My Buy Essay

For realtors the Internet can no longer be ignored. Significant numbers of home buyers on going online to do their preliminary research for real estate and agents. Recent surveys suggest over 50%.

I personally know a number of local realtors, and it is interesting to see how some are easily adapting to this media, while others are sitting on the sidelines wondering why they are seeing a decrease in prospective buyers.

The Internet is not going away, and if someone plans to make real estate a viable career they must incorporate online marketing in order to not only succeed, but to survive. So how can realtors cost-effective connect with potential customers? In addition to MLS listings, they can reach a very targeted audience through search engine marketing. There are basically two forms of search marketing, organic and pay per click advertising.

Organic Search Marketing

Organic search marketing is about ranking at the top of the search results. It is accomplished through search engine optimization (SEO). The goal is to get your web pages at the top of the search results for targeted terms and phrases. For example, if you are a realtor in Boise it would be profitable to have your site rank at the top for terms phrases like “Boise Realtors” or “Boise Real Estate.”

How do you accomplish this mysterious feat? First, you have to optimize your web pages around certain phrases like “Boise Real Estate.” That term becomes the theme of the page, and there are certain techniques that let the search engines know it is the theme.

In addition to optimizing the page you have to convince the search engines that your site is important enough to deserve a prominent ranking. This is achieved by getting other web sites to link to your site. When a web site has a hyperlink to your site, the search engines consider this a vote of confidence. It is more complicated than just getting a bunch of links, since some links are considered more important than others. But in general, the combination of optimized pages and external links results in top rankings. SEO takes time and effort. If you are a new site, you may not see results for 6-9 months with Google.

Pay Per Click Advertising

In contrast to SEO, pay per click advertising (PPC) can provide instant gratification. With Google you can set-up a marketing campaign in less than an hour. With Yahoo it takes 24-48 hours to be approved.

PPC is where you pay to have your web site listed at the top of the search results for particular terms that are relevant to your business. There are basically two search engines where you want to pay to market, Yahoo and Google. PPC is based on an auction model, where you bid for the position of your ad. The ads appear above and to the right of the organic search listings. They are listed as “Sponsored Links.”

PPC advertising is based on an auction model. You bid for positioning on terms that are relevant to your business, just like how you would optimize your web pages for similar terms. Once again if you are a realtor in Boise, you would bid on terms that your prospects would use to find services in your area. The position of your ad depends on how much you bid in relation to your competitors.

The appeal of PPC advertising is you set the bids, you set a maximum daily expenditure and you can turn your campaign on or off at any moment. Even more important is the ability to track exactly how your advertising dollars are being spent. With with this information you can tweak your bids and your ads for maximum performance.

It important to note that buyers who search online tend to be better informed, spend significantly less time with their realtor, and preview fewer houses than traditional buyers. That is another reason why search engine marketing is becoming essential.

Time is running out to ignore the Internet. Either you are going to be a player or you will be cut from the squad.

To stay relevant or even solvent, a company must keep itself informed. That’s why research, of both the in-house and outsourced varieties, is essential. At ConductSearch.com keeping tabs on who’s doing what in the marketplace is key to our success, and it doesn’t matter whether our information comes via mailman or email – at the end of the day, it’s still content, right? Recently, I happened to come upon the work of a reliable investment banking firm that specializes in Chinese tech research, New York Global Securities. I learned that New York Global thinks as highly of search advertising’s positioning in China as I do of it was here in America. They initiated coverage of a major Chinese Search Engine, Baidu (which translates to “a hundred times”), with a “Buy” rating.

Funny enough, ConductSearch.com and Baidu, the Chinese search giant, have something in common. But what, you ask? Baidu is based in mainland China (we’re not quite there, yet) and has little American presence. Yet, both companies, one small, one large, and on opposite sides of the earth, share a sentiment associated with search advertising – a sentiment shared by search advertisers all over the earth &ndash namely, that there’s still brilliant opportunities in the field. As players in search advertising, no matter what the size or where we are, we must avail ourselves to these favorable conditions.

We’re no GE, but we’ve got exclusive search technology surpassed by none, while Baidu, an indexer of 700 million pages, is located in a country that didn’t even have Internet access only 7-8 years ago. Incredible, sure, but these are hardly unique success stories in the field.

One great aspect of search is that as it evolves, advertisers grow increasingly aware of its effectiveness. This makes the task of selling the revolutionary concept much less difficult, and industry forecasts indicate this advertiser confidence with predictions of continued search advertising growth through at least 2010. Advertisers simply can’t get enough of measurable, targeted end-users.

