Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) – Do’s and Don’ts

If you are new to PPC (Pay Per Click), you may find the whole process a little daunting. You’re not alone – it can be confusing if you don’t do your research.

The way I look at it, you have 3 options:

1. The big 3 (Yahoo, MSN and Google) have services available to help you with your campaign.
2. You can hire a reputable firm to help you with your SEM (that can cost you a bundle).
3. You can do the a little research and try your hand at it.

I worked for a company that practiced a couple of the options listed above as well as just blindly going at it on their own (without researching).

What happened?

When they first signed up, their CTR (Click Through Rate) was non-existent. They barely had any impressions and not one person clicked through to their website.
Result: Google canceled their campaign for them.

Next, they signed on with a high profile SEM (Search Engine Marketing) firm and paid roughly seven thousand a month for advice and management of the campaign as well as their advertising dollars that they had budgeted per month (another thirty thousand).
Result: They spent a ton of money to have many visitors to their website, but the ROI (Return on Investment) was a big bust!

Moving forward, they decided to just pay the search engine team to manage the campaign. It was cheaper than the former option, however the search engine team didn’t really manage the campaign quite as closely as they would have liked.
Result: More money spent, less than desirable outcome.

Finally, with a little research – they managed the campaign in-house, reduced the amount spent per day and cut out the middleman.
Result: Their conversion rates increased and the ROI improved.

It wasn’t the easiest route, but it certainly was the wisest. An important factor was that they paid attention to their analytics and search results, used campaign ad variations as well as landing pages and they did A/B testing.

With a little research, you too can take control of your PPC advertising. You don’t need to pay an expert. If you do decide to go with an expert, be on the lookout for a company that is bringing more traffic to your site without converting. If that’s the case, you are just paying to have more people visit your site but you aren’t making any sales. Every time someone clicks on your ad in a search result, you are being charged for that visit. If they aren’t contacting, leaving their email address or purchasing your product, you are throwing your money away!

5 Steps to taking control of your PPC advertising:

1. Tracking. You need to track the results of your ad campaigns and find which ad groups are working for you. The search engine provides you with CTR’s, but you’ll need to check your analytics to see where they went from there. The tracking needs to be at keyword level so that you can tell which ones are working for you.
2. Testing. You need to split test your ads. A tiny change can make a huge difference. Is your call to action producing results? You can optimize the title, copy text and url to improve your CTR.
3. Utilizing negative keywords. Removing unnecessary words that don’t pertain to your product or service will limit the number of CTR’s that aren’t relevant – resulting in using up your ad dollars quickly.
4. Relevant ads. If you use the same keywords for all of your ads, you won’t know which ones are working with which ads. It’s better to split them up.
5. Geographical targeting (Geo Targeting). The big 3 allow you to target your keywords to your biggest performing areas. If you are selling sheepskin boots and your sales come from colder regions, you can target those areas for those keywords.

I’m a big fan of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in conjunction with PPC. I believe you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

You can do a Google search for some PPC tutorials and get started learning how to manage your campaigns to produce great results. If you consistently monitor your campaigns and analytics, you’ll know soon enough if this form of SEM is working for you.

Good luck!

Joanne

Do You Need a Small Business Blog?

Today's question was inspired by a meeting I attended this morning at the Monterey Bay Consultants Group, sponsored by IMC (The Institute of Management Consultants). I was on a panel with two other bloggers and the topic was “Blogging – what is the big idea?”.

I was very hesitant to accept the invitation to speak, I originally wanted Michelle to go as she's the better speaker and writer in this duo. Plus, I have to confess - I'm not fond of speaking in public. Originally we were going to be the only company presenting, but due to my hesitance, John Zott (the meeting presenter) found two other bloggers and made it a panel event. Once I found out I wouldn't be on the spot, I signed up.

The other two bloggers were Emily Thomas from Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing and Carol L. Skolnick, from Clear Life Solutions. It was great to hear their perspectives on blogging and how it helps their businesses.

I met all types of consultants and I enjoyed myself. I have to admit, I ended up speaking more than I expected because of the subject. I'm passionate about blogging and how it has helped my business grow.

So...to answer the question, "Do You Need a Small Business Blog?", my answer to you is YES. Yes you do! Here's a few reasons why I think you need one (based on the meeting from this morning):

1. Blogging gets you in touch with your customers. While your website is your online brochure to get your company message out, your blog personalizes your business and humanizes you to your potential clients.

2. Blogging is free. It doesn't cost you any money and can be a welcome addition to any of your current marketing campaigns. Emily uses her blog to showcase the events her company attends.

3. Blogging is instantaneous. You can post something and it's live on the Internet right away. You don't have to wait for search engine crawlers to find your content. Your blog is alive. People can comment on it too.

4. Blogging brings in business. Several of our customers found us through blog postings. It's a wonderful tool for getting your message out there.

5. Blogging creates new connections. Whether you are making connections on Digg, Facebook, Sphinn, Blog Catalog or Twitter - those connections can bring you potential business. Isn't that what every small business wants? More business?

Although today's meeting was a bit early for me (had to get up at 5:30 to be there on time), I had a wonderful time and met some great people. Funny enough "blogging" was the reason I met them...

Joanne

7 Things Every Website Should Have

Don’t monkey around with your future. If you’re going to invest in a website - do it right the first time!

What do you really need?

1. A Professional Design
Trust a professional to design your site for you so that you can avoid all of the common mistakes many small businesses make. Just because you can build your site with Yahoo site builder, doesn’t mean you should. Take time researching professionals and go with one that has a proven track record and clients to back up their claims.

2. Meta tags
That’s right, you still need them! Time and time again I speak to clients who have a page rank of 0, yet they have had their website up for years. Every time I click the link to view their site and check the source it’s always the same. No description, no keywords, no title tag. Some argue this point that the search engine crawlers don’t pay attention to this due to over-use. I argue right back that you’re wrong. I’ve seen evidence of it for far too long.

3. Keyword rich content
A delicate balance should be used here. Often times people over stuff their content using the same word over and over. Does it help you in a natural search? No it doesn’t. Sometimes it penalizes you. Study up on keyword density (as it’s also ever changing) and publish your content accordingly.

4. A web CMS (Content Management System)
Unless you have the budget to have a Webmaster on staff, or the budget to continually hire a contractor when you need changes, make sure that you get a CMS solution that will allow you to update your site yourself. It will help with your SEO (search engine optimization) by allowing you to continually provide fresh content to your site.

5. Analytics
It’s vitally important that you have analytics installed and that you actually look at them and use them. It doesn’t matter if you go with a paid option such as ClickTracks, WebTrends or if you use Google. Just make sure that you do include them. Just think if analytics were available in traditional advertising all these years? What a wonderful tool to be able to tell which one of your marketing campaigns is working. What page on your site is driving people away? What website referrals retain visitors longer. Knowing who your customers are is imperative, and having the ability to make tweaks and measure improvement is a fantastic tool that we all should be using!

6. Good Hosting
If you don’t have a reliable host, how will people view your site? If the server is consistently down or your email isn’t working – you could put your business and your reputation in jeopardy.

7. Basic SEO
You don’t have to pay a bundle to see search engine optimization results. Don’t trust any company that guarantees you #1 placement. No one can claim that and even if they could get you there for a minute, they’d have to continually work on your site full time in order to keep it there. Also, don’t fall into the trap that you have to plunk down a bunch of cash on a PPC (pay per click) campaign in order to be seen on the Internet. It takes time and effort to show up in a natural search result, but if you invest the time – the benefits are well worth it.

Most of all make sure that you properly research the designer you decide to go with. Make sure you Google their name and their company domain name. Contact their previous clients and make sure that you feel comfortable talking and that they will be there for you in the future if you need help.

Joanne

Too Much Television?

Either I'm a marketing genius or I watch WAY too much television! (I like to think I'm in the former category.)

My favorite client sent me the CramerSweeney Smart Marketing IQ test this morning. Try it out and see if you can recognize the famous brand icons, taglines, mascots and audio. It was a quick and fun jaunt on a Saturday morning.

Joanne

Playing Ketchup

I wish we were playing with ketchup, but really we've been busy all week catching up from being closed last week for the holidays. Even though we were checking Email and Vmail, we really didn't do much work other than posting on the blog.

Against my better judgement, I'm posting to the blog right now (when I should be catching up) which inspired me to Google "playing ketchup". I came up with this jewel where the Heinz Movie Director comments on his shots for a commercial campaign:




Anyway, here's a great blog post for you on the 7 Types of Blog Posts Which Always Seem to Get Links and Traffic.

Tomorrow I promise...

Joanne

2007 Recap

We're still out of the office for the holidays, but I felt compelled to post something on the last day of this glorious year.

Here's a list of our best articles for the year:

How to Get Traffic to Your Website for Free
Writing the Perfect Ad
Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) Explained
Google Vs. Wikipedia
Top 7 SEO Mistakes to Avoid
Small Business Holiday Survival Guide
Branding...It's Not Just for Cows!
Make Sure to Take Time Off
What is Hosting?
TV and Radio Advertising
Help with Analytics
What is Web 2.0?
Learning Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Link Popularity
Business Branding
New Business Website
Starting Your Small Business
Domain Name
Web CMS
Website Keywords
Website Analytics
Writing a Winning Press Release
Promoting Your Small Business Affordably

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones and I hope 2008 brings you happiness, health and success in all you do!

Joanne

Whopper Freak Out

Unfortunately, I was too busy today working on our SEO and out making connections to blog about small business tips.

So...with that being said, how about I show you another example of branding? See what would happen if the whopper disappeared:

The Whopper Freak Out

The brilliant commercial comes from Crispon Porter Bogusky.

Tomorrow I'll post some great business tips for small businesses I promise!

Until then, you can always start to Twitter... (Come on... follow me...)

Branding...It's Not Just for Cows!

Your company logo isn’t the only thing that makes up your brand. The service that you have provided to your clients, and your reputation are part of your brand as well.

If you think of your current customer base, how many of your clients or customers were referred to you by your past clients? If you answered “None”, you’re not cutting the mustard!

One of our clients — Rick Cook, Treasure Islands of Santa Cruz, has done a terrific job of building his brand name. He makes sure to include his company brand in everything he does. He’s consistently involved in local charity events, as well as donating his time to give back to his community. He passes out custom made T-shirts, hats, pens, and even branded butter mints (mmmmm). People who don’t even have a backyard in which to place one of his products know about his company. You can almost guarantee that when they do purchase their new home, they’ll be headed over to pick up a firetable or Big Green Egg to place in their new backyard.

I was on the phone with a friend earlier this morning, and he was praising our company for being ahead of the times in our town by being in the branding business. We were discussing that there are still many people who aren’t quite sure what branding is. Eric summed it up perfectly by using the example that he gives to people when they inquire about it:

He asks them, “When I say jeans, what comes to mind?” their response? “Levis or Wrangler”. Branding in a nutshell!

As mentioned in earlier blog posts, be consistent with your branding. Everything you put out should have your brand on it! This includes the employees working for you. (No, I’m not suggesting that you literally “brand” them with a hot iron.) Are they consistently giving the best service to your clients and staying on course to grow your brand?

Two free branding steps you can take today:

1. Create an email signature with your company logo and website url
2. Add your website url to your on hold music or voice mail message

Do it today – build your brand!

Oh yeah, and check out this video about the technology bubble – it’s pretty entertaining:

Here Comes Another Bubble - The Richter Scales

Joanne

TV and Radio Advertising for Your Small Business

Broadcast advertising has traditionally been a highly effective way of reaching large numbers of people at once. Even with the advent of the Internet, television and radio advertising is still a great tool to use in your marketing efforts.

