Smitty’s Web Marketing Blog

It is a website for saving bookmarks - making a list of your favorite websites.

You can add the Title, the hyperlink, a short description and create useful tags - almost like keyword phrases.

You get to see lots of other websites and information

• There are overviews - stuff you may want to look at
• Spotlights - they pick out a few posters and their bookmarks
• You can add to your online bookmark list
• My Bookmark - your list of websites
• Buddies List - well you can figure that one out
• A profile option to control what people can learn about you and you can upload your bookmarks from your browser or del.icio.us - you can also export them as well
• A genereous help section - and FAQ on steroids
• You can easily contact Mr Wong if you have questions
• There is an on going blog about the website as well
• It's free

As always, you should try to keep any personal information to a minimum on the internet

http://www.mister-wong.com/

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Sellers frustrated as eBay emphasizes fixed-price sales
By Rachel Metz, Associated Press

NEW YORK — Some people who sell things on eBay are fed up with new rules the company has been imposing in hopes of making the auction site more attractive to online shoppers. Now even more changes are coming in the next few weeks, but this time eBay hopes it can cool tempers.

The complete story…

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More than you can imagine.

People like to know where a company, that they are about to do business with, is located. Having your business address on your website provides credibility to the consumer and also helps with your web rankings.

Be certain that contact information is mentioned on each page of the site.

Make it easy for your visitors to quickly locate how to contact you.

Due to the rise in e-mail harvesters it is wise to avoid having your e-mail address on your web pages. It's best to use a dedicated contact page for any visitor to send you an e-mailed request or contact.

On the contact page be sure to also include your contact and geographic information. Be clear and specific about your business address, phone number (including area code & international calling) and country.

Some people even include their longitude and latitude of the business location on their sites. You can look yours up on a site called astro.com.

Good luck in your marketing

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PPC is short for Pay Per Click. Google, Yahoo and MSN, as well as other search engines, offer pay per click advertising services.

PPC is an advertising process where you bid on keyword phrases.

Pay Per Click is useful when you have a new websites or if you want to bid on keyword phrases that you cannot get naturally ranked in the top 10 results.

Since Google has the largest market share of search engine queries, then it is the first search engine one would use to start a PPC campaign.

To setup a PPC campaign, you need to do several things.

1. Select keywords phrases that would best fit your marketing needs
2. Group the keyword phrases to create ad groups
3. Write the ad for the keyword group
4. Make sure you have an solid landing page for each ad group
5. Setup the account with business contact information and a credit card
6. Load up the ads and set the bids
7. Monitor the account weekly
8. Be sure to create reports on a monthly basis to make campaign adjustments

This is an example of an ad:

Website Marketing
Market like the Experts
Increase traffic & Gain More Sales
www.SmittysHoldings.com

There are many lessons to learn in Pay Per Click marketing. The biggest factors to understand are biding, landing pages, conversions and use of the reporting.

It's always best to use someone with experience to manage a pay per click account or you can burn through money like it's water.

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This is from a recent e-mail I received:

Greetings from Google!

We're happy to announce that the Google content network now accepts display ads served from qualified third-party vendors.
During this initial release, only ads in English are eligible, although we look forward to offering more options in the future.

By accepting third-party ads, we can attract a greater variety of advertising on the Google content network, which we believe will result over time in increased revenue for publishers and more relevant advertising for end users.

If you're currently opted in to image ads, you're already able to receive third-party ads. If not, you can enable image ads to start receiving third-party ads immediately. (Learn how to enable image ads at
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=9741.)

If you choose to allow third-party ads on your site, please update your privacy policy to inform your visitors that third-party vendors may serve ads on your site. Please also provide links to these vendor websites and inform your users that they may opt out of cookies (if the vendor offers this capability). For more information about updating your policies, visit https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=94150.

You'll continue to have full control over which ads appear on your site with tools like competitive ad filtering and the Ad Review Center. Also, only advertisers with whom we have proven relationships and who've clearly demonstrated commitments to our quality standards may participate in this program. Our policies governing ad content and formatting remain unchanged.

To learn more about third-party ads, please visit our blog post at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2008/05/introducing-third-party-ads-on-google.html
and our FAQ at
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=14535.
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to contact us at adsense-support@google.com.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

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I ran across a great article written by Phil Craven on webworkshop.net. It probably goes farther then most would like to know, but he does a great job explaining something so complicated. 

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html 

Although many do not lend merit to a page rank, it can be best used as a barometer of sorts to measure how you can rank in Google.

It's worth the time to read. 

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Looks like Yahoo is matching Google's minimum bid control:

Starting today, the minimum bids for some Sponsored Search keywords are no longer fixed at $.10. Minimum bids can now be lower or higher than $.10. Content Match minimum bids currently will remain at $.10. Throughout the next week, you may start noticing new minimum bids on some of your keywords. You will be notified by email and within your account when the status of any of your keywords is affected.

The amount set as your minimum bid on a keyword in Sponsored Search can vary depending on multiple factors, such as:

How it Works

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From Google's Website…. 

What do I need to know about the updated display URL policy?

Based on feedback from both our advertisers and users, and consistent with our efforts to present relevant results, we'll no longer allow certain exceptions to our display URL policy. These include, but aren't limited to, redirects and vanity URLs. In line with our existing policy, we'll continue to require that your ad's display URL matches its destination URL (the URL of your landing page). This policy will be strictly enforced for new ads, regardless of previous exceptions. For more details about the current display URL policy, please visit

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47173.

Here are some other important aspects of the policy you may want to keep in mind:

Tracking URLs

Your ads will be approved if the URL of your landing page domain matches that of your display URL domain.

For example, the following would be acceptable:

    * Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
    * Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
    * Landing page URL: www.google.com

However, this example would be unacceptable:

    * Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
    * Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
    * Landing page URL: www.trackingurl.com

Sub-Domains

The use of sub-domains and additional text within the display will continue to be acceptable, provided the top-level domain matches the URL of your landing page.

For example, the display URLs below would be acceptable for the landing page URL of http://sub.google.com/miscellaneous, as the top-level domains match:

    * sub.google.com
    * google.com/extratext
    * www.google.com/extratext

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8 Useful SEO Techniques Every Webmaster Should Know
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008

Every webmaster should have some basic understanding of these simple SEO techniques if they want to achieve Top Rankings for their site. The more you know about these Search Engine Optimization techniques; the better your web pages will fare in the different search engines, especially Google.

Optimizing your pages for the search engines should be your main priority because conquering and dominating your chosen keywords is often cited as one of the major determining factors in the success of your online site or business. You must have a rudimentary grasp of how SEO can work for you and your site.

These simple SEO Tips will help you understand the basics and help you reach your online goals.

1. Title Tag

The Title Tag is located at the top of your html page and it tells the search engines what your page is about. When you open your page in a browser these are the words at the very top of the screen. Despite its simplicity, the title tag is crucial to 'on-page optimization'; it should include your main keywords and it should be 63 characters or less if you want your title to appear in full on Google.

Many SEO experts create web pages in a three-prong approach. They place the title in:

- the title tag - on the webpage itself - and in the URL for that page

Sometimes they will just pick the main keywords from the title and place them in the anchor url instead. For example: www.yourwebsite.com/keywords.html

2. Meta Description Tag

The Meta Tag contains the description for your web page. Your description will show up in all the search engines so you have to be careful to write precisely and objectively. It should be about 140 characters or around 20 words. Make sure to include your keywords but don't