Though, when you make a mistake with your PPC campaign it can cost you a great deal. If you are new to the game you may forget to do several important things. For one, you may not remember to place a cap on your daily bids. Even PPC veterans with high traffic campaigns sometimes have lapses in judgment that result in untargeted clicks which do not convert.
Monitoring your click-through-rates (CTR) and conversion data is a necessity once your campaign gets established, after which you can adjust your things accordingly. This is where PPC bid management comes into play.
If you use an automated bid management system which both analyzes your conversion data and CTR you can reduce the amount of time and effort you need to dedicate to your campaigns. This means that you can react much quicker to campaign fluctuations because they are identified sooner. But when looking for a good automated system you need to remember that often times you get what you pay for.
As a pay per click advertiser you need to consider four things when choosing a bid management system:
1. The number of keywords you are currently bidding on.

2. The size of your budget.

3. Is the system going to do a better job managing your budget across all your campaigns?

4. The number of campaign that are currently being managed.
If you take all these into consideration you can probably find a very good automated bid manager on the market. One such system is Acquisio Search. Acquisio Search is a custom pay per click software system that is capable of monitoring your keywords, flagging those that need to be paused, and automatically emailing you about keywords that have poor Quality Scores.
If you are still a PPC rookie then you probably have a much smaller number of active campaigns. Shoemoney Tools or BidMax offer more affordable solutions. Both of these tools are well suited for running a smaller campaign and are intuitive in how they function, making them perfect for someone new to PPC.
As much help as a PPC tool is they are still not as useful as regular, hands-on maintenance. Software can only interpret data in certain ways, requiring a human to properly understand the numbers and information. Constant scrutiny is required in order to get the best possible performance from your PPC campaign. Still, as your campaign becomes bigger and the scale or budgets increase, an automated bidding system becomes an invaluable tool for PPC advertisers.

Link building methods have changed form time to time and a specific method that worked yesterday may not work today anymore. This is due to changes in the industry over time and in some cases extreme abuse. If a specific link building method has been abused too much, then that method will not work anymore. It is therefore very important to know which link building method works today so that you can spend your time in a most productive way.
There are many link building methods out there today that work with some working better than others. Below are some of the today’s popular links building methods that work to some extent:

Article Submission: If you are reading this article, then you know that you can publish your own article on article directories. Not only you gain backlinks to your site from your published articles (see bottom of this article), you get some traffic as a bonus. Think of you reading this article. There can be many reading your published articles as well.Article submission is a great way to building backlinks as it provides you with 100% relevant contextual backlinks that Google loves.
Directory Submission: Directory submission used to work lot better before but it is still a popular link building method that still works if done properly. How many web directories are out there as of this date is anyone’s guess but one thing is certain that most of the directories don’t worth submitting.
Google considers Yahoo Directory link as a quality backlink so if you can afford and justify the cost, it is worth submitting to Yahoo Directory. Yahoo charges $300 for a yearly submission and there is no guarantee that your site will be approved!
DMOZ is another directory that worth submitting to and can come to great benefit in your SEO campaign. It may take months to get the approval form DMOZ and chance of getting approved is pretty slim. Lot of small directories use DMOZ directory categories so getting listed with DMOZ would mean getting bonus listing on many other web directories.
Another good directory to submit to would be BOTW directory that cost $99 for a yearly submission and $299 for a permanent listing.
Other than the above ones, you should look for quality directories where you can submit your site. You can judge the quality of the directories by analyzing the number of sites listed, number of backlinks the directory has, PR, age of the directory, etc.
Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking worked like charm only few months ago. If bookmarked on authority and quality bookmarking site like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, etc, then you can still make good use of social bookmarking. Other than backlinks, social bookmarking also offers you some bonus traffic depending on where you submit to. If you can manage to put together or collect a good bookmarking site list, then social bookmarking can still be a useful link building method.
Blog Commenting: This is a link building method where lots of spamming have already been done so to make the best of it, you nee to work a little hard here. It is best to find quality blogs related to your own category and make on-topic relevant comments. Not only your comments add value to the blogpost, you now have greater chance of getting your comment approved and your comments have greater chance of staying on those blogposts.
Press Releases: Submitting to press release sites can get you some backlinks as well. It is however hard to put together a list of good press release sites that worth submitting to. If a good list can be managed, then this method can offer some quality relevant backlinks as well.
Social Media and Web 2.0 Pages: There are lot of quality social media and Web 2.0 sites where you can publish your articles for backlinks. You write articles that are relevant to your site and publish them on these social media and Web 2.0 sites with your keywords hyperlinked to your own site. Some of the authority sites are Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, WordPress.com, etc.
Social media and Web 2.0 links are very popular these days as they work great. They offer quality relevant contextual backlinks that Google and other major search engines love. There are lots of other link building methods out there but if you can utilize the above ones to its fullest potential, there is no need for any other methods.