For the small business owner, broadcast advertising can be costly in terms of total dollars spent, but the cost to reach each prospective customer is often lower than other methods of advertising. It can also be somewhat intimidating to decipher jargon such as CPP, CPM, ratings points, and dayparts. For the purpose of simplicity, I always ask all media reps to provide a CPM, or cost per thousand (more on this later), so I can easily compare advertising costs across all advertising media.

I’ll outline the pros and cons of buying broadcast media, as well as explain some of the terminology commonly used by media salespeople.

Pros
The ability to reach large numbers of people at a time, while targeting who you want to reach by advertising in specific programs. For example, advertising beer during the Super Bowl. Also, having your own television or radio ad often creates a perception of credibility.

Cons
Can be expensive, especially when adding in the cost of producing your commercial. In the case of TV, it is difficult to make immediate changes to your ad.

Terminology

CPM — Cost Per Thousand
Refers to how much it costs to reach a thousand people in a given area or “market”. Cost per thousand is not affected by the size of the market.

CPP — Cost Per Point
The cost to reach one rating ”point”, which represents a percentage of TV viewers or radio listeners in a market. The value of a rating point is affected by the size of the market, e.g., 1% of the viewing audience in Los Angeles is greater than that of Providence, Rhode Island.

Reach — The number of unduplicated households or people exposed to an ad.

Frequency — The number of times a household or person is exposed to an ad.

Daypart — A programming time period, such as television primetime (8-10pm).

Obviously, I’ve just touched on the basics of buying television and/or radio advertising. I plan to address specific advertising topics for the small business owner in future posts.

Michelle Mizuno is the Vice President of Marketing for Complete Business Systems. Her experience includes media planning and buying, account management, advertising sales, and copywriting for advertising, marketing, and PR.

Help with Analytics

Most businesses consider their website an integral part of their marketing campaign. However, simply putting up a website and hoping for the best just isn’t enough. It’s essential to track your site’s traffic. This will let you know which marketing campaigns are working. For example, is your new website copy helping you make sales, or causing people to leave your site right away? Without tracking your visitors, you’ll never know.

Once you have your website analytics installed, and can see all those visitors coming to your site, you need to interpret the visitor activity information. What does it all mean?

Let’s break it down:

Hits: Many people confuse hits with visits. They are not the same. Hits are the number of times that an http request is made to your server. For instance, if a single visitor visits several pages on your site and pulls up images and other files on each page, the visit can count as several hundred hits.

Unique Visits: Tracking a visitor’s IP address, browser and operating system will measure the number of actual unique visits generated on your website. A visitor can browse several pages on your site, but their activity will only be counted as one unique visit. This number is the one you want to pay attention to, as it will give you the most accurate representation of how much traffic your website is generating.

Bounce Rates: Pay attention to your pages’ bounce rates. This number measures the number of visitors who come to your site and immediately exit. A high bounce rate can indicate that your page isn’t capturing your visitors’ attention. The page is either in need of updating, or is attracting visitors who are actually looking for something else. You can experiment using A/B testing to see which designs, content, and graphics work to lower your bounce rate.

Top Entry Pages: Where are visitors entering your site? Often, you’ll see direct hits to your site without a referrer. You can use the top entry page statistics determine how your visitors are arriving at your site. They may be coming from an online article or blog you’ve written. Make sure that your visitors will be able to easily navigate your website, no matter which page of your site they arrive on initially.

Top Exit Pages: This statistic shows the pages from which the majority of your visitors are leaving your site. Factors such as page content, graphics, navigation, and even color can affect a visitor’s decision to exit a website. Altering your website’s pages can work to keep a visitor’s interest in the site. Again, using A/B testing will show which design works best to retain your visitors.

Traffic Sources: This is by far my favorite in the analytics toolbox. I love checking our analytics every day to see which one of our ads, articles, or campaigns is driving the most traffic to our site. Use this resource to find out which of your marketing efforts are most effective.

