A simple guide to search engine marketing (part one)
Search engine marketing is by far the most efficient and effective way to advertise your business. With over 86% of internet users using Google as their search engine, the need for your business to show on the first page of Google has never been greater.
Many people are unaware of search engine marketing and just take for granted the results that appear when they search for something on a search engine such as Google.
However, search engine marketing seems to defy to current doom and gloom of the recession. Think about this:
“The average Britain spends 164 minutes online everyday, compared with 148 minutes watching TV”
Over half the world’s population now has access to the web and nearly 90% of them find what they’re looking for using search engines. 36% of people think that the result at the top of the first page is the market leader and 80% of people make their choice from first page listings alone. With over 21 billion web pages wanting a first page position how can you get your website on the first page.
This is called search engine marketing and I have listed a few techniques and tips to get you started with optimising your website to rank well on a search engine. Remember that this is a basic guide to help to you on your way.
Link building
First we have to look at how search engines rank a website and decide which order to list them. The simple (very very very simple) version is, Google changed everything the way many search engine rank. The initial creators of Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) wanted to create a search engine that could rank a website for quality and list them in order of quality to the user. The way they decided to rank a website was to count how many other websites link to it. If other websites link to it then it must be good. So, essentially links mean votes. Like I said, this is the very simple version and there is so much more to it than this but it is a great place to start as it holds the most importance.
See who links to you and then see who links to your competitors and try to muscle in on some of their action. Simply go to yahoo.co.uk, then in the search box type “link:yourcompetitor.com”. This will bring up a list of websites linking to your competitors website. Then contact them and ask them to link to you too. Don’t be stingy. Make sure you have links going out from your website. Important though that you link to high quality websites, i.e. If your website is a property website, have links to the relevant governing bodies, Wikipedia or the largest property portals. Search engines will see your site as being a good place to get good content. Submit your website to online directories. This can be very boring and takes hours. But once you have had your site accepted in to a directory. You’ll have a link back to your website. Remember. The more the better. Subscribe to forums in your niche. You can include a link in your signature straight to your website. Remember though. Do not spam on a forum. Forum users will not like it and the moderator will probably kick you off. If you use a forum properly though you will find it quite engaging. Read blogs relating to you niche market. This is very educational as well as beneficial for link building. Read the blog then leave a comment about that blog. Don’t forget to include a link to your website though. Just don’t make it too obvious.
Social Media (web2.0)
“Facebook”, “YouTube”, “Flickr”, “Myspace” – These are all social media websites. They provide a means for people from all over the world to join online and share information. The way in which people communicate vary though. “Flickr” allow people to upload photos and share them with other users or even comment on pictures uploaded. “Youtube” allow people to upload videos etc. The number of people visiting these websites to share information is in the millions. So maybe you could use these social communities to spread the word about your website. Social media is a great way to connect with hard to reach people that share the same interests. There are a number of ways to do this.
Make your content interesting enough for people to want to view it. Then,unlike search engine optimisation, change the content often, This will make people want to keep visiting you. Make it easy for people to tag or bookmark your new content. Bookmarking is very fashionable at the moment. The most popular way of doing this is by getting an “addthis” button due to its ease of use, however, there are many buttons available. Use more than just text in your site. Create a video and submit it to a video sharing website like “youtube”, Create a PDF version of your content and create an audio version too. Submit it to appropriate websites. Don’t forget the link back to your site. Blog.Blog.Blog then blog some more. The simple truth is that the majority of internet users love blogs. So do search engines. Create a blog and use it. A lot. Submit it to sites like “technorati.com”. If it is good enough people will link to you and then share and tell others about your writings. Make friends. The social media community, are very social and friendly. They will want to talk to you and ask you questions. Make sure you are polite and take time to answer any messages. Negative feedback spreads faster than positive feedback.
Pay Per Click
This is a method in which you pay to get people to your website. Have you ever done a search on Google and found there are two columns. The Colum on the right is called sponsored links. They are adverts from businesses. They do not pay anything for appearing there but they do pay when you click on the advert (pay per click). This is a very fast way to get people to your website but you do have to pay. I would recommend getting a pay per click company to help here. It will save you a lot of money. However, if you must have ago your self here are some very basic tips.
