Web Marketing 101 Series: 6 Steps to Creating Compelling Landing Pages

K.I.S.S.

Landing pages – the places on your site where people land after clicking on one of your sites links in the search engines – are often your first formal introduction to a new visitor to your website.  Landing pages can also have a huge impact on where you show up in natural and sponsored results on search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, and Microsoft Live Search.

Landing pages can include your site’s homepage, but are usually pages within your website that are created specifically for people who click on links for your site that appear in sponsored or natural search results, and pertain to a specific offer, promotion or campaign.

Here at Yield Software, we often hear from our small and medium size business clients that they want better landing pages, but just don’t know what they…

Web Marketing 101 Series: Writing Effective PPC Ad Copy

ChaiSpice Cupcake, courtesy Just Desserts

Even You Can Write Great Ad Copy

A key stumbling block for many novice Web marketers is the task of writing compelling ad copy for a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign on Google’s AdSense, Yahoo’s Search Marketing or Microsoft’s adCenter. Web site owners and novice marketers who are not natural copywriters will find it difficult to zero in on the most right collection of words that inspire people to click on a link.

The good news? No one knows your site, your company or your products as well as you do.

Put that unique knowledge to work when following these few simple tips for creating excellent PPC campaign ad copy:

First, be sure you know the character limits for the advertising platform. Typically the title (the first line in the ad) is limited to 25 characters.  Ad…

Web Marketing 101 Series: Intro to Return-On-Investment (ROI) Measures for SEM

Simply put, return-on-investment (ROI) refers to what is returned in profit as a result of any given investment.  When applied to web marketing, ROI typically refers to the profits generated as a result of your marketing investment.  Within the larger marketing profession, web marketing has been growing in popularity since its introduction in the late 1990’s because of its very precise measurability.

Unlike outdoor advertising (i.e. billboards) or radio and television ads, where precise correlations to ROI can be elusive, search engine marketing (SEM) enables marketers to track interactions and behavior at every step of engagement.

Though a huge number of web marketing professionals employ display advertising on sites like NYTimes.com or FOXNews.com or Yahoo!, a growing share of marketing dollars are being directed to the search engines and specifically pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.  By buying the “Sponsored…

Web Marketing 101 Series: Intro to Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Let’s start with the toughest part: learning a whole new language.

One of the biggest challenges to embarking on a web marketing strategy is figuring out what all the acronyms mean. SEM, SEO, PPC, ROI, LPO, CPA… it’s an alphabet soup of new terms to learn.

But don’t let learning a few new terms and concepts deter you from undertaking what could be a very profitable way for you to move your business forward. Search engine marketing (SEM) is helping businesses of all sizes to achieve their core sales objectives, often at a much lower overall cost and with better results than alternative marketing strategies.

So let’s start with SEM: what does it mean and how does it work?

According to Wikipedia, SEM is defined as:

…a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility…