Gasta Keywords

How to Target your Website’s Visitors for Optimized Traffic
Daniel McDowell is CEO of DLM International LLC
Over the past decade, the web has grown to such a scale that there are websites covering every single topic under the sun. Due to the sheer scale of it, it is near impossible to pin point the exact number of websites which are on the web; however, statistics show that in February 2007 there were an estimated 29.7 billion pages on web. Taking into consideration the speed in which the web has grown since it’s beginnings in the 1990’s, it is safe to say that this number has increased greatly over the past three years. When it comes to using the internet in connection to our business, targeting the right customers can be hard due to the level of competition our website has. There are various methods in which we may attempt to attract the right visitors as a means to increase our traffic, but some of the most effective methods are in actual fact the cheapest and easiest methods.

Increasing your website’s traffic is all about making your presence known on the web. Marketing and advertising strategies are the main way in which to do this, but in terms of traditional business these can be costly and take sometime to be effective. However, the internet is a fast paced business which allows for your campaigns to be made live in a much shorter space of time, as well as lowering your costs to almost nothing. One of the best ways in which to target visitors is through the use of back links. These can be placed on a wide variety of sites which gain high traffic such as social networking websites and blog sites, but can also be placed on other sites which you can partner up with, exchanging links. When using back links, the first thing you must take into consideration is what your website/product is and what your target market is. In doing this, you will have a clearer idea of what the best sites will be for you to target as irrelevant sites or sites which receive a low level of traffic will be of no use to your website. If you are fortunate to have capital to use, you can also use the aid of Pay per Click schemes. Large search engine sites such as Google can offer this to you but before deciding on this as a means to help your traffic, think about how much you can honestly afford as not to risk a loss in profits.

As businesses look for cheap ways in which to promote their websites, there has been a great increase in the amount of blogs and article directory sites on the web. These allow you to promote your product or service, as well as providing a link back to your website all for the simple exchange of your content on the website. This is a great way in which to gain more back links to your website, as well as s great method of advertising and self promotion. Different websites will have their own guidelines in terms of what you may submit to their sites, but in most cases this is one of the easiest ways in which to promote your business for free. The more external websites you use, the more links you will accumulate on the web which will help your overall traffic level. However, ensure you submit content to reputable sites which have some kind of relevance to your website so that you are targeting the right visitors for your market.

Finally there is one of the most beneficial forms of advertisement- word of mouth marketing. This is not necessarily something which you can achieve yourself, but rather a method of marketing which is completed by your current customers and visitors for free. Word of mouth marketing works by users of your site adding their own back links on to websites in the form of link sharing. Many companies and websites have benefited from this increasing their traffic thanks to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The way in which you can help this become possible is by providing a website and service which is worth talking about. By doing your own part in terms of promoting your website and your own marketing strategies on sites such as these, they are more likely to be noticed by visitors who will then be motivated to visit them. If they like what they see, they can then use bookmarking and other back linking methods to share with other web users they know, thus providing you with free marketing.

Generating traffic to your site is simple when you take into consideration what is right for your website. By looking at the way in which other websites are using the web to promote themselves, you too will soon discover the benefits which come from using simple, yet effective marketing techniques and see your traffic levels soar.

Daniel McDowell is CEO of DLM International LLC which operates globally providing products and services to their many clients, operating a variety of websites in many countries. To find out more about getting traffic to a website go to: http://www.trafficgrabsystem.com

Gasta Search Network - Working to build your promotions

Gasta Search Network - Working to build an honest web:
Gasta Search Network dot com has grown from one of the World's largest blog networks,
www.Gasta Search Network. We provide three simple packages to get your brand some online conversations and buzz. Whether you simply want blog reviews or would like someone
to help and manage your social media presence online, we've got it covered. We have
unique relationships with over 30,000 bloggers and a network growing by the hour.
Blogging & Social Media Conversations:

If you already have a good website, twitter account, facebook page and a blog but need
to get conversations online and buzzing, this is the option for you. We will give you the
following online exposure:
-Newsletter mention and link to your site, sent to over 25,000 blogger subscribers on
Gasta Search Network.
-20 guaranteed quality true online reviews, written by bloggers from the country or
countries you choose. people searching for products like yours or even looking for your

competitors
products will come across the quality blog reviews mentioning and linking to your
product for years to come.

