Archive for June, 2009

A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap for the sake of having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.

1) Navigation purposes

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.

2) Conveying your site’s theme

When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the “big picture” of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors’ time.

3) Site optimization purposes

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page — they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

4) Organization and relevance

A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird’s eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything sorted according to their relevance.

From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accesible and neatly organized for everyone.

1. Brainstorm top keyword choices
   Write down your top 5 or so key business keywords.  Start adding simple prefixes and suffixes to your keywords.  For example if you are a dentist who specializes in cosmetic dentistry procedures your keywords could be something like this: dentist, cosmetic dentist, cosmetic dentistry, and smiles.  Now you are going to want to take your geographic location and incorporate that into your keyword choices. For example, if you are located in San Francisco your domain choices now look something like this: SanFranciscoDentist.com, SanFranciscoCosmeticDentist.com and so on.  Just fool around with them until you find an available domain name.
2. Make Sure your Domain Name is Unique
   If you don’t do your market research before choosing a domain name you can end up with a gigantic mess on your hands.  For instance, if there is a dental practice with the domain name SanFranciscoDentalCare.com you don’t want to get the domain name DentalCareSanFrancisco.com.  When someone is telling you to visit their website unless they type in the URL, the search results can bring back your competition’s website instead of yours. Make sure to research your market before settling on a domain name.
3. Only Purchase a Dot-Com if Available
   Even though i showed you above that there are numerous gTLD domain names, the Dot-Com is always your best bet.  It is most widely recognized by almost everyone.  Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Live usually do not weight your domain selection as long as it is a gTLD.  The advantage to selecting a Dot-Com is that almost every person assumes when you tell them a web address that it is a Dot-Com and you could be sending very valuable traffic to your competition.  When in doubt purchase the Dot-Com and your secondary selection.  Set-up a 301 redirect to your secondary domain name if you would like.  A fine example of this is Wikipedia.  Go type in Wikipedia.com and you will notice you will be redirected to Wikipedia.org.
4. Make Your URL Easy To Type
   If your customers and clients cannot spell or remember your domain name then your marketing efforts are failing.  URLs should be memorable and easy to type.  It is stated that the letters to avoid are “q, z, x, c and p”.  The reason that these letters are said to be excluded from the domain names is due to their placement on the keyboards.
5. Make it Memorable
   Both word of mouth and dominance marketing rely on having your domain name be easy to remember and capitalizing on keywords in your URL.  Make it rhyme, alliterations, play-on-words, just KIS (Keep it Simple).  Just remember that this is your online identity and will be used in your print collateral and on practice signage.
6. Keep the URL as Short As You Can
   The industry number that I have been hearing is 25 characters excluding your suffix.  Try not to exceed that limit for numerous reasons, the URLs get harder to remember and the harder to fit on business cards, letterhead, etc.  In the dental world you want your URL to be as short as you can but still contain valuable keywords, such as location and occupation.
7. Set and Meet Goals and Expectations
   When you tell someone to go visit your website, you do not want to disappoint them.  If they can guess what contents your website has before ever visiting it then you have successfully completed your goal.  Try not to mislead them.  By meeting this goal you will need far less branding for people to recognize the URL.
8. Avoid Copyright Violations & Infringements
   Just take a look at copyright.gov before you purchase your domain name.  This is so you don’t get sued and loose all the hard time, work, and money vested into your website.  It is a simple thing to do that can save you a ton of heartache down the road.
9. Set Yourself Apart With Your Brand
   You can use a unique nickname or alias for your website like WebMD.com or FreeCreditReport.com.  They accomplish the goal of letting your audience know what it is you do with out them ever having to visit your website.  Dental examples like ‘VailVeneers.com’ or ‘CelebrityDentist.com’ are great URLS since they let your audience know exactly what procedures and service areas your cater towards.
10. Exclude Hyphens and Numbers
    When you add hyphens and numbers to a domain name it makes the domain name very hard to verbally say and remember.  There are always exceptions to this rule like ‘1800Dentist.com’, that URL is also their company name and is exceptionally simple to remember.  Even though you can still optimize the websites, hyphens add a whole level of complexity since you have to tell some one that your website is San Francisco Hyphen Dentist dot com.
11. Don’t Follow Latest Fads and Trends
    Try to stay away from the latest trends like odd misspellings, using words like top, best, hot, my, free, etc.  Even though there are numerous well optimized that contain two hyphens like www.dental–implants.com.  I would not recommend ever using a domain name that contains 1, let alone 2 hypens.  They are very hard to remember and say, and in the SERP results they just look plain wierd.
12. Research Available Domains Using the Latest Tools
    AJAX domain selection tools are the latest and greatest as far as saving time.  They instantly will let you know if a domain name is available everytime you enter a new character. Take a look at the ones below.

