Posts Tagged ‘search engine marketing’
There are a number of steps I always follow when optimizing a site for SEO (note these are just the high points, there are others that I don’t mention here, but these WILL take you a long way):
1) If it’s a new site, I will include the keywords in a non hyphenated domain name (if you can get a .edu or .gov suffix do so, otherwise a cheap .info will work just fine)
2) If possible, I will rename the URL to each money page to include the main keyword for that page.
3) Implement Google Analytics for the site and ensure the tracking script is added to every page.
4) Go through the “money” pages and make sure that the title, meta descriptions and meta keywords tags are different and optimized for the keywords on the page. In a competitive niche (over 1 million result pages in Google), I would limit the keywords to one main phrase, a couple of local modifiers and one or two more closely related terms per page.
5) Edit the non-money pages (i.e. pages that are irrelevant from an SEO perspective) and ensure the title and meta description tags are not duplicates of any of the money page tags. Google Webmaster tools will identify this for you once your site has been registered.
6) I nofollow any links to overhead pages from all of the pages on the site other than the home page. I leave the home page links as follow links, since I want the SEs to index all pages on the site and having privacy, contact, disclaimer, etc overhead pages enhance Google’s view of the “trust” for the site. On all other pages I just want the link to the home page to be a follow link, so I can build up the page rank of the home page. I handle this in Dreamweaver by using two different site templates. If your main keyword page is something other than the home page, modify your approach accordingly.
7) I then optimize each page’s content for it’s main keywords, modifiers and related terms. It’s important that each word or phrase used in the keyword META is found on the page to avoid keyword spam penalties.
At this point the on page optimization is complete enough to start with link building. As you may already know, building links is not a piece of cake. I use articles, blog posts, submit forms on relevant sites, reciprocal links, etc. There are ways to short cut this process, without going black or grey hat. Contact me at Mississauga Search Engine Marketing if interested.
Here is one example of the financial results that a company achieved by optimizing a single keyword that moved from the bottom of the second page of Google to a number 4 position, above the fold on the first page.
A client’s website had a ranking of 18 for their primary target keywords on the second page of Google’s natural search engine results. Considering the number of companies competing for a high ranking on this keyword, a position on the second page seemed like a good accomplishment, but the volume of sales leads was disappointing.
SEO Works
A marketing strategy focused optimization efforts on improving the natural keyword ranking for this one target keyword. After some time and effort, the ranking for the keyword first moved to the number 9 position, and then to the number 4 position of the first page search engine results. The improved search engine ranking for this single keyword generated an increase in sales leads far more than expected, which subsequently converted to an increase in sales revenue amounting to over $1,000,000.
Tracking the Moves
The list below shows the search engine ranking relative to the number of sales leads that were generated from the company’s primary target keyword:
- Nov 08 – position 18 = 6 leads
- Dec 08 – position 9 = 31 leads
- Jan 09 – position 9 = 126 leads
- Feb 09 – position 4 = 102 leads
- Mar 09 – position 4 = 207 leads
- Apr 09 – position 4= 221 leads
Summary of Results
The increase in the number of monthly sales leads can be seen as the target keyword ranking moved up over the six month time period. The full benefit of the keyword moving from the 18th to the 9th position is reflected in the January total because the change occurred later in the month of December. The same applies to the move from position 9 to position 4 because the change occurred later in February.
For marketing managers and business owners who are wondering about the difference between having a major keyword listing on the first page of search results compared to the second page of results, this case study should provide some insight based on our experience.
It also shows an example of the potential benefit from having keyword search results listed above the fold of a web page as opposed to below the fold where viewers must scroll down to see more search listings.
Based on these results, there is clear evidence that a higher organic search engine ranking can dramatically affect sales lead generation and company revenue, in this case over $1,000,000.
Wriiten by Rick Smith at 10th Degree Online Marketing and Jazel Automotive SEO.
Blogging can be a fantastic way to get more traffic charging full speed to your website.
The good news is that setting up a Blog for your website is surprisingly easy but there are a few caveats and things you need to change to ensure your blog is setup correctly to get maximum exposure in the search engines.
Before we start discussing what you should and should not do with Blogs, let’s take one step back and define what a Blog is.
