Financial institutions are failing. Fortune 500 marketers are cutting budgets. Inflation is increasing. Consumer spending is uncertain. Trade deficits are rising.

The news is filled with dire headlines and seemingly worse news everyday. The market appears to be moving to a more conservative state. Through all this, you still have a business to run and grow. Here are five best practices for your marketing to help you come out ahead during an uncertain economy.
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Statistics consistently show that searching the internet is the 2nd most common activity online (1st is email) with more than 50% of online users conducting at least one search per day. Search engines scour the web for websites and other content to index and provide strong search results to their users. When your website appears in the search results, you are receiving free exposure to your target audience. In addition, if the user clicks on your listing, you do not need to pay for that click.

The key challenge is that unless you pay for an advertisement or sponsored link, you can not control where or when your listings appear. The search engine maintains sole authority and editorial judgement of what sites to list. In an earlier post, we discussed six ways to achieve free traffic from Google and other search engines, but one of the most important additional aspects to achieving website rankings in Google and other search engines is your meta-title.
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Have you ever had a brainstorm for a great business idea? Of course! We all have had these brilliant flashes of genius. Sometimes we tuck them away for later use, sometimes we start furiously writing the business plan. In a lot cases, people are not sure how to start figuring out if the idea is a good one or not. Here are some key questions to help you get started before putting the effort into a business plan or tossing the idea aside:

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Google offers a unique program for non-profit organizations to advertise for free on Google.com’s keyword advertisements – Google Grants. From Google:

“Designed for 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, Google Grants is a unique in-kind advertising program. It harnesses the power of our flagship advertising product, Google AdWords, to non-profits seeking to inform and engage their constituents online. Google Grants has awarded AdWords advertising to hundreds of non-profit groups whose missions range from animal welfare to literacy, from supporting homeless children to promoting HIV education. Google Grant recipients use their award of free AdWords advertising on Google.com to raise awareness and increase traffic. “

Google was recently shown to have more than 70% search engine market share and is routinely touted as marketer’s #1 performing advertising placement. The upside is the program is free, the downside is that there are some limitations and hurdles to getting it to work properly. Whether you have a Google Grant or want a Google Grant, here are three things to look out for with your Google Grant program:
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You built a website. You have a list of keywords. You wrote some catchy ads. Now what? Before you spend another dollar, take a look at your conversion rate because you can save a lot of money and win a lot more customers by improving this metric. This might sound like a difficult process, but the good news is that there are a number of free and easy to use tools you can use to improve your conversion rate today.

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The age-old marketing question “How much should I spend on Marketing?” has recently turned into, “How much should I spend on Google?” Over the years, many different methodologies for determining budgets have been promoted, discussed and employed as different businesses try to perfect their marketing. Some of the most popular techniques are to allocate a percent of sales or an overall percent of total budget. Others go with gut instinct or a shoot-the-moon approach to maxing their credit card out. In search marketing, people often promote building a big keyword list, setting it live and ‘optimizing it to results’.

Whatever approach you have heard in the past, its worth considering a completely unique approach to Google budgeting – demand-based budgeting.
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When you are interviewing for a job, you are not only being considered for the position, you are considering whether you want to join that business. The same goes when you start a business. In fact, given the amount of dedication it takes to start, build and profit from a new business, it is critical that you look at the endeavor as a job and compare it to your other opportunities to make sure it is the right fit for you.

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Quality Score is the measure used by Google to determine the placement and cost per click of your search ads. Quality Score is calculated using a number of factors related to your keywords, creative and landing page in each ad group. One of the most frustrating parts of launching and managing a search campaign is when keywords are disabled and require a higher bid in order to be active. It is especially frustrating when seemingly obvious terms that should rank brand or product names are disabled due to low Quality Score. Why does Google do this? And how can you avoid it?

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Dear Thrivepoint,

We have received several proposals from search engine optimization providers who gurantee our listing will be ranked in the top 10 or our money back. This type of offer is very appealing because we have tight marketing budgets that need to be squeezed for maximum results. But, can SEO results be guaranteed?

-W.B.

Thrivepoint: SEO rankings are not something that can be guaranteed very easily. Beside the fact that the SEO does not own or control the search engines, there are a number of important reasons why you should dig deeper into the SEOs guarantee before buying. Here is how to get started with evaluating the guarantee.
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Optmizing your website to attract traffic from search engines – or search engine optimization (SEO) – can be one of the most cost-effective ways to generate traffic to your website. On the other hand, it can take a lot of time and energy to get to the point where the traffic is paying off for your effort. Whether you manage your site yourself or outsource it to someone else, here are six ways you can increase search engine traffic to your site without breaking the bank and without a time intensive overhaul.

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