- Twitter mentions per week through-out the campaign to over 12,500 followers
pointing to your twitter account and most bloggers would be either tweeting their blog
post (to their hundreds and thousands of followers) or retweeting our tweets.
-Banner advert on Gasta Search Network for one month.

-A round-up blog post on the Gasta Search Networkblog blog when the campaign is complete.
Blogging & Social Media Starter Pack:

This package is ideal for any businesses aware of the importance of social media and
online marketing but with little time or expertise on how to implement it into their
marketing strategy. Instead of hiring a "social media" member of staff or an expensive
PR company, we can take care of the hard work to get you started online immediately
and provide instant return on your investment.

We also provide help with managing
your online reputation. For additional fees, we can actually manage your blog, twitter
and facebook accounts on an ongoing basis for you.
As part of the service to kick off your online identity it needs a social media campaign of
which we will run using our blogging community of over 30,000 bloggers.
-Newsletter sent to over 25,000 blogger subscribers
-20 reviews of your product/service by targeted bloggers who will link back to your
product page, twitter account and write an honest opinion based on their experience
with your product.

-Banner ad on Gasta Search Network for the duration of the campaign.
-7 tweets per week to over 2,500 highly influential people through our twitter account.
-A round-up blog post on the FMB blog when the campaign is complete.
-Start you up with vital tools and online accounts such as: twitter, flickr, company blog,
facebook page.
-Report on your online buzz during the campaign to help you manage your online
reputation and encourage you to build relationships with potential customers and online
influencers.
-Access to the Gasta Search Networkblog guide on how to optimize your online campaigns

using social
media.
Get Online With Social Media Monthly Ongoing:

Campaigns as above but spread over one year, we'll manage your campaign with a
guaranteed 2 blog reviews per month, totaling 24 reviews, we'll manage your online
feeds and presence, ensuring a minimum of two posts per week with content relevant to
your audience including twitter and facebook feeds. Ongoing training and twitter/
facebook support and help with managing your brand,
1 x Newsletter mention per quarter with link to your site, sent to over 25 000 blogger
subscribers.
24 x guaranteed quality true online reviews, written by bloggers from the country or
countries you choose. We even allow you to target the type of blog for example "work
at home Mom's" Each blogger is physically sent your product or given a code to try your
service out. They will use correct linking methodology (SEO) and ensure their readers
know where to purchase your product or service. Because of the validity of blog
reviews, people searching for products like yours or even looking for your competitors
products will come across the quality blog reviews mentioning and linking to your
product for years to come.
1 x Twitter mentions per month mentioning relevant news to an audience made up of
PR, Journalists and Bloggers.
1 x Rotating banner advert on Gasta Search Network.
1 x Kick-off blog post on the Gasta Search Networkblog blog and round-up when the

campaign is
complete.

Gasta Keyword targeting: Massive traffic increases in January 2010

Keyword targeting completes the Gasta Network location-focused online and mobile device ad serving solution


Gasta Network, the premier location-focused ad network, today announced the addition of keyword targeting to the company’s ad targeting arsenal. Gasta Network’s proprietary Location Logic technology allows advertisers to target the delivery of their ads by including or excluding audiences based on where the audiences are living, along with the audiences’ expressed geographies of interest. With the ability to stack multiple location targeting criteria, coupling Location Logic with keyword targeting provides Gasta Network advertisers with the most advanced location-driven targeting available online or on mobile device today.



