En Resumen:

• Resultados Orgánicos: Tardan en aparecer entre 3 a 6 meses (para sitios nuevos) y se logran a partir de la correcta escritura del código fuente (programación) de cada página web y la adecuada inclusión de los estándares propuestos por los motores de búsqueda. Los resultados orgánicos o “naturales” en los motores de búsqueda por lo general aparecen del lado izquierdo de la página. Al optimizar orgánicamente una página web en el largo plazo generará relevancia o “Ranking” en palabras clave específicas.
• Resultados Pagados: Es el posicionamiento pagado o “Enlaces Patrocinados” en las páginas de resultados de los buscadores y aparecen de 30 minutos a una hora después de realizar el pago al buscador, sin importar si el sitio está bien programado o no. Por lo general los resultados pagados aparecen del lado derecho de la página y/o arriba de los resultados orgánicos. El posicionamiento pagado no genera relevancia, pero genera tráfico inmediato.

Ninguno excluye al otro, ambos se complementan. Aunque en el largo plazo los resultados orgánicos generan relevancia y tráfico de calidad. En la siguiente imagen queda manifiesta su ubicación, los Resultados Orgánicos están marcados con Verde y los Resultados Pagados con Amarillo.

La explicación:

Difícilmente se podrían resumir en un solo artículo todos los elementos que comprenden el Web Marketing, vamos… solo para enterarse “en corto” de los elementos que la componen habría que consultar al menos unas 50 páginas de la Wikipedia (a diciembre de 2007) lo cual tampoco es mala idea y seguramente en un futuro habrá que escribir al respecto resumiendo aun mas dicha información.

Sin embargo las preguntas más frecuentes (al menos las que me hacen a mi) van relacionadas con los SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), o las Páginas de Resultados de los Motores de Búsqueda, el cómo aparecer más rápido en ellas o el cómo salir “hasta arriba” en los resultados. Lo anterior cae específicamente dentro de uno de los ocho métodos (a dic. 2007) del Web Marketing conocido como SEM
(Search Engine Marketing) lo que en español sería algo así como “Mercadotecnia en Buscadores” aunque, para efecto de estándares, en este artículo usaremos la terminología a como se conoce en Internet.

Como decía, el SEM es uno de los ocho métodos que componen el Web Marketing, y el mismo SEM está compuesto a su vez por otros 4 métodos: SEO, Posición Pagada, Inserción Pagada y SMO. Sin embargo la mayoría de empresas y profesionales que se dedican al Web Marketing enfocan sus esfuerzos usualmente en 2 métodos del SEM: El SEO y la Posición Pagada, también conocida como PPC
(Pago Por Click) que es de lo que trata este artículo y particularmente sobre sus diferencias, así que vamos a ellas.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Método que se ocupa de los Resultados Orgánicos, e implica el proceso de incrementar el volumen y la calidad de tráfico (visitas) hacia un sitio web desde las páginas de resultados de los buscadores mediante la correcta escritura del código fuente de cada página web y la adecuada inclusión de estándares en el mismo. A este proceso también se le llama Optimización Orgánica, ya que se logra a través de métodos naturales (el código fuente) y es recompensada por los buscadores otorgándoles relevancia o PageRank (en el caso de Google) que es parecido a un “Rating” para internet, resultando en un tráfico de mayor calidad a medida que aumenta el Rank o “rating” de la pagina web. Esta optimización por lo general es realizada por un Desarrollador Web o bien por un Diseñador Web con conocimiento de causa.

Ventajas del SEO:

• Genera relevancia o PageRank (rating).
• La calidad del tráfico es superior que un enlace patrocinado una vez que se tiene un buen rating.
• Efectos duraderos
• Es relativamente económico.

Desventajas del SEO:

• Difícilmente reconoce tecnologías encapsuladas como el FLASH u obsoletas como los Frames.
• Tarda en aparecer en los SERPs, a veces hasta 6 meses o más.
• Implica actualizaciones generacionales a medida que los buscadores actualizan sus algoritmos.
• Se requieren aplicaciones adicionales para medirlo.