Keywords: Another fabulous tool that will let you know what search terms or phrases your visitors are typing in to arrive at your site. Use this information to create articles and page content to drive visitors to your website.

Map Overlay: This tool will reveal where your visitors are located geographically. You will be able to see if the majority of your traffic is coming from the United States, or other countries. It will even narrow down tracking to certain cities or territories. This is extremely useful for honing your marketing message, as well as for scheduling staffing and determining your business hours.

Browser/Capabilities: It is essential to know how your visitors access your site. Do you have a slick flash website with Javascript? If so, visitors who are using dial up, or don’t have Java installed won’t be able to see your site. Viewing browser information will tell you which browser the majority of your site users are using. You can then make sure that your site is optimized for that browser. It’s also important to note here that you should always test your site to make sure it has the look and functionality that you require, in all browsers.

If you’re using Google Analytics, you have the added bonus of the site overlay, which is a fun tool that shows you how visitors found your content, and moved through your site, as well as funnel visualization and conversion goals.

All in all, it’s crucial to have analytics for your site, so you can maximize your marketing efforts by determining whether you’re reaching your target audience and converting visits to sales.

Joanne

Link Popularity

What is link popularity and how can you build link popularity to help your business?

Link popularity plays an important role in the visibility of a web site among the top of the search results.

Wikipedia defines link popularity as a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a specific site on the World Wide Web.

There are all kinds of website design and search engine optimization terms out there that can be confusing especially when you are just getting started with your small business website.

Lets break down some of the definitions for easier understanding:

Link Popularity
Link popularity is the measure of the number of hypertext links coming into a website from other websites on the Internet. Although you obviously want to have several links incoming and outgoing, but it’s important to pay attention to the quality of your website inbound and outbound links. For instance, if you have several incoming and outgoing links to sites that aren’t relevant to your website, your links aren’t quality links. When browsing the web and you stumble upon a site with great information and you click on their resources, would you rather be directed to more information about the subject you originally searched for and related items, or links to widgets?

Anchor Text
The anchor text is the text that you click in a hyperlink. Many times you’ll see “click here” to view our pricing. Using click here rather than a keyword such as “widget pricing” takes away from your natural search engine optimization. The search engine algorithms use anchor text and can get you better ranking if you are using it correctly.

Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links are two-way links from one website to another. Basically, you place a link on your website to the other company website and they in turn place a link on their website to your website. Often times you are allowed to include your anchor text in the link you are placing on the external site, other times – you can include your company name, website and a brief description. Again this practice is another important part of search engine optimization.

Non-reciprocal links
Non-reciprocal links are sometimes referred to as one-way links. It is just as it sounds, a link to your site, or a link from your site that isn’t returned. Meaning, I often link to Wikipedia for definitions to help explain items in my website articles. Wikipedia doesn’t link back to me for my articles.

Link Exchange
A link exchange involves reciprocal links and usually occurs when you or your Webmaster receive an email from a company that would like to exchange links with you or you can initiate a link exchange with a website that you think has valuable information and would benefit your site users. Always fully check out the sites that are requesting link exchanges with you to make sure that they aren’t part of linking farm or using practices that Google and the other search engines frown upon. You don’t want to accidentally get your site banned from the search engines!

Paid Links
Paid linking involves buying and selling links to improve a site’s ranking. Google and other search engines use linking in their algorithms to determine a sites “importance” which effects the site ranking. Google frowns upon the process in particular as well as other search engines and there has been quite a bit of controversy over Google suggesting that webmasters report paid links to them. There are instances where it is okay to purchase a link for advertising and you can check out the guidelines in Google’s Webmaster Help Center.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, it’s time to get out there and start building your link popularity! Remember quality and quantity and watch your website move up in natural search engine results.

