Internet Marketing News – Search Engine Marketing

On one level, marketing and search engine strategies are two very separate fields. One is concerned with creating an image for your company and building consumer awareness of your brand, the other is concerned with getting your site to the top of the search engine results lists. But on another level, they are completely intertwined and inseparable … considering that they are both worthless if neither of them builds profits for you! If SEO thinks only about getting to the top of the Google rankings and ignores the type of image it is creating, it can actually harm your business. Today we check out the techniques that can help you combine marketing and search engine strategy.

Make sure you don’t sacrifice user-friendliness for keywords
A site that has heavy keyword density but makes no sense (and provides no value) to a human reader because of that density will ultimately not perform. NEVER sacrifice readability for keyword insertion!

Determine if there is a market need
On the Internet, supply of just about everything is virtually unlimited, and the people looking for services are very selective! If your business is based on providing free credit reports, anything ‘adult’ related or Forex trading tips, it may be best to seriously reconsider whether there is enough demand to keep your business going, with such heavy competition.

Ignore the bad neighborhoods
Links are one of the major bases of SEO success … but links from bad neighborhoods will only damage your reputation with consumers (that’s assuming that Google doesn’t penalize you for them!).

Make sure your domain name reflects both your branding and your business
In fact, it is best to have branding that reflects your business, in SEO terms. For example, having a lawn mowing business named ‘The Big Green’ is certainly cute. However, when it comes to SEO, a domain named www.BGlawnmowing.com will always rank higher than www.thebiggreen.com.

Look into social media
Much of the tension between marketing and search engine strategies comes from the need to use keywords in prominent places in the only thing that users interact with – the content. You can get around this dilemma (and still get great Google results) by undertaking a social media strategy. People don’t care about keywords in social media … they care about what their friends are doing. In this arena ‘The Big Green’ could do quite well, where boring old ‘BGLawnmowing’ would fail miserably. Don’t fall for the idea that social media and search engine strategies are separate – one can definitely affect the other.

Search engine marketing not only means knowing what you should do to get people to come to your website, it also means knowing what you shouldn’t do. Here are some of the more common mistakes that people make when they are advertising their website.

1. Not Having A Search Engine Marketing Strategy

This is one of the biggest mistakes that people make they are starting out in search engine marketing. Before you can effectively start marketing your website through search engines you have to have a strategy. This will help you pinpoint what it is that you are looking to accomplish and how much money you to spend.

2. Not Thoroughly Researching Keywords

One of the things that is going to bring people to your website is keywords, and when you don’t use the right keywords people won’t find your website as easily. Think about the words that people might use to search for things on your website and use them as a basis for the keywords you choose. You can also use misspelled versions of words and odd spacings to make sure that people can find you even when the words are spelled wrong or they spacing is off.

3. Not Doing Enough Testing

Before you go spending a lot of money on keywords, you should do some research and see what keywords get the best results. Some of the factors that you should test are search terms, copy, the type of the match, and offers. There are tools that you can find online that will help you to do the searching and see what the results will be.

4. Not Determining Expectations of Performance

In order to reach your goals, you first need to have goals. You should figure out what it is that you can realistically expect to accomplish and then you will have something to strive towards. Set yourself some goals and stick to them.

These are just a few of the mistakes that people make when they are trying to market a website. When you avoid these mistakes, you will find that you are going to have a lot of successful website traffic and reach more targeted audiences.

Have you ever noticed what words or sets of words you type into search engines when you are looking for something in particular? One of the best ways to effectively market a website using a search engine is to use keywords. Using relevant keywords for your business in the material submitted on your website as well as used to drive traffic to your website can help to improve your search engine ranking.

Here are the steps to take in order to use keywords to market your website:

1. First thing you will want to do is to plan the strategy that you are going to use. One way to do this is to start with a large variety of search terms and then gradually narrow the list down. You can also start out with several keywords, and then expand the list.

2. Look over the list and make sure that the keywords on the list are relevant. Try to think from the perspective of your clients, and ask yourself if the keywords that you have on your list are the ones that they are going to use. Make sure that the words are the ones that you know they are going to use, instead of ones that you have thought of yourself. If you are unsure, you can always ask your friends and family what types of words they use.

