Online Search Marketing

For effective online search marketing, here are some SEO Basics:

Keywords:

Keyword phrases are the most important part of your strategy. You’re going to miss your target, but that’s OK. That’s web site development. That’s marketing.

You can cast a big net and grab everything or you can target a specific phrase. I favor a mixed portfolio. It increases your odds of some success. A mixed set of keyword phrases also ensures some commonality among keyword phrases like nature posters and nature posters for sale.

If you go broad, your opportunities to convert a visitor (prompt them to take some action) are more limited. The searcher may very well not be interested in what you offer. If you’re too specific, no one may be searching (or the search traffic may be rare).

Web Site Content for Online Search Marketing

You don’t have a Golden Rule for content and the number of times you need to mention a keyword phrase. Start with few and then add more. Overkill won’t cut it. Some people suggest having 250-500 words per page. I think that can vary site to site and depending on what keyword you’re targeting. I’ve received traffic with 50 keywords and had no traffic with 500.

Focus on page headers, subheads and info boxes (secondary navigation) to other parts of the web site. Search engines seem to like it when you cluster together related keywords and navigation).

Online Search Marketing Analysis:

You can’t look at data in a vacuum. The real story is in the multiple slices of data and how they relate. A keyword ranking is nothing if no one is searching. And a single web site visitor can be worthless or an invaluable piece of data. You need to know how often people search for your relevant phrase. For example, if you see that you only got one visitor, that may be good if you’re ranking #15 and 500 people search for your phrase each month. You can do more with the page that is ranking and create related pages to support that keyword phrase (to help you get on the first page of Google and get more of those 500 visitors). Or, if you’re already ranking #3 for the keyword phrase and you only got one visitor, it’s likely a keyword phrase people rarely use. So don’t dismiss low web site visitor traffic. Keep it in perspective. If the Google tool suggests that relevant search traffic is high and you’re in the ballpark with rankings, you can make some changes and get the web site traffic volume you want.

Learn More

2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors – SEOmoz
 

SEO

• Competition
• Domain age
• Keywords in domain
• Text navigation
• Number of pages
• Amount of content on a page
• Keyword themes (keyword focus on web site)
• Anchor text (linked words when cross-referencing pages)
• Inbound links (from other web sites)
• Alt tags (text associated with images)
• Page headers (like headlines – H1 code)
• Subheads
• Proximity and density of keywords on page (staggered or limited to one area)
• Info boxes (secondary navigation with closely related linked text)
• Page age
• Programming (prominence of text on page or text lost in mounds of programming)
• Page load time
• Splash page (bad for SEO, and limited value for visitors who leave or click on
• Skip Intro out of habit)
• Keywords in page URLs
• Web site traffic
• Social media (mentions of your web site)
• Future content (your capacity to add to the web site)

If you want to be successful at online search marketing, these are some of the many variables you need to consider.

Online Ad Spending to Increase

In a recent report, industry analyst eMarketer projects that the U.S. online advertising market will grow a great deal in 2011 – with spending increasing 20.2% to $31.3 billion by the end of the year. That’s a significant jump from last year when spending reached $26 billion – a 14.9% jump.

Although future increases aren’t expected to be as high, it’s a strong reminder about the power of the Internet in a down economy. People want opportunities, relevance, targeted marketing and measurement. Internet advertising delivers at all levels.

But the key isn’t to just spend the money and measure it. Businesses that look at these opportunities need to think long and hard about what they’re doing. A misstep along the way can doom the campaign.

Here are some tough questions to ask:

What is my brand?
Who am I trying to reach?
How will I measure success?
How does that affect my marketing objectives?
Will this impact my company’s bottom line? Can I prove it?
What am I promoting that’s better than what the other guy offers?
Who is making my creative? Does it really work?
What happens when they reach my landing page? Is it new or something refined?

“The internet has become as fundamental as television to advertisers,” said eMarketer principal analyst David Hallerman. “As consumers continue to increase their time spent online and as the resurgent economy continues to bolster ad budgets, we’re going to continue to see an influx of dollars toward the internet. More ad formats, such as video, and more channels, especially social media and mobile, are also key contributors to the spending gains.”