Joanne Pele is the Vice President of Operations at Complete Business Systems. Complete Business Systems provides a ready-to-go branding package for your company, including website, logo, business cards and letterhead. Additional services include postcard design, databases, press release and web content writing. For more information, visit CompleteBizSystems.com, or call 800-479-9186

Joanne

Business Branding

Whether you are just starting a new company, or have been around for a while and need some marketing tips, branding your business should be on the top of your list.

Marketing your business by building a brand name isn’t just for large companies. Branding your business is essential for growing your company, no matter what size it is. Repetition, consistency, and visibility are the key to success in achieving brand power.

What is branding?

Wikipedia defines brand as including a name, logo, slogan and /or design scheme associated with a product or service.

If you are in business today, it’s imperative that you brand your business first-rate including logo, website, business cards, letterhead, print ads, television, radio and signage.

Let’s break down the key elements for branding your business:

Logo

An effective logo should reflect your business. If you examine successful brands that have achieved instant recognition, you’ll notice they all have one thing in common – simplicity. It’s important that your logo design can be used in many different forms, not just on your website design, letterhead and business cards. Think of how you may want to advertise in the future – will you want to place print ads? Will your logo reproduce well in black and white, and in varied sizes? What about apparel? Will your logo hold up when printed on the t-shirts you’ll be passing out at the next trade show?

Website

Your website is your online business card. Your logo should be presented on each of your website pages. Your website design should have intuitive navigation, clear navigation and valuable content. Once your website is up and ready to go, you should promote your site online via press releases and business networking sites. Don’t forget to register your site with Google and most importantly, your contact information should be visible on every page – especially your phone number.

Business Cards

Business cards should have a clean, uncluttered design. Make sure they display your logo and present a professional image of your company. Include all forms of contact, and don’t forget your web address! Some people choose to purchase double-sided business cards, and print just their web address on the back, so it stands out.
Business cards are often your first point of contact with a potential client, and we all know first impressions make all the difference.

Letterhead

Your letterhead should also include your logo and contact information. Use your company letterhead for all correspondence with potential and current clients.

All of your branding elements should coordinate with one another and present a consistent reflection of your company.

You now have all the tools you need to project a professional image and start getting your company name out there. Don’t try to cut corners and save money on these paramount items. Remember, you’re building a company brand!

Joanne Pele is the Vice President of Operations at Complete Business Systems. Complete Business Systems provides a ready-to-go branding package for your company, including website, logo, business cards and letterhead. Additional services include postcard design, databases, press release and web content writing. For more information, visit Complete Business Systems, or call 800-479-9186

Promoting Your Small Business Affordably

Making the most of a small business budget can bring big results.
While most business owners realize that having a good marketing plan is a must, often they don’t know where to begin.

Affordable Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses
The key to managing your marketing budget wisely is making every dollar count. Often, there are great ways to promote your company affordably.

The continued evolution of the Internet provides several ways for companies of all sizes to market themselves for little or no money. Most people realize that to be competitive in today’s business environment, having a website is an absolute necessity. Your goal should be to direct people to your website, not to tell your whole story in an online listing. List your website in relevant online business directories, join business networking sites, and submit press releases to the many free online wire services available. Include your website address on all your printed materials, such as business cards, letterhead, brochures, and in print ads. Remember that consistency is key. Your website, logo, and marketing materials should always use the same fonts and colors.

Take advantage of local low-cost marketing resources, such as joining the chamber of commerce, volunteering for charity benefits, and attending business fairs. Always have a ready supply of business cards with you, as opportunities to talk about your company often come up unexpectedly.

Complete Business Systems strives to make small business branding simple and affordable with its all-inclusive package. The package includes a professionally designed 10-page website with Flash introduction, website hosting and domain name, custom logo design, and letterhead/business card design and printing. Additional services include custom databases, press releases, and brochure and flyer design and printing.

What are Keywords? Why Do I Need Them?

Keywords are words that may be used by viewers searching for information, search terms or phrases that are related to an advertisement or ad copy.

In search engine marketing the keyword or search phrase is crucial. Keywords can be a single term or keyword phases can be used which contain multiple words.

