I hate SEO companies. Why is it they all look act and feel like each, other with zero creativity? O.k., I know hate may be a politically incorrect word, but in this case it sums up my feelings about SEO websites and products. My problem with the SEO industry comes from weeks of looking for whole and current SEO information. You might relate to a few of my top 10 list. As far as I can tell, 99% of all SEO companies on the web are carbon copies of each other.
A Newbie’s Guide to Advertising a Website For Better Internet Marketing
One important component of the internet marketing business is advertising. True, it can often cost money (sometimes a lot of it) but it is necessary to ensuring that your business gets the attention it deserves. When you’re a newbie in internet marketing, advertising is one of the best weapons you can use and should form part of your business strategy. Here are ways you can advertise your website to improve your internet marketing business:
SEO - What’s Hot What’s Not
The Worldwide Web is the world’s largest marketplace and the best place to market your product or service. Online marketing is similar to traditional marketing in some ways. You need to get your name out in front of people and get them to make a purchase.
Search engine optimization is a method used to get more traffic to your website. Whenever someone performs a search online they are using a search engine. With thousands or sometimes millions of potential sites to look at you need to find a way to make sure that your site appears as high up in the search results as possible.
Research has found that people only look at the first one to three pages of results from a Web search before choosing to click on a site. Therefore it is of extreme importance that you get your site to the top of the list. In order to keep people coming back enough times to make a purchase you need to provide them with some useful information once they reach your site. Keep your site up-to-date by renewing content often and by adding current features such as a blog.
One way to help drive your website up higher in the searching lists is by using search engine optimization. Search engines use special software that reaches out and locates the keywords and Meta tags from websites all around the Internet. They take this information and based on the keywords will rank the sites. These rankings are how the results will be given to people who enter those words during a search.
Meta tags are important because they indicate what your site is about while providing the terms that are used for searches. You’ll sometimes see Meta tag phrases appear on the search results as well as on the top of the site pages. Meta tags are made up of a couple of sentences or groups of words (keywords) that describe your site. Meta tags are typically less than 25 words and are used by the search engines to rate your site.
The term “keyword” is often heard when you talk about online marketing. Keywords are just the common words that are most often used to describe your business and the products or services you sell. There are several major search engines and many smaller ones and they all use keywords to help give them the ranking that they use to provide to users conducting searches online.
Choosing keywords is very important in ultimately getting business to your website. Keywords work best when they are as specific as possible. For example if you have a travel business you may think of using the keywords of “travel” or “vacation”. Yet these keywords are too broad and will produce millions of results. Instead you need to choose keywords that are specific and useful. In this example better keywords may be “Bahama Cruise” since this is a real term that people may be searching for. As you can image there may be hundreds of keywords that can be used to search for your site. If people commonly make spelling errors these should also be used as keywords.
After you know the way search engine optimization is done you will be able to decide on the right marketing strategy for your site. Be sure to choose keywords that are important to your business. Then use these keywords in your Meta tags for your web pages as well as on copy on your site especially on your main page. You will find that by paying attention to search engine optimization you can vastly improve the results of searches and add more sales to your business.
Text Links for Better SEO
Let’s talk a little more about using Text Links for better SEO placement becuase it’s a very relevant tool that you have at your disposal and something that you should consider exploring.
Working with text links to help with your SEO rankings is going to involve a good solid chunk of time. So, don’t think that this is an easy solution because it’s not, but it is solid … at least it is for now. Here’s some search term improvement techniques for you to take into account:
1. Link Exchanges
Used to be everyone was exchanging links with anyone else who give them a link. Then Google danced and bamm … doing that will get you lower placement. So, you have to be smart and ONLY exchange links with other domains that are relevant to your site’s topics. Do that and you will see your domain move up the ranks.
2. Billboards
This is something kind of new and is working for now until Google bans the companies offering this service. I’d say use it while it works my friend!
