We have heard a lot about PPC (pay per click), but what is it really?  There are variations on a theme such as keyword based PPC (pay per click).  Here is a little about that type of advertising and how it works.

What Is Pay per Click?

Pay per click involves making money when someone clicks on your advertisement.  The rate for pay per click is sometimes as low as $0.01USD since the person only has to click for you to get paid.  An actual sale is not required. 

Affiliate programs use pay per click.  You feature the ads of a website on your site and when a visitor clicks, you begin to cash in.  It isn’t a cash cow kind of deal but your website can make a little revenue, which is good - especially if your site doesn’t sell any products or services of its own.

What Is Keyword Based Pay per Click?

Some affiliate marketing programs pay more for pay per click because it is based on keywords and not just someone clicking on the ad.  Keyword based pay per click ads appear in the sidebar on search engines when results are generated.  You are probably used to seeing sponsored ads at the top and bottom of the search result page.   Pay per click ads can make big money for those willing to pay for the keywords.

How Does this Work?

Searches on the Internet are based on keywords.  You enter a keyword or a phrase into the search window.  Tons of results are returned.  Over to the side you’ll notice that there are ads that accompany those results, and these seem to be related to the nature of the search results. 

To be part of such a search engine pay per click program requires careful study of keywords.  The right mix of short or long tail keywords that fit your niche can get your ads ranked on the search results page.  Websites bid on these keywords (depending on the program) or have a set price.  The most popular keywords cost more since they are pretty well saturated on the Internet.  When bidding, how much you pay depends on where in the list of ads your ad appears.  Ideally you want it to appear at the top.  You will pay more but the return on your investment will be high as well.

You choose your keywords depending on your niche and your product area (real estate, marketing, education, etc.).  A good list of keywords can have up to 500 single keywords and varying length phrases.  You can test the more promising ones using keyword pay per click ads.  Design your ads to be eyecatching and enticing to get searchers to click on it.

Keyword pay per click lets you advertise your business where people are sure to see it – on search engine result pages.  Choose a list of keywords for your ads that searchers are likely to use and cash in.

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On most websites you’ll see advertising links at the top, bottom and on the sides.  Most of the advertisements are related to the site.  Displaying these ads on other sites could be a part of an affiliate marketing program.

Affiliate marketing is the idea of using other sites to help sell your products and drive traffic to your site.  Affiliate marketing works best when everyone involved benefits from the process.  If you need exposure for your products, get other business websites involved in making that happen.

Many websites offer affiliate programs.  One of the more popular ones is Google AdWords.  Some programs require you to just sign up, while others have an application that they ask you to fill out to evaluate if your website is right for their program. 

Affiliate marketing is great for websites that don’t have a product or service to sell but would like to generate revenue in some way.  As a part of an affiliate marketing program, websites earn commissions for hosting your ads on their website.  As you make money so do they.

You have worked hard to build your website.  Maybe you have employed several strategies to increase your visibility on the Internet:  SEO content, email marketing, eBooks, viral marketing and the like.  Now you are ready for something new to increase your traffic and sales. 

Affiliate marketing is easy and effective.  The strategy here is to find your niche and decide what you will sell on your site.  Develop a strong philosophy and operating policy to attract others to your affiliate program. 

Investigate other affiliate programs.  You may have joined a few when you were getting started to generate revenue.  Learn how the better ones operate and their strategies for success.  Before beginning your own, decide on commission rates, how you will pay your affiliates, and what benefits you will offer them.

Set yourself apart as a resource for your niche to increase your popularity.  When you produce great search engine optimized content that is updated regularly, people come back to your site over and over again.  You want them to have something fresh to see each time someone clicks on your links.

Affiliate marketing works for those who are also selling goods or services.  They are not in direct competition with you so both of you can benefit.  Get regular reports on how well the affiliate marketing strategy is working for you.  Some products may sell better than others.  Change the items you sell based on these numbers.

Affiliate marketing uses other popular websites to advertise for you and your website.  With links to your products and services on other websites, you increase your traffic and hopefully your sales through this marketing strategy.

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Hotel & Resort Internet Marketing & Website Development by Hotel Traffic Builders

It is easy for time to get away from us.  We get bogged down in the details and that is that.  When it comes to your home business, losing track of time is crucial.  Find out where your time is going and how to rectify the situation.

One way to see where you are losing time is with a time log.  We stress “where” instead of “if” because everyone loses track of time.  It becomes a problem when that loss of time leads to burning the midnight oil to meet client deadlines, or stress because one or more activities coincide with each other.

Stress is the likely result of lost time.  Consistently finding yourself in stressful situations can affect your entire life and your health.  Avoid all of that with a few simple experiments. 

One is using a time log which was mentioned earlier.  A time log can be as simple as a spreadsheet document that you can fill out with the names of activities you did during each day of the week.  A time log is like a food diary.  It tracks your current time management habits for later evaluation. 

Where does most of the time get lost?  It could be at the beginning of the day.  When there is not a plan in place to govern your tasks for the day, the day can get off to a sluggish start.  You spend time deciding what to accomplish or you begin with one area and see what falls out.  Because you have missed deadlines or forgotten about projects, your day is spent playing catch-up and apologizing to clients. 

