Google Offer Pages for Places

Google recently launched a new offer in its Google map service. You can now create a single page for a single place on the map. Google termed it “One Place, One Page“.

What is Google Place Page?

A Place Page is a web page for every place in the world, organizing all the world’s information for that place. Google mentioned in its blog that they really mean every place. You can create Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, landmarks, and cities all over the world. To find a Place Page, click on “more info” in your Google Maps search results or “more info” in the info bubble on the map.

Any Implication on SEO?

As Google offers this new service, do you think creating a page helps to rank better in search engine, commonly term as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

I found an article on Search Engine Land saying that Google claimed that they will not crawl or index the place pages. However, there seemed to have  a twist of the event that Google would index the place page, which I saw on another search marketing article saying that some place pages have been indexed.

I find it hard to believe that Google will not index their own place pages. They might not do it now but it is just a fact sooner or later. If you have a business either offline or online, you must create a place page now on Google and I am sure that will bring you some good business exposure.

Web2.0

What is Web 2.0? According at Wikipedia, “Web 2.0” refers to web development and web design that facilitates interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design^[1] and collaboration on the World Wide Web.

McKinsey has also recently conducted a global survey about Web 2.0 from nearly 1.700 executives. The finding show that Web2.0 delivering positive impact to the company.

McKinsey Survey Results of Web 2.0

The FastForwardBlog has summarized the survey result for us to look at. According to the survey, the top 3 benefits are:

1. Increasing speed of access to knowledge   68%
2. Reducing communication costs                     54%
3. Increasing effectiveness of marketing         52%

Though the effectiveness of marketing comes in at 3rd position, however, if you are spending money on marketing communication, benefit 1 & 2 can definitely help you to create more awareness and capture more mind share of the consumers.

In short, this survey result re-enforce the following statement:

Web2.0 is an effective and efficient marketing platform.

Blogging & Video Are Top Technology Platforms

If you continue to look closely into the survey result, blogging and video come in as the top 2 technologies used for both internet and external uses.  McKinsey also puts it that the more the technologies are used, the more benefits seen.

Though it will be excellent if we can make use of all the technologies available, however, due to our budget and time constraint, I will argue that focusing on Blogging & video is also a good first step to take if you are not engaging on any Web2.0 strategy now.

My conclusion after reading this survey is, this survey result also validate what I have believed always:

Blogging & video are the top ebusiness strategy, start blogging and video strategy on your eBusiness and you can definitely see positive result.

There are two methods for search engine optimization : On Page optimization or Off Page optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

On Page Search Engine Optimization

On page search engine optimization is easier to implement on our website. Basically, on page optimization deals with setting the correct title page, make sure we have meta keywords and meta description to emphasize the keywords that we like to optimize.

Create some short and simple header using H2, H3 or H4. In the paragraph itself, you can use BOLD or Italic to emphasis the keywords as well. Also, try to increase the occurrence of the keywords that you like to optimize in the paragraph.

It is very simple, but just a caution note: DO NOT Over Do It with keywords all over the place.

Many search engine perceived too high keywords occurrence in an article as keyword stuffing and it will hurt the search engine ranking.

Off Page Search Engine Optimization

Off page search engine optimization is harder to implement. Off page optimization deals with the anchor text or title text on the backlinks, count the number of backlinks into your page. The quality of the pages that links to your page. All of these deals with other websites or webpages that you usually do not any right to edit.

That’s why it is more difficult in this way. There are some people like ot buy text links on other quality websites in order build up the number of incoming links. But you will need to spend money in this case and there is no guaranteed that your site or keywords would rank high by buying text links.

Just a word of caution again : If you are willing to spend money in buying links, do not over do it to create too many links within short time span. That will trigger a red flag on search engine as well.

Alright, I hope that gives you some ideas on search engine optimization. SEO can also be an effective marketing strategy to bring in some fresh organic traffic. Feel free to drop any comment or question if you have, I will be happy to hear and discuss more with you.

Lose Money in Search PPC or SEM

I mentioned before that search PPC or SEM is the simplest marketing strategy you can utilize to start building an online business. SEM can bring in targeted audience or customer with clear need and want. That will be extremely useful to boost up the conversion and make more money.