Sites using Billboards are noticing significant rank increases. One site recorded the following…
Over the last 3 months, we have added about 20 unique billboards … We did about 2 per week, and every week we would see position moves of 1 - 2 positions. This is an extremely effective tool because it gives you relevant backlink content on different IP’s. Take the time to write good article/news stories and plug your company or product. This technique will pay off. Don’t believe me? pick an obscure term without competition, and put up 2 - 5 billboards using the term as anchor text through-out your BB’s and you will see position moves within 4 weeks.
The use of Billboards is currently a very good way to get your website relevant positioning in a shorter period of time and you can do so for reasonable fees. You only need to pay for Billboard space on another’s IP for 30 days, by then the search engine will have found you. Make sure the IP is spidered by all the major search engines regularly. After 30 days, you can remove your page and go on to the next IP. Keep doing this and you will build a repository of text rich backlinks to your own domain. Very yummy search engine food!
3. Text Link Advertising
Text link ads are very affordable for those not wanting to dedicate all the time it takes to getting relevant backlinks. Okay, here’s what I think is the best strategy with regards to buying text links. Most likely that PR8 website isn’t going to get you any higher placement than the PR4-PR6 will. That’s my opinion, others will disagree. My own testing is showing Google really doesn’t pay much attention to their own PR system … who knew?!
So, buy links that are PR4-6 and don’t pay over $25 for them … unless of course they happen to be mine … lol. Here again, I’d recommend you use Linkworth and use their set of tools to determine the worth of any link you might be considering … those tools will even help you with domains that aren’t in the Linkworth repository … hint, hint!
These types of one-way links will really help your placement. If you can get one-way links from other sources for free, go for it and make sure they have better PR than you do!
4. Content Development
Well now here’s a novel idea, the more content you ad to your website, then better your rankings will be … and go one step further, you must do so on a consistant basis … like every two weeks ad a new page.
Ad pages with 250-500 words of relevant content and relevant links.
And, this is really important … make sure all your webpages have different content by at least 40%. Google is so smart it actually knows if you’ve got the same page up on the domain … and it knows if you’ve got the same domain mirrored on other domains. You have to do the work!
5. Menu Structure
Make sure the search engines can easily spider every page on your website. I prefer to hard code all my links … including the domain name info. Taking short-cuts only hurts you.
Make sure you use keywords in your menu links and make sure the search engines can easily follow your links from the top level to the second their third levels.
6. Website SEO
Use the H1, H2 tages and relevant keywords through out the site. Keep keyword density around 2-5% … going over will cause you to drop in the ranks. I speak from experience on that one.
7. Schedule Regular Updates
Like I said, you must consistently add new content to your website to keep the search engines well feed and happy. You must get down and dirty and do this part, if you don’t … those purchased links aren’t going to help you get all the way there.
8. Hurry Up and Wait
It takes time to make all these things happen and with each step you have to sit back and see what result it had, if good then you step again. It’s like a chess game … really think about your next move and you can get to the top.
And while you’re waiting, put up a page that offers your viewers text links and graphical links back to your website … create a “link to us” page. It’s free! And, if your website is interesting, you’d be surprised how many people will link to you as a result.
Tips and Best Practices for Making Internet Videos
Making a good online video can be a major undertaking. You might not even know where to start, or perhaps you’ve started and it’s not going so well. Now you’re looking for help. Well you’ve come to the right place as this is exactly what this article is aiming to do. By assembling some basics before you go do that video shoot you should have a firm grip on what you’re doing and be well on the way to a great online video project
What is it? - Every good video starts with a good idea. But that good idea has to then be turned into a good script and good dialog (if you have any). It needs to be compelling and keep the viewer’s interest. But not only that, the story needs to go somewhere or the video has to be setup so that it leads the viewer into wanting to obtain further information, see further episodes or buy the product, whatever the goal of your video is. This can be accomplished with good pacing. An average person speaks 120-150 words per minute so if you are going to have someone speaking then a five-minute video would require around 600 to 750 words if it were one person speaking for the whole video.
