In This Issue:

• Overcoming Spam Filters in Your Linking Campaign

• Google Has New Advanced Search Feature

• Does Advertising in PPC Search Engines Really Work?

Overcoming Spam Filters in Your Linking Campaign

The most valuable thing you can do to increase your site's position on the search engine listings is to increase the number of sites linked INTO you site. A linking campaign should be part of your weekly/monthly site maintenance activities.

Webmasters of popular sites get hundreds of e-mail messages every day. Often, 30-50% of those messages are unsolicited messages containing advertising (so called spam e-mails). For this reason, webmasters install anti-spam software programs and sometimes these programs flag your e-mail message as spam mail. This means that your link request mail will be deleted immediately and the webmaster will not even receive your link request.

To overcome spam filters, you should follow these tips:

• Your e-mail message must not have a subject that sounds like advertising. E-mail messages with the infamous subject line "Let's trade links!" will nowadays be deleted immediately. Too many spammers used that subject line in the past and therefore it's not effective anymore.
   
• You should also refrain from impersonal salutations like "Dear Sir / Dear Madam", "Dear webmaster," or "Hi!". If you use personalized salutations, then you'll get many more webmasters to read your e-mail message.
   
• It's very important that you take a look at the Web site of the potential link partner before sending an e-mail message. Try to find the name of the contact person. If the webmaster is called Richard, then write "Dear Richard". Ask yourself: Which e-mail message would you trust more, one that says "Hello Internet user!" or one that says "Hello your-name"?
   
• Visit and surf through the Web site of your potential link partners. This way, you can tell them what you like specifically of their Web site, for example the easy to understand navigation, the green buttons, the artwork, the collection of special articles, etc.

Google Has New Advanced Search Feature

Google introduced a new advanced search feature which allows you to not only search for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. Just place the "~" character directly in front of the keyword in your search query, for example "browser ~help" not only searches for "browser help", but also for "browser support", "browser tips" and "browser tutorials".

Does Advertising in PPC Search Engines Really Work?

Maybe you've considered using pay per click (PPC) search engines to promote your Web site on the Internet. PPC search engines are search engines that allow you to bid for a special position on their result pages. You pay a certain amount for every click your listing receives. There are only two big PPC engines that are worth your time and effort:

1. Overture

Overture is the biggest and most important PPC search engine worldwide. Overture listings appear on Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista, InfoSpace, MSN Search and on many smaller sites. Overture has recently introduced it's "Content Match" program. When someone visits a site like MSN and views content pages (such as articles), Overture will provide relevant listings on the same page.

2. Kanoodle

Kanoodle is smaller than Overture, but with 14,000 customers, it's still larger than most other pay per click search engines. Kanoodle listings appear on CNet, HotBot, Galaxy and many other smaller sites.

The bids on Kanoodle are not as expensive as on Overture In addition, Kanoodle doesn't require an initial deposit but they give you US$5 for free so that you may test their search engine risk-free.

But does it make sense to advertise on these search engines?

It all comes down to your visitor/sales conversion rate and the price of your products. To determine the usefulness of bidding on pay per click search engines, you must constantly monitor your bids. Only then you can know if PPC advertising works for your site.

Pay per click advertising can quickly become very expensive, for example the current top bid for the search term "data recovery" on Overture is US$5.15. That means that the advertiser pays US5.15 every time a Web surfer clicks on his listing. For 100 visitors, that advertiser pays US$515.00. If these visitors don't become customers, it's wasted money.

Advertising your Web site on PPC search engines can contribute to your Web site promotion campaign. However, you should take care that you don't pay too much per click and that you get a positive return on investment.

A recent study from Consumer WebWatch showed that Web surfers prefer non-paid listings. For this reason, high rankings in search engines still matter and they cost less, too.