Pay Per Click Marketing

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Pay-per-click

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked.

Pay-per-click is commonly associated with first-tier search engines (such as Google Ads, Amazon Advertising, and Microsoft Advertising formerly Bing Ads).

With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market and pay when ads (text-based search ads or shopping ads that are a combination of images and text) are clicked.

In contrast, content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

PPC display advertisements, also known as banner ads, are shown on web sites with related content that have agreed to show ads and are typically not Pay-per-click advertising.

Social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter have also adopted Pay-per-click as one of their advertising models.

The amount advertisers pay depends on the publisher and is usually driven by two major factors: quality of the ad, and the maximum bid the advertiser is willing to pay per click.

The higher the quality of the ad, the lower the cost per click is charged and vice versa.

However, websites can offer PPC ads.

Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list that has been added in different ad groups, or when a content site displays relevant content.

Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to, above, or beneath organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.[1] The PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click fraud,[2] although Google and others have implemented automated systems[3] to guard against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt web developers.[4] Pay-per-click, along with cost per impression (CPM) and cost per order, are used to assess the cost-effectiveness and profitability of the internet marketing.

In Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM), the advertiser only pays for every 1000 impressions of the ad.

Pay-per-click (PPC) has an advantage over cost per impression in that it conveys information about how effective the advertising was.

Clicks are a way to measure attention and interest; if the main purpose of an ad is to generate a click, or more specifically drive traffic to a destination, then Pay-per-click is the preferred metric.

The quality and placement of the advertisement will affect click through rates and the resulting total Pay-per-click cost.

Cost-per-click (CPC) is calculated by dividing the advertising cost by the number of clicks generated by an advertisement.

The basic formula is: There are two primary models for determining Pay-per-click: flat-rate and bid-based.

In both cases, the advertiser must consider the potential value of a click from a given source.

This value is based on the type of individual the advertiser is expecting to receive as a visitor to his or her website, and what the advertiser can gain from that visit, usually revenue, both in the short term as well as in the long term.

As with other forms of advertising, targeting is key, and factors that often play into PPC campaigns include the target's interest (often defined by a search term they have entered into a search engine or the content of a page that they are browsing), intent (e.g., to purchase or not), location (for geo targeting), and the day and time that they are browsing.

In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click.

In many cases, the publisher has a rate card that lists the Pay-per-click (PPC) within different areas of their website or network.

These various amounts are often related to the content on pages, with content that generally attracts more valuable visitors having a higher PPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors.

However, in many cases, advertisers can negotiate lower rates, especially when committing to a long-term or high-value contract.

The flat-rate model is particularly common to comparison shopping engines, which typically publish rate cards.[5] However, these rates are sometimes minimal, and advertisers can pay more for greater visibility.

These sites are usually neatly compartmentalized into product or service categories, allowing a high degree of targeting by advertisers.

In many cases, the entire core content of these sites is paid ads.

The advertiser signs a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network.

Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot (often based on a keyword), usually using online tools to do so.

The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot.

When the ad spot is part of a search engine results page (SERP), the automated auction takes place whenever a search for the keyword that is being bid upon occurs.

All bids for the keyword that target the searcher's Geo-location, the day and time of the search, etc.

are then compared and the winner determined.

In situations where there are multiple ad spots, a common occurrence on SERPs, there can be multiple winners whose positions on the page are influenced by the amount each has bid.

The bid and Quality Score are used to give each advertiser's advert an ad rank.

The ad with the highest ad rank shows up first.

The predominant three match types for both Google and Bing are Broad, Exact and Phrase Match.

Google Ads and Bing Ads also offer the Broad Match Modifier type which differs from broad match in that the keyword must contain the actual keyword terms in any order and doesn't include relevant variations of the terms.[6] In addition to ad spots on SERPs, the major advertising networks allow for contextual ads to be placed on the properties of 3rd-parties with whom they have partnered.

These publishers sign up to host ads on behalf of the network.

In return, they receive a portion of the ad revenue that the network generates, which can be anywhere from 50% to over 80% of the gross revenue paid by advertisers.

These properties are often referred to as a content network and the ads on them as contextual ads because the ad spots are associated with keywords based on the context of the page on which they are found.

In general, ads on content networks have a much lower click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR) than ads found on SERPs and consequently are less highly valued.

Content network properties can include websites, newsletters, and e-mails.[7] Advertisers pay for each single click they receive, with the actual amount paid based on the amount of bid.

It is common practice amongst auction hosts to charge a winning bidder just slightly more (e.g.

one penny) than the next highest bidder or the actual amount bid, whichever is lower.[8] This avoids situations where bidders are constantly adjusting their bids by very small amounts to see if they can still win the auction while paying just a little bit less per click.

In order to maximize success and achieve scale, automated bid management systems can be deployed.

These systems can be used directly by the advertiser, though they are more commonly used by advertising agencies that offer PPC bid management as a service.

These tools generally allow for bid management at scale, with thousands or even millions of PPC bids controlled by a highly automated system.

The system generally sets each bid based on the goal that has been set for it, such as maximize profit, maximize traffic, get the very targeted customer at break even, and so forth.

The system is usually tied into the advertiser's website and fed the results of each click, which then allows it to set bids.

The effectiveness of these systems is directly related to the quality and quantity of the performance data that they have to work with — low-traffic ads can lead to a scarcity of data problem that renders many bid management tools useless at worst, or inefficient at best.

As a rule, the contextual advertising system (Google AdWords, Yandex.Direct, etc.) uses an auction approach as the advertising payment system.

There are several sites that claim to be the first PPC model on the web,[9] with many appearing in the mid-1990s.

For example, in 1996, the first known and documented version of a PPC was included in a web directory called Planet Oasis.

This was a desktop application featuring links to informational and commercial websites, and it was developed by Ark Interface II, a division of Packard Bell NEC Computers.

The initial reactions from commercial companies to Ark Interface II's "pay-per-visit" model were skeptical, however.[10] By the end of 1997, over 400 major brands were paying between $.005 to $.25 per click plus a placement fee.[citation needed] In February 1998 Jeffrey Brewer of Goto.com, a 25-employee startup company (later Overture, now part of Yahoo!), presented a pay per click search engine proof-of-concept to the TED conference in California.[11] This presentation and the events that followed created the PPC advertising system.

Credit for the concept of the PPC model is generally given to Idealab and Goto.com founder Bill Gross.[12] Google started search engine advertising in December 1999.

It was not until October 2000 that the AdWords system was introduced, allowing advertisers to create text ads for placement on the Google search engine.

However, PPC was only introduced in 2002; until then, advertisements were charged at cost-per-thousand impressions or Cost per mille (CPM).

Overture has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, saying the rival search service overstepped its bounds with its ad-placement tools.[13] Although GoTo.com started PPC in 1998, Yahoo! did not start syndicating GoTo.com (later Overture) advertisers until November 2001.[14] Prior to this, Yahoo's primary source of SERPs advertising included contextual IAB advertising units (mainly 468x60 display ads).

When the syndication contract with Yahoo! was up for renewal in July 2003, Yahoo! announced intent to acquire Overture for $1.63 billion.[15] Today, companies such as adMarketplace, ValueClick and adknowledge offer PPC services, as an alternative to AdWords and AdCenter.

Among PPC providers, Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing had been the three largest network operators, all three operating under a bid-based model.[1] For example, in the year 2014, PPC(Adwords) or online advertising attributed approximately US$45 billion of the total US$66 billion of Google's annual revenue[16] In 2010, Yahoo and Microsoft launched their combined effort against Google, and Microsoft's Bing began to be the search engine that Yahoo used to provide its search results.[17] Since they joined forces, their PPC platform was renamed AdCenter.

Their combined network of third party sites that allow AdCenter ads to populate banner and text ads on their site is called BingAds.[18] In 2012, Google was initially ruled to have engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) in possibly the first legal case of its kind.

The ACCC ruled that Google was responsible for the content of its sponsored AdWords ads that had shown links to a car sales website Carsales.com.

The Ads had been shown by Google in response to a search for Honda Australia.

The ACCC said the ads were deceptive, as they suggested Carsales.com was connected to the Honda company.

The ruling was later overturned when Google appealed to the Australian High Court.

Google was found not liable for the misleading advertisements run through AdWords despite the fact that the ads were served up by Google and created using the company's tools.[19]

Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising.[1] SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.[2] In 2007, U.S.

advertisers spent US $24.6 billion on Search engine marketing.[3] In Q2 2015, Google (73.7%) and the Yahoo/Bing (26.3%) partnership accounted for almost 100% of U.S.

search engine spend.[4] As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.[5] Managing search campaigns is either done directly with the SEM vendor or through an SEM tool provider.

It may also be self-serve or through an advertising agency.

As of October 2016, Google leads the global search engine market with a market share of 89.3%.

Bing comes second with a market share of 4.36%, Yahoo comes third with a market share of 3.3%, and Chinese search engine Baidu is fourth globally with a share of about 0.68%.[6] As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 1990s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly.

Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text[7] in 1996 and then Goto.com[8] in 1998.

Goto.com later changed its name[9] to Overture in 2001, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program.

By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary moneymakers[10] for search engines.

In a market dominated by Google, in 2009 Yahoo! and Microsoft announced the intention to forge an alliance.

The Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance eventually received approval from regulators in the US and Europe in February 2010.[11] Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged.

The term "Search engine marketing" was popularized by Danny Sullivan in 2001[12] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Search engine marketing uses at least five methods and metrics to optimize websites.[citation needed] Search engine marketing is a way to create and edit a website so that search engines rank it higher than other pages.

It should be also focused on keyword marketing or pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

The technology enables advertisers to bid on specific keywords or phrases and ensures ads appear with the results of search engines.

With the development of this system, the price is growing under a high level of competition.

Many advertisers prefer to expand their activities, including increasing search engines and adding more keywords.

The more advertisers are willing to pay for clicks, the higher the ranking for advertising, which leads to higher traffic.[15] PPC comes at a cost.

The higher position is likely to cost $5 for a given keyword, and $4.50 for a third location.

A third advertiser earns 10% less than the top advertiser while reducing traffic by 50%.[15] Investors must consider their return on investment when engaging in PPC campaigns.

Buying traffic via PPC will deliver a positive ROI when the total cost-per-click for a single conversion remains below the profit margin.

That way the amount of money spent to generate revenue is below the actual revenue generated.

There are many reasons explaining why advertisers choose the SEM strategy.

First, creating a SEM account is easy and can build traffic quickly based on the degree of competition.

The shopper who uses the search engine to find information tends to trust and focus on the links showed in the results pages.

However, a large number of online sellers do not buy search engine optimization to obtain higher ranking lists of search results but prefer paid links.

A growing number of online publishers are allowing search engines such as Google to crawl content on their pages and place relevant ads on it.[16] From an online seller's point of view, this is an extension of the payment settlement and an additional incentive to invest in paid advertising projects.

Therefore, it is virtually impossible for advertisers with limited budgets to maintain the highest rankings in the increasingly competitive search market.

Google's Search engine marketing is one of the western world's marketing leaders, while its Search engine marketing is its biggest source of profit.[17] Google's search engine providers are clearly ahead of the Yahoo and Bing network.

The display of unknown search results is free, while advertisers are willing to pay for each click of the ad in the sponsored search results.

Paid inclusion involves a search engine company charging fees for the inclusion of a website in their results pages.

Also known as sponsored listings, paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies either in the main results area or as a separately identified advertising area.

The fee structure is both a filter against superfluous submissions and a revenue generator.

Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for one webpage, which will automatically be catalogued on a regular basis.

However, some companies are experimenting with non-subscription based fee structures where purchased listings are displayed permanently.

A per-click fee may also apply.

Each search engine is different.

Some sites allow only paid inclusion, although these have had little success.

More frequently, many search engines, like Yahoo!,[18] mix paid inclusion (per-page and per-click fee) with results from web crawling.

Others, like Google (and as of 2006, Ask.com[19][20]), do not let webmasters pay to be in their search engine listing (advertisements are shown separately and labeled as such).

Some detractors of paid inclusion allege that it causes searches to return results based more on the economic standing of the interests of a web site, and less on the relevancy of that site to end-users.

Often the line between pay per click advertising and paid inclusion is debatable.

Some have lobbied for any paid listings to be labeled as an advertisement, while defenders insist they are not actually ads since the webmasters do not control the content of the listing, its ranking, or even whether it is shown to any users.

Another advantage of paid inclusion is that it allows site owners to specify particular schedules for crawling pages.

In the general case, one has no control as to when their page will be crawled or added to a search engine index.

Paid inclusion proves to be particularly useful for cases where pages are dynamically generated and frequently modified.

Paid inclusion is a Search engine marketing method in itself, but also a tool of search engine optimization since experts and firms can test out different approaches to improving ranking and see the results often within a couple of days, instead of waiting weeks or months.

Knowledge gained this way can be used to optimize other web pages, without paying the search engine company.

SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates SEO.

SEM includes both paid search results (using tools like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, formerly known as Microsoft adCenter) and organic search results (SEO).

SEM uses paid advertising with AdWords or Bing Ads, pay per click (particularly beneficial for local providers as it enables potential consumers to contact a company directly with one click), article submissions, advertising and making sure SEO has been done.

A keyword analysis is performed for both SEO and SEM, but not necessarily at the same time.

SEM and SEO both need to be monitored and updated frequently to reflect evolving best practices.

In some contexts, the term SEM is used exclusively to mean pay per click advertising,[2] particularly in the commercial advertising and marketing communities which have a vested interest in this narrow definition.

Such usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as search engine optimization and search retargeting.

Creating the link between SEO and PPC represents an integral part of the SEM concept.

Sometimes, especially when separate teams work on SEO and PPC and the efforts are not synced, positive results of aligning their strategies can be lost.

The aim of both SEO and PPC is maximizing the visibility in search and thus, their actions to achieve it should be centrally coordinated.

Both teams can benefit from setting shared goals and combined metrics, evaluating data together to determine future strategy or discuss which of the tools works better to get the traffic for selected keywords in the national and local search results.

Thanks to this, the search visibility can be increased along with optimizing both conversions and costs.[21] Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM).

SMM is a type of marketing that involves exploiting social media to influence consumers that one company’s products and/or services are valuable.[22] Some of the latest theoretical advances include Search engine marketing management (SEMM).

SEMM relates to activities including SEO but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management instead of relevant traffic building (as is the case of mainstream SEO).

SEMM also integrates organic SEO, trying to achieve top ranking without using paid means to achieve it, and pay per click SEO.

For example, some of the attention is placed on the web page layout design and how content and information is displayed to the website visitor.

SEO & SEM are two pillars of one marketing job and they both run side by side to produce much better results than focusing on only one pillar.

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports[23][24][25] by Consumer Reports WebWatch.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter[26] in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.

Another ethical controversy associated with search marketing has been the issue of trademark infringement.

The debate as to whether third parties should have the right to bid on their competitors' brand names has been underway for years.

In 2009 Google changed their policy, which formerly prohibited these tactics, allowing 3rd parties to bid on branded terms as long as their landing page in fact provides information on the trademarked term.[27] Though the policy has been changed this continues to be a source of heated debate.[28] On April 24, 2012, many started to see that Google has started to penalize companies that are buying links for the purpose of passing off the rank.

The Google Update was called Penguin.

Since then, there have been several different Penguin/Panda updates rolled out by Google.

SEM has, however, nothing to do with link buying and focuses on organic SEO and PPC management.

As of October 20, 2014, Google had released three official revisions of their Penguin Update.

In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Lens.com, Inc.

v.

1-800 Contacts, Inc.

that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit trademark infringement when it purchased search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its trademark enforcement practices in the Search engine marketing space have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act.

1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and appeared before an FTC administrative law judge in April 2017.[29] AdWords is recognized as a web-based advertising utensil since it adopts keywords that can deliver adverts explicitly to web users looking for information in respect to a certain product or service.

It is flexible and provides customizable options like Ad Extensions, access to non-search sites, leveraging the display network to help increase brand awareness.

The project hinges on cost per click (CPC) pricing where the maximum cost per day for the campaign can be chosen, thus the payment of the service only applies if the advert has been clicked.

SEM companies have embarked on AdWords projects as a way to publicize their SEM and SEO services.

One of the most successful approaches to the strategy of this project was to focus on making sure that PPC advertising funds were prudently invested.

Moreover, SEM companies have described AdWords as a practical tool for increasing a consumer’s investment earnings on Internet advertising.

The use of conversion tracking and Google Analytics tools was deemed to be practical for presenting to clients the performance of their canvas from click to conversion.

AdWords project has enabled SEM companies to train their clients on the utensil and delivers better performance to the canvass.

The assistance of AdWord canvass could contribute to the growth of web traffic for a number of its consumer’s websites, by as much as 250% in only nine months.[30] Another way Search engine marketing is managed is by contextual advertising.

Here marketers place ads on other sites or portals that carry information relevant to their products so that the ads jump into the circle of vision of browsers who are seeking information from those sites.

A successful SEM plan is the approach to capture the relationships amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines.

Search engines were not important to some industries in the past, but over the past years the use of search engines for accessing information has become vital to increase business opportunities.[31] The use of SEM strategic tools for businesses such as tourism can attract potential consumers to view their products, but it could also pose various challenges.[32] These challenges could be the competition that companies face amongst their industry and other sources of information that could draw the attention of online consumers.[31] To assist the combat of challenges, the main objective for businesses applying SEM is to improve and maintain their ranking as high as possible on SERPs so that they can gain visibility.

Therefore, search engines are adjusting and developing algorithms and the shifting criteria by which web pages are ranked sequentially to combat against search engine misuse and spamming, and to supply the most relevant information to searchers.[31] This could enhance the relationship amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines by understanding the strategies of marketing to attract business.

Cost per action

Cost per action (CPA), also sometimes misconstrued in marketing environments as cost per acquisition[1], is an online advertising measurement and pricing model, referring to a specified action – for example a sale, click, or form submit (e.g., contact request, newsletter sign up, registration etc.)[2] Direct response advertisers often consider CPA the optimal way to buy online advertising, as an advertiser only considers the measured CPA goal as the important outcome of their activity[3] The desired action to be performed is determined by the advertiser.

In affiliate marketing, this means that advertisers only pay the affiliates for leads that result in the desired action such as a sale.[4] This removes the risk for the advertiser because they know in advance that they will not have to pay for bad referrals, and it encourages the affiliate to send good referrals.

Radio and TV stations also sometimes offer unsold inventory on a Cost per action basis, but this form of advertising is most often referred to as "per inquiry".

Although less common, print media will also sometimes be sold on a CPA basis.

CPA is sometimes referred to as "cost per acquisition", which has to do with the fact that many actions which advertisers are optimizing towards are about acquiring something (typically new customers by making sales), although this has led to confusion in the marketing industry as to the correct meaning of CPA.[5] Adding to the confusion, "cost per acquisition" may be used where it actually is customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Cost per action (CPA) is calculated as the cost divided by the number of actions being measured.

So for example, if the spend is $150 on a campaign and the actions attributed to this campaign is 10, this would give the campaign a Cost per action of $15.

Pay per lead (PPL) is a form of cost per acquisition, with the "acquisition" in this case being the delivery of a lead.

Online and Offline advertising payment model in which fees are charged based solely on the delivery of leads.

In a pay per lead agreement, the advertiser only pays for leads delivered under the terms of the agreement.

No payment is made for leads that don't meet the agreed-upon criteria.

The service provider company can use multiple methods to bring traffic to a landing page designed to generate lead with validation and tracking system to make sure the client gets authentic valid leads.

Leads may be delivered by phone under the pay per call model.

Conversely, leads may be delivered electronically, such as by email, SMS, or a ping/post of the data directly to a database.

The information delivered may consist of as little as an email address, or it may involve a detailed profile including multiple contact points and the answers to qualification questions.

There are numerous risks associated with any Pay Per Lead campaign, including the potential for fraudulent activity by incentive marketing partners.

Some fraudulent leads are easy to spot.

Nonetheless, it is advisable to make a regular audit of the results.

In cost per lead campaigns, advertisers pay for an interested lead (hence, cost per lead) — i.e.

the contact information of a person interested in the advertiser's product or service.

CPL campaigns are suitable for brand marketers and direct response marketers looking to engage consumers at multiple touchpoints — by building a newsletter list, community site, reward program or member acquisition program.

In CPA campaigns, the advertiser typically pays for a completed sale involving a credit card transaction.

There are other important differentiators: Pay per click (PPC) and cost per click (CPC) are both forms of CPA (Cost per action) with the action being a click.[6][7] PPC is generally used to refer to paid search marketing such as Google's AdSense or Google Ads.

The advertiser pays each time someone clicks on their text or display ad.

When advertising in the Google platform, CPC bidding means that an advertiser pays for each click of an ad placed and that, in ad campaign, he can set a price cap as a maximum CPC bid.[8] Here, the CPC pricing is also sometimes referred to as PPC.

In the Facebook social networking platform, the term pertains to the average cost for each link click and it serves as a metric in online advertising for benchmarking online ad efficiency and performance.[9] CPC in the Amazon Marketing Service (AMS) follows the same model, although it is reported that this platform charge lower CPCs compared to other advertising platforms with Google charging the highest.[10] Also, pay per download (PPD) is another form of CPA where the user completes an action to download a digital content such as apps, digital media, and other files.[11] The actions can include completing surveys or answering quiz in order to generate revenue from a third-party advertiser.[12] With the payment of CPA campaigns being on an "action" being delivered, accurate tracking is of prime importance to media owners.

This is a complex subject in itself, however, if usually performed in three main ways: A related term, effective Cost per action (eCPA), is used to measure the effectiveness of advertising inventory purchased (by the advertiser) via a cost per click, cost per impression, or cost per thousand basis.

In other words, the eCPA tells the advertiser what they would have paid if they had purchased the advertising inventory on a Cost per action basis (instead of a cost per click, cost per impression, or cost per mille/thousand basis).

If the advertiser is purchasing inventory with a CPA target, instead of paying per action at a fixed rate, the goal of the effective CPA (eCPA) should always be below the maximum CPA.

As described by Yang's Law, eCPA<CPA.

This fundamental view of what the performance of a conversion-based campaign should be is served as the baseline for many buy-side platform optimization algorithms.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.[1][2][3][4][5] The industry has four core players:[citation needed] The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates, and specialized third party vendors.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree because affiliates often use regular advertising methods.

Those methods include organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC – Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing, and (in some sense) display advertising.

On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the retailer.

The two forms of marketing are differentiated, however, in how they drive sales, where Affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations, while referral marketing relies more on trust and personal relationships.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers.[6] While search engines, e-mail, and web site syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, Affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile.

Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.[citation needed] The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates Affiliate marketing and the Internet.

The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened in November 1994,[7] almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web.

The concept of Affiliate marketing on the Internet was conceived of, put into practice and patented by William J.

Tobin, the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts.

Launched on the Prodigy Network in 1989, PC Flowers & Gifts remained on the service until 1996.

By 1993, PC Flowers & Gifts generated sales in excess of $6 million per year on the Prodigy service.

In 1998, PC Flowers and Gifts developed the business model of paying a commission on sales to the Prodigy Network.[8][9] In 1994, Tobin launched a beta version of PC Flowers & Gifts on the Internet in cooperation with IBM, who owned half of Prodigy.[10] By 1995 PC Flowers & Gifts had launched a commercial version of the website and had 2,600 Affiliate marketing partners on the World Wide Web.

Tobin applied for a patent on tracking and Affiliate marketing on January 22, 1996, and was issued U.S.

Patent number 6,141,666 on Oct 31, 2000.

Tobin also received Japanese Patent number 4021941 on Oct 5, 2007, and U.S.

Patent number 7,505,913 on Mar 17, 2009, for Affiliate marketing and tracking.[11] In July 1998 PC Flowers and Gifts merged with Fingerhut and Federated Department Stores.[12] In November 1994, CDNow launched its BuyWeb program.

CDNow had the idea that music-oriented websites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors might be interested in purchasing.

These websites could also offer a link that would take visitors directly to CDNow to purchase the albums.

The idea for remote purchasing originally arose from conversations with music label Geffen Records in the fall of 1994.

The management at Geffen wanted to sell its artists' CD's directly from its website but did not want to implement this capability itself.

Geffen asked CDNow if it could design a program where CDNow would handle the order fulfillment.

Geffen realized that CDNow could link directly from the artist on its website to Geffen's website, bypassing the CDNow home page and going directly to an artist's music page.[13] Amazon.com (Amazon) launched its associate program in July 1996: Amazon associates could place banner or text links on their site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page.[14] When visitors clicked on the associate's website to go to Amazon and purchase a book, the associate received a commission.

Amazon was not the first merchant to offer an affiliate program, but its program was the first to become widely known and serve as a model for subsequent programs.[15][16] In February 2000, Amazon announced that it had been granted a patent[17] on components of an affiliate program.

The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which predates most affiliate programs, but not PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and several others.[18] Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception.

The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business.

According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone.

The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005.[19] MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs.[20] In 2006, the most active sectors for Affiliate marketing were the adult gambling, retail industries and file-sharing services.[21]:149–150 The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors.[21] Soon after these sectors came the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors.

Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using Affiliate marketing as part of their mix.[21]:149–150 Websites and services based on Web 2.0 concepts—blogging and interactive online communities, for example—have impacted the Affiliate marketing world as well.

These platforms allow improved communication between merchants and affiliates.

Web 2.0 platforms have also opened Affiliate marketing channels to personal bloggers, writers, and independent website owners.

Contextual ads allow publishers with lower levels of web traffic to place affiliate ads on websites.[citation needed] Forms of new media have also diversified how companies, brands, and ad networks serve ads to visitors.

For instance, YouTube allows video-makers to embed advertisements through Google's affiliate network.[citation needed] New developments have made it more difficult for unscrupulous affiliates to make money.

Emerging black sheep are detected and made known to the Affiliate marketing community with much greater speed and efficiency.[citation needed] Eighty percent of affiliate programs today use revenue sharing or pay per sale (PPS) as a compensation method, nineteen percent use cost per action (CPA), and the remaining programs use other methods such as cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM, cost per estimated 1000 views).[22] Within more mature markets, less than one percent of traditional Affiliate marketing programs today use cost per click and cost per mille.

However, these compensation methods are used heavily in display advertising and paid search.

Cost per mille requires only that the publisher make the advertising available on his or her website and display it to the page visitors in order to receive a commission.

Pay per click requires one additional step in the conversion process to generate revenue for the publisher: A visitor must not only be made aware of the advertisement but must also click on the advertisement to visit the advertiser's website.

Cost per click was more common in the early days of Affiliate marketing but has diminished in use over time due to click fraud issues very similar to the click fraud issues modern search engines are facing today.

Contextual advertising programs are not considered in the statistic pertaining to the diminished use of cost per click, as it is uncertain if contextual advertising can be considered Affiliate marketing.

While these models have diminished in mature e-commerce and online advertising markets they are still prevalent in some more nascent industries.

China is one example where Affiliate marketing does not overtly resemble the same model in the West.

With many affiliates being paid a flat "Cost Per Day" with some networks offering Cost Per Click or CPM.