According to Andrew Collier, New York Global’s analyst who’s recommending Baidu, the Chinese populace is even more receptive to Baidu’s relevant advertising than would be Westerners since existing Chinese advertising channels (that’s print, TV, and radio) are relatively weak.

So enticing is China’s advertising landscape for the accommodating platform of search, that Yahoo and, as of last January, Google, have launched Chinese versions of their popular search engines themselves. Baidu is sure to meet some stiff competition from Google.cn. Says New York Global’s Andrew Collier: “search is one of the best advertising models for the Chinese market because of its ability to target a specific customer base.” Do no evil and do much business, right Google?

In the meantime Baidu, with a 50% share of the Chinese search market, is reaching targeted customer bases within China. Search, by its flexible nature, adapts well to that frenzied economy. Massive ramp ups in Internet connectivity has been all the impetus needed. New York Global rates Baidu (BIDU) with a “buy” recommendation largely due to its positioning as a provider of this highly effective search advertising platform.

The deep reach that search advertising provides Baidu in connecting with Chinese Internet users contrasts greatly with the Chinese Internet Portals whose total end user numbers are still too small to deliver mass goods to large audiences through banner ads and the like. So, too, is this a problem with traditional media, where government ownership is essentially a monopoly, thus preventing a healthy advertising environment. In China, Internet search marketing shines brightest in a sky of less than stellar advertising opportunities.

Maybe I’m biased, but I believe it’s the best means here in America, too. Domestically, my company or yours might not have 50% of the search market, but, like any firm involved with search, we do have the same wind of opportunity blowing at our backs as Baidu.

Jeff Conduct

Director of Marketing

ConductSearch.com

.conductsearch.com

marketingconductsearch.com

If your business is focused on a very particular, small market, you are going to love search engines. The more focused you are, the easier it is to win on the engines.

Search Engines and Small Markets

Once you have identified a small market and built a site, you need to start thinking about Internet marketing. Search engines present the best marketing platform on a dollar for dollar basis. There are two specific ways to go about the process.

Pay-per-click advertising on search engines is a great way to immediately reach your target audience. Google Adwords and Overture represent the two best ppc platforms. Place ads using these two platforms and the ads will appear on the search results for Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and a host of other search engines.

The second platform for getting in front of your market on the search engines is search engine optimization, better known as seo. The goal in seo is to identify the keyword phrases your prospects are using to find things. You then try to get your site ranked in the top three or four positions when the relevant search engines return results for any of the searches. The upside of seo is you don’t pay for advertising and rankings tend to stay high once you achieve them. The downside is it can take a couple of months before you appear high in MSN rankings and up to a year or longer on Google.

Regardless of the approach you take on the search engines, your focus on a small market gives you a huge advantage. By focusing on a lucrative, defined area of the Internet, you have limited the number of competitors you must take on. It is far easier and cheaper to market to “San Diego Mortgage Loans” than going after “Mortgage Loans.” The first phrase has a limited number of competitors while the second phrase is contested by huge sites with lots of advertising dollars. To this end, make sure you stick to your area when pursuing your marketing. If you offer services in a location, only advertise for keywords incorporating that location. Having a person three states over call you is just a waste of time.

Advertising for small, defined markets on the search engines is inexpensive compared to general markets. It is also easier and quicker to get seo listings.

Back in the late 1990s, “stickiness” was the big term; how to get web visitors to return to your site &ndash hopefully, again and again. Today, the strategy has evolved into “Outbound Stickiness” &ndash going out and pulling that visitor back in.

Going back in time, there were many sticky techniques including the hosting of tools, calculators, forums/bulletin boards, and of course &ndash my favorite &ndash “favorites”.

“Favorites” pre-dated good search engine results. Back then, you as a site owner would proffer your favorite links. Typically, they related to your industry and gave web visitors the opportunity to explore other related sites. Well, as the search engines of the day improved their results, the favorites section lost its favor.

It became very hard to become an authority site. Many a client of mine back then created a “lounge” or “portal” type of section on their site hoping to be the center of their respective universe. But web surfers soon preferred to get their informational direction from a Yahoo search.

Site stickiness never lost its allure. And now, new techniques have come into play in order to gain that coveted repeat visit. This time it’s an outbound effort. Content is created that travels out from the website to seek out users. It’s driven by RSS (Really Simple Syndication), and it’s used to distribute all kinds of information including news, blogs, and podcasts. We have evolved to Outbound Stickiness.

