The Niche Marketing Blog

Web Site Traffic

[Editor's note: Web site traffic. Whether you are a niche marketer, or a brick and mortar business manager, you need more traffic.This is the one topic that every one of my clients, and many of my readers, ask about on an on-going basis. Everyone wants to know how to get more traffic to their site or blog. So, in response to this demand, I'm going to devote the next several articles to the topic of increasing your web site traffic. Today's guest article focuses on some tried and true methods for increasing the traffic to your site.

In future articles, I'll explore the different types of traffic - and which type you should be most interested in. In the mean time, enjoy today's article. Send me your traffic questions, by leaving a comment below, and I'll do my best to answer them for you. ~Scott]

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Traffic is unquestionably important in the success of an online marketing business. However, it is important to understand why quality website traffic is critical to the success of your site. That’s what we are going to help you with in this article.

Are the visitors there because they are interested in your niche or your product and the content on your site or are they there because they have been paid to click on an ad? Those in the former group are there because of their interest. They are targeted or pre-qualified leads. The latter group is untargeted and unlikely to stay on your site very long or to ever return.

Once you understand the difference it will be much easier for you to strive for targeted traffic. Let’s take a look at some of the ways the experts do this.

You are no doubt familiar with the phrase “content is king” and that certainly applies to your website or blog. It is greatly important that the content you put on your website is interesting to your visitors. It should also be informative. It can be educational; it may answer a question or even solve a problem.

The information you post should be updated frequently. This will keep your visitors interested and increase the chances they will return often.

Now let’s examine some ways to drive even more traffic to your site.

Write Articles. Writing articles pertaining to your niche is a good long term strategy for sending traffic to your website. This is especially true if you submit them to 4 or 5 top article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles ArticleDashboard, Buzzle, and ArticleBase.

Your articles need to be 400 – 500 words long with an author’s resource box at the end which directs visitors to your site. For article marketing to be successful you should submit articles on a regular basis.

Use Social Marketing. Facebook and Twitter, as you no doubt know, are very popular all over the world and more and more internet marketers are making use of these sites to market their business. These sites offer exceptional opportunities to advertise your site for free.

Participate In Forums. Forums can be of great help to you in 2 ways. First, you can learn from others in your niche what has been successful for them in their internet marketing endeavors. Second, you can offer your own advice or assistance to others which will increase your credibility and the trust of others. This can be big boost in your traffic.

Do Your Keyword Research. I could have placed this at the top of the list because it is so important. However, here near the end is a good place to emphasize how important it is to use the right keywords to improve your website traffic.

There are numerous sites and tools available to help you with keyword research and many of them are free such as Google Keywords AdWords Tool.

Using keyword phrases related to your topic will help people find your website. You need to develop a list of these phrases that you have determined to have a high number of searches and low competition and the use a different one in in each of your article and posts to your site.

These are all ways to get quality website traffic – traffic that is targeted and pre-qualified to improve your sales.

Walt Gemmell is the owner of earn at home a website where you can get your own income generating website ready to take orders. Also visit free traffic to discover 25 ways to get free traffic.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Walt_Gemmell

http://EzineArticles.com/?How-To-Get-Quality-Website-Traffic-Like-The-Experts&id=6694974

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• Internet Marketing Tips: Advanced SEO Targeted Traffic Tactics (ronmedlin.com)
• Website Traffic – That It Is Where Your Triumph Hinges (ronmedlin.com)

Technorati Tags: article marketing, Search Engine Optimization, website traffic

Image by vlima.com via Flickr

By Scott Spooner

The dream of many niche marketers – whether on-line or off – is to discover, or create, that first mega-hit product that will take sales through the roof, bringing both needed cash flow and financial stability to the company.  Whether from a wildly successful product launch, or a leading edge affiliate program, it is envisioned that the cash flow from the product sales will fund everything from marketing, to R&D for the next product, and will both pay the bills and fatten the salaries.

Let’s say that you are clever enough to identify this mega-hit product, and smart enough to leverage that product into an avalanche of sales orders. Have you considered what will happen next? Specifically, have you considered the order fulfillment and customer service functions that are about to be impacted?

Should you find yourself in this position, now would be the time to consider outsourcing these functions to a call center.

What is a call center?