3. Make certain that you pay careful attention to things that may make people change what they are searching for. If the keywords that you are using are being used by a different type of audience, you are going to find that the sales from the click-throughs are decreasing.

4. You should keep your eye out for any changes in your customers’ search patterns so that your marketing can be adjusted accordingly. It also helps to make note of what people are looking for when they are on your site.

5. Ad tracking is one of the best ways that you can tell what keywords are effective on the search engines. This will help you market your website the best way.

These are just a few of the ways that you can use your keywords to help with your search engine marketing. Search engine marketing with keywords is one of the best way that you are going to be able to bring customers into your website and get more sales. Keywords used in search engine marketing are a very effective way to know what your customers are looking for and what they want.

Marketing is one of the most expensive components to a business plan, making flawless execution crucial to the business’s bottom line. So, mistakes can prove to be costly. When developing a business marketing plan, it is important to understand what the most common mistakes are so that you can proactively work to avoid search engine advertising mistakes.

Here are some mistakes to avoid in search engine advertising:

1. Using keywords or phrases that aren’t targeted

This is a big mistake that people make – choosing the wrong keywords that are placed in their website’s META keyword tags. Even though you may think that the keyword that you are using is right, you have to think like a customer. Is this what you are really offering people, or are you just breaking it down to get more traffic? If they come to your website because they typed in the keyword jewelry, and they are looking for fine jewelry but all you sell is beaded jewelry, they aren’t going to be happy. So think about what you really are selling and be more specific with your keywords.

2. Body text that is not optimized

Have you ever gone to a website where the homepage doesn’t have any text on it at all? How did you feel? Were you frustrated? Did you think it was unprofessional? If you did, you would be right.

In order to have a good website, you are going to need to have some good text on your homepage. People are going to want information and they are going to want it to be well written. When you have a webpage that is keyword rich, then you are going to have a better chance of having a high rank.

3. Submitting and resubmitting over and over again

You have completed your website and it’s been submitted to search engines, and now you are waiting. You have been patient for three long weeks and you aren’t seeing any traffic. You need to submit your websites, right? That would be a big mistake. Some web pages can take up to three months to get your site into the index. Check the submission times, sit back, and have patience.

Once you have gotten your website in, how often should you resubmit your site? Once a month, once a quarter, maybe? Never. You don’t need to resubmit your site. The truth is that you are going risk getting the URL of your website banned from search engines because you are “spamdexing”.

When you know the mistakes, you can avoid them and avoid doing things that could hurt your business.

One of the most difficult business aspects of online marketing is determining cost effectiveness. For two tiny little words, you actually need quite a lot of information to do this properly – you’ll need to know exactly what your online advertising spend is, and you’ll need to know how much it is returning you. Today we are looking at simple methods that every business can use to determine their online advertising spend, and either estimate their return in advance, or track return retrospectively.

Calculating online advertising spend

Most companies have sophisticated, detailed cost-tracking systems in place to account for expenses and analyze what money is going out. If you have access to this information, this is the preferred and most comprehensive way to get an idea of your online advertising costs, as it will include employee hours, incidentals, etc.

To estimate your online advertising spend in terms of PPC ads, though, there is a simple trick you can use with Google AdWords.

* In the AdWords Keyword Tool, select ‘Display estimated cost per click’.
* Select ‘exact match’ from the drop down menu to get a precise estimate of traffic levels.
* Multiply the search volume by ten percent to get your estimated number of clicks
* Multiply this number by the estimated cost per click to get a reasonable idea of your PPC online advertising spend

Calculating online advertising return

You can use the same information from Google AdWords Keyword Tool to estimate how much cash placing a top-spot bid for a certain keyword will return the company. You’ll need to know previous traffic statistics and conversion rates. Look at the past six months if figures, and get an average of how many people ‘converted’ on your site, compared to how many visited. You should have an idea of the value of a conversion to the company, so simply:

* Multiply your estimated number of clicks from step one, by your conversion rate (which can be obtained by dividing the number of conversions by overall traffic figures). This tells you around how many conversions you can expect from a top-spot ranking on Google’s paid listings.
* Multiply this number by the average value of conversion to your company, and you have an estimated return on your online advertising investment!