In the case of cost per mille/click, the publisher is not concerned about whether a visitor is a member of the audience that the advertiser tries to attract and is able to convert because at this point the publisher has already earned his commission.

This leaves the greater, and, in case of cost per mille, the full risk and loss (if the visitor cannot be converted) to the advertiser.

Cost per action/sale methods require that referred visitors do more than visit the advertiser's website before the affiliate receives a commission.

The advertiser must convert that visitor first.

It is in the best interest of the affiliate to send the most closely targeted traffic to the advertiser as possible to increase the chance of a conversion.

The risk and loss are shared between the affiliate and the advertiser.

Affiliate marketing is also called "performance marketing", in reference to how sales employees are typically being compensated.

Such employees are typically paid a commission for each sale they close, and sometimes are paid performance incentives for exceeding objectives.[23] Affiliates are not employed by the advertiser whose products or services they promote, but the compensation models applied to Affiliate marketing are very similar to the ones used for people in the advertisers' internal sales department.

The phrase, "Affiliates are an extended sales force for your business", which is often used to explain Affiliate marketing, is not completely accurate.

The primary difference between the two is that affiliate marketers provide little if any influence on a possible prospect in the conversion process once that prospect is directed to the advertiser's website.

The sales team of the advertiser, however, does have the control and influence up to the point where the prospect either a) signs the contract, or b) completes the purchase.

Some advertisers offer multi-tier programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-partners.

In practical terms, publisher "A" signs up to the program with an advertiser and gets rewarded for the agreed activity conducted by a referred visitor.

If publisher "A" attracts publishers "B" and "C" to sign up for the same program using his sign-up code, all future activities performed by publishers "B" and "C" will result in additional commission (at a lower rate) for publisher "A".

Two-tier programs exist in the minority of affiliate programs; most are simply one-tier.

Referral programs beyond two-tier resemble multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing but are different: Multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing associations tend to have more complex commission requirements/qualifications than standard affiliate programs.[citation needed] Merchants favor Affiliate marketing because in most cases it uses a "pay for performance" model, meaning that the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are accrued (excluding any initial setup cost).[24] Some merchants run their own (in-house) affiliate programs using dedicated software, while others use third-party intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates.

There are two different types of affiliate management methods used by merchants: standalone software or hosted services, typically called affiliate networks.

Payouts to affiliates or publishers can be made by the networks on behalf of the merchant, by the network, consolidated across all merchants where the publisher has a relationship with and earned commissions or directly by the merchant itself.

Uncontrolled affiliate programs aid rogue affiliates, who use spamming,[25] trademark infringement, false advertising, cookie stuffing, typosquatting,[26] and other unethical methods that have given Affiliate marketing a negative reputation.

Some merchants are using outsourced (affiliate) program management (OPM) companies, which are themselves often run by affiliate managers and network program managers.[27] OPM companies perform affiliate program management for the merchants as a service, similar to the role an advertising agencies serves in offline marketing.

Affiliate websites are often categorized by merchants (advertisers) and affiliate networks.

There are currently no industry-wide standards for the categorization.

The following types of websites are generic, yet are commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.

Affiliate networks that already have several advertisers typically also have a large pool of publishers.

These publishers could be potentially recruited, and there is also an increased chance that publishers in the network apply to the program on their own, without the need for recruitment efforts by the advertiser.

Relevant websites that attract the same target audiences as the advertiser but without competing with it are potential affiliate partners as well.

Vendors or existing customers can also become recruits if doing so makes sense and does not violate any laws or regulations (such as with pyramid schemes).

Almost any website could be recruited as an affiliate publisher, but high traffic websites are more likely interested in (for their sake) low-risk cost per mille or medium-risk cost per click deals rather than higher-risk cost per action or revenue share deals.[28] There are three primary ways to locate affiliate programs for a target website: If the above locations do not yield information pertaining to affiliates, it may be the case that there exists a non-public affiliate program.

Utilizing one of the common website correlation methods may provide clues about the affiliate network.

The most definitive method for finding this information is to contact the website owner directly if a contact method can be located.

Since the emergence of Affiliate marketing, there has been little control over affiliate activity.

Unscrupulous affiliates have used spam, false advertising, forced clicks (to get tracking cookies set on users' computers), adware, and other methods to drive traffic to their sponsors.

Although many affiliate programs have terms of service that contain rules against spam, this marketing method has historically proven to attract abuse from spammers.

In the infancy of Affiliate marketing, many Internet users held negative opinions due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled.[29] As Affiliate marketing matured, many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to prohibit affiliates from spamming.

A browser extension is a plug-in that extends the functionality of a web browser.

Some extensions are authored using web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Most modern web browsers have a whole slew of third-party extensions available for download.

In recent years, there has been a constant rise in the number of malicious browser extensions flooding the web.

Malicious browser extensions will often appear to be legitimate as they seem to originate from vendor websites and come with glowing customer reviews.[30] In the case of Affiliate marketing, these malicious extensions are often used to redirect a user's browser to send fake clicks to websites that are supposedly part of legitimate Affiliate marketing programs.

Typically, users are completely unaware this is happening other than their browser performance slowing down.

Websites end up paying for fake traffic numbers, and users are unwitting participants in these ad schemes.

As search engines have become more prominent, some affiliate marketers have shifted from sending e-mail spam to creating automatically generated web pages that often contain product data feeds provided by merchants.

The goal of such web pages is to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, also known as spamdexing.

Each page can be targeted to a different niche market through the use of specific keywords, with the result being a skewed form of search engine optimization.

Spam is the biggest threat to organic search engines, whose goal is to provide quality search results for keywords or phrases entered by their users.

Google's PageRank algorithm update ("BigDaddy") in February 2006—the final stage of Google's major update ("Jagger") that began in mid-summer 2005—specifically targeted spamdexing with great success.

This update thus enabled Google to remove a large amount of mostly computer-generated duplicate content from its index.[31] Websites consisting mostly of affiliate links have previously held a negative reputation for underdelivering quality content.

In 2005 there were active changes made by Google, where certain websites were labeled as "thin affiliates".[32] Such websites were either removed from Google's index or were relocated within the results page (i.e., moved from the top-most results to a lower position).

To avoid this categorization, affiliate marketer webmasters must create quality content on their websites that distinguishes their work from the work of spammers or banner farms, which only contain links leading to merchant sites.

Although it differs from spyware, adware often uses the same methods and technologies.

Merchants initially were uninformed about adware, what impact it had, and how it could damage their brands.

Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue much more quickly, especially because they noticed that adware often overwrites tracking cookies, thus resulting in a decline of commissions.

Affiliates not employing adware felt that it was stealing commission from them.

Adware often has no valuable purpose and rarely provides any useful content to the user, who is typically unaware that such software is installed on his/her computer.

Affiliates discussed the issues in Internet forums and began to organize their efforts.

They believed that the best way to address the problem was to discourage merchants from advertising via adware.

Merchants that were either indifferent to or supportive of adware were exposed by affiliates, thus damaging those merchants' reputations and tarnishing their Affiliate marketing efforts.

Many affiliates either terminated the use of such merchants or switched to a competitor's affiliate program.

Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban certain adware publishers from their network.

The result was Code of Conduct by Commission Junction/beFree and Performics,[33] LinkShare's Anti-Predatory Advertising Addendum,[34] and ShareASale's complete ban of software applications as a medium for affiliates to promote advertiser offers.[35] Regardless of the progress made, adware continues to be an issue, as demonstrated by the class action lawsuit against ValueClick and its daughter company Commission Junction filed on April 20, 2007.[36] Affiliates were among the earliest adopters of pay per click advertising when the first pay-per-click search engines emerged during the end of the 1990s.

Later in 2000 Google launched its pay per click service, Google AdWords, which is responsible for the widespread use and acceptance of pay per click as an advertising channel.

An increasing number of merchants engaged in pay per click advertising, either directly or via a search marketing agency, and realized that this space was already occupied by their affiliates.

Although this situation alone created advertising channel conflicts and debates between advertisers and affiliates, the largest issue concerned affiliates bidding on advertisers names, brands, and trademarks.[37] Several advertisers began to adjust their affiliate program terms to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on those type of keywords.

Some advertisers, however, did and still do embrace this behavior, going so far as to allow, or even encourage, affiliates to bid on any term, including the advertiser's trademarks.

Bloggers and other publishers may not be aware of disclosure guidelines set forth by the FTC.

Guidelines affect celebrity endorsements, advertising language, and blogger compensation.[38] Affiliate marketing currently lacks industry standards for training and certification.

There are some training courses and seminars that result in certifications; however, the acceptance of such certifications is mostly due to the reputation of the individual or company issuing the certification.

Affiliate marketing is not commonly taught in universities, and only a few college instructors work with Internet marketers to introduce the subject to students majoring in marketing.[39] Education occurs most often in "real life" by becoming involved and learning the details as time progresses.

Although there are several books on the topic, some so-called "how-to" or "silver bullet" books instruct readers to manipulate holes in the Google algorithm, which can quickly become out of date,[39] or suggest strategies no longer endorsed or permitted by advertisers.[citation needed] Outsourced Program Management companies typically combine formal and informal training, providing much of their training through group collaboration and brainstorming.

Such companies also try to send each marketing employee to the industry conference of their choice.[40] Other training resources used include online forums, weblogs, podcasts, video seminars, and specialty websites.

A code of conduct was released by affiliate networks Commission Junction/beFree and Performics in December 2002 to guide practices and adherence to ethical standards for online advertising.

In 2008 the state of New York passed a law asserting sales tax jurisdiction over Amazon.com sales to New York residents.

New York was aware of Amazon affiliates operating within the state.

In Quill Corp.

v.

North Dakota, the US Supreme Court ruled that the presence of independent sales representatives may allow a state to require sales tax collections.

New York determined that affiliates are such independent sales representatives.

The New York law became known as "Amazon's law" and was quickly emulated by other states.[41] While that was the first time states successfully addressed the internet tax gap, since 2018 states have been free to assert sales tax jurisdiction over sales to their residents regardless of the presence of retailer affiliates.[42] Many voucher code web sites use a click-to-reveal format, which requires the web site user to click to reveal the voucher code.

The action of clicking places the cookie on the website visitor's computer.

In the United Kingdom, the IAB Affiliate Council under chair Matt Bailey announced regulations[43] that stated that "Affiliates must not use a mechanism whereby users are encouraged to click to interact with content where it is unclear or confusing what the outcome will be."

Post-click marketing

Post-click marketing is emerging as a recognized practice that aims at improving sales and marketing results by focusing on website visitors when they respond to online marketing activities such as pay per click advertising, HTML e-mails, and paid searches with the objective on increasing conversion rates.[1] It is focused on those sources of traffic where someone clicks from such as display advertisements, keywords searching, email or social media links and so on.

It involves the theoretical models of behavioral marketing to create the profile of web visitor’s online behavior.

Therefore, figuring out the context of the target audience is the first step to making an effective Post-click marketing strategy.[2] Next, those clicked visitors should be segmented into different content and communication channels on basis of their needs and interests, so the navigation of the landing page is especially important for the final conversions.

The MECE principle can help the website segment the choices of visitors exhaustively.

During this period, READY frameworks in content marketing are suggested to adopt, making the content persuasive.

Besides, the presentation of the landing page including the positions, layouts, images and interaction features also contributes to the final conversions.[2] Finally, conversion optimisation involves many performance metrics such as CPA (cost per acquisition), AOV (average order value), ROAS (return on ad spend), LTV (lifetime value) and ROI (overall return on investment).

Post-click marketing can also increase its efficiency to create production and improvements continuously by integrating agile marketing practices.[2] Post-click marketing relies on specific software and services that go beyond the information collected by popular web analytic tools such as Google Analytics.

For example, they distinguish themselves in their ability to supplement IP addresses with data from third-party sources, enabling marketing managers to view the name of the company visiting their website, their location, and the industry they are in.

There are many ways in which this information gathered about website visitors can be used.

Marketers might wish to use the information to detect if they are attracting their desired target audience to their landing pages, or to personalize the content based on the visitor’s language or location.

Inside Sales tend to use it for lead generation purposes, writing emails to email contacts they can find for the visiting organization.

Post-click marketing solutions appeal on many fronts: These tools are not so much lead generation software but more data extraction tools that can assist the early stages of a lead generation process.

With pressure to generate more leads with small budgets, these services are likely to grow in usage.[3] If used properly, they provide a powerful insight to marketing executives who want to measure online campaigns based on the type of audiences they are attracting, and can be helpful in engaging visitors who normally go totally unidentified by sales and marketing.

Cost per impression

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM), is a term used in traditional advertising media selection, as well as online advertising and marketing related to web traffic.[1] It refers to the cost of traditional advertising or internet marketing or email advertising campaigns, where advertisers pay each time an ad is displayed.

CPI is the cost or expense incurred for each potential customer who views the advertisement(s), while CPM refers to the cost or expense incurred for every thousand potential customers who view the advertisement(s).[2] CPM is an initialism for cost per mille, with mille being Latin for thousand.

Cost per impression, along with pay-per-click (PPC) and cost per order, is used to assess the cost-effectiveness and profitability of online advertising.[2] CPI is the closest online advertising strategy to those offered in other media such as television, radio or print, which sell advertising based on estimated viewership, listenership or readership.

CPI provides a comparable measure to contrast internet advertising with other media.

An impression is the display of an ad to a user while viewing a web page.

A single web page may contain multiple ads.

In such cases, a single pageview would result in one impression for each ad displayed.

In order to count the impressions served as accurately as possible and prevent fraud, an ad server may exclude certain non-qualifying activities such as page-refreshes or other user actions from counting as impressions.

When advertising rates are described as CPM or CPI, this is the amount paid for every thousand qualifying impressions served at cost.

Cost per impression is derived from advertising costs and the number of impressions.

Cost per impression is often expressed as Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) to make the numbers easier to manage.[2]

Cost per lead

Cost per lead, often abbreviated as CPL, is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for an explicit sign-up from a consumer interested in the advertiser's offer.

It is also commonly called online lead generation.

Contrary to cost per mille (CPM) and cost per click (CPC) pricing models, where advertisers are charged for impressions (a.k.a.

"views") and clicks, respectively, in a CPL pricing model advertisers pay only for a qualified sign-up regardless of how many impressions or clicks their advertisement receives.

CPL advertising enables advertisers to generate guaranteed returns on their online advertising money.

There are two types of leads that advertisers can buy in the lead generation market: Sales leads and marketing leads.

Sales leads are generated on the basis of demographic criteria such as FICO score, income, age, HHI, etc.

These leads may be exclusive (sold only to one advertiser) or non-exclusive (sold to multiple advertisers).

Sales leads are typically followed-up through phone calls by the sales force and are commonly available for a wide range of verticals including mortgage, insurance and home services.

Marketing leads are brand-specific leads generated for a unique advertiser offer.

In direct contrast to sales leads, marketing leads are sold only once.

Because transparency is a necessary requisite for generating marketing leads, marketing lead campaigns can be optimized by mapping leads to their sources.

In recent times, due to the growth of transparency in the online lead generation market, the marketing leads segment of online lead generation segment has grown rapidly.

Fortune 500 marketers, non-profit organizations and political candidates such as the 2008 Obama campaign are using CPL advertising to build e-newsletter databases, community sites, and other acquisition programs with consumers that are passionate about their brands/causes.

In CPL campaigns, advertisers pay for an interested lead – i.e.

the contact information of a person interested in the advertiser's product or service.

CPL campaigns are suitable for brand marketers and direct response marketers looking to engage consumers at multiple touchpoints – by building a newsletter list, community site, reward program or member acquisition program.

In Cost per action campaigns (CPA), the advertiser typically pays for a completed sale involving a credit card transaction.

CPA is all about 'now' – it focuses on driving consumers to buy at that exact moment.

If a visitor to the website does not buy anything, there is no easy way to remarket to them.

There are other important differentiators: CPL advertising is more appropriate for advertisers looking to deploy acquisition campaigns by re-marketing to end consumers through e-newsletters, community sites, reward programs, loyalty programs and other engagement vehicles.

Content marketing

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.[1] It is often used by businesses in order to: Content marketing attracts prospects and transforms prospects into customers by creating and sharing valuable free content.

Content marketing helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty, provides valuable information to consumers, and creates a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.

This relatively new form of marketing does not involve direct sales.

Instead, it builds trust and rapport with the audience.[2] Unlike other forms of online marketing, Content marketing relies on anticipating and meeting an existing customer need for information, as opposed to creating demand for a new need.

As James O'Brien of Contently wrote on Mashable, "The idea central to Content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return.

Instead of the commercial, be the show.

Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story."[3] Content marketing requires continuous delivery of large amounts of content, preferably within a Content marketing strategy.[4] When businesses pursue Content marketing, the main focus should be the needs of the prospect or customer.

Once a business has identified the customer's need, information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, blogs, etc.[5] Most of these formats belong to the digital channel.

Digital Content marketing is a management process that uses electronic channels to identify, forecast, and satisfy the content requirements of a particular audience.

It must be consistently updated and added to in order to influence the behavior of customers.

Traditional marketers have long used content to disseminate information about a brand and build a brand's reputation.

Taking advantage of technological advances in transportation and communication, business owners started to apply Content marketing techniques in the late 19th century.

They also attempted to build connections with their customers.

For example: During the golden age of TV, between the 1940s and 1950s, advertising took over the media.

Companies focused on sales rather than connecting with the public.

There were few ventures into Content marketing and not many prominent campaigns.

During the baby boom era, Kellogg’s began selling sugary cereal to children.

With this change in business model came sociable animal mascots, lively animated commercials and the back of the cereal box as a form of targeted Content marketing.

Infographics were born in this era.

This represented a new approach to make a brand memorable with the audience.

In the 1990s, everything changed for marketers.

The arrival of computers and the Internet made websites and blogs flourish, and corporations found Content marketing opportunities through email.

E-commerce adaptations and digital distribution became the foundation of marketing strategy.

Internet also helped Content marketing become a mainstream form of marketing.

Traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, radio and TV started to lose their power in the marketplace.

Companies started to promote and sell their products digitally.[10] The phrase "Content marketing" was used as early as 1996,[11] when John F.

Oppedahl led a roundtable for journalists at the American Society for Newspaper Editors.

By the late 2000s, when social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube were born, online Content marketing was accessible, shareable and on-demand anytime worldwide.

By 2014, Forbes Magazine's website had written about the seven most popular ways companies use Content marketing.[14] In it, the columnist points out that by 2013, use of Content marketing had jumped across corporations from 60% a year or so before, to 93%[15] as part of their overall marketing strategy.

Despite the fact that 70% of organizations are creating more content, only 21% of marketers think they are successful at tracking return on investment.

Today, Content marketing has become a powerful model for marketers.

Storytelling is part of it, and they must convey the companies’ messages or goal to their desired audience without pushing them to just buy the product or service.

The rise of Content marketing has turned many traditional businesses into media publishing companies.[16] For example: The rise of Content marketing has also accelerated the growth of online platforms, such as YouTube, Yelp, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, and more.

For example: Businesses actively curate their content on these platforms with hopes to expand their reach to new audiences.

Part of transitioning to a media publishing mindset requires a change in structure and process to create content at the speed of culture.

The old model you see on shows like Mad Men is too slow and cumbersome.

By the time an idea becomes an ad, it is out of date.

Marketers are increasingly co-locating insights, creative, production, legal approval, and placement to increase interaction and speed in producing and distributing content.

Marketing content production is transforming from an advertising agency model to a newsroom model.[23] Metrics to determine the success of Content marketing are often tied to the original goals of the campaign.

For example, for each of these goals, a content marketer may measure the different engagement and conversion metrics: Businesses focused on expanding their reach to more customers will want to pay attention to the increase in the volume of visitors, as well as the quality of those interactions.

Traditional measures of volume include the number of visitors to a page and number of emails collected, while time spent on page and click-through to other pages/ photos are good indicators for engagement.

Businesses want to measure the impact that their messages have on consumers.

Brand health refers to the positive or negative feedback that a company gets.

It also measures how important a brand is for consumers.

With this companies want to find out if brand reputation influences their customers to make a purchase.[24] Measures in this part comprise For businesses hoping to reach not only more - but also new - types of customers online, they should pay attention to the demographics of new visitors, as evidenced by cookies that can be installed, different sources of traffic, different online behaviors, and/or different buying habits of online visitors.

Businesses focused on increasing sales through Content marketing should look at traditional e-commerce metrics including click-through-rate from a product-page to check-out and completion rates at the check-out.

Altogether, these form a conversion funnel.

Moreover, to better understand customers' buying habits, they should look at other engagement metrics like time spent per page, number of product-page visits per user, and re-engagement.

Refers to companies that want to analyze whether their social media campaigns are generating commentary among consumers.

This helps them to come up with ways to improve their product and service.

This involves "high level of brand engagement and builds brand loyalty".[26] Examples: Digital Content marketing, which is a management process, uses digital products through different electronic channels to identify, forecast and satisfy the necessity of the customers.[27] It must be consistently maintained to preserve or change the behavior of customers.[citation needed] Examples: The supply chain of digital Content marketing mainly consists of commercial stakeholders and end-user stakeholders which represent content providers and distributors and customers separately.[34] In this process, distributors manage the interface between the publisher and the consumer, then distributors could identify the content that consumers need through external channels and implement marketing strategies.

For instance, Library and document supply agencies as intermediaries can deliver the digital content of e-books, and e-journal articles to the users according to their search results through the electronic channels.

Another example is when consumers pay for the acquisition of some MP3 downloads, search engines can be used to identify different music providers and smart agents can be used by consumers to search for multiple music provider sites.

In a word, the digital Content marketing process needs to be conducted at the business level and service experience level because when consumers are accessing digital content, their own experience depends on the complex network of relationships in the Content marketing channels such as websites and videos.

The consumers interact directly with distributors in the big supply chain through various digital products which have an important role in meeting the requirements of the consumers.

The design and user experience of these channels directly decides the success of digital Content marketing.[27] Electronic services refer to interactive network services.[35] In the electronic service, the interaction between the customer and the organizations mainly through the network technology, such as using E-mail, telephone, online chat windows for communication.

Electronic services are different from traditional services and they are not affected by distance restrictions and opening hours.

Digital Content marketing through electronic service is usually served together with other channels to achieve marketing purposes including face-to-face, postal, and other remote services.

Information companies provide different messages and documents to customers who use multiple search engines on different sites and set up access rights for business groups.

These are some channels of digital Content marketing.[27]

Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads, Microsoft adCenter and MSN adCenter) is a service that provides pay per click advertising on both the Bing and Yahoo! search engines.

As of June 2015, Bing Ads has 33% market share in the United States.[1] Microsoft was the last of the "big three" search engines (which also includes Google and Yahoo!) to develop its own system for delivering pay per click (PPC) ads.

Until the beginning of 2006, all of the ads displayed on the MSN Search engine were supplied by Overture (and later Yahoo!).

MSN collected a portion of the ad revenue in return for displaying Yahoo!'s ads on its search engine.[2] As search marketing grew, Microsoft began developing its own system, MSN adCenter, for selling PPC advertisements directly to advertisers.

As the system was phased in, MSN Search (now Bing) showed Yahoo! and adCenter advertising in its search results.

Microsoft effort to create AdCenter was led by Tarek Najm, then general manager of the MSN division of Microsoft.

In June 2006, the contract between Yahoo! and Microsoft had expired and Microsoft was displaying only ads from adCenter until 2010.

In November 2006 Microsoft acquired DeepMetrix, a company situated in Gatineau, Canada, that created web-analytics software.

Microsoft has built new product adCenter Analytics based on the acquired technology.

In October, 2007 the Beta version of Microsoft Project Gatineau was released to a limited number of participants.[3][4] In May 2007, Microsoft agreed to purchase the digital marketing solutions parent company, aQuantive, for roughly $6 billion.[5] Microsoft later resold Atlas, a key piece of the aQuantive acquisition, to Facebook in 2013.[6] Microsoft acquired ScreenTonic on May 3, 2007,[7] AdECN on July 26, 2007,[8] and YaData on February 27, 2008 and merged their technologies into adCenter.[9] On February 23, 2009, Publisher Leadership Council was created under the umbrella of Microsoft Advertising.

The council was responsible to deliver the next-generation advertising platform for the publishers of digital media resulting in the formation of Microsoft pubCenter.[10] In January 2010, Microsoft announced a deal in which it would take over the functional operation of Yahoo! Search, and set up a joint venture to sell advertising on both Yahoo! Search and Bing known as the Microsoft Search Alliance.

A complete transition of all Yahoo! sponsored ad clients to Microsoft adCenter occurred in October 2010.[11] On September 10, 2012, adCenter was renamed to Bing Ads, and the Search Alliance was renamed the Yahoo! Bing Network.[12] In April 2015, the Yahoo! partnership was modified; Yahoo! Search will only have to feature Bing results on the "majority" of desktop traffic, leaving the company open to "enhance the search experience" non-exclusively on both desktop and mobile.

Additionally, Microsoft will take over as the exclusive seller of ads delivered through Bing; Yahoo! will sell its own ads through its new in-house Gemini platform.[13][14] On June 29, 2015, AOL Inc.

announced a deal and partnership to take over the majority of Microsoft's ad sales business.

Under the pact, AOL will take over the sale of display, video, and mobile ads on various Microsoft platforms in nine countries, including Brazil, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

As many as 1200 Microsoft employees involved with the business will be transferred to AOL.

In turn, AOL's properties will replace Google Search with Bing, and display Bing Ads sold by Microsoft.[15][16] In May 2018, Bing Ads released additional productivity and time-saving tools for users managing their campaigns via Bing Ads Editor.[17] On April 30, 2019, Bing Ads was re-branded to Microsoft Ads.[18] Similar to Google Ads, Microsoft Ads uses both the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay per click (PPC) on their ad and the advertisement's click-through rate (CTR) to determine how frequently an advertisement is shown.

This system encourages advertisers to write effective ads and to advertise only on searches which are relevant to their advertisement.

Microsoft Ads allows advertisers to target their ads by restricting their ads to a given set of demographics and by increasing their bids whenever the ad is seen by a user of a certain demographic.

As of November 2006, no other PPC advertising system has a similar feature.

Similarly, Microsoft Ads allows advertisers to run their ads on specific days of the week or certain times of day.

Similar to Google Ads Editor, Microsoft Ads provides a desktop tool to manage campaigns offline, called as Microsoft Ads Editor.

Using this editor you can make offline changes to your campaigns and later sync it online.

Microsoft Ads also provides APIs that can be used to manage advertising campaigns.

Pay per sale

Pay-per-sale or PPS (sometimes referred to as cost-per-sale or CPS) is an online advertisement pricing system where the publisher or website owner is paid on the basis of the number of sales that are directly generated by an advertisement.

It is a variant of the CPA (cost per action) model, where the advertiser pays the publisher and/or website owner in proportion to the number of actions committed by the readers or visitors to the website.[1] In many cases, it is impractical to track all the sales generated by an advertisement.

However, it is more easily tracked for full online transactions such as selling songs directly on the internet.

Unique identifiers, which can be stored in cookies or included in the URL, are used to track the movement of the prospective buyer to ensure that all such sales are attributed to the advertisement in question.

