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Hi folks,
Many thanks to those who attended, and even more thanks to Rick Wilson and the owners of Miva Merchant for providing us space in their conference room for a great meetup.
So far, feedback has been really good. I'm eager to hear suggestions from this group as to what YOU want to do for the next meetup, if there are any other industry folks you'd like me to try to bring in for a discussion, etc. Now that the weather is getting better, I'd like to suggest the next meeting be near my office at Sunroad Marina poolside during the day - downtown area by the airport.
For those who couldn't make it, Rick @ Miva gave a great overview of what Miva Merchant is doing to make online commerce easier, more accessible for the new business owner, and how their software can easily be enhanced for the very serious online entrepreneur.
We talked about rough startup budgets - how to get online in the $1000 range all the way to the $30k+, and how important the ongoing marketing aspect of the business is... that's any business, whether on the corner lot or online.
In one of our discussions - the question of PPC & SEO versus just SEO came up. I referenced an article I had read, but couldn't remember where and the exact wording. What I tried to say was you need both - even if PPC isn't showing true ROI positive numbers. Just by using PPC, you'll actually get natural unpaid traffic that can't be tracked directly to your PPC campaign, but it will go away when you turn off PPC.
Well here it is - very interesting stuff. By the way, I've also experienced this first hand. From the May 2006 Website Services magazine (websiteservices.com) article "Retail Bonanza Begins Online" by Paul J. Bruemmer, Director of Search Marketing at Red Door Interactive:
"... anecdotal evidence shows that sites using both strategies [PPC & SEO] increase conversion rates because traffic goes up dramatically with links in multiple positions. Users choose to click more frequently on an organic listing when they also see a sponsored listing. But when marketers experiment by removing the paid link, conversions drop precipitously. Put the paid link back, and conversions rise."
There it is - must be the truth, you heard it on the internet.
cheers -
James
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