Search Engine Marketing Options:
Sponsored Search Campaigns (A.K.A. Pay-per-click): (credit card for Google Adwords and Yahoo Search budgets + hourly rate)
Easyway Web Design is recognized as a Qualified Google Advertising Professional and a Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador. This means that we have passed both comprehensive tests demonstrating our knowledge of both products. You may click on either link below for confirmation of certification.
Reciprocal Links: (credit card for links management system + hourly rate)
We can install a links management system on your site. Look at our link exchange for an example.
Great features of this system:
- Allows visitors to add their links without the hassles of trading links via email, then sending them to your webmaster to post on your site pages.
- Automatically checks link partners’ sites to ensure the link back to you is in place and stays there!
- You can manually accept links in order to retain control of who is placing links on your site, thus making sure they are appropriate and relevant links.
Search Engines: Pay-Per-Click vs. Reciprocal Links
Q: What is pay-per-click? Advantages? Disadvantages?
A: Pay-per-click is when you bid for a "sponsored link" position on a search engine. The two largest pay-per-click services are Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. (Formerly known as Overture.) Google powers AOL's, EarthLink’s and AT&T's search engines. Yahoo powers MSN's, Excite's, AltaVista's, Juno's, CNN's and NetZero's. The advantage of pay-per-click is that it is very targeted, effective and measurable advertising. The disadvantage is that once you stop paying for the service, your website disappears.
Q: What are reciprocal links? How do they help my site?
A:Reciprocal links are when others link to your site, and you link to them in return. The more incoming links (that means others linking to you) you have to your site, the more likely search engines deem your site popular, thus you are ranked higher. You want to try to keep your links relevant to your site also. (I.e. if you are a realtor, links to a title company, mortgage broker, and homeowner's insurance agent would be relevant.) Think about it…if you were looking for a certain business, and in asking around, everyone pointed you to the same business location, wouldn’t that be where you would look too? Search engines don’t look at it exactly like humans, but it’s a similar concept. The more links to your site, the more important the search engine perceives your domain to be.
Q: SO…Which one do I do?
A: Short term: pay-per-click. Long term: reciprocal links.
Using Google for an example, follow this scenario:
Type in the keywords: Miami Limos.
You will get a page similar to the following screenshot:
The listings along the top and right hand side are referred to as, “Sponsored Listings.” These are the pay-per-click ads. The listings in the main left part of the page are Google’s picks. If you click on the first one, whose website is: www.a1limobus.com, you will be taken to a site called, “A 1 Luxury Limousine of South Florida.” On their site, scroll down the left hand navigation until you find a link called, “useful links,” and click on it. This is an example of a reciprocal links exchange. If you look closer at the links, you will notice they are relevant to the site. (I.e. accommodations, clubs, travel, etc. – all places that you might find a limo service.) Have I made my case for why you need to do this?! Even better, reciprocal links are most often no cost and do not disappear like pay-per-click ads. For the favor of adding a link to your site, your partners will add a link to their site, thus helping the both of you.
Q: I don’t have time for all of this!!! What options do you provide to help me?
A: The most popular option: Set up a Webmaster Account: You can contract us at a reduced rate by guaranteeing us a set amount of hours each month. (I.e. Contract us for 3 hours a month, and we’ll come down 10%. We’ll do 3 hours of managing your pay-per-click account(s) and/or obtaining reciprocal links for you at the price of $135/month. The more hours you guarantee, the better the discount. You can also include site content updates in this or anything else we set as your goals.)
|
|
