27. October 2006 by Damian Petrini.

According to a recent article on InternetRetailer.com, a study by Piper Jaffray & Co. showed that search engines are still the most efficient method by far at acquiring new clients.

The study revealed that at an average acquisition cost of $8.50 per client, Internet search was shown to be more than twice as efficient as the next-best marketing channel in a study of five channels.

The five marketing channels covered in the study compared the customer acquisition costs of online search, yellow page ads, online display ads, e-mail and direct mail.

Here is a breakdown comparison of the average acquisition costs per client:

Online Search - $8.50 per client acquisition
Yellow Page Ads - $20 per client acquisition
Online Display Ads - $50 per client acquisition
E-Mail Marketing - $60 per client acquisition
Direct Mail - $70 per client acquisition

Yellow Pages came in as the second-most efficient at $20 per customer acquisition, followed by online display ads, $50; e-mail, $60; and direct mail, $70.

Also concluded in the study was that consumers are becoming more likely to use Internet search to research and find products and services, rather than going to online marketplaces. And with the growth of local search, the current number of 700,000 online advertisers could reach 2-4 million over the next five years.

This study demonstrates the importance of developing a successful and strategic search engine optimization and search engine marketing plan for your business, as well as for each of your products and services.

Posted in e-Commerce, Direct Response Marketing, Email Marketing, Business, Online Marketing, SEM, Advertising, Search Engine Opitmization, SEO, Marketing | No Comments »

16. August 2006 by Damian Petrini.

Below is Google’s answer to the question everybody on the internet is asking, “How can I improve my site’s ranking?”

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“Sites’ positions in our search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors, which are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. We don’t manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manipulate the ranking of any site in our search results.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site’s visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our webmaster guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.”

Source: Google.com
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34432&hl=en

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At first glance you will feel somewhat cheated by the answer, perhaps because you were looking for the holy grail of answers to the question that everyone claims to know the answer to, but fewer actually achieve it.

The biggest take away lesson you should learn from Google’s definition can be found in the first sentence of the second paragraph.

“In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

One of the most powerful strategies to improving your website rankings is to get as many other higher ranking websites to link to yours. The higher the ranking of the other websites linking to yours, the better.

1. Buy or Rent Links – Find high quality, high ranking websites, and pay them to link to your website.
2. Reciprocal Links – Identify the most relevant websites to your product, service, or industry and contact the webmaster of those sites to arrange a link exchange between both sites.
3. Read “10 Easy Ways to Increase Links to Your Website” for more ideas on how to get more links pointed to your website.

Learn more about how to get greater leverage out of your online marketing activities or how to put together and implement powerful marketing strategies.

Posted in e-Commerce, Direct Response Marketing, Email Marketing, Online Marketing, SEM, Sales, Search Engine Opitmization, SEO, Marketing | No Comments »