It's time for your weekly dose of SEO. So here's a thought for the week: as you design and optimize your website, you might want to remember that site visitors may be accessing your website from anywhere and any kind of device. The article we're highlighting this week from eWeek helps to bring this point home. How many people do you suppose would be looking for some online entertainment on Alaskan Airlines when flying between Seattle and San Jose? It's not the first airline to start offering in-flight broadband, and it probably won't be the last. Are you ready, or are your plans up in the air?

Of course, bringing up airlines makes one think of landings, and if you're an online marketer, that immediately leads to thoughts of landing pages. Which brings us to Monday's SEO Chat article on putting your landing pages to work. Even after you've lured visitors to your site, they still need to do some pretty heavy lifting; this guide can help you build them well. From landing pages, we moved to a discussion of how hard the economy has hit Google yes, the behemoth of the field, known for the loving treatment it gives its workers, is actually laying people off! Is it the end of the world? Well, not yet; Wednesday's article covered Bidvertiser and whether its services could be right for you.

They say advertising goes down in a bad economy because businesses can't afford to spend money on it; in fact, the opposite is true, at least early on. So it's appropriate that this week's thread focuses on some advertising math. If you've ever wrestled with an AdWords campaign, or even thought about using AdWords, you will definitely find it informative. Be sure to stop by the thread and add your voice!

It's always good to sharpen your skills, and that's true now more than ever. So it pays to check out the many SEO-related tutorials you can find on Tutorialized. We've highlighted just a few here to get you started. And if you lean more toward web design or another tech area, that's okay; we have a wide assortment on a variety of topics likely to be of interest to you. Point your browser to our site and see for yourself!

Finally, our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, lists some of the things you can check if you think the SEO you hired isn't living up to his or her end of the contract. There are a lot of scam artists out there; how can you tell if you're getting ripped off? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out.

As always, thanks for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

• News of the Weird gets smashed by DevShed Hulk. Marvel Comic's attorney seen rubbing hands greedily together.
• The Mad Russian returns and this week, he's even funny!
• A new segment is unleashed: Buddha scowls in anger, then forgives Tech Heaven for its sins.

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Would you like to spread the word about your site? Would you like to turn your online content into money-making online pages? Or, do you just want to sell things on eBay with a bit more ease? Using the services provided through BidVertiser, you could potentially take care of all these goals. Is this site your answer for all things advertising?

Online advertising isn't, by any means, a new fad. Many Web sites know how to use advertising, whether by bringing more people to the site or using ads to create revenue for popular pages. Sometimes, the hardest part of online adverting lies in finding just the right company to create these marketing campaigns. Could that company be

What is BidVertiser?

BidVertiser is a full-service online advertising site that helps you achieve your marketing goals. BidVertiser has been available online for a few years, and their services are often compared to Google's AdSense advertising programs. BidVertiser's user-friendly site and very simplified payment method (unlike Google, BidVertiser pays through PayPal and will make payments once the $10 mark has been reached) often make these programs seem very desirable.

Read BidVertiser: Your Answer for All Things Advertising?

Google Layoffs: A Sign of the Times
by Joe Eitel
2009-03-03

We knew the recession was hitting pretty bad, but we didn't think it would be this bad. Layoffs at Google are almost unheard of, but they're happening. What does this mean for the company's future? Keep reading to find out.
Google's Success

Everybody with a computer has heard of the Internet giant, Google. Google has made its success in Silicon Valley as a search engine-based company. The vast majority of their revenues are derived through the advertisements that they host on their widely popular search engine.

Google was incorporated in 1998, and in just 6 years, by 2004, made its IPO at $1.67 billion, making it worth $23 billion. At the time, many people thought that Google's stock was artificially high and there was just a lot of hype surrounding the company. However, these people were proven quite wrong as the stock price doubled, tripled, and eventually settled at a value over six times higher than its initial offering.

Read Google Layoffs: A Sign of the Times

Putting Your Landing Pages to Work
by Terri Wells
2009-03-02

Landing pages are among the hardest-working documents you'll ever write. Your landing page should not just inform visitors about what you're selling; it needs to convince them to convert, while at the same time give them enough information to feel good about their decision. So it must instill trust as well as persuade and inform. Keep reading to find out how.

I've written on the topic of landing pages before. Let's start our examination of this ubiquitous online selling tool from the point of view of your potential customer. Whether they've reached your landing page from clicking on a search engine text ad, a sponsored link, or even an email message, they saw certain things before they clicked that they expect to see on your landing page. If they don't see them there, they will click away faster than you can say "bounce rate."

Hana Ondrusek, writing for Microsoft adCenter, gives a more concrete example. "For example, if I perform a search for 'travel deals' and I'm shown an ad for a travel agency that references 'travel deals' in the keywords, ad copy or both, I expect that clicking on the ad will bring me to a page where I will find their travel deals. If I click on the ad and find myself staring at the agency's home page with a picture of their staff and a list of client testimonials, I'm going to hit the back button on my browser almost immediately." You've created certain expectations with the text of your ad; if you don't explicitly fulfill them, you immediately lose credibility with your prospect - and no smart person buys from someone who isn't credible.

Read Putting Your Landing Pages to Work

Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other
tech related tutorials.