To appear on those first few pages of a search engine a website must contain a density of keywords or phrases related to the search terms used. It is an imperative part of search engine optimization for any website.

When you go to a search engine such as Google and search for something, you are using a keyword or keyword phrase. For example, if you do a search for "website design" you are using keywords for your search. The results that come up will be as follows:

The top two results are paid advertisements (a company paid for you to see their ad when you searched using those words).

The results listed over on the right are also paid advertisements

The results listed on the page underneath the top two are your natural search results. The words that you chose for your search are listed within the content of the websites and Google is showing you the most relevant results. (This is a simplified explanation, more information can be found in SEO articles.)

If you have ever tried to figure out keywords or keyword phrases, you know it can be a daunting task.

Some websites make the mistake of just listing anything and everything under the sun for their keywords. Major search engines take into account many factors. If you are listing a keyword that has no relevancy to your website and there is no copy on your website to back it up it will not be taken into consideration. Another mistake often seen is the over-use of keywords on a page. Again, if you are using a word over and over on your site, (when it isn't needed) in order to get higher rankings - you are barking up the wrong tree. It won't help you get any closer to the coveted "Top".

Keyword density is key. We'll write another blog on that subject soon.

Back to keywords and how to find them...

There are many tools out there, and even services you can enlist to help you choose your keywords. I suggest going with the freebies.

Here are three that I like to use:

1. Google Adwords - Keyword Tool
This is an excellent source for figuring out what your keywords should be. Simply type in a keyword or phrase that is relevant to your website (make sure you check synonyms) and get your information. Another excellent tool is the next tab over "Site-Related Keywords". You can simply enter your site url and see what keywords you should be using based on the content that's already on your site.

2. Overture Keyword Selector Tool
This is Yahoo's PPC campaign (Overture) tool. You can enter a keyword and search and you will be shown the keyword phrases and how many times they were searched for on Yahoo for the previous month. This is a fabulous way to see if you are on the right track. If people aren't searching for what you are advertising, you may want to take another approach.

3. Google Suggest
This is a fun tool that guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. It also shows you the number of times the phrases were searched for. It can be useful to give you ideas of what other searches were performed using one of your keywords and inspire you to find new phrases.

Remember, it's not just about what your keywords are, but how you use them on your site and in your advertising.

Joanne Pele is the Vice President of Operations at Complete Business Systems. Complete Business Systems provides a ready-to-go branding package for your company, including website, logo, business cards and letterhead. Additional services include postcard design, databases, press release and web content writing. For more information, visit Complete Business Systems or call 800-479-9186.

Choosing a Domain Name

What is a domain name? Your domain name, or URL, is your “address” on the Internet, with your website being your “home”. Take your time in selecting a domain name, as it will be a reflection of your company and its offerings, as well as instrumental in directing people to your website. You may want to select your company name as your domain name, especially if your company name has good brand recognition. If this is the case, it’s often a good idea to buy different variations of your company name. For instance, three different domain names consisting of your company name, and ending in “.com”,”.net”, and “.org” Another tactic is to choose a domain name related to your company’s product or service, especially if you’ve used your product or service as a keyword in your advertising campaign. This is also a good way to capture the attention of people searching the Internet using your product or service as a search term, e.g. “ driveway repaving”. How do you know if the domain name you want is available? Go to a site that offers domain name look-up services, such as Whois.net. Simply type in your desired domain name to see if it’s available for purchase. Whatever you decide on for your domain name, it’s important to cross-promote it in all your marketing and advertising efforts. Make sure to include it on your business cards, letterhead, email signature (with a hyperlink to your website), as well as in any print or broadcast ads. Michelle Mizuno is the Vice President of Marketing at Complete Business Systems. Complete Business Systems provides a ready-to-go branding package for your company, including website, logo, business cards and letterhead. Additional services include postcard design, databases, press release and web content writing. For more information, visit www.completebizsystems.com, or call 800-479-9186 x 83