“The addition of keyword-targeting rounds out the Gasta Network offering – and is generating a great deal of excitement and inbound interest throughout the digital advertising community,” said Gasta Network CEO, Christopher Morris. “With the recent addition of new partners, including new resellers, advertisers and collaborators in development, Gasta Network is well positioned to take advantage of the recent explosion in demand for location-based advertising.”



“With Location Logic and keyword ad serving technology, Gasta Network is poised to not only serve ads on maps, but on any website or mobile application with a location-focused theme,” said Gasta Network Founder and CTO, Dr. David Baar. “We can now select ads using logic that ingests both the user’s physical location, and locations they express interest in, plus keywords, and perform combinatorial include/exclude logic on this set of location and context information to serve them an appropriate ad. We also can consider the ‘degree of locality’ of the user's interest in deciding whether to show a local business ad or a more brand-oriented one.”



Gasta Network ad-serving is available for all location oriented websites and mobile applications, including those for devices featuring iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Palm, Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems. Mobile application developers and web content publishers can contact bizz@amiwired.com for more information on how to achieve additional revenues through location-targeted Gasta Network ads. Advertisers can contact bizz@amiwired.com to develop their next location-targeted ad campaign.

About Gasta Network

We Monetize Location. Gasta Network is a fast-growing location-focused advertising network made up of websites and mobile applications delivering Real Estate, Travel, Health & Fitness, News, Weather and Traffic information. Gasta Network provides local and brand advertisers with an interactive medium for delivering geo-targeted display ads to a large and actively engaged user community, based on Gasta Network’s Location Logic ad selection and delivery technology. For mobile and web developers, Gasta Network transforms online maps, websites and mobile applications from cost centers into revenue-generating properties. To learn more about Gasta Network, visit www.Gasta Network.com.

Gasta Keywords : a collaboration in marketing

Work with Gasta.com for Long Tail Success

Independent Analyst Study Determines That Collaboration Improves Business Results
Collaboration technologies are changing how, when and where we work. To gain a competitive advantage, leading organizations are developing a collaboration strategy that will enable innovation and improve productivity.

Although collaboration is positioned to be the next great promoter of enterprise efficiency, the business benefits are limited unless an organization builds a unified program to support the use of new tools and to facilitate organizational change.

Study Highlights New Collaboration Methods
A recently completed study commissioned by Cisco from Forrester Consulting reveals how companies are currently investing in collaboration technology and what they plan for the future. Among the findings:

Business goals are driving adoption of collaboration technologies
New collaboration tools are adding value across business functions
Emerging collaboration tools present transformative benefits
An architectural approach to deployment of collaboration technology brings a competitive advantage
Tangible Benefits of Architecture for Collaboration
The Forrester study highlights the business benefits of building the right collaboration architecture:

Makes distributed teams more productive
Reduces travel and meeting expenses
Enables an increasingly mobile workforce
Expands adoption of collaboration tools

Gasta Tech News : MEDIA PLANNING & BUYING Part 1

MEDIA PLANNING & BUYING
5 reasons you no longer need an ad agency

The current agency model is broken. I know it, agencies know it, but luckily for all of us, clients haven't realized it yet. Gasta SearchMastch could be the savour as its grounded in Tradition and Classic agency approch that will never burn out, it does'nt try to do to much at one time and SearchMatch allows the best flexibility to campaigns I know of.

