By K. Mar on Jun 29, 2008 in Marketing and Consulting, Scandinavia, Sweden, www.Icenews.is

Scandinavia’s reputation for high tech investment and innovation means it is a constant magnet for the world’s high tech industries. This year SMX Search Marketing Expo has chosen Stockholm as the location for one of its flagship annual conferences.

SMX is a global search engine marketing conference that offers a wide selection of workshops, discussions and networking opportunities for industry professionals who want to keep ahead in the rapidly changing world of search marketing.

The SMX Search Marketing Expo in Stockholm is planned for the 23rd and 24th September in the Stockholm City Conference Centre, Folkets Hus.

Speakers include Nordic eMarketing’s Kristjan Mar Hauksson and Eniro’s Christer Pettersson, as well as a host of other expert online search marketers. Event speakers are carefully selected based on proven knowledge and experience that they can share with others. There is also a commitment not to include commercial pitches in presentations – a fact that keeps proceedings fresh and fast.

Other SMX expo events take place annually in a several major cities, such as London, Sao Paolo and Seattle, as well as Stockholm. The events provide a fun and stimulating environment for professionals to exchange knowledge and experience, to find and maintain useful contacts and even to keep an eye on the competition.

Personalised search techniques, keyword research tools, and link building are among this year’s top topics. Also on the agenda are targeting potential customer habits and preferences, and how to avoid exclusion by the search engines for ‘spam-like’ behaviour.

For more information on the SMX Search Marketing Expo Stockholm, visit: www.searchmarketingexpo.com/stockholm

So you have a web site which looks pretty but does not produce any leads or sales. You have invested a good chunk of money and now what ? What can you do to finally participate in the gold rush that is more than ever taking place online.

Online marketing will help you business succeed in a competitive environment. A setting where traditional marketing channels have faded away. Some of my clients report that, this year 2008, leads from Yellow Pages ® Directory have reduced to a trickle whereas their online leads from a well ranked website have fully replaced the Yellow Gold.

If you have NOT gone with the times and have again committed all your marketing dollars for the year fully in traditional marketing channels, than you may awaken one day to a bitter surprise: Your leads stop coming and you either don’t know what to do and go bust, or you know that there is this thing called internet marketing but you have absolutely no funds left to try it out.

My advise: Don’t go overboard with spending huge dollars on a glossy online marketing agency, engage a small affordable online marketer to create a concept for you and produce 10 online leads and subsequent sales for you to build confidence in this (for you) new marketing channel.

Rule No 1: Make a Start and Experience Returns on Investment
Find your own online marketing confidence by understanding and living ROI: Return On Investment.
A small monthly budget of a few hundred dollars that returns a few thousands is a very good start to tap into internet marketing.

Well, so how can I produce 10 times ROI on a few hundred dollars ? It’s not easy and not done on the quick but it can be done, and I do it all the time:

Rule No.2: Create a Website That Sells
Display a convincing case for your products and services, not just a listing of text and images, you must have EMOTION, or FEELING on your website, something that touches your visitors. Then you must have CALL FOR ACTION on your website, which can be displayed in various ways.

They must fell the need to ACT on the EMOTION that you have created. In one way or another.

Now, make it easy for them to ACT, dont hide your contact details, calls for actions and links to your contact page everywhere plus your phone number large at the top of each page.

Build TRUST with your website: Nothing is done on the quick here - you really have to sit down with your website developer and come up with a well designed flow of click logic, add subliminal messages, photos, text, more images. They have to be convinced that it makes sense to call you or email you. You need good quality images of your products, they need to be presented nicely, there should be a good amount of confidence building text with it, like FAQ Frequently Answered Questions are very well rewarded by search engines.

Dont get me wrong - this is after they have landed on your site - so obviously - how do we make them find your site in the first place ?

(Part 2 of 3 coming soon)

Preview Part 2: Search engine myths debunked: “I want to be at the top of page one on Google for search phrase “FLOWERS”.

Good Luck ! It will be difficult to get on the top of page one in the main section on Google for ONE super busy power keyword with a small marketing budget of a few hundred dollars per month. (The top ranked guys bitterly defend their spots with the large funds available from huge profits coming from top rankings.

But you can break into top search engine rankings over time - use the backdoor, it’s all about Trust building with Google by offering more, more relevant, frequently added content. Nothing is more valuable online than TRUSTWORTHY, RELEVANT, FREQUENTLY UPDATED content.

Make a start here: Investigate and collect lots and lots of valuable income producing keyword phrases that the Google keyword tool will assemble for you for FREE and that you have implemented into your site with cleverly written content and FAQ pages etc.

(Written by Michael Arendt, Marketing Director, MyConsulting Internet Marketing Melbourne, Search Engine Optimisation

No matter which type of industry you are in, you can definitely take advantage of the huge opportunities provided by search engine marketing. Nowadays, even small-scale business owners feel the need to build web sites because it is the easiest, cheapest and most convenient way for them to advertise, get in touch with customers and let online users know about the services that they provide. So where does search engine marketing fall into all of this? How can it improve your web site and your business operations as a whole?

To have a deeper understanding of how search engine marketing provides big opportunities for sole web sites and small businesses, it is good to have a background of the term first. Basically, search engine marketing is a type of advertising over the Internet which aims to promote web sites. The goal is to place your web site on top of the results page of search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Alta Vista and other search engines.

To do this, there are several methods that you can do yourself, or you can hire a professional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultant to do it for you. SEO is one of the ways to improve traffic to your web site, and it is one of the methods used in search engine marketing – along with paid inclusion and paid placement. With paid inclusion, search engine companies like Google charges fees so that your web site can be included with their search results list when an online user types in a keyword. On the other hand, paid placements – which are also known as sponsored ads – are actual links that online users can click so that they can visit your web site, and the search engine company will be paid on a pay-per-click basis.

The Advantages of Search Engine Marketing

Now that you know about the basics of search engine marketing, here is a list of its advantages:

1. Traffic to your site will increase if you choose to apply SEO as a search engine marketing method.
There is a virtual rat race when it comes to emerging on top of the list of the results on search engines. Sometimes, no matter which type of industry your business is involved in, or whatever type of web site you have – there are keywords that will be commonly searched by online users. So what are the chances of your emerging on even the top ten list if you do not employ search engine marketing techniques? Thus, SEO is really a must if you want to drive traffic to your site and achieve a higher search engine ranking.

2. Your Return of Investment is assured.
No matter which type of the three methods of search engine marketing you decide to use, your Return of Investment or ROI is assured. If you use SEO, for example, then traffic to your web site will be higher. This will easily equate to more clicks, and will result to a return of investment and assured profits for your web site. This is the reason why web sites are clamoring to get on top of the search engine results because the higher your search engine ranking, the more cash flow you will have.

3. Search engine marketing methods prove to be less costly and maintenance-free.
Finally, search engine marketing methods will cost you less in the long run – and will actually serve as an investment in the future. A well-designed and search engine optimized web site will continually drive traffic to your site, not just for the present but will continue as long as online users are searching for the keywords which relate to the text posted on your site. Also, a well-optimized web site will cover not just top search engines like Google or Yahoo, but their affiliates as well, which means more coverage for you.

Should I Go for Search Engine Marketing?

All in all, search engine marketing is an effective way of putting yourself out there – in the sense that you are getting the most traffic, your web site will not just be search engine optimized but also visually pleasing and user-friendly to your visitors – and most importantly, you are increasing your profit while reaching your business goals at the same time.

So what are you waiting for?

 Take advantage of the big opportunities provided by search engine marketing and secure a top position now!