Once you have discovered your target search phrases the next step is to saturate the content of your web pages with these keywords. Ensure that important keywords have pages of content specifically dedicated to them. Be careful to ensure that the keywords are in appropriate context however, as 'keyword stuffing' can result in penalisation. 

This section looks at how you can optimise your web pages to increase your chances of achieving good page rankings, for target keywords and phrases within the search engines.

Search engines rank your web page, for a keyword or phrase, based on the location of the keyword or phrase and the frequency the keyword or phrase appears in your page. Location is where on the web page a keyword or phrase is located and frequency is how often it appears on the web page, with some locations more important than others. Each of the key locations is outlined below, ranked in order of highest importance:

Theme your web pages

One of the best ways to optimise your web pages is to structure them into well defined themes.  One of the best aspects of themes is that they help keep your website well organized and on-topic - something that can become quite difficult as your online presence evolves and grows.  A correct theming structure will help you maintain a clear delineation between the different areas of your site, and allow you to target specific keywords and keyword variations to particular sections.

A themed website should follow a structure similar to this:

• First level:  Buy Meat Online in New Zealand
• Second level:  Buy Beef Online
• Third Level:  Buy Beef T-Bone Steaks Online

The key is to forget about the search engines as much as possible and just write and create your site with the single purpose of reaching your target audience.  Stay focused on this goal alone.  When you are done, then you can review it in the light of the guidelines below and tweak it to fit.

Content optimisation guidelines

• Incorporate the important key words and key phrases in the 'Heading 1', 'Heading 2' and 'Heading 3' formats.
• Optimise your meta data so that it includes your key words and key phrases.
• Include key words and key phrases in your internal links between pages whenever possible.

Title

The most important place to locate your keywords or phrases is in your web page titles. The title is the text that appears in the title bar of the web browser.

Headings

The second most important place to locate your keywords and phrases is in the headings of your website content. Within any web page you can have different levels of headings (heading 1, 2, 3 and so on). ‘Heading 1’ is the most important, with sub-headings having less ‘importance’.

Main text

The main text is one of the key content areas of your web page. It is the key area where you can influence the frequency of a keyword or phrase on your web page.

Graphics

Text that is inserted as a graphic on your web page cannot be ‘indexed’ by the search engines. However, graphics can include something called ‘alt’ text, which describes what the image is ‘about’, and this can be indexed. Make sure you use the ‘alt’ field to describe what each of your images is about.

Meta data

Meta data is the information that is included on a web page that is invisible to the online user, but is visible to a search engine. Meta information is designed to explain to a search engine what a web page is about. There are a number of different types of Meta information that can be included in a web page. The two most important types are:

Meta description

The Meta description in a web page describes in ‘plain English’ what the web page is about. The Meta description is very important, as some search engines will use this to describe your web page in the search results.

Meta keywords

The Meta keywords in a web page outline the key words that best describe the content of your web page. The use of Meta keywords has been subject to abuse by many authors in a quest to obtain higher search engine rankings. Because of this, many search engines now disregard Meta keywords completely, so do not spend too much time on your Meta keywords selection.

It is difficult to balance the needs of writing good sales copy versus the needs of writing copy that is optimised for the search engines. It is something that you will have to work out to achieve the best balance that you possibly can. That or hire one of our specialists to do this for you.

Look to write your copy so that your shortlist of keywords and phrases appear in the elements listed above as often as possible. Try different variations and measure the results.

A careful balance

It is difficult to balance the needs of writing good sales copy versus the needs of writing copy that is optimised for the search engines.  It is something that you will have to work out to achieve the best balance that you possibly can. That or hire one of our specialists to do this for you.

Look to write your copy so that your shortlist of keywords and phrases appear in the elements listed above as often as possible.  Try different variations and measure the results.

Classified advertisements are usually set in solid lines of small type and are often grouped together and arranged according to the product or service offered.  They are usually between 50 and 100 words long and have been the backbone of many a small business’s advertising for years.  They are very cheap and when done well, can be extremely effective. 

Classified advertising is also on the Internet.  And, like their paper-based versions- when they’re done well, they can be extremely effective as a low-cost way of generating more website traffic.  You should note that classified ads are particularly useful for ‘testing’ your headlines and sales copy (before you take them to the ‘big-time’!). 

Another form of advertising on the Web is banner advertising.  These display as ‘small’ banners in prominent positions on web pages.  Banner advertising is a very common form of advertising on the web. 

Both forms of advertising are usually charged at a fixed rate, or they use one of the following charging models: 

• Pay-Per-Impression (PPI) - In the Pay-Per-Impression model you are charged every time one of your advertisements is ‘served’ up to a viewer.  With this model you are usually charged per 1000 impressions.  The amount you are charged per 1000 impressions is called your Cost Per Impression or CPM.  This model is the hardest for you to manage because you don’t know how many people will click on your advertisements and purchase products or services or make an enquiry. 

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - In this model you are charged for each click you receive on your ad listing.  The amount you pay per click is called your Cost-Per-Click or CPC.  Pay-per-click advertising is a lot more attractive than pay-per-impression advertising as you can manage your costs a lot easier- you only pay for visitors that have clicked-through to your website. 
   
• Pay-Per-Acquisition (PPA) - Pay-per-acquisition advertising is the greatest of the lot!  In this model you pay only when someone purchases something from your website.  You pay for a new customer!  The amount you pay is called your Cost Per Acquisition or CPA. 

Places to Advertise

There are almost limitless numbers of places to advertise on the Internet.  Places that accept classified ads are usually one of the following: 

• Websites - There are a number of websites that specialise in classified advertising.  Many of the websites allow you to place a free, standard-sized classified advertisement with the opportunity to pay to have your ad upgraded to a more advanced type; e.g., bold listing, priority listings etc. 
  A lot of the normal print-based newspapers and magazines also have websites that allow you to place classified ads.  Quite often, if you place a classified ad with a publication it will also be listed on their website. 