A Blog can be thought of as a simple, public online diary where you can write entries (posts) into the diary.
Being public, the posts can be viewed by anyone who happens to surf by your site, and hopefully you have lots and lots of people reading every post you make, and contributing to your Blog in the form of adding comments, looking at relevant links you add to your blog, watching audio and video, and fingers crossed linking to your blog from their site, if they happen to have one.
What is particularly attractive about Blogs, is that the entire process of Blogging is very simple to do, mainly due to the great quality of Blog software available that you can install on your website.
Decent Blogging software provides all the functionality you need, the management of posts by yourself (and others), the categorization of posts (something that is essential) and even the process of telling other blogging websites every time you make a new post automatically.
Automatically telling other sites about your posts is a huge plus since it’s getting known on the Internet, without the need for you to be having to manually “submit” your blog in order for people to find out about it.
Now in my opinion, one of the most important things to ensure is that you don’t just use the Blog as a sales page (I recommend you leave the selling of your products and services to your actual sales page on your website).
Obviously you will want to talk about your products and services, and the benefits visitors will get in using them, but I believe it’s important not to have an all out sales pitch, as that will tend to turn off visitors who may be seeing your message for the first time. I also recommend you talk about non-business stuff, information about you, the person, what you like and dislike, things you have found of interest on the Internet, etc.
When considering finding out more about search engine marketing; it pays to visit professionals to help you achieve the best and most rapid results.
When people read these personal posts, they get to know the real you, and form a relationship with a “real person” and not a nameless website, and this can only assist you in future sales with these people.
A Blog also allows (and in fact encourages) participation by visitors, who can post responses to your entries, and this is often a great way to stimulate interesting conversations. Good Blogging software will allow you to remove spam responses (where visitors or programs “write” messages directing people to their site) as well as to moderate conversations that are in appropriate or off-topic.One of the best reasons to use Blogs is to help you rank highly in the search engines. The search engines love Blogs, provided they are providing relevant and quality content.
To give you an idea of how important search engines see Blogs, Google bought one of the largest Blogging sites out there (blogger.com). Having a focused relevant site with interesting and useful content can only help you in your journey to find true search engine love.
If you have read any of the other articles on this website, you’ve probably gathered that I preach relevant useful content. Blogs are no different than other web traffic techniques, you need to ensure it’s relevant, and ensure your separate your posts into logical categories.
For example if you have a website about software development, you may make posts discussing programming generally, other posts about training for software developers, and more posts about a specific computer language like Java.
It’s vitally important that you don’t lump all posts together for several reasons. Firstly, people coming to your Blog may have a specific interest in some of your posts (training for example) and may find it hard and frustrating to easily find all posts you have written on training if you have not clearly defined categories (and allowed posts to be searched/sorted by these categories).
Likewise the search engines may view your Blog as less relevant if you lump all your posts together than another Blog elsewhere that has posts clearly defined in categories. Search engines very much prefer categorization of information and reward websites that categorize correctly with high er rankings in the search engine.
The most popular open source blogging package is wordpress. Check that out online.
Wordpress is a free blogging package (yes nothing to pay!), and is extremely flexible and easy to use without sacrificing anything in power or flexibility. I use this package and can fully recommend you do as well.
Because of its popularity many Web host’s have it available for installation on their websites for you with “one-click” installs.
If you are a Local business owner, you need your business Website to show up near the top of all important SERP’s (search engine results pages) for the keywords important to your business. To achieve this goal, it is important that you understand various Search Engine Marketing tricks that can ensure that your Website blows away the thousands — often hundreds of thousands — of other Web Sites competing for top rankings on the same keywords. Here are some valuable ideas on the best way to execute SEO.
The first and foremost idea is to understand how search engines generate results. They do not understand graphics but rather, depend on comparing the terms that the searcher typed into the search form with the terms that might be included in your Web Site. For this reason, you should make it a point to include all keywords and keyword phrases as possible into your Website. Imagine the different keyword phrases that your visitors might type into the search boxes and try to incorporate those keywords into your site. If you have placed photos in your site, make it a point to attach “alt text” tags to all the photos to allow the SE’s can add them to the web site content.
