The A to Z of Search Engine Marketing in SEM

Article in SEM

The A to Z of Search Engine Marketing

By tamar

Released On 06-15-2009

Analytics will give you an idea of what users are searching for and how well your website is performing. Look at the tools available to you and study your log files to gauge how well your site is performing.

Build your website for your audience, not for yourself. Get an outside opinion on how things can be changed. Take feedback into consideration and be open to criticism.

Content should be updated on a frequent basis. This causes the spiders to crawl your content a lot more frequently. It also gives your site more chances to garner links.

Drive conversions (that is, sign ups to your service, purchases of products, downloads of whitepapers, or whatever you're aiming to accomplish) with clear descriptions. Don't leave critical questions unanswered. Also, when you drive signups and look for conversions, don't ask for too much information at first. Don't ask your visitor for their mother's maiden name if all they're doing is downloading an application or eBook. Make it simple and don't push them away.

Every site that wants to be branded should have a favicon. You should also include an FAQ for your visitors so that they know what to expect when they visit your site.

Flash sites by themselves aren't very SEO friendly. Neither are unfriendly splash pages or background music. Don't give your visitors something they don't want, even if you like it. It may provide a richer multimedia experience, but at the same time, if you're compelled to go with Flash, embed it within your HTML pages and use a noembed tag to tell search engines what's in the Flash file.

Goals should be defined early in the process. Make sure you establish what you want to do before you build your marketing strategy.

Hidden text for the sake of being deceptive to the search engines is a no-no. If you're hiding text under an image that shows the same text, you're probably all right. If in doubt, ask someone on the forums.

If you build it, they will come. This is the incorrect approach to marketing your website. You need to build content and optimize your page, but more so than that, you need to actively engage in the community around you so that you build relationships that make other people aware of your website's existence.

Just building content isn't enough, as mentioned earlier. You need to build links too. Make your sites social-media aware so that people who may not normally find it will learn about it.

Keyword research is essential. Build keywords that are related to your site's subject matter so that you can help visitors find your site through search engines. Keyword stuffing (spamming) is not good for your search marketing efforts.

Look at your images. Are they optimized? If not, take advantage of optimizing your images by adding relevant and keyword-rich alt text.

Motivate yourself. Why are you doing this? Don't give up. Market your website, build content, optimize, and socialize.

Networking is a great way to meet people who can link to your site and spread the word about your content.

Optimize your title tags, headlines, and body text.

Patience is an important part of website building. Nothing will happen overnight. Even brand new sites will take time to rank and become established sites, but keep at it.

Query search engines with a variety of terms and see how you rank. Mine your search query logs to see what terms are bringing you visitors. With that said:

Rankings should be checked often. Just be advised that some people really do get addicted to those numbers.

Social media engagement is another useful way to spread your content. Social media sites, such as Digg and StumbleUpon, are key players that can bring huge amounts of traffic.

Title tags should be straight and to the point. Typically, you should have some essential keywords followed by your brand name. Don't keyword spam, and keep your title tag no longer than 75 characters.

Usability is important. Put your important links above the fold (like search, login, etc.) Don't make your users dig for content that should be clear to them. Don't make things confusing.

Visitor loyalty means that you get repeat visitors often. Lure your visitors in with good product descriptions, testimonials, or whatever else you need to ensure that you get the biggest bang for your buck. Loyalty leads to word of mouth and improved conversions.

Webmasters of all kinds should value search engine optimization in the development process. There's no benefit to you to build a site and do nothing to make it consumer-aware. What is the benefit of having a website that nobody can find?

X-tra goodies, like tools, provide an incentive for your users to want to keep coming back. That's some good visitor loyalty.

Your content should be syndicated using RSS if possible. People then can subscribe to your updates and receive them in their feed reader, via email, or among other services.

Zealous approaches are the best. Be constantly determined, build up your content, network heavily, and be true to your offerings.

As you can tell, this isn't a comprehensive list in the least, but I figured that it would be an interesting (and fun) way to present some ideas about internet marketing. Do you follow all of these rules?

by tamar

Article in SEM

The A to Z of Search Engine Marketing

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