Some companies handle transactions "offline," meaning sales driven by online traffic are closed via inbound telephone calls or in person rather than online.

This model bridges the gap between online and offline platforms.[2] In these cases, a cookie-based rotating system of telephone numbers can be used to accurately trace a phone call to the source online visitor.

This way, a phone call that converts into business can be traced to the keyword search term that drove the phone call.

As a result, bids on the source traffic can be appropriately adjusted and managed.

Usually, it is the advertiser that determines what constitutes a valid lead or a qualified call to be paid.[2] Pay-per-Sale Search Engine Marketing is a variant of pay-per-sale, whereby the traffic source is largely search engine traffic such as that from Google's AdWords "pay-per-click" system.

The business model means that merchants no longer bear the cost of "pay-per-click"; instead, the "pay-per-sale" provider takes on the risk of conversion.

CPS belongs to the larger family of CPA, which is different from Cost Per Impression in which advertisers pay every time their advertisement is displayed, irrespective of whether the display created any action on the part of reader or visitor to the website or not.

Affiliate Networks usually offer the "pay-per-sale" business model and have done so since inception.

These are firms that manage affiliates for their clients and often work with websites that accept advertisements.[3] The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as retailer or brand), the network, the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate'), and the customer.

Typically, affiliate networks such as ValueClick or Commission Junction will connect merchants (advertisers) with publishers, or owners of sites, which can send traffic to the merchants' sites in exchange for a bounty, or commission for each sale delivered.[4] However, there is typically an upfront set-up fee, as well as monthly minimum charges for the advertiser, in addition to relatively stringent requirements around entry into the network to begin with.

An individual or an organization could also set up his or its own affiliate network.

This could address one of the risks of this model, which is less commitment on the part of the affiliates.[3]

Yahoo! Gemini

Overture (2001-2003) Yahoo! Search Marketing (2003-2009) Yahoo! Advertising (2009-2014) Yahoo! Gemini (now known as Verizon Media Native, formerly known as Yahoo! Advertising, and Yahoo! Search Marketing) is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo.

Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc.

(formerly GoTo.com).

GoTo.com was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service following previous attempts that were not well received.[1][2][3] GoTo.com (not to be confused with Go.com or Go2Net) was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service.[1][2][3] It started off with the purchase of World Wide Web Worm (WWWW), one of the oldest search engines.[4] GoTo.com is considered to have been an influential pioneer of paid search.[5][6] In February 1998, GoTo offered advertisers the option of bidding on how much they would be willing to pay to appear at the top of results in response to specific searches.

The bid amount was paid by the advertiser to GoTo every time a searcher clicked on a link to the advertiser's website.

By July 1998, advertisers were paying anything up to a dollar per click.

In June 1999, GoTo launched a tool set direct traffic centre (dtc) to enable advertisers access to keywords and real time bidding.

GoTo's business model was based on the idea that its paid listings would make it more relevant than other services, especially for general searches, and web sites that pay more are probably better sites.

A similar service had been offered by Open Text in 1996, but this precipitated outcries and bad publicity because searchers at the time did not want the search process more commercialized.

GoTo.com was the 19th most visited website by web traffic as of 1999.[7] In contrast, GoTo's pay-for-placement model was very successful.

Commentors theorised that the web had matured in the intervening two years, and these type of economic models were more acceptable since the web was no longer just a place for academic research, but also a place for buying products.

GoTo founder Bill Gross speculated at the launch that GoTo would succeed because, as a relatively new service, it had no reputation to taint with paid listings, unlike Open Text.

On October 8, 2001, GoTo.com, Inc.

renamed itself Overture Services, Inc.[8] GoTo's chief operating officer Jaynie Studenmund said "We also felt it was a sophisticated enough name, in case our products expand." Through partnerships, Overture enabled portals such as MSN and Yahoo to monetize the hundreds of millions of web searches made each day on their sites.

Indeed, these partnerships proved highly lucrative, and in a period otherwise marked by dot-com failures, Overture became a substantial profit driver for portals like Yahoo[9] This success enabled Overture to acquire web sites such as AltaVista and AlltheWeb.[10] On October 7, 2003, Overture was acquired by its biggest customer, Yahoo!, for $1.63 billion.[11][10] The old brand name of Overture was phased out as Yahoo rebranded many of its products under the Yahoo name.

The exception to this was in Japan and Korea where the local businesses continued to use the Overture brand.

In May 1999, GoTo.com filed a patent application titled "System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine".

The patent was granted as US 6269361 in July 2001.

A related patent has also been granted in Australia and other patent applications remain pending.

Prior to its acquisition by Yahoo, Overture initiated infringement proceedings under this patent against FindWhat.com in January 2002 and Google in April 2002.[12] The lawsuit against Google related to its AdWords service.

In February 2002, Google introduced a service called AdWords Select that allowed marketers to bid for higher placement in marked sections - a tactic that had some similarities to Overture's search-listing auctions.

Following Yahoo's acquisition of Overture, the lawsuit was settled with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo in exchange for a perpetual license.[13] In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Lens.com, Inc.

v.

1-800 Contacts, Inc.

that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit trademark infringement when it purchased Yahoo and Google AdWords search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its search advertising trademark enforcement practices have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act.

1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and was scheduled to appear before an FTC administrative law judge in April 2017.[14] In April 2003, Overture announced a three-year partnership with Gator Corporation, (now Claria Corporation) an adware company.

Under the partnership, Gator's software monitored a web-user's activity on web sites and search engines (even sites such as Google that are not affiliated with Overture) and grabbed search keywords.

These keywords were submitted to the Overture search engine.

As a result, advertisers who paid for listings in Overture found their products advertised through Gator's Search Scout software, even if they wanted nothing to do with Gator.

Overture faced a great deal of criticism for entering into this partnership.[15] When Yahoo acquired Overture, the Claria software impaired the operation of Yahoo's services.

For example, when a user with a Claria application installed used Yahoo Search, they received a standard set of Yahoo results with sponsored listings at the top supplied by Overture.

The user would then receive a full-screen pop-under window from Search Scout.

Since Search Scout uses Overture's paid listings as well, Claria's window has exactly the same listings as the Yahoo search results.[16] Subsequently, Yahoo came out with the Yahoo Toolbar, which allows users to remove adware and spyware from their system.

The toolbar affected the operation of Claria's software and may have put stress on the relationship between the two companies.[17]

Online presence management

Online presence management is the process of presenting and drawing traffic to a personal or professional brand online.

This process combines web design and development, blogging, search engine optimization, pay per click marketing, reputation management, directory listings, social media, link sharing, and other avenues to create a long-term positive presence for a person, organization, or product in search engines and on the web in general.

Online presence management is distinct from web presence management in that the former is generally a marketing and messaging discipline while the latter is Governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) discipline.

Due to the evolving nature of Internet use, a web site alone is not sufficient to promote most brands.

To maintain a web presence and brand recognition, individuals and companies need to use a combination of social tools such as Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, and Pinterest, as well as cultivating a brand presence on mobile apps and other online databases.

The Online presence management process starts by determining goals that will define an online strategy.

Once this strategy is put in place, an ongoing and constant process of evaluating and fine-tuning is necessary to drive online presence towards the identified goals.[citation needed] An Online presence management strategy has several parts.

Generally these will include search engine placement (making sure the brand appears high in search engine results when the end user has a relevant query), monitoring online discussion around the brand, and analyzing the brand's overall web presence.

Online profile or reputation is a sum of multiple activities and platforms.

It includes following: Online portfolio helps build visibility of a brand or individual.

It works as a centralized hub for all the activities related to the brand and includes, contact info, about the brand (history, vision etc.) and a product showcase.

The Web portfolio ranges in type.

The most common form of portfolio is the website.

A website, usually built on the same domain as the brand's name, represents the business/person throughout the web.

However, there are niche-based portfolio websites too that help brands reach out to a more targeted audience through purpose built features and spot on galleries to brag about their work and achievement.

A blog provides the brand a way to express.

It allows the brand to talk and get their voice/opinion heard on any topic they choose.

Blogging can promote a brand through consistent, interesting content generation associated with a particular brand or the market brand caters to.

Blogs can be created on the website or on third party platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Quora, Wordpress, Blogger.com and Medium, etc.

Apart from conventional blogging, social media enabled Microblogging (through services such as Twitter and Tumblr) is particularly effective in establishing a brand name and build recognition through interaction with masses.

It is also a quick way to respond to brand-related complaints and queries.

Search Engine Optimization is one of the most popular technique to build traction and turn a web page into a revenue generation machine.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO allows companies or individuals to: Search engines use a spider or a crawler to gather listings by automatically "crawling" the web.

The spider follows links to web pages, makes copies of the pages, and stores them in the search engine's index.

Based on this data, the search engines then index the pages and rank the websites accordingly.

Major search engines that index pages using spiders are Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, and Lycos.

Some methods that help optimize a web page for the search engine include: Internet advertising is a form of broadcasting and promotion of products, ideas, or services using the Internet to attract customers.

Internet advertising has overtaken other traditional advertising media such as newspapers, magazines, and radio.

Internet advertising targets users interested in relevant keywords and displays a text or image ad next to search results or within social media.

Reputation management is the process of tracking actions and opinions, looking for positive and negative reviews that reflect the opinion of the users about any particular service or product, and removing negative opinions (if any) and converting them into positive ones.

It is important, however, not to attack or try to obscure negative opinions through devious means, as this is likely to have an overall negative effect on the brand.

A better strategy is to respond to complaints with information and an apologetic attitude, cultivating later positive reviews.

Social media marketing uses social media platforms to create and foster communities and relationships.

Social media marketing is focused on creating content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share content with their social networks.

Social messages are often effective because they usually come from a trusted, third-party source, rather than the brand itself.

Understanding what tools are available and how to use them effectively is key to success in social media marketing.

Some of these tools include: Many of the tools listed above are often found in a social media management system.

This is a collection of procedures used to manage workflow in a disparate social media environment.

These procedures can be manual or computer-based and enable the manager (or managing team) to listen, aggregate, publish, and manage multiple social media channels from one tool.[1] The common features of a social media management system include access control, content libraries, publishing and scheduling, workflow, aggregation, mention listening, sentiment, analytic and archival functionality.

Jeremiah Owyang is often attributed with defining this term while he was working at Altimeter Group, now part of Prophet.[citation needed]

Pay for placement

Cost per mille

Cost per mille (CPM), also called cost per thousand (CPT) (in Latin, French and Italian, mille means one thousand), is a commonly used measurement in advertising.

It is the cost an advertiser pays for one thousand views or clicks of an advertisement.[1] Radio, television, newspaper, magazine, out-of-home advertising, and online advertising can be purchased on the basis of exposing the ad to one thousand viewers or listeners.

It is used in marketing as a benchmarking metric to calculate the relative cost of an advertising campaign or an ad message in a given medium.[2][3] The "cost per thousand advertising impressions" metric (CPM) is calculated by dividing the cost of an advertising placement by the number of impressions (expressed in thousands) that it generates.

CPM is useful for comparing the relative efficiency of various advertising opportunities or media and in evaluating the overall costs of advertising campaigns.[4] For media without countable views, CPM reflects the cost per 1000 estimated views of the ad.

This traditional form of measuring advertising cost can also be used in tandem with performance based models such as percentage of sale, or cost per acquisition (CPA).

The purpose of the CPM metric is to compare the costs of advertising campaigns within and across different media.

A typical advertising campaign might try to reach potential consumers in multiple locations and through various media.

The cost per thousand impressions (CPM) metric enables marketers to make cost comparisons between these media, both at the planning stage and during reviews of past campaigns.[4] Marketers calculate CPM by dividing advertising campaign costs by the number of impressions (or opportunities-to-see) that are delivered by each part of the campaign.

Thus, CPM is the cost of a media campaign, relative to its success in generating impressions to see.

As the impression counts are generally sizeable, marketers customarily work with the CPM impressions.

Dividing by 1,000 is an industry-standard.[4] Similarly, revenue can be expressed in terms of Revenue per mille (RPM).[5] To calculate CPM, marketers first state the results of a media campaign (gross impressions).

Second, they divide that result into the relevant media cost: For example: Note: Notice how the CPM is $6.25 and not $0.00625, this is because we are looking at cost per thousand.

The Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) defines eCPM as: In internet marketing, effective Cost per mille is used to measure the effectiveness of a publisher's inventory being sold (by the publisher) via a CPA, CPC, or Cost per time basis.

In other words, the eCPM tells the publisher what they would have received if they sold the advertising inventory on a CPM basis (instead of a CPA, CPC, or Cost per time).

This information can be used to compare revenue across channels that may have widely varying traffic—by figuring the earnings per thousand impressions.

Example This shows that: CPP is the cost of an advertising campaign, relative to the rating points delivered.

In a manner similar to CPM, cost per point measures the cost per rating point for an advertising campaign by dividing the cost of the advertising by the rating points delivered.[4] The American Marketing Association defines cost-per-rating point (CPR or CPRP) as:

Click-through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement.

It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns.[1][2] Click-through rates for ad campaigns vary tremendously.

The very first online display ad shown for AT&T on the website HotWired in 1994, had a 44% Click-through rate.[3] With time, the overall rate of user's clicks on webpage banner ads has decreased.

The purpose of Click-through rates is to measure the ratio of clicks to impressions of an online ad or email marketing campaign.

Generally the higher the CTR the more effective the marketing campaign has been at bringing people to a website.[4] Most commercial websites are designed to elicit some sort of action, whether it be to buy a book, read a news article, watch a music video, or search for a flight.

People rarely visit websites with the intention of viewing advertisements, in the same way that few people watch television to view the commercials.[5] While marketers want to know the reaction of the web visitor, with current technology it is nearly impossible to quantify the emotional reaction to the site and the effect of that site on the firm's brand.

However, Click-through rate is an easy piece of data to acquire.

The Click-through rate measures the proportion of visitors who initiated an advertisement that redirected them to another page where they might purchase an item or learn more about a product or service.

Forms of interaction with advertisements other than clicking is possible, but rare; "Click-through rate" is the most commonly used term to describe the efficacy of an advert.[5] The Click-through rate of an advertisement is the number of times a click is made on the ad, divided by the number of times the ad is "served", that is, shown (also called impressions), expressed as a percentage: Click-through rates for banner ads have decreased over time.[6] When banner ads first started to appear, it was not uncommon to have rates above five percent.

They have fallen since then, currently averaging closer to 0.2 or 0.3 percent.[7] In most cases, a 2% Click-through rate would be considered very successful, though the exact number is hotly debated and would vary depending on the situation.

The average Click-through rate of 3% in the 1990s declined to 2.4%–0.4% by 2002.[8] Since advertisers typically pay more for a high Click-through rate, getting many click-throughs with few purchases is undesirable to advertisers.[7] Similarly, by selecting an appropriate advertising site with high affinity (e.g., a movie magazine for a movie advertisement), the same banner can achieve a substantially higher CTR.

Though personalized ads, unusual formats, and more obtrusive ads typically result in higher Click-through rates than standard banner ads, overly intrusive ads are often avoided by viewers.[8][9] Modern online advertising has moved beyond just using banner ads.

Popular search engines allow advertisers to display ads in with the search results triggered by a search user.

These ads are usually in text format and may include additional links and information like phone numbers, addresses and specific product pages.[10] This additional information moves away from the poor user experience that can be created from intrusive banner ads and provides useful information to the search user, resulting in higher Click-through rates for this format of pay-per-click Advertising.

Having high Click-through rate isn't the only goal for an online advertiser, who may develop campaigns to raise awareness for the overall gain of valuable traffic, sacrificing some Click-through rate for that purpose.

Search engine advertising has become a significant element of the Web browsing experience.

Choosing the right ads for the query and the order in which they are displayed greatly affects the probability that a user will see and click on each ad.

This ranking has a strong impact on the revenue the search engine receives from the ads.

Further, showing the user an ad that they prefer to click on improves user satisfaction.

For these reasons, there is an increasing interest in accurately estimating the Click-through rate of ads in a recommender system.[citation needed] An email Click-through rate is defined as the number of recipients who click one or more links in an email and landed on the sender's website, blog, or other desired destination.

More simply, email Click-through rates represent the number of clicks that your email generated.[11][12] Email Click-through rate is expressed as a percentage, and calculated by dividing the number of click throughs by the number of tracked message deliveries.[13] Most email marketers use this metrics along with open rate, bounce rate and other metrics, to understand the effectiveness and success of their email campaign.[14] In general there is no ideal Click-through rate.

This metric can vary based on the type of email sent, how frequently emails are sent, how the list of recipients is segmented, how relevant the content of the email is to the audience, and many other factors.[15] Even time of day can affect Click-through rate.

Sunday appears to generate considerably higher Click-through rates on average when compared to the rest of the week.[16] Every year various types of research studies are conducted to track the overall effectiveness of Click-through rates in email marketing.[17][18] Experts on Search engine optimization (SEO) have claimed since the mid-2010s that Click-through rate has an impact on organic rankings.

Numerous case studies have been published to support this theory.

Proponents supporting this theory often claim that Click-through rate is a ranking signal for Google's RankBrain algorithm.

In a video interview with Dan Petrovic, he states, "There is absolutely no shadow of a doubt that CTR is a ranking signal.

CTR is not only a ranking signal, CTR is essential to Google’s self-analytics."[19] In an article by Neil Patel, Patel quotes Matt Cutts saying, "It doesn’t really matter how often you show up.

It matters how often you get clicked on..." He also cites a study where a 20% increase in Click-through rates resulted in 30% more organic clicks.[20] Opponents of this theory claim Click-through rate has little or no impact on organic rankings.

Bartosz Góralewicz published the results of an experiment on Search Engine Land where he claims, "Despite popular belief, Click-through rate is not a ranking factor.

Even massive organic traffic won’t affect your website’s organic positions."[21] More recently, Barry Schwartz wrote on Search Engine Land, "...Google has said countless times, in writing, at conferences, that CTR is not used in their ranking algorithm."[22]

Impression (online media)

An impression (in the context of online advertising) is when an ad is fetched from its source, and is countable.

Whether the ad is clicked is not taken into account.[1] Each time an ad is fetched, it is counted as one impression.[2] Because of the possibility of click fraud, robotic activity is usually filtered and excluded, and a more technical definition is given for accounting purposed by the IAB, a standards and watchdog industry group: "Impression" is a measurement of responses from a Web server to a page request from the user browser, which is filtered from robotic activity and error codes, and is recorded at a point as close as possible to opportunity to see the page by the user.[3][4] Counting impressions is the method by which most Web advertising is accounted and paid for, and the cost is quoted in CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or CPI (cost per impression).

(Contrast CPC, which is the cost per click and not impression-based).

A movement is underway to move from the current standard of served impressions, to a new standard of viewable impressions.[5][6][7] The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) have joined forces in an initiative called 3MS (Making Measurement Make Sense), with the purpose of better defining the value of display media.[8]

AppNexus

AppNexus is an American multinational technology company operating a cloud-based software platform that aims to enable and optimize programmatic online advertising.[1] Headquartered in the Flatiron District of New York City, the company has 23 offices in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

AppNexus offers online auction infrastructure and technology for data management, optimization, financial clearing and support for directly negotiated advertising campaigns.

It has both demand-side platform (DSP) and supply-side platform (SSP) functionalities.

It integrates with advertising sources including Google's DoubleClick, Microsoft's AdECN, engage:BDR and other aggregators.[2][3] It operates out of multiple data centers, including one in Amsterdam serving Europe and the Middle East, in a facility shared with Equinix.[4] In 2016, AppNexus was ranked #21 on Forbes Magazine's "The Cloud 100" list.[5] In June 2018, AT&T announced it was acquiring the company and putting it under its Xandr division as a subsidiary.[6] AppNexus was reportedly sold for $1.6 billion while most news outlets speculated the company did not sell for less than $2 billion.

[7] AppNexus was founded by former Right Media staff, CTO Brian O'Kelley, and Mike Nolet, product manager and director of analytics,[8] with Michael Rubenstein, a former vice president and general manager at Google DoubleClick, who joined AppNexus as president in September 2009.[9] The company was financially backed by Microsoft, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Venrock,[10] Kodiak Venture Partners, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Ron Conway; as of 2015 the company had raised $250 million in financing.

O'Kelley stepped down as CEO in October 2018.[11]

Online advertising

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers.

Many consumers find Online advertising disruptive[1] and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons.

When software is used to do the purchasing, it is known as programmatic advertising.

Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising.

Like other advertising media, Online advertising frequently involves a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content.

Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser.

In 2016, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and broadcast television.[2]:14 In 2017, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $83.0 billion, a 14% increase over the $72.50 billion in revenues in 2016.[3] Many common Online advertising practices are controversial and, as a result, have been increasingly subject to regulation.

Online ad revenues also may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams.

Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to place their content behind paywalls.[4] In early days of the Internet, Online advertising was mostly prohibited.

For example, two of the predecessor networks to the Internet, ARPANET and NSFNet, had "acceptable use policies" that banned network "use for commercial activities by for-profit institutions".[5][6] The NSFNet began phasing out its commercial use ban in 1991.[7][8][9][10] The first widely publicized example of Online advertising was conducted via electronic mail.

On 3 May 1978, a marketer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Gary Thuerk, sent an email to most of the ARPANET's American west coast users, advertising an open house for a new model of a DEC computer.[6][11] Despite the prevailing acceptable use policies, electronic mail marketing rapidly expanded[12] and eventually became known as "spam." The first known large-scale non-commercial spam message was sent on 18 January 1994 by an Andrews University system administrator, by cross-posting a religious message to all USENET newsgroups.[13] In January 1994 Mark Eberra started the first email marketing company for opt in email list under the domain Insideconnect.com.

He also started the Direct Email Marketing Association to help stop unwanted email and prevent spam.

[14] [15] Four months later, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, broadly promoted their legal services in a USENET posting titled "Green Card Lottery – Final One?"[16] Canter and Siegel's Green Card USENET spam raised the profile of Online advertising, stimulating widespread interest in advertising via both Usenet and traditional email.[13] More recently, spam has evolved into a more industrial operation, where spammers use armies of virus-infected computers (botnets) to send spam remotely.[11] Online banner advertising began in the early 1990s as page owners sought additional revenue streams to support their content.

Commercial online service Prodigy displayed banners at the bottom of the screen to promote Sears products.

The first clickable web ad was sold by Global Network Navigator in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm.[17] In 1994, web banner advertising became mainstream when HotWired, the online component of Wired Magazine, and Time Warner's Pathfinder (website)[18] sold banner ads to AT&T and other companies.

The first AT&T ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate, and instead of directing clickers to AT&T's website, the ad linked to an online tour of seven of the world's most acclaimed art museums.[19][20] GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search advertising keyword auction in 1998.[21]:119 Google launched its "AdWords" (now renamed Google Ads) search advertising program in 2000[22] and introduced quality-based ranking allocation in 2002,[23] which sorts search advertisements by a combination of bid price and searchers' likeliness to click on the ads.[21]:123 More recently, companies have sought to merge their advertising messages into editorial content or valuable services.

Examples include Red Bull's Red Bull Media House streaming Felix Baumgartner's jump from space online, Coca-Cola's online magazines, and Nike's free applications for performance tracking.[20] Advertisers are also embracing social media[24][25] and mobile advertising; mobile ad spending has grown 90% each year from 2010 to 2013.[26]:13 According to Ad Age Datacenter analysis, in 2017 over half of agency revenue came from digital work.[27] Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics.

Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect.

Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer.

Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.[28] As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed profile of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising.

This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting.[29] Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear.[21]:118 Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.[30] Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting.

A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region).

The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.[31] For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers.[32] Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further.[31] Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page.

Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs.

Frame ads were the first form of web banners.[19] The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads.

Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.[33] A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window.[34] A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.[26]:22 Pop-under ads and similar technologies are now advised against by online authorities such as Google, who state that they "do not condone this practice".[35] A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content.

Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a pre-set time period.

An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad.[36] Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space.

A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks.[37] Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch.[38][39] Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.[40] "News Feed Ads", also called "Sponsored Stories", "Boosted Posts", typically exist on social media platforms that offer a steady stream of information updates ("news feed"[41]) in regulated formats (i.e.

in similar sized small boxes with a uniform style).

Those advertisements are intertwined with non-promoted news that the users are reading through.

Those advertisements can be of any content, such as promoting a website, a fan page, an app, or a product.

Some examples are: Facebook's "Sponsored Stories",[42] LinkedIn's "Sponsored Updates",[43] and Twitter's "Promoted Tweets".[44] This display ads format falls into its own category because unlike banner ads which are quite distinguishable, News Feed Ads' format blends well into non-paid news updates.

This format of online advertisement yields much higher click-through rates than traditional display ads.[45][46] The process by which Online advertising is displayed can involve many parties.

In the simplest case, the website publisher selects and serves the ads.

Publishers which operate their own advertising departments may use this method.

The ads may be outsourced to an advertising agency under contract with the publisher, and served from the advertising agency's servers.

Alternatively, ad space may be offered for sale in a bidding market using an ad exchange and real-time bidding.

This involves many parties interacting automatically in real time.

In response to a request from the user's browser, the publisher content server sends the web page content to the user's browser over the Internet.

The page does not yet contain ads, but contains links which cause the user's browser to connect to the publisher ad server to request that the spaces left for ads be filled in with ads.

Information identifying the user, such as cookies and the page being viewed, is transmitted to the publisher ad server.

The publisher ad server then communicates with a supply-side platform server.

The publisher is offering ad space for sale, so they are considered the supplier.

The supply side platform also receives the user's identifying information, which it sends to a data management platform.

At the data management platform, the user's identifying information is used to look up demographic information, previous purchases, and other information of interest to advertisers.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of data obtained through such a data management platform: This customer information is combined and returned to the supply side platform, which can now package up the offer of ad space along with information about the user who will view it.

The supply side platform sends that offer to an ad exchange.

The ad exchange puts the offer out for bid to demand-side platforms.

Demand side platforms act on behalf of ad agencies, who sell ads which advertise brands.

Demand side platforms thus have ads ready to display, and are searching for users to view them.

Bidders get the information about the user ready to view the ad, and decide, based on that information, how much to offer to buy the ad space.

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, a demand side platform has 10 milliseconds to respond to an offer.

The ad exchange picks the winning bid and informs both parties.

The ad exchange then passes the link to the ad back through the supply side platform and the publisher's ad server to the user's browser, which then requests the ad content from the agency's ad server.

The ad agency can thus confirm that the ad was delivered to the browser.[49] This is simplified, according to the IAB.

Exchanges may try to unload unsold ("remnant") space at low prices through other exchanges.

Some agencies maintain semi-permanent pre-cached bids with ad exchanges, and those may be examined before going out to additional demand side platforms for bids.

The process for mobile advertising is different and may involve mobile carriers and handset software manufacturers.[49] An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load.[50] Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.[51][52] A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks.

Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to the advertiser's websites.

Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing.

Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.[53] Search engine marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query.[21]:117 Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results.

Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords.

The primary reason behind the rising popularity of Search Engine Marketing has been Google.

There were a few companies that had its own PPC and Analytics tools.

However, this concept was popularized by Google.

Google Ad words was convenient for advertisers to use and create campaigns.