What goes where when? - Scripting is good to know who says what. Storyboarding is great for knowing who and what goes where and when. It’s a fantastic way to get the full picture of your video laid out prior to even thinking about shooting. It puts you in the director’s seat of a fully equipped and ready to go idea. That means you’ll know exactly what you need to proceed and will really help your video shine when you get to the nuts and bolts. If all goes smoothly you’re on budget and on time and that helps make for happy people all around.
The Extras - Sure you need some script and some story and you need to know where it’s going and what everyone is doing. But then you also have to have some post-production. This is where you get to put in the extra bang for the buck. With online video it includes thinks like web URLs, email addresses and if you’re working in some of the fancier video platforms interactivity. These are vital pieces to the video puzzle for online. You need to tell people where they can find out more, buy that product or when to expect the next episode. You need to tell them who is involved and how to contact them. Who knows, this could be the start to your online video directing or producing career.
Making video isn’t just about aiming a camera and yelling Action. You’ve got to have all your proverbial ducks in a row long before you ever step foot on the set so you know just exactly what it is you’re looking to shoot. This small bit of planning will really get you far later on down the road and make your online videos look more professional and take less time and they say, time is money.
SEO Techniques That Work
I have no doubt that most people who own a website on the internet have heard of SEO, which stands for search engine optimisation. Knowing about it is one thing, understanding it however is a whole different ball game. A lot of these people simply do not have the time to learn about the ins and outs of SEO and instead look to a third party to deal with this for them. Unfortunately there is an awful lot of misplaced advice given from people trying to make a quick buck and in this article I am going to write about SEO tactics that do work.
The first bit of advice that I think is important to state, is to be aware when so so called SEO experts state they can get you onto the first page of Google’s natural listings within say two months. Firstly enquire as to whether this is Google dot com or Google dot co dot uk. It is more difficult to gain high placements on Google dot com for obvious reasons but this is where you eventually want to be. The SEO expert may well be able to gain this top ten or top twenty ranking for your site but may well use techniques that could end up in your website being banned for ever. Tactics such as hidden pages or cloaking are some of the favourite of these web promotion cheats.
In SEO as in most areas of life, hard work pays off. What we all need to do is to attract visitors to our sites and the best way to do this is to have other webmasters to add a link to your site on their site. This is not that easy but is where this hard work comes into play. Communication is a big part of learning about SEO and gaining these links. I personally love to speak to other webmasters about their experiences and am always cheeky to ask if they will put a link to my site on theirs.
These are the ways I like to promote my own websites, article marketing, talking to other webmasters and learning from their experiences, and also by ensuring that the content of the sites is of value which will by itself encourage other people to link to the sites.
You need to add links, every day to every page of your website. Don’t just add links to page one, that won’t help.
10 Search Engine Optimization Tips
Title tag- The title tag is the single most important piece of content for people who search.
-Keep it short–8-10 Words (60 Characters with space) -Start with most important keyword (Not Your company name) -Combine the important keywords by using “|”
2. Description tag -Write a summary of your page. -Must to include ( Less than 30 words)
3. Size of The Page Should not exceed 100 KB.
4. Don’t forget to use Heading1 and Heading2 tags. It’s very much important.
5. Bold, italicize, and underline your keywords.
6. Place your keyword at the top left side and end-right side of your webpage. You can creatively include your keywords in the copyright footer of your webpage.
7. Check out the backlinks of your competitors. Search on Google ” link: www.YourCompetitor.Com.” Then try to get backlink from these sites. You can request backlink, reciprocal link or Text-Link-Ads in those sites. Keep in mind what is the PageRank (PR) of these sites. I mean just creatively copy the competitors.
8. You must have backlinks from different website pointing your site as much as possible. Remember, backlinks from irrelevant website can decrease your PageRank. So try get backlink from the site same to your site theme.
9.Write articles and submit them to Ezines. Include link of your website in the footer of your article
10. Buy Text-Link-Ads from high page rank website on your niche.
11. Include your main keywords in the “anchor text”.
12. Try to get links from as many different IP Addresses as possible.
13. In order to get backlink to your website, you can trade links with other people by sending link requests.
SEO or PPC What’s The Difference?