All you need is a free Google account if you don’t already have one.  You can add details about your business such as your hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons, menus and more. Not only is it fun and easy to do, you get instant traffic and more business too.

Long tail keywords will produce higher page rankings because there is less competition for them.
You will find your best prospects through long tail keywords. They’ve already taken the energy to think about what they specifically want or need; now they are on your site. These people are more likely to subscribe to your blog, email blasts and read your advertisements.
Long tail keywords generate higher sales. Shoppers who use long tail keywords are motivated and looking to spend money. Skip past the window shoppers and focus your energy on the serious shopper.
So how do you get your business listed at the top of the first page?  By narrowing the search with additional keywords.  As you add keywords your chances of coming up on top will increase exponentially.
Focusing your SEO energy on long tail keywords will deliver the customer who is most likely to spend money at your site. Isn’t that what we all want?

The Secrets of Effective Sales Videos
So, how do you do it? How do you ensure the videos you add to your site will indeed be effective and help drive sales?
The truth is, as with all marketing tools, there’s no one sure fire method that is guaranteed to always work, but there are quite a few techniques that seem to work fairly well:
1.  Here’s a quick way to decide where to begin – Apply the Pareto Principle
The Pareto principle, also known as the “80-20 Rule”, applies to most businesses. Simply put it means that you’re probably making much of your revenue with a well defined group of top selling items. You’ll probably get the most from your video endeavor by boosting these items’ product pages with videos first. Most online retailers have over five hundred items in their catalog. Choosing to follow the Pareto Principle serves as an excellent guideline for where to begin with video enhancements.
2.  You don’t need long videos to increase sales – Keep them sweet and short
The truth is that online your audience has a very shot attention span to start of with. This issue is compacted by the less-than-ideal objective qualities of most online video: download times, small player windows, poor sound quality, etc. The good news is that this is actually in your favor because it allows you to save on production time and costs. Ideally you should keep your product videos to less than one minute long. If your product is especially complex or pricey you might want to extend that by up to 50% however there’s little point in going above 90 seconds. The simple fact is the vast majority of your viewers will simply ignore anything longer…
3.  If you don’t conduct A/B tests from the start you’ll regret it later
Quite obviously different types of videos perform better for different types of products and different types of clients. The catch is we can’t know which type of video preforms best for our products and client base until we’ve tested a few versions – failing to test for effect early on can mean leaving substantial conversion potentials untapped. The simplest way to do this is by creating and uploading a few versions of product videos for a limited group in your catalog and monitoring their performance, in terms of conversion rates and purchasing behaviors, in order to determine which gave the best results. Once you feel you’ve accumulated the data you need, pick the best formats and them for the rest of your site’s products.
4.  What everybody should know about captions
Captions within your videos have a surprising effect on click through rates and conversions.  Check out these two product videos. Although the only difference between both versions is the red captions in the version on the right, there is a 8.3% difference in their conversion rates. That’s right – merely adding captions to the original video improved its conversions by over 8 percent.

5.  Add user reviews to increase trust
User reviews and testimonials are popular in e-commerce because people tend to trust ratings and recommendations from their peers. You can increase the ROI from any existing user’s reviews you have by adding them to your videos, as shown in this example from England’s leading online Golf’s retail site (click the “View Video Showreel” beneath the product images).
6.  Include video in your on-site search results to increase sales
Research shows people searching your site are twice to three times more likely to make a purchase than those merely browsing. The reason this is so is because searching visitors usually have a clear intent, while browsers are more likely to be casual traffic. A good way to use video to capitalize on the quality traffic using your site’s search engine is by indicating the availability of video within every item’s search results. Indicating an item has video increases the likelihood a user will click to view it, and then buy it.
7.  Are you getting the most out of your videos?
Once you’ve invested in creating a few videos you can maximize the ROI on them by including them in all your online marketing activities. Link to them from your email marketing campaigns, upload them to your social media profiles and use them to push your SEO campaigns via proper tagging and deep backlinks.
Make video your holiday resolution and beat the competition
Adding video to your site can not only help improve your sales, it can also be a fun experience for both you and your customers. With the holidays right around the corner, now is the perfect time to add a few select videos to help drive your holiday-season’s promotions. Online video can steer traffic away from your competitors, improve your site’s stickiness AND give you a powerful way to capture more sales during these holidays.