• Newsletters & Ezines - Many organisations and individuals provide quality newsletters and ezines to a loyal base of subscribers.  These newsletters and ezines are often highly targeted and have very reasonable advertising rates. 

But before you go ahead and start placing advertisements you need to think about the following: 

1. Who is my target customer and do they read the publications or visit the websites that we are looking at advertising on? 
2. How many visitors or readers does the site or publication have?  How many impressions will my ad get? 
3. Where will my advertisement be placed? 
4. What size will the advertisement be? 
5. If you are assessing a newsletter or ezine- ask to see a sample copy of the publication and check its quality.  Does it look professional?  Is the text appropriate and of high quality?  

‘Local’ Classified Advertising Websites

There is a number of very good online ‘classified advertising’ websites based in New Zealand.  A list of them is provided below: 

•    New Zealand Herald (www.nzherald.co.nz) 
•    Trade & Exchange (www.trade-exchange.co.nz) 
•    AdPost (www.adpost.com/nz) 
•    Sellit (www.sellit.co.nz) 
•    Gumtree (www.gumtree.co.nz) 

Local Ezines & Newsletters

When searching for local ezines and newsletters the best approach is to search the NZ-based directories.  Some good links are below: 

• http://www2.piperpat.co.nz/nz/magazine/a.html
• http://www.nzs.com/media/e-zines/
• http://news-media.nzpages.co.nz/news_and_media/Online_News_Services/
• http://news-media.nzpages.co.nz/news_and_media/Magazines/
• http://www.nzsearch.com/category.asp?id=871  
• http://www.nzsearch.com/category.asp?id=792 

Free Classifieds

There is a huge number of websites on the Internet that offer free classified advertising.  Many of these websites are international and will only be of use if you are marketing yourself internationally. 

The key thing with many free classified advertising websites is that the response rate is very low, so quantity is essential.  You will need to submit lots of ads to lots of websites.  The best way to do this is to use automated submission software that will automatically submit your advertisement to hundreds of websites that deal with classified advertising.  There are two pieces of software I know of: 

•    Classify PRO (http://www.trellian.com/classify/) 
•    AdBlaster (http://www.megapromoter.com/) 

But we haven’t given them a test-run, so if you see fit to use either of them please let us know how you go, because we are skeptical that these programs do in fact work for New Zealand classified advertising sites. 

Banner Advertising

Most of the ‘high traffic’ and popular websites offer banner advertising options.  Email the Webmaster and ask to see their advertising rate card. 

There are also a number of ‘banner exchange networks’.  With banner exchange networks, you sign-up to the network and set-up an area on your website to display the banner ads provided by the network. 
For every two banner ads you ‘serve up’ from the network, someone else on the network displays one of yours.  But the problem with many of the banner networks is that you do not get to target your ads at a specific market.  Your ad can be ‘served up’ to visitors who are not the slightest bit interested in what you offer. 

New Zealand has its own banner exchange network called NZADS (www.nzads.co.nz).  

There are also a number of international banner networks: 
•    http://www.bannerswap.com 
•    http://www.123banners.com 

Writing Great Ads

Writing a great classified ad is completely different to writing great sales copy for your website.  The primary objective of a classified ad is completely different!  Generally the primary objective of your website copy is to persuade your visitor to buy or enquire about your product.  The objective of your classified ad is to get the reader to click-through to your website or pick up the phone and call you. 

The type of customer that you are going to come across using a classified ad will also be different.  When a customer comes to your website they are already interested in what you are offering– they are pre-qualified.  A customer that you will find in an ezine or on a website that has classified ads is unqualified. 

The structure for a classified ad is as follows: 

• Headline
• Opening Hook
• Call to Action. 

The headline is the most important part of the whole ad.  It needs to immediately attract the reader’s attention.  It needs to YELL above the ‘din’ and cut through all the noise.  Think about your target customer.  What is your target customer’s need, problem or goal?  Write a headline around that.  Yell out their problem! 

Whenever possible use your reader’s name– some ezines give you the ability to personalise your advertisement by automatically inserting the person’s name into each separate copy of the ezine. 

The opening hook should expand on your headline.  Elaborate further on your strongest benefits and look to set the reader up for the call to action. 

Remember, your primary objective with a classified ad is to get the reader to click through to your website, or pick up the phone and call you.  Outline exactly what you want your reader to do.  Make it as easy as possible.

If your website is new and the search engines dos not know about it, you need to submit it and tell them about it so they can list it.  If the search engines already know about your website it may not be necessary to submit it. You can find out if the Search engines know about your website by doing a "site:www.yourwebsiteaddress" search. The search engine will tell you how many pages of your website that they have a record of.

Please note. you do not have to submit your sitemap. The search spiders are programmed to crawl the internet in search of new content, new websites. Sometimes it can be faster to get your website in the search results by simply getting a good link to it. 

Search engine submission can be a complicated process; fortunately there is just a few search engines to submit to these days. Many of the other search engines are "Powered" by the primary ones.

So how do you submit your website to the search engines?

Avoid using automated submission services

There are many automated search engine submission services.  The best advice we can offer you regarding them is – “Don’t use them!”.  Search engines hate automated submission services as they can be used to ‘spam’ the search engines.  Most search engine submission processes differ slightly, so after coming this far with your optimisation why risk receiving a ‘black mark’ next to your website’s domain name in the search engines.

Free organic manual submission

If search engines are a key part of your website promotion strategy then we believe it is absolutely vital that you spend time submitting your website to the search engines manually.
This method has no guarantees and it usually takes a number of weeks (up to eight) before your website is indexed.  The key search engines that offer free submission are below:

• Google (www.google.com/addurl.html) or even better Submit your sitemap to Google
• Yahoo (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit)
• Bing (search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx)

Paid inclusion

Pay per click advertising (PPC) means that you pay to have your website included in a search engine.  By paying for inclusion you ensure that you are included in a search engine as a matter of priority.  Pay per inclusion programs give you no guarantee about where your website will rank on search pages. So for certain keywords or phrases, you still need to properly optimize your pages.  All that pay-per-inclusion programs guarantee is that your website will be included in their search engine’s index.

