The setup is quite standard, like most ranking SEO tools, you add your domains and keywords (with their appropriate groupings) and select your search engines (in this case 30 to choose from). Next you add your competitor’s domains, which is not revolutionary, but very useful to your SEO Campaign nonetheless. Finally, you have the option of connecting your Google Analytics account so you can tie together rankings and visits. This will help you decipher whether a rank 5 for one keyword provides more visits than a rank 8 for a separate keyword.

The way the dashboard is setup is quite unique. It provides a week by week by week comparison allowing you to see rankings at a very high level, for example: Total keywords ranked in positions 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 one week vs. another week. See example below:

SEO Rank Monitor also provides other reports (examples below), including Analytics Monitor (visits correlated by rankings) and Domain monitor (domain level data such as pages indexed and backlinks).

First of all, let’s talk about the type of advertiser who needs an optimized-for-traffic PPC campaign. For publishers selling cost-per-thousand (CPM) ad space or advertisers measuring revenue-per-visitor (RPV), traffic may be all their business needs to be successful. Publishers in this situation want to drive up the overall impressions their website is getting, as cheaply as possible, so they can in turn sell more ad space to their own advertisers. PPC advertising is still one of the best ways to accomplish this goal. Advertisers measuring RPV are looking for insight as to how much revenue a marketing program contributes to their bottom line by visitor.

Next let’s take a look at the keywords you should target. Any SEO Professional will tell you — depending on the type of website you have, you should buy the broadest terms available within your vertical. If you run an e-commerce site, then buy early — buying cycle keywords like MP3 player, cell phone, shoes, etc. For a lead generation site, buy high-volume keywords that are not fully defined, like marketing, diabetes, dentist, gold, etc. Publishers will want to buy a rotating set of keywords based on new headlines and popular culture. Also target the content network. Even though over 90% of web traffic begins at the search engine, over 90% of all page views are non-search pages.

Finally, your ad copy must be optimized for a high click-through rate (CTR). The best way to do this is make sure your keywords are in your ads. Make separate ad groups for all of your highest volume keywords so those ads will be highly targeted. You can also use the dynamic keyword insertion tool here. Remember that Google bolds a keyword that is placed within an ad. Another way to gain an extremely high CTR is with high-interest ad copy. Using words like Free, Learn, and Sale are great ways to grab attention and clicks.

By making traffic the main goal of your PPC campaign, you go down a different path than most PPC marketers. Goal setting, keyword research, and copywriting have new meaning within this type of PPC campaign. By employing these optimization techniques, you will be ensuring you are getting the most out of your PPC campaign and its integration into your overall business success.

We deal with these clients all the time, and you can always immediately tell the difference between the ones who understand what they are paying for, and the others. It’s a circular song and dance that comes from SMBs about how they are aware they need to take a more active approach toward their Internet marketing strategies. Many get that concept, but unfortunately just understanding that fact is not enough. The other end of that unfortunately is the part that leads to the eventual breakdown of their business. This is where their internet marketing efforts usually stop, and it stops with this statement, “but I don’t want to spend any money. What can we do for free? At this point, San Diego SEO experts should pack their bags and run, because this mindset leads to a horrible business relationship, and ultimately doesn’t allow them to execute appropriate SEO training and strategies. Frank goes on to discuss this circular debate below- well said Frank.

I see this happen in Chamber of Commerce environments where everyone wants to meet you and buy you a cup of coffee so you can talk all about your knowledge of the Internet, but when it comes to the reality of “these things cost money,” you can hear crickets during the stunned silence. SMBs attend every free event that gives them the most generic advice, but when it comes to the point of paying for a real service that will produce results, they run like mice when the lights go on.

I know the economy is bad. I know money is tight. Does that mean, however, that you don’t need to still spend money to make money? Here’s some advice for all Internet marketing service providers and those looking for their services. As we rapidly approach that time of year when SMBs need to decide if they will again throw good money at their Yellow Pages presence, there needs to be some serious thought applied to this traditional advertising play. SMBs will be assaulted by aggressive sales people and then be put into the spin cycle about how they can get the best of both the online and offline world with the Yellow Pages offerings. Must … resist … the …. Yellow …. Pages … sales ….. pitch.

Everyone needs to stop, listen, and truly think. I am going to suggest something truly revolutionary. It actually may not cost the SMB anything more than is currently spent for advertising to effectively do Internet marketing! I call this process the “Budget Theory”. Maybe as an SMB you have been buying YP ads for ages and it’s just something you do. Well, this year, why not take that dead marketing spend [unless you can truly say that you are experiencing a real ROI with that YP spend, in which case it's not dead, so keep doing it] and apply it where you know you need to be — on the Internet. That’s right; say no to your Yellow Pages rep and start to apply that money to the place you really want to be.

The vastness of the Internet cannot be overstated. It is the greatest compendium of information ever known and offers an almost unlimited array of opinions, blogs, specialty items and more. As great as it is to have all this information available, it is virtually useless without a working system to help you find what you are looking for, while keeping you away from everything you’re not.

This is the beauty of the search engine. The most basic function of a search engine is to catalog all the information available on the web and return the most relevant results of a query posed by the searcher. For instance, if a user is looking for a store that sells mousetraps in their area, they may type ”Mousetraps, Springfield” into Google. Google will go through its gigantic database of websites and return those sites that sell mousetraps in Springfield.

Why is any of this relevant to your online business? Simple. Search Engines are often the first stop a potential customer makes in their search for a product or information. Internet users constantly utilize search engines to help filter the web and hand them the information and products they are searching for. In this way, search engines can be a huge driver of high quality traffic to your website. A store needs customers. An online store needs web visits. Search engines can bring searchers to your page if you play by the rules of search engine optimization.

Getting to the top of Google or any of the other search engines for the key terms of your website can greatly increase web traffic and, ultimately, conversions. By ignoring search engines, you are likely to end of far down in the queries where busy web surfers rarely visit. Your site will be ignored and adrift in the vast ocean of Internet slush.