By: Avinash Kaushik | Source: kaushik.net

A question that comes up a lot is whether it’s cost effective having your company name and your brand names as keywords in a pay per click campaign. It can seem as though it isn’t necessary especially if your website ranks highly for these keywords in the natural search listings.

it’s better to use pay per click for generic, non-brand names and allocate resources to search engine optimisation to make sure that the website is optimised for the brand names.there are some good reasons why you should include brand names in a ppc campaign:

1. If you have a paid listing and a natural listing you occupy more of the real estate on the page. This multiple exposure can have the effect of enhancing the credibility in the minds of the searcher. People are more likely to click the organic listing just because they notice the paid listing.
2. The more spaces on the screen you occupy, the less are occupied by your competitors.
3. You have direct control over the wording of a paid ad so for example can include a strong call to action.
4. It’s not always the case that you show up in the natural listings for your brand names. The natural rankings can fluctuate so by having two shots at it you are covering more options.
5. You can target misspellings and variations of your name in paid search more easily than you can on your website.

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By: Michael Douma | Source: onlamp.com

It’s a universal frustration. You just know that the piece of information you’re looking for is somewhere on a site. You click one link, then another, and another. You go back to the home page and try a different branch of the site. After dozens of clicks, you still can’t find the information you need. Then it’s back to Google and on to another site. At last you find one with an internal search engine. You enter your search term, and voilá!–the information you need pops up in less than a second.

If you want your visitors to have "voilá!" moments, consider incorporating an internal search engine into your web site. Search tools not only make your information easily accessible, but they also increase the time visitors spend on your site. An internal search engine may be a necessity if your site has more than 100 pages of content, if it is deeply hierarchical, or if its architecture is weak. If the purpose of your site is to provide in-depth information on a variety of specific topics, it’s ineffective to force a visitor to browse through your site to find the information he seeks. Even if you have designed your site to bring users pleasure through browsing, it’s still a good idea to give your visitor an effective option for finding something specific.

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Source: attentionmeter.com

New web site traffic and popularity metrics tool called AttentionMeter, triangualtes graphs from Alexa, Compete & Quancast all into one easy to use interface.

As the competition for best public third party site popularity & reach measurement system grows, AttentionMeter is a good way to keep tabs on all of them.

Try this tool here…

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