And, they realized that the tool did a fair job, by charging only for someone's click on the ad, which reported as the cost-per-click for which a penny was charged.

This resulted in the advertisers monitoring the campaign by the number of clicks and were satisfied that the ads could be tracked.[54] Search engine optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms.

Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers.[55][56] Many vendors offer SEO services.[26]:22 Sponsored search (also called sponsored links, search ads, or paid search) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords.

Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords.[21]:118[57] In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints.[21]:118 Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids.[21]:119 Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.[23] Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites.

Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.Videos, interactive quizzes, and sponsored posts are all a part of this operation.

Usually these ads are found on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.[58] Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers.

Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, "advergaming," or application sponsorship).[26]:23 Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general Online advertising.[52] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons.

There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively.[26]:14 The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers.[26]:14 In July 2014 Facebook reported advertising revenue for the June 2014 quarter of $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 percent over the second quarter of 2013.

Of that, mobile advertising revenue accounted for around 62 percent, an increase of 41 percent on the previous year.

Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message.[26]:22 Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in).

Businesses may ask for your email and send updates on new products or sales.

As opposed to static messaging, chat advertising refers to real-time messages dropped to users on certain sites.

This is done using live chat software or tracking applications installed within certain websites with the operating personnel behind the site often dropping adverts on the traffic surfing around the sites.

In reality, this is a subset of the email advertising but different because of its time window.

Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services.

Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and online auction-based listings.[26]:22 Craigslist and eBay are two prominent providers of online classified listings.

Adware is software that, once installed, automatically displays advertisements on a user's computer.

The ads may appear in the software itself, integrated into web pages visited by the user, or in pop-ups/pop-unders.[59] Adware installed without the user's permission is a type of malware.[60] Affiliate marketing occurs when advertisers organize third parties to generate potential customers for them.

Third-party affiliates receive payment based on sales generated through their promotion.[26]:22 Affiliate marketers generate traffic to offers from affiliate networks, and when the desired action is taken by the visitor, the affiliate earns a commission.

These desired actions can be an email submission, a phone call, filling out an online form, or an online order being completed.

Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.

This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blogs, news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides and more.

Considering that most marketing involves some form of published media, it is almost (though not entirely) redundant to call 'content marketing' anything other than simply 'marketing'.

There are, of course, other forms of marketing (in-person marketing, telephone-based marketing, word of mouth marketing, etc.) where the label is more useful for identifying the type of marketing.

However, even these are usually merely presenting content that they are marketing as information in a way that is different from traditional print, radio, TV, film, email, or web media.

Online marketing platform (OMP) is an integrated web-based platform that combines the benefits of a business directory, local search engine, search engine optimisation (SEO) tool, customer relationship management (CRM) package and content management system (CMS).

eBay and Amazon are used as online marketing and logistics management platforms.

On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other Social Media, retail online marketing is also used.

Online business marketing platforms such as Marketo, MarketBright and Pardot have been bought by major IT companies (Eloqua-Oracle, Neolane-Adobe and Unica-IBM).

Unlike television marketing in which Neilsen TV Ratings can be relied upon for viewing metrics, online advertisers do not have an independent party to verify viewing claims made by the big online platforms.[61] Advertisers and publishers use a wide range of payment calculation methods.

In 2012, advertisers calculated 32% of Online advertising transactions on a cost-per-impression basis, 66% on customer performance (e.g.

cost per click or cost per acquisition), and 2% on hybrids of impression and performance methods.[26]:17 Cost per mille, often abbreviated to CPM, means that advertisers pay for every thousand displays of their message to potential customers (mille is the Latin word for thousand).

In the online context, ad displays are usually called "impressions." Definitions of an "impression" vary among publishers,[62] and some impressions may not be charged because they don't represent a new exposure to an actual customer.

Advertisers can use technologies such as web bugs to verify if an impression is actually delivered.[63][64]:59 Similarly, revenue generated can be measured in Revenue per mille (RPM).[65] Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else's content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.[66] CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud," and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.[67]:1–4 CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad.

CPC advertising works well when advertisers want visitors to their sites, but it's a less accurate measurement for advertisers looking to build brand awareness.[68] CPC's market share has grown each year since its introduction, eclipsing CPM to dominate two-thirds of all Online advertising compensation methods.[26]:18[67]:1 Like impressions, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers.

GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50% of clicks on static mobile banner ads are accidental and resulted in redirected visitors leaving the new site immediately.[69] Cost per engagement aims to track not just that an ad unit loaded on the page (i.e., an impression was served), but also that the viewer actually saw and/or interacted with the ad.[70][71] Cost per view video advertising.

Both Google and TubeMogul endorsed this standardized CPV metric to the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it's garnering a notable amount of industry support.[72] CPV is the primary benchmark used in YouTube Advertising Campaigns, as part of Google's AdWords platform.

The CPI compensation method is specific to mobile applications and mobile advertising.

In CPI ad campaigns brands are charged a fixed of bid rate only when the application was installed.

In marketing, "attribution" is the measurement of effectiveness of particular ads in a consumer's ultimate decision to purchase.

Multiple ad impressions may lead to a consumer "click" or other action.

A single action may lead to revenue being paid to multiple ad space sellers.[73] CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPP (Pay Per Performance) advertising means the advertiser pays for the number of users who perform a desired activity, such as completing a purchase or filling out a registration form.

Performance-based compensation can also incorporate revenue sharing, where publishers earn a percentage of the advertiser's profits made as a result of the ad.

Performance-based compensation shifts the risk of failed advertising onto publishers.[67]:4, 16 Fixed cost compensation means advertisers pay a fixed cost for delivery of ads online, usually over a specified time period, irrespective of the ad's visibility or users' response to it.

One examples is CPD (cost per day) where advertisers pay a fixed cost for publishing an ad for a day irrespective of impressions served or clicks.

The low costs of electronic communication reduce the cost of displaying online advertisements compared to offline ads.

Online advertising, and in particular social media, provides a low-cost means for advertisers to engage with large established communities.[58] Advertising online offers better returns than in other media.[67]:1 Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of the potential audience or actual audience response,[21]:119 how a visitor reached their advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually loaded within a visitor's view.[63][64]:59 This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns over time.

Advertisers have a wide variety of ways of presenting their promotional messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links.

Unlike many offline ads, online ads also can be interactive.[20] For example, some ads let users input queries[74] or let users follow the advertiser on social media.[75] Online ads can even incorporate games.[76] Publishers can offer advertisers the ability to reach customizable and narrow market segments for targeted advertising.

Online advertising may use geo-targeting to display relevant advertisements to the user's geography.

Advertisers can customize each individual ad to a particular user based on the user's previous preferences.[30] Advertisers can also track whether a visitor has already seen a particular ad in order to reduce unwanted repetitious exposures and provide adequate time gaps between exposures.[77] Online advertising can reach nearly every global market, and Online advertising influences offline sales.[78][79][80] Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately.

The delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher's publication schedule.

Furthermore, online advertisers can modify or replace ad copy more rapidly than their offline counterparts.[81] According to a US Senate investigation, the current state of Online advertising endangers the security and privacy of users.[82] Eye-tracking studies have shown that Internet users often ignore web page zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called "banner blindness"), and this problem is worse online than in offline media.[83] On the other hand, studies suggest that even those ads "ignored" by the users may influence the user subconsciously.[84] There are numerous ways that advertisers can be overcharged for their advertising.

For example, click fraud occurs when a publisher or third parties click (manually or through automated means) on a CPC ad with no legitimate buying intent.[85] For example, click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on ads to deplete its rival's advertising budget, or when publishers attempt to manufacture revenue.[85] Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites.

In 2011, certain scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer, forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's knowledge.[86] As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers.

To combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are developing ways to count online impressions credibly.[87][88] Because users have different operating systems, web browsers[89] and computer hardware (including mobile devices and different screen sizes), online ads may appear to users differently from how the advertiser intended, or the ads may not display properly at all.

A 2012 comScore study revealed that, on average, 31% of ads were not "in-view" when rendered, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen.[90] Rich media ads create even greater compatibility problems, as some developers may use competing (and exclusive) software to render the ads (see e.g.

Comparison of HTML 5 and Flash).

Furthermore, advertisers may encounter legal problems if legally required information doesn't actually display to users, even if that failure is due to technological heterogeneity.[91]:i In the United States, the FTC has released a set of guidelines indicating that it's the advertisers' responsibility to ensure the ads display any required disclosures or disclaimers, irrespective of the users' technology.[91]:4–8 Ad blocking, or ad filtering, means the ads do not appear to the user because the user uses technology to screen out ads.

Many browsers block unsolicited pop-up ads by default.[92] Other software programs or browser add-ons may also block the loading of ads, or block elements on a page with behaviors characteristic of ads (e.g.

HTML autoplay of both audio and video).

Approximately 9% of all online page views come from browsers with ad-blocking software installed,[93] and some publishers have 40%+ of their visitors using ad-blockers.[4] Some web browsers offer privacy modes where users can hide information about themselves from publishers and advertisers.

Among other consequences, advertisers can't use cookies to serve targeted ads to private browsers.

Most major browsers have incorporated Do Not Track options into their browser headers, but the regulations currently are only enforced by the honor system.[94][95][96] The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised consumer concerns about their privacy.[31][64] Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given an opportunity.[97][98] Over half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.[99] Many consumers have reservations about online behavioral targeting.

By tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite well.

Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to maximize their abilities to track consumers.[64]:60[100] According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent.[101][102] Consumers can be especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such as financial or health status.[100] Furthermore, some advertisers attach the MAC address of users' devices to their 'demographic profiles' so they can be retargeted (regardless of the accuracy of the profile) even if the user clears their cookies and browsing history.[citation needed] Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online persona's identity,[103]:1 leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to those from a well-known brand owner)[104] and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419" scam.[105][106][107] The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012, totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.[108][109] Consumers also face malware risks, i.e.

malvertising, when interacting with Online advertising.

Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn.[110][111] For example, in August 2014 Yahoo's advertising network reportedly saw cases of infection of a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.[112] The Internet's low cost of disseminating advertising contributes to spam, especially by large-scale spammers.

Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labeling to content filters, but most of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.[6] In general, consumer protection laws apply equally to online and offline activities.[91]:i However, there are questions over which jurisdiction's laws apply and which regulatory agencies have enforcement authority over transborder activity.[113] As with offline advertising, industry participants have undertaken numerous efforts to self-regulate and develop industry standards or codes of conduct.

Several United States advertising industry organizations jointly published Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising based on standards proposed by the FTC in 2009.[114] European ad associations published a similar document in 2011.[115] Primary tenets of both documents include consumer control of data transfer to third parties, data security, and consent for collection of certain health and financial data.[114]:2–4 Neither framework, however, penalizes violators of the codes of conduct.[116] Privacy regulation can require users' consent before an advertiser can track the user or communicate with the user.

However, affirmative consent ("opt in") can be difficult and expensive to obtain.[64]:60 Industry participants often prefer other regulatory schemes.

Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to privacy issues with advertising.

The United States has specific restrictions on online tracking of children in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),[114]:16–17 and the FTC has recently expanded its interpretation of COPPA to include requiring ad networks to obtain parental consent before knowingly tracking kids.[117] Otherwise, the U.S.

Federal Trade Commission frequently supports industry self-regulation, although increasingly it has been undertaking enforcement actions related to online privacy and security.[118] The FTC has also been pushing for industry consensus about possible Do Not Track legislation.

In contrast, the European Union's "Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive" restricts websites' ability to use consumer data much more comprehensively.

The EU limitations restrict targeting by online advertisers; researchers have estimated Online advertising effectiveness decreases on average by around 65% in Europe relative to the rest of the world.[64]:58 Many laws specifically regulate the ways online ads are delivered.

For example, Online advertising delivered via email is more regulated than the same ad content delivered via banner ads.

Among other restrictions, the U.S.

CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that any commercial email provide an opt-out mechanism.[113] Similarly, mobile advertising is governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), which (among other restrictions) requires user opt-in before sending advertising via text messaging.

Digital marketing

Digital marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services.[1][2] Its development during the 1990s and 2000s, changed the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing.

As digital platforms became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life,[3] and as people increasingly use digital devices instead of visiting physical shops,[4][5] Digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e–books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace.

Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold mobile ring tones.[6] The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates Digital marketing from online marketing.[7] The development of Digital marketing is inseparable from technology development.

One of the key points in the start of was in 1971, where Ray Tomlinson sent the very first email and his technology set the platform to allow people to send and receive files through different machines.[8] However, the more recognisable period as being the start of Digital marketing is 1990 as this was where the Archie search engine was created as an index for FTP sites.

In the 1980s, the storage capacity of computer was already big enough to store huge volumes of customer information.

Companies started choosing online techniques, such as database marketing, rather than limited list broker.[9] These kinds of databases allowed companies to track customers' information more effectively, thus transforming the relationship between buyer and seller.

However, the manual process was not as efficient.

In the 1990s, the term Digital marketing was first coined,.[10] With the debut of server/client architecture and the popularity of personal computers, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications became a significant factor in marketing technology.[11] Fierce competition forced vendors to include more service into their software, for example, marketing, sales and service applications.

Marketers were also able to own huge online customer data by eCRM software after the Internet was born.

Companies could update the data of customer needs and obtain the priorities of their experience.

This led to the first clickable banner ad being going live in 1994, which was the "You Will" campaign by AT&T and over the first four months of it going live, 44% of all people who saw it clicked on the ad.[12][13] In the 2000s, with increasing numbers of Internet users and the birth of iPhone, customers began searching products and making decisions about their needs online first, instead of consulting a salesperson, which created a new problem for the marketing department of a company.[14] In addition, a survey in 2000 in the United Kingdom found that most retailers had not registered their own domain address.[15] These problems encouraged marketers to find new ways to integrate digital technology into market development.

In 2007, marketing automation was developed as a response to the ever evolving marketing climate.

Marketing automation is the process by which software is used to automate conventional marketing processes.[16] Marketing automation helped companies segment customers, launch multichannel marketing campaigns, and provide personalized information for customers.[16] However, the speed of its adaptability to consumer devices was not fast enough.

Digital marketing became more sophisticated in the 2000s and the 2010s, when[17][18] the proliferation of devices' capable of accessing digital media led to sudden growth.[19] Statistics produced in 2012 and 2013 showed that Digital marketing was still growing.[20][21] With the development of social media in the 2000s, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, consumers became highly dependent on digital electronics in daily lives.

Therefore, they expected a seamless user experience across different channels for searching product's information.

The change of customer behavior improved the diversification of marketing technology.[22] Digital marketing is also referred to as 'online marketing', 'internet marketing' or 'web marketing'.

The term Digital marketing has grown in popularity over time.

In the USA online marketing is still a popular term.

In Italy, Digital marketing is referred to as web marketing.

Worldwide Digital marketing has become the most common term, especially after the year 2013.[23] Digital media growth was estimated at 4.5 trillion online ads served annually with digital media spend at 48% growth in 2010.[24] An increasing portion of advertising stems from businesses employing Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) to tailor advertising for internet users, but OBA raises concern of consumer privacy and data protection.[19] Nonlinear marketing, a type of interactive marketing, is a long-term marketing approach which builds on businesses collecting information about an Internet user's online activities, and trying to be visible in multiple areas.[25][26] Unlike traditional marketing techniques, which involve direct, one-way messaging to consumers (via print, television and radio advertising), nonlinear Digital marketing strategies are centered on reaching prospective customers across multiple online channels.[27] Combined with higher consumer knowledge and the demand for more sophisticated consumer offerings, this change has forced many businesses to rethink their outreach strategy and adopt or incorporate omnichannel, nonlinear marketing techniques to maintain sufficient brand exposure, engagement and reach.[28] Nonlinear marketing strategies involve efforts to adapt the advertising to different platforms,[29] and to tailor the advertising to different individual buyers rather than a large coherent audience.[26] Tactics may include: Some studies indicate that consumer responses to traditional marketing approaches are becoming less predictable for businesses.[30] According to a 2018 study, nearly 90% of online consumers in the United States researched products and brands online before visiting the store or making a purchase.[31] The Global Web Index estimated that in 2018, a little more than 50% of consumers researched products on social media.[32] Businesses often rely on individuals portraying their products in a positive light on social media, and may adapt their marketing strategy to target people with large social media followings in order to generate such comments.[33] In this manner, businesses can use consumers to advertise their products or services, decreasing the cost for the company.[34] One of the key objectives of modern Digital marketing is to raise brand awareness, the extent to which customers and the general public are familiar with and recognize a particular brand.

Enhancing brand awareness is important in Digital marketing, and marketing in general, because of its impact on brand perception and consumer decision-making.

According to the 2015 essay, “Impact of Brand on Consumer Behavior”: “Brand awareness, as one of the fundamental dimensions of brand equity, is often considered to be a prerequisite of consumers’ buying decision, as it represents the main factor for including a brand in the consideration set.

Brand awareness can also influence consumers’ perceived risk assessment and their confidence in the purchase decision, due to familiarity with the brand and its characteristics.”[35] Recent trends show that businesses and digital marketers are prioritizing brand awareness, focusing more of their Digital marketing efforts on cultivating brand recognition and recall than in previous years.

This is evidenced by a 2019 Content Marketing Institute study, which found that 81% of digital marketers have worked on enhancing brand recognition over the past year.[36] Another Content Marketing Institute survey revealed 89% of B2B marketers now believe improving brand awareness to be more important than efforts directed at increasing sales.[37] Increasing brand awareness is a focus of Digital marketing strategy for a number of reasons: Digital marketing strategies may include the use of one or more online channels and techniques (omnichannel) to increase brand awareness among consumers.[45] Building brand awareness may involve such methods/tools as: Search engine optimization techniques may be used to improve the visibility of business websites and brand-related content for common industry-related search queries.[46] The importance of SEO to increasing brand awareness is said to correlate with the growing influence of search results and search features like featured snippets, knowledge panels and local SEO on customer behavior.[47] SEM, also known as PPC advertising, involves the purchase of ad space in prominent, visible positions atop search results pages and websites.

Search ads have been shown to have a positive impact on brand recognition, awareness and conversions.[48] 33% of searchers who click on paid ads do so because they directly respond to their particular search query.[49] 70% of marketers list increasing brand awareness as their number one goal for marketing on social media platforms.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube are listed as the top platforms currently used by social media marketing teams.[50] 56% of marketers believe personalized content – brand-centered blogs, articles, social updates, videos, landing pages – improves brand recall and engagement.[51] According to Mentionlytics, an active and consistent content strategy that incorporates elements of interactive content creation, social posting and guest blogging can improve brand awareness and loyalty by 88%.[52] One of the major changes that occurred in traditional marketing was the "emergence of Digital marketing" (Patrutiu Baltes, Loredana, 2015), this led to the reinvention of marketing strategies in order to adapt to this major change in traditional marketing (Patrutiu Baltes, Loredana, 2015).

As Digital marketing is dependent on technology which is ever-evolving and fast-changing, the same features should be expected from Digital marketing developments and strategies.

This portion is an attempt to qualify or segregate the notable highlights existing and being used as of press time.[when?] To summarize, Pull Digital marketing is characterized by consumers actively seeking marketing content while Push Digital marketing occurs when marketers send messages without that content being actively sought by the recipients.

An important consideration today while deciding on a strategy is that the digital tools have democratized the promotional landscape.

The new digital era has enabled brands to selectively target their customers that may potentially be interested in their brand or based on previous browsing interests.

Businesses can now use social media to select the age range, location, gender and interests of whom they would like their targeted post to be seen by.

Furthermore, based on a customer's recent search history they can be ‘followed’ on the internet so they see advertisements from similar brands, products and services,[58] This allows businesses to target the specific customers that they know and feel will most benefit from their product or service, something that had limited capabilities up until the digital era.

Digital marketing activity is still growing across the world according to the headline global marketing index.

A study published in September 2018, found that global outlays on Digital marketing tactics are approaching $100 billion.[59] Digital media continues to rapidly grow; while the marketing budgets are expanding, traditional media is declining (World Economics, 2015).[60] Digital media helps brands reach consumers to engage with their product or service in a personalised way.

Five areas, which are outlined as current industry practices that are often ineffective are prioritizing clicks, balancing search and display, understanding mobiles, targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic, and cross-platform measurement (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Why these practices are ineffective and some ways around making these aspects effective are discussed surrounding the following points.

Prioritizing clicks refers to display click ads, although advantageous by being ‘simple, fast and inexpensive’ rates for display ads in 2016 is only 0.10 percent in the United States.

This means one in a thousand click ads are relevant therefore having little effect.

This displays that marketing companies should not just use click ads to evaluate the effectiveness of display advertisements (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Balancing search and display for digital display ads are important; marketers tend to look at the last search and attribute all of the effectiveness to this.

This, in turn, disregards other marketing efforts, which establish brand value within the consumers mind.

ComScore determined through drawing on data online, produced by over one hundred multichannel retailers that digital display marketing poses strengths when compared with or positioned alongside, paid search (Whiteside, 2016).[61] This is why it is advised that when someone clicks on a display ad the company opens a landing page, not its home page.

A landing page typically has something to draw the customer in to search beyond this page.

Things such as free offers that the consumer can obtain through giving the company contact information so that they can use retargeting communication strategies (Square2Marketing, 2012).[62] Commonly marketers see increased sales among people exposed to a search ad.

But the fact of how many people you can reach with a display campaign compared to a search campaign should be considered.

Multichannel retailers have an increased reach if the display is considered in synergy with search campaigns.

Overall both search and display aspects are valued as display campaigns build awareness for the brand so that more people are likely to click on these digital ads when running a search campaign (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Understanding Mobiles: Understanding mobile devices is a significant aspect of Digital marketing because smartphones and tablets are now responsible for 64% of the time US consumers are online (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Apps provide a big opportunity as well as challenge for the marketers because firstly the app needs to be downloaded and secondly the person needs to actually use it.

This may be difficult as ‘half the time spent on smartphone apps occurs on the individuals single most used app, and almost 85% of their time on the top four rated apps’ (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Mobile advertising can assist in achieving a variety of commercial objectives and it is effective due to taking over the entire screen, and voice or status is likely to be considered highly; although the message must not be seen or thought of as intrusive (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Disadvantages of digital media used on mobile devices also include limited creative capabilities, and reach.

Although there are many positive aspects including the users entitlement to select product information, digital media creating a flexible message platform and there is potential for direct selling (Belch & Belch, 2012).[63] Cross-platform measurement: The number of marketing channels continues to expand, as measurement practices are growing in complexity.

A cross-platform view must be used to unify audience measurement and media planning.

Market researchers need to understand how the Omni-channel affects consumer's behaviour, although when advertisements are on a consumer's device this does not get measured.

Significant aspects to cross-platform measurement involves deduplication and understanding that you have reached an incremental level with another platform, rather than delivering more impressions against people that have previously been reached (Whiteside, 2016).[61] An example is ‘ESPN and comScore partnered on Project Blueprint discovering the sports broadcaster achieved a 21% increase in unduplicated daily reach thanks to digital advertising’ (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Television and radio industries are the electronic media, which competes with digital and other technological advertising.

Yet television advertising is not directly competing with online digital advertising due to being able to cross platform with digital technology.

Radio also gains power through cross platforms, in online streaming content.

Television and radio continue to persuade and affect the audience, across multiple platforms (Fill, Hughes, & De Franceso, 2013).[64] Targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic: Targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic all are aspects used by marketers to help advocate digital advertising.

Cookies are a form of digital advertising, which are tracking tools within desktop devices; causing difficulty, with shortcomings including deletion by web browsers, the inability to sort between multiple users of a device, inaccurate estimates for unique visitors, overstating reach, understanding frequency, problems with ad servers, which cannot distinguish between when cookies have been deleted and when consumers have not previously been exposed to an ad.

Due to the inaccuracies influenced by cookies, demographics in the target market are low and vary (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Another element, which is affected within Digital marketing, is ‘viewabilty’ or whether the ad was actually seen by the consumer.

Many ads are not seen by a consumer and may never reach the right demographic segment.

Brand safety is another issue of whether or not the ad was produced in the context of being unethical or having offensive content.

Recognizing fraud when an ad is exposed is another challenge marketers face.

This relates to invalid traffic as premium sites are more effective at detecting fraudulent traffic, although non-premium sites are more so the problem (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Digital marketing Channels are systems based on the Internet that can create, accelerate, and transmit product value from producer to a consumer terminal, through digital networks.[65][66] Digital marketing is facilitated by multiple Digital marketing channels, As an advertiser one's core objective is to find channels which result in maximum two-way communication and a better overall ROI for the brand.

There are multiple Digital marketing channels available namely;[67] It is important for a firm to reach out to consumers and create a two-way communication model, as Digital marketing allows consumers to give back feed back to the firm on a community based site or straight directly to the firm via email.[80] Firms should seek this long term communication relationship by using multiple forms of channels and using promotional strategies related to their target consumer as well as word-of mouth marketing.[80] The ICC Code has integrated rules that apply to marketing communications using digital interactive media throughout the guidelines.

There is also an entirely updated section dealing with issues specific to digital interactive media techniques and platforms.

Code self-regulation on use of digital interactive media includes: Digital marketing planning is a term used in marketing management.

It describes the first stage of forming a Digital marketing strategy for the wider Digital marketing system.

The difference between digital and traditional marketing planning is that it uses digitally based communication tools and technology such as Social, Web, Mobile, Scannable Surface.[84][85] Nevertheless, both are aligned with the vision, the mission of the company and the overarching business strategy.[86] Using Dr Dave Chaffey's approach, the Digital marketing planning (DMP) has three main stages: Opportunity, Strategy and Action.

He suggests that any business looking to implement a successful Digital marketing strategy must structure their plan by looking at opportunity, strategy and action.

This generic strategic approach often has phases of situation review, goal setting, strategy formulation, resource allocation and monitoring.[86] To create an effective DMP, a business first needs to review the marketplace and set 'SMART' (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Time-Bound) objectives.[87] They can set SMART objectives by reviewing the current benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs) of the company and competitors.

It is pertinent that the analytics used for the KPIs be customised to the type, objectives, mission and vision of the company.[88][89] Companies can scan for marketing and sales opportunities by reviewing their own outreach as well as influencer outreach.

This means they have competitive advantage because they are able to analyse their co-marketers influence and brand associations.[90] To cease opportunity, the firm should summarize their current customers' personas and purchase journey from this they are able to deduce their Digital marketing capability.

This means they need to form a clear picture of where they are currently and how many resources they can allocate for their Digital marketing strategy i.e.

labour, time etc.

By summarizing the purchase journey, they can also recognise gaps and growth for future marketing opportunities that will either meet objectives or propose new objectives and increase profit.

To create a planned digital strategy, the company must review their digital proposition (what you are offering to consumers) and communicate it using digital customer targeting techniques.

So, they must define online value proposition (OVP), this means the company must express clearly what they are offering customers online e.g.

brand positioning.

The company should also (re)select target market segments and personas and define digital targeting approaches.

After doing this effectively, it is important to review the marketing mix for online options.

