Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing refers to the practice of getting your company listed with the various search engines and appearing in the results of an internet search. Search engine marketing is an essential practice in today's online world, and this site will explain this topic in depth.
Search Engine Marketing - Overview
Search engine marketing involves getting your website listed with the many search engines available. Having your website listed means that when someone does a search for something they need, such as flowers or gift baskets, then your website will come up in the search results as a possible lead on what they are looking for. Clicking the link on the results page will take them directly to your website, and hopefully end in a sale.
To gain any kind of success through search engine marketing, people have to be able to find your website. By implementing the tools to optimize your website, either through software programs or with a search engine marketing firm, your website will become more accessible to potential customers and visitors.
To get your website in the search engines, you not only need to have a website optimized for them, you need to work on getting your link onto other websites. This can be done through link exchanges, buying ad space, or even posting for free on website directories or on the classifieds page. However, placing your link on a website that has a low ranking in the search engines isn’t going to help you much. The higher-ranking websites will ensure that your link will be seen, because they have a lot of traffic, are crawled by spiders, and will bring up your ad or link on the search engines when someone does a search.
Search engine marketing is one of the best options you have for getting noticed online. Your website is just a speck, on the virtually endless World Wide Web, and without the help of search engine marketing, no one would even know you exist.
Search Engines
According to registereverywhere.com, there are roughly 240 search engines in the world and only about 12 of those are considered to be major search engines. The most popular ones being Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, Altavista, Netscape, Lycos. Hotbot, AOL, Iwon, LookSmart, and OpenSource Directory.
Your search engine marketing efforts should include getting your website listed in the top engines. Most of them will allow webmasters to submit their link to the engine for free, or you can hire a search engine marketing firm to do it for you. Hiring someone will usually ensure that your website will achieve high rankings due to the optimization work that is done on your website, and because it is a paid service, you will get your website in the search engine’s sponsored listings.
Search engines use software programs that are referred to as robots, spiders, and crawlers to index your website in the engine. The software automatically follows links around the web and sends all the information back to the engine to be indexed. That’s why it may take a few days for new information on your website to be updated in the search engine. The amount of time it takes to get your website initially indexed depends on the engine itself.
Search Engine Optimization
All search engine marketing work should involve SEO (search engine optimization) to achieve good rankings. Good rankings result in a lot of traffic to your website. Search engine optimization is something you can do yourself, or you can hire a professional to do it for you.
SEO includes choosing the best keywords and key phrases for your website, the less competitive they are (infrequently used by other webmasters), the better chance you have of getting decent rankings. Do a search of your competitors and find out what keywords they are using, and then try to come up with different ones. Think about the kinds of keywords and key phrases that you type into a search engine search box, what would you type in if you were looking for the product or service that you sell?
Title tag descriptions. These are the words that appear at the top of your web browser in the blue box. Again, look at what your competition is putting up there. Avoid using your website’s business name; instead use words that describe your website’s content. The html for the title tags is this, Every Pizza Dough Recipe You Could Ever Want in One Cookbook.
Description tags. This should explain to your visitors what your website is all about, because this is the description that shows up on the search engine results page. Keep it short and sweet, entice your readers to click on your link to go to your website, because if they do, they will find what they want. The html code for your description is,
Keyword tags. Using the html, List your chosen keywords and key phrases in order from most important to least important, and use the keywords you list here throughout your website’s actual content.
Headlines. These help search engines figure out how significant your content is, and also make it easier for your visitors to find what they are looking for. Your headlines should look like this, Pizza Dough Recipes use the appropriate number according to your font size, the higher the number, the bigger the font.
Alt tags. This is a commonly forgotten form of SEO, and refers to your website’s image descriptions. A lot of search engines use the alt tags to ensure that your website is listed under the right search terms. If you move your mouse over an image on your website, a box should show up with a short description of the image. Include your keywords or key phrases in the brief description of your image. Alt tags can be added into the body of your website locating where each image is (it will start like this
Naming pages. The names of your pages throughout the website should be descriptive and describe what is on that particular page using hyphens to separate them. For example, pizzadoughrecipes.com/our-famous-cookbook.html accurately describes what is on that page, and may help when it comes to search engine marketing.
Good content. Placing a lot of well written, informative articles, fact sheets, checklists, etc., using your keywords, key phrases, and descriptions can help make your website search engine friendly.
Website layout. Having a nicely laid out website will make it easier for your visitors to find their way around your pages, not to mention user friendly for search engine robots, spiders, and crawlers to index your content.
Links. Get your link listed on other good ranking websites that are related to your website’s content. Even having a few links on other high-quality websites can increase your search engine rankings.
Page Ranking
Ideally, the better the page ranking you have, the more traffic you will get. Page ranking is determined by links, the more links there are pointing to your website, especially from pages that are considered important, will tell the search engine that your website is important also, therefore boosting your website higher in the search engines.
The better the page ranking you have means that your website will be brought up, hopefully, on the first three pages on results for your chosen keywords and key phrases when someone does a search. Anything past the first three pages means that the chances of your website being seen by the searcher are slim. Increasing your back links (your link on other websites) will improve your search engine marketing success.
