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Article by Michael Dickinson

Getting marketing calls irritates most of us – some unknown person gives you a call to talk you into buying some utterly useless product or services! It leaves one wondering, how these people get your number? Well, you are probably aware of the lead generation business- where a company sells a list of potential customers to different businesses. These are the companies calling you with sales on their mind. This is the reason why many people go for telephone preference service to opt out of the marketing calls.

However, all those opting for TPS are not yet saved. They may still get marketing calls from various companies. However, it is not the fault of the TPS service provider. Some of the lead generation companies intentionally include the contact details of people signed up for TPS only to make their list bigger. This helps them to earn big bucks. On the other hand, those who signed up for TPS start getting calls all over again.This is indeed an unethical business practice and yet some of the lead generation companies take help of such practices to stay ahead of competition. They have to be stopped at any cost for the sake of the common people. Thankfully, some of these companies have received fitting punishments from different trade bodies and that should straighten them up!

Sometimes back one, Phruit Limited, one of the most prominent names of lead generation industry in the United Kingdom, was found indulged in some unethical practices. A the-then member of Direct Marketing Association, Phurit used to operate marketing calls under the guise of research call. This unethical process is known as ‘sugging.’ Other than ‘sugging’ they also used to sell the contact details of people opted for TPS service.

Can you believe it? Just one complaint against Phruit led to a DMC investigation, in which hundreds of TPS complaints were examined along with hundreds of web-based complaints and comments against Phruit as well as the companies using Phruit data to make marketing calls. As the result of the investigation, it was found that Phruit is found guilty under the following DMA provisions:

• 21.18 and 21.20 on TPS compliance and data cleansing

• 3.11 under which Phruit has a responsibility for compliance by suppliers

• 3.18 on “sugging” or carrying out sales and marketing under the disguise of research

Based on the outcome of the investigation the Direct Marketing Association suspended Phruit Limited from its membership.

So, you can see the power of just one complaint – it led to suspension of a company involved in unethical practice. For those who want to voice their concern, can note down contact information of Phruit Limited furnished below:-

Phruit LimitedThe BarnHuddlestone’s WharfNewarkNottinghamshireNg24 4ul

They can also be reached through phone at- 0844 41 42 741

You can also address your mails to Phil Lightfoot, the director of Phruit Limited. If you unite your voice against such practice then these companies will definitely think twice before indulging in unethical practices.

About the Author

Michael Dickinson voices his opinions against any unethical practices taking places around him. He is keenly interested in consumers’ right and tries to alert people about the unethical practices by reputed companies.

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www.persuasivemarketing.it L’Email Marketing è lo strumento promozionale con il miglior ROI. Secondo una recente ricerca della Direct Marketing Association, ogni dollaro speso sulle email commerciali nel 2009 ha generato un ritorno di oltre 43 dollari. Guarda questo video per scoprire alcuni utili Tips & Tricks per migliorare le tue attività di Email Marketing!

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Article by Anything4SEO

Basic SEO Process

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a highly technical process, but for online merchants it’s also a critical business process. That’s why we take the time to learn about your goals, products, the competition, and your marketplace.

First, we’ll review the site structure and search engine rankings for both your website (if any) and those of your competitors. This helps define your ‘Before’ and ‘After’ benchmarks for search engine optimization.

Keyword research is next – identifying the words or phrases that your audience is likely to enter into search engines in order to find your products. This research can yield keyword suggestions that can be one of the most beneficial aspects of SEO, with high returns on investment (ROI).

Keyword research consists of three primary activities:Discovery

We’ll guide you to select the most relevant keywords for your store. We’ll use the ‘root’ keywords to generate related single keywords, keyword combinations, and variations like singular, plurals and synonyms.

We’ll then compare these keyword suggestions to those in current use by your audience. The goal is to identify the most widely-used search keywords so we can focus on the ‘vital few’ for your store.ROI analysis

Popular keywords aren’t always the most valuable. Generic keywords can be widely used while also delivering mediocre conversion rates. We’ll perform a statistical analysis that highlights relevant keywords with the highest ROI.Competitive Analysis

This phase will show you the competitive landscape for any given search term. Competitive factors include how diligent sites are to optimization issues, how many relevant inbound links they have received.

We also give you an Initial Positioning Report that highlights your competitors’ strengths & weaknesses, along with a summary of where you and the competition are currently positioned in the major search engines and directories.Site Optimization

Optimizing your site will typically take 5-10 business days, depending on your goals, the complexity of your site, and the competitive landscape.

Note: Optimizing your site will not affect the way your pages look in any way. The necessary changes include new URLs (path names) for selected pages as well as including a list of recommended words in your existing page content. We’ll give you files summarizing all these changes.The Site Optimization Process consists of:On-Page Site Optimization

Here we work on a page-by-page basis to optimize your content. We identify the page(s) needing modification and give you the optimized content you need for higher rankings. All our methods follow Best Practices for SEO and are spam-free. We adjust such factors as Title & Meta Tags, Creating/Reframing, Internal Site Links, Keyword-rich Content, and URL framing. When we’re done, your site can definitely be considered search engine-friendly.

