Candid Color Systems is pleased to announce the dates for the 2011 Summer Workshops. The workshops will be held in Oklahoma City at the CCS campus on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday: July 24th, 25th, and 26th.

According to Susan Ward from About.com, “The science of online marketing is the research and analysis that goes into choosing the online marketing strategies to use and measuring the success of those online marketing strategies.”

You’ve chosen a part of your online marketing strategy by creating a website for your company. You researched and analyzed the information you placed on your site. So now it’s time to measure the success of your website. You need to find out if the information you placed on your site is successful in attracting visitors to your site and providing them with the information they are looking for. You can do this by using web analytics.

Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. Through the use of web analytics you will be able to optimize your website to attract more visitors and turn those visitors into customers.

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What is Paid Search? Search engines display ads when a keyword query matches an advertiser’s keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. These ads appear adjacent to or above organic results on search engine pages and are usually called sponsored links or sponsored ads. On content sites, the ads appear anywhere the site chooses.

So you may be asking your self what the difference is between Organic Search and Paid Search. Basically, Organic Search provides information about the company. Paid Search ads typically provide a financial incentive with a “call to action”. Here’s another way to look at it, Organic Search is similar to your business listing in the phonebook. Paid Search is similar to an ad in the newspaper.

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Recently I discussed how to increase the visibility of your business in search engines by using Local Map Listings (link to previous article -http://snapshots.candid.com/2009/10/search-engine-basics-for-your-photo-business/). Now I’d like to take a look at Organic Search. Organic Search consists of the search listings on a search engine’s results page that are not sponsored or paid. According to some recent studies, 85% of search engine users click on organic listings vs. 15% on paid listings. So, being aware of how your website appears in organic search is very important.

Can your business be found at the top of the page in search engines? If not, there are a few things you can do to increase the visibility of your business name in the 3 major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing.

There are 3 ways your business can be found in search engines.

Local Map Listings – this service is free in all 3 search engines.

Organic Search – this service is free in all 3 search engines but requires changes to your website. If you’ve had someone else design your website you may incur costs to change your site.

Paid Search (PPC) – this is not a free service and there are a number of factors that determine the price of the ad.

Let’s start with Local Map Listings. It is vital that you claim your business information in each search engine so you can control what is listed about your business.