Keywords and Key Phrases
Keywords and key phrases are the words that people type into a search engine’s search bar to find what they want. If your website has the keyword the visitor has typed in, it will bring up your website’s listing in the results. Using your keywords throughout your website’s content, in the title tags, alt tags, description tags, and many back links will all give your website a better page rank in the results.
Use a free program to find out how many other webmasters are using the same keywords and key phrases you want to use. The less there are, the better your chances are of getting your website seen in a search engines results.
Link Exchanges and Website Advertising
Exchanging links are a great way to build up back links that point to your website, allowing search engines to follow all those back links to your website, thus improving your website’s importance. To get the best results from link exchanges, be sure to exchange links that relate to yours. For example, if you sell parenting books, exchanging links with parenting websites will get you more traffic from their website visitors (who will be parents), and will build your popularity in the search engines. Link exchanges do mean, however, that you must place a link of the website you are exchanging with on your website in return. You may want to place these links on a resource page on your website, and by choosing to exchange links with related content to your website, will prove beneficial to your visitors.
Website advertising means purchasing ad space on another website. This can be a text, banner, or button ad. Choose the websites you purchase advertising from carefully. Does it relate to your website? Are their visitors likely to click on your ad? Again, if you sell parenting books, buying ad space on a quality parenting site will likely prove worthwhile, because your target market is the same as theirs, which is parents. Most websites come with stat programs that will allow you to view your visitor’s comings and goings. Use the program to find out how many clicks you are getting from the website you have purchased ad space from. If it doesn’t turn out to be enough to be worth the cost of the space, you may want to re-think the kind of space you buy and from whom. The high-quality websites will cost more in advertising, because they are so popular, but it could be worth it in the long run, because of the amount of traffic they send your way.
Your search engine marketing efforts should place importance on both link exchanges and purchased ad space, because it can place you higher in the search engines.
Pay-Per-Clicks (PPC)
Google adwords is a very popular and well known pay-per-click program. It costs nothing to set up an account, but once you have selected your keywords and key phrases, you will need to decide how much you want to pay for each person who clicks on your website. You may want to pay just .5 cents for every person, or $50, whatever you choose is up to you. Pay-per-click program fees can add up fast, which means wracking up hundreds or even thousands of dollars a day on advertising fees. However, most programs allow you to set up a daily or monthly spending limit. That means you can choose to pay .25 cents per click, but set a limit of $50 per day, or $100 per month. This program gets you good listings in the search engines, based on your keyword and key phrase selections, but it can also be costly.
Article and Press Release Submission Sites
Writing and submitting articles has become a huge form of search engine marketing on the Internet for today’s business people. Articles are written on something related to their business and submitted to the vast array of free articles sites. This may not seem like a simple article could do much of anything, but it actually works to increase your search engine rankings.
Write good, informative articles and do a search for article sites that have good search engine rankings to increase your chances of visibility. Your article will need to include an author’s resource box at the end. This box should contain information about you, your business, and always include your website address. Be sure to use the http:// to ensure that it will show up properly.
While you write your article, include your website’s relevant keywords and key phrases throughout. But avoid making the entire article sound like an ad. Most submission sites will need to approve your article before listing it, and an ad for an article won’t suffice.
By submitting your articles to these sites, you are allowing other people to use them in their personal and business newsletters, on their websites and blogs, and even in print publications. But wherever it ends up, your website’s link is in the author’s resource box and must be included wherever it gets used. This results in building up your back links and makes your website more important to the search engines. Your work will also show up from the article submission website it is listed on, if someone does a search that relates to your article’s content.
Press releases are also a great form of search engine marketing, and you don’t have to be a large business to reap the benefits of them. There are many press release submission sites that you can submit your release to. To achieve the best results, write and submit a new press release each month. If you don’t know how to write one, hire someone to do it for you.
There are many things happening with a business that can be announced in a press release, such as a fundraising event, a special sale, a new employee, etc. If you have something happening, write up a press release about it and submit.
As always, include your website’s address (use the http://) so that people who read your press release can easily visit your website, and to get your link seen by the search engines who visit the press release sites.
Search Engine Marketing Firms
There are thousands of search engine marketing firms out there. They can save you precious work time by doing all the work for you so that you can focus on running your business. The prices can range from $50 all the way up to thousands, depending on the extent of the services you require. When considering a search engine marketing firm, always do your research to make sure it is worth the cost.
Do they have a proven track record? Do they have a lot of satisfied clients and can you talk to them personally? What sort of guarantees do they have, if any? How long does it take the firm to complete your order? What is their customer service like; can they be contacted quickly and easily? Make price and package comparisons with your top firm choices; does one offer a better package for the same or cheaper price?
a search engine marketing firm carefully will ensure that you are getting the promised results for your money.
Search engine marketing is a must for every website that exists on the web today. If you do not intend to put some work or money into getting listed in the search engines, you might as well not have a website, because no one will be able to find it otherwise.
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