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.

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.

I tell the ads are appear as clutter by the total number of clicks as the ads have been received. The click through rate (CTR) is about .25%. The return on investment (ROI) of having the clutter is very small at best. The postage of mailing a check would cost more than I would actually receive in the check. So for my loyal visitors you will be happy to know that I will soon be removing the sponsored Google Ads. I have looked at other options and non seem worth the investment to have that much clutter. I hope to pursue other advertising methods such as my hosting company. Until I find a better alternative I will let you enjoy banner and advertising free reading.

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.

1. Be Polite and Tasteful
2. Always share your opinion in a polite way
3. Don’t use fowl language
4. Use good grammar (this can be hard for even me, as you can tell)
5. Spell Check
6. Only put in links when relevant to the topic
7. Keep the length short no more than two paragraphs (write your on rebuttal and link back to the original post otherwise)
8. 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.
9. Only comment if you can contribute to the topic
10. Be Polite and Tasteful
11. 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

The point is to explain the advertising. Google Ad Sense pays a commission to post content specific ads on websites. It is a great service they offer to help aspiring Internet marketers. There are several problems with advertising this way. On my page you can see ads for other SEO companies, search marketing, hosting providers, and all kinds of other goods and services. It is obvious to most people why this is a bad idea… I am advertising for other people. A flashy ad as opposed to my long-winded articles? Isn’t it obvious why this could be a bad idea? That still doesn’t take away the fees I have to pay every month. So until this blog can become profitable without the sponsored ads I will have to let others advertise.

If you asked me if you should put advertisements on your website, I would recommend not doing it.