Budget. Make sure you create a sensible budget and stick to it. Don’t get in to a bidding war. Don’t just rely on pay per click as the be all and end all for your business marketing. PPC is great for promoting specific products and services very quickly but you always have to pay for the result. Analyze your cost per click and cost per acquisition closely. Then compare it to your other marketing activities. See which one works best. Remember that sites such as Google take into account the quality of your website content being marketed more than how much you are bidding. PPC is my favorite part of search engine marketing due mainly to the sheer speed of return on investment BUT make sure it is done properly other wise it can be devastating. Always have two ads running at the same time for each product but with different ad text. Google will use the most successful advert for you and show that advert more often, helping you gain more traffic. Change to poorest performing advert and see if it improves. Keep repeating. This will eventually lead to you having the best possible advert showing.
Search engine optimisation
Remember the two columns we just mentioned. Search engine optimization is the are of optimizing your website enough for Google to rank it on the left hand column. This list is ordered on how relevant your website is. And you don’t have to pay for these listings. Ever noticed how all the big companies appear at the top of the first page. Now we should as “which came first – The chicken or the egg?”. Search engine optimisation is generally split into two categories onsite optimisation and off site optimisation. The first, when done property is very important but it will only get you to the starting line. Offsite optimization is the race itself. A good search engine optimisation campaign should include all the search engine marketing techniques mentioned and when you really get into it you can learn the more advanced techniques. Below are a few basics.
Include your keywords in your domain, title, meta tags. The first thing a search engine spider will read is your domain name. i.e www.yourdomain.com. This doesn’t mean anything to a search engine so ideally use www.yourdomain.com/your-key-words, or even better www.your-key-words.com . Then the next part is your title. Don’t just have “home Page” or “Front Page”. I would have “your domain – your key words”. This also matches the domain name. Then repeat the same in your meta data. And sprinkle it throughout your web page. Keep it readable though. Make each page different. This helps search engines differentiate them and should lead to them indexing each of your pages separately. Get a site map and submit it to major search engines. Don’t pay for this service though. It amazes me that people actually charge for this. Just type into Google “sitemap” and you should be presented with website that will generate you a sitemap for free. Keep going. Older sites generally rank better than new sites. It is believed that older websites must be more reliable. As there is nothing we can do about this just focus your time on other offsite optimisation such as link building, social media optimization and if you just can’t wait, Pay per click. Search engine optimisation is a long term solution but boy is it worth waiting for. Validate your HTML code. Visit “validator.w3.org/ “.This will ensure that web browsers show your website correctly and helps search engine to index your site. There is no point in optimising your website if it doesn’t work properly.
Other useful tips
Get Google analytics. It is one thing having a website but you need to know what people are doing when they are on it. Google analytics is very comprehensive and FREE but it does not report in real time. Woopra however does report in real time. The choice is yours. Before doing anything else you should get one of these other wise how will you know your efforts are paying off. If you decide to use a company to undertake your search engine marketing campaign (recommended) make sure you choose your search engine marketing company wisely. Don’t just go on recommendation. It is going to be a long working relationship so the important thing is that you get on with them. Do your own research on the industry. Think twice about search engine marketing firms that say they can guarantee a first page listing in a short time, the methods they use WILL end up in your website being banned. BMW found this out the hard way.
Search engine marketing is not an easy option but when done properly will bring untold rewards.
This is by no means an exhaustive list but it will give people new to the concept a few things to get on with and research. Look out for more articles that will start to break the subjects down into more detail.
A web video that showcases background information regarding search engine marketing. WordUp Online is search engine marketing company, specialising in paid search on the Google, Yahoo and MSN networks.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
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7 Steps to Greater Link Popularity and Higher Search Engine Rankings
Copyright (c) 2008 Noble River Marketing
Link Popularity is one of the most important factors affecting your Search Engine rankings. When your site is popular with other web-sites, the Search Engines love you, but if you are the new kid on the block, they ignore you; totally. Its great to be popular; and improving your Link Popularity will also get you higher rankings on the search engines.
Why is Link Popularity important for higher rankings?
Search Engines are just software programs that try to analyze the utility and validity of your content with regard to certain keywords. It also tries to understand the importance or ranking of your site against all competing sites in its index.
Just how do Search Engines learn about the utility and the validity of your content?
Search Engines just love sites that users love to visit. They love it even more if users spend more time at the site before they browse away. Now how do they know which sites humans love? Obviously with the billions of web pages on the world wide web, the Search Engines cannot manually go to each site and check their content. They let other humans do that work for them. Then they watch as others link to your site. They watch your LINK POPULARITY.
Link popularity simply means how popular are you on the World Wide Web. And your popularity is determined by the number of people linking to your web-site. The greater the number of external links pointing to your web-site, the greater is your ranking. Simple, isn’t it?
Here is how to find YOUR link popularity: Go to Google.com and type in link: followed by your URL. This returns all the sites that link to you in the Google index. eg. link:http://www.yourdomain.com.