The words should also be included in the URL and other related file names since the SE’s interpet them. This is a critical Search Engine Optimization trick. So, if your business is Pete’s Paving in Charlottesville, VA, or Harrisonburg, VA, you might be well-served to use the domain CharlottesvilleAsphalt.com or HarrisonburgPaving.com.
The title tag, which is on the beginning of your html document, must include the top keywords as must your meta description and meta keyword tags. These description and keyword tags are not visable on your Web Site but will display in text format as the SE’s list their results. Thus, it is critical to include key phrases that beckon the visitor to the Website in your description tags. It is important to be sure not to just overuse the same keyword phrases in your domain name, meta tags and other file names because most SE’s will interpret that as SPAM and simply put your site in the “SandBox”. As an alternative, try to blend in various related words that are similar to your search terms.
Use local words in your body content to improve your chances of top SE rankings for your local market. If you business isin the Harrisonburg, Virginia area, be sure to use some of those terms in your key phrases.
Be patient since after you have completed the required modifications to the site, it will still take some time for the SE’s to recognize that fact and push you up in the rankings.
Make sure that your body text is limited to about 300 words and that the relevant keywords are injected at regular intervals rather than simply grouing them in one part of your page.
If you implement these tactics, you might be pleasantly surprised to watch the SE’s boost your site’s rating. Continue to implement different Search Engine Optimization methods to ensure that your site remains on top since your competitors will be doing their best to jump over you.
Get out the confetti and ticker tape! You can achieve first-page organic search engine ratings without having to deal with the constant changes of Google.
Successful search engine marketing has been elusive for thousands, if not millions, of people who have the desire to start a profitable online business.
As someone reading this page, you obviously have an interest in search engine marketing. You may be just a beginner in the SEO game, or perhaps you’ve been swimming upstream for quite awhile. In either case, how would you answer this question? If you had a lucrative new career in front of you, and you had the choice to fight either Gozilla or a 98-pound couch potato to get there, which would you choose?
Chances are you’d pick the second option. Maybe you’ve had top-page ratings in Google, only to get knocked off for no reason by some algorithm change. Maybe you have a truly breakthrough product or approach, but can’t make it happen in Google BECAUSE THE WHOLE WORLD IS BATTLING IT OUT THERE.
Note: What if you had a great site that ranked on the sixth or seventh page of Google and got about 100 hits a week? That same site, optimized for MSN, might attract 100 page views per day. Which one do you think will convert more clicks into sales for you? Get in on the ground floor of the latest discovery in search engine marketing.
If you don’t have traffic, you don’t have Internet marketing success. On the internet, traffic is how you survive.
The Ultimate Search Engine Loophole is what it says — the real deal. The genuine article.
I’m not saying it’s a magic button or anything. There’s absolutely no reason, with the ease of this method, that you can’t create the kind of income that will change your life, beginning right now.
Think about the simplicity of this business.
You are literally just one converting offer away from life-changing income with the ability to easily rank for virtually any keyword you want.
Especially considering our “either you rank or get a refund” guarantee – is their honestly any reason not to get access to this method and start generating some serious traffic from MSN right now?
Search marketing via pay per click advertising can be an outstanding source of immediate income for your web based business. Or, when mishandled, pay per click is a perfect way to burn loot like a teepee of dried up Christmas trees on fire. When you are seeking broad traffic like marketing florida keep in mind that more targeted phrases like internet marketing in florida will turn into opportunities at a much higher pace and be much less of an expense. If you have experimented with paid online marketing and have had less than total triumph, the cause can be explained by one of the following two causes.
The first is that your site is not transferring your web traffic effectively into profits or the second possibility is that mistakes were made in keyword research, ad copy, and/or ad placement. There are lots of methods that can be used with pay per click that cost very little yet drive tons of eyeballs to your site and company. Purchasing advertising space for very detailed targeted key words is highly profitable. In fact, it is these long tail key words that generate the greatest return on your ad spends.
For instance, a local car dealer in Gainesville Florida, is smart to be buying the more targeted phrases that are more likely to actually end up in a customer. Phrases such as used cars gainesville fl will convert those searchers into actual car deals at a far faster pace than the far more expensive and broader terms like “cars” or “trucks.”
Do you recall the Christmas trees on fire? Yup, that’s your loot when you’re advertising with the broadest keywords. It is impractical to attempt to convert such broad web traffic at profitable rates as these are the most expensive words you can buy.
