Internet Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Web 2.0 Optimization
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The posts here look at Search Engine Marketing, what is it? why do you need this for your site?
Marketing to the 1%
05 months ago
Some think that a successful marketing campaign means driving thousands of visitors to your site every single day. Of course, with this comes the hope that they will invest in your particular products or services while they are there. However, if all you are doing is getting lots of traffic and none of them are interested in your product, you cannot honestly call that a success. A successful SEOcampaign will increase the site traffic as this is the main purpose of getting the site to rank high in search engine result pages. However, traffic isn’t everything. The point is that you want that traffic to purchase your product, or sign up for your services. This means that a smaller, but targeted, audience can be much more effective economically than lots of generic traffic that never purchases anything at all. You are basically going to ignore 99 percent of internet users and concentrate on the 1 percent who will make you money.
Niche marketing
Targeted Traffic
In order to have an effective web marketing campaign you will need to focus the site on one particular topic or product and then concentrate on reaching the audience that is interested in that one thing. You will not be able to reach or please every internet surfer. Simply narrow down the intended audience and focus in on those who will use your services. Fewer visitors who are real customers will bring in more revenue than more generic visits to the site. In short, you can effectively monetize the right audience.
Make Your Site Useful to Visitors
Once you have established your targeted audience, the entire site should be geared toward meeting their needs. Everything should be centered around your niche, or topic. Become their most important resource on your chosen topic. Your web design should be such that it makes you an authority on the topic and you become indispensable to your customers. You are there greatest resource!
Narrow Your Focus
What does all of this mean? It simply means that you will employ a variety of strategies to form a successful web marketing campaign. You will focus on an intended audience while offering a specific product or service that they will find valuable. It does not leave good SEO practices out of the picture; these are still very valuable tools. It just means that you will be more focused on reaching a particular audience with a specific service.
Internet Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing
16 months ago
When is the last time you picked up a newspaper or searched for a phone number using the Yellow Pages? If we think about these pages honestly we have to say that we do not look to these types of resources nearly as much as we used to. When you do a price comparison between e-marketing and traditional approaches to marketing, the numbers are amazing. Traditional marketing will typically cost somewhere between 2 and 3 dollars per lead. Broadcast mediums like television and radio cost somewhere between 10 and 40 dollars for each sale. Internet marketing can be as low as $.60 per lead to about $1.40 per lead. It is the most cost effective of the marketing strategies. There are several aspects to web marketingthat makes it advantageous.
Traditional Marketing
Retrieval Speed
We live in an information age and when we are looking for something, we want it now! This is one advantage internet marketing has over traditional marketing. It is much quicker to type a product name in the search engine than it is to stand perusing through a phone book trying to find the right word with a listing under it. Sure it’s alphabetized to help us find things more quickly; but how many times do you stand there silently saying your ABC’s to figure out what comes next? An internet search yields much quicker results. This is one reason it is important to have a web presence and employ proper SEO marketing strategies. Customers want what they want and they want it now! (Just like you and me) Getting your site to rank high in SERP gets your business in front of potential customers much quicker than an alphabetical listing in the yellow pages or an obscure ad in a newspaper.
Content Accessibility
Consider the last ad you saw in a newspaper or magazine. How much could you learn about the business or product in such a limited space? Maybe a catch phrase, phone number and the name of the business was all it contained. Billboards, although larger, do not contain much more content either. A site that has a good web design will be able to present customers and potential customers with everything they need to know about your business. Website optimization will include the basics of advertising: name, address, phone number. But it will have detailed information about the product or services provided as well as a map so that customers can easily find it using any means. Internet marketing can give customers much more information than traditional marketing can in a small ad.
Audience Base
Using local television, newspapers and maybe even radio ads used to be the way to reach your audience base. While it may not be totally ineffective, it is still attempting to reach a very small audience. Especially considering that the vast majority of the population turns to the internet as their primary resource over these traditional options. The potential audience base for internet marketing is virtually unlimited. There’s a reason it’s called the “World Wide” Web.
Contrast and Comparison Conclusion
Traditional Marketing
- Cannot target audience
- Expensive and requires more investment of time for product promotion
- Limited reach
- Limited exposure (per issue, per newspaper)
- No effective way to track the marketing investment
Internet Marketing
- Ability to reach a targeted audience
- Economical and quick method to promote products
- Cost effective global promotion
- 24/7 advertising of your product of service
- Very effective ways to track investments
SEO for Social Media
211 months ago
Social Media Optimization
Social media is a great tool for search engine marketing projects as it can not only help drive more traffic to your website/business but it also allows you a platform with which you can engage in productive conversation with your current/potential clients.