How do you get a lot of people to link to you?
Getting people to link to you is easy if you establish your presence. Show that you are a master of your domain. Even if you deal in manure, and there are people out there wanting to know more about it, you have an audience. And if you establish your presence well enough, the links will automatically follow.
Here are a few ways you can increase your inbound links.
1) Articles : Almost anybody can write articles. This is the easiest way to get started on your way to Search Engine manna. Its just the question of putting down your thoughts in a coherent manner. As long as the information you are providing is useful and valid, your articles are sought after by publishers out there. There are also hundreds of article directories on the net.
To find article directories, Google ‘Article Directories’. You get nearly 2 million hits. There are also some awesome free tools available for this.
For those with a morbid fear of writing, you can find ‘Ghostwriters’ as well as ‘Virtual Assistants’ on the Internet. Search on Google for those terms and you will find many a link to sites that provide you suitable services. You may also use sites like Elance.com and RentACoder.com for people who will write articles for you.
2) Blogs: Blogs are not as easy to do as Articles are. But they are a very useful tool, nevertheless. When you have a blog, you have an audience. It like a fan base. They have certain expectations of you. They want you to churn out hit singles or albums. But they want you to give them more. Even though they started out as mere diaries or daily jottings of a few people, currently they are excellent link building, content management and search engine optimization tools.
In fact almost industry may have its blog portal. As always run a search and you will find something in your industry. Or you may go to blogger.com or wordpress.com to start your own blog free of charge.
3) Free Products: The easiest way to do this is to write a tool and offer it for downloads. Or may be even provide a service for free. The greatest example of building a business with free service that comes to mind is hotmail.com. Once your service becomes a must-have, its only a matter of time before you can start making money from it. Also you can have people point to your site to give their customers access to your tool.
4) Trackbacks: This is the easiest way to get your links out there. What you do is go to other blogs(Authority Sites) in your industry and become a regular contributor. Or comment on the blogs. Along with your signature, most people offer a link to your web-site. And the more links you have pointing back to you, the more popular you get. Also, when you become a major contributor/commentor, people start valuing your opinion more.
5) Syndications : You can offer your articles to other sites for publishing for free or for payment. Your article links back to your site.
6) Reciprocal links: You offer a link to another peer site, in return for them linking back to you. This is a good way to get your target industry users to come to your site. Also you introduce your users to other sites that they may be interested in visiting. They will be thankful to you for pointing them in the right direction. And they come to trust you more.
7) Partner links : Your local Chamber of commerce, Suppliers, Resellers, Affiliates, Sites selling complementary products etc.
Study your competition: Google your product and study the linking strategy of top ranking sites. There are tools that help you do this. Webposition.com has a good tool but I prefer EliteSEOTool.com as it has some additional features that I love. These tools help you conduct an ongoing study of your competition and their rankings thereby helping you beat them consistently.
Of course, no amount of link popularity will help you if don’t have the content to keep visitors at your site. So start with good content.
A note of caution! Make sure that you are being linked to by Authority sites with a Good PageRank. Also the linking sites should somehow be relevant to your industry. If not, it only serves to confuse the Search Engines and your rankings will suffer.
Search Engine Marketing, Or Sem, To Sem Or Not To Sem, Websites In Kelowna
Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages. Most experienced companies agree that search engine marketing is the most effective means of bringing high-quality traffic to a website. Search Engine Marketing is figuring out the “Marketable” keywords, and producing good sentences from them. Search Engine marketing is one of the most powerful tools available.
Search engine marketing is very important and should not be looked at as a “add on” service to website design, and with good SEM techniques will ensure top search engine rankings for websites to be successful. A guiding philosophy to follow for destination search engine marketing is SEO and SEM without compromising rankings for conversions or conversions for rankings.
The cycle time of learning about search engine optimization and search engine marketing is extremely long and accurate tactical information is in short supply. Search engine marketing is a critical activity, which is often overlooked. It has become increasingly complex and rapidly changing. Search engine marketing is a component of an overall integrated online marketing strategy that aims to increase a website’s positioning on the Internet. Why search engine marketing is so different? A company does not search for customers. Customers search for a company.
Search Engine Marketing is the practice of promoting a professional corporate website in a variety of ways to increase visibility with the search engines, done through organic search engine optimization, paid search engine advertising and paid inclusion. Statistically return on investment or ROI from search engine optimization and search engine marketing is much greater then from spending money on PPC or pay per click programs. Bottom line is search engine marketing is the art of driving more and better qualified web traffic to a website.
