We have always believed that business strategy is the most important aspect of any Search Marketing effort. Throwing SEO/PPC tasks against the wall and hoping something sticks is a recipe for disaster. Before we engage a client we focus on gaining a deeper understand of the client business goals and objectives for and now and in the future.
What direction is the company going in?
Then we point our tools at the competition, how are they positioned, what tactics are they leveraging to get there? This is a valuable part of forming a counter strategy to attain the goals our clients have set for themselves. Interestingly there is some amazing information in this research.
Many things can be discovered by looking under the hood of a competitors website, such as: What key words do they win with? On many occasions we get an idea of what new marketplaces, products or strategies the competition is focusing in long before these tactics are completely introduced to the market place.
If you are in a competitive battle, and who isn’t anymore - think of your SEO vendor in a new way. Ask you vendor to help with your strategic planning, see what they can learn about the competition that you might not already know.
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Search engine marketing is the act of leveraging a range of marketing techniques required to make a website visible to the various search engines and directories so that it will attract visits from a targeted audience.
These techniques include the optimization of the website or landing page, the submission of the site to directories, and the use of paid listings, which means paying a search engine to have an ad placed at the top of the search page or along the side of the page. The above mentioned techniques will help additional traffic to a companies website.
Website traffic is not the only concern of a company when if comes to its website, in fact it is only the first step in a successful search engine marketing campaign. The other two and more critical factors are click-through and conversion. Traffic is great, but traffic alone on your site does not pay the bills.
What makes the ROI in Search Marketing so powerful is when visitors to your site are encouraged through best practices to click through, or look deeper into the site.
Last and even most critical is the ability to generate and improve upon website traffic conversions. In a conversion, a visitor agrees to take the next step, to sign up for a whitepaper or account and even to purchase something from the website.
A properly thought out and executed strategy will take all the above facets into consideration and can drastically improve all of those areas.
Bookmark at:You have just entered Google Hell and you don’t even know it.
Or, you know it but you don’t know how you got there or how to get out.
What is Google Hell? For website owners/operators who at one point had a solid organic ranking, Google Hell is when for some unexplained reason your rankings have imploded and left you ranked on some distant page in the vast waste land of post page 3+ rankings.
What are some causes of transcending to Google Hell? Well, the first cause could be the fact that the search engines are constantly changing. Many people think a high ranking is etched in stone. Your search marketing strategy is a raft and the search engines are the river, when you stop paddling the current can take your progress away.
A strong Search Marketing strategy will have an ongoing component that monitors changes in your traffic behavior. The competition is another enemy of high rankings. If you are standing still your competition is busy devising plans to pass you. A solid Search Marketing strategy will observe the movements the competition is making and react. Technical server issues are another demon in maintaining high rankings. An offline server that occurs while search engines spider can hurt rankings, and/or speed to get listed (if you are brand new).
Be aware of server downtime and re-direction issues.
The last item we will talk about here are link issues. Once a good link does not mean always a good link. Link properties can change over time leaving you with links that are no longer relevant, these devalued links can lower your rankings. A solid search Marketing strategy will have an ongoing element that covers link analysis.
This should help you identify what the culprit was for sending you down the road to sudden poor organic rankings.
Bookmark at:You’re a loser, well maybe not you, but your website is. How can you know if this statement is true?
For many its not that obvious that the website they call their own is a true dog. So what defines a website loser on the internet? Ideally, a website should do the following:
Well, now you know what to look for. But, how in the heck can you validate the factors mentioned above? A simple to use tool for validating your current status is http://www.alexa.com.
With Alexa you can measure your current tracking ranking and measure the page views of each visitor. Some basic guidelines, the higher the ranking, the worse. So a 410,000 Alexa ranking is not great. The page view data is good for seeing how effective your click through techniques are on your site. The more page views per visitor the better.
One final simple but important tool is the Google Page Rank tool. You can easily locate that with a Google search and is available as part of the Google tool bar. With the Google tool bar the lower the number the worse. A 2 is not a good page rank, and 6 or a 7 are fantastic.
Leverage the tools mentioned above to determine whether your website is a loser or not.
Bookmark at:The search marketing industry has been able to rely on PPC and SEO exclusively since the infancy of this industry to achieve successful search results for clients. This world is changing rapidly and many customers and vendors are not prepared to adapt to this changing climate.
Welcome to the world of Google Universal Search. Universal Search opens the world of search to include alternative media sources. What are alternative media sources you ask? Well the list is impressive and includes news, video, images, blogs and others. The question now becomes does your current Search Marketing strategy have you prepared to take advantage of this new search capability, or are you prepared for your competitors taking advantage of these new opportunities to reach clients and be found before you organic rankings?
Lets spend a moment discussing the various media forms and how each should be an important part of your Search Marketing strategy. News for example is very simply the use of press releases andvthese press releases should be newsworthy and interesting. Press release optimization if executed properly, can get your press releases on quality news sources. A quality press releaase itself is only the first step in a successful strategy, the next important step is getting the press releases to the right places for exposure.
A boiling hot area of the web is obviously video and should be investigated as part of a sound SEM strategy. Video’s can become very popular quickly and the viral aspect of this effort can produce fantastic results.
Images are another powerful way to be found on the web. If you have images currently, you will want to consider methods for optimizing the images to be found in Google. Images differentiate yourself from your competition and you must leverage all of this corporate value to maintain advantage.
Last but not least is the use of the corporate Blog. Corporate Blogs have provided companies with an amazing tool for communicating with clients and employees, and a forum for sharing and educating. There is much to be considered when formalizing a Blog strategy and this planning should not be taken lightly. The content itself, who has writing privileges, what can be written and how to get attention to your Blogs are all crucial aspects to take into consideration before launching a Blog.
The doors continue to open on the web providing companies with new opportunities to reach potential clients. Remember that the best strategy is flexible one that is changing to meet competitive pressures and rapidly take advantage of new opportunities.
How have you prepared your company???
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