Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a large portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth – not all web traffic is welcome.

Some companies offer advertising schemes that, in return for increased web traffic (visitors), pay for screen space on the site. Sites also often aim to increase their web traffic through inclusion on search engines.

References

• Malacinski, Andrei; Dominick, Scott & Hartrick, Tom (1 March 2001). “Measuring Web traffic” at IBM – retrieved 1 January 2005
• Machlis, Sharon (17 June 2002). “Measuring Web Site Traffic” at ComputerWorld.com – retrieved 1 January 2005
• Ward, Mark (5 May 2003). “The Dangers of Having a Good Idea” – A BBC News look at the case of freelance journalist Glenn Fleishman after his site was linked to from MacCentral – retrieved 7 July 2005

Links

• “Web traffic analysis could save your site” by ZDNet
• “Websites strain under net traffic load” by The Register
• Alexa.com – monitors web traffic of people who use its toolbar. Reports available free.
• Nielsen Netratings – commercial web monitoring service used by large sites. Most reports are by subscription only, but the top 10 list is usually free.
• Introduction and Chapter 1 excerpt from Practical Web Traffic Analysis (ISBN 1904151183, 2002)
• “Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience” by Fran Diamond at boxesandarrows.com

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Many forms of search engine optimization only amount to ensuring compliance to search engines’ guidelines for inclusion and removing any technical barriers that might keep the website from reaching a proper ranking. However, other methods of search engine optimization such as keyword spamming are often viewed as “gaming the system” and considered unethical.

Displaying advertisements or sponsored results in an area visually separated from the algorithmically determined results is generally considered ethical. However, some search engines allow the ranking of a website to be influenced with a payment and provide little or no indication to the end-user that this has happened. Since the search engines give the impression or claim that the rankings reflect the relevance or popularity of the websites, this is often seen unfair or deceptive.

Search engine advertising products that don’t guarantee a specific ranking or an amount of visibility are seen as unethical by some search engine marketers. The product might provide an unspecified “boost” or the final ranking or visibility might be a result of an auction.

Paid inclusion

Search engines use computer programs called spiders or web crawlers to automatically discover websites and catalog their content. As this process can take some time and requires a website to be linked to from another website (to allow the crawler to find it), most search engines except for Google provide another channel to be included in search rankings via paying. This is different from pay per click advertising because the inclusion is guaranteed but not placement.

Paid inclusion has not caused much concern. However, it has been suggested that search engines should improve the speed they pick up new websites and that paid inclusion services thus create a conflict of interest that discourages improving service levels across the board.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Advertising with search engines is known by different names. It is also called sponsored search. Advertising with search engines could be further classified as follows:

Advertising based on a keyword search

Advertising based on a keyword search could take place through a search engine such as google.com, or a search engine partner site, such as shopping.com. For example, Google offers a service called AdWords, which allows companies, for a small fee, to have a link to their website featured when a user searches a specific keyword which the company specified.

Advertising based on content context

Many search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo! Search) have partner websites with specific content. The websites agree to let the search engines place content-specific advertising on their website, in return for a fee. The search engine then finds companies interested in advertising on websites with their desired content. For example, an online dog food retailer might have their advertisement placed on a site about dogs.

Both of these advertising formats allow advertisers to target specific users with certain interests. Generally these advertisements are paid for based on either a pay per click campaign or an impression based campaign.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Search engine optimization aims to index and improve rankings for the webpages which are most relevant to the keywords searched for according to the algorithm of each search engine. The relevant pages are returned in search engine result pages (SERPS). Basically this is done by writing a naural copy of each page containing the keywords that genuinely represent the goods and the services described within the corresponding webpages. Keywords are also used in the Title Pages, Meta Tags, Headings within a density of about 6% i.e., about 6 keywords spread over a page containing 100 words.

In order to further fine tune the pages and keep them user and search engine friendly, the architecture of the website, including its internal link structure, navigation etc., are also suitably modified for human beings and search spiders to nevigate through whole wbsite pages. Search spiders then can scan all necessary data about the whole site and store in engines’ data base. A good navigation systems imparts excellent experience to the users and they tend to visit the site again and again. This a sign of good achievement.

Numbers of inbound links to the site and the ‘quality’ of the links determine the Reputation of the website within the industry it belong to. This Reputation is one of the most important criteria for search engines to consider higher levels of rank to the deserving webpages. Algorithms are evolutionary and strives to develop every day in an attempt to provide most relevant & useful pages to the users and strike out the websites that trick them and attain higher positions for a while.

These processes are known as Organic or Algorithmic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of websites. Eventually it is essential for each and every website to get optimized organically, though temprarity they can make use of Pay-per-Click (PPC) to market their website without having to wait for the results of Organic SEO. However, users still prefer Organic Result Pages than Pages for which Advertising charges are paid to search engines. So far for inclusion in Organic Result Pages no fees are prescribed except the high usefulness of the information to the users.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

In Internet marketing, search engine marketing, or SEM, is a set of marketing methods to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs). The three main methods are:

• Search engine optimization, or improving rankings for relevant keywords in search results by rectifying the website structure, and content such that they could be easly read and understood by the search engine’s software programs. It is seen that website containing the latest trends and updates are first available to the visitor.
• Search engine advertising, or paying the search engine company for a guaranteed high ranking or an ad displayed aside the results (commonly known as pay per click advertising).
• Paid inclusion, or paying the search engine company for a guarantee that the website is included in their natural search index.

Search engine marketers are experts and firms who explore of weaknesses and strengths in the methods and individual products to find the best way to promote a particular website in search engines.