How to Choose a Proper Web Site Hosting Service

To Pay or Not to Pay; That Is the Question.

The first consideration when choosing a web site hosting service is simple: free or paid service. Free service providers have restrictions. Maximum file sizes, ad banners, limits on file types, and some deploy frames. SEO proponents counsel avoiding frames because they can be a rank-killer with search engines; others argue that properly used frames make no difference. A link about frames follows this article. The bandwidth of free providers varies and is known, at least for some of them, for crawling to a literal halt at times. Paid providers offer more bandwidth and storage space, better tech support, and numerous customization options free providers lack.

Server OS and Languages

The operating system and the programming language that is used by a web host matters. If you code Windows-only apps with VB, ASP and similar languages, Windows servers are necessary. UNIX-based hosts outperform its Windows counterparts across the board. As far as languages, PHP, Perl and Ruby are some of the most common to work with web site hosting. Ruby on Rails hosting with a Ruby language base, is very beneficial to work with, as it can help optimize website speed and customize configurations, two important aspects to have with web site hosting.

Bandwidth, Space, Access Options

How much bandwidth does a new site need? Estimates range from 2.5 to 3.5 gigs. Do you expect your site to have a visitor explosion, higher search engine ranking, and increased sales? Upgrade to four or five gigs. Sudden spikes in web traffic increase your costs with paid providers, so scalable bandwidth plans are a must for those who wish to grow.

Disk space: How much is optimal? That decision depends on the content hosted. What will be hosted, text, audio or video files, or streaming services? A tight estimate to extrapolate from: 1MB of disk space equals about thirty pages sans A/V files.

Downloadable content is handled by FTP or anonymous FTP. If you have apps or files for others to download, add this option to your checklist. UNIX-based hosts (including Solaris, Linux and BSD distributions) require the use of Telnet or SSH for access. If you have never used SSH, fear not. If you can program or script in any language, learning SSH is a breeze.

Sites that sell services or products need a way for customers to pay. Security of these transactions is a must, and handled by SSL. However, SSL is unnecessary for non-commercial blogs or sites.

Additional Web Site Hosting Service Concerns

Variants of SQL communicate with databases. This is imperative for running a good blog or implementing content management systems (CMS). Some CMS scripts modify XML and text files, while others work with databases.

The quality of tech support service is critical. Are they available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, especially on holidays? Holiday customer purchase spikes happen. It makes no difference if a business is brick-and-mortar or click-and-order. Prompt and competent tech support availability is crucial during holiday purchasing sprees. Other major determinations must be made regarding tech support. Can you modify passwords, email accounts and other critical settings without having to wait for the approval of tech support? You should be able to perform such common tasks on your own site without permission.

Show Me the Money

In this type of investment a dichotomy rears its ugly head: You don’t always get what you pay for, and, you get what you pay for. Establishing your site’s needs renders these diametric quips trivial. Client review is a decent tool for aiding a decision about how much to pay. Compare satisfactory reviews with unsatisfactory. Keep an eye out for scalability in pricing plans. You will need a flexible plan when your site tops the search engines.

Web Marketing Strategy – Social Media

You can do a lot with social media, including:

• Establish a Facebook profile
• Maintain Facebook with the latest news
• Establish  blog with the company branding
• Update blog with on a regular basis
• Establish LinkedIn profile
• Create a Twitter account
• Post to Twitter, follow others on Twitter

You can make the most of your social media efforts by identifying the types of people/companies that you want us to focus on.

In addition, you can:

- Promote social media among employees;  invite them to Like/Follow on your business on Facebook
- Ask employees’ family and friends to Like/Follow
- Invite customers to follow your business on Facebook
- Ask employees to establish and update Linked In profiles so they link to your business

Social media opportunities for your web marketing strategy:

Social Oomph
Objective Marketing
Buddy Media
Virtue
Ripple6
SpredFast
TubeMogul
CoTweet
HootSuite
Radian6
KickApps
SocialToo
Ping.fm
Social Mention
FriendFeed
Filtrbox
Popular Media
Social Meter
uberVU
Trendpedia