1. Choose the best name for your Facebook Page – and don’t change it.
Choosing the right name for your Facebook Page is vital. Despite the temptation to stuff your Page title with high value generic keywords – like “Bill’s Travel Agency: Las Vegas, Hawaii, Cancun – Hotels, Flights, & More” – this approach will actually harm your Page’s viral growth rate inside Facebook more than it will help through better SEO. For example, if your page’s title appears too spammy, fans will be less likely to share it with their friends on their profile and more likely to hide your updates from their News Feed.
Second, don’t give into the temptation to choose a fully generic page name like “Travel” or “Hawaii.” Because Facebook’s intention for Pages is that they authentically represent businesses, brands, or celebrities, Facebook has recently been disabling updates for generically named Pages – effectively neutering their ability to reach their Facebook fans.
The bottom line: use your business’s real name as the name of your page, even the one used for your “regular” website. And… once you pick your Page’s name, don’t change it. Facebook uses your Page name in the title of the Page, and since Google dings pages when their titles change, modifying your Facebook Page’s name will cost you SEO points. We will continue next week with Part 2.

Facebook recently launched the ability to choose a vanity URL (Facebook calls it a “username”) for your Facebook Page, one of the most important SEO opportunities on Facebook to date. When you choose a Facebook username for your Page, your Page’s URL becomes www.facebook.com/YourUsernameHere. Usernames can be selected at www.facebook.com/username.
facebook-page-seo-username
Facebook usernames present a better opportunity for businesses to consider incorporating generic keywords for SEO purposes than the Page name itself. While Facebook has created a black list of generic usernames that Pages (and users) are prevented from registering, there are still opportunities for businesses to obtain relatively generic usernames, or usernames that combine their actual name with additional generic keywords.
However, we do offer a word of caution when incorporating generic keywords in your Facebook Page URL: Facebook intends for Pages to authentically represent the identities of businesses, and brands and has revoked privileges from Pages with generic titles in the past, so it’s not unfathomable that Facebook might somehow punish Pages with generic usernames by similarly revoking status publishing rights (or at least the username itself) at some point in the future.
The safest option – and wisest long term bet in our view – is to choose a username that authentically represents your business or brand. For example, we chose www.facebook.com/InsideFacebook. Once you pick a Facebook username/URL for your Page, it cannot be changed – ever. So pick a username you’re going to be comfortable with and confident in for the long term.
One important note: in order to mitigate Facebook username squatting, Facebook requires that your Page have at least 100 fans before it becomes eligible to select a username. If your Page has less than 100 fans, you’ll need to recruit more fans before being able to take advantage of this important SEO strategy.

One important SEO strategy that should be employed on your Facebook Page whenever feasible is placing keyword-dense prose as close to the top of the Page as possible. Because Facebook limits where Page owners can place large chunks of text on the default Wall tab of Facebook Pages, the “About” box actually represents the highest place in the CSS structure of the page to add custom text.
In order to add text to your Page’s “About” box, click the “Write something about [YourPage]” in the box underneath your Page’s profile picture. You’ll then be able to enter custom text in the input box – there is a 250 character limit, so choose your words wisely.

Trend #1: Search Engine Optimization

Advice: Test

Sites with relevant content and credible links will continue to rule the search rankings in the coming year, but 2010 has the potential to reveal a few new standards. As the volume of web content continues to grow, con sumers will demand even more relevant and personalized search results. That means search engines will be looking for more relevant and personalized content from publishers and brands. In fact, the search engine algorithms are already beginning to pay more attention to date of publication, geo-location, mobile device browsers, past behavior and social media content.
Don’t abandon your current SEO strategy in search of personalization, but make sure you allocate a portion of your budget to testing content, keywords and links that are targeted toward niche audiences. Test keyword and link placement in social media, local content and mobile websites, and make an effort to more frequently refresh some of the content you devote to search engine rankings. Once the search engines have tested these new search targets and revealed some concrete standards, you should be prepared to invest accordingly.

