The Web Mark’s Internet Marketing Blog

If you haven’t ventured into affiliate marketing, now is the perfect time to increase your online sales force (and profits) by doing so. Affiliate marketing comes with many benefits, most notably: inbound links, increased traffic and of course, increased sales.

As part of our complete online marketing solution, The Web Mark and the AXT Media Group offer our proprietary, fully managed Affiliate Program, MerchantZoo (www.MerchantZoo.com). MerchantZoo allows us to expose your website to affiliate marketers who will use the traffic on their sites to promote your products and offers. At the same time, we can manage and track your affiliate activity (including sales, sign ups, and more), as well as payout affiliate commissions and answer any of their questions.

Through MerchantZoo, we will recruit affiliates, sign them up, and even provide them with customized banners or ads. The only thing you have to do is sign up. If you don’t have a unique product or service of your own, you can sign up as an affiliate and market other high quality products to earn great commissions.

MerchantZoo specializes in offering the highest commissions on only high-quality products. Contact us today to see how we can help your online marketing with a complete set of marketing solutions.

Are you losing traffic or dropping in search engine rankings and don’t know why? Does your site look better than your sales reports? You might want to evaluate the “health” of your website with Webscale.

Webscale is an awesome web tool for evaluating the performance of your website and identifying problems within the HTML code, JavaScript or Flash. Your site may look perfectly fine, but if you’ve got sloppy code or poorly utilized JavaScript, you’re making it that much more difficult for search engine bots and spiders to read your site – and that’s the last thing you want to do.

Cleaner code and optimized website performance can help search engines and users alike find your site and use it as you intended. WebScale generates valuable data that helps you see your site as a search engine crawler “sees” it. Cool visuals and flashy effects may look nice, but what good is it when there’s no traffic on your site? Webscale can help you identify the garbled code and other not-so-friendly web elements that can keep search engines (and the traffic they bring) from reaching your most important content.

What WebScale Does:

• Crawls the URL you enter
• “Sees” the site as a search engine does
• Displays the page code
• Shows the stripped text
• Allows you to analyze the keywords
• Identifies the links
• Indicates the Meta information
• Time it takes your site to load, and much more . . .

Best of all, all the tools offered at www.WebScale.com are completely free – so you’ve got nothing to lose but sloppy code. Go ahead, give it a try and test your website’s fitness.

If you’re interested in how The Web Mark and AXT Media can help you with your business and online marketing, contact us any time!

An optimized site map not only helps your visitors find what they’re looking for on your site, it also helps search engines find your site and all the pages within it. A good site map will contribute as much as possible to both search engine positioning and usability by delivering targeted, easy-to-find links to all pages.

A good place to start is with the anchor text. If you optimize each page of your site for a particular keyword or search term, use those keywords in the links you set up for each page, especially the link you use in your site map. If you link within pages (usually a good idea), make sure the anchor text in those links consists of your targeted keyword too.

The more content your have on your site, the more helpful the site map will be for both visitors and search engines, as it makes it easier to categorize and organize links and pages with headings and subheadings. An optimized site map lets users and search engines see your site’s structure to make vital connections between pages and information.

Optimized site maps are just part of the package of services offered by The AXT Media Group and The Web Mark. Contact us today to find out how we can help you with search engine optimization, online marketing, and more.

Although MySpace marketing is becoming more and more popular among musicians, artists, and models, the giant online social networking community is still ripe for guerilla marketing by direct marketers and retailers.

Marketing on MySpace has great potential because of the sheer number of users, as well as its unique community and social networking features. Many MySpace users are deeply dedicated to keeping their profile current and making as many connections with other people in a variety of different ways. A successful MySpace marketing venture will capitalize on the web of human relationships and social networks that has drawn so many people to it in the first place.

Think of MySpace as a separate Internet with its own community. Yes, it’s that big. With its unique users rapidly approaching 60 million, it’s safe to say that being well known with even a fraction of those 60 million could be extremely beneficial to your business or company. Best of all, it is all completely free.