• AJAX Who Is
• Domjax

Engaging in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has its own benefits and drawbacks. But what exactly is PPC advertising and what it can do to your business?

Business nowadays is doing different kinds of austerity measures when it comes to advertising their products and services. This is because of high rates of placing ads on print and on television. But there is a fast growing approach that businessmen can utilize to bring their services closer to the people and that is through Internet Marketing.

One tool that is causing internet marketing popularity is PPC advertising. This is a technique used in search engine marketing that requires one to pay a fee every time someone clicks an ad on your website. Usually this placement is done through a bidding process. If you are a top bidder for your keywords/phrases, you are sure to be on the number one spot on all search engines. Just be sure of the effectiveness of your ad copy to get the most number of clicks you need for your business.

Here are the benefits of PPC advertising are:

1.    You need not be a genius in computer and technology to be able to run this ad campaign.
2.    Immediate results are seen after a few days.
3.    No need to make a website conform to the SEO rules.
4.    Nothing to lose even if you do not top the pages of different search engines. You can still always choose PPC advertising.
5.    You can make use any search engine available.
6.    You can type in any keyword you like.

Cons of PPC advertising includes:

1.    Fixed payments every month to the search engine you choose.
2.    Pay for each click received by your website. At times, visitors are just competitors or people playing pranks on search engines. This hassle wastes money you put in to this advertising.
3.    Inability to pay for the fees next month would mean removal of your website on the paid listings.
4.    This advertising can only be used temporarily because it is difficult to handle in the long run.
5.    Pay-per-click pricing can be costly for long periods of time, therefore, this should be stopped after an ad campaign.

But how exactly PPC advertising can increase traffic, leads and sales?

PRE-QUALIFIED TRAFFIC. All visitors of your website are already considered as a qualified consumer or buyer of your product. PPC advertising leads your customers to you for a lesser cost.

INSTANT EXPOSURE, IMMEDIATE PROFITS. PPC search engines enable you to get your desired results fast. They will have your website live within just a few hours which means immediate increase in sale.

CONSISTENT TOP LISTINGS. This is to get your website on top of the sponsored search results for free. You just have to choose the keywords related to your site and business and place them within your web pages. After this, you are done.

PPC advertising enables advertisers to control their advertising campaigns. Advertisers have effectively targeted their audience and set their own price per click. PPC advertising networks provide the platform to identify the desired audience by geographic setting, topic and industry.  These networks have a list of websites of the publishers where the ads will be placed.

Tools are provided by the networks to check how the pay per click limit is working for a certain advertiser. If its still competitive, would it be even listed among the paid search lists or does it generate sales? Of course, if the advertiser made the highest bid, the better chances the ad will be seen in the search engine. These networks too provide protection for the advertisers against click fraud. This advertising set-up allows advertisers to set a daily budget for his ads, thus, less spending for unnecessary clicks. Advertiser will never go over his budget.

In PPC advertising, what are important are the keywords and phrases. You have to select at least ten “very specific” keywords that would give you the best traffic in the search. Then, write the ad creatively but straightforward. Tell the truth about your product or service and do not lie. Good thing if your product or service will not disappoint those that are relying on your ad’s promise – but what if it did otherwise? Important too is the clarity of the ad. Do not use very vague languages. Include important details like the price.

You should also remember to budget your bids. Do not go overbidding because you will only lose your money and do not go so low that your ads will never get the chance to show up. Check your profit against your spending. If you see no progress then most likely you have to drop your ad campaign.

More and more advertisers have been using PPC advertising and it will continue to grow faster than any online advertising techniques. From revenues of $2.6 billion in 2004 to $5.5 billion in 2009, cost per click will dramatically go up as well from $0.29 to $0.36.

PPC advertising is new in online marketing and it is going to continue in the years to come. For advertisers, this means increase revenues with fewer advertising expenses, savings, more sales, good return of investment (ROI) and effective ad campaigns in the days to come.

