Search Engine Marketing




Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing describes the many ways in which you can promote your website in order to drive more traffic to your site and as a way of generating more potential sales. There are a number of ways that you can go about search engine marketing so to help you out I have described some of the main methods below: 

Pay Per Click 

This represents a great way in order to quickly drive highly qualified and targeted traffic to your website. The way pay per click works is advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With this choice of search engine marketing it is completely flexible and transparent. This is because you get to choose how much you want to pay for a click and how much budget you have each day. 

When it comes to the position of ads this works on a bidding system. Basically the highest bidder gets position one, second highest bidder position two, and so on. However Google will place better quality ads up higher, even for a cheaper price. It is these ads that will drive more traffic to your site as you will appear on the first/second pages for as long as you pay for. 


Google Adwords Keyword Tool 

This tool is provided by Google and best of all it is provided free! So how exactly does it work? It provides keyword suggestions based on 'descriptive words' or 'website content.' The main use of this tool is to assist Google Adwords advertisers. However you are free to use it to research SEO keywords. Not only does this tool allow you to gather keyword suggestions, it can also be used to see estimated traffic volumes for exact match phrases within any country as long as they have Google as a search engine. 


Google Adwords Traffic Estimator 

This tool is again free from Google. The way that this tool works is that it provides Adwords advertisers with an estimated cost of running a PPC campaign while using specific keyword phrases. You should aim to use this tool in conjunction with the Google Adwords keyword tool. So basically you would extract keywords from the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, paste them into the Google Traffic Estimator, once you have done this you would then select the country you are optimising in and run the search. Once the search has completed you would be able to sort your chosen keywords out in descending order of how much it would cost you per day. 

The reason that this is such a good idea when it comes to search engine marketing is because it is the perfect way of identifying the keywords that have high traffic volumes but don’t adapt very well. This is because the phrases that don’t produce revenue for advertisers will be low in cost but they will also have a lower estimated cost per day as a result. 

Quality score and Click through rates (CTR)

When it comes to PPC and links Google is unique and driven by returning the best and most relevant results for the user. For this reason Google have introduced what is known as 'quality score.' This is based on how many people click on your ad. So how does this affect your CTR? A well organised and tested SEO campaign should have a CTR of 3-4%. The average CTR however currently stands at 1%. Well with quality score, if your ad appears in 100 impressions and 2 people click on your ad you will have a CTR of 2%. When your CTR increases Google will then also increase your quality score. The higher your quality score, the less you pay per click. For example originally we were paying $3 per click for weight loss on one of our sites, however after we increased our CTR from 1% to 5%, this cost was reduced to $1.65 a month. I believe this demonstrates how vital it is to increase your CTR. 

Ways to increase CTR

CTR is a means of measuring the success of an advertising campaign. To help increase your CTR you should split your campaign into several campaigns. For example with a healthy eating website you could split the categories into weight loss and diet and then use appropriate keywords for each section as oppose to using keywords for the entire site. 

What you should aim to do is write five different ads for each of the campaigns, in the case of my example, five ads for weight loss and five ads for diet. Then with these ads you can select the highest performance ones to use in your search engine marketing campaign. With each of these ads you should aim to creative different enticing methods such as free trial, guaranteed and buy today as well as save 20% by doing this you can then see which advert people respond to the most. You can continue to tweak your ads everyday until your CTR starts to improve. 

Banner PPC

Banner pay per click works in pretty much the same way as normal PPC but just instead of an advert appearing, a banner appears. These are great when it comes to not only promotion but also branding. People will be able to find out about your company and then go on to visit your website. With banner PPC you generally have two options, you can either pay per click or pay through cost per thousand impressions. There is an advantage to both of these, cost per thousand impressions is the best option for branding whereas pay per click is your best option when it comes to traffic. 

Email Marketing


Email MarketingThe concept of email marketing is one that has been around for a long time and has been proven to work. So how does this form of search engine marketing work? Well let me explain, when someone visits your website for the first time there is a high chance that said person won't buy anything. However if you make your site a data capturing centre it will capture the email addresses of people who visit your website with there permission. So you can now start emailing them with helpful and informative information about your site, while promoting the electronics products and services that you website has to offer. 

Your Ideal SEO Consultants to Help You Boost your Business Online


It goes without saying that for anything to be a success or profitable it needs to be promoted and your website is no exception. With the constant growth and use of the Internet you have to fight to keep your website afloat, especially when there are thousands of websites created on a daily basis. The only way to really do this is through the use of SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimisation. 

What is Search Engine Optimization


What is Search Engine Optimization
Optimisation is what is used to market your business and the products or services that it provides. It is what allows search engines to pick up your website, but just how do you go about incorporating this service into your website? The answer to this one is pretty simple; to get the best out of your website and more importantly your business you need to hire the help of a search engine optimisation consultant who will be able to help you define the perfect SEO strategy to get your website rank high in the search engines, which in effect will get it seen by a global audience. 

