A #1 Google Ranking in Just Days?
The internet is littered with thousands of “SEO” companies who claim to be able to get you on the first page of Google for a small (or not-so-small) fee. Is this really possible? Do these so-called “experts” really know something that the rest of us don’t about getting on the first page of Google for any given keyword?
The fact is, anyone can get “on the first page” of Google by simply [...]
What is Alexa?
Alexa Internet Inc. is a company that specializes in providing statistical information on how much traffic websites receive. Based in California, Alexa is a subsidiary of Amazon. Alexa offers a free toolbar that is downloaded and installed into the major browsers–Internet Explorer, Mozilla/FireFox and Netscape.
This toolbar is a tracking program that records the URL’s of all websites visited from that particular browser and transmits this information to Alexa, where it is then used to compute a ranking for each recorded site. This is known as a site’s “Alexa Rank”.
Why is a site’s Alexa rank important?
Forecasting the response rate to an ad on a particular website requires knowing how much traffic the site receives. In theory, Alexa’s rank does just that. It provides a statistical ‘best guess’ based on information from actual web surfers. Some pay-per-click networks offer Alexa’s information as a resource for assessing the relative strength of various websites in terms of traffic received.
Banner Ads: How Effective Are They?
Eyeblaster, an NYC based firm that gathers statistical information through online ad monitoring estimates the average click-through rate for banner ads across the entire worldwide web to be near 0.20%., or just 1 click for every 500 impressions. Considering the average conversion rate for online merchants in general is between 1% and 3%, that equates to 50,000 impressions per sale.
Now, just to be clear, the ads we’re describing are the ones that typically appear in a fixed location on a website, often near the top or side of a page. They’re sold in quantities of ‘1000′ at a time, and are for the most very untargeted. An exception to this general description would involve placing a banner ad for a very specific product or service on an equally specific website. For example: an ad for microscopes on a site that rates and reviews microscopes–pretty targeted.
Pay-Per-Click Basics
Pay-per-click advertising offers a performance-based approach to online advertising, meaning that even if your ad appears in the number one spot, you don’t pay anything until someone actually clicks on it. Google’s “AdWords” program is by far the most popular of the pay-per-click programs, having sold over $16 billion in AdWords advertisements in 2007.
Pay-per-click is especially useful for start-up websites, or for websites that have not been optimized for the search engines. It can take months or even years to rise in the search engine rankings for certain keywords. But who has that kind of time or patience? A pay-per-click campaign offers the possibility of top placement…for the right price.