PPC stands for Pay Per Click – a popular advertising technique on the Internet. Found on websites, advertising networks, and especially on search engines, PPC advertising involves sponsored links that are typically in the form of text ads. These are usually placed close to search results, where an advertiser pays a particular amount to visitors who click on these links or banners and land on the advertiser’s web page.

In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading position on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services – the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it “keyword auctioning”). Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website.

PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations:

·    Pay per placement
·    Pay per performance
·    Pay per ranking
·    Pay per position
·    Cost per click (CPC)

PPC advertising is usually done with the following standard procedures:

1. Setting up an account and/or deposit funds.

2. Creating a keyword list.

3. Choosing (and setting up) an account with a PPC search engine.

4. Bidding on the ad placement, including the search result words or phrases.

5. Writing out an ad copy.

6. Setting up the ‘landing pages’ for your ads.

7. Placing the advertisement in the search engine.

There are many benefits to Pay Per Click advertising, making it an effective way of promoting a business ‘online’. Some of them are listed below:

·    Get launched immediately. PPC advertisements are implemented very quickly – they can go ‘online’ within an hour after winning the bid and paying for it.

·    Obtain specific, pre-qualified, and quality traffic. PPC provides you with a quality or a well-targeted traffic. Visitors are narrowed down into ‘qualified’ people who are actually looking for specific products and/or services that you offer – those who are more likely to become a ‘lead’ (a convert) and complete a transaction (either by buying your product or subscribing to the service that you are offering.

·    Widen your reach. PPC advertising provides additional traffic to your site, aside from the natural or “organic” search engines.

·    Track your investment. PPC advertising makes use of a tracking system that will determine exactly who comes to the website and what they do once they arrive – the length of their stay on the site and the number of pages (including the actual pages) that they view. These are valuable tools in determining statistics such as return on investment (ROI), acquisition cost-per-visitor, and conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who are converted into customers or leads).

Below are some important things to consider when planning on a pay per click campaign:

1. Know your product. Take an inventory of the product and/or services that you have to offer (before anything else).

2. Stay within the budget. Determine your daily or monthly budget; and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in mind, avoiding bidding wars if possible.

3. Bid just right. Know how to bid right – a bid that is too high can exhaust all of your money, while a bid that is too low can make you lose that spot.

4. Watch the bottom line. Measure your profit margin against your spending or expenses. Know when to stop and terminate your PPC program – if you spend more on advertising but have little or no sales at all.

5. Find the right keywords. Decide which keyword phrases to opt and bid for. Do some keyword research, either by actually looking at existing search terms or with the use of online keyword suggestion tools, to know which terms are mostly used when searching for items that are related to your business. Focus on specific keywords, not on general ones.

6. Write effective ads. A good PPC ad is that which can persuade and move a searcher. There are several approaches to this:

·    Discount offers
·    Testimonials
·    Celebrity/famous endorsers
·    Money-back guarantees
·    Free trials or sample offers
·    Freebies
·    Reverse psychology
·    Major benefits (“Lose weight”)
·    Direct instructions (“Click here”)

7. Maintain a professional-looking site. Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. The website should be simple – designed in such a way that it will be easy for visitors to navigate and load. Include contact details to create a good impression among potential customers.

Done properly, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing tool that will maximize the return on your investment.

I have been on the hunt for Dunkin’ Doughnuts stores in California.  From all of my research I found a Dunkin Doughnuts in Antioch, CA.  As far as I can tell they have been apprehensive to move out west like Lewis and Clark did so many years ago.  I have heard speculation that there might be a Dunkin Doughnuts in Sacramento, but still no confirmation on this one.  There are also many rumors that there are numerous Dunkin’ Doughnuts in Southern California.

The Dunkin’ Doughnuts Twwitter page states that they are moving out west, with a data to be determined.  The only thing that I have read that places a date on their Westward expansion was from Guardian.co.uk, they stated in their business section that Dunkin’ Donuts is looking to expand into California in the next 3 years.

Links to Useful Dunkin’ Stuff

• Dunkin Doughnut’s Twitter Page
  
• Dunkin Doughnuts Homepage
  

Dunkin’ Doughnuts in Northern California?

• Antioch Dunkin Doughnuts

4538 Lone Tree Way
Antioch, CA 94531

Dunkin’ Doughnuts in Southern California?

• Torrance  Dunkin Doughnuts

4538 Lone Tree Way
Antioch, CA 94531

Know of  a Dunkin’ Doughnuts Location? Email me.