Extremely expensive (CPC)
That is a sign of many advertisers biding for the keyword they think is important for their business. In some cases it might be just the two advertisers having their private price war.

Unexpected big drops (in CPC)
Some keywords show huge cost per click drops, and become cheep. That is mostly the result of the big player (the big AdWords spender or a number of them) leaving the marketplace, usually with their marketing budget all spend for the period, and the keywords CPC price drops drastically.

The overall size of the Irish PPC market seems to be shrinking during early 2009. Both Google AdWords and Google AdSense publishers can see it clearly. Recession is here, and is here to stay with us for some time. It is having the impact on the online marketing and the PPC budgets are suffering in this volatile market.

I read somewhere a comparison of the search engine optimization and a weight loss:

Search engine optimization as a weight loss takes time. No quick fixes available.

You need to make changes to your site and to your diet. No changes made, and sometimes drastically changes, no (rank) gain or (weight) loss.

You must be in it for a long term.

‘One size fits all’ product does not exist. As our bodies are different, our habits (how much do you eservice each day?), the web sites are different. The web sites compete in the different markets, where some are crowded and some are there to be taken easily. The search engine optimization packages like Bronze, Silver & Gold will do no good to the 95% of the web sites. It will do no harm, but also you will not see any measurable improvement in your revenue after investing in those once of ‘Perfect Fit’ search engine optimization packages.

Understanding is the key to success. What you eat and how much of it, and how much do you exercise is the basics of any weight loss program that will deliver a result. Having a proper content on the site correctly ‘presented’ to the search engine, with the correct amount of links to your site from the ‘important’ sites to your market is the key to success. The rest is just marketing and packaging of eh search engine optimization service. The rest is a vocabulary of the sales man.

Yahoo has a bit strange ‘Go To Market’ strategy in letting only a limited number of users to it. Their message printed between the lines is that if you become an advertiser with the Yahoo Search Marketing – ‘apt’.

And this is where Yahoo got it all wrong and missed a huge opportunity. Yahoo is here just chasing the direct revenue, with giving a free Yahoo Web Analytics to those who pay for advertising in their channel. What they should have done instead is to use the same carrot on the stick approach and give it free to the publishers of their ads. It would widen their ads network and made it more interesting to the advertisers.

But then again, Google with its the largest online advertising channel AdWords, is giving Google Analytics for free to anyone? Yahoo should have a much better product to create a compelling reason to switch.

Why is SEO ’so important’?
Well the SEO staff have a job to make sure that the IT and Marketing excel in what they do without clashing into each other’s territory.

What makes a good SEO professional?

The term Team Player describes well what a SEO staff need to be good at. Unfortunately this is completely incompatible with one of the most important skills required for the perfect SEO person and it is entrepreneurship. SEO is changing and evolving rapidly. The SEO person needs to be a serious ‘forward thinker’. Again, being a visionary and the analytical is again extremely rare in the same person. Statistical Analysis is the base and the start of any SEO. There is a high level of leadership skills required to get the web developers and marketing staff involved constructively into the common project, and make them byte in to it. Vendor management skills, and negotiation skills in general is certainly required to manage the external SEO and PPC vendors, partners and consultants.

Let’s just list the skills described above in a simple list:

Team Player vs. Entrepreneur (Soloist, Leader)
Statistical Analysis (Detail Oriented) vs. Creative Forward Thinker
Negotiator vs. Charismatic
Management Experience
Results Driven (doesn’t it sound so much like ‘Black Hat’)
….

The more you define your SEO staff requirements the more complex it gets. It actually gets to the utopia stage, since there as a so many so conflicting skills required. Perhaps hiring the SEO staff in house doesn’t sound as that good idea anymore?

Is there money to be made by posting links of other websites on your own website? Do you need a middle man to accomplish something like this? How can you find out the going rates?

And my LinkedIn Answer:

Google will not like you really much if they find out that you are selling or renting links from your web site. So do not display the advertisement for such a service on your front page, since Google will not send you much traffic, and we all know that the vast majority of the web sites have the majority of their traffic directly from Google.

How to find the rates?

Rates depend on the traffic volume, traffic quality, geographical market, industry, or niche and if your traffic is from Google – what keywords is your web site found for.

The easiest way to find out what is the going rate is to ask a large number of similar sites to yours – in the same market, industry, and with the similar number of the Google PR and Alexa ranking – what would they charge to link to your site (or a fictitious site). Or even better, send them an email and say, I offer €XXX for the link to our site on your front page. From their responses you will quickly establish what would they agree to sell it for – and that is what the going price is.