If you are looking for the most natural way to generate traffic to your website, then SEO is the answer. Natural organic seo not only creates traffic but it also increases sales conversions. The knowledge of search engine marketing methods will help create a lifetime of traffic to your websites.
There are more than one way to use the search engines to market your business. Pay per click marketing is another form of search engine marketing that charges advertisers every time their advertisement is click.
Both of these methods however, are considered to be natural search engine optimization due to the fact that they both are powered by natural searches. The keywords used in each individual campaign determines the effectiveness.
Keyword selection is the key to marketing using either strategy. The ability to select keywords or phrases that are highly targeted with very little or no competition is the name of the game.
The decision between which method to choose usually is spelled out within their vast differences. Optimizing a website properly can take months in order to build backlinks naturally. After the optimization process, there is still waiting period for the search engines to crawl your website.
With pay per click, you can literally start seeing results overnight. The traffic is guaranteed but you still have to manage the incoming traffic to make sure it is converting. Bad keyword selection along with poor management can lead to a costly ineffective campaign.
The choice of which strategy is better suited you should be decided on the level of your experience. Before you decide to start a pay per click campaign you should be knowledgeable on keyword selection tools and PPC management strategies.
I myself, have chosen to utilize both search engine marketing strategies for all my opportunities. If I was forced to make a choice however, it would be SEO, it takes a little more patience but has less risk.
The One Way Links Exchange Solution
The most basic way on the net to rate useful information on another site is to provide your own visitors with a link to that information on the other site. The links are the blood of the web and the reason for calling it a web or a net.
For the search engines such links have for years had three functions:
1. Links help the search engine spiders to find and index other websites and their pages.
2. The links to a site and to a specific web page is interpreted as a vote for the quality of that website.
3. The text in the link - the hyper text - is regarded as some kind of descriptor of the content to be found on the site the link is going to. And to this we can add that also the surrounding text to the links is helping the search engine to estimate what the content is about.
Until recently we could email fellow webmasters to ask for an exchange of links, the so-called link swap. This mechanism was seen as a mutually rewarding link exchange, a true win-win situation as both websites would benefit from such a two-way link exchange.
The two-way links exchange would satisfy the no. 1 function and no. 3. function for the search engines, but at the same time it would to some extent undermine the no. 2 function. Obviously a two-sided link exchange doesn’t need to be a vote for any content on any website but just a marketing tool, in fact a SEO tool, a search engine optimizing tool. Many different link exchange tools and programs have been developed to automate this process of mutual link exchange, making it easier to establish the links and to keep track of that the back links were kept alive. People easily forget what they have promised to do and to keep.
Two way links are still useful seen from a point of direct traffic generation as long as the links to your site isn’t burrowed among long lists of links to other websites. If the to way links are included in the running text of the partner site in a meaning full way it will generate some targeted traffic from visitors searching for information from the partner site. But as mentioned the search engine enhancer function doesn’t work that well anymore.
The links exchange solution
The solution the tuff way is to develop outstanding content to your website and be active in all relevant social meeting places on the web.
A much faster and more easy solution is to use mechanisms to generate one way link exchange. If you partner up with two other webmasters or with one webmaster with two relevant websites you could ask for the mechanism that you link to each other in such a way that all websites get one link but only link to another other website that is indirect link exchange in this way:
Website A links to B Website B links to C Website C links to A
This isn’t too complicated for one or a few cases of link exchange but it becomes much more complicated if you want to reach the level of 50 valuable links to your site. As the words in the link text is regarded with much interest by Google you should also variate a number of different kinds of keywords and mainly key phrases in the link text. It will unfortunately take you very much of your productive time to keep op with that, not to mention to make sure that the partners aren’t forgetting to keep the links to your site.
If you have more than one site and want to do the same for each site this is a tremendous work. Until now some keen marketers have simply outsourced that kind of work to have it done manually from people in low income countries. The cost for outsourcing the link building might be profitable as the links are so important to get. Read more about a new one way links exchange solution below.