After more than a decade of working for an agency (six years on the client side), I have come to several conclusions, none of which are pretty pictures for agencies unless they change. You see, agencies need clients more than clients need agencies, and there has been a fundamental shift in how technology has both enabled and altered that dynamic. It has exacerbated the problem with the explosion of new media channels, and it has also provided the solutions.
We have built an interweaving production process that is designed to produce media the old way, not the new way, and agencies and clients seem to be stuck in this model.
Agencies over the last 20 years have morphed into advanced communication production shops. The offline agencies have desperately been pursuing online projects with their clients, and the online agencies have been trying to do more offline work. What they both have not done, however, is change the process of production. They have been too busy chasing the money.
But agencies used to be so much more than that. They were the creative powerhouses. The ideation shops. The meme creators for their brands across society. Some still are, but is meme creation needed anymore?
The explosion of communication methods to reach the consumer has had a natural dilution effect. As the playing field got wider, it gave something to consumers they didn't have before: instantaneous access to desire fulfillment and an ability to access information about a product, not just from the company and the agency's perceived lens, but through other consumers and competitors. There have been three profound effects on the technological expansion of media: a wider communication platform for all, the persistence of data on that platform, and a plethora of spawned agency models.
So how is this all related to no longer needing an ad agency? SEM, SEO, interactive, offline, online, media, social media -- the breadth of these elements has made clients' heads spin, and the rapid pace has left many core agencies scrambling.
No longer does the client feel that one shop can handle all their needs, because in reality, no single shop can. But there is something being lost by all of the expansion: message and brand cohesion. Since your "main" agency is no longer the idea shop, and since that message has inherent problems cascading throughout so many communication channels, why have one?
I am about to commit sacrilege.
Reason 1: "The Big Idea"
What we no longer need is "The Big Idea," or at least not in the way most agencies still view it. Agencies used to exist because of that concept, but many lost their way. The communication cascade has been so profoundly altered that it is no longer The Big Idea but many smaller ones. The argument goes that everything should sit under the umbrella of The Big Idea, but I challenge that assumption. The Big Idea was necessary to help seed an overall brand image in consumers' minds and have it be harmonious and able to fit all of the little communication channels under it. That's really its essence.

The problem is that when integration is attempted by most clients -- truly attempted -- it dilutes the message in the communication medium that is being used because the mindset of the consumer is often overlooked.
Traditional media (TV, radio, print, outdoor) had a much narrower human "need-state" of consumption, so messages could cascade among them while keeping the message coherent, simple, and emotionally impactful. The important thing is the bounce-back from consumers. It is their opinion of you. And their opinion dwarfs yours.
The last 10 years started to completely throw off the machinery of communication messaging. And with the explosion of social media, it became bilateral. No longer is it a tree diagram and a linear cascade downward to consumers. The internet, texting, mobile devices, etc., have all created a persistent communication feedback loop that is impossible to control. You can no longer effectively hide who you are as a company, because your Big Idea must essentially fall out of something bigger: your corporate mission, your reason for being in business.

Yes, yes, all corporations are in business to make money, but underlying that fact is how the company actually functions. The age of corporate transparency has arrived.
My argument is that The Big Idea, the overarching communication "message," should arise from the company itself because it is ultimately dictated back to you by your consumers. Unfortunately, too many companies are so mired in their own internal politics that they feel the need for the outside perspective of an agency. But agencies are often painfully unaware of the details of their clients' businesses. If you are an agency, try to be more influential internally, and don't limit yourself to engaging just with the marketing department. If you develop relationships at a higher level, the coordination between your proposed messaging and what will work for the company will be more harmonious.

Too many clients and agencies change direction so quickly that The Big Idea is never given time to cement itself, and they aren't listening to the bounce-back messaging. They still believe they can control and dictate. How often do company taglines change now? Is that the agencies' fault? No, but if The Big Idea is based on who you are as a brand, then it does not have to change with the wind. For The Big Idea to work, it must be BIG, but you don't need an agency for it. As a brand, you first need to look internally. Understand who you are as a company, and listen to the messaging coming back at you. Don't blame your agency; blame yourself for not listening.

Gasta Tech News : MEDIA PLANNING & BUYING Part 2

Reason 2: Why build an Edsel?

Most external corporate web presences are over-designed monstrosities. I would argue that almost all businesses could easily survive with a more simplified, streamlined version that could be accomplished with most good blog software. Unless your business IS in business to sell products on the internet, and the website IS your brand, your website is overkill. This is where the consumer need-state comes into play. Your website is a conduit to the consumer's desire, but not the desire itself. Why are you paying an agency so much money to handle it?