With the correct strategy and the right words, your paid advertising campaign turns your pennies into dollars. When your advertising campaign is targeting your most profitable words and phrases with influential ads, the more you spend the more you make. Right then is when you must exercise self control. When you are making money with the long tail key terms you naturally want to purchase the broader ones. Don’t do it. Those broad terms are no more than your personal Christmas tree on fire.
It is generally known that SEO techniques and branding work best for the online exposure of a product or service. A fundamental basic strategy and the implementation of a SEO program represent the main players in the development of a realistic marketing scheme that enables continuity of service, access to a broader audience and a potential business expansion. Web page monitoring on the electronic market is not possible in the absence of robotic tools and softwares, and these tools are the very mechanism one needs for SEO. This means that but for a good SEO program, the chances of attracting more customers to the business remain limited.
Then, there comes the need to rank high in search engines. The advantage of a good SEO program is that it makes the web page appear more search engine-friendly, which is immediately reflected in the page rank. Is there a definition for the best SEO program? Well, this is the kind of situation when you have to become a bit picky; not all the products available on the market are suitable for the optimization of your page. What you need to find is a program that analyzes the page, creates the expected SEO effect and improves the relevant traffic necessary for business growth.
Then, optimization takes lots of time, and without a SEO program one cannot cover all the aspects in a money and time-wise manner. SEO is not something you see to now and then, it is a process that requires constant monitoring, and only those who rely on high performance tools can expect to rise up to the challenge of great web site quality. You can either address a professional SEO company to have the best SEO program recommended to you, or you can check software reviews to make sure that what you buy is of good quality. Have a look over SEO software guides to learn some further stuff related to SEO software applications.
For a final relevant definition of what one should understand by a good SEO program, we should consider the situation of someone who knows little about SEO. In such a case, get a software that does almost all the work for you. On the other performance extreme, the most complex of programs include extensive elements on the software disk; here, a simple comparison between two or three disks will show you which is the right web SEO tool for your business. Consequently, we can only conclude that a business cannot grow online without software assistance, and the sooner you implement the technology the more advantageous it will be for business.
If you operate a small business with less than a dozen employees that serves mostly local customers, then you need an Internet presence!
More and more, your potential clients are abandoning those outdated Yellow Pages paper books for Google and other Net search engines. It’s easy and quick to do a search for “Market Your Business On The World Wide Web”. If you don’t find the service you are searching for in the city of Charlottesville, you can very simply extend your search to “Internet Marketing Services Staunton VA” or even “Internet Marketing Services Central Virginia”. (See if you can widen your research like that with Yellow Pages!)
Internet Marketing For Local Businesses
If your offline business doesn’t utilize the internet to advertise itself, keep in contact with its clients, extend its reach, and take your competitions prospects, you can bet that it’s competition will do it to you… and it will occur in the not too distant future.
For some small business owners, shifting from traditional OFFline marketing to the ONline world is a very difficult thing to do. Quite a few brick and mortar businesses hang on to “the way we’ve always done it” and reject online promotion.
How should you shift your business from “the way it’s always been done” to an net promotion mind set?
Taking Your OFFline Business ONline…
Online promotion doesn’t, necessarily, need a web site. Email promotion by itself can make a big difference.
For a local offline company to succeed with a marketing campaign on the net would probably require the efforts (and salary) of a full time employee. Creating a basic direct-response web page or two, getting a keyword rich domain name, search engine optimization, email marketing, article marketing, and other internet promotion are time consuming chores. Once the web site or email opt-in methods are created, Search Engine Marketing becomes the major job. Nonetheless, unless it is continued on a regular basis, it will not generate the desired results.
A web site is dandy, but it is easily forgotten unless it is continually promoted and kept up regularly.
Employing a qualified outside internet marketing service is a cost-effective answer for small businesses who want to add a web presence to their promotion, but who don’t want the added work.
Altogether, bridging the offline/online gap should not be looked upon as big problem. There are firms — right in your own locality — that will help. Here’s a thought… Why not Google “Internet Marketing Yourtown Yourstate” or “Online Marketing For Local Businesses Yourtown Yourstate” and see what you come up with? It’s the smart way to do business today!