Making Internet Advertising Work : Attract A Target Audience
The Internet is a vast place that can really swallow up a lot of your advertising dollar if youre not careful about being specific. That means that youll need to choose the best technique for what suits your budget and vision of where you see your company going. Remember that ppc advertising services dont apply generically to every Internet based firm and while email marketing in San Diego might be perfect for eight out of ten firms that are based there, it just might not be the right solution for everyone.
One of the factors that can help you decide which website seo services will work best for you starts by defining the target audience that suits your product or service best. To do that youll need to understand the characteristics of your ideal customer. Ask yourself:
What is the general age of the market that youre targeting? Theres no use in trying to sell the latest roller shoes to retirees. Make sure that youve given thought to who will be mostly likely to buy what youve got to sell.
Narrow it down even further by deciding if youre looking to target a specific gender or ethnic group. Ask yourself what their average household income will be. Again, theres no point in targeting people that wont be able to afford what youve got to sell. As well, this kind of information allows you to set a price if you havent already done so.
Think about how computer literate they are. This is actually a help with the website design in Southern California that youll implement. Remember that although the Internet has vast possibilities, you need to narrow these factors down to find the right people.
Here are some factors that should help you to look at the web design aspect a little more critically. For example, these are specific things that youll need to consider when youre targeting women and first and foremost is the fact that they like to save time and money. They see having something available 24 hours a day and the ability to compare prices quickly and easily as beneficial factors so those are conditions that youll want to use in the website design in Southern California phase.
On the other hand, seniors prefer simple sites since they are not always comfortable with the Internet.
Offpage Optimization Basics
What is offpage optimization?
Well, they are techniques you can use to help improve your Search Engine rankings but is done off your site. Which means it is done on other sites and not your own. Onpage requires you to do optimization on your own webpages, offpage requires you to do it off-site.
Ok, what does it all mean?
With Google, offpage optimization has became more important as they place a lot of emphasis and relevance on links. The simple lowdown for offpage optimization is LINKS. LINKS from other websites to yours or BACKLINKs or INBOUND LINKs. Links with anchor text(keywords) from other websites to yours. And seriously, that’s about it - getting others to link to you with the proper anchor text. LINKs are also important because they provide a way for the search engines bots to find your site.
The more links you have pointing to your site, the more important the search engines rate your site. Anchor text provides a way to rate the keywords for your site. And more links with anchor text to your site, the more important the Search Engine rate your site for those keywords. It’s as simple as that.
If you properly plan your offpage optimization and what a bit of luck, you can rank better in the Search Engines.
Firstly, you have to pay attention to :
1. How many sites are linking to you. More the merrier.
2. What kind of sites are they and whether their topics are related to yours (titles, keywords and so on).
3. The Anchor text used.
4. Trustrank and Pagerank of the sites linking to you (whether they are trusted by Search Engines or have been blacklisted)
Anchor text is the hyperlink text. It is usually used to tell the reader the subject matter of the page that it links to. Like a link here - SEO Articles, you can see that the anchor text here is “SEO Articles”, pointing to http://www.seochat.com and this is like telling the reader that the subject is SEO Articles and this site “http://www.seochat.com” has information related to it. So if someone searched for the words “SEO Articles”, this is helping the site http://www.seochat.com to rank for that term. So use this anchor text to your advantage by using keywords in them. Although it is not always possible to use keywords you want, you should not use “click here” as your anchor text.
Remember to optimize your internal pages as well. DO not try to link your main page with all your keywords. For example, if you have a site selling orchids(the flower) and one of your internal page is about flower delivery, is it better for you to optimize your main page for “flower delivery”? No, optimize your main page for the keyword “flower orchids” and your internal page for the words “flower delivery” or “orchid delivery”. This way, at least your site will rank for more terms and get better results for different searches. And not to mention, your onpage optimization would be more effective and easier without too many keywords on one page.