A call center is a centralized office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of customer requests by telephone. Call centers do more than just answer your phone calls during office hours. They can also offer you a comprehensive package that includes handling after-hours inquiries, total customer service, technical support and collection of orders. Call centers are typically operated by third-party companies to administer both incoming product support and information inquiries from consumers, along with outgoing calls for telemarketing, product services, and, possibly even debt collection. In addition to a call center, the collective handling of letters, faxes, live chat, and e-mails at one location is known as a contact center.

Most large companies use call centers to interact with their customers. If you find your company in a position with sales orders suddenly going vertical, you will likely want to outsource to a call center as well.

Outsourcing to a call center can do a lot for your company in the way of saving precious employee time and resources while, at the same time, promoting growth management.

Types of Call Centers

When it comes to call center outsourcing solutions, there are many options from which to choose. The following is a list of different types of call centers that you will want to consider, depending on your company’s required level of service, type of customer interaction, and budgetary constraints:

• Inbound call centers generally accept rather than make calls, and are typically used for customer service and technical support. Outbound operations call selected people or companies, often to support a marketing or sales campaign or survey.
• An in-house operation would be staffed by your own employees, working within your own facility. An outsourced call center, on the other hand, would be a separate company that you hire to care for your customers while using its own staff and facilities.
• Offshore call centers are typically located on another continent, while nearshore call centers will be in a country that is adjacent or very near yours. For example, Canadian call centers are nearshore if you’re based in the United States. Irish call centers are nearshore if you’re in Great Britain.
• Call centers with shared agents will have the same person handling calls for more than one company. Computer-telephony integration (CTI) will allow those agents to be surprisingly seamless in their work for each of the companies, letting them see which company’s call is coming in, with the proper greeting and even the caller’s information appearing on their computer screen before the call is even answered. Dedicated agents meanwhile will handle only one company’s calls. Using shared agents can significantly reduce a company’s costs, and is often the first step for a growing company that wants to outsource, but does not yet have a heavy call volume.

How to Choose a Good Call Center for Your Company

With so many surveys showing customer service to be even more important than price for consumers, and especially businesses, it is no wonder that few business decisions have as much potential to positively impact your customers’ impression of your company as choosing the right call center. A great call center can quickly transform the way people think about you and your products or services; from helping them to resolve difficulties, to allowing you to build brand loyalty.

Whether your company is a multi-national conglomerate, or a two-person, back room affair, it’s important to remember that the call center is the face of your company. There are several different types of call centers so you’ll want to assess your company’s level of need, and depth of services, before making your selection.

The best place to begin your call center search is on the Internet. Point your web browser to either “call center guide” or “call center directory”, and you will find several companies with which to compare.

Different types of call centers charge differently; some charge per “dedicated client service rep” while others charge “per minute”. Checking on both rates and service packages will help you make a smarter decision.

Make sure that the prospective call center understands your industry and the type of contact you are expecting with your clients or customers. For instance, if your business model requires you to participate in web chats with clients, or replying to service-oriented e-mails, make sure that the call center can meet these needs.

Once you’ve narrowed your call center list down to a few good prospects based on their costs and services rendered, you’ll ant to turn your attention to their performance histories. Call center performance levels can be determined by several standard traffic measurements (performance metrics). Some of the most important questions to ask when determining performance metrics include:

• What is the percentage of calls that resolve the customer’s issues entirely? Resolving it completely means that the customer does not find it necessary to call back regarding the same problem at least for a specified minimum period of time. This is called “First Call Resolution” or FCR.
• What is the average amount of time a caller is required to wait while waiting in a queue?
• What is the “Average Handling Time” (AHT) or the typical amount of time spent dealing with the customer? The AHT is equivalent to the ATT plus time spent wrapping up as well as time spent holding on.
• What is the number of calls that an agent answers in one hour? In call-center-speak this is referred to as CPH.
• What is the “Average Talk Time” (ATT), or the typical amount of conversation time?
• What is the amount of time that an agent spends while processing customer requests whilst not actually talking to the customer? This is referred to as NR- “Not Ready Time”, or ACW – “After Call Work”.
• What is the percentage of calls that a customer abandons the call completely due to having to hold on for a long time in a queue? This is called “Percentage of Calls Abandoned” or “Total Calls Abandoned”. This happens in call centers that do not have sufficient staff to handle high call volumes.

Knowing Your Best Options

There is great value in finding a call center that has experience in your industry. Their understanding of callers’ needs and the best approaches for various situations can deliver great value to you and your clients.