If you need your website to be included within a search engine quickly then you need to consider pay-per-inclusion. We recommend that you use both methods.

Learn more about Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Monitoring

Now that you have submitted your website to the search engines you will need to wait for the search engines to index your website.  This usually takes between two weeks and two months (unless you have paid for inclusion).  Once you have been listed it’s time to monitor your listings.  There are a number of ways you can do this:

• Simple Monitoring - The simplest method of monitoring is to go to each of the search engines that you are targeting and type in your keywords or phrases.  Take note of where your website appears in the list.  Look at who appears above you and then research what they are doing to make their website rank higher than yours.
   
• Web-based Tools - When you Submit your sitemap to Google, you create a Google Webmaster account. The Google Webmaster account provides a set of tools which help you monitor the Search engine listing and ranking process. Market Leap (www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm) provides a number of free web-based keyword analysis tools.  These tools will allow you to check the rankings of each of your keywords and phrases.
   
• Software Packages - Web Position Gold (www.webposition.com) is the #1 solution for SEO.  It provides a whole range of tools for all aspects of SEO.  Included as part of the Web Position Gold package is the ability to monitor your rankings on target keywords and phrases.  If you are serious about your SEO, and the DIY route is for you, then you should consider purchasing Web Position Gold.  The standard edition costs US$149.

Links are the Internet’s form of ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing. When someone links to your website they are, in a sense, endorsing your website.

Links are currently the most important component that a search engine uses to rank a website.  Search engines assess and measure the quantity and quality of inbound links to help them judge the quality and poularity of a website.

Incoming links (links to your web page from another website), are highly valued by search engines as a ranking factor, as they are difficult for a Webmaster to control and manipulate the ‘results’. Because of this they are considered by the search engines to be genuine indicators as to the true nature of the content of your website.  There are four key things that a search engine considers when assessing your incoming links:

• Quality - Search engines place a lot of emphasis on good quality websites linking to yours (if they’re all ‘deemed’ relevant to what yours is about). Obviously a good amount of quality websites linking to yours is going to increase your traffic.
• Relevancy - How relevant is the website that is linking to your website?  Is its content in some way relevant to your website’s content?  Is it in a similar subject space, but slightly different?  Is it targeting similar keywords and about similar subjects?
• Link Text - The text that is used within the link that is linked to your website is also very important (especially to Google).  Try to include your keywords or phrases into the text that is linking to your site.  Also think about the text that surrounds the area ‘linked-to’ on your site.
• Trust - Are the websites that link to yours trustworthy? Websites such as government sites, large media sites such as CNN or BBC et

If good search engine rankings are a crucial part of your website promotion then it is well worth spending time and effort on increasing the number of links to your website.  The best way to do this is to set up a great website that attracts the interest of other website operators.

Building a large network of quality links from authority sites that link back to your site is an extremely powerful way of generating good traffic and improving your search engine ranking. Here are some ideas for building and managing a large network of quality links:

Measure your link building efforts

Before you start you need to establish a baseline and measure the success of your efforts. Some methods will be more effective than others and you want to know which ones work best for you and how to tune them. The metrics you want to measure include:

Inbound links. How popular is your website?  Do you have a lot of people with links to your site?  Are these sites trusted? You can check your link popularity with each of the search engines by going to: tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop or, www.linkpopularity.com

Or you can check your link popularity directly with the search engines themselves:

Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com Enter your website address IE. "www.zeald.com"
Google: Visit www.google.com Enter the website address with "link:" at the beginning. IE. "link:www.zeald.com"

Be sure to also check who these people are that are linking your site. Understand that one quality backlink is worth a handful of normal, standard backlinks.

Please note: Google will nearly always under report the number of inbound links. Google provide a more accurate report for the number of inbound links through your Webmaster tools account.

Build Reciprocal links

Build up a list of target websites that you would like to receive links from and then send an email or letter to their Webmaster or owner.  A template for this email is provided on the following page.

Expect a low response rate to these emails.  Many Webmasters are very busy and sometimes they are just not concerned with their search engine rankings.  However, the results that you can achieve from the extra links to your website can still make the effort worthwhile.

1. Research Possible Websites
   The first thing you need to do is research the possible linking websites. Think about your target customer and where they are likely to visit. Try to find places that are a hive of activity (lots of traffic!) and places that are known and trusted. Use the search engines to locate different websites and don’t forget the New Zealand search engines:
   • www.nzpages.co.nz
   • www.searchnz.co.nz
   • www.nzsearch.co.nz
   • www.nzs.co.nz
   Also, use a tool like Alexa (www.alexa.com) to analyse each website and to check out how much traffic each of them is getting.
2. Prepare a List
   Based on your research; prepare a short-list of websites that you would like to approach. Don’t be afraid to approach people for a link. Be courageous! You have nothing to lose. Make sure the websites that you list are complimentary and not competitive.
3. Prepare your Email
   Use an email template that has been prepared specifically for approaching websites for a link. We have provided an example email template for this purpose on the following page.
   Make sure your email focuses on ‘what’s in it for them’ (Remember, WIIFM)! They need to see what the upside is. Why should they go to the effort? Your website should offer something for their customers.
4. Follow-up
   Make sure you follow-up, because persistence does pay. Follow-up at weekly intervals and be prepared to follow-up many times if necessary.

Link Request Template

Hi [Target's Name],
My name is [Insert Name] from [Insert Business Name]. I was recently browsing the Web and came across your website ([Insert Website URL here]). [Say something positive about their website here].
We have a website that [insert what your website does here].
I was hoping that you might consider linking to us and would like to invite you to review our website for the same purpose here [insert website address].
I believe that linking to each other’s website would have a number of mutual benefits:
- we can help increase each other’s website traffic
- we can help increase each other’s search engines rank (search engines currently put a lot of emphasis on links between websites).
If you believe that a link to our website would be appropriate, then please add it at your discretion- perhaps I could suggest the following link and description:
[Your site name and URL] - [Your site description]
Please let me know if you would like to proceed and I will set up a link on our website too.
Thank you for taking the time to consider this. If you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me.