How do I go about doing it?
You should start off with a link building campaign. I will divide them into two major parts.
The first step is where you get links by direct posting.
1. Link exchanges - Link with other websites, preferably with related sites. They are two-way (they link to you and you link back) links. You can email webmasters and request a link exchange with the proper anchor text. Link exchanges can be very effective if done with sites of the same topics or subjects. But beware of who YOU link to. Linking to “bad” sites can get you into trouble with Search Engines and even get you delisted or banned.
2. Article submission - Submit articles you have written to article directories. Usually they have an author’s bio, where you can place your site’s URL in it with the appropriate anchor text. And not only that, writing articles can help improve your reputation in your field of interest as well. You know, your readers may think that you are an “expert” or something.
3. Directory Submission - Submit your site to various directories. There are free and paid directories. It would be advisable to submit your directories to free directories(especially DMOZ) and choose which paid directories you would like to submit to. It’s hard to say which paid directory is best, so use your common sense if you want to do paid inclusion. Please avoid link farms (directories with tons and tons of links in their categories and subcategories) because they don’t work to your advanatage and a lot of them have already been blacklisted or devalued by Search Engines.
4. Forum posting - Signatures allow you to place links and anchor text to your site. If you are posting in a forum related to your site( and with a lot of keywords), you can get better results in your rankings from these postings. However, do note that there are some forums which have the nofollow tag which tells Search Engines not to follow the link. This makes the link useless in SERPs.
5. Blogging - Nowadays everyone likes to leave comments in blogs. You can do it as well. And add your link with the comment. However remember not to spam blog sites, if you add a comment make sure that comment has something to do with the topic. It is also wise to post in blogs which you have some knowledge about.
6. Purchase links - Pay other webmasters to link to you. This method is a bit like a paid directory, just that the site isn’t a directory but could be a informative site or even a blog. You get a link or links with a proper anchor text. There have been reports that some Search Engine devalues such a technique, but it is difficult for Search Engines to know whether that link is a legitimate link or a purchased link. I would also recommend you to buy links directly from other websites than through a “links broker”. You can do this by directly contacting the webmaster and negotiating a price and where your link will be placed. The placement of your link is important as you don’t want your link to be in very page of the site. For your link to have maximum exposure, it would be best to be in the first page(or the main page) and to reduce the spammy effect, confine to 2 to 3 pages at the most. Avoid site-wide links if your own site has very few pages!
The next step would be link baiting and this step is very highly recommended because these links are natural. However all these link baiting are very much related to onpage optimization(what you do on your site).
1. Although this is considered onpage optimization but it would be appropriate to mention this again - content. The biggest and most effective offpage technique is related to your onpage optimizaton. Good, useful and keyword rich content. This way, you are “baiting” other webmasters to link to you. Some of them even provide you with a good anchor text as well. These are what is termed as “natural links” because others linked to you without you directly asking for a link and is very much encouraged by Search Engines.
2. Software/script - Writing a script or software which a lot of people use is a good way to generate links. If you look around forums or blogs or just normal sites, you can see people recommending this and that software or script. Some scripts like forum scripts have a small link back to their site with the appropriate anchor text included, just imagine, if a lot of users use those scripts, the amount of backlinks will be enormous! Do a Google search “link:www.phpbb.com” and see the amount of backlinks! Phpbb.com is the official site for the free Phpbb forum script. And if you provide the software or the script at no charge, the number of grateful users with the link back will surely help your site. Simply put, it generates links for you.
3. Tutorials/How-to articles - Very related to content. Write useful tutorials like those photoshop tutorials or howtos and this will encourage other web designers or webmasters to link to that. Having useful and unique content is one of the best way to get natural links and traffic. If it is useful to a webmaster’s visitors, he will surely want to tell his visitors about it.