Currently, most blogs and podcasts revolve around time-sensitive events and writer opinion. However, they are just too darned valuable to be left to those noble endeavors. Businesses, big and small see (or will soon see), RSS and its related content as an opportunity to reach out and touch someone &ndash again and again.

This trend doesn’t bother me in the least. I’ve always gotten educated or stayed current on my industry by subscribing to informative newsletters, magazines, etc., be they of the printed or electronic variety. I even appreciate advertising as an information source in its own right. The difference is that now I have the convenience of having all of my sources being dropped into a central place for pickup. It’s on demand and I like many others are demanding it.

Outbound stickiness is going to include not only news of the day, but education on the tried and true.

In order to be credible, businesses are going to need to educate through these mediums as opposed to simply advertising or branding. If they want to keep you as a subscriber of their feed, value is going to need to be continually delivered. Something easier said than done.

This all presents opportunities and challenges on a variety of levels. First, there is creation of the content. Someone is going to have to acquire and consolidate the content. To get good traction with and grow a subscriber base, recycling someone else’s content will not do the trick for long (sorry, you can’t just steal it from the net).

Next, not all of us are writers or recording artists. Internal or outsourced resources will need to be hired to actually deliver the information in an effective style and format (e.g. blog writers, podcasters, video podcasters, etc.).

You’ll need information marketers to continually review the information that has been previously published for accuracy and relevancy. Because information created and distributed to the Internet is difficult to eradicate, it won’t be a matter of just deleting old files. New information will need to be created to supersede the old. And the whole cycle will begin again.

A credence of mine (that I obtained from somewhere now unknown), is “if you can’t get out of it &ndash get into it”. Let me tell you &ndash you can’t get out of this one.

If you don’t already have a strategy to deliver some Outbound Stickiness, get it going now. It’s just not for news-junkie/conservative/liberal/techie/egocentrics anymore.

My recommendation is to publish by series. If you sell paint, do a series of 5 blog entries, podcasts, etc., on color. Next, do a series on prep and application. Next, on design trends. You get the idea.

By publishing to a series you escape the pressure of continually coming up with and extending your subject. Also, if you need a break, take it between series’. Then you won’t look like you just jumped on the bandwagon, ran out of ideas, and fell off.

Additionally, mix time-specific information and opinion with tried and true educational content.

Good luck with it all! For some of you it will be liberating, for others it’s fingers on a chalkboard (by the way, we’re going to need to come up with a new idiom for that one &ndash who uses chalk boards anymore. Any suggestions &ndash email me).

If you want some advice or have any comments &ndash email me at jboulterbastioninternet.com or visit us at .bastioninternet.com. We’re a web marketing firm located in Southern California and are happy to help.

Are you the owner of an online business and eager to promote your website and your services without spending a single dollar? Press release writing could well be one of the ways to advertising your products online.

Technically speaking, press releases are news item which you can transform to cater to your marketing goals by writing ads that have the features of general news. This could be very advantageous in your publicity campaign since many people are bored of reading ad copies that only boast about themselves and want to read news which contains solid information and hard facts. One of the most essential internet marketing schemes, this could effectively attract the eyeballs from targeted groups.

Given below are three ideas to effectual press release writing that can give a boost to your advertising and marketing campaign programs:

1. Write your copy in the third person to create press releases that sound objective. Avoid the use of personalized phrases and words. Try to express what you want to say in as much as a concise and brief manner as possible. Straightforward description is the key here – lay out your press release in using the 4 Ws and 1H of news writing – who, what, when, where and how.

2. Try to steer clear from hype words. This is a definite no-no in press releases. Editors are extremely impatient of such texts and will discard them in no time. And on the other hand readers will find it too clich

New Delhi, India: Can Selling a ‘Pixel’, the smallest graphic unit on your computer screen, make you a millionaire?

If you apply the formula used by England’s Alex Tew, creator of the wildly successful Million Dollar Homepage, it just might.

The idea is simple: Create affordable Internet advertising space by selling blocks of pixel (usually 10X10) ads on a high traffic Web site. Then, link those blocks back to the advertiser’s site and tell everyone you know about it to create buzz.

M-Solutions, an India-based Company joined the pixel bandwagon, and launched ‘PixelAdMall’[1] on 4 November, 2005. A little late than other pixel websites, but today has made a presense felt on major Pixel Top-Sites and Search Engines, like Google. Keywords like ‘Buy Pixels’ and ‘Pixel Directory’ when searched, this Site appears on the first page itself.