The marketing mix comprises the 4Ps – Product, Price, Promotion and Place.[91][92] Some academics have added three additional elements to the traditional 4Ps of marketing Process, Place and Physical appearance making it 7Ps of marketing.[93] The third and final stage requires the firm to set a budget and management systems; these must be measurable touchpoints, such as audience reached across all digital platforms.

Furthermore, marketers must ensure the budget and management systems are integrating the paid, owned and earned media of the company.[94] The Action and final stage of planning also requires the company to set in place measurable content creation e.g.

oral, visual or written online media.[95] After confirming the Digital marketing plan, a scheduled format of digital communications (e.g.

Gantt Chart) should be encoded throughout the internal operations of the company.

This ensures that all platforms used fall in line and complement each other for the succeeding stages of Digital marketing strategy.

One way marketers can reach out to consumers, and understand their thought process is through what is called an empathy map.

An empathy map is a four step process.

The first step is through asking questions that the consumer would be thinking in their demographic.

The second step is to describe the feelings that the consumer may be having.

The third step is to think about what the consumer would say in their situation.

The final step is to imagine what the consumer will try to do based on the other three steps.

This map is so marketing teams can put themselves in their target demographics shoes.[96] Web Analytics are also a very important way to understand consumers.

They show the habits that people have online for each website.[97] One particular form of these analytics is predictive analytics which helps marketers figure out what route consumers are on.

This uses the information gathered from other analytics, and then creates different predictions of what people will do so that companies can strategize on what to do next, according to the peoples trends.[98] The "sharing economy" refers to an economic pattern that aims to obtain a resource that is not fully utilized.[101] Nowadays, the sharing economy has had an unimagined effect on many traditional elements including labor, industry, and distribution system.[101] This effect is not negligible that some industries are obviously under threat.[101][102] The sharing economy is influencing the traditional marketing channels by changing the nature of some specific concept including ownership, assets, and recruitment.[102] Digital marketing channels and traditional marketing channels are similar in function that the value of the product or service is passed from the original producer to the end user by a kind of supply chain.[103] Digital marketing channels, however, consist of internet systems that create, promote, and deliver products or services from producer to consumer through digital networks.[104] Increasing changes to marketing channels has been a significant contributor to the expansion and growth of the sharing economy.[104] Such changes to marketing channels has prompted unprecedented and historic growth.[104] In addition to this typical approach, the built-in control, efficiency and low cost of Digital marketing channels is an essential features in the application of sharing economy.[103] Digital marketing channels within the sharing economy are typically divided into three domains including, e-mail, social media, and search engine marketing or SEM.[104] Other emerging Digital marketing channels, particularly branded mobile apps, have excelled in the sharing economy.[104] Branded mobile apps are created specifically to initiate engagement between customers and the company.This engagement is typically facilitated through entertainment, information, or market transaction.[104]

Compensation methods

Compensation methods (remuneration), are pricing models and business models used for the different types of Internet marketing, including affiliate marketing, contextual advertising, search engine marketing (including vertical comparison shopping search engines and local search engines) and display advertising.

The following models are also referred to as performance based pricing/compensation model, because they only pay if a visitor performs an action that is desired by the advertisers or completes a purchase.

Advertisers and publishers share the risk of a visitor that does not convert.

Cost-per-action or cost-per-acquisition (CPA), cost per lead (CPL).

Advertiser pays publisher a commission for every visitor referred by the publisher to the advertiser (web site) and performs a desired action, such as filling out a form, creating an account or signing up for a newsletter.

This compensation model is very popular with online services from internet service providers, cell phone providers, banks (loans, mortgages, credit cards) and subscription services.

Similar to pay per click, pay per call is a business model for ad listings in search engines and directories that allows publishers to charge local advertisers on a per-call basis for each lead (call) they generate (CPA).

Advertiser pays publisher a commission for phone calls received from potential prospects as response to a specific publisher ad.

The term "pay per call" is sometimes confused with click-to-call, the technology that enables the "pay-per-call" business model.

Call-tracking technology allows creation of a bridge between online and offline advertising.

Click-to-call is a service which lets users click a button or link and immediately speak with a customer service representative.

The call can either be carried over VoIP, or the customer may request an immediate call back by entering their phone number.

One significant benefit to click-to-call providers is that it allows companies to monitor when online visitors change from the website to a phone sales channel.

Pay-per-call is not just restricted to local advertisers.

Many pay-per-call search engines allows advertisers with a national presence to create ads with local telephone numbers.

Pay-per-call advertising is still new and in its infancy, but according to the Kelsey Group, the pay-per-phone-call market is expected to reach US$3.7 billion by 2010.[citation needed] Advertiser pays publisher a commission for every install by a user of usually free applications bundled with adware applications.

Users are prompted first if they really want to download and install this software.

Pay per install is included in the definition for pay per action (like cost-per-acquisition), but its relationship to how adware is distributed made the use of this term versus pay per action more popular to distinguish it from other CPA offers that pay for software downloads.

The term pay per install is being used beyond the download of adware.[1] Some botnets are known to operate PPI scams to generate money for their operators.

Essentially, the compromised computer with the bot agent is instructed to install the software package from a registered PPI source via the bot's command and control system.

The bot operator then receives payment from the PPI agency and, after a short period of time, uninstalls the software package and installs a new one.[2] Cost-per-click (CPC).

Advertiser pays publisher a commission every time a visitor clicks on the advertiser's ad.

It is irrelevant (for the compensation) how often an ad is displayed.

commission is only due when the ad is clicked.

See also click fraud.

Cost-per-action (CPA).

Search engines started to experiment with this compensation method in spring 2007.

Cost-per-mil (or, per thousand) impressions.

Publisher earns a commission for every 1,000 impressions (page views/displays) of text, banner image or rich media ads.

Cost-per-action (CPA).

Used by display advertising as pricing mode as early as 1998.[3] By mid-2007 the CPA/Performance pricing mode (50%) superseded the CPM pricing mode (45%) and became the dominant pricing mode for display advertising.[4] Shared Cost-per-mil (CPM) is a pricing model in which two or more advertisers share the same ad space for the duration of a single impression (or page view) in order to save CPM costs.

Publishers offering a shared CPM pricing model generally offer a discount to compensate for the reduced exposure received by the advertisers that opt to share online ad space in this way.

Inspired by the rotating billboards of outdoor advertising, the shared CPM pricing model can be implemented with either refresh scripts (client-side JavaScript) or specialized rich media ad units.

Publishers that opt to offer a shared CPM pricing model with their existing ad management platforms must employ additional tracking methods to ensure accurate impression counting and separate click-through tracking for each advertiser that opts to share a particular ad space with one or more other advertisers.

See PPC/CPC in Search engine marketing.

see PPI/CPM in Display Advertising Google AdSense offers this compensation method for its "Advertise on this site" feature that allows advertisers to target specific publisher sites within the Google content network.

There are different names used for the same type of compensation method and some Compensation methods are actually special cases for another method.

This grid shows alternative names for the individual Compensation methods.

The "cost per ..." name was used as default.

how pay per click marketing works

Pay per click programs allow you to acquire a position in search engines by choosing the price you want to pay for each visitor you receive.

So far, pay per click marketing is the most direct marketing strategy ever invented.

Through pay per click, this could place you in the list where you want to be.

the basics of pay per click search engine marketing

This article talks about pay per click search engine marketing.

Also, it finds out the benefits of hiring a pay per click agency.Marketing and promoting your goods or services over the web is both incredibly effective and greatly competitive.

Further, there is a great deal of ways to go about magnetizing traffic to your site; Pay Per Click is one of the alternatives you can select from, together with building an search engine optimization, or SEO campaign.

Both Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing and search engine optimization are aimed to get your website put as near to the top of search engine results as probable.

One of the distinctions is that it consumes minutes to create a PPC campaign versus months for a fine search engine optimization campaign.PPC is an easy kind of paid marketing that most search engines, consisting of some of the biggest ones, now provide.

It needs a bid for a ‘per click’ basis that translates to your firm paying the bid sum each time the search engine deviates a visitor to your website.

There is the extra advantage that when a per click website gets your website traffic, your site more often than not comes out in the results of other ubiquitous search engines.

You can hire a Pay Per Click Agency for this task.Like all promotion campaigns, there are pros and cons.

In case you comprehend the procedure and keep an eye on your PPC campaign often, it could be extremely effective.

One of the best benefits is that you never need to tweak your web pages to modify your place in search engine results, seeing that you are required to do in a classic search engine optimization campaign.

What you carry out to do in a PPC campaign is shell out a fee.Another benefit is the ease of the PPC procedure.

You merely bid and you are up & running.

It does not require any particular technical knowledge, nevertheless the more you comprehend about search engines as well as keywords, the simpler - and more efficient - the procedure would be.The disadvantage is that PPC is in effect bidding combat.

A greater bid than yours would lower your place on SE results.

This implies that you would require lifting up your bid to recover your position - which could visibly become pretty dear, particularly if you are bidding on a trendy keyword.So as to determine if PPC is an inexpensive type of advertising for your business, you are required to do some computing to decipher how much each visitor to your site is worth.

Moreover, you could calculate this value by dividing the revenue you make over your site over a certain period of time by the whole number of visitors for that similar time period.

For instance, if your website made $3,000 in earnings and there were 1,5000 hits, every visitor will be supposedly value 50 cents.

The fundamental formula is earnings divided by visitors.The number of 50 cents for each visitor is the spot at which your commerce breaks even.

The thought, certainly, is to display an earning, not to only cover your prices.

Hence, you are focusing at a figure less than 50 cents for each click.Be alert that the most common keywords often cost significantly over 50 cents a click.

The mere way is to bid less for these phrases or you would be paying too much for every separate hit.The answer to success is to learn the whole thing you can about SE keyword research.

The great news is there is not a limit to the quantity of keywords you could input to your bid since extra keywords do not add extra charge.

This translates into loads of less hassle for you for the reason that there is no require optimizing your website to index a specific set of keywords and keyword phrases.Clearly, a few keywords are much more efficient as compared to others; nonetheless they would not charge you anything apart from time to establish your account in your PPC bid.

Of the major search engines which provide Pay Per Click, one known as Overture offers a web tool which would offer you the data on how frequently specific keywords are come into their search engine.

They moreover provide suggestions for keywords once you put in a description of your website.In Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing, this written description is vital.

You are required to comprehend that the object of your description is not to usually magnetize visitors, nevertheless to be as particular as possible in order that merely those visitors who are inclined to purchase your goods or service go to your website.���

how to explode your click through rate of article marketing

If you�re looking to learn how to improve or increase click through rate of article marketing, you�re going to have to adhere to a few pieces of advice that can help you out.

These tips can see your low rates to getting a nice passive click through rate....

how much should you pay for pay per click

Sometimes known as Pay Per Click advertising, pay per click is an example of internet marketing wherein advertisers pay whenever an ad is clicked.

the pros and cons of pay per click marketing

Pay per click marketing is probably the single most prevalent form of internet marketing today.

In fact it has become one of the most important forms of marketing period.

But there are both pros and cons to this form of marketing that you should be aware of.

how to make pay per click marketing work for you

You may not have considered pay per click marketing before but it can be a great way to get people to your website.

Read on to find out how to approach this for maximum success.

ppc marketing popular method of advertisement on the web

PPC marketing or pay per click marketing is the most popular method of advertisement employed by various websites on the Internet.

PPC marketing may often be referred to as pay for position, cost per click or pay for performance.

But regardless of the term used, PPC marketing is the online advertiser's medium of choice for promoting products and services to online consumers.

guide to pay per click management and social media marketing

Businesses of all kinds looking to enhance their online marketing locally or worldwide whether through pay per click advertising or social media marketing can meet their professional needs by seeking the expert services of Dev Digital.

affiliate program marketing using pay per click

Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the four types of Search Engine Marketing.

PPC is also one of the most cost-effective ways of targeted affiliate program marketing.

promoting your online business through social media platforms

There are numerous Internet Marketing strategies you can employ to make your online business successful.

Some of the most popular ones include article marketing, pay-per-click advertising, forum marketing, and email marketing.

To achieve success through these Internet Marketing platforms, online business owners need to diligently track click-throughs and conversion rates.

kids and their techie devices how can parents keep up

In a world of technology that well surpasses anything that has ever been experienced by any generation in the past, how can parents keep up?� Just about every time you turn around that teenager is on the laptop, home computer, or on their cell phone�click, click, click�.

Laugh�click, click, click�and on it seems to continue forever.�

7 effective ways of marketing to increase the click through rate of your article

With the availability of thousands of articles online, marketing your article and increasing the click through rates may seem a daunting task.� With determination and hard work however, you can do it ...

internet marketing with pay per click advertising

Most people have been exposed to pay per click ads on the internet at one time or another.

Some search engines that specialize in pay per click will put these ads on the top of their search results and list them as sponsored or featured links.

why pay per click marketing is still effective for conversion

The pay per click marketing is one of the best and effective marketing that helps the business to promote their product and get more business leads.�When we talking about digital marketing so one thing comes in our mind that pay per click marketing because of this more effective digital marketing services as compare to other digital marketing.

The pay per click marketing is only working when the process of implementation is well and the selection of the keywords is more accurate.The pay per click marketing works for the business more effectively because it only works for the business to lead generation.

The cost will deduct on the basis of the click.

On the pay per click marketing, the ad will show only the keyword that you chose and the customer will click in your and your website will open.What is pay per click marketing?The pay per click marketing is a type of marketing that will work on search engines and will affect only the user who will click your ad.

It is very cost-effective to compare to other marketing sources.The pay per click as well known as search engine marketing�that works on the result of search engines that give for a particular quarry.

Its target on search engines mainly and search engines show this ad on their search quarry.Why pay per click marketing is still effective?This is one of the best marketing platforms that gives the proper result and helps the business to attract more customers.The pay per click marketing is very cost-effective its works only on the clicks of the add.

From the beginning of the Campion, the cost will only be deducted after clicking the ad.

This is very cost-effective among other digital marketing.

The pay per click marketing gives the best result in very little time.The pay per click marketing is very fast and it gives the result in very little time.

After creating the ad Campion the ad will run and the ad will run till your selected budget will expire.

This is very fast and the result will come very quickly once the customer will click on the ad and the ad will transfer you to the website or mobile number and the customer will call you.On the ad Campion, the company will monitor your ad Campion like where the click will come what time will click most on the website, what worries the customers will search, what is the age, like, dislike, the gender of the customers.

All of the detail will get a company while doing this process.The pay per click marketing is very result-oriented it gives the best result for the user and the company will promote their services by using this.

It directly works on the demand of the customers because the customer search something when they needed anything so at that time the customer directly click on the ad and will call on that company.Overall pay per click marketing is very important for the business because of its products very effective result.

Nowadays all most all of the companies are using this for getting the business.

The CA in Mumbai�said the result will come is more accurate and many companies get the benefit in this.

5 sure steps to explode any affiliate marketing commissions with ppc

Affiliate marketing through pay per click advertisements is still one of the best method's of bringing in profits for a home based entrepreneur.

You get paid for every click on your advertisement placed and then the prospect purchases your affiliate product.

Pay Per Click Marketing

Video search engine

Metasearch engine

A Metasearch engine (or search aggregator) is an online Information retrieval tool that uses the data of a web search engine to produce its own results.[1][2] Metasearch engines take input from a user and immediately query search engines for results.

Sufficient data is gathered, ranked, and presented to the users.

Problems such as spamming reduces the accuracy and precision of results.[3] The process of fusion aims to improve the engineering of a Metasearch engine.[4] Examples of Metasearch engines include Skyscanner and Kayak.com, which aggregate search results of online travel agencies and provider websites and Excite, which aggregates results from internet search engines.

The first person to incorporate the idea of meta searching was Daniel Dreilinger of Colorado State University .

He developed SearchSavvy, which let users search up to 20 different search engines and directories at once.

Although fast, the search engine was restricted to simple searches and thus wasn't reliable.

University of Washington student Eric Selberg released a more "updated" version called MetaCrawler.

This search engine improved on SearchSavvy's accuracy by adding its own search syntax behind the scenes, and matching the syntax to that of the search engines it was probing.

Metacrawler reduced the amount of search engines queried to 6, but although it produced more accurate results, it still wasn't considered as accurate as searching a query in an individual engine.[5] On May 20, 1996, HotBot, then owned by Wired, was a search engine with search results coming from the Inktomi and Direct Hit databases.

It was known for its fast results and as a search engine with the ability to search within search results.

Upon being bought by Lycos in 1998, development for the search engine staggered and its market share fell drastically.

After going through a few alterations, HotBot was redesigned into a simplified search interface, with its features being incorporated into Lycos' website redesign.[6] A Metasearch engine called Anvish was developed by Bo Shu and Subhash Kak in 1999; the search results were sorted using instantaneously trained neural networks.[7] This was later incorporated into another Metasearch engine called Solosearch.[8] In August 2000, India got its first meta search engine when HumHaiIndia.com was launched.[9] It was developed by the then 16 year old Sumeet Lamba.[10] The website was later rebranded as Tazaa.com.[11] Ixquick is a search engine known for its privacy policy statement.

Developed and launched in 1998 by David Bodnick, it is owned by Surfboard Holding BV.

On June 2006, Ixquick began to delete private details of its users following the same process with Scroogle.

Ixquick's privacy policy includes no recording of users' IP addresses, no identifying cookies, no collection of personal data, and no sharing of personal data with third parties.[12] It also uses a unique ranking system where a result is ranked by stars.

The more stars in a result, the more search engines agreed on the result.

In April 2005, Dogpile, then owned and operated by InfoSpace, Inc., collaborated with researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania State University to measure the overlap and ranking differences of leading Web search engines in order to gauge the benefits of using a Metasearch engine to search the web.

Results found that from 10,316 random user-defined queries from Google, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves, only 3.2% of first page search results were the same across those search engines for a given query.

Another study later that year using 12,570 random user-defined queries from Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves found that only 1.1% of first page search results were the same across those search engines for a given query.[13] By sending multiple queries to several other search engines this extends the coverage data of the topic and allows more information to be found.

They use the indexes built by other search engines, aggregating and often post-processing results in unique ways.

A Metasearch engine has an advantage over a single search engine because more results can be retrieved with the same amount of exertion.[2] It also reduces the work of users from having to individually type in searches from different engines to look for resources.[2] Metasearching is also a useful approach if the purpose of the user’s search is to get an overview of the topic or to get quick answers.

Instead of having to go through multiple search engines like Yahoo! or Google and comparing results, Metasearch engines are able to quickly compile and combine results.

They can do it either by listing results from each engine queried with no additional post-processing (Dogpile) or by analyzing the results and ranking them by their own rules (IxQuick, Metacrawler, and Vivismo).

A Metasearch engine can also hide the searcher's IP address from the search engines queried thus providing privacy to the search.

It is in view of this that the French government in 2018 decreed that all government searches be done using Qwant, which is believed to be a Metasearch engine.[14] Metasearch engines are not capable of parsing query forms or able to fully translate query syntax.

The number of hyperlinks generated by Metasearch engines are limited, and therefore do not provide the user with the complete results of a query.[15] The majority of Metasearch engines do not provide over ten linked files from a single search engine, and generally do not interact with larger search engines for results.

Pay per click links are prioritised and are normally displayed first.[16] Metasearching also gives the illusion that there is more coverage of the topic queried, particularly if the user is searching for popular or commonplace information.

It's common to end with multiple identical results from the queried engines.

It is also harder for users to search with advanced search syntax to be sent with the query, so results may not be as precise as when a user is using an advanced search interface at a specific engine.

This results in many Metasearch engines using simple searching.[17] A Metasearch engine accepts a single search request from the user.

This search request is then passed on to another search engine’s database.

A Metasearch engine does not create a database of web pages but generates a Federated database system of data integration from multiple sources.[18][19][20] Since every search engine is unique and has different algorithms for generating ranked data, duplicates will therefore also be generated.

To remove duplicates,a Metasearch engine processes this data and applies its own algorithm.

A revised list is produced as an output for the user.[citation needed] When a Metasearch engine contacts other search engines, these search engines will respond in three ways: Web pages that are highly ranked on many search engines are likely to be more relevant in providing useful information.[21] However, all search engines have different ranking scores for each website and most of the time these scores are not the same.

This is because search engines prioritise different criteria and methods for scoring, hence a website might appear highly ranked on one search engine and lowly ranked on another.

This is a problem because Metasearch engines rely heavily on the consistency of this data to generate reliable accounts.[21] A Metasearch engine uses the process of Fusion to filter data for more efficient results.

The two main fusion methods used are: Collection Fusion and Data Fusion.

Spamdexing is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes.

It uses a number of methods to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner unaligned with the intention of the indexing system.

Spamdexing can be very distressing for users and problematic for search engines because the return contents of searches have poor precision.[citation needed] This will eventually result in the search engine becoming unreliable and not dependable for the user.

To tackle Spamdexing, search robot algorithms are made more complex and are changed almost every day to eliminate the problem.[24] It is a major problem for Metasearch engines because it tampers with the Web crawler's indexing criteria, which are heavily relied upon to format ranking lists.

Spamdexing manipulates the natural ranking system of a search engine, and places websites higher on the ranking list than they would naturally be placed.[25] There are three primary methods used to achieve this: Content spam are the techniques that alter the logical view that a search engine has over the page's contents.

Techniques include: Link spam are links between pages present for reasons other than merit.

Techniques include: This is a SEO technique in which different materials and information are sent to the web crawler and to the web browser.[26] It is commonly used as a spamdexing technique because it can trick search engines into either visiting a site that is substantially different from the search engine description or giving a certain site a higher ranking.

List of search engines

This is a List of search engines, including web search engines, selection-based search engines, metasearch engines, desktop search tools, and web portals and vertical market websites that have a search facility for online databases.

For a list of search engine software, see List of enterprise search vendors.

* Powered by Bing ** Powered by Google *** Metasearch engine † Main website is a portal General: Academic materials only: Search engines dedicated to a specific kind of information These search engines work across the BitTorrent protocol.

Desktop search engines listed on a light purple background are no longer in active development.

Search engine optimization metrics

A number of metrics are available to marketers interested in search engine optimization.

Search engines and software creating such metrics all use their own crawled data to derive at a numeric conclusion on a website's organic search potential.

Since these metrics can be manipulated, they can never be completely reliable for accurate and truthful results.

GooglePageRank (Google PR) is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page's relevance or importance.

Important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

Google PageRank (PR) is a measure from 0 - 10.

Google PageRank is based on backlinks.

PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is.

The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.[1] However, Google claims there will be no more PageRank updates, rendering this metric as outdated.[2] As of 15 April 2016 Google has officially removed the PR score from their Toolbar.[3] Alexa Traffic Rank is based on the amount of traffic recorded from users that have the Alexa toolbar installed over a period of three months.

A site's ranking is based on a combined measure of Unique Visitors and Pageviews.

Unique Visitors are determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day.

Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site.

Alexa's Traffic Ranks are for domains only and do not give separate rankings for subpages within a domain or subdomains.[4] Domain Authority (DA), a website metric developed by Moz, is a predictive metric to determine a website's traffic and organic search engine rankings.

Domain Authority is based on different link metrics, such as number of linking root domains, number of total backlinks, and the distance of backlinks from the home page of websites.[5] Similar to many other websites like Alexa, Netcraft features a toolbar that provides users with the ability to view page-hit popularity and various web server metrics along with aggregated user provided website feedback.

Compared to Domain Authority which determines the ranking strength of an entire domain or subdomain, Page Authority measures the strength of an individual page.[6] It's a score developed by Moz on a 100-point logarithmic scale.

Unlike TrustFlow, domain authority does not account for spam.

Local search engine optimisation

Local search engine optimization (local SEO) is similar to (national) SEO in that it is also a process affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results (SERP- search engine results page) often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results.[1] In general, the higher ranked on the search results page and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users; these visitors can then be converted into customers.[2] Local SEO, however, differs in that it is focused on optimizing a business' online presence so that its web pages will be displayed by search engines when users enter local searches for its products or services.[3] Ranking for local search involves a similar process to general SEO but includes some specific elements to rank a business for local search.

For example, local SEO is all about ‘optimizing‘ your online presence to attract more business from relevant local searches.

The majority of these searches take place on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines but for better optimization in your local area you should also use sites like Yelp, Angie's List, LinkedIn, Local business directories, social media channels and others.[4] The origin of local SEO can be traced back[5] to 2003-2005 when search engines tried to provide people with results in their vicinity as well as additional information such as opening times of a store, listings in maps, etc.

Local SEO has evolved over the years to provide a targeted online marketing approach that allows local businesses to appear based on a range of local search signals, providing a distinct difference from broader organic SEO which prioritises relevance of search over a distance of searcher.

Local searches trigger search engines to display two types of results on the Search engine results page: local organic results and the 'Local Pack'.[3] The local organic results include web pages related to the search query with local relevance.

These often include directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, Facebook, etc.[3] The Local Pack displays businesses that have signed up with Google and taken ownership of their 'Google My Business' (GMB) listing.

The information displayed in the GMB listing and hence in the Local Pack can come from different sources:[6] Depending on the searches, Google can show relevant local results in Google Maps or Search.

This is true on both mobile and desktop devices.[7] Google has added a new Q&A features to Google Maps allowing users to submit questions to owners and allowing these to respond.[8].

This Q&A feature is tied to the associated Google My Business account.

Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool that allows businesses to create and manage their Google listing.

These listings must represent a physical location that a customer can visit.

A Google My Business listing appears when customers search for businesses either on Google Maps or in Google SERPs.

The accuracy of these listings is a local ranking factor.

Major search engines have algorithms that determine which local businesses rank in local search.

Primary factors that impact a local business's chance of appearing in local search include proper categorization in business directories, a business's name, address, and phone number (NAP) being crawlable on the website, and citations (mentions of the local business on other relevant websites like a chamber of commerce website).[9] In 2016, a study using statistical analysis assessed how and why businesses ranked in the Local Packs and identified positive correlations between local rankings and 100+ ranking factors.[10] Although the study cannot replicate Google's algorithm, it did deliver several interesting findings: Prominence, relevance, and distance are the three main criteria Google claims to use in its algorithms to show results that best match a user's query.[12] According to a group of local SEO experts who took part in a survey, links and reviews are more important than ever to rank locally.[13] As a result of both Google as well as Apple offering "near me" as an option to users, some authors[14] report on how Google Trends shows very significant increases in "near me" queries.

The same authors also report that the factors correlating the most with Local Pack ranking for "near me" queries include the presence of the "searched city and state in backlinks' anchor text" as well as the use of the " 'near me' in internal link anchor text" An important update to Google's local algorithm, rolled out on the 1st of September 2016.[15] Summary of the update on local search results: As previously explained (see above), the Possum update led similar listings, within the same building, or even located on the same street, to get filtered.

As a result, only one listing "with greater organic ranking and stronger relevance to the keyword" would be shown.[16] After the Hawk update on 22 August 2017, this filtering seems to apply only to listings located within the same building or close by (e.g.

50 feet), but not to listings located further away (e.g.325 feet away).[16] As previously explained (see above), reviews are deemed to be an important ranking factor.

Joy Hawkins, a Google Top Contributor and local SEO expert, highlights the problems due to fake reviews:[17]

Social media optimization

Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a number of outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, service brand or event.