Products

• Google AdWords
• Yahoo! Search Marketing

External Articles

• Search Industry Explained – Four part article that gives the past, present and future of search engine marketing, optimization and related technologies.
• The Symbiotic Relationship Between SEO and PPC

Organizations

• Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO)
• SEO Consultants
• SeoPros.org
• Search Marketing Association of North America
• Romanian Association for Telework and Teleactivities

Industry resources

• ClickZ
• Searchviews
• Searchblog

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Relationship between trade marks and brand

Business Week magazine publishes an annual “brand scorecard” of the top 100 most valuable brands worldwide. Some results from the 2005 survey, which contained 53 American, 37 European, 7 Japanese, and 3 South Korean brands, are listed below.

The European breakdown is as follows: 9 German, 8 French, 5 Swiss, 4.5 British, 4 Italian, 3.5 Dutch, 1 Finnish, 1 Spanish, and 1 Swedish

United States Of America

American Express (credit card)
Apple (computer)
Citi (banking)
Coca-Cola (soft drink)
Disney (entertainment)
Ford Motor Company (automobiles)
GE (household appliances)
Global Gillette (shaving accessories)
Google (internet)
Harley Davidson (motorcycles)
Heinz (food)
IBM (computer)
Intel (computer)
KFC (fast food restaurant)
Levi’s (clothing retailer)
Marlboro (tobacco)
McDonald’s (fast food restaurant)
Microsoft (software)
Nike (footwear)
Pepsi (soft drink)
Starbucks (coffee)

Europe

BMW (automobile—Germany)
Volkswagen (automobile—Germany)
Mercedes-Benz (automobile—Germany)
UBS (banking—Switzerland)
HSBC (banking—UK)
Philips (electronics—Netherlands)
Nestlé (food—Switzerland)
Alessi (Home Accessories—Italy)
IKEA (furniture—Sweden)
Louis Vuitton (leather goods and luxury apparel—France)
Chanel (luxury apparel—France)
Gucci (luxury apparel—Italy)
Nokia (mobile phones—Finland)
BP (petrol—UK)
SAP (software—Germany)
Diesel (Apparel—Italy)
Giorgio Armani (luxury apparel—Italy)
Barilla (food—Italy)

Japan

Canon (photography)
Honda (automobiles)
Nintendo (video games)
Nissan (automobiles)
Sony (electronics)
Toyota (automobiles)

South Korea

Hyundai (automobiles)
LG (electronics)
Samsung (electronics and mobile phones)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Brands in the field of marketing originated in the 19th century with the advent of packaged goods. Industrialization moved the production of many household items, such as soap, from local communities to centralized factories. When shipping their items, the factories would literally brand their logo or insignia on the barrels used, which is where the term comes from.

These factories, generating mass-produced goods, needed to sell their products to a wider market, to a customer base familiar only with local goods. It quickly became apparent that a generic package of soap had difficulty competing with familiar, local products. The packaged goods manufacturers needed to convince the market that the public could place just as much trust in the non-local product.

Around 1900, James Walter Thompson published a house ad explaining trademark advertising. This was an early commercial explanation of what we now know as branding.

Many brands of that era, such as Uncle Ben’s rice and Kellogg’s breakfast cereal furnish illustrations of the problem. The manufacturers wanted their products to appear and feel as familiar as the local farmers’ produce. From there, with the help of advertising, manufacturers quickly learned to associate other kinds of brand values, such as youthfulness, fun or luxury, with their products. This kickstarted the practice we now know as branding.

Modern branding practices are studied and analyzed at research institutes such as the Zyman Institute of Brand Science at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Brands in the field of marketing originated in the 19th century with the advent of packaged goods. Industrialization moved the production of many household items, such as soap, from local communities to centralized factories. When shipping their items, the factories would literally brand their logo or insignia on the barrels used, which is where the term comes from.

These factories, generating mass-produced goods, needed to sell their products to a wider market, to a customer base familiar only with local goods. It quickly became apparent that a generic package of soap had difficulty competing with familiar, local products. The packaged goods manufacturers needed to convince the market that the public could place just as much trust in the non-local product.

Around 1900, James Walter Thompson published a house ad explaining trademark advertising. This was an early commercial explanation of what we now know as branding.

Many brands of that era, such as Uncle Ben’s rice and Kellogg’s breakfast cereal furnish illustrations of the problem. The manufacturers wanted their products to appear and feel as familiar as the local farmers’ produce. From there, with the help of advertising, manufacturers quickly learned to associate other kinds of brand values, such as youthfulness, fun or luxury, with their products. This kickstarted the practice we now know as branding.

Modern branding practices are studied and analyzed at research institutes such as the Zyman Institute of Brand Science at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a large portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth – not all web traffic is welcome.

Some companies offer advertising schemes that, in return for increased web traffic (visitors), pay for screen space on the site. Sites also often aim to increase their web traffic through inclusion on search engines.

References

• Malacinski, Andrei; Dominick, Scott & Hartrick, Tom (1 March 2001). “Measuring Web traffic” at IBM – retrieved 1 January 2005
• Machlis, Sharon (17 June 2002). “Measuring Web Site Traffic” at ComputerWorld.com – retrieved 1 January 2005
• Ward, Mark (5 May 2003). “The Dangers of Having a Good Idea” – A BBC News look at the case of freelance journalist Glenn Fleishman after his site was linked to from MacCentral – retrieved 7 July 2005

Links

• “Web traffic analysis could save your site” by ZDNet
• “Websites strain under net traffic load” by The Register
• Alexa.com – monitors web traffic of people who use its toolbar. Reports available free.
• Nielsen Netratings – commercial web monitoring service used by large sites. Most reports are by subscription only, but the top 10 list is usually free.
• Introduction and Chapter 1 excerpt from Practical Web Traffic Analysis (ISBN 1904151183, 2002)
• “Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience” by Fran Diamond at boxesandarrows.com

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.