Posición Pagada (PPC)

Se refiere a los Enlaces Patrocinados
o Resultados Pagados, también se le conoce como PPC (Pago Por Click) e implica la contratación de un anuncio similar a un clasificado en una posición notoria dentro de las páginas de resultados de un buscador (los SERPs) que aparecen al introducir determinada palabra clave (keyword), generalmente son visibles a un lado o arriba de los resultados orgánicos. Dicha contratación se hace directamente con la empresa propietaria del buscador (a través de agencias, distribuidores, consultores, etc.) generalmente a través de un prepago equivalente a $50 USD como mínimo, presupuesto del cual se va descontando una cantidad cada vez que algún navegante da click en el anuncio. El costo del click es determinado libremente en una subasta automatizada, por ejemplo: Si el costo del click empieza en 0.25 centavos pero un anuncio competidor ofrece 0.30 centavos por click su anuncio aparecerá arriba del nuestro, generalmente el sistema de subasta permite introducir rangos de subasta automáticos para evitar una supervisión tediosa, aun así se recomienda supervisar el comportamiento del anuncio al menos unas 3 veces al día si la competencia en vasta.

Ventajas del PPC:

• La programación del sitio es irrelevante.
• Aparece de inmediato en los SERPs, entre 15 minutos a 2 horas.
• Genera tráfico inmediato
• Aparece solo cuando se busquen las palabras clave contratadas.
• Es medible desde el origen.

Desventajas del PPC:

• No genera relevancia o PageRank (rating).
• Es efímero, pues deja de ser visible en el momento en que agota su presupuesto.
• Es caro, si el anuncio tiene muchos competidores el costo (por subasta) del click puede llegar a ser bastante alto y agotar rápidamente el presupuesto planeado.

THE YAHOO RULES for High Performance Web Sites:

1. Make Fewer HTTP Requests
2. Use a Content Delivery Network
3. Add an Expires Header
4. Gzip Components
5. Put Stylesheets at the Top
6. Put Scripts at the Bottom
7. Avoid CSS Expressions
8. Make JavaScript and CSS External
9. Reduce DNS Lookups
10. Minify JavaScript
11. Avoid Redirects
12. Remove Duplicate Scripts
13. Configure ETags
14. Make Ajax Cacheable

Also check out this related articles

• SitePoint - Web Site Optimization: 13 Simple Steps
• Y! Developer Network - Performance
• Y! User Interface Blog - Performance
• Suggested reading

Good mktg guide… for the record:

A Comparison of Paid Search Advertising Models
by Bill Platt

As webmasters, we are all chasing customers. We are looking for human
visitors to come to our websites and to buy what we are selling.

To serve our needs for targeted traffic — potential customers — the
search companies have begun to offer us a share of their significant
traffic through many paid advertising methods.

The most common advertising offer at the search engines is the PPC
(Pay-Per-Click) advertising model. There are also other search
advertising models such as CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) and
Featured Listings.

In this article, we will look at the advantages and disadvantages of each advertising method.

PPC (PAY-PER-CLICK) ADVERTISING MODEL

By far, PPC is currently the most popular advertising model. From the
buyer’s perspective, it is usually the most expensive type of
advertising and the one that generates the most fear of fraud. In fact,
many experts suggest that click-fraud might be as high as 20 to 25% of
all click-traffic.

Pay-Per-Click is exactly what it sounds like. The advertiser bids on
keywords and tells the advertising company that they will pay X number
of cents or dollars for every click that they receive to their website
through the PPC-provider’s website.

Advertisers compete for position within the search results with the
highest bidder getting the best advertising spot at the top of the
results. The second highest bidder gets the #2 spot, etc.

Generally, Pay-Per-Click providers serve three listings on the first
page of search results. Only when there is strong competition for a
particular keyword term and a number of advertisers vying for
placement, will the PPC-provider show results with more than three
advertisers.

If you bid the minimum five cents per click (the standard for most PPC
systems), then it is possible that you might not see your listing on
page one or page two of the search results. Let’s face it; PPC
providers are interested in making the most money they can from the
traffic they send to people. So, if one advertiser is paying a dollar
per click and you are only bidding five cents a click, who do you think
will receive the best placement? Yep, the one-dollar per click
advertiser will get the most attention and the best placement, even if
it requires pushing your placement back to page three of the search
results.

The top two PPC-providers are:

http://adwords.google.com/
[url]http://www.content.overture.com/d//url] - Now owned by Yahoo!

