Marketing Tips Your Mama Forgot To Tell You About
If you were to talk with a search engine marketing consultant, they would have certain tips to give you. There are many websites these days which do have a website which is optimized for search engine marketing. This is important because if you do not have a website which is optimized and shows up in search engine results, you cannot get traffic to your website without having to buy it and this gets expensive.
If you are concerned about how your website shows up in websites, you may inquire about search engine marketing services. These services will usually focus their attention upon three main areas: incoming links, your content, and your keywords. These are factors which are important for the search engines and will result in your website being placed higher in results if you focus on these factors. This article will talk more about this.
The first of the six factors a search engine marketing services company will examine is competitive analysis. This is done to see how your website stacks up against the competition along with which companies are in the top ten results and why they are there.
The second factor to look into is keyword research to see which keywords are actually used by your prospective audience and how competitive these keywords are. Without proper keywords, your website is not visible to your niche audience searching for what you have to offer.
A search engine marketing consultant will use page optimization to see which keywords are emphasized on various pages. This will ensure that your set of keywords is used properly throughout your website so that you show up for all keywords you are targeting.
Search engine marketing services companies place great emphasis on site usability. Without a site that is easy to get around, your audience will become disenchanted and exit your site quickly which is not good for your business.
Off page optimization such as link building is the next area which will be focused on by search engine marketing services companies. Link building is important because this is a factor in search engine rankings.
You can also think about using paid search engine marketing such as Adwords. This is an option some search engine marketing consultants will recommend because you can get your website in front of your audience faster than organic search engine marketing optimization efforts.
Can you not see the importance of these tips if you were a search engine marketing consultant? There are certain steps that must be done to develop a highly successful website and this website covers many of those steps. Be sure to use these to maximize your website’s chances for success.
Search Engine Marketing – Creating A Better Landing Page
Landing pages have the ability to grab and hold us like fly no-fly paper or repel us like jumping on the trampling. The question is what impact does your landing page have on the people who visit your website. As I talk to people who are just getting into SEO (search engine optimization), all they focus on our rankings in traffic. We have to remember that “rankings” in “traffic” or not the end but a means to the end. That end is visitors to your site that take advantage of the solutions that you offer. We can have a lot of traffic to our website but if no one is sticking around long enough to see if our solutions can solve their problems then that traffic does not mean anything.
A lot of thought must go into your landing pages, both from a search engine perspective and from a customer perspective.
Search Engine perspective:
This is covered in Search Engines 101 Paid Vs Natural Search so I am not going to go into detail here.
Customer Focused Landing Pages:
Your landing page has to do one thing, answer the questions that the searcher had in mind when he typed in his keywords. The searcher type in his search terms because he has a problem, needs a solution or is in some kind of “pain”. You have about two seconds to convince him that you understand what he is going through and what he needs. The last thing a searcher wants to see is that you can jump higher, run faster and do it better than the competition. He just doesn’t care (yet). Besides, most of the websites that he already visited probably stated that they do that. The challenge is to show the searcher that you have the answers to his needs. How do we do that?
1. Think of as many questions as you can that might be on the mind of a visitor to that specific landing page.
2. Choose one of the questions to be the title of that specific landing page. Use the other questions as sub points or topics in the outline of the page.
3. The content underneath each heading will be a description of the problem. It is very important that when you describe the problem you do it from your client’s perspective.
4. After describing two or three scenarios that your client may fall into closeout with the paragraph that describes your qualifications for dealing with the above scenarios. This is where you put in how me years of experience, the combined experience of your team or your experience in the marketplace.
5. The last thing is to have a call to action. The idea is that if your client falls into one of the scenarios described it would be natural for them to do the call for action to get help with their problem.
For example, if someone is doing a search on long-term care insurance they may only have a general idea of what you’re looking for. When they come to a landing page that has a question like “what happens to your nest egg if you suffer an illness or an injury that requires long-term care?” Then in the description of the problem they read that one year of long-term care can cost between $90,000 and $130,000 and as a result of this high costs it will either force you into bankruptcy or dependency on your children or family to take care of you. (Not a pretty picture.) After you add your qualifications, whatever they are, you put in your call to action. It could be something like “for a free quote and help in understanding what your options are fill out form below and one of our experts will contact you within the next 48 hours”.
