Right now, somewhere, a potential customer is searching for your products. But, who will they look for first, your company or your competitor? Search engine marketing means reaching customers the moment they are searching for your products on Google and other engines. But how do you take full advantage of search engine marketing and beat your competition? The following seven steps will get you on the right track to search engine marketing success.
Define an effective strategy
Often, companies get into search engine marketing without a coherent strategy. Don’t fall into this trap. Get off on the right foot by defining your target audience well, identifying their needs and motivations, and highlighting how your products can meet these needs. Next, review your company’s position in the market. Identify your top competitors and your company’s competitive advantage. Finally, identify specific goals and benchmarks, such as increased search ranking, website traffic, sales lead volume, and other ROI metrics so that you can measure the success of your search engine marketing campaign. This strategy will form the foundation of your campaign and set you on the road to search engine marketing success.
Choose the Best Keywords
The most important step in search engine marketing is to strategically select the most important keyword phrases for your company. If you don’t do this step properly, your search engine marketing campaign is destined for failure. When choosing the best keywords, it is important to choose phrases that are not only relevant to your business but also the most frequently searched phrases by your target customers. Start by getting your customers in mind and brainstorm possible terms your customers may use when thinking about your products and capabilities. Ask your salespeople and customer service people which phrases they find most important. You may also want to ask your best customers. Then, turn to keyword research tools provided by Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and Google AdWords to build a list of highly searched words that will drive targeted traffic to your website.
Optimize your website contents
Now that we know your most important keywords, let’s put them to work. You need to make sure that your website content is optimized to take advantage of these key phrases. Start with your website copy – the information people can read on your website. Make sure you write your website copy efficiently to effectively market your company, using your important keyword phrases in a relevant fashion. Next, focus on your website structure – the code under the hood of your website that search engines see when they visit your website. Use your keyword phrases relevantly in page title tags, title tags, director names, file names, alt tags, and meta tags. PLEASE NOTE: While the ‘keywords’ meta tag has been exploited for years, the ‘description’ meta tag is very important. This description will appear in search results below your link, giving you a great opportunity to entice a searcher to visit your website.
Get your site indexed by the top three
To be found online, you must ensure that all pages on your website are fully indexed by the top three search engines: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live Search. I suggest you start by focusing on Google as it handles over 55% of all searches, and it makes the process easier for site owners. While all search engines allow you to submit your website for direct consideration, Google also provides you with a backdoor to get your site indexed faster. Google allows you to create a Google Sitemap, which essentially serves as a constant invitation to Google to visit your site and a roadmap detailing the pages it should index. To expedite the process of being indexed by other engines, submit your website to the DMOZ.org Open Directory Project. Once your website is accepted by DMOZ, Yahoo and Microsoft should have no problem indexing your website.
Attract Quality Links to Your Website
Link building involves obtaining links to your website from other websites that are frequented by your target visitors. The more quality inbound links you have, the more popular your website will be in the eyes of Google and other engines. And, these links can have a dramatic impact on your search rankings. A good place to start your link-building efforts is to make your Website content link-worthy. Good content attracts links, so fill your website with interesting and informative content such as a library of best practices articles, a blog about developments and trends in your industry, etc. Next, get your website listed in online directories and portals. First look at important online destinations in your industry, then focus on general-purpose directories like Yahoo Directory and Business.com. You can also get links to vendors, customers, business partners, and trade associations. Finally, you should take advantage of online public relations and distribute press releases and articles online. By consistently implementing these link-building strategies, you will dramatically impact your ranking on Google and increase your online popularity.
Manage an ROI-Driven Paid Search Campaign
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) in sponsored links search results provides a lucrative ROI-driven marketing opportunity. Unlike traditional advertising, where you ‘pay for exposure’ regardless of the results, with PPC you are not paying to be listed in search results. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website, providing an attractive ‘pay for display’ mode of advertising. To manage an ROI-driven paid search campaign, first, bid on the most relevant keywords. Don’t choose words based only on popularity. Make sure your product offering will be of interest to the searcher. Second, link your bidding strategy to business results. Think of cost-per-lead and cost-per-sale instead of just cost-per-click. In many cases, a lower ad position will generate a higher ROI. Finally, include an engaging ‘call to action’ in the ad and drive traffic to a relevant landing page associated with the ad. An attractive and relevant offer will help in increasing the response and increase your ROI.
Measure Success
Like all marketing activities, you should measure success to see how well you have performed in the past, as well as identify actionable strategies to improve your results in the future. Since search engine marketing is all about attracting targeted traffic, start by taking advantage of web analytics to monitor growth in traffic from search, as well as what search engines and phrases people are using to visit your website. Huh. You should also monitor your position or ranking in search results to ensure that the amount of targeted visitors continues to increase. On a regular basis, check your position in the top three search engines for your most important keyword phrases to see how well you’re moving upwards toward the top 10 rankings. Finally, to measure the success of your pay-per-click advertising efforts, track cost-per-visit, cost-per-lead, and cost-per-sale for all your pay-per-visit. Make use of the scalable nature of the web.
