The best way - Advertise with google.

[higherdestiny]

Hi,

Many people spend countless hours attempting to get their site listed as high as possible on the google search engine - often with limited success.

Personally, I have found the best way by far is to use Google's "Adwords" advertising. This is a paid (per click) advertising system and has really brought me results.

Our website traffic increased from 30 visits per week, to well over 400 visits per week with the help of google advertising.

Adwords also displays your ads on sites such as amazon.com to increase the spread of advertising.

The cost of advertising has been fully covered by the increased profits - and some more. But the biggest advantage is a greater international knowledge of our product and a snowball effect of "word of mouth" referrals.

I highly suggest trying the adwords program. Invesing a little money into advertising through google really pays itself off.

-Dave.

[ink cartridges]

we have been using adwords for 3-4 months now - and whilst its not cheap and we have not made a profit for its use we have collected quite a number of customers who are now starting to revisit and buy

thats i guess the branson policy - trade at break even for a while and then reap from the market share

any thoughts ?

[niko]

This issue was mentioned elsewhere in this Forum, and I did exactly that, but I found the $2,500 for 5 months a little too much to carry without some return of benefit quickly. If you are on a 30+ margin you may find it worthwhile but generally I have to compete on a 10 to 15% margin and based on net profit of around 5% it becomes an issue. I now advertise in the yellow pages for Perth and Sydney and that seems to be working ok but not as well as Google. Checking my search stats for last year it was 50/50 with Google and Yahoo, this year its a major swing in favour of Yahoo without any paid inclusions. This may indicate I'm better off paying Yahoo for inclusions rather than Google. If you really need to know which is the better option or if you are smart then you would split the paid inclusion 50/50.

SEO is still an important part of gaining a high position but my gripe is the fact that Adwords is to the right of the page and as far as I'm concerned they should be on the left due to the fact Westerners read from left to right.

Updating your content and delivering quality information is also better than just a product title and a pic because I often find Google has picked out text on a page and not the title of the product.

Some people create BLOGs and create as many text links within the BLOG to their web site and the relevant product. I have seen this work very effectively and if done correctly you will come top in the free listings without having to use black magic.

[niko]

One thing I did forget to mention is that you may have paid inclusions but they have to convert to sales. This can only be done if you have several advantages such as a user friendly web site, competitive prices, easy card transactions (e-commerce), informative web site, not just in product but about your business and in some instance about yourself. People buy online because they feel secure in doing so. Many people buy from Dick Smith because DSE is a household name and people trust DSE not to be closed the next day if the customer may have problems with their purchase. However, you and I know that the kid standing behind the counter isn't as fortunate as us in being able to give better product information/service and the typical DSE customer considers that as a secondary issue. If it is a low value item, first time internet buyers are willing to take the risk on losing the small sum if it is a scam. From then on when they have received their goods in a timely manner and in a condition they expect (sufficient packaging) then they will come back again and be a very good referal. Of course the best people to get referals from are well experienced internet buyers because they have more confidence in their appraisal and newbies to e-commerce would absorb some of that condifence.