HoustonBusinessListing.com is a new Houston Business Directory and your local online advertising solution. Founded in January 2009 by a Houston based Website Design and Internet Marketing company InDesigns Studio,

 

HoustonBusinessListing.com offers all businesses located in the Houston Metropolitan area the ability to position themselves strategically in the growing marketing arena of the internet.

 

Unlike many Internet marketing services, which may simply have a poorly trained intern who can write a single title and description and submit it to the major catalogs and call it search engine optimization, we are highly qualified search engine professionals that follow an extensive process which includes the following steps:

 

1.Extensive consultation with your marketing team to ensure we have a solid understanding of the direction your team wants to travel with the search engine process.

 

2. Consultation regarding the advantages and disadvantages of your current web site design for search engine placement and the top solutions for enhancement.

 

3. In-depth analysis of the online competition in your industry by a top search engine expert, and experienced marketing and entrepreneurial professional:

 

• Who are they?

 

• What key words and key phrases are they targeting?

 

• What measures are they using for online success?

 

• What measures are they neglecting?

 

• What can we do for your business to help you surpass the top competition in your online industry?

 

4. Independent key word / key phrase analysis to determine the target key words and key phrases that will provide the most (and the best) traffic for your online business.

 

5. Professional development of effective, marketing friendly titles and descriptions specified to each of the major catalogs to take full advantage of the most relevant combination of key words and key phrases to increase exposure to your web site.

 

6. In depth category analysis to determine which category(s) within each directory are the best fit for your web site and have the potential to drive the greatest amount of traffic to your web site while effectively improving your link popularity and relevancy.

 

7. Expert, independent submittal to the Internet's major catalogs including: Yahoo, DMOZ*, JoeAnt, and many other lesser know catalogs to increase the link popularity of your web site. *DMOZ is very slow to approve or add sites into their directory. This is due to the fact they are volunteer editors and there are many categories that do not have editors.

 

Search Engine Marketing (Pay Per Click Advertising): Good or Bad?

 

Does Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising work?

 

Absolutely! We believe that a properly set up and maintained PPC campaign can be very profitable and cost effective for any business. Latest research conducted by a major internet marketing firm shows the following cost for acquiring a customer: "the cost to acquire a customer is about $8.50 for search (Pay per Click), $20 for Yellow Pages, $50 for online display ads, $60 for e-mail and $70 for direct mail. Data for television was not included."

 

Pay Per Click (also known as cost per click) Advertising cost 55% less than the Yellow Pages in customer acquisition. With the Yellow pages your ad is the same for one whole year. Pay per click advertising can be changed to reflect new products, season promotions, special sales, or anything your business wants to promote. You can change your ad every day!

 

Also you can advertise in specific regions or cities. Say you want to market to customer in Houston and Dallas, You can set up a campaign that will display your ads only to those cities (Limited to certain PPC search engines). For instance if you have a business that primarily serves the Houston Area, then you only want your ad to show up in Houston and maybe the surrounding areas. Google and MSN currently allow your PPC ads to be delivered to IP addresses only from certain cities. Some of our clients offer special promotions or products to specific areas and the only way to do this is with a geo targeted PPC ad in Google or MSN.

 

So what should I plan on spending to set up a pay per click campaign?
We say that a test campaign budget should be $500 to $1000. It may seem like a lot but many small businesses waste 10 times that in other types of marketing that yield no results. With pay per click campaigns you only pay for clicks into your web site. If you have a good product or service you will get results.

 

How much are PPC ads?
You can spend as little as 10 cents per click or as much as $50 per click. It is all based on the competitiveness of the keyword, your competition and how much a particular advertiser is willing to pay for each click.

 

What are the top Pay Per Click Providers?
Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN AdCenter are the top PPC (search engine marketing) providers. Google AdWords is the largest and has the most competitors and can be the most costly but can also lead to more sales and conversions overall. MSN statistically has the greater percentage of buyers per search that Google or Yahoo but they do have far less traffic than Google and Yahoo.

 

Why should I hire someone to set up my PPC Program?

 

You can do it yourself but we have plenty of experience in researching the best keywords, establishing budgets, setting a web site in the right position and making sure to stretch the budget out as far as possible to maximize the ROI. Our staff at HoustonBusinessListing.com have plenty of experience with all of the top PPC web sites and we know what works and what doesn't. We have seen companies spend their 60 day budget in one week! Then they wonder why it did not work.

 

The cost of having a professional like HBL do it is going to save you money in the long run and it will be done right! And if you want to manage the program after it is set up we will train you on how to manage and generate reports so you can take control of your PPC program with the knowledge that it was set up right the first time.