Benefits of marketing on MySpace include the following:

• Free web presence – your company’s space can be “The Official MySpace Page” for your company. There’s no need to build or manage another generic affiliate site
• Highly targeted, highly specific traffic – joining with groups and posting on forums within your targeted demographic appeals directly to the audience most likely to buy your product or service
• Brand building and lead generation – 60 million people who otherwise might not be looking in search engines or other areas for your website are now just one click away from hearing of your brand or service
• No limits or restrictions on marketing content – videos, pictures, newsletters, and banners are all fair game; endlessly customize your profile
• Lively interaction with potential customers – subtlety plug your product in a forum and instantly see what your potential customers have to say

Perhaps the best part about MySpace marketing, however, is that it’s significantly more enjoyable and fun than the traditional one-way advertising. You can really get to know your potential customers by viewing their preferences, pictures, and even their friends. Join groups, engage in forums and send personal messages that they are more likely to respond to.

The Web Mark has added MySpace marketing to its suite of internet marketing services. Call or contact us today to find out how we can help you take advantage of the MySpace phenomenon and drive more targeted traffic to your site.

So you’re running several advertising campaigns to drive more traffic to your site. Your search engine marketing efforts include pay-per-click ad campaigns supplemented by email blasts, TV, and radio spots to get people to visit your site. All these are vital to your success, but they are also only the beginning.

The landing page needs to keep the potential customer’s attention, then convert them from “oooh, that’s interesting” to “yes, I am going to buy”.

Targeted landing pages that correspond with your ads will help you convert more visits into sales. An optimized landing page will not only pick up where your ad left off, but it will also provide your potential customers with everything they need to make a purchase – this includes a concise yet powerful message, several conversion/action options (such as buy butons), and efficient, optimized forms.

Other key factors in creating effective landing pages are to emphasize important elements and keep them “above the fold” (without scrolling down on the page). You also want to eliminate any type of design distractions or links that will guide the user’s attention away from the desired action. Everything on the landing page must work together towards converting the user.

We can help you set up an internet marketing campaign for your company complete with PPC advertising, targeted landing pages, and other forms of search engine marketing. With over 10 years of experience in search engine optimization and web design, targeted landing pages that lead to higher conversion rates are only a call or email away.

Contact us to learn more about how you can partner with The Web Mark (a division of the AXT Media Group) to improve your eCommerce and increase your conversions.

Keyword bidding just isn’t what it used to be. In the past, ad buyers would only pay what a keyword was worth to them, pay-per-click engines like Google and Yahoo! have modified the keyword bidding models to maximize profits for themselves. This causes ad buyers to stretch their bid on certain keywords to the max they are willing to pay, rather than only what it is worth to them to maximize profits and ROI.

Inexperienced search engine marketers will make the mistake of overpaying for keywords, or misappropriating their energies on keywords that aren’t entirely cost-effective.

For example, an advertiser might be paying $8.00 per click to hold the top sponsored spot on a search engine for a highly competitive keyword. This top spot might be getting them 20 clicks per hour, which at $8.00 per click costs them $160 per hour to hold that position and get those clicks. Meanwhile, the advertiser willing to bid only $5 per that same keyword might only hold the third sponsored position, but still be getting 10 clicks per hour, costing them only $50 per hour. Though only receiving 10 clicks per hour, the price of that position is much lower and may ultimately yield higher profits.

Because of possible scenarios such as this, a company would be wise to use an experienced and savvy search engine marketer who knows how to strategically manage the system to optimize bids and placement; ensuring efficiency and profitability. The Web Mark has over a decade of experience in search engine marketing, as well as other valuable internet marketing services through its parent company AXT Media Group.

Contact us to learn more about how you can partner with The Web Mark and The AXT Media Group to improve your eCommerce and complete your set of technology solutions.

PPC campaigns, or pay-per-click advertising, play an integral part in increasing targeted traffic to your site. Although PPC campaigns involve bidding on keywords and specific search terms, an important part of a successful campaign is having an optimized web site that will turn clicks into conversions, and provide your site’s visitors with a quick and easy shopping experience.

