My Viral Blog

Archive for December, 2009

Anyone who has ever used PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising knows that to get a listing under the top used keywords means spending copius amounts of money on each of the main keywords even then there is no guarantee that your bid will be beaten 5 minutes after placement.

I hope through this article to show the reader alternative tactics that will produce the same sort of results received when you successfully win the bidding war but without spending all that money.

The first step in any successful advertising campaign should always be keyword research closely followed by the development of a sound marketing plan which encompasses exactly where the ads will appear.and what their content should be.(i'll cover this in more detail in future posts)

Now for small companies struggling to make an impression on the Internet there are alternatives to competing with the large corporations in PPC advertising, rather than looking to bid on high usage keywords they are better off spreading their available budget across a broad range of lesser keywords the results will only be slightly less than if they had gone for the major keyword, in fact in some cases they will gain results that surpass those using the major Keyword both is traffic and positioning as they gain more exposure.

The other option small business owners can look to is CPM (Cost Per Month) advertising, this form of advertising rotates users through the number of slots available for each keyword guaranteeing exposure in the top 10 places, this form allows for accurate budgeting and has simular results to PPC without the bidding war on top keywords, a shining example of this is the ISEDN form of CPM advertising.

The bottom line is small business should not even consider competing in bidding wars as this will ultimately lead to failure

Sphere: Related Content

In the old days of SEO it was important to make sure your sites code was valid to W3c standards and that your Meta data was correctly formatted, sites required loads of 2 way and one way links and a constant stream of fresh relevant information.

With the launch of Google's Caffeine  SEO has been tossed on its head, 2 way links (reciprocal)  are basically worthless and your meta data and code standard moved down on the weighting scale, instead it is now imperative to employ Google analytics into your site structure if you want to stand any chance of making page one of the search results.

Caffeine depends on information gathered by Google analytics in order to rank and position your site according to user information collected by analytics, Google have also started a personalized search system which is also integral to how your site is positioned in the results.

So what does this mean for SEO's and site owners, well for starters it means most SEO's will have to rethink their strategies and in many cases embark on a complete restructure of the sites under their care since the strategies they have had in place will no longer have the same effect as before.

The key to the new Caffeine system is Traffic and lots of, the more traffic a site receives the higher it is going to rank and position and it's part of a clever ploy by Google to increase it's advertising sales while raising the bidding war for top spots on the major keywords, site owners will need to increase their advertising budgets if they want to stay in the race for traffic and sales, SEO will be overtaken in importance by SEM and SMO and the costs incurred by site owners will rise tremendously forcing many small businesses to leave the Internet scene forever.

Meanwhile those that have relied on carrying the Google advertising on their sites and who have basically put Google where it is today will continue to receive breadcrumbs in return for their efforts, very few of the millions of site owners carrying Google adsense on their sites see decent levels of income from the Search Giant many on approaching the monthly claim threshold see a degradation of the ad quality supplied to their sites as Google chokes off the click rate and restricts their earnings forcing them to wait even longer to meet their $100 monthly minimum.

In some cases they will have their accounts terminated with out just cause and lose the income from their labors, (this has personally happened to me and while google did send me an email stating they would send me a check for the balance of my account  a lousy $36 they did not offer any sufficient reason for canceling my membership nor have i seen any sign of the check after 4 months).

To me it would seem that Google while putting on a face of performing a public service is changing it's systems in order to feed the Giants Greed and need to totally control the Internet and it's users.

Caffeine and Personalized Search are just another Tactic being employed to achieve this, Google is trying to play Big Brother to the world and decide for all of us what we see on the Internet , it is collecting information on each and every user despite the fact in some cases this is a breach of privacy (Germany has already raised this issue regarding Google analytics and is considering a Ban on it's use on .de tlds) It's maps system poses a security nightmare for countries even though sensitive areas are blacked out we are talking only a small area and when you think about it from a strategist point of view those black spots make ideal targets for a nuclear attack after all land a bomb within a kilometer of the black spot and your guaranteed to wipe the target out if the blast doesn't do the job the radiation will and they must be considered vital to a countries security to have required blanking out, so thank you Google for painting all those bullseyes .

The information they collect can also pose a threat to every Internet user notice the rise in spam and Internet scams lately and the fact a lot of it is personally addressed to you, well the people behind those annoying emails get their information via sites that collect mountains of data on it's users and their surfing habits the main repository is of course Google.

Now it may seem i am slamming Google quite a lot in this article but like the Berlin wall it's no use attacking with a toothpick if you want to make any impression that could cause them to reconsider the effect they will have on the general population of the Internet you need to use a large sledgehammer or two.

Yes some people will benefit from Caffeine and Personalized search but it won't be the small business man or in many cases the family members who turn to the Internet for information or to purchase needed items a little cheaper, those that are going to benefit most are the large corporations followed by the larger companies that can afford to plow an extra million or two into it's yearly budget, and of course Google.

For the families it's just another intrusion into their daily lives another struggle to find information they need as the Google index gets turned on it's head and well shaken put enough money into a lie and it becomes fact, control the flow of information and you control the world.

Sphere: Related Content