With regards
[Insert email signature here]

Before your website visitor is persuaded to make an enquiry or buy your products or services online they need to trust you and believe that what you're saying is true. It's easy to achieve this credibility in a store where the visitor can meet your sales staff and shake his/her hand but when you are dealing with a website, you have to look at other ways to achieve the same level of trust and credibility.

Here are 10 most effective ways to build the trust and credibility of your website:

1. Fast-loading website: Studies show that all web pages should load in 10 seconds or less on a 56k modem, otherwise you will start losing your customers. 

2. User-friendly layout & clear navigation: Don’t try to be unique and quirky with the structure and layout of your website – you'll confuse your visitors. Everything needs to be as simple and obvious as possible. If you want to avoid being like every other website, get your personality across by using your branding, photography and copy. 

3. Professional website design: First impressions are extremely important - if your website looks cheap, you will destroy trust immediately. Always use an experienced website designer - don’t try and do it yourself or get your cousin’s son or even your business card designer to do it! 

4. Testimonials are great for establishing trust and credibility. The more the merrier! Keep them in their original form– don’t fix grammatical errors. Provide contact details for the people giving the testimonial. Whatever you do– NEVER fake a testimonial– it's obvious and you will destroy your credibility! 

5. Case studies are in-depth studies of the successful 'experience' a customer has had with your business. They are powerful trust and credibility builders - particularly for complex products and services.

6. Awards & certifications: Has your business won an award or achieved some sort of certification? Make sure it's displayed on your website because they can be fantastic for building your credibility. 

7. Partners: Associating yourself with a well-respected partner or affiliate is a great way of building 'borrowed credibility'. You are effectively tapping into their credibility and people will think that if you are partnered with them, then you must be credible as well.

8. Guarantees are one of the strongest trust and credibility building elements that you can have on your website. A strong guarantee shows that you have a 100% belief in your products or services. Make your guarantee big, bold and even a little brash! Many organisations have reported that the stronger they made their guarantee the fewer claims they received against it. And the increased sales or enquiries resulting from a stronger guarantee far outweighed the one or two extra claims that they received.

9. Privacy policy: With the huge increase in SPAM and many other invasions of the individual’s privacy, a clear, ‘no ifs or buts’ privacy policy is mandatory for any website.

10. A detailed 'About Us' page: This is a biggie. Websites can be very impersonal so the more you can show that there is a real business with real people behind the website the better. Use photos of your business and staff, and include where possible include a bio.

Building trust and credibility is an essential part of any sales process. Implement the above suggestions and you will be well on your way to improving the ‘persuasiveness’ of your website – and it’s ability to increase the level of enquiries or sales that you achieve.

Twitter is a powerful social networking service that allows anyone to say anything about anybody in 140 characters or less – this includes spaces and all punctuation. The short posts, known as 'tweets' and are delivered to other users that have signed up to receive them. By default the messages are published publicly, but this can be changed by the user if they choose to restrict delivery to just their community.

What is unique about Twitter?

Twitter is unique because the text-based posts can be no longer than 140 characters. It was designed this way to work with mobile phone text messages (SMS), so users can update anytime, from anywhere. In a way, Twitter is used in a similar manner to instant messengers like MSN, but the majority of posts are published to the world and recorded for anybody to find at a later date.

So where does Twitter fit in the social networking landscape?

The public nature of Twitter means that it is less about family, and unlike LinkedIn, it is used more by regular people than businesses. It is “what are you doing right now” type of messaging but people are using it for a lot more than that. Twitter has become the way to instantly share links, reviews and comments about experiences people are having so it has become an information hub on a wide range of topics.

People are also using Twitter to research information that will help them with their jobs and to discuss and review services and products before buying them. Twitter is also being used to voice concerns and complaints in a public forum about individuals or companies. On the other hand, it is also used to share and inform the community about good experiences.

In fact, Twitter has become so popular for sharing experiences that on any given day, the average number of Tweets on twitter.com is now around 3,000,000! 

An alternative to Google?

This has become a valid question because Twitter, like a Google search listing, is a directory of links. Twitter listings are also short and sharp, which is very similar to a Google search results page. In fact each post is like a personalised Metatitle. But it is different in that the links are personally recommended by friends, colleagues or simply like minded individuals.

Twitter is being used as an alternate method for finding information on the Internet. Twitter posts are timely, relevant, of good quality and not influenced by businesses or advertising. It is honest and transparent.

So what does this mean for business?

Twitter allows you to interact with public while increasing brand awareness. The primary objective of this medium is to manage a company's brand online. In a way it has revolutionised branding. For the first time, it allows companies to respond and discuss issues openly with their customers and potential customers.

This also means that you can get instant access to what people are saying about your brand, people and service and use that information to manage your online reputation.

It can also increase traffic. Social networks have taken over email in terms of popularity.

You can write articles and announce them with Twitter. Since you only have 140 characters to post a message, there is no way you can tell a story. All you can do is post a link to the information and provide a summary as to what the information is about. Twitter works really well with a blog. If you would like to broadcast a message to your followers, use your blog (or dedicated area on your website) to convey the message and use Twitter to broadcast it.

Users opt in by 'following' to be your friend and see your messages. This means your messages will be targeted specifically to people who are interested in your product or service. It's a great way to make announcements to loyal customers.

Twitter is also a great way to network with others in your industry or others who share your interests.

Tips for effective Twittering

Twitter is about networking, learning, helping and most importantly listening. Be active in the community and participate in discussions.