So the question remains, are your landing pages flypaper or trampolines? Customer focused landing pages are worth the time and energy to produce. If you are not sure give us a call and we will do a free evaluation of your site. This will help determine whether or not changes or in order.
Search Engines Marketing: Paid Search Vs. Natural Search
Search Engines
Search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are really just data bases. When you do a Google Search you are not searching the “world wide web” you are searching Google’s data base. There are two ways to get in to these databases. One is to submit your site to the different search engines. In about 6 to 9 weeks the search engine will index your site. They have software that comes to your site and index every page and adds it to the database. They come into your main web URL and follow the links to all the pages of your site. They capture key elements from the code on your page to the content. These are then stored in the data base. When someone puts a keyword in the search box the “algorithms” determine the best page or links to the best pages for your search.
The other way to get added to the search engines data base is to have the search engine software find you through a link to your site from another web site back to yours. The software, called “spiders” will periodically comeback and re crawl your site to see if you have updated it.
One important thing to know is that each page on your site is indexed individually and each page stands on its own. The ranking are based upon the combination of correct meta tags, relevant content to the keyword they are trying to get rankings for and link popularity. Mostly one way links back to their site from relevant sites.
As long as the search engine can index the site, clearly read the meta tags and content, the better. The big issues come when a site is built in flash with very little content (search engines cannot read or index “flash” sites. Also, if the bulk of the relevant content is in PDF format this is bad because the search engines cannot read PDF. If the search engines cannot index the relevant text there will be no rankings.
You all ready know this but “sites” are not ranked, individual pages are ranked for specific terms found in the content of that page as well as link popularity, (relevant links pointing back to that specific page) for the term that you are trying to get ranked on. This is why each page has to be giving very specific attention. Paid search
Paid search is when your ad shows up at the very top of a Google search or down the right hand side of the results page. These are called “sponsored ads”. You pay for those positions. When every you click on one of those ads the owner of the ad pays the search engine. This is also called “pay-per-click”. The amount you pay is determined by several factors including what you are willing to pay every time someone clicks on your ad.
Natural Search
Natural Search is when you type in a “keyword” and a link and a description shows up on left hand side of the search result page. The only way to get on the first page is to have very relevant content on your web site and links to your site from other relevant sites. This is a long process for people in it for the long haul. There are a lot of companies that claim to be able to get you on the first page of Google. That may be true if the “search term” is very specific and no one else would ever search for it but you or they are using a “black hat” method that could get you site banned from the search engine. Bottom line: Paid Search means you pay for your position. The benefit is, if you have the $$, you will get instant traffic. Stop paying and the traffic goes away. Natural search is free traffic but it is built over time. The advantage is, if done right, it can provide traffic for a long time.
Search traffic (paid or natural) is the BEST traffic to have because you are being found by folks who are specifically looking for what you have. It does not get any better than that.
Writing & Publishing Articles for the Internet Marketing
A lot of people are beginning to see the importance of writing and publishing articles on the internet as part of their SEM marketing campaign. This is also a great way to improve the link popularity of your website as part of your SEO efforts, showcase your expertise and be seen as an expert in your field.
A lot of us know more about our field and how our product or service can help people than anybody else. The question is where to start. This article designed as a starting point so that we can get some of our own ideas and solutions published.
Publishing Content There are hundreds of article publishing sites. A simple search will yield a nice list.
Some sites require that you register with them. My suggestion would be that you use the same user name and password with each publication website. Create a template using Notepad so that when you are ready to entering in your articles you will have everything in one place.
Use the following outline as a template. These tips come from having several articles rejected. That’s no fun. Article Title: Make sure that you have your main keyword phrase in this title. Author Bio: Limit your bio to about 200 characters some allow more, but I think shorter is better. Add at least, one link to your website in the bio. Have the link pointing back to the page on your site where the article resides. Some sites do not allow you to have a link to your website in the content of the article.