Other not-so-well-known providers of PPC traffic, in alphabetical order, include:

http://www.411web.com/
http://www.7search.com/
http://www.abcsearch.com/
http://www.adbrite.com/
http://www.ask.com/
http://www.brainfox.com/
http://www.enhance.com/
http://www.kanoodle.com/
http://search.looksmart.com/
http://www.lycos.com/
http://www.miva.com/
http://www.search123.com/
http://www.searchfeed.com/
http://turbo10.com/

The biggest advantage to these systems is that they serve large pools
of consumers online, and they let you target specific search keywords.

The disadvantages are numerous. Those most often cited include: the
high cost of bids for certain keywords, poor conversion rates on
purchased clicks, and click fraud (generally regarded as people
clicking your link just so they can get paid for it).

Personally, I have paid as high as a dollar per-click for a service
that sells for $35, and $20 in volume. I have spoken to others who
operate for-profit websites and have paid as much as $2.50 per click on
an average keyword. In some really competitive markets, people pay as
much as $30 per click.

If you use the Web-Professor bid tool to check keywords at Overture ( http://web-professor.net/tools/bidstats/)
and you type in the keyword “mesothelioma”, you’ll find 30 bidders
vying for that term and a maximum bid of $29.88 per click! If the
maximum bidder converts traffic to sales at the national average of 3%,
then he or she is paying an average of $900 to get one client! Insane,
but true.

CPM (COST PER THOUSAND IMPRESSIONS) ADVERTISING MODEL

CPM advertising is most often associated with banner advertising, but
can now be purchased for text ads as well. This type of advertising is
available from many sources, including:

http://adwords.google.com/
http://www.realtechnetwork.com/
http://www.joetec.net/

CPM advertising can be cheaper than PPC, but it fails to address the
effectiveness of your advertising copy. Before undertaking a large CPM
campaign, you need to be confident your advertising copy will deliver
results.

As with any other type of advertising, you need to track click-through
and conversion rates to determine the advertising copy that is most
effective for your business.

You also need to have a solid understanding of how many impressions it
will take to generate a visitor, and how many visitors you will need to
generate one sale. And, on the backside, you will need to know what the
average earnings from your sales will be. With these stats in hand,
you’ll know how much you can afford to pay for CPM advertising or any
other type of advertising.

Using Google Adwords, you can buy CPM advertising for as little as $2
per thousand impressions. The one time I went that route, thinking my
advertising might be cheaper, I ended up dropping $180 in three days
with only one sale to show for my investment — utilizing the exact
same ad that generated a 4% click-through rate (CTR) in Google’s PPC
advertising system.

The major appeal of CPM advertising is its perceived low-cost, with rates ranging between $2 - $3 per thousand impressions.

The major disadvantage to this type of advertising is that you need a
good handle on how well your advertising is performing. Your
advertising copy can make or break you. Additionally, you need to keep
an eye on your advertising budget. From first hand experience, I can
tell you that although CPM advertising can appear inexpensive, it can
in short order surpass the costs of PPC advertising.

FEATURED LISTING ADVERTISING MODEL

Featured listings differ from the other two advertising models in that
you do not pay for “ad clicks” or “ad impressions”. With featured
listings, your advertisement appears in the purchased location for 30
days, 90 days, or one year.<BR><BR>

Featured listings can be bought on individual websites and even on
networks of websites. Below are a few examples of advertising networks
that offer featured listings:<BR><BR>

Geek Files ( http://www.geekfiles.com/advertising/ )

Geek Files offers various Featured Listing placement options with ad
rates ranging from $19 to $179 per month. You get two months free if
you buy advertising for a full year.

Aardvark Travel ( http://www.aardvarktravel.net/featured/ )

Aardvark Travel is a travel search engine. Featured listings appear in
a colored box between the top five listings and the bottom five
listings in the travel-related search results. There is a $50 setup fee
for each Featured Listing and a $10 per month recurring charge for as
long as you keep your listing active. Aardvark claims featured listings
generate 40 times more clicks than any other listings on their pages.

The Independent Search Engine & Directory Network( ISEDN.org

The ISEDN offers a program that allows you to purchase Top Ten exposure
for your website(s) across their network of 200 plus member websites.

The network is comprised of specialized search engines, search
directories, and article directories. Featured Listing placements for
specific keywords are displayed across the entire ISEDN system.

The cost of a keyword term (the word or phrase associated with the
listing) is $12 for three months or $36 for 12 months. The price drops
for each additional 5 listings you purchase. If you are buying in
volume, discounts can be significant. For example, the cost for 16 to
100 listings is $6 per listing for 3 months and $18 per listing for 12
months.