It is always to your advantage to know what you need before you start shopping around for a call center. However, if this is your first time in using a call center, you would be wise to seek input from the call centers themselves. With the constant advancement of technology and increasingly specialized call center management techniques, you will likely discover options that you did not know about, or hadn’t even considered. It is always best to understand your options.

The right call center can deliver exceptional value to you and your customers. When you are considering the best call center outsourcing solutions for your company, take your time to make the right decision based on the needs of both your company and your customers.

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Technorati Tags: call center, Call centre, Outsourcing

By Scott Spooner

Lately, there has been a lot of buzz going around about “QR Codes“.

A “QR Code” (for “quick response” code) is a 2-D extension of the traditional bar codes. The difference is that a QR Code can carry a lot more information than a traditional bar code. For example,  the following QR Code contains my contact info (name, address, phone), web site, email and more.

Now here is where it gets real interesting: if you are a niche marketer and part of your strategy includes location-based, or promotion-based, marketing, then you’ll want to take a close look at QR Codes. Why? Because these codes can also carry promotional content. That means you can create a promotion for your store, products, or services, and carry that promotion through to your QR Code. Since QR Codes are easy to create, you can change promotions often and still use these codes to help with the marketing.

So, how do they work?  It is simpler than you may think.

You start by going to Google, typing in  “QR Code generator”, and selecting any of several free generators. Enter in your content and generate your code for download. From there, you can print up the code onto anything you want to promote; a flier, a poster, even a business card!

Someone with a smart phone can point their phone’s camera at the code, capture the code with any of a number of free application software, and be sent directly to your web site for detailed information on the product, promotion, and/or company.

So, take a look at QR Codes. They are easy to set-up and they just might help generate the type of traffic (and sales) you are looking for!

I’ve included the following video (below) that helps explain the whole concept.

Related articles

• QR Code: Why You Should Be Using It to Promote You, Your Business and Products (drdianehamilton.wordpress.com)
• What is a QR Code? – QR Codes – Library Research Guides at Boise State University (guides.boisestate.edu)
• How to use QR codes on Android phone (cash-bandit.com)

QR Code Video

Advertising with QR Codes

CNET’s Natali Del Conte showed how QR codes may change the future of advertising. Customers scan the codes with their cell phones to receive information.

Technorati Tags: location-based marketing, niche marketing, niche marketing tools, QR Code

Image via Wikipedia

Editor’s note: Today’s guest article focuses in on “qualified traffic”, and how it is differentiated from general visitor counts to your web site.  Learn how to spot traffic and watch your conversions increase. ~Scott]

Every website has different things that will separate those who count as qualified traffic, and those who are merely visitors that are inflating and skewing their analytics numbers. A good marketing idea for small business is to define clearly who their qualified traffic is, and where it is coming from. Then, you can start to focus more on those sources of traffic and draw in more qualified visitors to your site. Ultimately, the quality of your visitors can matter far more than your total site views.

To begin, we must first define what is meant as a qualified visitor. In essence, a qualified visitor is one that we feel is actually potentially a customer. When you’re using raw data, such as Google Analytics, you never know how many visitors are actually coming to your site and looking for the data that you want them to be looking for. Some may be bot hits, some may be miss-clicks and some may be people just wasting time on the internet. So, you need to define your qualified visitors are.

A good way to look at it is that you need for a customer to have three things to be qualified. First, they need to actually have the money required to make a purchase from your site. Second, they must fill any prerequisites involved in purchasing your product. For example, a course in French as a second language wouldn’t make much sense for a native French speaker.

Alternatively, a site that sold car floor mats wouldn’t have much use for visitors without cars (with the rare obvious gift-giving exception). And finally, they must be the kind of person that actually buys products online. There are many who do not.

The reason this information is useful is that it can help you target some of your advertising efforts. Truth be told, targeting the first and third qualifying factors can actually be quite difficult. However, there are often many opportunities for targeting the second. One way to do this is with any PPC campaigns. If you pay to put ads on the Google content network, carefully selecting which sites you want to pay to have your ads on can be a good way to make sure that you’re only targeting those with an actual interest in your products.