SEO stands for the process in which you design a website, organise it and produce content for it. Once the site is complete you then go onto promoting it, preferably spending a good few hours a week keeping the actual site updated and producing backlinks through article writing and setting up link exchanges with other websites. Aspects such as these boost the traffic that comes in to your site, meaning more people will be able to access your site and in effect know about the products or services that you have to offer. This is a time consuming job and can prove to be a difficult one if you are unsure about how to go about it, which is why you should hire an SEO consultant to do this for you. Not only does this free up your time to concentrate on other aspects of the business but it also allows an expert to promote your site meaning you are more likely to see results and you will see them a lot quicker. 

Getting your SEO Consultant

SEO ConsultantIf you are thinking of hiring an SEO consultant to promote and optimise your website there are certain aspects that you need to discuss with your consultant. This is important to make sure that you are getting the best help for your website and to also make sure that you are getting the best value for money. You need to highlight and discuss the following points with your consultant to make sure both of you are on the same page: 




  • What is your SEO strategy?
  • Does your strategy fall in line with your global business objectives?
  • What type of search engine marketing would create the best ROI (rate of return) for your website?
  • How do you most effectively turn visitors into purchasers?

    To answer questions such as these correctly you should organise an SEO consultation. During this consultation you will be able to get the main points across about your site and you will be able to ensure that your consultant knows exactly what work you want doing and what results you want to see from the work that is carried out on your website. However in order to get the most out of your consultation you should have the following information available; who your target market is, background information on your company, a list of your competitors and your online business objectives as well as your budget requirements.

    As well as looking over and discussing the above information it is also important that you ask your consultant certain questions; one of the most important being the type of rankings that they have achieved for other clients. Get them to show you results that other clients have seen. When looking at these results you should concentrate on the type of keywords that have been optimised. You should look to see if these keywords have been optimised for international, national or a suburb level. This will greatly make a difference as to how competitive the keywords are that they have had success with.

    You should ask about project timelines and the consultants reporting capabilities. Also on top of this you should find out if they will give a guarantee to back up their work i.e. 50% discount if they don't achieve the rankings that they promise.

    As well a finding out information such as this it is also a good idea to ask to speak to previous or current clients of the consultant. They will be your best, and most honest guide to the service provided by your chosen consultant. You should ask them about the delivery of the service that they are receiving and how good the company is at meeting targets and delivering success. Finally you should ask them if they would refer the company to their friends and family. If and only if the consultant company meets your expectations, produces the ranking results you want to see and delivers on communication should you opt to do business with them.

    It is important to know information and have facts and figures on the consultant team that you are planning on doing business with. This is because in the worst case scenario your website could go from having a page one ranking through to having a complete ban from the search engines altogether. Not something you want to happen! So make use of the expertise from an SEO consultant but make sure they can deliver on their promises.
  • Effective SEO Strategy for Your Business


    In order to make your website and your business in general a success, it is critical that you have an SEO strategy in place. This has never been as true as it is now for the fact that there are thousands of websites created every day, all of which are competing for the highest rankings within the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. In order for your website to stand any chance of success against this flow of new websites you need to incorporate an optimization strategy, but just how do you go about doing this? 

    By following the steps set out below you will be able to develop an online strategy that will help you achieve your online objectives: 

    Domain Name

    Your domain name is one of the most important aspects to your website. It is the name that people will associate with your products or services. Also it is the name that people will need to remember if they want to continually visit your website. For these reasons it is important that the name you choose for your domain name is relevant to your business and website and is easy to remember. It is easier to remember short, straight to the point domain names so keep it simple. 

    Navigation

    You need to decide what information you would like to feature on your own website. Only when you have done this can you then break the information into separate pages. These pages will then make up the navigation on your website. The navigation on your website is one of the most fundamental issues when it comes to the usability of your site, which is why you need to make sure that the usability is kept very simple. 

    Keyword Research

    Keyword Research

     

    Keywords are essential when it comes to the success of your SEO strategy. Keywords are the main phrases that are associated with your website so for example if your website was based on healthcare in the UK you would need the phrase healthcare in the UK to appear on most, if not all the pages of your website and you should aim to feature it about three to five times on these pages. In order to make sure that you use the correct keywords throughout your website you need to carry out research surrounding what keywords are associated with your website. One way of doing this is putting yourself in the position of your potential customers. Think about what are some of the main phrases that people would search for if they were looking for the products or services that you have to offer such as electronics and then use these words and phrases throughout your website. 

    Writing Content 

     
    Writing Content

    Once each page of your website has been decided on you will be able to start producing the content that will be placed on each of the pages. Remember you need to incorporate your keywords within the text that is placed on your site. Also you need to ensure that each page has appropriate content. For example the about us shouldn’t focus on promoting products, it should merely inform about the company. The content should be written with good spelling and grammar and shouldn’t overwhelm the reader so keep it to the point and make sure it flows. 