4. Service/Knowledge Sharing - Yes, even if you don’t write good content or tutorials or articles, you can provide a valuable service to others. Like script installation, colour matching service for web designers, technical support for Operating Systems and so on. Something like sharing your knowledge or helping others with their problems can very well get you the links because it is useful to webmasters and useful for their visitors as well. You can see some of the most popular sites are actually sites which help others like those webmasters forum or those technical support groups. You can even be selling some unique product or service to the public and let it generate links for you. Unique, valuable and useful service is just as important as unique, valuable and useful content.
5. Freebies and contests can attract links from other sites as well. Who doesn’t want freebies or who doesn’t want to join a contest to get prizes? Everyone does and because it is such a good promotional tool, you can attract a lot of visitors(and links) from these contests even if it is for a short period.
What all this being said, it is important to note that links from high quality sites are better for rankings than links from low quality sites. A few links from reputable sites is worth more than a lot of links from unknown sites. So if you can, try getting links from these sites instead.
There are a lot of SEO experts who say that offpage optimization is more important than onpage optimization. While that is not completely wrong, it is very difficult (but not impossible) for a good offpage optimization to work without excellent content. And that is ultimately what is on your web pages.
What Is Search Engine Marketing?
It’s in our genes, we’re driven to seek. We ‘hunt’ for food, homes, partners, jobs and lately - with the advent of the Internet - information.
Even in the early years of the Internet, before it evolved to include Web browsers, there were text based search engines. Back then they had funny names like Archie, and Gopher. It was only later, when the graphical browser was invented, that searching became much easier and accessible for the rest of us.
The concept behind Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is quite simple: when a consumer or business person searches the Web through either a text box or by clicking through a directory hierarchy, they are in “hunt mode.” This mode is unique because it indicates that the person is looking for information. Marketers understand this “hunt mode” means the searcher is probably somewhere in the buying cycle, researching a product or service to fill an immediate or future need.
It’s this ‘timeliness’ that makes search engine results some of the best sources of targeted traffic, whether that traffic originates from “organic” unpaid search listings or paid (sponsor) advertising listings.
To leverage the power of targeted traffic, marketers must understand how to effectively use both paid and organic SEM and what they can expect each methodology to achieve.
Search engine traffic is unique because:
Presenting your message within the search engine traffic is non-intrusive. The searching is not interrupted and your message “arrives” just when the searcher is seeking knowledge or a solution.
Search engine traffic results from a fixed inventory of searches. To truly qualify as search engine traffic, the search must be one that the searcher initiated as a search, either by clicking a search link or by entering a search query.
Search engine traffic originates from a voluntary, audience-driven search. This means the visitors arriving from a search have selected your listing and chosen the words that match.
Natural or “Organic” search engine marketing combines the best practices of technology, usability, copy/linguistics and online PR. This is because many search engines base their relevancy algorithms on a combination of the text they see on a page or site, combined with external elements such as links and user behaviours/preferences.
These days, Marketers can buy text-link search results on all of the top search sites. The popularity of paid search results advertising can be attributed to the search engines’ need for alternative revenue sources, marketers’ increasing requests for search results traffic, and the high value of the traffic generated through search results.
Unpaid (otherwise known as organic or algorithmic) search engine traffic was once fairly easy to get - but this was before there were more than 3 billion documents competing for attention of the search engine databases!
Some marketers believe there are “tricks” which will improve the relevancy of their indexed sites. Using tricks to fool the search engines is dangerous because many of these ‘tricks’ result in negative relevance penalties (they actually lower your ranking score!) as the engines take measures to punish search marketers who try and manipulate their systems. Remember, site and IP Blacklists do exist and ‘tricks’ are one sure-fire way to get yourself added.
The good news is there are many compelling and legitimate organic search engine optimizations. Some of the best ones focus on content - the mainstay of the Internet. Particular efforts should be focused on copy (the words), the site design (it’s an artful balance between what the computerized search engine needs and what the human searcher wants), HTML formatting, and other technical considerations.
Online marketing is a proven and valuable part of an overall integrated marketing campaign. And it all begins by understanding the precise keywords and search terms your ideal prospect is using to search the Internet. Find these and you unlock the potential of the Internet.
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