Web Page Analysis We also perform a deep analysis of your website and server, to identify any issues related to standards compliance, domain usage, page structures, internal and external link structure, URL-rewriting, load balancing and any problems that might lower your search engine position. Search Engine Markup Semantic Analysis Here we analyze the source code of your website and correct anything that could make a search engine hesitate or stumble. This analysis also checks the Meta Tags, Titles, Keyword Density and Content on all pages.

Off-Page Site Optimization

Once On-Page Optimization is complete, we’ll reload the website to see if further modifications are needed. When everything’s perfect, we’ll upload the optimized content (with compiled tags) to your server.

Your website is now ready for the major Search Engines and Directories.Link Building

Boosting Page Rank is the next priority for your optimized site. When all other factors are equal, Search Engines will always favor the page with a higher Page Rank.

Page Rank is essentially ‘link popularity.’ It’s a reflection of how many other websites contain links pointed at your site. (You may also hear these called ‘inbound links’ or ‘non-reciprocal links.’

Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista and others place great importance on incoming links. A large number of high-quality incoming links can help your website beat the competition in the search engine rankings.

Not all links are created equal. Search engines evaluate the incoming links to determine the ‘quality’ of the link. They use such factors as the Page Rank of the linking page, the total outgoing links on the linking page, the relevance of the linking website to your industry, the relevance of the specific linking page, the use of keywords in anchor text, etc.

for more information please visit – ” http://www.anything4seo.com ”

About the Author

Anything4SEO offers a unique portfolio of Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing, Pay Per Click Management and Article Writing services. All designed to deliver real results, increasing your sites exposure, enquiry and sales conversion. For more information about how each service can help improve your online business, please select an SEO service from the list below and find out more.

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Article by Higher Education Marketing

The Web Analytics Association defines Web Analytics as: “The measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.”

Web Analytics, in other words, is information culled from your website and used as the basis of all future optimization, design, development, and marketing. With a Web Analytics tool (like Google Analytics), you can find out which advertisement medium (print, email, social media, radio, television, etc) is most effective, and can measure the impact of each advertising campaign.

With Web Analytics you can effectively monitor your website’s statistics in real time, gauging the impact of marketing initiatives like Search Engine Optimization (SEO and Pay Per Click Marketing (also known as Search Engine Marketing). Doing so allows you to make informed decisions on website design and optimization, and ultimately maximizes your return on investment (ROI).

Web Analytics is generally used for four major website categories: lead generation, e-commerce, customer support, and content.

Here are some of the more commonly used Web Analytics terms, as defined by the Web Analytics Association:

Page ViewsPage views refer to the number of times a page (an analyst-definable unit of content) was viewed. When people talk about a website’s popularity (e.g. “It gets a lot of hits”), they’re usually referring to page views. However, this doesn’t actually represent the amount of people visiting your site.

Visits/SessionsA visit is an interaction, by an individual, with a website consisting of one or more requests for an analyst-definable unit of content (i.e. “page view”). If an individual has not taken another action (typically additional page views) on the site within a specified time period, the visit session will terminate.

Unique VisitorsThe number of inferred individual people (filtered for spiders and robots), within a designated reporting timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more visits to a site. Each individual is counted only once in the unique visitor measure for the reporting period.

Entry and Exit PageThese are the first and last page of a visit.

Landing PageA page intended to identify the beginning of the user experience resulting from a defined marketing effort.

Visit DurationVisit duration is the length of time in a session. Calculation is typically the timestamp of the last activity in the session minus the timestamp of the first activity of the session.

ReferrerThe referrer is the page URL that originally generated the request for the current page view or object.

Search ReferrerThe search referrer is an internal or external referrer for which the URL has been generated by a search function.

Click-throughClick-through is the number of times a link was clicked by a visitor. This may occasionally be refered to as “clicks”.

Click-through Rate/RatioThe number of click-throughs for a specific link divided by the number of times that link was viewed.

Single Page View Visits (Bounces)Visits that consist of one page view.

Bounce RateSingle page view visits divided by entry pages.

ConversionA visitor completing a target action (this may be anything from filling out a request for more information form, or signing-up for a newsletter, etc).

Conversion RatePercentage of visitors who complete a multi-step conversion process with a defined beginning and end within 30 minutes, whether it be signing up for a newsletter, buying a product online, or some other desired outcome.

Take the time to review and understand these terms. Knowing your way around the basic terminology is the first step in truly understanding what you’re measuring when working with Web Analytics.

Higher Education Marketing specializes in Web Analytics for lead generation and e-commerce websites. Contact them today for more information.