    Wireframe 

    Once the content for your website has been produced you can then wireframe your website. Wireframing your webpages is all about creating a visual guide that is used in web design to suggest the structure of a website and the relationship between the pages featured within that website. It is a basic layout that involves demonstrating where information and graphics will be placed. Due to this they are often completed before any artwork is produced for the site. 

    Grey Scale

    It is important that when you set up your website that you grey scale your site. This involves grey scaling where text is going to be placed and where graphics will be placed within your site. 

    Graphics 

    When building up your SEO strategy you not only have to think about the text that is going to be placed within your website but you also have to give some thought as to what images and graphics you want placed within your site. To achieve this it is important that you build up the images and graphics and then finalise them. 

    Create Website 

    Congratulations you are now ready to create your website! 

    On Page Optimisation 

    On Page Optimisation

    When your website has been created and you are happy with the outcome of it you can go on to make those small, last little changes that are needed to enable it to perform well. These changes refer to optimising your tags, which includes your title tags and your Meta tags. 






    Submit Website 

    Once your website is ready and waiting to be used by customers and to be visited by people you can submit it to the search engines. Once your site has been picked up and indexed it will then start to appear within the search engine results pages. It is also important however to not only submit your website to the search engines but to also submit it to free general directories. 

    Promote 

    In order to not only keep your website within the search engine results pages you also need to keep your website high up within the search engine results pages. The way in which you achieve this is through aspects such as article writing and creating many back links to your site. You need to make use of blogs and banner ads etc, basically use all of the Internet marketing skills that you have as these are the aspects that will make your website a success and keep your website a success. 

    Definition of SEO


    SEO is what helps businesses grow an online presence. Basically for a website to be truly successful you need to implement SEO. So what exactly is it and how is it used to help improve the amount of traffic to your website? 

    True Definition of SEO

    What is SEO?
    The true definition of SEO is the process of building a highly specialised and successful website. Without the help of SEO, which stands for search engine optimisation, a website won’t be picked up by the major search engines, which means not only is it not successful but it basically isn’t doing its job. This will basically mean that you aren’t using the Internet to its full advantage as you aren't getting your website out there to a global audience so you won't gain new customers as they will be doing business with your competitors. 

    To get an idea of just how important getting your website into the major search engines is, think about this fact; 90% of all new visitors to a website found that site through using major search engines such as Google or Yahoo. So if your website doesn’t appear high within these search engine rankings you are losing out on a high percentage of possible new customers. By using the help of SEO you are able to gain the top level search engine result spots, which will boost your sales potential and will introduce your business to a variety of new people from all across the globe. 

    SEO is used to increase your brand awareness as you will be able to reach people 24/7 who wouldn’t have been able to access your business without the help of the Internet. It helps to lift your sales while decreasing your customer acquisition costs. Also it works out to be 100% measurable and gives measurable return on your investment. The right use of SEO will be able to get your website onto the top page of Google. One of the main ways that this is achieved is by optimizing your website to include the keywords that demonstrate what your website is all about. For example if your website is all about compensation your site should be optimised to include words such as accident claims, no win no fee and of course compensation. 

    Also as part of your SEO campaign you should be writing keyword targeted articles in order to target traffic to your website. You should be getting as many links out there that lead people back to your website. This is done through links placed on the articles that you write as well as setting up link exchanges with other websites. 

    More SEO Works, the better



    SEO Works

    The more SEO work that you carry out the more chance you have of getting your website into the top spots on several of the major search engines. In order to do this your SEO work needs to keep up with ever changing electronics technology and also has to be familiar with other website marketing techniques such as banner ads, pay-per-click programs and even some offline advertising options. 

    It is very common practice for Internet users to not click through pages of search engine results so where your site ranks is essential if you want to direct more traffic to your business. This is why implementing SEO into your website is so high in importance. 

    It is important that if you are implementing optimisation into your site that you implement the right sort. It is important that you optimise your site so that the traffic that it brings in is organic search engine traffic. Your SEO work should be what is known as 'white hat.' This refers to any optimisation tactic that maintains the integrity of your website and the SERPs (search engine results pages). These are the only tactics that should ever be used as they are the only ones that will be applicable and that will enhance rather than detract your website and from the rankings. 

    Many people often question why the search engines can’t pick up your custom web design site without the help of optimisation. Well the reality is in order for anything to be known and succeed it needs the help of promotion; optimisation acts as the promotion of your website. However search engines are always working towards improving the technology that they have but there is and will always be a limit to how search engines can operate, which is why optimisation is so important but remember only the right optimisation can bring you thousands of visitors; the wrong can hide or bury your site deep in the search results where visibility is minimal. 

    To give your business or company the best chance of success within the Internet or online shopping, you need to implement SEO into your site. So don’t leave it too late, start your promotion campaign now and get your site moved up within the search engine results, you will be amazed to see how much of a difference it will make to your sales and your reputation.