Wal-Mart SEO & SEM
This Post is geared towards Fellow SEO’s
Back in December there was a lot of talk about Sam’s Club offering SEO and SEM services. I haven’t seen a follow up on the service and wonder how the service is working out. I have not seen or heard of a business actually using the service.
Over at Search Engine Journal they discuss “Sam’s Club Search Marketing: Good or Bad for the Industry?” I haven’t seen a follow up since the rumblings started. I would like to get a hold of a solid review of the service. Let me know if you can review it objectively and show proof of the service.
. 02 Jun 08 | Business, Marketing, SEM, SEO, Search Engine Advertising, Search Engine Optimization | Read on | Comments (0)
What is search engine marketing?
Search engine marketing by definition is marketing and advertising through search engines.
If you do a quick search on Search Engine Marketing you will find all types of answers. The most practical answer is advertising through search engines. Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing are two different marketing techniques. Both use search engines, both use keywords, both can be found on the same search engine result pages (SERP), but both are different. They are different in their approach. Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is paid or sponsored search often called Pay-Per-Click. The most commonly used tools for sponsor search is Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing. Search Engine Optimization is for free organic results and used with page content and many other factors discussed at this site.
Both Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing use keywords. They use keywords as a way to sell advertising space. Advertising space? If you have ever noticed along the top and bottom of most Search Engine Result Pages there are links. Those links are being paid to be there. Most all the times the ads are purchased based upon search terms or blocks of search terms.
What does this have to do with search engine optimization? With a joint effort of search engine marketing and optimization can produce a major Return on Investment (ROI). SEO is a long term investment and SEM should be used for the interim. Together the two different approaches can make a big difference on ROI. Using a Pay-Per-Click campaign to "kick start" a marketing campaign is a good idea. Pay-Per-Click offers very little direct SEO advantages besides traffic and visibility. Visibility leads to the potential of bookmarking and linking. Traffic brings search agents to the site also.
Back in the old days, summer 2007, search marketing occasionally gave excellent links. With many sites hosting paid listings on their site, much like SEO by Chris, search bot crawlers would occasionally index paid ads from these text link advertisements. Hosted ads are not supposed to be indexed or crawled, errors do happen (after all humans program the search agents). An ad appearing on a page often means that the ads are contextually relevant giving a credible link. Since October 2007 less of these type of indexing errors. Since these errors are not supposed to happen and should continue to be phased out as indexes are updated.
So what is Search Engine Marketing to Search Engine Optimization? Together in tandem they are part of complete online marketing strategy. Effectively used they will produce a maximum return on investment.
. 20 Feb 08 | Marketing, Online Marketing, PPC, SEM, SEO, SMO, Search Engine Advertising, Search Engine Optimization | Read on | Comments (0)
Blogging with Adsense - Does it Really Make Sense?
A couple of weeks ago I posted about putting Google Adsense advertising on my blog to offset hosting cost. I am now reconsidering having the ads. It isn’t a matter of being an activist, as one stumbler accused me of on my personal blog, it is more taking up room with useless clutter. Although, the announcement of Adsense changing its commission polices does make it more appealing.
Blogging How To’s: The extended “What Everybody Ought To Know About Blog Commenting”
Ramkarthik at Blogging Tune posted a good article entitled “What Everybody Ought To Know About Blog Commenting“, and is the first in a series about Blog Commenting.
This article points out good techniques of boosting traffic by commenting on other blogs. I agree this is a great way for exposure and popularity. As a contributor to a few blogs I can say first hand that commenting is one of the best ways to boost traffic. You can help control the links, information, and public image of your blog/company/you.
With the fallout of the “Google Smack Down” in the fall most blogs use nofollow attributes on all external links from their blog. There are some rouge blogs, and movement along with them, that fight the system and aren’t using the attributes. Linking from blog comments will have little effect besides boosting traffic. Ultimately getting more traffic is whats important. As Ramkarthik pointed out some of the visitors will subscribe to your blog feed and become some of your chief commenter’s and most loyal visitors.
I have a few rules of my own when it comes to commenting.
- Be Polite and Tasteful
- Always share your opinion in a polite way
- Don’t use fowl language
- Use good grammar (this can be hard for even me, as you can tell)
- Spell Check
- Only put in links when relevant to the topic
- Keep the length short no more than two paragraphs (write your on rebuttal and link back to the original post otherwise)
- Always make a comment that you thought the article was good, interesting, loved it, found it hard to understand your point, an interesting take, or some other nice phrase. The point of this is to make the author and reader know your stance on the article.
- Only comment if you can contribute to the topic
- Be Polite and Tasteful
- A bonus: The author should always be considered the winner of any debate unless they are blatantly wrong. It can be taken as an insult to the author any other way. I learned this the hard way.
I can not state it enough that you must be polite. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing, in fact I disagree with many people (persons wearing black hats and doing SEO for one), that can lead to a positive engagement. All comments should be positive in nature and written with the best intentions. If you aren’t able to be positive then just don’t comment.
I look forward to reading what Ramkarthik has to say in future articles about blog commenting.
Happy Blogging,
Chris Estes
. 30 Dec 07 | Blogging, Fellow Blogger, Google, SEM, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, links | Read on | Comments (5)
Advertising on my blog
If you have been following the development of SEO by Chris you have noticed the Google Ads all around. So are you annoyed by them? I am too, but the truth about them is that hopefully they will offset the hosting fees, which I might add are only $3.99 a month. I bought the cheapest hosting package I could find. I landed at www.1and1.com for a low monthly hosting rate and included a couple perks to go along with it.
. 28 Dec 07 | Business, Google, PPC, SEM, SEO, Search Engine Advertising, Web Hosting | Read on | Comments (2)
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