About the Author

Higher Education Marketing has provided analytics-driven marketing solutions for schools and colleges for more than a decade. A full service Internet marketing firm, Higher Education Marketing utilizes Google Analytics, Search Engine Optimization, Mobile SMS Alerts, Pay Per Click and Social Media Marketing to remove the guesswork from marketing. The Montreal-based firm is an officially certified Google Adwords partner, and it works closely with St?phane Hamel, an internationally known eBusiness Strategist and Online Analytics advocate.

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Article by Lola Olaru

The multitude of websites present today on the Internet made the competition for the top placement in the natural section of the search engines very fierce. So, we have to admit that it’s quite a big responsibility for Google, Yahoo, and MSN to accurately and fairly establish which 10 websites out of thousands and thousands deserve to be placed on the first page for a certain search query. Let’s imagine a simplified version of the mechanism behind the search engines: think of the Internet as a huge database that contains all websites in it. Each website is labeled as belonging to a certain industry and as responding to certain search queries or keywords, and then graded based on relevance, popularity, user friendliness, technical attributes, etc. When we perform a search query for a certain keyword, the search engines already know which thousands of websites, out of millions, are relevant and should be presented to the visitor. Then, they extract from their database those websites that were labeled as “relevant” for that search query and list them based on the grade they received for that specific keyword. This all happens in a matter of seconds. But how do the search engines establish which websites deserve the top positioning? Each search engine has its own algorithm or mathematical formula for evaluating and grading a website. The closer a website is to meeting the algorithm’s terms, the higher the rankings. The algorithm behind the “grading” is not made public, but all major search engines provide website design and optimization guidelines for improving rankings that can put us on the right direction. Of course, the intelligent interpretation of these guidelines and the correct implementation of the solutions found is what makes the difference between two SEO companies. Search Engine Optimization is a relatively new industry that has been rapidly embraced by many self proclaimed “SEO experts”, who’ve seen in it one of those rare opportunities to get rich fast. They started to charge huge up front amounts promising the world, but in the end delivering nothing, creating a huge wave of disappointment among business owners. The reason why so many people adventured themselves in the Search Engine Optimization jungle is because everything looks simple from the outside.Truth is that succeeding in this industry, like in any other industry, takes commitment, continuous training, permanent knowledge acquisition, and mastering all means of online communication. Actually it goes beyond that: it requires a deep understanding of the psychology of the online behavior and search patterns, careful analysis of website statistics and analytics, correct implementation of corrective actions, and creative approach of optimization strategies. The inability of many SEO companies to deliver the promised results, which had caused huge financial loses and disappointment among business owners, created a new trend in the search optimization arena: Performance Based Search Engine Optimization or the “Pay for Results, not for Promises” approach. According to this new, revolutionary approach of the SEO, a business owner who hires the services of an SEO company to achieve top rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN will pay only after the promised results are delivered, and NOT before. We witness a shift in power and control between the service provider and the beneficiary of the service. Performance Based Search Engine Optimization empowers those who use the services of an SEO company, and help them be in control of their finances. This new approach of SEO has already started to filter the participants in this industry, by eliminating those companies that do not employ ethical business practices and do not posses the knowledge and expertise to deliver what they promise, and by promoting the real masters of SEO. Performance Based Search Engine Optimization works like a natural selection process, where the weak ones will be automatically self-destructed and eliminated. Nobody can survive in business if revenues do not come in; if results are not delivered, the SEO company will not only be unable to record any income in its books, but will incur huge loses buy investing money in trying to implement an optimization strategy that does not work. The benefits of the Performance Based SEO are very tangible when it comes to ROI. SEO used to be a huge investment for businesses, but used to bring back in the investors’ pockets very low returns, if any at all. SEO was in many cases a rather huge expenditure than a business investment. The difference between expense and investment stays in the ROI. A business expense can have an indirect influence on the ROI, but it is hardly measurable; this is why, in a financial sense, a business expense is considered a necessary controlled loss (think of office supplies). An investment is supposed to produce an easily measurable profit. In most cases, old SEO tactics used to have a very measurable positive impact on the ROI, but instead of doing so for the business in need of SEO, they were acting solely in the benefit of the SEO Companies. Performance Based Search Engine Optimization on the other hand, where payments are made only after the top results are achieved, became a basically no-risk investment. No results, no payment. It’s as simple as that!The Internet is a moving target, and trying to control all variables that account for a certain ranking scenario is not a the subject of a hobby. There is no such thing as “Part Time SEO.” The Internet is a market that is open 24 hours, 7 days a week. These should be the business hours of those in charge with exposing and promoting your business on the Internet. Unless an SEO Company can ensure you 24/7 top online presence in the search engines you want for the keywords you want, you should not even consider pursuing such an adventure. It is a huge responsibility to promise top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and an SEO company that offers Performance Based Search Engine Optimization with a “Results First-Payment After” approach, should give you the confidence that that they will deliver.

About the Author

http://www.imajestic.com