To get started

1. Build an account and link your profile to your company's website. That will give you more chances to get visits to your site. And where possible, introduce your work colleagues to other twitter users. Likewise, post a link to your Twitter profile from your website – Twitter is all about building a community.
2. Add a clear picture of yourself and personalise your page. Remember this is about a personal brand, users want to know you and see you.
3. Set yourself objectives. What are you trying to achieve from this tool? For example, do you want to promote your brand or find out what people are saying about your brand or simply build a network?
4. Find people to follow. Start with your friends, family and your work colleagues. Then find New Zealand’s 'most powerful tweeters'.
5. Use Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitors' names and words that relate to your space. By listening you will know if you are achieving your objectives.

What to Tweet?

1. If you want to use Twitter effectively, don't make the mistake of answering the question, “What are you doing?”. Instead answer the question, “What has your attention at the moment?”
2. Point out interesting things in your space, not just things about you.
3. Commenting on other users’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build a community. Learn the Twitter lingo to find out how you can do this.
4. Talk about what other people are doing as well. This may not directly help your business but shows that you are human and that you are interested in events that not just 'work-related'.
5. Share links to neat things in your space so you are actively contributing to the Twitter community. Remember to make every Tweet count.
6. If someone says something negative about you or your brand, don't get defensive or just apologise. Offer help and useful tips instead.
7. Steer clear of becoming a 'salesperson' on Twitter as most people will see through this and tune out. You will have a lot more success being a 'real person'.
8. Promote your colleagues and employees, not just your business. Social media is about people connecting with people and your followers want to know hear about human-related things.
9. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link. And make it useful.
10. Ask questions. Twitter is a fantastic way to get opinions.
11. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who they follow, and follow them. You can always 'unfollow' someone if their Tweets are not relevant to you.

Make it efficient

1. Remember you don’t have to read every tweet and you don’t have to reply to every tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty). Twitter can be time consuming and if you spend all your time on Twitter, your employer will surely find out!
2. Use direct messages for one on one conversations if you feel there’s no value to the entire Twitter community.
3. Use third party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl, which make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
4. Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL. It helps tidy up your tweets. If you use a third party client like Tweetdeck, the URLs can be automatically shortened.
5. If someone says you’re using Twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out system. They can unfollow if they don’t like what you're saying.

Things not to do

1. Make sure that you’re avoiding overly repetitive tweets (or too many RT’s).
2. Remember this is your personal brand. Avoid creating arguments and flaming users.
3. Be very careful what you announce and who you are announcing it too. Check out this famous case of a girl who Tweeted before she started her new job.

Happy tweeting!

Optimising your website for the search engines is only one option for generating traffic for your website. Another option is to advertise on a search engine.

When advertising on a search engine, you pay for an advertisement to appear when a person searches for a particular keyword or phrase, relevant to your website. There are three common models search engines use for charging for advertisements- in fact; these models are common across all forms of online advertising:
 

• Pay-Per-Impression (CPM)

 

• Pay-Per-Click (CPC)

 

• Pay-Per-Acquisition (CPA)

 

Advertising Types

There are two common types of search engine advertising:
 

• Fixed Placement Advertising

   

• Pay For Placement Advertising (PFP)

PFP advertising can change day-to-day as advertisers change their bid amounts, and as new advertisers start bidding. Almost all PFP advertising utilises a Pay-Per-Click method of charging. The advertiser pays each time a person clicks their advertisement.

PFP advertising is great for small businesses as you can trial it with very little advertising budget. You can often secure visitors to your website for just a few cents. Its only downside is that it can require substantial time and effort to manage it successfully.

The rest of this section focuses on PFP advertising, as this is the form of advertising that will be most applicable to the majority of our readers.

 

PFP Advertising Providers

In the PFP advertising world there are two main providers:
 

• Google

   

• Overture
  Overture is the biggest supplier of PFP advertising. Similar to Google Adwords, Overture allows you to bid on keywords that when searched show an advertisement on the right-hand side of the page under the tile – ‘Sponsored Results’.

 

There are also a number of smaller PFP providers:

• FindWhat (http://www.findwhat.com)
• LookSmart (http://www.looksmart.com)
• Kanoodle (http://www.kanoodle.com)
• Enhance Interactive (http://www.enhance.com)
• Mamma Media Solutions (http://www.mammamediasolutions.com).

 

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“Is Your Website Producing Amazing RESULTS?”

If you answer is anything less than a resounding yes, then you need to learn about how Zeald can help. Because results that are anything less than ‘amazing’ means you are selling yourself short!
 

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© Zeald 2005 – All Rights Reserved

The number of visitors coming to your website is directly related to your website promotion and marketing.

The first thing that you should ask yourself if you have a low number of website visitors is– “How much money do I spend, and do I have budgeted, to be spent on website promotion and marketing each month?” If your answer to this is ‘nothing’ then you need to urgently reconsider your commitment to your website!

If you do not promote and market your business then what happens? No new business right?! And eventually no business at all, i.e., the business goes belly up! Well, the same thing happens with a website– no promotion and marketing then no results. And no results generally means that eventually, your website will go belly-up.

You must have at least some budget dedicated to the marketing and promotion of your website. $100 a month? Surely any company that is serious about their website can find a spare $100 to use on website promotion? What about $250, $2,500 or $10,000 a month? The more money that you can allocate to website promotion and marketing, the better.

If you have a successful physical business then chances are that you spend a healthy amount of money each month on the promotion and advertising of your business. Don’t expect miracles from your website. Give it a healthy budget too and the results will follow.

If you have a budget in the $1,000 - $10,000 range, then you should seriously consider employing a professional website marketing and promotions company. Talk to your Zeald Internet consultant for more information.

If you have a very small budget– in the hundreds of dollars a month range, then you are going to have to take a DIY approach. You will need to read the ‘Promote’ module of your E-Business Bible very carefully.

