Getting Targeted Clicks with “Negative” Pay Per Click Marketing

Using “negative” keywords in your PPC campaign is necessary to detract people who are using a keyword you’re advertising with, but highly unlikely to want what you’re offering.  For example, they may be searching for “Free MP3″ and you’re advertising a new “MP3 Player - same keyword, different market.

 But did you know that you can also use these kinds of negative keywords to more finely target your specific audience?  For example, if you’re promoting an upcoming marketing seminar, you might write an ad that reads:

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Trademarks and Online Marketing: What’s Acceptable?

The core underlying idea behind whether or not using a trademark online is acceptable or not is the answer to this question:

“How likely is it that the use of this name will confuse the user into thinking it’s the “official” one?”

One very hot, and very “grey” area of internet trademark use concerns internet marketing and affiliate marketing.  Is it okay to make a comparison between two brands?”  “Can I use the trademark if I’m an affiliate promoting the company’s products?”  Or “Can I use the competitor’s trademark in my PPC advertising?” 

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Where Does the Best Web Traffic Come From? Hint: It’s NOT Always the Search Engines…

Some of the best, most targeted traffic to your website doesn’t always come from your articles, your search engine results or even your pay-per-click ads.  It comes from your “link partners” - those quality, non-competitive sites you’ve shared links with in an effort to increase traffic for each of you.

It used to be that Google and other search engines ranked sites based on the number of incoming links they had pointing to them.  So, being the clever humans we are, some people decided to one-up the system by getting massive amounts of links from everywhere pointed at them.  This was commonly done through so-called “marketing tactics” like blog comment spam, link directories and free-for-all link sites.

Thankfully, the search engines have grown up and have placed more emphasis on not just the links you have pointing to you, but the other sites you’ve linked to as well.   But that doesn’t mean you just spend a day going out and collecting URLs and email addresses to contact people for a “link exchange”. These days, no webmaster or website owner is going to link to your page just because you asked.

The truth is, it can seem overwhelming for the beginning website owner to get anyone to notice them…

So what do you do?  Here are my top 3 link building tactics that I’ve used for my clients to help them build strong, popular and “evergreen” websites that people enjoy discovering, sharing and reading.

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