If you’ve ever thought about buying paid advertising in Google or Yahoo, but thought the costs were too high, you might be right. Even though you set a budget for PPC ads (Pay-Per-Click), are you really getting your money’s worth?

Paid or sponsored listings, those ads at the top and right side of search results, may not be getting as many clicks as you’d expect. Research indicates that approximately 60 to 80% of people click on organic listings over paid ones, probably because they know sponsored ads will be sales campaigns. If the searcher is just looking for information, they don’t want to be sold to! Additionally, if you’re looking for people with a higher level of education to click on your organic listing, don’t bother with PPC.

Search engines also record your ranking history, so your organic listing will stand the test of time and you’ll continue to rank higher, especially as you implement more and more SEO and ranking techniques that you learn from this blog. If you’re still curious about how Google’s PPC campaigns work visit https://adwords.google.com. You might test a few ads with a limited budget and see what results you get.

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I just Googled this phrase to find out for myself, and came upon the following handy tool:

http://www.selfseo.com/google_ban_tool.php

As it turns out, I’m not banned! Although I don’t know why I would be, since my site came up in the search results in the first place.

If you did find your site was banned, I suggest you get yourself to a search engine optimization specialist who can do an analysis of your site and find out whether the problem is duplicate content, keyword stuffing, or what.

Popularity: 51% [?]

by Dina Giolitto

Suppose you paid thousands to have a professionally branded website designed from scratch. What’s the one element that can make or break your sales? The words! Yes, you’ve heard it before - your message to the customer means everything.

Oh, you already know that? Well, that’s terrific. And now let me tell you something you probably didn’t know. Remember the part where your designer asked you if you wanted “search engine optimization” - and you said no thanks, because your bank account had just been drained?

THAT is where you went astray, and lost out on myriad opportunities to get your brand and message in front of all those clamoring, salivating prospects. And that’s what’s REALLY keeping you and the people who want to buy your stuff from ever crossing paths.

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Popularity: 26% [?]

The short answer is yes, but only if used properly.

When I began my online writing career the trend with keywords weighed heavily in favor of putting as many relevant keywords into your copy as possible. This was great for search engine rankings, but made for awkward - if not impossible to read- copy.

Thankfully, search engines today don’t favor pages that are stuffed with keywords, and the practice can even get you banned.

So how, and where, do you use keywords so that you get good search results while still retaining copy that people want to read?

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Popularity: 23% [?]