 

Low or No Budget Promotion Strategies

So how do you promote a website if you have little or no budget? This is a good question. You need to be prepared to work hard! The short list of things we would suggest are:

• Submit your website to the free submission search engines (free)

• Collect customers’ email addresses and send a monthly newsletter or promotion to them every month (free)

• Create some ‘punchy’ classified advertisements for your website– submit them to free classified advertising sites, as listed in the ‘Classified & Banner Advertising’ section of the E-business Bible (free)

• Set up a “Yellow Pages” link from the online Yellow Pages (yellowpages.co.nz) to your website ($25 p/mth)

• Consider advertising your website using the Google Adwords & Overture search engine advertising systems (maximum budget varies and can be set)

• Consider running an advertisement in an ezine that is targeted directly at your target market. (rates will vary depending on ezine)

• Consider signing-up to the NZAds (www.nzads.co.nz) banner exchange network, and start running banner ads on your website (free).

Like with everything, you will need to track and measure each of your different advertising or promotional campaign initiatives very carefully. If it isn’t working, tweak it, or drop it, and give something else a go. If it is working, then try dropping something that is barely working, and use the extra budget to do more of what is working.

Website advertising and promotion can be tricky. Remember the Support Team is there to help you. Don’t hesitate to talk to them for more recommendations and ideas.

Writing a great classified ad is completely different to writing great sales copy for your website. The primary objective of a classified ad is completely different! Generally the primary objective of your website copy is to persuade your visitor to buy or enquire about your product. The objective of your classified ad is to get the reader to click-through to your website or pick up the phone and call you.

The type of customer that you are going to come across using a classified ad will also be different. When a customer comes to your website they are already interested in what you are offering– they are pre-qualified. A customer that you will find in an ezine or on a website that has classified ads is unqualified.

 

The Structure of a Classified Advert

The structure for a classified ad is as follows:

• Headline

• Opening Hook

• Call to Action

The headline is the most important part of the whole ad. It needs to immediately attract the reader’s attention. It needs to YELL above the ‘din’ and cut through all the noise. Think about your target customer. What is your target customer’s need, problem or goal? Write a headline around that. Yell out their problem!

Whenever possible use your reader’s name– some ezines give you the ability to personalise your advertisement by automatically inserting the person’s name into each separate copy of the ezine.

Review ‘headline’ writing in the ‘load’ module from the E-business Bible for a detailed look at writing good headlines.

The opening hook should expand on your headline. Elaborate further on your strongest benefits and look to set the reader up for the call to action.

Remember, your primary objective with a classified ad is to get the reader to click through to your website, or pick up the phone and call you. Outline exactly what you want your reader to do. Make it as easy as possible.

Example:

 

Your business website should make sales, or generate enquiries for your products or services. Is Yours? If not, it will be due to one of three simple reasons.

Because a website that delivers results is no fluke!

Visit our website or call 0508 WEBSITE to find out why.

 

Formatting a Classified Advert

Once again, review the ‘content’ module from the E-business Bible for a detailed look at formatting your ads. Consider putting your headline inside quotes. Make sure you bold your headline and capitalise the first letter of every word. Sometimes putting your advertisement inside a table and using some alternative colours can really help it stand out from the rest of the copy on the page.

 

Measuring & Monitoring the Results of a Classified Advert

As always– make sure you measure and monitor everything. Set each of your classified ads up as separate campaigns in the Zeald Website Management Software, so that you can track and measure the results. Experiment with different headlines and different opening hooks.

Make sure you vary your classified ads and keep them fresh– especially the advertisements that are in ezines. You will see your response rates drop-off significantly, after a number of repeated listings.

There are many other online advertising opportunities, besides Google Adwords, for you to tap-into, for driving visitors to your website. Think about the following areas:
 

Specialty Search Engines

Specialty search engines focus themselves on specific niche areas. They can be an excellent source of targeted website traffic. Some examples are:

• Shopping

  -  Yahoo Shopping (http://shopping.yahoo.com)

  -  BizRate (www.bizrate.com)

  -  PriceGrabber (www.pricegrabber.com)

  -  PriceSpy (www.pricespy.co.nz)

 

• Local Search

  -  SearchNZ (www.searchnz.co.nz)

  -  NZS (www.nzs.com)

 

Top Ranking Websites

Find websites that are ranking highly for the keywords that you are targeting, and are not in competition with you. You may be able to approach these website owners to see if they offer Pay-Per-Impression, Pay-Per-Click, or Pay-Per-Acquisition advertising opportunities.

 

Commercial Directories

We have already covered some of the free directories earlier; but there are a number of major online commercial, local directories that receive substantial traffic. They are:

 

• Yellow Pages (www.yellowpages.co.nz)

• UBD (www.ubd.co.nz)

• Iris (www.iris.co.nz)

Each of these commercial directories charges a fee to have your company listed as part of their directory.

 

Yellow Pages

The online Yellow Pages (www.yellowpages.co.nz) offer you a number of different listings to complement your basic online and paper-based Yellow Pages directory listings:

 

• Website Link

    $20+GST p/month

    $15+GST p/month – Priority 1 Upgrade.

 

• Shop Site Link

    $25+GST p/month

    $15+GST p/month – Priority 1 Upgrade.

The Yellow Pages also offers banner advertising on a Pay-Per-Impression model. Talk to your local Yellow Pages representative to discuss their options.

 

UBD

UBD is one of New Zealand’s largest and most popular business directories. There is both a print based and online version of the directory. Both versions allow you to list your website address and the online version also links directly through to your website.

There are three basic options for listing on the UBD website.

 

• Basic Listing – (Company name, address, phone, fax, e-mail, website) - $465 + GST per annum

• Logo Listing – (Company name, address, phone, fax, email, website, company logo) - $635 + GST per annum

• Logo & Text Listing – (Company name, address, phone, fax, email, website, company logo, 40 words of text) - $885 + GST per annum

UBD also has more advanced advertising options. Talk to your local UBD representative to discuss further options.

 

Iris

Iris is a directory for consumers. The Iris directory is run by UBD. 

There are three basic options for listing on the Iris website.