The majority of this link trading is done by the third party companies, that try to do it all ‘under the radar’ for Google not to notice. Google on the other hand encourages the webmasters to report paid links. Unfortunately they do not offer any of their cash as a reward.

Other third parties like Google AdSense and Text Ads,… offer a far smaller revenue then the direct link sales.

For more of my LinkedIN Answers in the Internet Marketing visit: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanstojanovic.

Their SEO ranking tool is missing the Internationalisation that they support quite well in the Payd Keywords analysis, and that is the major drawback on the usage for of the KeywordSpy for the International search engine optimisation.

This is what the KeywordSpy marketing blob says about themselves:

Find which keywords your competitors are using!
Increase your Ad Campaign revenue by finding the most profitable keywords.
Get access to over a billion keywords in our database.

KeywordSpy is certainly the one to keep an eye at, since they are adding new and interesting features fast as well.

Almost anyone who sad published a web site realised after the hype in the office quietened, that there is something missing. There was no visitors to the web site. You learned to be patient, and have been watching the web logs, but time is passing and there is still just a ‘flat line’ A few visitors, mostly from your own IP. When a first referral from a search engine showed up, it gave you hope, but in reality the keyword used was you domain name. Months pass by and still nothing really. No visitors, and a spider visiting a home page and a few more pages only, once in a week or a month.

Then you realise, I need to do something to bring this visitors to my site. SEO is the magic word there. Let’s invest in it, but…

How much does SEO cost?

I have been asked that question a million times so far. And still there is no definite answer, but here is the sentence that made me thinking today:

The budget for marketing a site in the first month should be equal to the budget for building the site in the first place.

To anyone who has just purchased a new web site this is most likely shocking to say at least. You have paid through the roof for the web site, and now you need t spend as much into online marketing of it. And all that in the first month only? What happens the next month, and any other month later on?!

SEO is Expensive

Paying a few dollars per inbound link to a company in Asia is cheap. And every day you receive an offer for such services in your inbox. Just check your SPAM or Junk folders. Will that bring you any good (visitors). Quite unlikely.

SEO is Time Consuming

A SEO Consultant will most likely have to rewrite the majority of the content on the site. In some cases the whole site (code) will have to be replaced by something the search engines can read and understand. The top SEO Consultants will if at all possible look into replacing the whole web site with a completely new one. The look and feel will be the same, the content will be retained, and a lot of new one added (in most cases), but the code will be completely replaced in the end product.

Is SEO for You?

SEO is not for everyone. That is the fact. SEO is a viable investment to any web site owner who will make a return on investment from the direct on indirect sales from the traffic on the web site.

What is your SEO Budget?

Web Site Grader is trying to do that exactly! It is the free online website grading service. You just put your URL in it, and it checks all different aspects of your site (including online and offline web site optimisation!) and gives your site the score. It even gives you the brief description of all various elements and checks the web site was scored against.

So is Website Grader good? Is it bad?

Well it is far more good than bad. The advantages are:
1. It is quick
2. It does an fairly rounded check-up of various elements
3. In almost all cases it is correct in what it states
4. It can be used as a ‘Reminder Checklist’.
5. It is nice!!!

What is bad? Well nothing much is bad with Website Grader. If it is used with a grain of salt. If your site gets 100% it does not mean you should stop working on SEO. If you get 95% it does not mean that there are not obvious SEO mistakes on your site!

How to use Website Grader?

The reports that Website Grader should be used in conjunction with all the other SEO reports you have. Trusting anyone in the SEO industry is a bit ‘unreliable’. Who you do trust is your own gut feeling, helped by the number of other sources who tell you the same!

Website Grader is nice. It is really easy to trust it!

How to structure and organise your company blogging?

Create a new position. Call it a ‘Chief Blogger’ or however your companies position titles are structured. Do not make it report to the Marketing manager, but to the same head where the Marketing Manager is reporting. Allocate a percentage of your marketing budget to the Blogging Department.

What should a Chief Blogger do?

Company Business Blog
The first step into the blogging world is to create a company blog under the company domain. Structure your blog based on the type and amount of the content you intend to publish, and the participation (content contribution in the form of comments, etc) you are looking for. Publish your initial ‘static’ articles about your company, services or products. Start blogging!

Social Networking
Search for the blogs related to yours. Leave comments, contribute in discussions. Develop the ‘Trust’ and the feeling of the ‘Authority’, associated with you and your company name. Trust and respect will help you bring visitors to your blog. Some of those visitors are partners and some your future clients! The sales process is far shorter if they see you as an authority in your industry!

Matt Cuts is a good example of a Business Blogging for Google: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/