Determining the best possible keywords and search terms for your campaign therefore becomes essential, and so does the optimized landing page to where your ad will direct your possible buyers. Depending on your website and the nature of your business, there may be several specialized niche terms that might be worth focusing on for your PPC campaign.

For example, a site that sells flowers for all types of occasions may want to consider using a niche use for flowers, such as “wedding flowers” or “funeral flowers,” as the focus of one of their PPC ads rather than the more general (and therefore more contested and pricey) “flowers.” This way, a person searching for flowers for that particular occasion will find your ad and your site ideal for their needs.

PPC campaigns start with keyword research and collection, then build to well-written and targeted ads, and are followed by smart and efficient campaign management, all of which ultimately contribute to a higher ROI performance and increased new site traffic (with the possibility for return customers).

The Web Mark offers comprehensive management of your entire PPC campaign as part of its Internet marketing services.

Please contact us to learn more

Press releases are a great way to spread the word about your company, a product, or any newsworthy service you want to promote. Writing and submitting a press release is a way to gain exposure to a larger general market in a short amount of time.

With the online news wire services and the number of people who read Google News, Yahoo News, and other major news/search sites every day, writing optimized press releases is now considered a significant part of any SEO/SEM campaign. Not only can an optimized press release gain the attention of potential customers, but it also serves as a fast way to drive targeted traffic to your website.

An additional benefit of submitting an optimized press release for distribution to major news sites on the web is that it gets you a valuable inbound link to your site, which can help with how a search engine will rank your website. The more relevant inbound links, the better, when it comes to how your site ranks in the search engines.

The Web Mark offers press release writing and optimization as part of its Internet marketing services. Please contact us to learn more

Keywords Lay the Foundation
Keyword research is the vital first step of any Internet marketing campaign. The terms and phrases that people are typing into Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines are the same terms that need to be present on your website. If they aren’t, your site won’t rank for those terms. Granted there are many other factors that weigh into how a website is ranked,but at the most basic level, the words people are searching for need to be on the site.

The website optimization process begins with keywords. There are several keyword research tools available such as Wordtracker and the Yahoo/Overture search term suggestion tool that not only help identify related search terms, but that give a general idea of how many people are searching for each particular term. From these (and other) keyword research tools, a number of “targeted” keywords will become apparent.

Targeted Terms Bring Targeted Traffic
The Internet search is an exercise in categorization. An average person doing a search will usually start general and refine the search to be more and more specific. The more speficic you are in your search, the more targeted the results will be.

Let’s say you need a new battery for your camera. You might go to a search engine and type “battery” or “camera battery” to which you will get tons of pages that mention, sell, or possibly have nothing to do with “battery” - which could be the little power source for your camera, your car, the space station, your watch; or it could mean the act of beating someone up. “Camera battery” is more specific, but still yields more results than are reasonably worth searching through to find your specific camera battery.

So back to the search engine, but this time, you search for your specific camera’s battery by entering your camera’s make and model, plus the word battery. You find several results for that, but you decide to try one more search. You enter the make and model number of the battery in your camera, and up pop several results with the exact battery you are searching for.

The sites that target your camera’s specific battery’s model number are optimized for that keyword (the keyword being your camera battery brand and model number). The webmasters who thought to optimize a page for that specific battery model have suddenly earned your click and possibly your business if indeed you do buy. And chances are that if you went through all that searching to find a new camera battery, you probably needed it and therefore, will buy it once you find it.

The point of this little adventure is simpy to take advantage of the specific terms that relate to your site, whether it is a specific model number of a product, or a niche that relates to the product you offer.

Even if nobody knows your company name or your product name, somewhere there is a relevant term or terms that are ultimately related to what you do or sell, and that is the value of good keyword research. Extensive keyword research takes time to do, but once it is done, you essentially have a roadmap for how to gain more search engine traffic to your website.