• Basic Listing – (Company name, address, phone, fax, e-mail, website) - $285 + GST per annum

• Logo Listing – (Company name, address, phone, fax, email, website, company logo) - $365 + GST per annum

• Logo & Text Listing – (Company name, address, phone, fax, email, website, company logo 40 words of text) - $485 + GST per annum

Iris also has more advanced advertising options. Talk to your local UBD representative to discuss further options for advertising on Iris.

As with every part of your website – always monitor and test your search engine listings.

Most of the different PFP providers supply tools to help you monitor and measure your advertising results. 

The Zeald Website Manager also has a campaign management module that allows you to track and measure all your PFP advertising campaigns. Talk to your Zeald E-Business Consultant or the Support Team for information on activating this add-on.

The key metrics that you will need to monitor when advertising on the search engines, using paid placements programs are different depending on what type of website you have. The key metrics for an ecommerce website are:

• Impressions – the number of times your advertisement has been ‘served’ to viewers

• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – how often visitors click on your ad

• Clicks/Visitors – the amount of clicks that you have received

• Conversion Rate (Visitors) – the percentage of visitors that placed an order

• Orders – the number of orders placed

• Average Sale – the average value of each order

• Revenue – the total amount of revenue generated

• Gross Margin – the percentage of revenue that is your profit

• Gross Profit – the total amount of profit that you have made

• Cost Per Click (CPC) – the cost per click on your advertisement

• Total Cost – the total cost of your campaign

• ROI - the return on your advertising investment (gross profit divided by the total cost).

 

The key metrics for an Promotion or Catalogue website are:

• Impressions – the number of times your advertisement has been ‘served’ to viewers

• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – how often visitors click on your ad

• Clicks/Visitors – the amount of clicks that you have received

• Conversion Rate (Visitors) – the percentage of visitors that made an enquiry

• Enquiries – the number of enquiries made

• Conversion Rate (Enquiries) – the percentage of enquiries that resulted in an order

• Orders – the number of orders placed

• Average Sale – the average value of each order

• Revenue – the total amount of revenue generated

• Gross Margin – the percentage of revenue that is your profit

• Gross Profit – the total amount of profit that you have made

• Cost Per Click (CPC) – the cost per click on your advertisement

• Total Cost – the total cost of your campaign

• ROI - the return on your advertising investment (gross profit divided by the total cost).

Writing search engine advertising is not very different to writing sales copy for your website. If you haven’t already– go back and review the articles on ‘Headlines’ and ‘Opening Hooks’. When writing your titles and descriptions for your advertisements make sure you follow the principles outlined in these articles. You should always be thinking– “Will this title and description clearly attract my target visitors, and repel visitors who are not genuinely interested in my products and services?” For example:

Order meat online today

Order New Zealand’s finest meat online and have it delivered direct to your doorstep.

www.meatcuisine.co.nz

To substantially increase your click-through rate, mention the keywords that you are targeting in your title or description.

Don’t always send users through to the home page of your website. If your ad is targeted at a certain product or service, direct the customer directly to that section of your website.

Analyse your competitor’s advertisements. If they are positioned higher than yours, especially on Google, then there is a good chance that they are achieving a higher click-through rate. Look at what they may be doing to gain a higher click-through rate.

 

Submitting your Listing

Now it’s time to submit your listings and start your PFP advertising.

The first thing that you will need to do is set up an account with a PFP advertising provider. Our recommendation for beginners is to set up an account with Google Adwords first. You can move to Overture and some of the other PFP providers at a later date. Google Adwords has a simple system and it costs only US$5 to create an account.

Go to Google Adwords website (http://adwords.google.com).

The Google Adwords website provides detailed instructions for setting up an account, and running and managing Adwords listings.

Don’t forget– ‘walk before you run!’

Start with a small advertising campaign on Google and once you are familiar with that and you’re achieving results, move forward.

Please Note: This section talks extensively about website and business ‘metrics’. If you do not understand metrics like ‘visitors’, ‘conversion rate’, ’average sale’, ‘revenue’, ‘margin’ and ‘profit’, then you need to read our free booklet titled– 'Website Fundamentals - How to Generate Amazing Results Online' before working through the remainder of this document. This section extensively utilises information we provide in the booklet, ‘Website Fundamentals - How to Generate Amazing Results Online’.

One of the first things you need to do before venturing into the world of search engine advertising is to establish your advertising budget. In order to successfully establish an advertising budget you need to work out exactly how much you can afford to spend on attracting visitors to your website. How much can you pay for each visitor or each click while you’re making money? This is called your Maximum Cost-Per-Click (CPC) or ‘Bid Cap’.

Calculating the max CPC/bid cap will vary depending on whether your website sells products or services directly online (ecommerce) or merely looks to generate an enquiry (E-Profile).

To work out your max CPC/bid cap for an ecommerce website, perform the following calculation:

Average Sale	$100
X	X
Margin	30%
=	=
Gross Profit	$30
X	X
Conversion Rate (Visitors)	5%
=	=
Max CPC / Bid Cap	$1.50

To work the max CPC/bid cap on an Profile website, you perform a slightly more complicated calculation:
 

Average Sale	$100
X	X
Margin	30%
=	=
Gross Profit	$30
X	X
Conversion Rate (Enquiries)	25%
X	X
Conversion Rate (Visitors)	5%
=	=
Max CPC / Bid Cap	$0.375

This shows your absolute max CPC/bid cap. We strongly suggest that you set a bid cap a little below what is shown by these calculations, as they do not take into account the fixed overheads of your business.

Your max CPC/bid cap is sometimes not an easy thing to work out– especially if you are venturing into the online world for the first time. This is because it is hard to know exactly what ‘visitor conversion rate’ your website will achieve if you haven’t had several months of testing and measuring it.

If your website is really new, we suggest you work with a visitor conversion rate of 3%. Website conversion rates across the world are currently averaging between 2-3%. Hopefully, as you measure your website over a number of months, you will find that your conversion rate is much higher than the standard.

