Using a simple ROI equation you can calculate how much you should really invest on gaining new web site visitors.

Targeted or untargeted visitors? The Internet offers a wide range of advertising and marketing options that wasn't available to business and marketing managers only a few years ago. Terms like pay-per-click, search engine optimisation, web site localisation, pay per lead, email marketing, contextual advertising, banner advertising, links exchange etc. are now commonly used by marketing experts and business managers worldwide.
An easy way to understand what your options really are, is to subdivide all the different forms of online advertising available today in two general streams: Targeted and untargeted advertising.

Untargeted online marketing is the closest to print advertising. An example of this form of marketing is banner advertising, but also other tactics like links exchange. Placing a banner on a high-traffic web site, such as a national newspaper web site, or large media site, can offer exposure to a large number of viewers, but offers little control over the viewers buying profile. This type of advertising makes sense for large consumer brands, looking at flooding the market with large scale consumable goods. But it's perhaps less attractive to small and medium size businesses looking at targeting a specific segment of the market, especially in a business-to-business sector.

On the other hand, search engine marketing and pay per click will allow you to target your marketing effort by focusing on specific search terminology (i.e. key-phrases), thus ensuring that your web site visitors are well qualified before reaching your website. This means gaining web site traffic from interested, potential buyers who are actively searching for your product or service. This allows you to place your business at the closest possible point before a buying decision is made.

Optimising your web site for Google ranking is not a simple process and requires technical as well as sales and marketing skills.
However this technique can help you develop a targeted online marketing strategy at a fraction of the cost compared to other online and offline marketing forms.

How to optimise your web site for high Google ranking? Google's crawler (Googlebot) periodically 'spiders' the web for new websites and updated ones. Googlebot will follow all the links in your site. So make sure all your pages are linked otherwise some of your pages will not get indexed.
With Google, unlike other search engines, you can't really buy your way up the search rankings (you can advertise on Google using their AdWords service. In this case ads are displayed on the right hand side of the screen, next to 'genuine" - organic - search results).

Getting listed in Google can take up to a couple of months although most web pages can be listed within a month from submission (nb. Google does not guarantee this). The time frame depends on their crawl schedule and how many other web sites are in queue to be indexed before yours. In our experience, Google usually lists a site within a month.

To achieve a high ranking make sure your web site is ready before you submit it to be listed. Google will index your entire site, content and all. It takes keywords from the metatags as well as the content. You'll find that Google will send you the maximum amount of traffic (in some cases it is triple of what Yahoo would send you), so time well spent on your web site will pay off in the long run.

Using product-service-relevant keywords in your domain names significantly improves the ranking of Web pages. However, the presence of even an incidental string of letters that spell adult words or the deliberate use of words such as "girls" can block your non-adult Web site from search results.

Google and domain names. In order for your website to rank high on Google search results and not to be blocked, you must use keywords that describe your company's products range or services.

Ranking and/or inclusion in search engine listings is determined by a combination of factors:

Meta Tags are lines of information describing the content of a webpage embedded in the HTML code of the page - generally at the top. There are 3 type of meta tag - the "Title", the "Description" and the "Keywords". Generally speaking the order of weighting given to them is as listed ie "Title" is the most important.

Link Popularity is a general representation of the total number of web-pages which link to a website (or individual web-page).

Link popularity is a major factor used by search engines in influencing a site's position in search results. Other main factors that will affect your search engine ranking include keywords and metatags in your website's HTML code, as well as the relevancy of the content displayed on the body of the website.

Keywords. In html and body of content. More information about choosing a key phr ase from Domainz News [learn more]

Missing links, error pages and content updates. While broken links can negatively affect your web site's ranking, search engines like Google reward web sites with frequently updated content. Domainz web site maintenance service

Domain names. A fundamental rule of web marketing is to think of your domain name as a marketing tool and not simply a reference or address, securing the right domain name for your web site can make a considerable difference to your web business success. More information on domain names from Domainz News [Learn more]

Finally, there is no limit to the options you have in terms of driving more traffic to your web site. Dutch hotel reservation web site Hotel.nl had an original idea to promote their web site. Sheep advertising ...

The Role of Search in Business to Business Buying

Decisions. A Summary of Research Conducted by

Enquiro.com

First Choice Online Destination

Favourite Search Engine

Where in the buying cycle is search used?

Sections of search results page first looked at

Online destinations broken down by budget