Types of social media involved include RSS feeds, social news and bookmarking sites, as well as social networking sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, video sharing websites and blogging sites.

SMO is similar to search engine optimization, in that the goal is to generate web traffic and increase awareness for a website.

In general, Social media optimization refers to optimizing a website and its content to encourage more users to use and share links to the website across social media and networking sites.

SMO also refers to software tools that automate this process, or to website experts who undertake this process for clients.

The goal of SMO is to strategically create interesting online content, ranging from well-written text to eye-catching digital photos or video clips that encourages and entices people to engage with a website and then share this content, via its weblink, with their social media contacts and friends.

Common examples of social media engagement are "liking and commenting on posts, retweeting, embedding, sharing, and promoting content".[1] Social media optimization is also an effective way of implementing online reputation management (ORM), meaning that if someone posts bad reviews of a business, a SMO strategy can ensure that the negative feedback is not the first link to come up in a list of search engine results.[2] In the 2010s, with social media sites overtaking TV as a source for news for young people, news organisations have become increasingly reliant on social media platforms for generating web traffic.

Publishers such as The Economist employ large social media teams to optimise their online posts and maximise traffic,[3] while other major publishers now use advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology to generate higher volumes of web traffic.[4] Social media optimization is becoming an increasingly important factor in search engine optimization, which is the process of designing a website in a way so that it has as high a ranking as possible on search engines.

As search engines are increasingly utilizing the recommendations of users of social networks such as Reddit, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram to rank pages in the search engine result pages.[citation needed] The implication is that when a webpage is shared or "liked" by a user on a social network, it counts as a "vote" for that webpage's quality.

Thus, search engines can use such votes accordingly to properly ranked websites in search engine results pages.

Furthermore, since it is more difficult to top the scales or influence the search engines in this way, search engines are putting more stock into social search.[5] This, coupled with increasingly personalized search based on interests and location, has significantly increased the importance of a social media presence in search engine optimization.

Due to personalized search results, location-based social media presences on websites such as Yelp, Google Places, Foursquare, and Yahoo! Local have become increasingly important.

While Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, it differs in several ways.

Primarily, SMO focuses on driving web traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search engine ranking is also a benefit of successful Social media optimization.

Further, SMO is helpful to target particular geographic regions in order to target and reach potential customers.

This helps in lead generation (finding new customers) and contributes to high conversion rates (i.e., converting previously uninterested individuals into people who are interested in a brand or organization).

Social media optimization is in many ways connected to the technique of viral marketing or "viral seeding" where word of mouth is created through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites.

An effective SMO campaign can harness the power of viral marketing; for example, 80% of activity on Pinterest is generated through "repinning."[citation needed] Furthermore, by following social trends and utilizing alternative social networks, websites can retain existing followers while also attracting new ones.

This allows businesses to build an online following and presence, all linking back to the company's website for increased traffic.

For example, with an effective social bookmarking campaign, not only can website traffic be increased, but a site's rankings can also be increased.

In a similar way, the engagement with blogs creates a similar result by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogosphere and special blog search engines.

Social media optimization is considered an integral part of an online reputation management (ORM) or search engine reputation management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who care about their online presence.[6] SMO is one of six key influencers that affect Social Commerce Construct (SCC).

Online activities such as consumers' evaluations and advices on products and services constitute part of what creates a Social Commerce Construct (SCC).[7] Social media optimization is not limited to marketing and brand building.

Increasingly, smart businesses are integrating social media participation as part of their knowledge management strategy (i.e., product/service development, recruiting, employee engagement and turnover, brand building, customer satisfaction and relations, business development and more).

Additionally, Social media optimization can be implemented to foster a community of the associated site, allowing for a healthy business-to-consumer (B2C) relationship.[8] According to technologist Danny Sullivan, the term "Social media optimization" was first used and described by marketer Rohit Bhargava[9][10] on his marketing blog in August 2006.

In the same post, Bhargava established the five important rules of Social media optimization.

Bhargava believed that by following his rules, anyone could influence the levels of traffic and engagement on their site, increase popularity, and ensure that it ranks highly in search engine results.

An additional 11 SMO rules have since been added to the list by other marketing contributors.

The 16 rules of SMO, according to one source, are as follows:[11] Bhargava's initial five rules were more specifically designed to SMO, while the list is now much broader and addresses everything that can be done across different social media platforms.

According to author and CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, Lee Odden, a Social Media Strategy is also necessary to ensure optimization.

This is a similar concept to Bhargava's list of rules for SMO.

The Social Media Strategy may consider:[12] According to Lon Safko and David K.

Brake in The Social Media Bible, it is also important to act like a publisher by maintaining an effective organisational strategy, to have an original concept and unique "edge" that differentiates one's approach from competitors, and to experiment with new ideas if things do not work the first time.[2] If a business is blog-based, an effective method of SMO is using widgets that allow users to share content to their personal social media platforms.

This will ultimately reach a wider target audience and drive more traffic to the original post.

Blog widgets and plug-ins for post-sharing are most commonly linked to Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

They occasionally also link to social media platforms such as StumbleUpon, Tumblr, and Pinterest.

Many sharing widgets also include user counters which indicate how many times the content has been liked and shared across different social media pages.

This can influence whether or not new users will engage with the post, and also gives businesses an idea of what kind of posts are most successful at engaging audiences.

By using relevant and trending keywords in titles and throughout blog posts, a business can also increase search engine optimization and the chances of their content of being read and shared by a large audience.[12] The root of effective SMO is the content that is being posted, so professional content creation tools can be very beneficial.

These can include editing programs such as Photoshop, GIMP, Final Cut Pro, and Dreamweaver.

Many websites also offer customization options such as different layouts to personalize a page and create a point of difference.[2] With social media sites overtaking TV as a source for news for young people, news organisations have become increasingly reliant on social media platforms for generating traffic.

A report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism described how a 'second wave of disruption' had hit news organisations,[13] with publishers such as The Economist having to employ large social media teams to optimism their posts and maximize traffic.[3] Major publishers such as Le Monde and Vogue now use advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology from Echobox to post stories more effectively and generate higher volumes of traffic.[4] Within the context of the publishing industry, even professional fields are utilizing SMO.

Because doctors want to maximize exposure to their research findings SMO has also found a place in the medical field.[14] Social media gaming is online gaming activity performed through social media sites with friends and online gaming activity that promotes social media interaction.

Examples of the former include FarmVille, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, FrontierVille, and Mafia Wars.

In these games a player's social network is exploited to recruit additional players and allies.

An example of the latter is Empire Avenue, a virtual stock exchange where players buy and sell shares of each other's social network worth.

Nielsen Media Research estimates that, as of June 2010, social networking and playing online games account for about one-third of all online activity by Americans.[15] Facebook has in recent years become a popular channel for advertising, alongside traditional forms such as television, radio, and print.

With over 1 billion active users, and 50% of those users logging into their accounts every day[16] it is an important communication platform that businesses can utilize and optimize to promote their brand and drive traffic to their websites.

There are three commonly used strategies to increase advertising reach on Facebook: Improving effectiveness and increasing network size are organic approaches, while buying more reach is a paid approach which does not require any further action.[17] Most businesses will attempt an "organic" approach to gaining a significant following before considering a paid approach.

Because Facebook requires a login, it is important that posts are public to ensure they will reach the widest possible audience.

Posts that have been heavily shared and interacted with by users are displayed as 'highlighted posts' at the top of newsfeeds.

In order to achieve this status, the posts need to be engaging, interesting, or useful.

This can be achieved by being spontaneous, asking questions, addressing current events and issues, and optimizing trending hashtags and keywords.

The more engagement a post receives, the further it will spread and the more likely it is to feature on first in search results.

Another organic approach to Facebook optimization is cross-linking different social platforms.

By posting links to websites or social media sites in the profile 'about' section, it is possible to direct traffic and ultimately increase search engine optimization.

Another option is to share links to relevant videos and blog posts.[12] Facebook Connect is a functionality that launched in 2008 to allow Facebook users to sign up to different websites, enter competitions, and access exclusive promotions by logging in with their existing Facebook account details.

This is beneficial to users as they don't have to create a new login every time they want to sign up to a website, but also beneficial to businesses as Facebook users become more likely to share their content.

Often the two are interlinked, where in order to access parts of a website, a user has to like or share certain things on their personal profile or invite a number of friends to like a page.

This can lead to greater traffic flow to a website as it reaches a wider audience.

Businesses have more opportunities to reach their target markets if they choose a paid approach to SMO.

When Facebook users create an account, they are urged to fill out their personal details such as gender, age, location, education, current and previous employers, religious and political views, interests, and personal preferences such as movie and music tastes.

Facebook then takes this information and allows advertisers to use it to determine how to best market themselves to users that they know will be interested in their product.

This can also be known as micro-targeting.

If a user clicks on a link to like a page, it will show up on their profile and newsfeed.

This then feeds back into organic Social media optimization, as friends of the user will see this and be encouraged to click on the page themselves.

Although advertisers are buying mass reach, they are attracting a customer base with a genuine interest in their product.

Once a customer base has been established through a paid approach, businesses will often run promotions and competitions to attract more organic followers.[11] The number of businesses that use Facebook to advertise also holds significant relevance.

Currently there are three million businesses that advertise on Facebook.[18] This makes Facebook the world's largest platform for social media advertising.

What also holds importance is the amount of money leading businesses are spending on Facebook advertising alone.

Procter & Gamble spend $60 million every year on Facebook advertising.[19] Other advertisers on Facebook include Microsoft, with a yearly spend of £35 million, Amazon, Nestle and American Express all with yearly expenditures above £25 million per year.

Furthermore, the number of small businesses advertising on Facebook is of relevance.

This number has grown rapidly over the upcoming years and demonstrates how important social media advertising actually is.

Currently 70% of the UK's small businesses use Facebook advertising.[20] This is a substantial number of advertisers.

Almost half of the world's small businesses use social media marketing product of some sort.

This demonstrates the impact that social media has had on the current digital marketing era.

Search optimization

Archie (search engine)

Archie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing people to find specific files.

It is considered to be the first Internet search engine.[3] The original implementation was written in 1990 by Alan Emtage, then a postgraduate student at McGill University in Montreal, and Bill Heelan, who studied at Concordia University in Montreal and worked at McGill University at the same time.[4] The Archie service began as a project for students and volunteer staff at the McGill University School of Computer Science in 1987,[5] when Peter Deutsch (systems manager for the School[5]), Emtage, and Heelan were asked to connect the School of Computer Science to the Internet.[6] The earliest versions of Archie, written by Alan Emtage, simply contacted a list of FTP archives on a regular basis (contacting each roughly once a month, so as not to waste too many resources of the remote servers) and requested a listing.

These listings were stored in local files to be searched using the Unix grep command.

The name derives from the word "archive" without the v.

Alan Emtage has said that contrary to popular belief, there was no association with the Archie Comics and that he despised them.[7] Despite this, other early Internet search technologies such as Jughead and Veronica were named after characters from the comics.

Anarchie, one of the earliest graphical ftp clients was named for its ability to perform Archie searches.

Archie was developed as a tool for mass discovery and the concept was simple.

The developers populated the engine's servers with databases of anonymous FTP host directories.[8] This was used to find specific file titles since the list was plugged in to a searchable database of FTP sites.[9] Bill Heelan and Peter Deutsch wrote a script allowing people to log in and search collected information using the Telnet protocol at the host "archie.mcgill.ca" [132.206.2.3].[5] Later, more efficient front- and back-ends were developed, and the system spread from a local tool, to a network-wide resource, and a popular service available from multiple sites around the Internet.

The collected data would be exchanged between the neighbouring Archie servers.

The servers could be accessed in multiple ways: using a local client (such as archie or xarchie); telnetting to a server directly; sending queries by electronic mail;[10] and later via a World Wide Web interface.

At the zenith of its fame the Archie (search engine) accounted for 50% of Montreal Internet traffic.[citation needed] In 1992, Emtage along with Peter Deutsch and some financial help of McGill University formed Bunyip Information Systems the world's first company expressly founded for and dedicated to providing Internet information services with a licensed commercial version of the Archie (search engine) used by millions of people worldwide.

Bill Heelan followed them into Bunyip soon after, where he together with Bibi Ali and Sandro Mazzucato was a part of so-called Archie Group.

The group significantly updated the archie database and indexed web-pages.

Work on the search engine was ceased in the late 1990s.

A legacy Archie server is still maintained active for historic purposes in Poland at University of Warsaw's Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling.

Click-through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement.

It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns.[1][2] Click-through rates for ad campaigns vary tremendously.

The very first online display ad shown for AT&T on the website HotWired in 1994, had a 44% Click-through rate.[3] With time, the overall rate of user's clicks on webpage banner ads has decreased.

The purpose of Click-through rates is to measure the ratio of clicks to impressions of an online ad or email marketing campaign.

Generally the higher the CTR the more effective the marketing campaign has been at bringing people to a website.[4] Most commercial websites are designed to elicit some sort of action, whether it be to buy a book, read a news article, watch a music video, or search for a flight.

People rarely visit websites with the intention of viewing advertisements, in the same way that few people watch television to view the commercials.[5] While marketers want to know the reaction of the web visitor, with current technology it is nearly impossible to quantify the emotional reaction to the site and the effect of that site on the firm's brand.

However, Click-through rate is an easy piece of data to acquire.

The Click-through rate measures the proportion of visitors who initiated an advertisement that redirected them to another page where they might purchase an item or learn more about a product or service.

Forms of interaction with advertisements other than clicking is possible, but rare; "Click-through rate" is the most commonly used term to describe the efficacy of an advert.[5] The Click-through rate of an advertisement is the number of times a click is made on the ad, divided by the number of times the ad is "served", that is, shown (also called impressions), expressed as a percentage: Click-through rates for banner ads have decreased over time.[6] When banner ads first started to appear, it was not uncommon to have rates above five percent.

They have fallen since then, currently averaging closer to 0.2 or 0.3 percent.[7] In most cases, a 2% Click-through rate would be considered very successful, though the exact number is hotly debated and would vary depending on the situation.

The average Click-through rate of 3% in the 1990s declined to 2.4%–0.4% by 2002.[8] Since advertisers typically pay more for a high Click-through rate, getting many click-throughs with few purchases is undesirable to advertisers.[7] Similarly, by selecting an appropriate advertising site with high affinity (e.g., a movie magazine for a movie advertisement), the same banner can achieve a substantially higher CTR.

Though personalized ads, unusual formats, and more obtrusive ads typically result in higher Click-through rates than standard banner ads, overly intrusive ads are often avoided by viewers.[8][9] Modern online advertising has moved beyond just using banner ads.

Popular search engines allow advertisers to display ads in with the search results triggered by a search user.

These ads are usually in text format and may include additional links and information like phone numbers, addresses and specific product pages.[10] This additional information moves away from the poor user experience that can be created from intrusive banner ads and provides useful information to the search user, resulting in higher Click-through rates for this format of pay-per-click Advertising.

Having high Click-through rate isn't the only goal for an online advertiser, who may develop campaigns to raise awareness for the overall gain of valuable traffic, sacrificing some Click-through rate for that purpose.

Search engine advertising has become a significant element of the Web browsing experience.

Choosing the right ads for the query and the order in which they are displayed greatly affects the probability that a user will see and click on each ad.

This ranking has a strong impact on the revenue the search engine receives from the ads.

Further, showing the user an ad that they prefer to click on improves user satisfaction.

For these reasons, there is an increasing interest in accurately estimating the Click-through rate of ads in a recommender system.[citation needed] An email Click-through rate is defined as the number of recipients who click one or more links in an email and landed on the sender's website, blog, or other desired destination.

More simply, email Click-through rates represent the number of clicks that your email generated.[11][12] Email Click-through rate is expressed as a percentage, and calculated by dividing the number of click throughs by the number of tracked message deliveries.[13] Most email marketers use this metrics along with open rate, bounce rate and other metrics, to understand the effectiveness and success of their email campaign.[14] In general there is no ideal Click-through rate.

This metric can vary based on the type of email sent, how frequently emails are sent, how the list of recipients is segmented, how relevant the content of the email is to the audience, and many other factors.[15] Even time of day can affect Click-through rate.

Sunday appears to generate considerably higher Click-through rates on average when compared to the rest of the week.[16] Every year various types of research studies are conducted to track the overall effectiveness of Click-through rates in email marketing.[17][18] Experts on Search engine optimization (SEO) have claimed since the mid-2010s that Click-through rate has an impact on organic rankings.

Numerous case studies have been published to support this theory.

Proponents supporting this theory often claim that Click-through rate is a ranking signal for Google's RankBrain algorithm.

In a video interview with Dan Petrovic, he states, "There is absolutely no shadow of a doubt that CTR is a ranking signal.

CTR is not only a ranking signal, CTR is essential to Google’s self-analytics."[19] In an article by Neil Patel, Patel quotes Matt Cutts saying, "It doesn’t really matter how often you show up.

It matters how often you get clicked on..." He also cites a study where a 20% increase in Click-through rates resulted in 30% more organic clicks.[20] Opponents of this theory claim Click-through rate has little or no impact on organic rankings.

Bartosz Góralewicz published the results of an experiment on Search Engine Land where he claims, "Despite popular belief, Click-through rate is not a ranking factor.

Even massive organic traffic won’t affect your website’s organic positions."[21] More recently, Barry Schwartz wrote on Search Engine Land, "...Google has said countless times, in writing, at conferences, that CTR is not used in their ranking algorithm."[22]

Search engine (computing)

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system.

The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits.

Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information which must be consulted, akin to other techniques for managing information overload.[citation needed] The most public, visible form of a search engine is a Web search engine which searches for information on the World Wide Web.

Search engines provide an interface to a group of items that enables users to specify criteria about an item of interest and have the engine find the matching items.

The criteria are referred to as a search query.

In the case of text search engines, the search query is typically expressed as a set of words that identify the desired concept that one or more documents may contain.[1] There are several styles of search query syntax that vary in strictness.

It can also switch names within the search engines from previous sites.

Whereas some text search engines require users to enter two or three words separated by white space, other search engines may enable users to specify entire documents, pictures, sounds, and various forms of natural language.

Some search engines apply improvements to search queries to increase the likelihood of providing a quality set of items through a process known as query expansion.

Query understanding methods can be used as standardize query language.

The list of items that meet the criteria specified by the query is typically sorted, or ranked.

Ranking items by relevance (from highest to lowest) reduces the time required to find the desired information.

Probabilistic search engines rank items based on measures of similarity (between each item and the query, typically on a scale of 1 to 0, 1 being most similar) and sometimes popularity or authority (see Bibliometrics) or use relevance feedback.

Boolean search engines typically only return items which match exactly without regard to order, although the term boolean search engine may simply refer to the use of boolean-style syntax (the use of operators AND, OR, NOT, and XOR) in a probabilistic context.

To provide a set of matching items that are sorted according to some criteria quickly, a search engine will typically collect metadata about the group of items under consideration beforehand through a process referred to as indexing.

The index typically requires a smaller amount of computer storage, which is why some search engines only store the indexed information and not the full content of each item, and instead provide a method of navigating to the items in the search engine result page.

Alternatively, the search engine may store a copy of each item in a cache so that users can see the state of the item at the time it was indexed or for archive purposes or to make repetitive processes work more efficiently and quickly.

Other types of search engines do not store an index.

Crawler, or spider type search engines (a.k.a.

real-time search engines) may collect and assess items at the time of the search query, dynamically considering additional items based on the contents of a starting item (known as a seed, or seed URL in the case of an Internet crawler).

Meta search engines store neither an index nor a cache and instead simply reuse the index or results of one or more other search engine to provide an aggregated, final set of results.

Progressive enhancement

Progressive enhancement is a strategy for web design that emphasizes core webpage content first.

This strategy then progressively adds more nuanced and technically rigorous layers of presentation and features on top of the content as the end-user's browser/internet connection allow.

The proposed benefits of this strategy are that it allows everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, using any browser or Internet connection, while also providing an enhanced version of the page to those with more advanced browser software or greater bandwidth.

"Progressive enhancement" was coined by Steven Champeon & Nick Finck at the SXSW Interactive conference on March 11, 2003 in Austin,[1] and through a series of articles for Webmonkey which were published between March and June 2003.[2] Specific Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) techniques pertaining to flexibility of the page layout accommodating different screen resolutions is the concept associated with responsive web design approach.

.net Magazine chose Progressive enhancement as #1 on its list of Top Web Design Trends for 2012 (responsive design was #2).[3] Google has encouraged the adoption of Progressive enhancement to help "our systems (and a wider range of browsers) see usable content and basic functionality when certain web design features are not yet supported".[4] The strategy is an evolution of a previous web design strategy known as graceful degradation, wherein designers would create Web pages for the latest browsers that would also work well in older versions of browser software.

Graceful degradation was supposed to allow the page to "degrade", or remain presentable even if certain technologies assumed by the design were not present, without being jarring to the user of such older software.

In Progressive enhancement (PE) the strategy is deliberately reversed: a basic markup document is created, geared towards the lowest common denominator of browser software functionality, and then the designer adds in functionality or enhancements to the presentation and behavior of the page, using modern technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), or JavaScript.

All such enhancements are externally linked, preventing data unusable by certain browsers from being unnecessarily downloaded.[citation needed] The Progressive enhancement approach is derived from Champeon's early experience (c.

1993-4) with Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), before working with HTML or any Web presentation languages, as well as from later experiences working with CSS to work around browser bugs.

In those early SGML contexts, semantic markup was of key importance, whereas presentation was nearly always considered separately, rather than being embedded in the markup itself.

This concept is variously referred to in markup circles as the rule of separation of presentation and content, separation of content and style, or of separation of semantics and presentation.

As the Web evolved in the mid-nineties, but before CSS was introduced and widely supported, this cardinal rule of SGML was repeatedly violated by HTML's extenders.

As a result, web designers were forced to adopt new, disruptive technologies and tags in order to remain relevant.[citation needed] With a nod to graceful degradation, in recognition that not everyone had the latest browser, many began to simply adopt design practices and technologies only supported in the most recent and perhaps the single previous major browser releases.

For several years, much of the Web simply did not work in anything but the most recent, most popular browsers.[citation needed] This remained true until the rise and widespread adoption of and support for CSS, as well as many populist, grassroots educational efforts (from Eric Costello, Owen Briggs, Dave Shea, and others) showing Web designers how to use CSS for layout purposes.

Progressive enhancement is based on a recognition that the core assumption behind "graceful degradation" — that browsers always got faster and more powerful — was proving itself false with the rise of handheld and PDA devices with low-functionality browsers and serious bandwidth constraints.

In addition, the rapid evolution of HTML and related technologies in the early days of the Web has slowed, and very old browsers have become obsolete, freeing designers to use powerful technologies such as CSS to manage all presentation tasks and JavaScript to enhance complex client-side behavior.

First proposed as a somewhat less unwieldy catchall phrase to describe the delicate art of "separating document structure and contents from semantics, presentation, and behavior", and based on the then-common use of CSS hacks to work around rendering bugs in specific browsers, the Progressive enhancement strategy has taken on a life of its own as new designers have embraced the idea and extended and revised the approach.[how?] The Progressive enhancement strategy consists of the following core principles: Web pages created according to the principles of Progressive enhancement are by their nature more accessible, because the strategy demands that basic content always be available, not obstructed by commonly unsupported or easily disabled scripting.

Additionally, the sparse markup principle makes it easier for tools that read content aloud to find that content.

It is unclear as to how well Progressive enhancement sites work with older tools designed to deal with table layouts, "tag soup", and the like.[citation needed] Improved results with respect to search engine optimization (SEO) is another side effect of a Progressive enhancement-based Web design strategy.

Because the basic content is always accessible to search engine spiders, pages built with Progressive enhancement methods avoid problems that may hinder search engine indexing.[14] Some skeptics, such as Garret Dimon, have expressed their concern that Progressive enhancement is not workable in situations that rely heavily on JavaScript to achieve certain user interface presentations or behaviors,[15] to which unobtrusive JavaScript is one response.

Others have countered with the point that informational pages should be coded using Progressive enhancement in order to be indexed by spiders,[16] and that even Flash-heavy pages should be coded using Progressive enhancement.[17] In a related area, many have expressed their doubts concerning the principle of the separation of content and presentation in absolute terms, pushing instead for a realistic recognition that the two are inextricably linked.[18][19]

Organic search

Spamdexing

In digital marketing and online advertising, Spamdexing (also known as search engine spam, search engine poisoning, black-hat search engine optimization (SEO), search spam or web spam)[1] is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes.

It involves a number of methods, such as link building and repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed, in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.[2][3] Spamdexing could be considered to be a part of search engine optimization, although there are many search engine optimization methods that improve the quality and appearance of the content of web sites and serve content useful to many users.[4] Search engines use a variety of algorithms to determine relevancy ranking.

Some of these include determining whether the search term appears in the body text or URL of a web page.

Many search engines check for instances of Spamdexing and will remove suspect pages from their indexes.

Also, search-engine operators can quickly block the results listing from entire websites that use Spamdexing, perhaps in response to user complaints of false matches.

The rise of Spamdexing in the mid-1990s made the leading search engines of the time less useful.

Using unethical methods to make websites rank higher in search engine results than they otherwise would is commonly referred to in the SEO (search engine optimization) industry as "black-hat SEO".

These methods are more focused on breaking the search-engine-promotion rules and guidelines.

In addition to this, the perpetrators run the risk of their websites being severely penalized by the Google Panda and Google Penguin search-results ranking algorithms.[5] Common Spamdexing techniques can be classified into two broad classes: content spam[4] (or term spam) and link spam.[3] The earliest known reference[2] to the term Spamdexing is by Eric Convey in his article "Porn sneaks way back on Web," The Boston Herald, May 22, 1996, where he said: The problem arises when site operators load their Web pages with hundreds of extraneous terms so search engines will list them among legitimate addresses.

The process is called "Spamdexing," a combination of spamming — the Internet term for sending users unsolicited information — and "indexing."[2]These techniques involve altering the logical view that a search engine has over the page's contents.

They all aim at variants of the vector space model for information retrieval on text collections.

Keyword stuffing involves the calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page.

This is useful to make a page appear to be relevant for a web crawler in a way that makes it more likely to be found.

Example: A promoter of a Ponzi scheme wants to attract web surfers to a site where he advertises his scam.

He places hidden text appropriate for a fan page of a popular music group on his page, hoping that the page will be listed as a fan site and receive many visits from music lovers.

Older versions of indexing programs simply counted how often a keyword appeared, and used that to determine relevance levels.

Most modern search engines have the ability to analyze a page for keyword stuffing and determine whether the frequency is consistent with other sites created specifically to attract search engine traffic.

Also, large webpages are truncated, so that massive dictionary lists cannot be indexed on a single webpage.[citation needed] (However, spammers can circumvent this webpage-size limitation merely by setting up multiple webpages, either independently or linked to each other.) Unrelated hidden text is disguised by making it the same color as the background, using a tiny font size, or hiding it within HTML code such as "no frame" sections, alt attributes, zero-sized DIVs, and "no script" sections.

People manually screening red-flagged websites for a search-engine company might temporarily or permanently block an entire website for having invisible text on some of its pages.