Now that you know your max CPC/bid cap, you need to work out your total search engine budget. Most search engine advertising providers will allow you to set an advertising budget, so that in the event you receive many more clicks than you anticipated, you will not end up with a hefty bill.

If you have worked-out your calculations correctly, and you pay for advertising at a rate significantly below your bid cap, you should see a significant return on the money that you have invested.

The final thing you need to decide is exactly how much search engine advertising you can afford to bankroll. “What!?”, we hear you say, “I thought you just said that providing we do our calculations well, we will make returns on search engine advertising– so what’s the risk?”

This is true, but like all advertising projects you need to be aware that there will be a period of time before you see a return on that advertising investment. You need to understand your sales cycle and product or delivery cycle.
 
Let’s take a look at an example:
 
You pay $50 a day, everyday, for search engine advertising. Based on your calculations you know that the advertising is going to generate approximately $100 worth of profit everyday. Now imagine that it takes you on average of 10 weeks for you to deliver the product or service that you provide to your customer, and receive payment. This means that you will need to pay $3500 ($50 X 70 days) before you will start to see the profits resulting from your advertising. You need to be able to bankroll $3500 worth of advertising before you will see the results of that advertising making a positive affect on your bank balance.

So let’s imagine that we have $2000 that we can dedicate to search engine advertising, and that it takes us four weeks to deliver the product or service to our customer, and receive payment. This means that our search engine, advertising budget is $66.70 per day ($2000 / 30).

This can be a little confusing when you are looking at these concepts for the first time. Don’t worry … soon you will be able to do all this in your sleep!
If you need some help, talk with the Support Team.

Remember– the key figures you need to know before starting a search engine, advertising campaign are:

• Max CPC / bid cap

• Daily search engine advertising budget.

Optimising your website for the search engines is only one option for generating traffic for your website. Another option is to advertise on a search engine.

When advertising on a search engine, you pay for an advertisement to appear when a person searches for a particular keyword or phrase, relevant to your website. There are three common models search engines use for charging for advertisements- in fact; these models are common across all forms of online advertising:

 

• Pay-Per-Impression (CPM)

   
  In the Pay-Per-Impression model you are charged every time one of your advertisements is ‘served up’ to a viewer. With this model you are usually charged per 1000 impressions. The amount you are charged per 1000 impressions is called your Cost Per Impression or CPM. This model is the hardest to control, as you don’t know how many people will click on your advertisements, and then purchase products or services, or even make enquiries (although you will able to forecast this accurately after you have some historical results).

 

• Pay-Per-Click (CPC)

   
  With this model, you are charged for each click your ad listing receives. The amount you pay per click is called your Cost Per Click or CPC. Pay-per-click advertising is a lot more attractive than pay-per-impression advertising as you can manage your costs a lot easier- you only pay for visitors that have clicked-through to your website.

 

• Pay-Per-Acquisition (CPA)

   
  Pay-per-acquisition advertising is the best of the lot! In this model you pay only when someone purchases something from your website. You pay ‘a commission’ for a new customer! The amount you pay is called your Cost-Per-Acquisition or CPA.
   
   

Advertising Types

There are two common types of search engine advertising:

• Fixed Placement Advertising

   
  Fixed placement advertising is exactly how it sounds. It is an advertisement that is locked into a specific position on a search engine’s results page. Generally, the position of the advertisement doesn’t change. Many search engines reserve a portion of space at the top or side of their page for fixed placement ads.
   
  The advantage of fixed place advertising is that you can lock-in your advertising rates and lock out your competitors from the top positions. Unfortunately, this type of advertising with the search engines is often very expensive and is usually in the realm of larger organisations with substantial advertising budgets.

 

• Pay For Placement Advertising (PFP)

   
  Pay for placement (PFP) advertising works like this - people bid for placement in the advertising slots provided by the search engines, on their results page. The highest bid wins the number one slot, second highest bid the second slot, and so on.
   
  PFP advertising can change day-to-day as advertisers change their bid amounts, and as new advertisers start bidding. Almost all PFP advertising utilises a Pay-Per-Click method of charging. The advertiser pays each time a person clicks their advertisement.
   
  PFP advertising is great for small businesses as you can trial it with very little advertising budget. You can often secure visitors to your website for just a few cents. Its only downside is that it can require substantial time and effort to manage it successfully.

The rest of this section focuses on PFP advertising, as this is the form of advertising that will be most applicable to the majority of our readers.

 

PFP Advertising Providers

In the PFP advertising world there are two main providers:

• Google

   
  Google runs a PFP system called Google Adwords. Google Adwords allows you to bid on keywords. When these key words are searched, an appropriate advertisement will appear on the right-hand side of the page, under the title– ‘Sponsored Links’.
   
  Google Adwords allows you to target your advertisements to the New Zealand region without including the region in the keyword. What this means is that you don’t have to include the geographical region in the keyword that you are targeting, i.e., ‘New Zealand Meat’. Instead, you can just tell Google to only ‘serve’ advertisements to New Zealand-based searchers.
   
  Any advertisements that you set up using Google Adwords will be displayed in these search engines: Google, Ask Jeeves, Teoma, Netscape Search and AOL Search.

 

• Overture

   
  Overture is the biggest supplier of PFP advertising. Similar to Google Adwords, Overture allows you to bid on keywords that when searched show an advertisement on the right-hand side of the page under the tile – ‘Sponsored Results’.
   
  Overture only allows you to target your advertisements to the Australasian region. The only way to target specifically to the New Zealand region is to include the region in the keyword. We are expecting Overture to upgrade their systems to include the New Zealand-only feature in the very near future.
   
  Overture advertisements are displayed in these search engines: AllTheWeb, AltaVista, MSN Search and Yahoo.

 

There are also a number of smaller PFP providers:

 

• FindWhat (http://www.findwhat.com)

• LookSmart (http://www.looksmart.com)

• Kanoodle (http://www.kanoodle.com)

• Enhance Interactive (http://www.enhance.com)

• Mamma Media Solutions (http://www.mammamediasolutions.com).