However, if done amateurishly, your weekly social media updates may not be doing much in terms of helping to build up your web presence. How can this be? Well, simply put, if you neglect to optimize your digital content, then you are producing content that users would not easily find if they were searching for it. For instance, you may be churning out insightful content on a weekly basis on your blog that in theory would interest a significant number of people. But if you don’t implement search engine optimization techniques, then all that great content will be left out on the web to collect virtual dust. For those of you that are more visually inclined, this is comparable to adding a beautiful artistic detail to a painting every week but keeping the painting in the back door of your store where customers don’t know to look. It is a sad instance of wasted potential. Fortunately, there are simple yet effective ways to optimize the content on your social media platforms, and we’re here to bring you up to speed on what they are.
Before we go into the technical side of how to use social media to augment your SEM goals, it is important to backtrack a little so that you and your users get the most out of your social media activity. Before you can optimize your content, you want to make sure your content is something your readers will care about. The first thing you should consider is who your audience is. Who are your followers, and what do/will they get out of following you on Twitter/Facebook/WordPress/etc.? As mentioned in one of our previous posts, search engine optimization is an art, and you should always please the reader with content that will interest him/her. What you never want to do is artificially stuff your social media outlets with SEO links. Doing so will not accomplish your internet marketing goals and will instead tarnish your connection with the user (current AND potential).
To learn more about SEM and social media, please read the next post.
This guest post was written by Premiere Creative. Premiere Creative is a New Jersey based marketing company that specializes in website usability and heuristic analysis. Additionally Premiere prides in self on doing top quality web design and SEO for clients in various industries.
Search Engine Friendly Website Design
4This is a guest post by Brian Stephens of Moulin Website Design, Francea web design company supporting small businesses.
Web Design
A common misconception when it comes to producing a website design that is search engine friendly, is that search engines examine a complete website as a unit. This is not strictly true, search engines spider a complete website i.e. they follow the links from one page to another, but they actually consider each URL or page in its own right and on an individual basis.
So what does this mean with respect to search engine optimization(SEO)and how you can ensure your website is search engine friendly?
There are three aspects to consider when designing for SEO:
- Navigation
- Keyword Identification and Placement
- Header Information
Navigation
Search engines currently rely heavily on the presence of text that they can access to inform them of the presence of a navigation link to internal locations on a page or the additional pages that make up a complete website. So you can imagine that text based links, which can easily be read by the search engines, not only provides the links that allows the search engine to spider the site, but should also be a clear indication of the information they will find through that link.
Many designers will sacrifice this aspect of SEO in favour of more aesthetically pleasing Flash, Java or image based links to gain a wow factor in their design in terms of the imagery they can achieve. This approach is fine as long as an alternative means of identifying additional pages is provided. For example site map submissions and or using the alt tags for images.
Keyword Identification and Placement
Remembering that each page of a website is treated on an individual basis, keywords (enquiries entered into search engines) should be selected on a page by page basis. If for instance you were designing a website for a travel and one of the pages of the site was dedicated to ‘flight information’, then the keywords selected for that page should be indicating that the page is all about flight information.
Your primary keyword or phrase should be placed in the URL title; this is one of the first places a search engine will look for content information. After the title comes headings and sub headings i.e. h1, h2 etc. and then the text based content you have included on a page. If you have included images or other graphics it is a good idea to place some keywords using the ‘alt’ tags for those images and where possible the actual file names of the graphics.
Finally don’t forget the name of the URL, if the URL file name includes a keyword then there is a good possibility that it will be picked up by the search engine. Using the example above the URL might be called something like ‘mytravelsite.com/flight_information.html’
Header Information
The information contained in the ‘Head’ section of a website is typically not seen by a visitor to a website page, the exception would be the ‘title’ mentioned previously. The ‘Head’section contains what are called ‘meta tags’ and these are used to provide information to the search engines that help them deal with the page content.
For example a meta tag may indicate a page is child friendly and does not contain adult only material, or may tell the search engine the page is only there for reference purposes and should not be indexed in search results. Having these indicators helps search engines enormously in how they deal and interact with the page.
Two of the most important ‘meta tags’ are the ‘Title’ meta tag, which incidentally will ideally be no more than 60 characters in length, and the ‘Description’ meta tag. The description should be a short statement of content contained within 150 characters and should if possible include the primary keyword for the page included in a sensible fashion, i.e. the text should flow, be grammatically correct and make sense.
The description is often included on the search engine results page (SERP, particularly when there is insufficient text in the main content of a web page that the search engine can use to indicate the content of the page in search results.
Taking care of these 3 key aspects of a web design should ensure that you end up with a website that is search engine friendly. There are other factors of course, but from a design perspective these are the most important, along perhaps with the recently introduced criteria of taking care of load speeds, so that your website loads swiftly into the browser.