The main drawback to the ISEDN program is that the network, although
large, does not yet have the traffic volume of the major engines.

The major benefit, of course, is that you can buy a lot more bang for
your advertising dollars. Additionally, you can see your ads appearing
on pages in a position that will attract more attention and
click-through traffic to your website.

WHICH ADVERTISING MODEL IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

It really depends on your business model. More so, it depends on your
absolute click-through averages and your website conversion rates.

Your advertising needs to cost you no more than what it earns for you.
Ideally, your advertising will cost less than it earns for you.

Some businesses trade on the lifetime value of customers and are
willing to pay more to get customers than what they earn on their first
sale, but not all of us can afford to build a customer base in the same
way that Amazon built theirs.

If your advertising budget is small, your goal should be to make every
advertising dollar count. Grow your business to the point where you
might be able to afford some of the more expensive advertising
solutions. But then, if the lower-cost solutions generate sales for
you, why would you want to pay more?

I found this interesting article about a crucial subject that sometimes is hard to explain to clients, I guess the way Laura explains it, is definitely crystal clear, so “why write if you can quote”, here’s that info for the record:

Marketing vs. Advertising: What’s the Difference?
By Laura Lake.

You will often find that many people confuse marketing with advertising or vice versa. While both components are important they are very different. Knowing the difference and doing your market research can put your company on the path to substantial growth.Let’s start off by reviewing the formal definitions of each and then I’ll go into the explanation of how marketing and advertising differ from one another:

Advertising: The paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by an identified sponsor; the non-personal presentation or promotion by a firm of its products to its existing and potential customers.

Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products.

After reading both of the definitions it is easy to understand how the difference can be confusing to the point that people think of them as one-in-the same, so lets break it down a bit.
Advertising is a single component of the marketing process. It’s the part that involves getting the word out concerning your business, product, or the services you are offering. It involves the process of developing strategies such as ad placement, frequency, etc. Advertising includes the placement of an ad in such mediums as newspapers, direct mail, billboards, television, radio, and of course the Internet. Advertising is the largest expense of most marketing plans, with public relations following in a close second and market research not falling far behind.

The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy. All of these elements must not only work independently but they also must work together towards the bigger goal. Marketing is a process that takes time and can involve hours of research for a marketing plan to be effective. Think of marketing as everything that an organization does to facilitate an exchange between company and consumer.

This is a very good article full of truth and it sketches a pretty good idea. I’ve successfully applied this in the past for some of my customers already (and in my blog BTW)…, I just might add for my own record (and for those that find it useful) that translation will get you more customers for sure, but once you got them, you’ll probably need customer support and in some cases public relations, manuals or even personal assistance in that very language you just translated.

Good planning is needed before making this important step, because there is a chance you might grow on that language market more than expected…, and if not ready, some uncomfortable situations with your new customers may follow.

Do They Speak English?
by: Charles Jr Jean

Double your customer base… by repeating the same things!

Are you unknowingly restricting your market to more than half of your potential customer base? Are you alienating an important number of your visitors? If, your site is only in English and not translated in other key languages, you’re undoubtedly are! Did you know that as of 2005, around 300M users accessed the Internet in English, while almost 700M users accessed it in another language? If we were to make a crude assessment, strictly English localized website are loosing 70% of their potential customer base from the start.

To be more specific, the top ten languages used in the Internet, are in order, English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Korean, Portuguese, Italian and Russian (internetworldstats). Even in the United-States, over 45M users access the Internet from home in another language than English, Spanish being the main language with over 26M users.

The major companies recognize this situation and offer their website in different languages, some even going to the length of implementing specifically targeted version of their website, based on the target language. However, many websites or small business are neglecting this aspect, and hence loosing out on a chance of increasing their market… simply by not repeating the same thing! Ironically, it’s the smaller companies that should use the benefits of an easy and affordable method of increasing their customer base.

So, what do I do now?

Well, first you must determine the potential market your website’ service or product should target. Indeed, the necessity to translate your website in certain languages may be constrained if your site usability is confined to specific regions. Another good thing to do is to determine the specific web pages that need to be translated. Opening your website to the world doesn’t require the translation of your entire website. If your site has a page that promotes the Whistler Mountain in BC Canada to snowboarders, there’s probably no need to translate it in certain languages as some markets wouldn’t be concerned.