Most corporate websites are painful reflections of their internal structure. They spend millions on revamping and solving problems, but in reality, they do not address the core issue. The agency model preys on this behavior. It is as if you built a shack that has had room after room bolted onto it -- kitchens, dining facilities, bathrooms, showers, etc. It may appear to be somewhat cohesive on the front end, but at what cost? This is not an agency problem but the client's unwillingness to make substantive decisions for their external web presence.
When you decide to redesign that shack, all of the extra detritus comes along for the ride.

You may discard items here and there, but feature-creep somehow always results in another monstrosity being built, and you end up building an Edsel.
I recently advised a client who had switched from a traditional website to a standard blog template system using WordPress. The company designed the template adhering to its color palette and design philosophy, and for $100,000, the company ended up accomplishing what its agency had estimated would cost $500,000 to build. The end-product did more than what the agency was pitching, and it shaved an additional $200,000 a year off maintenance costs for the company. It also allowed internal staff to update the blog easily and communicate simply.

Another advantage of a switchover like this is that the search engines pick up all that new content much more easily than an overly designed Flash site. Remember, the majority of consumers now use search engines to navigate the web. So when you build a monstrosity of a site, the issue isn't just the cost of the build itself, it's the cost of maintenance, and the agency you need to employ because it wasn't designed for search engines to scan.

Design a system that is templated specifically for your needs, and the control goes back to your company. Isn't that where these decisions should rest anyway?
Reason 3: Scalability, production, and distributed messaging platforms
You used to be able to produce one TV ad and run in one market. If it resonated and helped move product, all you needed to do was scale the effort. The ad was already produced. You just had to spend more money. Same with print, outdoor, and many other traditional media. But with online, the playing field is so disparate that much of it is not as scalable.

You can produce a banner, but for some reason you always need to change it and produce more. Not to mention, you have to do it in four different sizes. Before too long, you have too many little snippets running in too many different places, and you find yourself myopically looking over analytics reports tweaking a tenth of 1 percent here and there. For what? The model is not scalable the way offline is. Sure, you can throw more media at it, but anyone in online media planning knows that with each new site, and each new format, you increase the complexity.
What most brands don't have is the willingness to run a single ad, test and control that one ad, and beat the hell out of it. Now that's efficient! The customization of messaging on the internet for each subgroup has created a cacophony of noise. So why not simplify? It's only a matter of will, and you can probably ditch the huge amount of production, media trafficking, and complexity you are creating for yourself in trying to find the one thing that works with your agency.Gasta SearchMatch allows this Niche

There will never be one banner ad that fundamentally changes your business and impacts the consumer in the way one TV ad could. It's the same with SEM. I watch company after company let their ad agency do their SEM ad copy. Are you serious? There is not going to be anything brilliant that an agency can do with 85 characters that you can't. Let an SEM vendor do it. Again, you're spending money on the wrong thing. If you're going to use an ad agency, use them for ideation, not wasting billable hours.

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, WordPress, blogs, email systems, and a host of other tools are available for you to extend your brand, so use them. Why build internally what other companies have spent millions building, tweaking, and supporting? And why have your agency build them? Look at Facebook the same way you view outsourcing any other aspect of your business. Facebook hosts it and deals with the IT and serving costs. You should be making the decisions, listening to those channels, and managing them.


Reason 4: Stop focus groups

This is where I enrage every company in this business. Sorry. In the end, it's about what your consumers are saying about your product, although that conversation used to be isolated from both the client and the agency. Agencies used to have to conduct focus groups to gauge consumer opinion. There is no need for a focus group, ever. They are the harbingers of clients intending to cover their ass, and agencies that profit from it. Truth be told, many agencies hate focus groups, and please don't ever use them for validating creative.