However, hidden text is not always Spamdexing: it can also be used to enhance accessibility.

This involves repeating keywords in the meta tags, and using meta keywords that are unrelated to the site's content.

This tactic has been ineffective since 2005.[citation needed] "Gateway" or doorway pages are low-quality web pages created with very little content, but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases.

They are designed to rank highly within the search results, but serve no purpose to visitors looking for information.

A doorway page will generally have "click here to enter" on the page; autoforwarding can also be used for this purpose.

In 2006, Google ousted vehicle manufacturer BMW for using "doorway pages" to the company's German site, BMW.de.[6] Scraper sites are created using various programs designed to "scrape" search-engine results pages or other sources of content and create "content" for a website.[citation needed] The specific presentation of content on these sites is unique, but is merely an amalgamation of content taken from other sources, often without permission.

Such websites are generally full of advertising (such as pay-per-click ads), or they redirect the user to other sites.

It is even feasible for scraper sites to outrank original websites for their own information and organization names.

Article spinning involves rewriting existing articles, as opposed to merely scraping content from other sites, to avoid penalties imposed by search engines for duplicate content.

This process is undertaken by hired writers or automated using a thesaurus database or a neural network.

Similarly to article spinning, some sites use machine translation to render their content in several languages, with no human editing, resulting in unintelligible texts that nonetheless continue to be indexed by search engines, thereby attracting traffic.

Publishing web pages that contain information that is unrelated to the title is a misleading practice known as deception.

Despite being a target for penalties from the leading search engines that rank pages, deception is a common practice in some types of sites, including dictionary and encyclopedia sites.

Link spam is defined as links between pages that are present for reasons other than merit.[7] Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, which gives websites higher rankings the more other highly ranked websites link to it.

These techniques also aim at influencing other link-based ranking techniques such as the HITS algorithm.[citation needed] Link farms are tightly-knit networks of websites that link to each other for the sole purpose of gaming the search engine ranking algorithms.

These are also known facetiously as mutual admiration societies.[8] Use of links farms has been greatly reduced after Google launched the first Panda Update in February 2011, which introduced significant improvements in its spam-detection algorithm.

Blog networks (PBNs) are a group of authoritative websites used as a source of contextual links that point to the owner's main website to achieve higher search engine ranking.

Owners of PBN websites use expired domains or auction domains that have backlinks from high-authority websites.

Google targeted and penalized PBN users on several occasions with several massive deindexing campaigns since 2014.[9] Putting hyperlinks where visitors will not see them to increase link popularity.

Highlighted link text can help rank a webpage higher for matching that phrase.

A Sybil attack is the forging of multiple identities for malicious intent, named after the famous multiple personality disorder patient "Sybil".

A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs (known as spam blogs).

Spam blogs are blogs created solely for commercial promotion and the passage of link authority to target sites.

Often these "splogs" are designed in a misleading manner that will give the effect of a legitimate website but upon close inspection will often be written using spinning software or be very poorly written and barely readable content.

They are similar in nature to link farms.

Guest blog spam is the process of placing guest blogs on websites for the sole purpose of gaining a link to another website or websites.

Unfortunately, these are often confused with legitimate forms of guest blogging with other motives than placing links.

This technique was made famous by Matt Cutts, who publicly declared "war" against this form of link spam.[10] Some link spammers utilize expired domain crawler software or monitor DNS records for domains that will expire soon, then buy them when they expire and replace the pages with links to their pages.

However, it is possible but not confirmed that Google resets the link data on expired domains.[citation needed] To maintain all previous Google ranking data for the domain, it is advisable that a buyer grab the domain before it is "dropped".

Some of these techniques may be applied for creating a Google bomb — that is, to cooperate with other users to boost the ranking of a particular page for a particular query.

Cookie stuffing involves placing an affiliate tracking cookie on a website visitor's computer without their knowledge, which will then generate revenue for the person doing the cookie stuffing.

This not only generates fraudulent affiliate sales, but also has the potential to overwrite other affiliates' cookies, essentially stealing their legitimately earned commissions.

Web sites that can be edited by users can be used by spamdexers to insert links to spam sites if the appropriate anti-spam measures are not taken.

Automated spambots can rapidly make the user-editable portion of a site unusable.

Programmers have developed a variety of automated spam prevention techniques to block or at least slow down spambots.

Spam in blogs is the placing or solicitation of links randomly on other sites, placing a desired keyword into the hyperlinked text of the inbound link.

Guest books, forums, blogs, and any site that accepts visitors' comments are particular targets and are often victims of drive-by spamming where automated software creates nonsense posts with links that are usually irrelevant and unwanted.

Comment spam is a form of link spam that has arisen in web pages that allow dynamic user editing such as wikis, blogs, and guestbooks.

It can be problematic because agents can be written that automatically randomly select a user edited web page, such as a Wikipedia article, and add spamming links.[11] Wiki spam is a form of link spam on wiki pages.

The spammer uses the open editability of wiki systems to place links from the wiki site to the spam site.

The subject of the spam site is often unrelated to the wiki page where the link is added.

Referrer spam takes place when a spam perpetrator or facilitator accesses a web page (the referee), by following a link from another web page (the referrer), so that the referee is given the address of the referrer by the person's Internet browser.

Some websites have a referrer log which shows which pages link to that site.

By having a robot randomly access many sites enough times, with a message or specific address given as the referrer, that message or Internet address then appears in the referrer log of those sites that have referrer logs.

Since some Web search engines base the importance of sites on the number of different sites linking to them, referrer-log spam may increase the search engine rankings of the spammer's sites.

Also, site administrators who notice the referrer log entries in their logs may follow the link back to the spammer's referrer page.

Because of the large amount of spam posted to user-editable webpages, Google proposed a nofollow tag that could be embedded with links.

A link-based search engine, such as Google's PageRank system, will not use the link to increase the score of the linked website if the link carries a nofollow tag.

This ensures that spamming links to user-editable websites will not raise the sites ranking with search engines.

Nofollow is used by several major websites, including Wordpress, Blogger and Wikipedia.[citation needed] A mirror site is the hosting of multiple websites with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.

Some search engines give a higher rank to results where the keyword searched for appears in the URL.

URL redirection is the taking of the user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g., using META refresh tags, Flash, JavaScript, Java or Server side redirects.

However, 301 Redirect, or permanent redirect, is not considered as a malicious behavior.

Cloaking refers to any of several means to serve a page to the search-engine spider that is different from that seen by human users.

It can be an attempt to mislead search engines regarding the content on a particular web site.

Cloaking, however, can also be used to ethically increase accessibility of a site to users with disabilities or provide human users with content that search engines aren't able to process or parse.

It is also used to deliver content based on a user's location; Google itself uses IP delivery, a form of cloaking, to deliver results.

Another form of cloaking is code swapping, i.e., optimizing a page for top ranking and then swapping another page in its place once a top ranking is achieved.

Google refers to these type of redirects as Sneaky Redirects.[12] Spamdexed pages are sometimes eliminated from search results by the search engine.

Users can craft at search keyword, for example, a keyword preceding "-" (minus) will eliminate sites that contains the keyword in their pages or in their domain of URL of the pages from search result.

Example, search keyword "-naver" will eliminate sites that contains word "naver" in their pages and the pages whose domain of URL contains "naver".

Google itself launched the Google Chrome extension "Personal Blocklist (by Google)" in 2011 as part of countermeasures against content farming.[13][14] As of 2018, the extension only works with the PC version of Google Chrome.

Keyword clustering

Search engine indexing

Google Search

Google Search, also referred to as Google Web Search or simply Google, is a web search engine developed by Google.

It is the most used search engine on the World Wide Web across all platforms, with 92.62% market share as of June 2019,[4] handling more than 5.4 billion searches each day.[5] The order of search results returned by Google is based, in part, on a priority rank system called "PageRank".

Google Search also provides many different options for customized search, using symbols to include, exclude, specify or require certain search behavior, and offers specialized interactive experiences, such as flight status and package tracking, weather forecasts, currency, unit and time conversions, word definitions, and more.

The main purpose of Google Search is to search for text in publicly accessible documents offered by web servers, as opposed to other data, such as images or data contained in databases.

It was originally developed in 1997 by Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Scott Hassan.[6][7][8] In June 2011, Google introduced "Google Voice Search" to search for spoken, rather than typed, words.[9] In May 2012, Google introduced a Knowledge Graph semantic search feature in the U.S.

Analysis of the frequency of search terms may indicate economic, social and health trends.[10] Data about the frequency of use of search terms on Google can be openly inquired via Google Trends and have been shown to correlate with flu outbreaks and unemployment levels, and provide the information faster than traditional reporting methods and surveys.

As of mid-2016, Google's search engine has begun to rely on deep neural networks.[11] Competitors of Google include Baidu and Soso.com in China; Naver.com and Daum.net in South Korea; Yandex in Russia; Seznam.cz in the Czech Republic; Qwant in France;[12] Yahoo in Japan, Taiwan and the US, as well as Bing and DuckDuckGo.[13] Some smaller search engines offer facilities not available with Google, e.g.

not storing any private or tracking information.

Within the U.S., as of July 2018, Bing handled 24.2 percent of all search queries.

During the same period of time, Oath (formerly known as Yahoo) had a search market share of 11.5 percent.

Market leader Google generated 63.2 percent of all core search queries in the U.S.[14] Google indexes hundreds of terabytes of information from web pages.[15] For websites that are currently down or otherwise not available, Google provides links to cached versions of the site, formed by the search engine's latest indexing of that page.[16] Additionally, Google indexes some file types, being able to show users PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, certain Flash multimedia content, and plain text files.[17] Users can also activate "SafeSearch", a filtering technology aimed at preventing explicit and pornographic content from appearing in search results.[18] Despite Google Search's immense index, sources generally assume that Google is only indexing less than 5% of the total Internet, with the rest belonging to the deep web, inaccessible through its search tools.[15][19][20] In 2012, Google changed its search indexing tools to demote sites that had been accused of piracy.[21] In October 2016, Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst with Google, announced that the search engine would be making a separate, primary web index dedicated for mobile devices, with a secondary, less up-to-date index for desktop use.

The change was a response to the continued growth in mobile usage, and a push for web developers to adopt a mobile-friendly version of their websites.[22][23] In December 2017, Google began rolling out the change, having already done so for multiple websites.[24] In August 2009, Google invited web developers to test a new search architecture, codenamed "Caffeine", and give their feedback.

The new architecture provided no visual differences in the user interface, but added significant speed improvements and a new "under-the-hood" indexing infrastructure.

The move was interpreted in some quarters as a response to Microsoft's recent release of an upgraded version of its own search service, renamed Bing, as well as the launch of Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine based on "computational knowledge".[25][26] Google announced completion of "Caffeine" on June 8, 2010, claiming 50% fresher results due to continuous updating of its index.[27] With "Caffeine", Google moved its back-end indexing system away from MapReduce and onto Bigtable, the company's distributed database platform.[28][29] In August 2018, Danny Sullivan from Google announced a broad core algorithm update.

As per current analysis done by the industry leaders Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land, the update was to drop down the medical and health related websites that were not user friendly and were not providing good user experience.

This is why the industry experts named it "Medic".[30] Google reserves very high standards for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages.

This is because misinformation can affect users financially, physically or emotionally.

Therefore, the update targeted particularly those YMYL pages that have low-quality content and misinformation.

This resulted in the algorithm targeting health and medical related websites more than others.

However, many other websites from other industries were also negatively affected.[31] Google Search consists of a series of localized websites.

The largest of those, the google.com site, is the top most-visited website in the world.[32] Some of its features include a definition link for most searches including dictionary words, the number of results you got on your search, links to other searches (e.g.

for words that Google believes to be misspelled, it provides a link to the search results using its proposed spelling), and many more.

Google Search accepts queries as normal text, as well as individual keywords.[33] It automatically corrects misspelled words, and yields the same results regardless of capitalization.[33] For more customized results, one can use a wide variety of operators, including, but not limited to:[34][35] Google applies query expansion to submitted search queries, using techniques to deliver results that it considers "smarter" than the query users actually submitted.

This technique involves several steps, including:[36] In 2008, Google started to give users autocompleted search suggestions in a list below the search bar while typing.[37] Google's homepage includes a button labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky".

This feature originally allowed users to type in their search query, click the button and be taken directly to the first result, bypassing the search results page.

With the 2010 announcement of Google Instant, an automatic feature that immediately displays relevant results as users are typing in their query, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button disappears, requiring that users opt-out of Instant results through search settings in order to keep using the "I'm Feeling Lucky" functionality.[38] In 2012, "I'm Feeling Lucky" was changed to serve as an advertisement for Google services; users hover their computer mouse over the button, it spins and shows an emotion ("I'm Feeling Puzzled" or "I'm Feeling Trendy", for instance), and, when clicked, takes users to a Google service related to that emotion.[39] Tom Chavez of "Rapt", a firm helping to determine a website's advertising worth, estimated in 2007 that Google lost $110 million in revenue per year due to use of the button, which bypasses the advertisements found on the search results page.[40] Besides the main text-based search-engine features of Google Search, it also offers multiple quick, interactive experiences.

These include, but are not limited to:[41][42][43] During Google's developer conference, Google I/O, in May 2013, the company announced that, on Google Chrome and Chrome OS, users would be able to say "OK Google", with the browser initiating an audio-based search, with no button presses required.

After having the answer presented, users can follow up with additional, contextual questions; an example include initially asking "OK Google, will it be sunny in Santa Cruz this weekend?", hearing a spoken answer, and reply with "how far is it from here?"[44][45] An update to the Chrome browser with voice-search functionality rolled out a week later, though it required a button press on a microphone icon rather than "OK Google" voice activation.[46] Google released a browser extension for the Chrome browser, named with a "beta" tag for unfinished development, shortly thereafter.[47] In May 2014, the company officially added "OK Google" into the browser itself;[48] they removed it in October 2015, citing low usage, though the microphone icon for activation remained available.[49] In May 2016, 20% of search queries on mobile devices were done through voice.[50] "Universal search" was launched by Google on May 16, 2007 as an idea that merged the results from different kinds of search types into one.

Prior to Universal search, a standard Google Search would consist of links only to websites.

Universal search, however, incorporates a wide variety of sources, including websites, news, pictures, maps, blogs, videos, and more, all shown on the same search results page.[51][52] Marissa Mayer, then-vice president of search products and user experience, described the goal of Universal search as "we're attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results.[53] In June 2017, Google expanded its search results to cover available job listings.

The data is aggregated from various major job boards and collected by analyzing company homepages.

Initially only available in English, the feature aims to simplify finding jobs suitable for each user.[54][55] In May 2009, Google announced that they would be parsing website microformats in order to populate search result pages with "Rich snippets".

Such snippets include additional details about results, such as displaying reviews for restaurants and social media accounts for individuals.[56] In May 2016, Google expanded on the "Rich snippets" format to offer "Rich cards", which, similarly to snippets, display more information about results, but shows them at the top of the mobile website in a swipeable carousel-like format.[57] Originally limited to movie and recipe websites in the United States only, the feature expanded to all countries globally in 2017.[58] Now the web publishers can have greater control over the rich snippets.

Preview settings from these meta tags will become effective in mid-to-late October 2019 and may take about a week for the global rollout to complete.[59] The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base used by Google to enhance its search engine's results with information gathered from a variety of sources.[60] This information is presented to users in a box to the right of search results.[61] Knowledge Graph boxes were added to Google's search engine in May 2012,[60] starting in the United States, with international expansion by the end of the year.[62] The information covered by the Knowledge Graph grew significantly after launch, tripling its original size within seven months,[63] and being able to answer "roughly one-third" of the 100 billion monthly searches Google processed in May 2016.[64] The information is often used as a spoken answer in Google Assistant[65] and Google Home searches.[66] The Knowledge Graph has been criticized for providing answers without source attribution.[64] Google Search has been accused of using using so called zero-click search to prevent large part of the traffic leaving its page to third-party publishers.

As result 71% searches end on the Google Search page.

In case of one specific query out of 890'000 searches on Google, only 30'000 resulted in the user clicking on the results website.[67] In May 2017, Google enabled a new "Personal" tab in Google Search, letting users search for content in their Google accounts' various services, including email messages from Gmail and photos from Google Photos.[68][69] The Google feed is a personalized stream of articles, videos, and other news-related content.

The feed contains a "mix of cards" which show topics of interest based on users' interactions with Google, or topics they choose to follow directly.[70] Cards include, "links to news stories, YouTube videos, sports scores, recipes, and other content based on what [Google] determined you're most likely to be interested in at that particular moment."[70] Users can also tell Google they're not interested in certain topics to avoid seeing future updates.

The Google feed launched in December 2016[71] and received a major update in July 2017.[72] As of May 2018, the Google feed can be found on the Google app and by swiping left on the home screen of certain Android devices.

As of 2019, Google will not allow political campaigns worldwide to target their advertisement to people to make them vote.[73] Google's rise was largely due to a patented algorithm called PageRank which helps rank web pages that match a given search string.[74] When Google was a Stanford research project, it was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a site's importance.

Other keyword-based methods to rank search results, used by many search engines that were once more popular than Google, would check how often the search terms occurred in a page, or how strongly associated the search terms were within each resulting page.

The PageRank algorithm instead analyzes human-generated links assuming that web pages linked from many important pages are also important.

The algorithm computes a recursive score for pages, based on the weighted sum of other pages linking to them.

PageRank is thought to correlate well with human concepts of importance.

In addition to PageRank, Google, over the years, has added many other secret criteria for determining the ranking of resulting pages.

This is reported to comprise over 250 different indicators,[75][76] the specifics of which are kept secret to avoid difficulties created by scammers and help Google maintain an edge over its competitors globally.

PageRank was influenced by a similar page-ranking and site-scoring algorithm earlier used for RankDex, developed by Robin Li in 1996.

Larry Page's patent for PageRank filed in 1998 includes a citation to Li's earlier patent.

Li later went on to create the Chinese search engine Baidu in 2000.[77][78][79] In a potential hint of Google's future direction of their Search algorithm, Google's then chief executive Eric Schmidt, said in a 2007 interview with the Financial Times: "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'".[80] Schmidt reaffirmed this during a 2010 interview with the Wall Street Journal: "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."[81] In 2013 the European Commission found that Google Search favored Google's own products, instead of the best result for consumers' needs.[82] In February 2015 Google announced a major change to its mobile search algorithm which would favor mobile friendly over other websites.

Nearly 60% of Google Searches come from mobile phones.

Google says it wants users to have access to premium quality websites.

Those websites which lack a mobile friendly interface would be ranked lower and it is expected that this update will cause a shake-up of ranks.

Businesses who fail to update their websites accordingly could see a dip in their regular websites traffic.[83] Because Google is the most popular search engine, many webmasters attempt to influence their website's Google rankings.

An industry of consultants has arisen to help websites increase their rankings on Google and on other search engines.

This field, called search engine optimization, attempts to discern patterns in search engine listings, and then develop a methodology for improving rankings to draw more searchers to their clients' sites.

Search engine optimization encompasses both "on page" factors (like body copy, title elements, H1 heading elements and image alt attribute values) and Off Page Optimization factors (like anchor text and PageRank).

The general idea is to affect Google's relevance algorithm by incorporating the keywords being targeted in various places "on page", in particular the title element and the body copy (note: the higher up in the page, presumably the better its keyword prominence and thus the ranking).

Too many occurrences of the keyword, however, cause the page to look suspect to Google's spam checking algorithms.

Google has published guidelines for website owners who would like to raise their rankings when using legitimate optimization consultants.[84] It has been hypothesized, and, allegedly, is the opinion of the owner of one business about which there have been numerous complaints, that negative publicity, for example, numerous consumer complaints, may serve as well to elevate page rank on Google Search as favorable comments.[85] The particular problem addressed in The New York Times article, which involved DecorMyEyes, was addressed shortly thereafter by an undisclosed fix in the Google algorithm.

According to Google, it was not the frequently published consumer complaints about DecorMyEyes which resulted in the high ranking but mentions on news websites of events which affected the firm such as legal actions against it.

Google Search Console helps to check for websites that use duplicate or copyright content.[86] In 2013, Google significantly upgraded its search algorithm with "Hummingbird".

Its name was derived from the speed and accuracy of the hummingbird.[87] The change was announced on September 26, 2013, having already been in use for a month.[88] "Hummingbird" places greater emphasis on natural language queries, considering context and meaning over individual keywords.[87] It also looks deeper at content on individual pages of a website, with improved ability to lead users directly to the most appropriate page rather than just a website's homepage.[89] The upgrade marked the most significant change to Google Search in years, with more "human" search interactions[90] and a much heavier focus on conversation and meaning.[87] Thus, web developers and writers were encouraged to optimize their sites with natural writing rather than forced keywords, and make effective use of technical web development for on-site navigation.[91] On certain occasions, the logo on Google's webpage will change to a special version, known as a "Google Doodle".

This is a picture, drawing, animation or interactive game that includes the logo.

It is usually done for a special event or day although not all of them are well known.[92] Clicking on the Doodle links to a string of Google Search results about the topic.

The first was a reference to the Burning Man Festival in 1998,[93][94] and others have been produced for the birthdays of notable people like Albert Einstein, historical events like the interlocking Lego block's 50th anniversary and holidays like Valentine's Day.[95] Some Google Doodles have interactivity beyond a simple search, such as the famous "Google Pacman" version that appeared on May 21, 2010.

Google offers a "Google Search" mobile app for Android and iOS devices.[96] The mobile apps exclusively feature a "feed", a news feed-style page of continually-updated developments on news and topics of interest to individual users.

Android devices were introduced to a preview of the feed in December 2016,[97] while it was made official on both Android and iOS in July 2017.[98][99] In April 2016, Google updated its Search app on Android to feature "Trends"; search queries gaining popularity appeared in the autocomplete box along with normal query autocompletion.[100] The update received significant backlash, due to encouraging search queries unrelated to users' interests or intentions, prompting the company to issue an update with an opt-out option.[101] In September 2017, the Google Search app on iOS was updated to feature the same functionality.[102] Until May 2013, Google Search had offered a feature to translate search queries into other languages.

A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that "Removing features is always tough, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users.

Unfortunately, this feature never saw much pick up".[103] Instant search was announced in September 2010 as a feature that displayed suggested results while the user typed in their search query.

The primary advantage of the new system was its ability to save time, with Marissa Mayer, then-vice president of search products and user experience, proclaiming that the feature would save 2–5 seconds per search, elaborating that "That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up.

With Google Instant, we estimate that we'll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!"[104] Matt Van Wagner of Search Engine Land wrote that "Personally, I kind of like Google Instant and I think it represents a natural evolution in the way search works", and also praised Google's efforts in public relations, writing that "With just a press conference and a few well-placed interviews, Google has parlayed this relatively minor speed improvement into an attention-grabbing front-page news story".[105] The upgrade also became notable for the company switching Google Search's underlying technology from HTML to AJAX.[106] Instant Search could be disabled via Google's "preferences" menu for those who didn't want its functionality.[107] The publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly compiled a list of words that Google Instant did not show suggested results for, with a Google spokesperson giving the following statement to Mashable:[108] There are a number of reasons you may not be seeing search queries for a particular topic.

Among other things, we apply a narrow set of removal policies for pornography, violence, and hate speech.

It's important to note that removing queries from Autocomplete is a hard problem, and not as simple as blacklisting particular terms and phrases.

In search, we get more than one billion searches each day.

Because of this, we take an algorithmic approach to removals, and just like our search algorithms, these are imperfect.

We will continue to work to improve our approach to removals in Autocomplete, and are listening carefully to feedback from our users.

Our algorithms look not only at specific words, but compound queries based on those words, and across all languages.

So, for example, if there's a bad word in Russian, we may remove a compound word including the transliteration of the Russian word into English.

We also look at the search results themselves for given queries.

So, for example, if the results for a particular query seem pornographic, our algorithms may remove that query from Autocomplete, even if the query itself wouldn't otherwise violate our policies.

This system is neither perfect nor instantaneous, and we will continue to work to make it better.PC Magazine discussed the inconsistency in how some forms of the same topic are allowed; for instance, "lesbian" was blocked, while "gay" was not, and "cocaine" was blocked, while "crack" and "heroin" were not.

The report further stated that seemingly normal words were also blocked due to pornographic innuendos, most notably "scat", likely due to having two completely separate contextual meanings, one for music and one for a sexual practice.[109] On July 26, 2017, Google removed Instant results, due to a growing number of searches on mobile devices, where interaction with search, as well as screen sizes, differ significantly from a computer.[110][111] Various search engines provide encrypted Web search facilities.

In May 2010 Google rolled out SSL-encrypted web search.[112] The encrypted search was accessed at encrypted.google.com[113] However, the web search is encrypted via Transport Layer Security (TLS) by default today, thus every search request should be automatically encrypted if TLS is supported by the web browser.[114] On its support website, Google announced that the address encrypted.google.com would be turned off April 30, 2018, stating that all Google products and most new browsers use HTTPS connections as the reason for the discontinuation.[115] Google Real-Time Search was a feature of Google Search in which search results also sometimes included real-time information from sources such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and news websites.[116] The feature was introduced on December 7, 2009[117] and went offline on July 2, 2011 after the deal with Twitter expired.[118] Real-Time Search included Facebook status updates beginning on February 24, 2010.[119] A feature similar to Real-Time Search was already available on Microsoft's Bing search engine, which showed results from Twitter and Facebook.[120] The interface for the engine showed a live, descending "river" of posts in the main region (which could be paused or resumed), while a bar chart metric of the frequency of posts containing a certain search term or hashtag was located on the right hand corner of the page above a list of most frequently reposted posts and outgoing links.

Hashtag search links were also supported, as were "promoted" tweets hosted by Twitter (located persistently on top of the river) and thumbnails of retweeted image or video links.

In January 2011, geolocation links of posts were made available alongside results in Real-Time Search.

In addition, posts containing syndicated or attached shortened links were made searchable by the link: query option.

In July 2011 Real-Time Search became inaccessible, with the Real-Time link in the Google sidebar disappearing and a custom 404 error page generated by Google returned at its former URL.

Google originally suggested that the interruption was temporary and related to the launch of Google+;[121] they subsequently announced that it was due to the expiry of a commercial arrangement with Twitter to provide access to tweets.[122] Searches made by search engines, including Google, leave traces.

This raises concerns about privacy.

In principle, if details of a user's searches are found, those with access to the information—principally state agencies responsible for law enforcement and similar matters—can make deductions about the user's activities.

This has been used for the detection and prosecution of lawbreakers; for example a murderer was found and convicted after searching for terms such as "tips with killing with a baseball bat".[123] A search may leave traces both on a computer used to make the search, and in records kept by the search provider.

When using a search engine through a browser program on a computer, search terms and other information may be stored on the computer by default, unless the browser is set not to do this, or they are erased.

Saved terms may be discovered on forensic analysis of the computer.

An Internet Service Provider (ISP) or search engine provider (e.g., Google) may store records which relate search terms to an IP address and a time.[124] Whether such logs are kept, and access to them by law enforcement agencies, is subject to legislation in different jurisdictions and working practices; the law may mandate, prohibit, or say nothing about logging of various types of information.