Trend #2: Paid Search

Advice: Invest

Paid search hasn’t seen a revolutionary trend since the idea of the long tail was applied to keyword bidding. That’s OK, because consumers will still use search engines in 2010 as a primary means of finding products and services to fulfill their needs, and they will still be clicking on relevant ads. Search advertising prices will remain reasonable, and average returns will remain comparably high as larger companies with decreased search marketing budgets continue to allocate resources to lower-cost SEO tactics in hopes of attracting visitors at lower prices. 2010 has the potential for even more downward pressure on price-per-click if Bing can gain enough loyal searchers to attract business away from Google.
You won’t exactly feel like you’re in the driver’s seat when your search marketing placement choices are limited to Google, Microsoft or both, but that doesn’t mean you should shy away from investing in the highly qualified leads that paid search is capable of producing for your small business.
Trend #3: E-mail Marketing

Advice: Invest

It isn’t hard to justify an investment in e-mail marketing when the cost of sending e-mails is so low. The low cost isn’t the only reason to send e-mail, however. Most consumers still consider e-mail to be their primary form of communication, even though there are several alternative ways for consumers to subscribe to periodic content from small businesses.
E-mail marketing will remain highly predictable in 2010 and may even become more powerful as e-mail service providers improve social media integration, search engine access to archived e-mails, auto-responders and new integrated applications. If you don’t already use an e-mail service provider, invest in one in 2010. If you already use an e-mail service, invest in your e-mail list and in producing valuable content to nurture leads and attract repeat customers.
The cost of building a permission-based list is likely to stay the same in 2010 as it was in 2009, but more than one-third of consumers changed at least one of their e-mail addresses in 2009–due to job changes or other economic factors. Spend more time and money in 2010 focused on keeping your e-mail list current when those consumers return to work and change e-mail addresses again.
Trend #4: Social Network Marketing
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Advice: Test

Social media has one redeeming quality for marketers–lots and lots of eyeballs. That’s attractive if you’re a major brand, but profitable interaction will continue to be the exception for small businesses in 2010 rather than the rule. A good test of your social network marketing potential is to survey your current customers to see how many of them consider social networking to be a primary form of communication. You should probably experiment with a Facebook fan page and a Twitter page if you find that a meaningful percentage of your current customers indicate an interest in following your business.
Make 2010 your year to test content that attracts repeat and referral business. Your current customers are more likely than total strangers to respond to offers posted on social networks because they already know you and trust you based on their prior purchases.
Trend #5: Blogging
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Advice: Let it rest

If you’re writing a blog to help with search engine rankings or to inform existing customers, you should continue to test or invest. If you’re blogging in an attempt to attract new prospects and convert them to customers, however, 2010 will be a year that exposes the blogosphere’s vulnerability to the law of averages. Converting prospects into customers depends on driving visitors to content that maximizes conversions, and that means your conversion rate is only as good as the content on your landing page. If that landing page is your blog and your blog changes frequently, your conversion rate is only as good as your latest blog post.
Instead of blogging to convert your website visitors into customers in 2010, work hard to test and develop great landing page content. When you find something that works, don’t change it.
Trend #6: Web Presence:

Advice: Invest

If you want people to see the content on your website, it might make sense to advertise the location of your website content by placing ads on other high-traffic websites. Driving visitor traffic to your website isn’t the way to go for 2010, however. Instead, you need to spend 2010 driving your website content to the visitor traffic.
The difference stems from the fact that content aggregation websites like YouTube are boosting consumer demand for instant gratification and what I like to call “content nesting.” Content nesting allows consumers to browse through content fed to them through a single web page, or nest, so that they don’t have to click on links to individual websites all over the World Wide Web, which takes more time–not to mention that the results can be anywhere from unpredictable to shockingly irrelevant.
To take advantage of content nesting in 2010, your website content needs to be nested in as many content aggregation sites as possible. For example, a lot of people search for videos on YouTube. If you have a video on your website and it’s not also on YouTube, people on YouTube won’t bother searching for your website. To them, YouTube represents the total number of videos available to them on their topic of interest.
Trend #7: Mobile Marketing:

Advice: Test

In case you haven’t heard, mobile marketing is all about marketing to people through their mobile phones and smart-phone devices. Small businesses haven’t had much of an opportunity to engage consumers on mobile devices, but 2010 has the potential to change that.
Demand is increasing dramatically for mobile applications and mobile web-browsing due to wider adoption of devices like the iPhone and the Google Android phone. As more people adopt these phones and features in 2010, look for small-business marketing services to start providing lower-cost mobile marketing solutions like text messaging, mobile e-mail marketing, mobile websites, mobile application development and location-based marketing.
Make 2010 your year to collect mobile preferences from your prospects and customers, and use tools like Google Analytics to see how many people are visiting your website on mobile web browsers. If you find interest in mobile interaction among your customers, begin testing simple mobile marketing campaigns such as sending a few mobile coupons via text or building a mobile micro-site for one of your products.
Trend #8: Podcasting and Online Radio

Advice:Let it rest

Online radio is actually on a bit of a growth trend, but that’s just because so-called terrestrial radio is suffering so much that radio advertisers are switching their investments to digital formats. 2010 will be a year of exploration for online broadcasters as they struggle to find and attract loyal audiences. iTunes has long been the leader in podcasting, but there are still no clear leaders in internet radio.
Even if leaders emerge in 2010, internet broadcasters will need to make their media more sharable, more engaging, more trackable and more mobile to attract money from advertisers. If you’re looking to attract an audience by broadcasting or advertising on broadcast media, go with online video in 2010 and wait for radio to finish reinventing itself.
Trend #9: Online Video
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Advice: Invest

If a picture paints a thousand words, how many words does a 30-second online video paint? Countless buying emotions and memorable brand moments are possible with video. Until recently, spreading your message with video was limited to the television screen. In 2010, watch for video to become more accessible to small businesses through online outlets. Online video is interactive, memorable, widely accessible, cheap to create and highly shareable. There’s also a lot of investment happening around video, which is sure to create even more low-cost opportunities for small businesses to participate in video promotions in 2010.
Video presents a great opportunity for small-business marketing, but don’t think of video as a replacement for text. As powerful as video can be, it can be more cumbersome than text because you can’t scan a video as quickly as you can scan a page of headlines, links and text to quickly find the exact information you need. Use your investments to find the right balance for your customers.
Trend #10: Coupons, Discounts and Savings

Advice: Test

OK, this one isn’t entirely an internet marketing trend, but it’s important enough to mention because of the economy. 2009 was another tough year for retailers, and consumers are so accustomed to shopping for deals that they might begin to expect the plethora of deep discounts currently available to continue forever. If you’re engaged in heavy discounting to attract sales and survive the economic downturn, you’ll need to spend 2010 slowly weaning your customers off your lower prices, assuming that the economy recovers. Resetting expectations won’t be easy, so try swapping discounts for special privileges like loyalty discounts, free upgrades and other offers that won’t lock you in to price comparisons.
Internet marketing trends develop quickly, so expect many new and exciting trends to emerge in 2010. Don’t be too quick to jump on new bandwagons because consumers move more slowly than marketers and technology. Stay focused on attracting repeat business, deepening your customer relationships and solving problems for people. Those are the trends that never fail small businesses.

1. Never, under any circumstances, spam others.
2. Give your readers opt in/out options for unsubscribing.
3. Have a plan. Don’t just randomly send email blasts…that’s spam.
4. Focus on creating benefit-driven subject lines.  Get their attention.
5. Keep subject lines under 40-50 characters so they aren’t cut off.
6. Avoid using spammy words in your subject line.  They will get filtered out.
7. Tailor your message to the preview pane by placing the most important info up top.
8. Track your results (delivery rates, open rates, click throughs, conversions, etc.)
9. Don’t try to do too much within a single email.
10. Link to highly-targeted landing pages.  Think conversions!
11. Don’t email too often as it can upset customers and cause them to ignore you.  Let them know in advance when they sign up, how often you send out emails.
12. Always deliver on the promise of your subject line.
13. Let subscribers update their contact info quickly and easily.
14. Use clear, powerful calls to action throughout the email copy.
15. Test different subject lines, copy length, and calls to action to find the winning formula.
16. Make sure your email copy is easy to scan.
17. Keep any images small for fast loading.
18. Try to build relationships with your subscribers.
19. Don’t buy your email list.
20. Don’t sell your email list to others.