If you look below, this is the result we got for “texas search engine marketing” based on a broad match:

Looking at the broad results, there’s 1,900 searches, but if you look at the actual “phrase”, there’s only 590 queries for the local marketing, which is English and in the United States:

Now, why in the world would the local results be higher than the global search volume when there are more people in the world than the U.S.? Good question.

The answer to this question is simple: The local search result is based on the most recent month!

When you look at the global search volume, you’re not seeing whether some months got 1,000 visitors while some months had barely 10. And unless you track the local search volume every month, you don’t know whether “texas search engine marketing” only got 60 searches in February, 100 in March, and 80 in April.

Some months, people just tend to search for something a little more than usual. That’s why it is possible for local search results to be higher than the global average over 12-month period.

By-the-way, out of 7.7 million results, we’re ranked #6 for this keyword phrase .

There’s many ways of getting traffic to your website, but since my site is about search engine optimization and marketing, it’s only fair to talk about increasing traffic through the use of the Internet. Back then, all we knew was to submit our site to the search engines and that was it. There software to submit our site to hundreds and thousands of them. Now we know better. Now we know we don’t even have to submit our site and we’ll still get indexed… if done properly.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames are like a black hole that search engines simply cannot read. There are many sites that are many years old with hundreds of pages but Google shows that they only have ONE page indexed. That’s because they used frames. Please avoid it like the plague. In fact, avoid it like it’s the Ebola Virus (what a terrible way to die!).

We love to see flash sites, but don’t ever have a flash-only website. Always have an alternative to it because search engines simply cannot read nor index flash files. By having an “HTML” version of it, you are increasing your ability to be indexed by the search engines.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. When using images, ALWAYS use the “alt” tag to describe what the image is. It is also imperative to also name your files according to what is on the image. I.E. If the image is of a black dining table, you’ll want to name the file “black-dining-table.jpg” instead of “image45.jpg”.

Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.

Stop using improper HTML tags like <font> to style your pages. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

Finally, for today’s tips, please avoid using navigation text that changes sizes upon a mouse-over. It is very tacky and annoying. Okay, this wasn’t search engine related, just a user-friendly advice.

In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading position on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services – the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it “keyword auctioning”). Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website.

PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations:

• Pay per placement
• Pay per performance
• Pay per ranking
• Pay per position
• Cost per click (CPC)

PPC advertising is usually done with the following standard procedures:

1. Setting up an account and/or deposit funds.
2. Creating a keyword list.
3. Choosing (and setting up) an account with a PPC search engine.
4. Bidding on the ad placement, including the search result words or phrases.
5. Writing out an ad copy.
6. Setting up the ‘landing pages’ for your ads.
7. Placing the advertisement in the search engine.

There are many benefits to Pay Per Click advertising, making it an effective way of promoting a business ‘online’. Some of them are listed below:

• Get launched immediately. PPC advertisements are implemented very quickly – they can go ‘online’ within an hour after winning the bid and paying for it.
• Obtain specific, pre-qualified, and quality traffic. PPC provides you with a quality or a well-targeted traffic. Visitors are narrowed down into ‘qualified’ people who are actually looking for specific products and/or services that you offer – those who are more likely to become a ‘lead’ (a convert) and complete a transaction (either by buying your product or subscribing to the service that you are offering.
• Widen your reach. PPC advertising provides additional traffic to your site, aside from the natural or “organic” search engines.
• Track your investment. PPC advertising makes use of a tracking system that will determine exactly who comes to the website and what they do once they arrive – the length of their stay on the site and the number of pages (including the actual pages) that they view. These are valuable tools in determining statistics such as return on investment (ROI), acquisition cost-per-visitor, and conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who are converted into customers or leads).

Below are some important things to consider when planning on a pay per click campaign:

1. Know your product. Take an inventory of the product and/or services that you have to offer (before anything else).
2. Stay within the budget. Determine your daily or monthly budget; and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in mind, avoiding bidding wars if possible.
3. Bid just right. Know how to bid right – a bid that is too high can exhaust all of your money, while a bid that is too low can make you lose that spot.
4. Watch the bottom line. Measure your profit margin against your spending or expenses. Know when to stop and terminate your PPC program – if you spend more on advertising but have little or no sales at all.
5. Find the right keywords. Decide which keyword phrases to opt and bid for. Do some keyword research, either by actually looking at existing search terms or with the use of online keyword suggestion tools, to know which terms are mostly used when searching for items that are related to your business. Focus on specific keywords, not on general ones.
6. Write effective ads. A good PPC ad is that which can persuade and move a searcher. There are several approaches to this:
   • Discount offers
   • Testimonials
   • Celebrity/famous endorsers
   • Money-back guarantees
   • Free trials or sample offers
   • Freebies
   • Reverse psychology
   • Major benefits (“Lose weight”)
   • Direct instructions (“Click here”)
7. Maintain a professional-looking site. Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. The website should be simple – designed in such a way that it will be easy for visitors to navigate and load. Include contact details to create a good impression among potential customers.

Done properly, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing tool that will maximize the return on your investment.