Brian is the also the author of A Good Time is Blog Time and you can follow him on Twitter
Difference Between SEO and SEM
21 year ago
SEO and SEM
In recent years the sheer volume of “stuff” on the internet has exploded exponentially, and continues to grow at a fevered pace. Not only has the amount of content increased, but so has the diversity of content, following the development of web 2.0, and the widespread availability of broadband internet connections (which allow for users to load bigger files faster) many previously unforeseen ways of delivering content have come into existence, today “content” ranges from online videos, to websites, to blogs, Tweets etc… and the sheer volume of content that is added every second (or that has been added while you’ve been reading this post) is unimaginable.
Our content (website, blog, video, Squidoo page…) exists within this ever expanding universe of content and the ability of others (customers, clients…) to find this content will often make the difference between the success and the failure of your website, and often, the success or failure of your website will determine the success of your business, this is where SEO and SEM comes into the picture.
SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) are terms that are often used interchangeably within the online marketing community, although there are a few key differences and understanding these might help you in deciding which SEO consultancy to hire. SEO typically refers to things that are done on your site; this is more technical and consists of things such as proper tagging, and on page optimization of each page of your site, so that each page will be found in top search engines. For more advanced, or dynamic websites on page SEO can get very involved and tricky and if you want your dynamic website to achieve top results hiring a proper expert is essential.
SEM typically refers to things that are done off page to promote your site (although please note that SEO can also be used to talk about off page optimization and SEM can sometimes be used when talking about on page optimization). For many websites, particularly those in competitive industries a proper SEM campaign is essential in order to rank well in search engines. Such a campaign should consist of a number of different components and these should be adjusted and shifted depending on the industry and target audience. Here are some of the components that a SEM campaign might include: Link building (essential for all websites/blogs), social bookmarking (this is important for blogs, or for other types of sites that have regular new content), social networking (depending on your target audience and demographic there are many platforms for you to chose from, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Gather etc…) and there are many more things that your off page optimization campaign should have.
Do you have a good definition of SEM? Please share.
What do you use for off page optimization?
Easy Ways to do Local SEO
61 year ago
A guest post submitted by Eric Rea
Eric Rea is a college student who has a passion for Blogging and Sports. Check out his personal blog at www.ericrea.com
Local SEO is important
Local search engine optimization (SEO) is a powerful marketing initiative to make. It’s the perfect blend of driving more traffic to your online website as well as to your local retail location. Alerting potential customers who live in your retail location’s general area to the existence of your business is going to undoubtedly increase sales. After all, people tend to trust local businesses more than obscure, online outlets. The beauty of the matter is that there are some relatively easy ways to do local SEO for anyone who is so inclined.
My first suggestion to you for your local SEO efforts would be to pay close attention to the keywords you use in the anchor text. Google does. Anchor text is the text that’s used to embed the link you are using. So, if you’ve written an article to post online and you’re going to link back to your website, instead of saying, “click here” and embedding the link into the word, “here”, instead use the keywords you want to rank for along with the local area your business is in. For instance, if you wanted to rank for the term, “Dentists” and you were located in Chicago, you might want to embed the link into the phrase, “Dentists Chicago”. That helps the search engines to connect the dots and realize that your link is relevant to those keywords and that geographical area.
Another great way for you to get your business to pull up on local searches is to submit your information to Google Maps. Google Maps is a very useful and popular tool that millions of people use every day. It can be used to get directions for various local businesses by consumers. By submitting your company address and information to Google Maps, you’ve just made yourself available to those who are looking for directions to local businesses in your community. Oh, and did I mention it’s free to do this? Yeah, it’s free.
Lastly, you ought to participate in local blogs and forums. Any sort of website that is already established for your local community will also already have local customers visiting there on a regular basis. Get in on the conversations. Contribute useful and relevant information and opinions for the conversations at hand. Be sure to embed your company website in your signature. The more people who see you participating actively on these local blogs and forums, the more their interest will be peaked. People will inevitably click on your link in the signature and will therefore learn about your business that’s located right in their local community. Local SEO really can be an effective marketing strategy that’s easy to do.
Optimization of title tags
21 year ago
This is a guest post by Ben Hook
Ben Hook is the head of search at Navaro, a search engine optimization agency in the UK.
The title tag is one of the most important on page factors search engines look at when ranking websites. An incorrectly optimized tag can leave your website in the supplemental results, hidden away, whereas the right keywords can put your website in front of people at the exact time they are looking for your product or service.
The title tag is visible to both the search engines you users. It is one of the factors that will encourage them to click through from the search results onto your website and so it needs to be both optimized and compelling at the same time.