Some search engines, located in jurisdictions where it is not illegal, make a feature of not storing user search information.[125] The keywords suggested by the Autocomplete feature show a population of users' research which is made possible by an identity management system.

Volumes of personal data are collected via Eddystone web and proximity beacons.[citation needed] Google has been criticized for placing long-term cookies on users' machines to store these preferences, a tactic which also enables them to track a user's search terms and retain the data for more than a year.[126] Since 2012, Google Inc.

has globally introduced encrypted connections for most of its clients, in order to bypass governative blockings of the commercial and IT services.[127] In late June 2011, Google introduced a new look to the Google home page in order to boost the use of the Google+ social tools.[128] One of the major changes was replacing the classic navigation bar with a black one.

Google's digital creative director Chris Wiggins explains: "We're working on a project to bring you a new and improved Google experience, and over the next few months, you'll continue to see more updates to our look and feel."[129] The new navigation bar has been negatively received by a vocal minority.[130] In November 2013, Google started testing yellow labels for advertisements displayed in search results, to improve user experience.

The new labels, highlighted in yellow color, and aligned to the left of each sponsored link help users clearly differentiate between organic and sponsored results.[131] On December 15, 2016, Google rolled out a new desktop search interface that mimics their modular mobile user interface.

The mobile design consists of a tabular design that highlights search features in boxes.

and works by imitating the desktop Knowledge Graph real estate, which appears in the right-hand rail of the search engine result page, these featured elements frequently feature Twitter carousels, People Also Search For, and Top Stories (vertical and horizontal design) modules.

The Local Pack and Answer Box were two of the original features of the Google SERP that were primarily showcased in this manner, but this new layout creates a previously unseen level of design consistency for Google results.[132] In addition to its tool for searching web pages, Google also provides services for searching images, Usenet newsgroups, news websites, videos (Google Videos), searching by locality, maps, and items for sale online.

Google Videos allows searching the World Wide Web for video clips.[133] The service evolved from Google Video, Google's discontinued video hosting service that also allowed to search the web for video clips.[133] In 2012, Google has indexed over 30 trillion web pages, and received 100 billion queries per month.[134] It also caches much of the content that it indexes.

Google operates other tools and services including Google News, Google Shopping, Google Maps, Google Custom Search, Google Earth, Google Docs, Picasa (discontinued), Panoramio (discontinued), YouTube, Google Translate, Google Blog Search and Google Desktop Search.

There are also products available from Google that are not directly search-related.

Gmail, for example, is a webmail application, but still includes search features; Google Browser Sync does not offer any search facilities, although it aims to organize your browsing time.

Also Google starts many new beta products, like Google Social Search or Google Image Swirl.

In 2009, Google claimed that a search query requires altogether about 1 kJ or 0.0003 kW·h,[135] which is enough to raise the temperature of one liter of water by 0.24 °C.

According to green search engine Ecosia, the industry standard for search engines is estimated to be about 0.2 grams of CO2 emission per search.[136] Google's 40,000 searches per second translate to 8 kg CO2 per second or over 252 million kilos of CO2 per year.[137] In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google's indexing, claiming that Google's caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content.[138] In both Field v.

Google and Parker v.

Google, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google.[139][140] Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously.

For approximately 40 minutes on January 31, 2009, all search results were mistakenly classified as malware and could therefore not be clicked; instead a warning message was displayed and the user was required to enter the requested URL manually.

The bug was caused by human error.[141][142][143][144] The URL of "/" (which expands to all URLs) was mistakenly added to the malware patterns file.[142][143] In 2007, a group of researchers observed a tendency for users to rely on Google Search exclusively for finding information, writing that "With the Google interface the user gets the impression that the search results imply a kind of totality.

...

In fact, one only sees a small part of what one could see if one also integrates other research tools."[145] In 2011, Google Search query results have been shown by Internet activist Eli Pariser to be tailored to users, effectively isolating users in what he defined as a filter bubble.

Pariser holds algorithms used in search engines such as Google Search responsible for catering "a personal ecosystem of information".[146] Although contrasting views have mitigated the potential threat of "informational dystopia" and questioned the scientific nature of Pariser's claims,[147] filter bubbles have been mentioned to account for the surprising results of the U.S.

presidential election in 2016 alongside fake news and echo chambers, suggesting that Facebook and Google have designed personalized online realities in which "we only see and hear what we like".[148] In 2012, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Google US$22.5 million for violating their agreement not to violate the privacy of users of Apple's Safari web browser.[149] The FTC was also continuing to investigate if Google's favoring of their own services in their search results violated antitrust regulations.[150] Google Search engine robots are programmed to use algorithms that understand and predict human behavior.

The book, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code[151] by Ruha Benjamin talks about human bias as a behavior that the Google Search engine can recognize.

In 2016, some users Google Searched “three Black teenagers” and images of criminal mugshots of young African American teenagers came up.

Then, the users searched “three White teenagers” and were presented with photos of smiling, happy teenagers.

They also searched for “three Asian teenagers,” and very revealing photos of Asian girls and women appeared.

Benjamin came to the conclusion that these results reflect human prejudice and views on different ethnic groups.

A group of analysts explained the concept of a racist computer program: “The idea here is that computers, unlike people, can’t be racist but we’re increasingly learning that they do in fact take after their makers...Some experts believe that this problem might stem from the hidden biases in the massive piles of data that the algorithms process as they learn to recognize patterns...reproducing our worst values”.[151] As people talk about "googling" rather than searching, the company has taken some steps to defend its trademark, in an effort to prevent it from becoming a generic trademark.[152][153] This has led to lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, and the use of euphemisms, such as calling Google Search a famous web search engine.

Squeeze page

A Squeeze page is a landing page created to solicit opt-in email addresses from prospective subscribers.[1] In the field of direct marketing, the subscriber list is considered the most important part of a mailing campaign.

Marketers devote a great deal of time and money to collecting a "list" of highly targeted subscribers as a result.

Common methods for gathering a mail list include business reply mail, telemarketing, list rentals, and co-registration agreements.

Email lists serve the same purpose in the digital world.

A highly targeted list of email subscribers allows the owner to market their product and service with a fairly high probability of success.

With the proliferation of spam, however, consumers are very careful about giving out their email addresses.

To ease consumer concerns experienced online, businesses create "Squeeze pages" that detail the businesses' privacy standards and what the subscriber will receive.

A Squeeze page is a single web page with the sole purpose of capturing information for follow-up marketing; that means NO exit hyperlinks.

Quality Squeeze pages use success stories that the prospect would relate to when making a buying decision.

They also use things like color psychology, catchy sales copy and keyword rich text placed with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind.[2] Some advanced marketers even use audio and video on their Squeeze page.

Internet marketers borrow copywriting techniques from offline direct response marketing.

This includes the use of a headline, bullets, teaser copy, deadlines, testimonials, scarcity, and the like.

Aggressive marketers will present visitors with multiple incentives in exchange for their contact information.

As a general rule, Internet marketers try to keep the content on their Squeeze pages to a minimum.

The goal of the page is to obtain the visitor's email address; additional information could distract the user or cause them to "click away" to a different website.

Navigation and hyperlinks are almost always absent from typical Squeeze pages.

The absence of links is used to focus visitors' attention on one choice: register for the email list or leave the site.

Squeeze pages are often used in conjunction with an email autoresponder to begin delivering information as soon as the visitor confirms their email address.

The autoresponder may be utilized to send a series of follow-up emails or to provide an immediate download link to get information.

Promising information upon completion of confirming their email address has proven to be an effective method of increasing opt-ins using Squeeze pages.

New technology has also led to adding voice or video to Squeeze pages in an effort to capture the visitor's attention.

In 2011, on two occasions (Google "Panda" and "Farmer" in February and June), the major search engines adjusted their algorithms to more accurately rank and sometimes exclude Squeeze pages that are considered to be "spam" due to their lack of content.

In addition, some marketers have seen their pay-per-click campaigns being penalized by restrictions that prevent "affiliates" from purchasing pay-per-click advertising to build opt-in lists for future sales.

In response, marketers have begun to increase the amount of content included on Squeeze pages to ensure that their page maintains its search result rankings.

Content on a Squeeze page can be increased by adding a blog at the bottom of the page.

Another Squeeze page design that is growing in popularity is a combination of a linear sales page and a Squeeze page.

This design keeps the Squeeze page basics such as opt-in form, bullet points, and video at the top of the page.

At the bottom of the page the user would find more content and product information..

fresh content improves search engine optimization

Many search engine optimization companies will sell you a search engine optimization package that addresses many of the major aspects of search engine optimization.

These aspects include, but are not limited to, use of file names, alt tags, h1 tags, keyphrase density, meta tag optimization, link analysis and the like.

These are all key aspects of a good search optimization.

search engine optimization website design to seo or not to seo

� Search Engine Optimization is a highly specialized technology, and requires deep understand regarding various aspects of search engine optimization.� Successful search engine optimization is the ability to use search engines to draw traffic to a website.

website design search engine optimization to seo or not to seo seo in kelowna

� Search engine optimization is often referred to as SEO,�search engine positioning and search engine promotion.

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer."

welcome to the world of seo seo services india

SEO is the acronym of Search Engine Optimization.

For the understanding of beginners, search engine optimization is the art and science of making a website to perform better with various search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com.

In other words, SEO involves a number of activities that make your site search engine friendly.

The field of search engine optimization has been witnessing rapid changes and the same trend will continue in the future also.

So, both webmasters and SEO service providers have to be on their toes always to cope with these changes.

We�ll take a look at the evolution search engine optimization over the years and its future ahead.What is SEO?SEO is the acronym of Search Engine Optimization.

For the understanding of beginners, search engine optimization is the art and science of making a website to perform better with various search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com.

In other words, SEO involves a number of activities that make your site search engine friendly.�As you know, search engines offer the platform to extract particular information on almost anything existing in the world.

Users generally type in some text known as keyword or key phrase in the search box and get the most relevant information on that keyword in the form of listed web pages.

Have you ever wondered how and why these web pages appear in that sequence for a particular keyword?�Search engines normally adhere to a set of rules or algorithm to rank websites or web pages for a certain search query (keyword).

So, if your website contains good, original content related a search query and receives high-quality inbound links from other similar websites in great quantity, then the site is highly favored by search engines that give it a high rank in the search results for that query.�Now, we can provide a more advanced definition of SEO which is the process of optimizing your website (or setting it right) according to the preferences of search engines through the implementation of some techniques both on and off the site, so that it obtains a high ranking in search engine result pages (SERPs).

�SEO � Advantages & Impact�Preferring search engine optimization can deliver a number of advantages and positive impacts for your website.

These include: �1.����� As search engines nowadays are the most popular online tools among web surfers to look for specific information, the scope of SEO is quite enormous.

With millions of search queries every day, search engines can prove to be the ultimate source of potential customers for your products or services.

2.����� Conventional advertising and promotional techniques bear a local impact.

Global promotional techniques call for huge investments that small and mid-size businesses are unable to make.

So, search engine optimization becomes all the more important as it is the most powerful online promotional tool having a deep impact on global customer base.3.����� Optimizing a website for search engines is the cheapest technique around.

Generally, the costs involved in a full-fledged SEO campaign are much lower than that of conventional promotion.

Converting a sales lead to a customer can also be performed in a cost-effective manner with the optimization technique.

4.����� With the help of search engine optimization, your website can receive a large number of highly qualified leads that have maximum chances of becoming customers because they land on your website through search engine result page, looking for their desired product or service you sell.5.����� Implementing SEO techniques can allow you to gain valuable knowledge of keywords used by your potential clients to find the products or services you offer.

This information will be helpful in identifying customer tastes and preferences and formulating your optimization strategies accordingly.

You can also target your end customers in a better way through better positioning of products or services.6.����� Search engine optimization can open the door to nonstop generation of revenues through increased web traffic and sales.

When your website obtains top ranks for all your profitable keywords, it becomes highly visible among millions of search engine users.7.����� This technique is the quiet means of product promotion, devoid of any extravagant advertising tricks.

As a result, your prospective clients will find your website offerings more reliable and believable.�SEO � The Past, Present & Future�The field of search engine optimization has been witnessing rapid changes and the same trend will continue in the future also.

So, both webmasters and SEO service providers have to be on their toes always to cope with these changes.

We�ll take a look at the evolution search engine optimization over the years and its future ahead.�The Past�During the beginning of search engine optimization in the late 1990s, more attention was given to optimizing the on-page factors of websites rather than building link popularity through off-page optimization.

We�ll discuss both on-page and off-page optimization in detail later in this article.

The reason behind lack of efforts on link popularity is webmasters and Internet marketers were exchanging links with other related websites freely.

That was enough to bring traffic to their websites.

Banner ads were actually popular during this period.�During the early 2000�s, the popularity of link building gained momentum.

You can say, this was the beginning of the era when link popularity outclassed on-page activities.

Numerous websites concentrated on building more and more links from related websites and creating sub-domains.

On the other hand, it was also the era of rising SEO companies who adopted unprincipled and unfair strategies and techniques to achieve link popularity.�During the middle period of 2000�s, more than 75 percent of all SEO activities were focused on link popularity.

This period also witnessed the rise of social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Orkut, etc.

that revolutionized the process of interlinking.

Search engine optimization turned so prominent that it did away with the need of listing on Yellow Pages for countless businesses around the world.

This period was also important for Google as it established itself as the number one search engine.

�� The Present�Talking about the present scenario, the concept of SEO is in full swing and has become the paramount choice of online businesses to promote their products or services.

As stated by Internet Retailer Magazine, the expenditure on search engine optimization worldwide is expected to rise by a staggering 43% this year.�As far as link popularity is concerned, there is no sign of dying away as more than 80 percent of all activities are currently revolved around link building.

Such is the craze of link popularity that links have got the status of commodity and are often traded over the Internet by link brokers.

The PageRank toolbar offered by Google regarding the importance of a web page has lost some of its sheen for ranking intentions, but it continues to exist for viewing by web surfers only.

�As the number of websites is presently numbered in millions, the competition for optimizing the majority of 2-word phrases is getting tougher.

The keywords that had mere 50,000 search results some 6 years back have now more than 300,000 search results, thereby making the task of top 10 ranking all the more difficult.

This implies that only the most innovative SEO techniques employed by the most competent SEO firms can get you the top ranks for your targeted keywords.

So, guaranteed optimization services are not a cakewalk anymore.

The advice for webmasters is to choose a service provider cautiously after planning their expenses meticulously.

�The Future�In the future, search engines will start to present search results that can be controlled locally.

Though noteworthy progress has already been made in this regard by Google, it would be more prevalent in the days to come.

Browser-specific results will also be witnessed.

Link building will continue its growing streak, but the evaluation of links will get trickier with the advent of more complicated search engine algorithms and link determination factors.

On-page optimization will get back to the popularity chart with mounting emphasis on cutting down the website size.

Video search will grow in stature with the potential to become the most preferred choice of online marketing.�SEO � Various Processes Involved�Preliminary Analysis of Website�The typical process of search engine optimization starts with the analysis of the present status of the website.

Various aspects of the site are closely examined to find out potential problems that need to be sorted out.

The content on different web pages is reviewed for duplication and for the presence of keywords.

If the present list of keywords is found inadequate, a new list of profitable keywords is prepared.

Various important on-page factors that are evaluated during the preliminary website analysis are discussed below.

�Keyword Research�Keyword research is the technique employed to investigate and find out potential search phrases that people use to extract information from search engines.

Some of the popular tools for keyword research include Google Keyword Tool, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Suggest, Google Trends, Wordtracker, Yahoo Keyword Tool, and Hitwise.

This technique must be able to produce keywords that have good search volume and potential capability to compete.

Keyword research is also termed as the fundamental principle of web page optimization.�On-Page Optimization�On-page optimization is usually carried out on the website itself and aims at rectifying a number of potential website problems.

It has quicker and straighter bearings on SEO results than off-page optimization that takes some time to show effects.

On-page optimization takes into account the text and content on various web pages.

There are several on page factors that must be addressed properly to make your website search engine friendly.

While optimizing your web pages, you must stay away from hidden link or text, cloaking (two versions of the same site for search engine robots and users), and duplicate content.

�On Page Factors�Various on-page factors include:��������� Search engine optimized web page URLs in your site�������� Meta Tags optimization of title, description and keywords�������� Link optimization that includes the use of proper anchor text, clean internal linking between various web pages, linking between the home page and other major web pages, and avoidance of broken or dead links�������� Image optimization that includes the presence of ALT text or Alternate Text to depict site images, use of purposeful file names for images, use of image title and image linking�������� Keyword optimization that includes the use of proper keywords on web pages, modest keyword density, use of synonyms or other pertinent keywords������� on web pages, etc.�������� Vital HTML tags such as header tags (h1, h2, h3), bold (strong) and italic (em).

Make sure that there are no errors and warnings in the HTML code.�������� Implementation of sitemap to ensure the indexing of all web pages by search engines�������� Original and high quality page content�������� Browser compatibility for smooth functioning of all web page elements on all browsers�������� Fast loading of website �Off-Page Optimization�Off-page optimization involves SEO techniques that enhance your site visibility and link popularity with the help of several external sources.

It is all about generating quality backlinks from other websites in massive numbers.

The higher the number of quality backlinks for your website, the better ranking your site gets in search engines compared to competitors.�(A)�� One-Way Backlink Techniques�Directory Submission: It is the technique of submitting a website, its address and description to a large number of web directories that allow webmasters to list their websites in the most appropriate category or sub-category.

Some of the large and well-known directories include DMOZ (open directory project), Google and Yahoo.

Submitting your website to these directories is very essential from SEO point of view.�Article Submission: It is another effective off-page optimization technique that can create more one-way backlinks to your website.

In this technique, well-written articles related your products, services or industry are submitted to hundreds of article directories.

When these articles get approved, more and more potential customers can read them to enrich their knowledge as well as click on the link to visit your website.

All the articles must be informative and should not contain promotional materials in the title and body.�Press Release Distribution: It is a great way to let your prospective clients know about the special events, developments, offerings and accomplishments happened in your online business.

Various press releases highlighting the important features of the website are submitted to online PR directories to give maximum exposure to your business.�Blog Posting: Blogs and blog posts play a significant role in search engine optimization due to their search engine friendliness.

They can be enriched with good-quality content as well as links back to your website.

Regularly updated blogs can attract a lot of readers as well as potential customers for your website.

Blogging is a popular activity on the Internet nowadays with countless blogging websites to server your purpose.�Blog Commenting: Commenting on various blogs related to your business theme is a good way to build one-way backlinks.

In blog commenting, you�ll receive a free and open invitation to keep your website link.

However, your comments must be meaningful, appealing and related to the subject of the blog.

It is said that 3 blog comments are equivalent to additional 100 inbound links per month.

So, always search popular blogs posted on high quality blogging websites for commenting.�Forum Discussions: Since search engines index various forum websites frequently, participating in forum discussions can be a good source of generating backlinks with the anchor text of your preference.

It is also beneficial from site traffic standpoint.

Visit popular and active forums having relevancy to your business and take part in discussions by replying to existing threads.

The more time you spend in forums, the more popular you will be among fellow members.

Always put links back to your website in your signature.�Social Bookmarking: It is used extensively in search engine optimization to augment your site visibility and promote your online business.

There are many social bookmarking websites like Digg and Del.icio.us where you can submit stories or bookmarks containing your website link.

Make your bookmarks public so that others can view and follow them to build strong online social networks.

Always prefer websites that offer do-follow links to help your SEO endeavors.

�(B)�� Two-Way Link Building�Reciprocal Link Exchange: Reciprocal links are also known as link exchanges, link swaps and link partners.

These links are obtained when two websites having similar business theme agree to link to one another.

A good amount of reciprocal links can boost your search engine position and site traffic alike.

However, you must not overdo this technique.

Search in Google to find the list of link exchange websites that provides information on webmasters who regularly swap links with one another.

Never go for automated link exchanging to avoid the situation of being involved in link firms that link to completely dissimilar websites.�(C)�� Three-Way Link Building�Three-Way Reciprocal Link Exchange: This form of link exchange involves three websites instead of two.

Though it is practiced on a limited scale, you can give your link exchange a more natural look with it.

In three-way link exchange, three distinct websites must be present.

For instance, A, B, and C are three websites.

Here, A links to B, B links to C and C links to A.

Elaborating further, B receives a one-way link from A, but doesn�t link back to it.

Similarly, C receives a link from B, but doesn�t reciprocate the same to B.

A receives a link from C without linking back to it.

You can say three-way link exchange is arranged to hide reciprocal link exchange.�Website Traffic Generation Techniques�Social Bookmarking & Social Networking�Social bookmarks let you to share your favorite websites with other individuals by means of bookmarking or tagging them.

There are sites like Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon to create social bookmarks for your online business.

However, do not promote your website excessively to bear the wrath of some service providers.

You should only bookmark your most excellent pages, blogs and articles to increase traffic to your website.�On the other hand, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace can promote your products or services in a great way.

Just create accounts on those websites particularly for your offerings and update the information regularly.

Add surveys, contests, polls and newsletters to arouse interests of people in your business.�Video Promotion�Video promotion or video marketing can ensure constant flow of prospective clients to your website.

Visual aids are an effective means to capture the attention of people.

Post interesting videos related to your business that can generate interests among the viewers to go for your products or services.

YouTube is the prominent website where you can share your videos.

Others include DailyMotion, Google Video, Vimeo, Flixya, and BrightCove.�PPC or Pay-per-Click Promotion�PPC advertising services are an alternate to organic search engine optimization.

When it becomes difficult to bring your website into the first or second page of search engines for targeted keywords, you can opt for paid searches or sponsored links through Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or MSN AdCenter.

Just select your keywords and determine how much you are ready to pay the hosts when a user clicks on your sponsored links or ads.

You can acquire a top position in paid searches by paying the highest price for every click.�Article Marketing�Online article marketing is a free way of generating substantial traffic to your website.

It involves promoting products or services through the powerful medium of article directories.

The majority of article directories witness voluminous traffic and are highly regarded by search engines.

So, submit your articles to many different article directories simultaneously to gain good amounts of traffic straightway.

Search in Google to get the list of top 50 or top 100 article directories for submission.

�Press Release Marketing�When you want to publish some newsworthy events, offerings or achievements of your website, press release marketing is the most popular choice.

You can create good traffic for your site by submitting press releases to many PR websites concurrently.

However, all the PRs you submit must be attention-grabbing to have productive press release marketing.

Some of the popular PR websites consist of PR Log, i-newswire, Pr Log, Press Release Point, Online Pr News and so on.� ��� �������

back in time to the advent of search engine optimization seo

Did you recently learn what search engine optimization means? Learn a brief history behind this new industry, including which search engine first implemented what later became known as search engine optimization, and how initial unethical SEO practices forced the search engines to tighten their measures on how their robots rank and index Web sites.

search engine optimization experts the only way to rank you websites even more higher

Search engine optimization experts can help you improve the ranking of your website in the search engine results in order to attract more traffic.

These professionals have vast knowledge of the technicalities and procedures involved in search engine optimization (SEO) and can help you in getting and maintaining high rankings in search engines �However, you need to hire a SEO company that is trustworthy in order to get value for your money.

A SEO firm with excellent staff that is fully committed to work towards the success of its clients can do wonders for an online businessperson.

It should have a staff that is capable of handling demands of a wide range of industries such as finance, catering, communication, transport, retail, tourism, and web design.

Physical location should not be a limiting factor for the selected firm.

Search engine optimization Tampa professionals use keyword tools to attract more traffic to a website.

The right keywords utilized with the appropriate density is what makes all the difference.

Therefore, the best search engine optimization firm is one that can decipher the best keywords and utilize them effectively.

The best SEO experts use skilful writers to write web contents that are unique, relevant and informative.

This not only attracts more traffic to your website but also merits higher rankings in search engine results.

SEO professional should analyze their clients’ website SEO performance regularly to help them achieve higher ranking within a short period.

Writing of high quality and relevant articles is the hub of search engine optimization services.

Businesses should hire SEO firms if they want to attract more clients, retain them, and keep ahead of their main competitors.

Many people refer a Search engine optimization Tampa specialist as a SEO consultant, SEO guru or SEO doctor, but no matter what word one uses, Search engine optimization is the process of helping people who own businesses get high ranking on search engine results as well as attract more traffic to their websites by use of relevant keywords.

Millions of people conduct searches on the internet daily by use of certain keywords.

The high ranking web pages get free publicity by being on the top.

This not only markets their businesses but also help them make more revenue than those sites that are not visible.

If you want to hire a SEO guru, ensure that they reputable.

They should be able to provide you with testimonials as well as references.

A good SEO expert needs to know how the search engine algorithms of the different search engines works and should be able to design and modify web pages to keep up with the dynamic standards of search engines.

Search engine optimization Tampa experts need to meet their customers’ demands.

They must have the knowledge and experience for competing for the best position on the search engine results as every business firm or people want to be in the forefront which makes online businesses quite competitive.

Therefore you must hire the experts to monitor and update your web content frequently.

natural search engine optimization seo

Natural search engine optimization (SEO), otherwise known as organic search engine optimization, is concerned with maximizing the visibility of a web site by making its listings appear more frequently and more prominently in organic search results.

Natural search engine optimization can give a much higher return on investment than other SEO methods such as pay per click.

create campaign matters in search engine ranking optimization

During the process of search engine optimization, experts follow the phases of initial consultation, keyword research, article marketing and other search engine activities.

They go ahead with advanced search engine optimization mechanism by analyzing the level of competition exists in the online domain.

search engine optimization tips for affiliate marketing

There are no secrets on how to rank high with the major search engines because effective search engine optimizations are now immense.

What is search engine optimization? So how do search engines work? Well here are a few search engine optimization tips you could adopt.

search engine optimization the right approach

Search Engine Optimization plays a vital role when you consider a Search Engine Marketing Campaign.

A systematic approach when considering Search Engine Optimization is very important to make your website perform online.

search engine optimization tutorial

To place your site higher in the natural search engine rankings, search engine optimization is the best tool of the solution of your problem.

If once you are successful in the optimization of your site, you may get rid of the pay per click advertising or we can say that in this way you will be able to receive a free traffic.

Two major processes are present related to see one is the on site optimization and the other is off site optimization.

black white the philosophies of seo

Search engine optimization otherwise known as SEO is a popular form of search engine marketing.

The main goal of which (as its name would suggest) is to improve the ranking of the site in various search engines.

An entire industry of consultants has sprung up around the idea of search engine optimization.

It�s important to note that when it comes to SEO there are two distinct methodologies at work when it comes to optimization.

affordable search engine optimization within reach

As of today the landscape of search engine optimization has changed.

Many of the once coveted secrets of seo are now common knowledge.

More and more people know how to do search engine optimization and since supply increased the prices have dropped.

your site benefits from the search engine optimization

Search engine optimization is very important when you are considering of the accomplishment of the website you own or developing.

So you need to be very careful about the various aspects of the search engine optimization and hire necessary professional if possible to have a deeper insight to the matter.

the elusive practice of search engine optimization

Search engine optimization is an art that requires skill, and creativity, a synergy of original content, efficient marketing, and site analysis. These are the foundations for a successful search engine optimization campaign.

Search Engine Optimization

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