Beware! You Can Lose Lots of Money on Search PPC & SEM

Having said that, I also like to warn that we can easily lose lots of money in search PPC or SEM if we are not careful.

I myself has been a victim of search PPC when I first started to learn about online business or internet marketing. When I first heard about search engine marketing, I thought I have found a gold mine and therefore, I was just too excited to set up many PPC advertisements at the same time, hoping to bring in more sales.

I was totally wrong. I ended up spending hundreds of dollar when I checked my dashboard the second morning I woke up. This was my painful learning experience.

Here’s my story, I was using Google Adwords to drive traffic to my site. I set up multiple campaign at one go. Though I did set a daily limit of not spending more than $10 per campaign, I never know that all the campaign was running so fast that they all hit my limit.

My #1 Mistake : Set up too many campaigns

When I set up the campaign or advertisement, I selected all the keywords suggestion from google and I enter more than 100 keywords per advertisement. I thought more keywords will bring in more targeted customer for myself. I was wrong on that. Gabbage in gabbage out, I simply bring in too much junk traffic.

My #2 Mistake : Select too many keywords

When I set up my ad, I simply trying to fill up the available space with words, without much considering the quality of the sentences or meaning. I have no idea what is split test at that time and I simply allow the ad to run in alternate mode at full force. Then, I learned again, copy writing or headlines selection is very important.

My #3 Mistake : Failure to use the most appropriate headlines

Lastly, Google do offer both content and search network as well and the bidding price per click can go as low as 1 cent per click. I thought 1 cent was nothing, and I turned full force on both content and search network. I was wrong again, content network is not as targeted as search network and therefore waste lots of money again.

My #4 Mistake : Failure to gain a deeper understanding of the search setup

4 Costly Mistakes

These are some of the 4 costlier mistake that I had on search marketing or PPC. After wasting hundreds to pay for my tuition, I started to learn, reflect on my mistake and work towards improving it.

One of the great resource that I found is the definitive guide of Adwords from Perry Marshall. He is indeed a great guru in the field of search marketing. I have learned a lots from him since then.

Search PPC or Search Engine Marketing

If you are new to internet or online business, you must know that critical success lies on your website traffic. The higher the traffic, the higher the probability for you to convert into sales, and therefore making more money. Search PPC is the simpliest form of nternet marketing strategy to bring in fast and huge traffic.

What is Search PPC?

PPC stands for pay per click. In layman term, you pay the advertisement fee only when someone click on it. Search PPC means that your advertisement will be displayed on the search engine result page and you will only be charged only if someone click on your advertisement link.

There are some people also called this search engine marketing or SEM.

Search Engine Marketing Has Huge Profit for Vendor

Search PPC is the simpliest and easiest form to set up in order to bring in huge traffic to your site. Some of the common search engine vendors are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. SEM business has been proven to be very profitable and therefore it has been the main contributor to Google success. You can also see that Microsoft was trying to acquire Yahoo years ago simply because Yahoo has the core search technology that will benefit Microsoft in the search marketing revenue.

Not just Google, Yahoo & Microsoft, many other new internet companies all know that search marketing has a big market potential and huge profitability. Therefore, you can see some recent movement that biggest social network, Facebook, has been trying to improve their search capability as well. Another HOT buzz word, Tweeter, is also also trying very hard to improve search capability. Their main goal is to offer search engine marketing in order to be profitable.

Search Engine Marketing Offer Targeted Audience & Traffic

Now, let’s think back why is search engine marketing so profitable for these vendor? The reason is very simple as well. End user will go to search engine when they have a particular need or want that they are trying to find a solution. If you are offering a solution that can fit their need, and your advertisement appear right in front of them when they are searching. The chances of the end user buying from you is very high.

Due to the nature of targeted customers who has clear need and want, the advertisers like you are willing to spend more money in order to display advertisement to the end users. Therefore, search engine marketing vendors will also benefit from this as well.

If you are serious about building an online business, you must start to look into the search engine marketing or PPC advertisement to bring you the massive traffics or potentials that has clear need and want. That will definitely improve your conversion ratio and bring you success in your internet venture.