Online Branding by way of SEO
Brand - a trademark or a unique name to identify your product or a manufacturer.
Read the tutorial.

Creating Search Engine Friendly URLs Using .htaccess
Using .htaccess is simple and easy.
Read the tutorial.

Secrets Behind Link Building
On reading this post you should be able to do link building with simple steps.
Read the tutorial.

10 Tips To Improve Traffic
Learn these 10 steps to increase traffic to your site.
Read the tutorial.

Bring Customers and Business Together Through Proper Keywords
The title says it all. Easy methods.
Read the tutorial.

5 SEO Myths
Are you still spending too long on worthless SEO? This can help.
Read the tutorial.

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A lot of analysis goes into a good AdWords campaign. You must do much of this work beforehand, to keep from losing money. This week's thread gives you a taste of the kind of math and thoughtful consideration you should do if you hope to make your campaigns pay off. Be sure to stop by the thread and add your experiences.

Adwords mathematical question

Hi all,
I sell men's accessories through my site and make about 10 profit on each item after postage and product cost. The average CPC in my field is around 0.50p, below which my site would not be shown on page 1. If I aim for page 2, I don't get as many impressions.

1. The quality score of all my ads is around 9/10.
2. Keywords are very specific and exact match, NOT broad; to get very high quality targeted clicks.
3. I prefer to keep content network off as I think it's best to aim for people who are actually searching for the product on Google with full intention to buy.

So, let's say I was to spend 10 a day/300 month on AdWords that will bring me 20 visits a day/600 month.
With a 2% conversion rate I get only 12 sales a month. Equaling to 120 profit, but I've spent 300 on AdWords.

The AdWords CPC ratio and my profit margins don't match. My prices are very sensible and completely in tune with the market.

For me to make money -
1. Either my CPC has to come down to at least 10p a click.
2. or increase the conversion rate to 5% JUST to break even.

The only way to make it work is to increase conversion rate to 10-20%, does anyone get that kind of rates with AdWords?

Thanks

You have done a good analysis and understand what needs to be done - up your conversion rate or get more visitors from your current ad spend - or better yet, do both.

Do you have a lot of ads running? I usually write about ten versions of each ad and allow Google to pick the best one. Also you should experiment with different landing pages to increase your conversion rate. Get a copy of Tim Ash's book "Landing Page Optimization" and see if you can improve.

One more thing to consider. I have one site that gets lots of repeat sales. If you are selling consumable items then your customers might come back to buy over and over. So, even if you lose money on sale #1 you will make money in the long run through customer loyalty. This can be cultivated through email marketing.

Good luck. Let us know how you do.

As above, I agree with increasing conversion rate, or having repeat customers.

However, there are some industries in which PPC is not going to add value to your company. In these cases, I would suggest SEO (if possible for your industry).

I have had campaigns that only broke even, if you added the time for managing it; it was a bad business idea. Not everyone makes a lot of money from AdWords, especially in the current financial environment.

One suggestion: drop any keywords that will cost more than 10p to make it to the front page. This will probably result in a lot less clicks; however, at least you will be making money from them.

Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts.
Read the full thread.

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Is Your SEO Doing His Job?

If you've never engaged an SEO before, it's easy to get lulled by promises and all too easy to get ripped off. How do you separate the ethical SEOs from the scam artists? And how do you tell if the SEO already working for you is one or the other? That's the question one of members of our forum asked; he was trying to figure out how to track what his SEO is doing (if anything) to fulfill his contract. All he seemed to be getting, in his words, was the runaround.

An ethical SEO communicates in hard numbers from the beginning. It is true that this kind of work takes a while before you see an effect but in order to see an effect, you need to know your starting point. Another forum member commenting on the situation said it is standard practice for him to give new clients statistics such as where they are in the search engines based on the keywords they selected; that's just one example.

Before any work begins, you and your SEO should agree on a goal that is clear, measurable, and leaves no room for grey area. Respected forum member googler gave as examples I expect traffic to rise 10 percent every month or I expect to have sales increase by 20 percent within three months. These goals will of course be different depending on your site, industry, competitiveness of keywords, what you can realistically hope to accomplish, and other factors.

Your SEO should give you full access to statistics, keyword ranking tools and show you what content his team has added, googler explained. What if you don't have that access are you getting ripped off? And if you are, how can you tell? Fortunately, as site owner there are certain things you can check regardless. Googler gave the following list:

• Your keyword positions on the keywords for which you are trying to rank.
• Your title tags, and whether they include keywords in a way that makes sense.
• Your site's content. Has he critiqued it? Has he offered unique ideas for linkbait and other ways to build links to your site?
• The technical aspects of your site. Have they been changed to be more friendly to the search engines (sitemaps added, navigation adjusted, etc?).
• Is the number of links to your website increasing? Googler recommends checking your links in Yahoo on the first of every month by typing in linkdomain: yoursite(dot)com.
• Is your traffic increasing? Ask your SEO what stats programs he uses to track this, and request access to them. Also ask for a monthly report.

Some people treat SEO as a black art, but it doesn't have to be. You deserve straight answers from anyone you've hired to perform a service, and you have every right to find out whether they're doing the job they promised. If they aren't, fire them and find someone who will.