Ideate Media SEO Web Marketing Blog (2)

Posts Tagged ‘organic search’

SEM Strategy: Keyword management in content

Friday, May 27th, 2011

Keywords drive the tone and power of online content, build you website business’ brand, and increase your Internet ranking by improving your organic search results.

Most search engine marketing experts are quite in love with keywords and their effect on an online business.

With great power, as we know, comes great responsibility. When it comes to implementing keywords in content, there has to be an extremely responsible, SEM strategy-savvy person in charge of approving the final web content. While it may make logical sense written down to use your keywords judiciously in your web content, there might be the desire to start keyword stuffing. This is where someone with a clear sense of the SEO picture can step in and edit the content to sound more like natural writing, and less like something a spambot banged out on a computer.

The rule of thumb is to have two to three keywords per page of content. A “page” is usually around 500 to 1000 words, and the two or three keywords don’t have to just be that one word or phrase, but can include variations of it. The main keywords should be separated by page, of course, but each main keyword will have variations, and related subject matter that you should include in the page’s content. Add a mix of popularly ranked words with lower ranking and obscure phrases to make sure you’re covering all the bases.

Generally speaking, a web editor should be aware of the keywords, but should produce the content like an article. If they know the subject, the content will show it, and be pretty optimized naturally. At the end of the day your website is for an audience of humans, not spambots or Google search engine Bots, so make it look good, and you won’t have to worry.

SEM Strategy: Staying un-focused in SEO

Thursday, May 26th, 2011

We’ve all heard that well-worn, and almost trite idiom, “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket,” but really, in the world of search engine marketing and SEO, it’s almost difficult not to, at times. A more appropriate idiom would be the one about not seeing the forest for the trees, perhaps. In search engine marketing strategy, it’s good to know your SEO forest has trees, but don’t forget to look at the entire picture.

Hyper-focusing, whether it’s a PPC campaign, blog, web content, or worrying about your paid search results vs. your organic search results, is a pretty awful way to run your online business. For one thing, it’s an incredible waste of time to spend all of your time on, say, your next social media update, instead of fixing your website’s meta and title tags. It makes no sense to create excellent web content, when your web design looks like something the 70s rejected.

SEO is a balancing act of tasks that are better suited to creating organized lists for, and maintaining in some kind of sequential order. The first set of things to do are creating, and optimizing your website’s content, keywords, and all of the internal things like tags, titles and alt text. After that, your job is to promote with social media things like blogs, and close monitoring of review sites. After that, you should be making sure your online business is staying updated in your niche industry with PPC, and organic search results that rival your online competitors.

SEM Strategy: Budgeting for PPC—Spending (Part 2/2)

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

When your search engine marketing strategy gets to the point of planning for pay-per-click advertising, your online business needs to be reviewed for which keywords will actually compete, and are worth paying for in order to rise in the paid search results. Your organic search results will take care of themselves as your website business gains recognition and your brand starts showing up in targeted search results.

The PPC budget, for most small online businesses, is based entirely on profits. If your company has some level of profit coming in, whether it’s organic search results or just general profits from your storefront, you have some form of capital to invest in your PPC advertising. If not, try and focus your efforts on increasing organic search, because it is free!

When you go the paid route, it is entirely acceptable to spend as little money as possible to give it a test run. If the results of this initial PPC foray are successful, and actually provide some measure of profit that pay for the expenditure, then you can delve a little deeper and go from there. Companies will invest anywhere from $50 to $500,000 on paid search, but there is no reason to put down a mortgage payment on pay-per-click advertising if you’ve never done it before.

SEM Strategy: Budgeting for PPC—Background (Part 1/2)

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

As your online business grows, you will eventually want to gain higher Internet ranking results than organic search can produce. When this happens, you will probably turn to pay-per-click advertising, and bidding on some excellent, optimized keywords in your niche industry.

Paid search is very much a part of traditional search engine marketing strategy; it’s the online version of buying a billboard on a highway, or a 30 second radio advertisement on a popular station. Most SEMs should dabble in a little keyword bidding and be aware of what PPC involves. Generally, it helps to go through Google’s AdWords tutorials to figure out a good starting point for your campaigns, and to see whether it is even worth it for your online business to start a PPC campaign. It really depends on your competition, and if there is a clear advantage in purchasing keywords to start outranking them in the search results.

Apart from Google AdWords, if your company uses a search engine marketing agency, they should have some tools they are familiar with, or at the very least, should have some kind of a SEM strategy for creating successful PPC campaigns.

One final tip for familiarizing yourself with PPC campaigns and how you can apply pay-per-click advertising to your online business website, Google “Perry Marshall X10 Seminar” in Google videos, and watch the tutorials.

SEM Strategy: Connecting and interacting with your audience

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Although social media is an excellent way for online business owners to connect with their target audiences, the first place your users will go is your company website. There is a terrific opportunity to begin the conversation on your website business that a good search engine marketer should want to build in to the SEO experience of visiting the page.

When a user first comes to your website, one of the things they may click is the “About Us” section, to get an idea of what your company is like. This should not be the end of their insight into your company, because it is an excellent opportunity to provide an optimized link to further contact. As the user interacts with your online business more, they may want to reach out to someone with questions, comments, or issues. Instead of these people going to your social media platforms to vent, your website business should have a few interactive tools built in to the homepage experience.

The first, is a contact form, or information about how to contact the company. This should be assiduously monitored, since it is the first point of contact, and one of the first places a customer will go for communication. Second, you may want to implement features like a Live Chat option, so your users can have their issues, questions or comments resolved in real time. There isn’t much preventing a customer from bouncing away from your website, so these types of tools help maintain their interest, and show that you are dedicated to keeping in touch with your core audience.

If your company website has a blog, you may want to keep the comments open, if you have someone closely monitoring them, to make sure your customers have a way to interact with the information you are posting. And don’t forget, your response on any of these forums is that of a customer service approach, so do it with a smile, and it will help grow your organic search and Internet ranking results through establishing your company as a reputable brand.

Connecting Buyers With Sellers On The Internet