The same goes for the family side of your time.  It is hard to find the balance between family life and business.  Without a schedule it is next to impossible.  A forgotten deadline could mean you are working well into the weekend when you were supposed to take a family outing.  Do you skip the outing or delay the project work longer?  It is a tough decision that will leave you stressed either way.

Consider charting your time as a way of keeping it from escaping you.  You can keep a big chart in your office.  A large chart can be purchased if it meets your specifications.  The days of the week run along the top with the times running along the side.  Color-code the chart for easier reading.  Choose two or three colors for business activities and do the same for family activities.

Whenever you get a deadline, record it on the chart.  Scheduled family activities are also recorded.  Each day, block out time for work, personal time and family.  In a smaller planner or a digital calendar, record the details of the plan for the work and personal blocks for each day. 

A chart can help organize your time better than keeping everything in your head.  At a glance you can see what your schedule will be like each day.

Hotel Traffic Builders

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Hotel & Resort Internet Marketing & Website Development by Hotel Traffic Builders

In a business world which is getting more competitive each and every day, there’s one thing which will keep your customers coming back again and again – a valuable customer experience.  Your customer experience begins and ends with spectacular customer service.

What Is Customer Service? 

It’s being there for your customer from the moment they meet you, whether it is online, on the phone or they walk through the front door of your establishment.  It’s being there to prevent any potential problems and it’s being there to resolve any issues that come up. Finally, customer service is about being proactive and engaging your current customers so they always feel valuable and appreciated.

For many businesses, and you’re sure to have had this experience as a customer, customer service is an afterthought.  It’s when the problem solvers step in and attempt to appease you.  While this is certainly part of customer service if this is your approach you’re going to spend a whole lot of time solving problems.

Spectacular customer service means being in communication with your customers to make sure they’re happy, to find out what they need and want and to meet those needs with innovative products and services.

How To Provide Spectacular Customer Service

Be transparent and available 24/7.  This doesn’t mean you have to answer the phone at all hours but it does mean providing all the information possible for your customers to have easy access to.  A FAQ page and a customer service form on your website can fill in the off hours and you can hire a customer service company to answer phones, address problems, and even have a presence on your website in a pop up customer service chat screen.

However as mentioned earlier customer service is about more than answering questions and solving problems.  It’s about creating strategies to solve problems before they occur, to embrace your customers’ needs and wants before they know what they are and solve them.

This can be accomplished with regular communication, surveys and polls, special offers for your loyal customers only and regular tracking and analytics.  Data is a valuable asset to providing an ideal customer experience.  Think about your last shopping experience at your favorite store.  Chances are your satisfaction with the outing was influenced by the sales representatives you encountered but also by the layout of the store – how easy it was to find things – and how easy it was to check out.  Online or off these little experiences add up to a spectacular customer service experience.

The happier and more satisfied your customers are the more they’ll come back and the more they’ll talk about you to your friends. It means a bigger and better business and more profits.  Focus on your customer experience and you’ll be building the kind of success which lasts.

Hotel Traffic Builders

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Hotel & Resort Internet Marketing & Website Development by Hotel Traffic Builders

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a hot topic.  Using it will help grow your business online and get you noticed.  But what is it really?

Search engine optimization is a term used to describe how search engines work for you, the website owner.  Think about this for a moment:  You want to research a topic online.  You enter certain words into a search engine such as Google or Yahoo.  The computer spits out results and you view them to see what fits your needs. 

How you get those results has a lot to do with search engine optimization.  The words you enter into a search engine are called keywords.  If you ever look at the top of your search results you will see the number of results returned plus the words that the search engine used to bring you those results.  Now look at the results.  The keywords you typed in are bolded either in the titles or in a line of content on that webpage. 

By optimizing your web pages and content to match the most common phrases or keywords used for that subject, your content can be found.  Ideally, content found on the first two pages of search results are the ones that people will click on.  No one wants to sift through five million results.  The top content or websites are the ones ranked first. 

What makes them top ranked?  The keywords appear in the content a certain percentage of the time.  For keyword-optimized content, keywords that show up three to seven percent of the time are ranked higher than content with less frequent keywords. 
Search engines crawl your content and webpages for ranking.  Keyword-dense content has a good chance of rising to the top of the rankings.  But, search engine optimization is not just about single keywords, but also two and three word phrases.  Longer phrases have become a great way to rank high, since most content tries to match single keywords. 

Search engine optimization extends to your domain name as well.  If your website has a specific niche, using keywords relative to that niche in your domain name drives traffic to your website.  Don’t neglect your webpages either.  Individual pages that use search engine optimized headers are also ranked. 

For the website owner, using a keyword optimizer makes short work of calculating your keyword density.  There are also programs that rank the popularity of certain keyword phrases when searching for information using search engines.  Remember, if you can’t be found, it will be hard to sell your product or service to others. 

Are you looking for a way to drive traffic to your website?  Consider search engine optimization for your webpages and content.

Hotel Traffic Builders

www.HotelTrafficBuilders.com

Hotel & Resort Internet Marketing & Website Development by Hotel Traffic Builders