Currently, PixelAdMAll’s pixels cost USD $.20 each or USD $20 for 100 pixels. Where this site differs is in it’s marketing strategy, the site keeps giving users on the internet Hot Offers and promotions, which one should regularly check and take advantage of. For more information please visit PixelAdMAll[2] – The Best Place to Buy Pixels!

“Our pixel price is about half of what other sites charge,” added CEO, M-Solutions, “plus, we’re investing heavily in keyword advertising and search engine visibility that will drive traffic for added value and improved return on investment for our customers.”

The company’s minimum pixel purchase is 100 pixels (a 10 x 10 square) the developing industry standard for effective pixel advertising.

The USD $.20 promotional price is valid until 100,000 pixels are sold at which point the price will and is expected to rise.

PixelAdMall also offers its own Top-Site List (A.K.A. Pixel Sites Directory[3]), a guide for internet users to search for pixels of value; it is a list of sites, ranked in a way as to guide prospective buyers, which pixel site should they invest in for advertising their own site. It is also a place where all Pixel Based sites advertise.

Contact: M-Solutions.

salespixeladmall.com

###

Effective marketing medium like newspapers, popular magazines or TV are very important for boosting a business. However, for small businesses especially for those that are just starting, advertising through these medium might be too expensive.

However, with the internet, there are already powerful but cost-effective measures to gain free marketing. First requirement, though, your small business must have a website. Invest on it and find its advantages.

One very affective way to boost your business quickly but not spending too much is through having your business website listed on an online business directory fast. Actually, you can have it listed on many directories, repeatedly. Your website will slowly get ranking and attract many potential customers in the process.

On the other end of the bargain, don’t you know that running and organizing an online business directory can be quite profitable? First, you must first know what its advantages are and how you can get more search engine optimization importance for it. Only then will you find that it is indeed a lucrative online site.

There are online business sites that want to list their companies as an advertising tactic on online business directory websites. Online business directories are much like yellow page sites online. They are a great help for both users and business websites because online yellow page sites also list the websites together with their city address and zip code.

Other online business directories list websites like this, as well. This strategy boosts the chance that business websites even small ones, come up on their target customers’ local search.

On their own, small and local business, company websites cannot get higher rankings, since they might only have 5-10 pages. Thus, online business directory advertising websites are really helpful and significant for them.

As online business directories regain more recognition among internet users, more business websites find make sure they are listed on them. An online business directory connects buyers and sellers. They offer the same advantages as advertising in traditional yellow pages. By having a business website listed, they can establish their brands, give customer latest information about their business and what’s more important, attract new customers.

Many online business directories list websites free. Some asks for reciprocal links. Nevertheless, once an online business directory achieved a good ranking especially on major search engines, they may charge for listing already. Listing sometimes is categorized from basic listing to other listing opportunities, like attaching company logo, giving a direct link to the website, and maps/directions to the business website address.

There are also upgrading opportunities. Larger online business directory services may offer a business website already subscribing a basic listing with online coupons, acquisition services and reporting tools.

One of the characteristics of a good online business directory is its good organization. If you are running an online home based business directory then you have to know that it is very critical to have a well-organized structure for your directory. Having a good directory structure will not get your users hopelessly confused and make it easy for them to find what they need.

Also, having an organized business directory means they are all in one place and makes it easy to have a back up file for it. Like organizing a real file cabinet, you can have your online business directory organized by having three levels. The file cabinet itself is the first level, 2nd is the file drawers and third is the file folders.

Understand that whatever end of the deal you may be, a small business website opting to have your site listed in an online business directory, or a directory offering free and paid listings, you can have advantages.

All web sites are different. MTTs unique software is modified on the fly to suit each web sites products and services to guarantee that thousands of sales are generated. A huge surge of ready to buy targeted search engine traffic is Guaranteed.

It’s FREE to join MTT as an affiliate, clients are queuing to savor the unique pay on results payment model. MTT’s pay on results plane is revolutionizing the way people and businesses make money on the Web. You do nothing, just give them the URLs to your web site, you never have to touch MTT’s software.

Your web site will be deluged by ultra-targeted ready to buy search engine traffic. You site will jump to the top of all the best search engines’ results for the keywords and content the software will feed them including Google. You will sell more and earn far greater profits but only pay service fees subject to the MTT income and performance guarantee ONLY when they generate you $100,000.

If you do not earn $100,000 net profit within 4 months, MTT will give you the remainder of their service for FREE- no charges plus you get to keep what you earn. You can set up as many of your web sites or affiliate programs as you want. This is true Set-It-And-Forget-It technology. Join our FREE affiliate program and try the service before the introductory offer expires.

See You At The Top!

C L Eldridge