Agencies use them so when the idea fails miserably, they can point to the focus group and know that they had senior-leader approval. Business now moves way too quickly for that. Make the decision and go with it. Why are you spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get opinions from small groups of people who will tell you something that doesn't even affect their behavior? Trust me, they don't work. Instead, get Radian6, Biz360, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, or eCairn Conversation to help you learn what your consumers are actually saying. I advocate strongly for having this knowledge generate from inside your company and not from an agency. If it is inside, it will not be limited to the marketing group.

This is the conversation that the CEO needs to hear, as welll as the product development people, etc. It should become core to your business because only by truly listening to your consumers will you make better products. And listening in on the conversation when they aren't aware is the only way to get at the real information. Do you really think consumers in focus groups don't know you're behind the mirror? Wake up.

Gasta and the future of contextual search

Gasta and the future of search
I can’t find my phone. What are my options for locating it?

1. Look for it
2. Ask others if they’ve seen it
3. Phone it

I would probably apply those strategies in that order as each fails. Of course, what I really want is for my phone to magically appear in my hand whenever I need it. That would be nice.
Search on the internet today is somewhere between a technology-driven stage 1 (Google, and minor variations like Wolfram Alpha and Bing) and a people-driven stage 2 (Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Amazon recommendations). One might stretch the metaphor to argue that RSS, Google Alerts and the like are forms of stage 3; I’m not sure I would agree.
Technology markets typically display the following characteristics.
- Incumbents are displaced by products that are an order of magnitude better, not just 20% better.
- Product evolution is about adding value by getting closer to the user
The Internet has evolved. It has become more personal, less about static home pages and more about communication and collaboration (behaviour rather than data). This is what we would expect: The Internet is moving closer to us.
But what most people think of search has not changed significantly:
For the first 10 years, the web was primarily just a bunch of pages, and Google was an excellent tool for searching primary data.
Then we started doing mashups and social networks; these are essentially derived and dynamic forms of data and it’s not that we search differently, per se, but that we simply don’t think about search in these arenas in quite the same way. How many links away from me are you in a social network? Who is listening to the same music as me on Last.fm? What relevant experience do we have within our business? What houses are for sale on my street?
Inevitably, search will move closer to these problems, because these problems are closer to us.
Context is King
The end game for search is recognizing a context where an answer should be presented rather than sought. There are a few candidates in this field.

The semantic web garners a lot of attention (or at least it did once!). It attempts to wrap content in more meaning by enriching it with relevant keywords (I know this is a simplification, but really, who cares?). It is a rather an old fashioned view of the web because it solves an old fashioned problem — find relevant pages. It’s not that there is no room for innovation in this arena it’s jut that Google does this so well, you’re only ever go to be picking at their leftovers. Start-ups entering the search arena should be focussed on a different set of use cases.

There is a lot of talk about real time search but I think it is confused. Nothing is real time, particularly the typical examples that are given like Twitter (go talk to guys that build financial trading systems about “real-time”!).
Further, it is a rather unattractive property. I want data to arrive at the right time and real time is a narrow set of those cases (your house is on fire!). But we don’t understand what right time means so we’ll shove it at you whether you like it or not, so that when you actually need the data, it will have disappeared down the drain with the rest of the contents of the firehose.

Which returns me to my opening gambit. I want my phone to appear in my hand when I need it. How do we know when I need my phone? We start with behavioral triggers (he put his hand to his ear!) and continue to layer in those activities that provide meaning such as task-lists (I must order my groceries) or conversations (they are discussing the price of tomatoes).

Put that way it sounds a lot like the future of search belongs to collaboration: ‘What am I working on with you?’ is a the kind of behavioural question we could hang a new form of search off. What do we have to do to complete this project? That’s a context begging for unsolicited answers.
The future of search is not about better text fields and faster, smarter indexing; the future of search is about you and me.
This is a guest post by Jasper Westaway of OneDrum. Throughout the summer we’re running guest posts we like - exclusive to TC Europe - written by people on the tech scene in Europe. If you’d like to contribute get in touch. More info here.