Search engine optimization or SEO is one of the hottest secret to drive targeted traffic to your website. A well optimized website is sure to yield lots of earnings. It might cost you a lot or with some good knowledgeable professional and creativity you can do it well within your budget. One of the results of SEO is to move up the SERP's (Search Engine Results Page's).

Effective SEO Techniques:

1. Articles with rich key-words: Writing truly informative and keyword-rich articles is one surefire way to make your website more visible than ever. If you can not write your own articles, you can get them from article directories that allow you to post these articles on your website as long as you keep the resource box or the author's byline in tact. The readability, substance and freshness of your articles will still be the basis of whether your writers will keep on coming back to your website or not.

2. Link exchanges: One inexpensive SEO method is through link exchanges or linking to and from other web sites. This technique could even cost you nothing depending on the author or owner of the web site you want to have a link exchange with. You will be surprised with the eventual spiking up of your page ranking.
   Here are the 4 existing linking strategies in summary form:

   1. Reciprocal Linking = Site 1 links to Site 2, Site 2 links back to Site 1

   2. One-Way Linking = Site 2 links to Site 1

   3. Multi-Site Linking = Site 1 links to Site 2, Site 2 links to Site 3, Site 3 links to Site 4, and Site 4 links back to Site 1. Can be 3 to N number of sites involved.

   4. Directory Linking = Site Directory 1 links to Site 1

3. Catchy, user-friendly & meaningful Domain Name: This is one of the most common-sense ways to make your target visitors remember your website with a very easy-to-remember domain name. Something sweet, short and meaningful will prove to be very invaluable. As most of the obvious domain names are gone, do not get disappointment as good quality content will supersede the name.

4. Organized site navigation: Providing easy steps in navigating your site is one way to make your visitors become at ease with your site. This, in turn, will improve the flow of traffic to your website.

1. Cost-Per-Click (CPC): Advertisers are charged for each click their ads receive to their web sites or specified landing pages. The charge is only incurred when the user clicks. Simply put, you are not charged until a searcher clicks on your listing.

2. Click-Through Rate (CTR): This metric is calculated by taking listing clicks divided by the number of impressions (times shown) served times 100. The CTR helps determine how listings/ads are performing.
   Example: 3230 clicks/300,000 impressions x 100 = 1.08%

3. Search Term or Keyword: The word or group of words that a user searches on and enters into a search box.

4. CPM: This stands for cost-per-thousand impressions. A CPM pricing model means advertisers pay for impressions received.

5. eCPM: Effective CPM, or eCPM, is the effective cost per 1000 impressions generated by a cost-per-click ad. eCPM is determined by multiplying a number of factors, including the ad's cost per click (CPC) and its clickthrough rate (CTR). The resulting eCPM can be used to rank CPC ad campaigns against CPM campaigns.

Here is a website where we can search on a phrase to a hit count on that word and its related phrases:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

The above website is a useful tool that we can suggest to our website customers in order to promote their own website.

How much does Google AdWords cost?:

In the Google AdWords program, the cost of your campaigns really depends on you -- how much you're willing to pay and how well you know your audience. It all boils down to knowing your own goals and applying them to your account.

There is a nominal, one-time activation fee for Google AdWords. After that, you pay only for clicks on your keyword-targeted AdWords ads, or for impressions on your site-targeted AdWords ads. You can control your costs by selecting how much you're willing to pay per click or per impression and by setting a daily budget for spending in your account.

For example, a new advertiser paying in USD can activate their AdWords account with just US$5.00, and can then choose a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) from US$0.01 - US$100.

Daily budgets start as low as 1 cent up to whatever limit the advertiser is comfortable spending. Site-targeted ads require a minimum CPM price of US$0.25, or the local currency rate, per 1000 impressions.

What is site targeting?

Site targeting lets AdWords advertisers choose individual sites in the Google content network where they'd like their ads to appear. If you want to place your ad on a single international website, you can. If you want to select dozens of sites about basketball or orchids, you can do that, too. Site targeting lets you handpick your audience, big or small.

When you set up a site-targeted campaign, you first name the sites where you'd like to advertise, or just give us a list of words that describe your site. The AdWords matching system does the rest, analyzing your input and creating a list of available content network sites for you to choose from.

Remember that a site must be part of the Google Network in order to be available for your site-targeted campaign. Being part of the content network means the site has agreed to run ads provided by Google, which in turn allows your AdWords ad to appear in that space.

As with all AdWords advertising, you'll compete for space with other advertisers. If you choose very prominent and popular sites, you'll need a higher price to win the ad position. The minimum cost-per-thousand (CPM) bid for a site-targeted ad is US$0.25 or the local currency equivalent.