I usually write about internet marketing but today I want to share my experience as a potential client doing a search. The search engines are better than they used to be but they are still far from perfect. Most of us can save time by learning how to search more efficiently.

I recently was informed by my travel agent that there are two conferences in Barcelona and therefore there are no hotel rooms available for us. Good luck, he said. Since I was due to leave for the airport in 15 hours I started to see images of me and my wife sleeping on airport chairs. The first thing I did was to do what most people do—do a search for Barcelona hotel rooms on the internet and click on the first few links. These links were portals which most certainly received fees from the hotels they signed up. This search got me nowhere as all the rooms in the area we wanted were booked. That is when I started to think.

One of my clients is a hotel owner, so I know about hotel internet marketing strategies. Smart hotel owners try to eliminate the middleman and market directly to their clients. Since I am looking for a place that other people missed, why not try looking on the second page of the search engine results for a small family hotel? I know that this type of hotel doesn’t have the budget or need to be on the first page. I refined my search, went directly to the second page, and saw a sponsored link that looked just like the kind of place we were looking for.

The website confirmed that this was for us and the location was better than I dreamed of. I quickly checked to see if any rooms were available and saw that the hotel was completely booked. Since I work on internet sites I knew that — especially with a family run hotel–they may not have time to update the site on a timely basis. I took a chance and called the hotel. Sure enough, they had one last vacancy and our vacation was saved.

Lessons learned:

• In some cases it is best to start with the second page search engine results
• Websites are not always updated in a timely manner. This is probably truer for small businesses that don’t have someone whose job it is to update the site. With today’s lwo phone costs there is no reason not to call site owners for more information

Many times special events present special opportunities. One example of a special event is the problems that businesses encountered which were under missile attack during the war. Protecting data from going up in smoke is a high priority for them. The presents an opportunity for companies which offer off-site data backups and data transfer solutions.

Starting or increasing the exposure of a PPC campaign would be a good start for these companies. Since Google Adwords allows you to decide which geographical areas you can target - the North of Israel and Lebanon would be a good choice. A special landing page assuring visitors that the work can be done immediately would also help.

During war I checked AOLs keyword popularity database. On the day I checked, the word Israel was very high at no. 6 and Lebanon was no. 11. The Israeli Foreign Office had a very high rating in the natural search results. They could have quickly changed the snippet that the search engines show to draw more people into their site. In addition, they could have started a PPC campaign to further advance their goals.

Although most of the people searching for “Israel” were probably interested in news about the war, this also presents other opportunities. For example, companies which sell Israeli consumer products could geo-target sponsored link campaigns triggered by the “Israel” keyword. They would do this in areas where they have good potential clients.

These are just a few examples. Other events include winning gold medals, song contests, conferences, etc. The savvy web marketer is always ready to take advantage of special events.

That is what I was asked by a journalist a few days ago.

I would say Conversions.

Before I explain what conversions is–you need to know one thing. Bringing people to your web site is a waste of time if they don’t turn into customers. In fact, it can be counter productive. If visitors come to your site and are not engaged by it they may leave with a negative view of your company.

Turning visitors into marketing leads is not easy, however. It must be done one step at a time. First describe your product or service in a prominent location on the screen. Research shows that you only have a few seconds to convince visitors that they are at the right site before they click away.

Next–start your sales pitch. You may have to develop several sales pitches for different personas. For example, a CEO has to approached differently than a project engineer.

After they read the sales copy don’t forget to make it easy for them to take the next step: sign up for a newsletter, contact a sales person or anything else which will start the engagement process. This is what is know as a conversion. Of course this is a simplified version and sometimes it takes many steps before they convert.

Once you have your web site visitors engaged you are well on your way to increasing your client base. Don’t forget to test with different approaches so you continually improve your results.

I am embarrassed to admit that I haven’t posted in a couple months. I know that some folks blog almost every day. And a lot of them are busier than me. And I am an internet marketer who tells his clients that a blog without frequent posts can’t be successful.

The truth of the matter is, my blog has a different purpose than most. I don’t expect people to come back to my site every few days. The goal of my internet marketing site is to capture leads. The purpose of the blog is to support this by:

• Demonstrating to visitors that my internet marketing company is alive and kicking by my adding new material to the web site
• Showing off my internet marketing expertise

To attain these goals I really don’t have to blog every day. Once a month should do it. The point is that a blog doesn’t necessarily have to be updated often. Don’t be put off from blogging because you don’t have enough time to post all the time.

• First, determine what your goals are
• Then, see if a blog will fit in this strategy
• Only then should you decide if you have the resources to keep the blog going at the pace you need

Now lets see if I can manage to post at least once a month.

Google established an office in Israel last month—February 2006. What this means is that sponsored link prices are going to go up. Although I understand that in the future Google has plans for an R&D center, for the present the office is dedicated to promoting Adwords—their PPC advertising program. Making more people aware of this advertising venue means that more people will join the fray. Since the price per click is partly based on an auction, that means that prices will rise.

What should you do to protect yourself from high advertising prices?

By starting your Adwords campaign now you can get in before prices go up. This will help you establish a high CTR (click through rate). That is to say, that since you have fewer competitors now, more people will click on your ad. By having more people click on your ad you are considered to have a more relevant ad than others and Google moves your ad up towards the top of the page.

In addition, by starting early and testing different ads, you can learn which ads do better before the prices go up. You will then be ready for the competition.

Marketing in many languages is more complicated but the effort can bring big rewards. Not enough people try this. For companies on a budget I recommend starting with just one landing page and a PPC campaign.

Yahoo PPC forces you to open a new “sister” campaign which you can’t do on your own. In addition, their correspondance with you is in the foreign languages. This slows down progress considerably. Nevertheless the effort can be justified.

Using Google Adwords in foreign languages is pretty straight forward and you can get started right away. If the bids and target audience on Yahoo PPC and Google Adwords is similar, you will find it much easied to start with Google. If the effort justifies itself then go ahead and open a new campaign with Yahoo PPC too.

A lot of people call me in order to improve their Internet Marketing Strategy. Many have started with banner ads. Others want to start directly with SEO. My advice to almost everyone is to start with a paid Google Adwords or Yahoo PPC campaign. This way you can quickly find out what works and what doesn’t. This information can then be use to guide you in your SEO, banner ad and other marketing efforts.

Internet marketing demands resources, so it makes sense to do things methodologically and in the right order.