A large part of the challenge in managing a successful pay per click campaign is generating a conversion rate on keywords that translates to a bottom line result. While most marketers feel lucky to achieve a 10% conversion rate, The Info Group considers that a standard. iTKO developers of LISA a automated testing solution for SOA, websites, applications and more, has already seen their ppc campaign achieve double digit conversion rates on their keywords.

Childrens Medical Center is a internationally known hospital and support center and we are honored they have chosen The Info Group to provide search engine marketing services for them. More news to come!

The choice between a positive or negative ROI on a marketing campaign is a no-brainer right? Maybe not if you are convinced that top rankings for your big keywords are the only way to go. The reality is and always has been, at least as long as I’ve been involved with search engine marketing (1998), that the highest ROI keywords were the ones the client never thought of or at a minimum considered secondary keywords and not worth much effort.

Search terms are used in the same thought process online as people use them when shopping in a brick and mortar store. For instance if you were a sales clerk and a customer walked into your establishment and said I’m wanting to buy a dingy flopper, that would be a pretty clear indication you were going to make a sale. However if a customer walks in and says something like, I’m interested in learning about your dingy floppers, you would also have a clear indication not of a impending sale but that a sale is possible and will require you to educate and apply your best sales tactics to turn this potential customer into a paying customer. So this same thought process should apply online. When you are trying to decide what keywords you need to target you need to add intention into the equation. While you do want exposure on your “main” keywords, serious thought and effort needs to be put into all of your keywords. The true power of search engine marketing has always been bulk. The company that is gaining visitors from hundreds or thousand of keywords is converting more than the company gaining visitors from just a few keywords and statistics bear that statement out over and over again.

So while getting top rankings is an ego boost and will generate traffic, the more important question is are those keywords earning you a return on your investment? With search engine optimization becoming the norm and with only 10 slots on the front page of search engines, it’s time to look beyond egos and concentrate on what will really take your business to the top an effective overall search marketing strategy which delivers results that affect the bottom line.

We’ve all seen those ads or received emails trying to sell you hundreds if not thousands or millions of backlinks to your site all in a matter of minutes. Well just like the emails that promise you millions of dollars if you’ll just put up a few thousand, it’s too good to be true. Link building like every other aspect of an effective search engine optimization campaign requires research, time and patience.

It’s no secret that one part of the three main search engine algorithms (Google, Yahoo & MSN) is link popularity, or who is linking to you and how relevant is that link and how much weight will it be given. So to think that by simply buying links to your site is the magic bullet is a big mis-calculation. Let’s look at what should go into an effective link building strategy.

• Anchor Text - Yes, it’s critical that you “say” the right thing in the links that point to your page. Although this is not always under your control for those links that you can generate that do allow you to determine your anchor text it’s essential that you use your keywords in the text. So just as you’ve done when optimizing your meta tags or body content, consult your keyword list and develop short, keyword rich anchor text options to use when soliciting links.
• Research - Find sites that are relevant to your site, identify a page within their site to ask for a link to your site and then contact the site owner as ask them. Ok, you’re probably going to be rejected more times than not but if you’re site offers complimentary content, if the content is original and of value, you’ll be surprised how many site owners would be willing to offer you a link as a value to their visitors. Keep in mind, sites that are more popular will have a greater impact on the value of your link than sites of less popularity.
• Offer something - A simple link from a site may not be enough for a site owner so you might offer an article that is content rich which will be of value to his site and also allow you to gain that link via a signature box or if the site owner is generous maybe even links throughout the article.
• Time - It’s going to take time to not only identify sites that fit your theme but also to communicate and gain those links. If you go the article route you’ll also need to write those articles so your timeframe has increased even more.
• Patience - Once links are obtained you’ve got to now wait for them to be recognized by the engines. MSN is fairly quick at identifying backlinks, Yahoo is usually not too far behind and Google usually takes much longer.

So the next time you pull the credit card out to buy those 1,000,000,000 backlinks, think again, the chance of those having any major effect at all is minimal and even if they do, it won’t be long before one of the engines realizes what’s up and suddenly you’re left with no backlinks.

In yet another innovative way, the folks at FIFTY50 are launching a website to provide discount diabetic supplies. The site, which will offer a months supply of testing products for $69.95, will enable those who don’t have insurance an affordable outlet to obtain their diabetes supplies. Watch for a launch in the next 60 days.