Not by any sense of the word is search engine marketing a secret. However there are secrets and tricks to search engine marketing. In this article we'll try to successfully educate you on the different factors which contribute to SEO, SEO is becoming a 'Hot Word' in Internet marketing.
In case you don't already know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a vital part of any online marketers quest for success.
It means preparing your website with the 'right ingredients' for the search engines to 'like' it. If they 'like' your site you can expect to get hundreds if not thousands of free visitors from them.
In fact some research has found that at least 65% of traffic to websites comes from search engines. This is just a general figure and of course varies depending on the other marketing methods you employ, however this figure does give you an indication of how important SEO is to any online business.
OK now we'll go through the different factors which affect your sites ranking. First things first!
Choosing the right keywords Keyphrases
With most of the big 'useful' engines now operating express submission services you will want to spend your dollars wisely. Do You want:
- Highly targeted visitors?
- Very good visitor to sale ratios?
- Lots of profits?
If you answered yes to these questions, then forget about choosing the rights keywords, realize the benefit of keyphrases. This approach is likely to generate much higher click through of highly qualified visitors.
Let me explain this to you - How many people do you think search for the word music? ''A lot'' - How many results come up for music ''A lot''. What do you think your chances of appearing near the top are, well I'll answer that one for you. SLIM TO VERY SLIM. Not to worry though because visitors who click-through to a site after searching for music are not highly targeted, you don't know if they're searching for:
- music tickets
- music lessons
- music CDs
- music related equipment
- music software
- music news
- etc., etc., etc.
It's so vague that your time and effort would be better spent on other methods.
However if a search engine visitor types in 'Special Offer Music CDs' and you have targeted that keyphrase in prominent places where search engines look on your website, you have a much better chance of appearing near the top of the pile. Also if in fact the visitor clicks through on your listing, you are much more likely to make a sale, because you have exactly what the searcher was looking to buy.
RECAP
The more complex your keywords are the more highly qualified visitors you are going to get from the search engines.
Qualified visitors = Sales! Sales! Sales
Try also to regionalize your keyphrases if possible. This will of course only apply to certain websites.
What I mean by this is that if you operate out of a specific location target that location and the surrounding areas in some of your keyphrases. This helps to improve the quality of your visitors.
Example: Imagine that the biggest & best car dealer in Detroit happens to have a website, but they're unwise and their title tag is as follows:
#1 Car Sales Dealer and Garage in America.
They think this will bring them lots of visitors because it has an alphabetically high start (#1) and has decent keywords, they're probably right. The visitors it does bring however will not exactly be targeted. A visitor from the other side of America could visit their website, are they going to travel across America to buy a car from someone just because they visited their website? No.
Now let's say a man from Detroit is looking to buy a new car. The dealer he bought his two previous cars from has closed down and he doesn't know of any other dealers around. He therefore decides to use the Internet to look for "Detroit car dealers" .
The likelihood is that the above car dealers competition will show up because he or she has used a title like this: #1 Detroit car dealer, garage and sales website.
Obviously the man looking to buy a car in Detroit is going to be interested in the site. It's for these reasons that if it's appropriate for your business I recommend that you always regionalize with your keyphrases.
Imagine you don't know what words to target in your keyphrases, well there's a simple solution. Visit http://www.wordtracker.com and do their free trial. Enter in a word that you think people searching for your site will enter on the search engines and wordtracker will give you a list of 15 related words and keyphrases. These are what you'll use to make your keyphrases.
Now you should know what keyphrases you want to rank well on in the search engines, but where do you put these on your website pages to improve you chances of appearing near the top of the results.
Continue to Search engine optimization guide - part 2