Search engine marketing is a strategic form of Internet marketing that promotes a website’s visibility in search engines. This can be done using a variety of methods and tools, but the overall idea is to help a website get in front of customers searching for it.
There are different ways to market your website and a campaign that works well for one client may not work well for yours.
At YourAdTeam, your website is developed using a multi-dimensional strategy uniquely tailored to your needs and specifically crafted to speak to your target market.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be defined as a set of methodologies that make it easier for search engines to find, index, categorize and rank web content.
According to a recent ad effectiveness survey, SEO is the most effective online marketing tactic for generating conversions.
Here’s a basic SEO checklist to help ensure that your website is search engine optimized:
I came, I puked, I left!….this pretty much sums up the term bounce rate, or the rate at which people visit your site and leave right away. So, how do you prevent that swift click that terminates your chance to sell a prospective customer and takes her to your competitor’s offer?
The secret lies in the first seven seconds!The single most important change to fixing a page is eliminating confusion in the first few seconds a visitor spends on your landing page.
Remember, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve invested in your shopping cart, incentive, or even product if your visitors don’t stay on your site long enough to learn about them.
Throughout history, there has been a gradual shift in what determines one’s wealth and stature:
Early on, those who held possession of land were the ones with wealth.
Then, during the Industrial Age, the wealthy were those who owned factories.
Today, information is often the key determinant in one’s wealth and position. As the old saying goes, knowledge is power!!! So, the more you know, the farther you can go in life!
The same is true for your business success!
Ready to apply this principle to every area of your business, from advertising to social media to web design? Contact Bradley Lattin
“Outbound marketing” is where a marketer pushes his message out far and wide hoping that it resonates with that needle in the haystack. Some examples include trade shows, seminar series, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and advertising.
Rather than do outbound marketing to the masses of people who are trying to block you out, I advocate doing “inbound marketing” where you help yourself “get found” by people already learning about and shopping in your industry. In order to do this, you need to set your website up like a “hub” for your industry that attracts visitors naturally through the search engines, through the blogosphere, and through the social media sites.
I believe most marketers today spend 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and 10% on inbound marketing and I advocate that those ratios flip.
More internet marketing techniques to get you going….
Text links almost always outperform banner ads as advertising techniques because they look more like content and people are used to clicking on content (text links) far more than ads.
Internet display ads perform best with Flash animation, motion, or video.
The eye reads top left to bottom right and that impacts your click-through rate depending on where your text links or display ads are on the page.
The page upon which the consumer clicks is just as important as the ad or link that got them there.
Improving or optimizing your own pages and your own site has more impact than optimizing your advertising techniques in text links or display ads.
Don’t assume that just because you built a website people will visit it.
Thinking about advertising on the internet? Check out these simple techniques to get started:
The most powerful advertising technique on the Internet is showing up in organic search results (ideally first page, in the first three results).
Using sites such as Wordtracker.com is currently your best tool, along with Pay Per Click suggestion tools (from Google, etc), to discover which search terms get the most search volume.
If your website is really not working for you, here are some points to think about.
- Keep your website fresh.
- Monitor the effectiveness of your website.
- Collect analytics to see if you need to change what you’re doing.
- Re-evaluate your goals for your website.
- Listen to your customers that go to your website.
- Keep new products / services in front of your website visitors.
- Have your website re-designed by professionals.
Seven more difficult and important questions you need to answer before you spend a dime on your website makeover or website development:
1) Is there ongoing news and updates that need to be presented to people?
2) Do we want people to call us?
3) How many times a month would we like people to come by? For how long?
4) Who needs to update this site? How often?
5) Does showing up in the search engines matter? If so, for what terms? At what cost?
6) How much money do we have to spend? How much time?
7) Does the organization understand that ‘everything’ is not an option?
At the end of the day, who you hire to assist in your website development or makeover is just as important as any of these questions.
Seven difficult and important questions you need to answer before you spend a dime on your website makeover or website development:
1) What is the goal of the site? In other words, when it’s working great, what specific outcomes will occur?
2) Who are we trying to please? If it’s the boss, what does the boss want? Are we trying to impress a certain kind of person?
3) Who are we trying to reach? Be specific.
4) Are we trying to close sales? Are we telling a story?
5) Are we earning permission to follow up?
6) Do we need people to spread the word using various social media tools?
7) How do people find the site? Are they looking to answer a specific question?
In addition to these seven questions, the most important question is “Who?” Who fits best with your company to develop your Web site or makeover your Web site? Who can help you answer these and other questions you’ll have?
