• data feeds
• your unique selling proposition
• making money from niche markets
• obtain merchant status in australia
• real time and manual/Offline transactions
• the importance of link popularity and how to build it
• keywords. the road to optimisation
• fix those darn title tags
• fast track to traffic
• tips and tools to help increase site traffic
• increasing site traffic and revenues

Fast Track to Traffic

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an involved process we are not going to be able to cover comprehensively, nor perhaps get any immediate results.

However, by using some pay per click devices and Pay for Inclusion , we might just be able to help in generating some sales!

Pay Per Click

A Pay Per Click (also known as Pay Per Ranking, Pay Per Placement or Pay Per Position) search engine enables you to list your site at the top of the search engine results. You pay only when the browser or person searching, clicks on your listing and connects to your site. You don't pay to list, you only pay for clicks or click throughs.

Pay-Per-Click Strategy

Selecting a bunch of keywords is only the first step in creating and launching effective PPC campaigns. Like all good marketing it requires consideration and strategy.

1. Write a list of all the keywords you can think of that relate to your site. If you're not sure if it's a keyword that anybody will search on, list it anyway. If nobody searches on it, you don't pay. The more keywords you include, the better your results will be. A great FREE key word suggestion tool provided by Google as part of their AdWords PPC program
2. Start out with a low bid on each keyword, between one and five cents per click or limit the daily expenditure if rates are set for particular words.
3. Go back each day and see how many hits each of those keywords have generated. You can sometimes see how many others have bid on the same keyword, what they have bid on the same keyword, and what your position is in the hit list. For instance, if you were to bid five cents, two other people bid four cents, and seven others bid greater than five cents, then whenever somebody conducts a search, your site's description will be the eighth one listed.
4. Now, having monitored the results, you will want to re-evaluate your bids. If a given keyword generated a satisfactory number of hits, and you are near or at the top of the list, then you don't need to raise your bid. If you are near the middle of the list, raise your bid slightly; if you are near the bottom, raise it more.
5. One or two of the keywords you have selected will probably most accurately describe your site, and the results of searches on these will want to be at or near the top. Make sure you place your highest bids here or enter a proxy bid that automatically raises your bid relative to others.
6. Repeat your re-evaluation at least once a week, and make changes as needed.
7. Record the results. If possible use a web tracking utility to identify the source of your traffic and where they have been referred from.

Performance-based marketing can give you an excellent return on your marketing dollar, and gives you opportunities to fine-tune your programs in a way that is not possible elsewhere.

To save you time in evaluating this useful technique I have listed some commercial search engines. Most of the Pay Per click engines detailed allow you to select countries you wish to receive traffic from. Sensis have an Australian specific service which is useful

Other recommended engines are:

• Searchmarketing.yahoo.com – highly recommended. Based on the amount of traffic through affiliates like MSN, CNN, AltaVista and Infospace. They have a great reputation with a friendly advertiser system that is now offering "Auto Bidding" which allows you to cap bids on each term individually. Yahoo Search Marketing was previously known as Overture.
• Google AdWords - highly recommended. Based on a strong brand and one of the top destination sites that people know and trust. Plus a substantial amount of traffic - not only from their own sites but also through affiliates like America Online, Ask Jeeves, Earthlink, Lycos Canada, Netscape, Compuserve, AT&T Worldnet and NYTimes.com.

As we increase your understanding of ezimerchant Professional and it's potential, I am looking forward to providing you with information that will improve your business and increase your revenues. I would also love to hear any of your experiences that you would like to share amongst our ezimerchant community.

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