There are a few things to keep in mind when optimizing this tag to help you get maximum benefit:
1. Use the important keywords at the very start of the title tag – the closer to the start the keywords are the more weight the search engines place on them
2. Use only the most important keywords – don’t dilute the weight that each keyword carries by stuffing as many in as possible
3. Don’t duplicate – One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to have the same title tag across the whole website
4. Keep it consistent – although the tags should be different the layout should be consistent across the website.
5. Keep it to 65 characters or less – Although the search engines will index more this is the ideal limit for neat, optimized title tags.
By applying these steps to your title tags you can have a dramatic effect on your websites rankings and make the most of your title tags.
Is social bookmarking still important?
32 years ago
The overall importance of social bookmarking has ebbed and flowed like the tides and it is not always clear what good social bookmarks bring to a site. Obviously, if you are able to get to the top page of DIGG, Delicious, or any of the other bookmarking sites you will get many hits, but these days many of the top bookmarking sites are very political and unless you have truly amazing content, or you have a large network of friends that will DIGG what you ask, you are unlikely to ever see the front page. Despite this truth I would urge you to still use social bookmarks, especially for any content rich pages. Make sure that every new blog post has an entry on Digg, and the other top bookmarking sites. Such a strategy will ensure a steady flow of traffic to every new blog post and some of that traffic will surely generate business for your company.
Have you had success with social bookmarks? Please share your stories with us in the comments section.
Is blogging still important?
62 years ago
Blogging was once seen as the jewel of SEO, the golden goose that could propel any website to instant stardom, those days are long past, but despite this, a well maintained blog remains a vital and essential tool for SEO, and has the ability to do wonders, both for your SEO as well as for your brand as a whole.
When it comes to SEO a blog has a few clear advantages, as well as a few disadvantages over a regular website, although a blog has other advantages that extend beyond SEO and fall into the sphere of brand marketing. As far as advantages of blogs go, blogs tend to be treated differently from regular websites by most search engines; since blogs are seen as a platform that is often updated search engines tend to index blogs more often than regular sites, and the initial crawling of a new blog also occurs faster. Therefore content that is added to a blog is often likely to appear in search engine results in as little as a few hours, and if this content is properly optimized, with tags, categories and a proper title (How to title a blog post) than it (individual blog post) is likely to rank high for a few long tail keywords (what is a long tail keyword?). Another SEO advantage of blogs can be seen through clever use of blog directories and blogging social network communities. There are many directories that cater only to blogs, admission to these is often free of charge and they can do wonders to increase your blogs, and your brands visibility. As far as blog social networks, there are a number of communities that exist as social networks for bloggers, these communities are a great way to expand your reach and to build relationships that can help further your brand, these communities are also a great place to find link trading partners. The last advantage of blogs that I want to discuss here is RSS feeds. An RSS feed allows you to easily syndicate content, so websites can display your RSS feed (which usually lists your last 3 blog posts) and users can subscribe to your feed and receive an automatic update in their feed reader, or their email inbox each time that you add a new blog post. Proper use of RSS feeds can help guarantee an audience of eager readers for each blog post that you write.
Blogs also come with a few substantial disadvantages (although today it seems that a good blog is treated differently by search engines than a good website). The main problem with a blog is that there are certain limits on the way that you can format the look and feel of the pages, and depending on the goal of your site a blog may not be suitable for you. Another big disadvantage is that a blog requires a constant flow of new content, if you are not able to provide new content then your blog will drop into obscurity and will not achieve your goals. Currently the best approach for many of our SEO clients seems to be a combination of a website with proper SEO, combined with a well optimized blog.
Do you have a success story about blogging? Please share it with us in the comments section of this post.
The biggest secret of SEO: time
11There are many SEO tricks of the trade that SEO experts use, but the simple fact is that the most important aspect of any SEO (organic) campaign is time. You can do everything write from an SEO perspective, set up quality on page SEO, start building links… but it takes time for real SEO to show results. As a rule SEO companies typically require new customers to sign a 6 month contract, this is typically enough time to start seeing good results, but I would urge you that if you want to see amazing SEO results and if you want to make your website a leader in your chosen industry, you should think about SEO in years, rather than in months.
A big reason why time plays such an important factor in SEO is b/c Google looks at a websites age, how long the domain has been registered/how long the site has been up… as an indication on whether the site is an authority in its field (keywords), and more weight is given to your keywords the older you are.
Another reason that the age of your site plays such a big role is b/c page rank still plays a role in the ranking of your keywords and page rank tends to go up with the age of your site. (it is very difficult to get a high page rank when your site is young b/c it takes time for Google to assign your initial page rank, which is very low and then it takes time for you to get quality sites to link to you so that your page rank will increase).
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