These days, search engine marketing is preferred by all online business, and search engine marketing is important to make a website popular. The goal of search engine marketing is to get the website’s pages to show up when target customers or web surfers make relevant searches.
Utilizing search engine marketing is a very effective tool and search engine marketing is the process of helping a website’s owner move potential customers onto their website and popularly through their website with the key to search engine marketing being its usability and accessibility.
Search Engine Marketing is both a science and an art. Search Engine Marketing is basically a form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engines. SEM which stands for search engine marketing is by far the most efficient and effective way to promote websites on the Internet.
Search engine marketing is the advertising method that provides the best return on investment or ROI and is a marketing method to promote a website in search engine results pages. Search Engine Marketing is now one of the fastest growing forms of advertising in the industry today, and search engine marketing is the key to unlocking access to the world.
Look for my many articles on the Internet under James Murray Author for more information and strategies on website design or jjmurray007@yahoo.com.
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Why You Need To Get Your Localized Business Online Before The Competition Scoops Up Your Customers
The days have passed when you needed to decide whether you wanted your localized business online. Now its a question of:
How to get your local business on the web.
The new age of the internet makes it imperative for you to attract potential customers to your offline business before the competion scoops them away from you. More and more potential customers are searching localized business online rather than using the yellow pages. The Google gurus know this which is why they made changes to the search engines which include local businesses in your community or a community near you.
Are you tired of losing customers to the competition? Searching for a better and more effective way to attract new customers? Want to expose your localized business online to thousands of clients daily and more effectively than the costly yellow pages? Read on.
Brick and mortar businesses are primarily available to your local community. However, people are catching on to getting their localized business online…
to use the global approach to build their local businesses. To scoop up customers before the competition does And with a little ingenuity add multiple streams of income that are not possible with an offline business.
Combine this with the increasing numbers of small localized business online, the convenience of the search engines, the number of households that use the internet on a daily basis, before you know it those bulky yellow pages books that are dropped on your doorstep will soon become clutter rather than a vehicle to drive potential customers to you business.
How much does a 2×4 ad in the yellow pages cost? How about a full page ad? Can the yellow pages do this:
Display your local business with no limits to size, including testimonials, or special offers? Grab your potential customers attention and draw them into wanting to learn more? PREsell your business through informative content that addresses as a need, concern, or pain and provide a solution? Build credibility and trust to potential customers with informative valuable information? Expose your business to thousands of visitors daily and provide you with a means to stay in touch with your potential customers through newsletters or e-zine articles? Track the number of visitors that search for your business daily and monthly? Or even track repeat visitors? Very useful information Give your business a competitive edge over the big boys? Allow you to earn additional revenue through related products or on page advertising strategies? Reach a global targeted market opening up possibilities for expansion? let you add video, podcasts, or flowcharts?
Ask yourself how much that 2×4 ad costs? You can have your localized business online for less than the cost of a yellow pages ad and attract literally thousands of new customers growing your business by a modest 25%.
Guess Whats Happening Right Now
Someone in your neighborhood is searching for your product or service but they won’t find you. Another potential customer just got scooped up by the competition. All search engines put importance into localized business online. They realize the trend changes and know more people are searching online for local business. Stop and think about it! Have you ever done this? I have!
So, how do you do it? You can hire a professional web designer ( expect to pay 00.00 and up depending on the features) or you can do it yourself. The main advantage to doing it yourself is the ability to easily add new content and build your localized business online through a proven process.
The best choice if you need an all in one package for less than the cost of the yellow pages is localized business online by Site Build It.
What Not To Do
Too many localized business online sites miss a keypoint when building a website. They concentrate too much on themselves and not enough on their visitors. Truth is your visitors really don’t care about you. They need and want to know more about your product or service.
How many times have you visited a site and seen an about us page that focuses on the CEO, President, or Vice President of the company. Then they list special awards and degrees. How long they have been in business and cute pictures of their products and their crew. They may think this is interesting to their visitors BUT this approach is all Wrong – Fatal – Who Cares
It is effective to describe your business to its best advantage. More importantly its the content and information that you build about your businesses theme and what needs it fills. People use the internet for information, solutions, ways of simplifying their lives they don’t search for you.
What To Do
Your localized business online needs to be found by new clients using profitable searchable keywords. Your valuable content builds trust and reputation with the search engines that is relevant to your product or service. Particularily now that local searches are on the rise and Google knows it.
Think about your localized business online from your customers shoes. What problems do you solve? What niche do you fill? What topics can you think of that are related to your niche? Write keyword focused content that PREsells your visitors and converts them into ready to do business customers. Your passion about your business and original content builds trust and deepens your relationship with your visitors.