Another way to do this is to buy ad space, or to work with people who run related websites to yours. For instance, if your product required people to own a car in order to be qualified, you could target websites that are built for car owners. You could buy ad space, but you could also post on car owner forums, you could comment on car owner blogs, join social networking groups targeted at car owners, and create off-site content that should draw the attention of those who own a car. Getting back links from related niche sites is also something that you should find extremely valuable, and which can definitely help increase the flow of qualified traffic to your own site.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Rich Reese is a consultant for a marketing idea for small business company and has expert knowledge of selling online marketing.

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Technorati Tags: Google Analytics, niche marketing, niche marketing tools, qualified traffic, target marketing

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[Editor's note: Over the last several months I have been using the term "location based marketing" to describe strategies that niche marketers can use to tap into local customers. Today's guest article defines "location based marketing" in an easy to understand way. As location based marketing continues to merge with promotional marketing, powerful new niche marketing strategies are emerging. I'll explore some of those strategies in upcoming articles. ~Scott]

By Alan Weeks

From billboards to costumed mascots, companies have been using location based marketing for years. As technology has continued to grow and change, so have the ways that you can reach potential customers.

What is Location Based Marketing?

Location Based Marketing allows a business to market directly to its patrons via social media marketing applications accessed through mobile devices. Simply put, if your customers are using a Smartphone, iPad, or other mobile device near your location, you can utilize this local mobile marketing strategy to get them through your front door.

How It Works

With the prevalence of sophisticated mobile devices, the popularity of location based social media is growing. Smartphones alone accounted for 19% of all mobile devices sold in early 2010. More and more people are getting involved and connecting on sites like:

• Foursquare
• Facebook Places
• Gowalla
• Loopt
• Google Latitude
• Brightkite

These sites let people “check in” to show others where they are and depending on the service, give them access to a variety of digital interactions. Foursquare users for example, can collect badges based on the number of times they check into a particular place. This type of social media marketing involves taking advantage of these interactions to encourage people to visit your location, make purchases, and recommend it to their friends.

Getting Involved

In order to make the most of location based social media, your company must be listed on a location based social networking website. Each site handles listings a little differently, so it’s important to make sure that the information provided about your company is correct. A quick search of location based social media sites will tell you if you have a listing and if any changes need to be made. If the site doesn’t allow you to update the listing yourself, simply contact them to get your listing corrected.

A correct listing ensures that potential clients can find your business when looking for to places to go when they’re out and about. This can draw both local residents and people from out of town to your company, bringing in customers who might not otherwise have thought to stop by.

How Your Business Can Benefit

There are many ways to utilize location based marketing to grow your business. Depending on your marketing goals, you may wish to:

• Offer specialized coupons to customers the first time they check in
• Create a “digital punch card” that gives a discount or free item after a certain number of check-ins
• Post a customized banner ad or icon to catch the attention of potential clients
• Run targeted promotions for users on specific social media sites

Location based marketing occurs in real-time, meaning that the customer will view a promotion, decide whether or not to act on it, and post comments or reviews all while physically present at your location. By keeping on top of what consumers are saying, you can analyze which promotions are working the best for your company and modify your internet marketing strategy accordingly.

Now that you understand how location based marketing can increase your profits, its time develop a custom tailored internet marketing plan for your business. Contact http://envisionnetinc.com for a free consultation and website analysis.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alan_Weeks

http://EzineArticles.com/?Location-Based-Marketing—How-To-Reach-More-Local-Customers&id=5408552

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Technorati Tags: location-based marketing, marketing strategies, niche marketing

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By Scott Spooner

The other day I was driving through a business park on my way a client’s office. Along the way I passed by a string of businesses that you would normally find on a major city boulevard: gas stations, dry cleaners, mini-marts, and the like.

However, there was one business that caught my attention: a sandwich shop. There was nothing memorable about the building or the name of the business; in fact, I had driven past this business dozens of times before without taking much notice. What caught my attention on this particular trip was a new banner that they had hung outside their front door.

The sandwich shop was now promoting something called the Business Meeting Package. This “package” includes 10 sandwiches, 10 drinks, 10 salads, and lots of pickles.

Now, there is nothing new about offering lunches to local businesses, but most of these types of promotions are aimed at the individual employee who is in a hurry to grab some food during a lunch hour. What made this promotion unusual was that it was targeting a slightly different niche – the “work during lunch” crowd.

With the slower economy that we are currently experiencing, many business owners, and employees, are working through lunch in an effort to stay as productive as possible. This sandwich shop identified this trend and built a marketing promotion around the niche.