It is important that you know which keyword phrases to use as you begin creating and writing compelling ads for your Google Adwords campaign, so that people can easily find your ads. Perry Marshall (a Google Adwords expert) teaches pay-per-click users and advertisers to utilize the Google Adwords Keyword Selector Tool when creating their ads. This free resource will allow users to uncover the best keywords in a niche, and may also assist in locating other related phrases for your campaigns, or in your keyword research. Google’s Keyword Tool is very helpful at focusing your efforts if your ads aren’t working; if your ad is only using low volume keywords, there’s a possibility that your Adwords ads won’t be clicked on enough to make your ad profitable.
Here are some more ways to use the Google Adwords Keyword Selector Tool effectively for your Adwords campaign:
1. Start with a broad search. Most people use very specific keyword phrases when they first begin conducting research with Adwords, and this might be a mistake because it will typically leave you only with average results. Begin with broad search instead and drill down your results using the ’synonyms’ tool that offers suggestions and variations as part of the results.
2. Create different ad groups using a set of similar keywords. Make sure you are creating an entirely new ad group for every campaign so you can keep track of what is working – and what isn’t. You can also make use of the ‘relevant keywords’ feature already built into the Google Adwords Keyword Selector Tool that helps you narrow down your search with ease.
3. Use a ‘negative keywords’ strategy. Optimizing your Adwords campaign can sometimes involve taking out the words that don’t work in your niche, the Google Adwords tool can be adjusted to not show certain words that don’t fit in your market. An example of this would be, using the negative keywords to eliminate the word “free” from triggering your ad, thus improving your ROI by only displaying your ad to people who are looking to potentially buy. The Adwords Keyword Selector Tool will now only show you phrases that exclude the word “free”.’
4. If you aren’t sure where to start, you can use the Site Content feature. Google can scan your web page and offer suggestions of keywords based on your site’s content. For example, if your website displays info about trends or services in your niche, these might also be good keywords to use in your market. After the search process, you will be given a list of targeted keywords related to these concepts and areas in the search results.
5. Location, location, location. Many people fail to realize how important adding a location – whether it’s a town, city or state – to your key term or keyphrase really is. This can be important if you provide products or services that are geographically specific; the visitors you get from these types of phrases might be better than a less specific search, and will provide more qualified traffic to your site. Consider appending a keyword or keyphrase with a location to determine the best combinations for your ad campaign.
Marketing with Google Adwords is an effective technique that most websites can use to attract more customers. Creating quality Google Ads is one of the most important skills to have when using Adwords – and there are many quality training resources available online. .
Web site management has its intricacies and difficulties that often make it a nuisance. If you want your site to survive in the cruel virtual world of the Internet you need to make it popular and wanted for the information it contains. The page rank tells one how many people access the site in a certain period of time. The lower the traffic, the smaller the revenue; therefore, SEO becomes a must in order to prevent low profitability and faulty performance. Taking into account that search engines are the ones ruling the entire business, you need to perform search engine optimization to your site so that it will become visible to searchers. A SEO solution is often provided by a professional web master, but individual users can come up with innovations, strategies and methods to boost up the site performance without paying someone else for it. You can come across the right SEO solution in a book, on an informative site, in a virtual magazine or on a forum; be grateful for it and move on with the implementation.
There are some people who say that site optimization is difficult to perform and that this needs constant work. However there are others who will declare that implementing one SEO solution or another is not very difficult and can be done by yourself without having to pay somebody. Whichever the case, time is crucial, how fast can you make the site profitable? When it comes to a good SEO solution, the thing that you should have in mind is the DO-IT-YOURSELF option. Constant reliance on a company to perform the optimization could be a waste of money or a luxury you can’t afford, therefore, you’ll have to concentrate on training and learning how to run the web site alone and with great results. So go on and apply one SEO solution or another depending on what optimization method may work best for your site. And if anyone tells you that after having optimized your site there is no more need to worry, be sure that he or she knows little in this field. Optimization should be performed constantly and should cover the design of the website too. Some SEO specialists seems to ignore certain aspects of your site and the partners you work with, that is why the best SEO solution is to become informed and trained yourself in order to take the matter into your own hands and do the best optimizing job for your site.