If you are allowed two links, make one to the page with the article and the other to your homepage. Sample Bio: Terry Stanfield is a SEM consultant with over 15 years of sales and marketing experience. His company, ClickAdvantage, manages PPC and SEO efforts for his lead generation and ecommerce clients. For more information: http://www.clickadvant.com/se101.htm In some article directories, they do not have a place for a box for your bio. In those cases, you can put your short bio at the end of your content. Keyword List: It is best to start with one or two keyword phrases. Think of the questions behind the search than write your article to answer the questions. Make a list of two or three keyword phrases that you want your article to be found on. Make sure that those phrases are in the content of the article. Limit yourself to 2-3 keyword phrases. The keyword phrases should be the core topic of your article. Keeping these terms in the forefront of your mind will keep you on track. Article Content: This is the content of your article. Do not include the title of the article in this box. The articles should be about 500 to 550 words.
The minimum number of words, allow in the vast majority of the article distribution sites is 500. If you are new to writing articles, let me suggest the following outline: Introduction: First one or two sentences introduce the problem that you’re going to solve by writing this article. The next sentence states the three areas that you’re going to cover or the top five reasons or the five things you should look for or the six misconceptions about, you get the idea. Meat of the article: Point1 Two or three sentences Point2 Two or three sentences Point3 Two or three sentences Conclusion: You might start this paragraph like: “We just looked at three ways around the problem of … The challenge is, what are you going to do from here.” Make some suggestions on what to do next. Invite them to look for upcoming articles on this topic or related topics. Finally: It is important that you edit your article for spelling and grammar, but most importantly, key words and phrases and their positions in the article. Create Meta tags for that article so that you can have them when that page is added to your website. Add the content to your website and have it on your site for about a week before you publish the article. The reason you want to do this is to establish that your site had the content first.
Now that you have a starting point the next step is to sit down and start writing. Writing & publishing articles for the internet will only be beneficial after you do it!
Search Engine Marketing: Timing of SEO in the Web Design Process
If you’re just starting to build your website now is the best time to start planning your search engine optimization and search engine marketing strategy. The best time to introduce the SEO planning of a website is when the site design is ready and the site is ready to be launched but there is no content yet for the site. Just before the site launches is the time to bring in an SEO consultant to provide some SEO services.
After the design of the website is done an SEO consultant can give you suggestions about what keywords and key phrases you need to add into the site HTML as Meta tags and where those tags should go. Once the site is tagged and the design and navigation has been tested it’s time to add in content. Having SEO content on your site from the start will give your web site a big advantage over older websites that might already have a bit of a following but haven’t had any SEO services by a professional SEO consultant.
For a new site where that site ends up on the search engine results pages can be critical to its success. In order for the site to get a high ranking on the search engine results pages it’s imperative that a professional and experienced SEO consultant creates search engine optimized content that is ready to be part of a broad search engine marketing campaign. It just makes more sense to get all your ducks in a row before you launch the site doesn’t it? Bring in an SEO consultant when you’re ready to start putting content on the site so that when the site launches your site will be instantly indexed by the search engine spiders and can start drawing traffic from search engines immediately.
If you have an existing site that is due for an overhaul or a design revamping then you should also consult a professional SEO consultant before the site is redone so that you will have a good idea of what SEO services that you need. Cosmetic work on the site is important so that your site doesn’t look outdated but changing up the content on the site will be very important. Most of the traffic that websites get comes from searches done by people who use Google or another search engine to look for website dealing with a particular topic.
You want your site to be at the top of or at least near the top every search that is done by a search engine for the topic that your site is about. In order to achieve that you need an SEO professional to write great search engine optimized content before the site launches. If your existing site has had the same content on it for more than six months you should get an SEO professional to write new content. Changing the content is a great search engine marketing strategy to draw new web site traffic and improve your search engine ranking.
