Search Engine Marketing
Know Your Audience:
When starting a search engine marketing campaign it might be tempting to jump right in and start changing page factors, such as META tags, headings, or keyword density. This is one of the biggest mistakes made by amateur SEO specialists. Get to know your audience first! Just as with any traditional advertising campaign, you have to first understand your audience. Once you understand your audience you can start to develop the search phrases that will drive them to your site.
Developing Your Search Phrases (Keywords List):
Start by brainstorming search phrases that are likely to drive quality visitors to your website. Sit down with your co-workers, developers, business partners, and maybe even family and friends, to discuss what keywords are relevant to your site. You should be able to come up with at least 20+ search phrases, but don't worry if you have less. During the brainstorming process there are several thing to consider.
- Does the search phrase describe part of your site or business?
- Is the search phrase directed towards a technical or non-technical person?
- What are your direct competitors doing? View your competitor's websites for keywords.
- What are the unique products or services that you provide?
- Analyze any past data from existing website logs.
Choosing Related Search Phrases and Identifying the Competition:
Once you have chosen your 20+ search phrases, it's time to start analyzing them. You don't want to choose search phrases that are rarely searched for because they would be a waste of effort. At the same time, you don't want to choose highly competitive search phrases either because it will be very difficult for your site to get listed in the top of the search results (typically the top 10 search results). You're aiming at something in between the two extremes. A tool that greatly helps you with this analysis is WordTracker's KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) tool at www.wordtracker.com. This tool allows you to analyze your search phrases to determine the level of competition and also provides related (lateral) search phrases. Another quick research tool is Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool, which can be found at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.
Identifying Pages for Your Search Phrases:
As you've seen so far, search engine marketing is much more than just writing META tags. Search engine marketing is about creating pages using targeted search phrases that will bring quality users to your site. Now in order to use those search phrases effectively, you need to identify and/or create pages that are specifically about those search phrases. Each page on your website should target one search phrase, usually the topic of the page. If a page seems like it is focusing on more than one topic, then split the page and redefine the search keywords for those pages. It's better to have multiple pages with distinct topics, then to have one page with multiple topics.
Designing Your Pages:
In the past, SEO's would concentrate entirely on "page design" factors to optimize a website. This isn't true today, but page design does still have an effect. A poorly optimized page design can have a negative effect on your SER's (Search Engine Rankings). It's beyond the scope of this document to cover all of the factors involved. Instead, I'll try to go over the basics for a page. Use the search phrase in the title of the page, in the META keywords, in the META description and in at least two heading tags (H1 or H2). Try to keep the page as small as possible (less than 15kb) and the keyword density up (between 5-20%, if possible). Feel free to emphasize, bold and italicize important keywords. There's no need to cram ALT tags with keywords and don't use comment tags unless necessary.
PageRank™:
SEO drastically changed when Google™ developed the PageRank™ (PR) algorithm into its search listing. With the creation of PR, a new factor was introduced that SEO's could no longer fully control. Page Rank is a measure of the popularity of a webpage, based on the number of incoming and outgoing links for the page. Today, SEO is two fold. It is part page design factors and part page popularity or PageRank™. Developing PR for your site can be difficult. The best way to develop PR is to write quality informational content that visitors want to read; "Write it and they will come!" For more information on PR, visit http://www.google.com/technology/.
Designing a Spider Friendly Site:
Designing a robot friendly site is simple, yet so many designers forget about this crucial factor. Simply put, if a search engine's spider can not successfully crawl your website you will not get listed in their search engine results. The most common problem arises when using specialty JavaScript navigation methods. Search engine spiders do not parse JavaScript, only HTML code. If you choose to use a JavaScript navigation script, always provide alternative text links somewhere on your pages.
Avoid Spamming:
Avoid spamming search engines at all costs! If you are caught spamming you could be permanently banned from the search engine. Avoid using doorway pages. Avoid using tiny text or invisible text. Avoid using cloaking techniques, unless you're absolutely sure what know what your doing.
Professional Search Engine Marketing:
JJW Web Design can help with your search engine marketing needs. Feel free to contact me if you need professional help with search engine marketing or other search engine related projects.