I pulled over and went into the store to speak with the owner  about this promotion (and to get a sandwich!). I asked the owner how the promotion was working out; he told me that the banner was, indeed, drawing a response from the local area businesses. In fact, he said that the promotion was responsible for a 10% increase in catered lunches.

And that’s the point. Hanging a banner saying something like “we cater” probably wouldn’t have worked. There are lots of those types of marketing messages around town. However, positioning the catering service around the needs of the work-during-lunch crowd (i.e. a “business meeting package”) was the key.

This business had found a new and unique niche and they were starting to see the rewards from pursuing that niche.

So, how can you do the same with your business? What customer needs are going unfulfilled in your niche? How can you identify those needs and offer a unique solution?

What are your thoughts?

Technorati Tags: niche marketing, niche markets, target marketing

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By Scott Spooner

This past week Yahoo consummated its long awaited courtship with Bing by announcing that, henceforth, Bing will be powering the search functions of Yahoo, one of the Net’s most respected search engine companies.

I can understand the desire for Yahoo and Bing to enter into this partnership; both from a market share and financial perspective. After all, someone has to challenge the 600-lb. gorilla that is Google.

But, from a strictly marketing point of view, how will Yahoo position itself in the mind of the consumer? To the average consumer, Yahoo has always meant “search”. If Bing is now powering the search, can Yahoo legitimately continue to claim this mantle? If not, what position will Yahoo stake out?

I’m sure – or, at least, I hope – that both Yahoo and Bing have their best marketing teams working on this very question. In the ever changing landscape that is the Internet, they’ll have to move quickly if the are going to capitalize on the benefits of this merger and build future market share.

Otherwise, the venerable search engine will shrink into the shadows and join the likes of other search engines that have come and gone.

Or maybe the net surfers of tomorrow will simply remember the former giant as “YaWho?”

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Technorati Tags: Bing, Market share, niche marketing, niche markets, Yahoo

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By Andrew Rossillo

You could have the finest product line or set of services in the marketplace, but if you fail to market your offer right, no prospects will ever see or hear about it. Even if you are employing one of the latest online marketing tools, the outrageous rate of saturation of today’s marketplace means that people are constantly bombarded with a virtually infinite amount of marketing and advertising messages throughout the day. This makes it even more of a challenge to reach your target audience.

Because of this onslaught of marketing and advertising, our brains have actually become programmed to filter out a great degree of the messages that are fired at us. What new marketing tool consistently passes through our marketing and advertising filter? Mobile marketing and the awesome power of text messages! One of the reasons why businesses are experiencing great success with mobile marketing is because it features a fraction of the competition than other media-Internet and email tools are engrossed in a jam-packed and highly competitive environment.

For example: An email message usually has around a 10 percent success rate of actually being read. Text messages, however, feature over a 90 percent success rate of not only being read, but being read within the first 30 minutes of being received! While getting your marketing message out is important, having your message actually read is key to your business or organization experiencing record-breaking sales. What adds even more potency to this special type of marketing? It’s the only marketing media that reaches prospects and clients while they are on the go! Mobile marketing and text messages allow you to automatically update, announce, invite and communicate when you want and how you want!

Top Mobile Marketing Benefits:

• Generate leads that you can continuously market to
• Build a mobile database for lucrative follow-up
• Reach customers instantly
• Build relationships with customers
• Learn more about your customers through surveys, polls and demographic info
• Drive traffic to your business with the use of coupons, special deals, and event promotions

Your Chance to Be a Wealthy Pioneer

Very few businesses are actually taking advantage of mobile marketing right now. That’s because this type of marketing is where Internet marketing was back in 2000. That means you can get a gigantic head start by incorporating mobile marketing within your business today. Plus, you can easily integrate mobile marketing and text message marketing within any offline and online marketing campaign. Of course, this type of marketing is substantial enough to form a standalone marketing campaign.

If you’re questioning the type of potential you have with text message and mobile marketing then consider that there are 270 million mobile subscribers in the U.S. alone, and 91 percent of them are said to keep their phones within just a few feet of themselves 24 hours a day throughout the year! In addition, text message marketing has an incredible reach of almost 5 billion compared to Internet marketing’s reach of 1.7 billion.

Lucrative Lead Generation

Every time a prospect or customer opts into one of your text message offers (e.g. to get informational updates, coupons, discounts) that creates a lead. You now have the means to market to that person as much as you’d like. Take this opportunity to upsell, build belief in your business, provide additional value, increase attendance at events and just about anything else you can think of.

