The +1 button is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.”

Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.

To find out more click here.

Each of these pages is specially formulated (SEO) for the search engine spiders to find and index their content, thus by creating these satellite websites out on the web we create a network of doorways for people to find you. These satellite pages can exist anywhere, even inside the Facebook network.

The Factor x10 Examples:
Satellite Pages

• Yes Team Auto Pontiac – Steubenville, OH

Facebook Fanpages

• Holmes Auto – Des Moines, IA

YouTube Channels

• Des Moines Imports – Des Moines, IA

Please contact us to find out more about the Factor of 10 and make it easier for customers to find you vs. your competition.

Brian Cox

President

Dealer Impact Systems

www.dealerimpact.com

Search engine marketing isn’t a perfect marketing medium. But compared to every “innovative” marketing methodology that’s come along in the past five years, search is a hands-down winner. This is why Google has become a multi-billion dollar powerhouse and why hundreds of marketers are reaping ROI, increased market share and branding benefits from being active participants in search.

The reasons SEM has taken off are both elementary and revolutionary. As a marketing channel, it offers the following strengths: 

1. Paid search campaigns happen in real-time, making it possible for marketers to obtain almost instantaneous marketing ROI. Search’s real-time nature provides for the ongoing fine-tuning of all variables in the campaign in a continuous process of optimization, which means that marketers can learn and improve their campaigns over time.
2. Paid search advertising is by its very nature the most unobtrusive way of getting the word out about one’s product, service or brand. Instead of pushing a messages in the face of an uninterested and possibly unwilling audience, SEM is a low-key “pull medium,” responsive to the user’s intention to engage. Therefore, calls to action are more likely to be heeded because users perceive them to be relevant to their intent.
3. The data generated by paid search campaigns can have enormous value to marketers, in terms of providing business intelligence, extending CRM efforts and scouting out audience segments that may have been neglected by existing marketing plans. Given that search behavior is highly responsive to non-search marketing efforts (both on- and offline), such data can provide a reliable indication of the effectiveness of all other marketing efforts.
4. Paid search is still a relatively inexpensive medium and search campaigns can be dynamically scaled up or down to accommodate varying needs. Applying targeting and segmentation technologies can dramatically reduce (although not completely eliminate) the problem of non-converting clicks.

Unfortunately, each one of these strengths comes with major caveats. The fact that search happens in real-time provides both opportunity and risk. Minor campaign errors can quickly result in significant financial losses unless they are quickly corrected, so the onus is on the marketer to continually monitor search campaigns to ensure peak performance.

The mere fact that search provides the ability to systematically test campaign elements doesn’t ensure that such steps will be taken. Nor do many marketers actually use the rich data from search to inform their non-search marketing efforts. Teams can be overloaded with data, and many function in departmental isolation where they are insulated from high-level marketing strategy conversations.

Finally, while paid search is inexpensive relative to other media, media management costs are proportionally higher. Unlike other channels where the media is expensive (such as television) but media management costs are low (because the media is easy to buy), search presents the exact converse. The media (keywords) are cheap but the costs of managing campaigns may be significant — especially for sophisticated search campaigns.

Given these difficult issues, many marketers choose to simply outsource some or all of the search campaign process to an outside agency, either one that already handles their online media buying or a specialized search shop that does nothing else but search. In my view, there are definite risks with going the big agency route, because big agencies rarely have access to the sophisticated technology required to deliver top-performing search campaigns. Nor does their economic model (which depends on marking up media bought in big chunks such as radio/TV buys) favor intensive work on search. You can’t really blame big agencies for regarding search this way, because it’s only natural for agencies to focus their efforts on media buying opportunities where the profit potential is greatest.

Specialized SEM agencies provide an alternative to the big agency route, but once again, marketers need to exercise care before committing their search budgets to such organizations. Many SEM agencies are new and don’t have more than a few years of operating experience behind them. While many promise to deliver unparalleled campaign results using “proprietary” technology, the fact is that many of them license the same off-the-shelf campaign management tools used by the big agencies, limiting their ability to provide truly customized solutions.

As there are no industry benchmarks for evaluating such agencies, a good selection rule is to look at the agency’s client list, seek out positive, unbiased testimonials from those who have used them in the past and, perhaps most importantly, examine how much their existing clients have grown since the agency took over their accounts.

However the work gets done, marketers need to understand that search isn’t just another marketing channel, but a fundamental organizing method by which users and marketers can find each other in the terabytes of data constituting the digital world. While it’s attractive to think that search can just be bolted onto existing media plans, it is far better to regard search as an integral element at the heart of the marketing strategy, because the demand that you drive through your media efforts is all harvested in the search process.

Source: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/20470.asp

• Is search engine marketing (SEM or PPC) really a wise investment of marketing capitol?
• Is a dedicated search engine optimization (SEO) investment worth the money and effort?

The obvious answer to both is a resounding yes. But first you need to define your goals before starting on either one. They both have their place but they two very distinct purposes.

To often though is SEM used as a crutch to make up for deficiencies in SEO.

You should not have to buy your money terms with pay per click advertising. Money terms meaning your stores name, and your brand and location combination’s. Ranking for these keywords is child’s play in the grand scheme of things, if your site is properly optimized and you obtain a few relevant back links.

Only 25% of your of your websites search engine presence is determined by your on site efforts. The other 75% is determined by the number of votes it gets from other sites, back links. However the 25% factor may make a huge difference on how effective the other 75% is and how long it takes to see results.

Key elements to be concerned with on site.

Meta Data

Meta tags tell the search engines what users will find when they arrive at your site. Think of it as how your site is cataloged in their index.

1. Page title: This is the most important element. The title is what describes what your page is all about very much like a book title. It is also what people see in the search engines in the results pages and in the browser bar. It gets more weight than anything from the search engines when they index your site.
2. Page description: It is a summary of your page and is what shows for a description of your site under your title in some of the search engines. It is very important to include your main “money terms” in your page description.
3. Keywords: It was once the most weighted of all meta data but as people discovered this it was the most abused. People would stuff as many keywords as they could imagine to describe their site to the search engines many time even if they were not relevant. Now they do not give them as much weight however most SEO experts will agree because the search engine spiders still scan them and if your content matches they do provide some weighting. Having more than 8 keywords is a waste of energy and more than six is probably over kill and may even sandbox your site.

Website vendors should give you access to manipulate these items to help you build the relevance of your site. No one can describe your business better than you so it should not be left up to them. I laugh when I see websites by vendors that basically have broiler plate meta descriptions with just minor changes for dealer name and location. It is like they just fill in the blanks. Each page on your site should have unique meta data. Each page delivers a different message let the search engines know what you are showing your visitors.

Heading Summaries:

Heading summaries are sub headings on your site. These tags help people read your web page but also help the spiders understand more about your page is targeted too and what its the most important parts. For example you will see different sections of this post show different headlines through out the post. This is through the use of head tags. <h2> is a second level title and
<h3> a third level title. Heading summaries above is an <h2> element.

Image summary:

The search engine spiders cannot see images like your website visitors can. So you have to tell them what the image is or says especially if it is an image mostly comprised of text.

Source: http://ismintraining.com/seo/seo-vs-sem-part-one/