This is made even easier with the accompaniment of super simple database options that allow you to file all of your leads, so you can send out a blast to your entire database or use simple filters to send out to select groups within your database. Build a herd and market like there’s no tomorrow.

Plus, mobile marketing offers one of the most significant ROI’s possible among today’s leading marketing and media tools. Text message marketing is like having hundreds of obliging little marketing assistants hustling around doing all the work for you. All you have to do is press a few buttons and you’ll have instantly reached out to your entire database of leads, customers and prospects-with a 90 percent success rate of being read!

Andrew Rossillo is the primary copywriter and co-owner of Business Ball; a comprehensive business resource website. We’re all about helping as many people as possible, so please feel free to post our article on your website. We simply ask that you don’t alter the content and that you leave our link intact (http://www.businessresourcesdaily.com/).

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Rossillo

http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Make-More-Money-With-Mobile-Marketing&id=4698379

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Technorati Tags: Lead generation, Mobile Marketing, niche marketing, niche marketing tools, niche markets, Text messaging

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What do Starbucks, Sports Authority, and Jack in the Box all have in common? They all are successful, national brands. They also have recently embraced social media as part of their marketing campaigns.

Starbucks and Sports Authority are developing campaigns using “location based” media (such as Foursquare.com), and Jack in the Box has developed a “fan page” on Facebook where they can communicate their latest promotions via their fan base.

Hundreds of businesses, both large and small, are following suit.

Whether you publish a blog, or have a “brick and mortar” retail location, you can no longer afford to ignore social media and it’s power to both create a community of followers, and nudge those followers to your blog or store.

But, with the dozens of social media sites popping up, where do you start? My recommendation is to visit several of the better known sites (like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon) and see which ones “fit” your personal style.

For instance, if you are interested in bookmarking sites in your industry, consider the social bookmarking sites (like Digg, Reddit, and Propeller).

If writing short posts is more in tune with your lifestyle (called “micro-blogging”), then consider Twitter.

If you just want to jump in with both feet – and mix it up with 400 million of your closest “friends” – then Facebook might be the place for you.

In any case, get in the pool and start paddling around. You’ll find that the water is just fine.

Once you’ve settled on a small list of social media sites that interest you, set up an account with each and begin posting; post about yourself, but also post about your industry and your business.

One word of caution here: don’t get into social media sites thinking that you are going to get very far by selling your products and services – that will come later. Simply become part of the conversation and and listen for frustrations and “pain points’. Offer advice. Point people towards solutions that you have found.  Be seen as an expert. Lead the conversation. If you have something useful to say, people will start looking forward to your posts, and then will want to learn more by stopping by your blog or store.

So, you’re now ready to take your first step. It is a good step to take. In future posts I’ll explore more of the social media sites, along with some tips and tricks for  building a loyal following.

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Related videos:

Social Media in Plain English

commoncraft.com A simple story that illustrates the forces shaping social media. This video comes in an unbranded “presentation quality” version that can be licensed for use in the workplace. http

What is Social Media?

chris.pirillo.com – Blake Cahill recently interviewed me, and I thought you might find my answers somewhat interesting. If you wanna know what I care about most, let me lay it on the line… and please post a video response with your own take on Soci…

Technorati Tags: Digg, Facebook, Reddit, social media, Social network, StumbleUpon, Twitter

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

By Scott Spooner

When you think of search engines, what names come to mind? if you are like most people, you’ll probably come up with some combination of Google, Yahoo, and Bing. If you’ve been on the Net for a while, you might also think of Alta Vista, Baidu, Ask, and dozens of others.

But let me ask you: did Facebook or Twitter come to mind?

Most netizens associate Facebook with social networking, and Twitter with micro-blogging. But few realize that both Facebook and Twitter are also up and coming search engines, as both offer searchable keyword databases.

With active Facebook members now exceeding 400 million, and active Twitter members now exceeding 100 million, the respective search databases are enormous.

Add to this Facebook’s pay-per-click ad network (with rumors that Twitter will be following suit with their own paid advertising), and you have a potent combination for both demographic/geographic keyword research and targeted advertising opportunities.

If you are an on-line marketer who is looking to build traffic and reach your target audience, then don’t overlook Facebook and Twitter when it comes to search.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Google, Scott Spooner, Twitter, Web search engine