Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Your website is a representative of your company. Think of it as your best employee. It has to always represent you the best way possible. You want it to have critical information like what you do, where you do it, your business name and probably some contact information like a phone number, physical address and email. But do you know how and where that information should be displayed? Better yet, do you know why?
Your website has to serve two audiences. The first is your human audience; an endless pool of potential customers who want to read compelling copy set inside well designed architecture complemented with alluring pictures and easy to navigate forms and features.
The trouble is your second audience. This audience is comprised of a handful of Search Engines who will automatically read (crawl) your website using self-contained software programs (known as spiders, robots or bots) and send the information it deems important back to the home base. The robots who crawl your website can’t see your pictures and don’t understand visually stimulating graphic design. They only care about the information and the structure.
The idea is to make all of your important information readily available to people already at your website and the people who are actively searching for it online. In serving two masters, the balancing act of providing accurate information to both humans and robots becomes both an art and a science.
SEM + SEO
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an umbrella term to describe any efforts used in order to drive more traffic to a specific website or web page. These efforts can generally be divided into two groups; paid and non-paid (more commonly referred to as Organic). To begin, let’s focus on the Organic side of SEM. This refers to all the things you can do to your website that make it easier to be indexed and catalogued by the major Search Engines. These collected practices and concepts are commonly referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Internet Landscape
Google accounts for over 50% of all searches online. This is an overwhelming market share. Yahoo is the second largest with somewhere around 30%. Four other players account for about 15% of all search traffic. These are: MSN, Ask.com, AOL and Local.com. These six Search Engines are referred to as Tier 1 Search Engines. Hundreds of others make up the remaining few percentage points. Throughout this article I will often refer solely to Google. When I do this please know I am referring to all of these large search engines. Google is the industry leader but the others are very similar (overall) to Google. Google is also the innovation leader, so at least for now, look to them to lead the way. However, bargains in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can be had at other search engines.
Search Engines
The way a search engine works is that it indexes websites and web pages according to certain criteria such as unique content, traffic, links and age of a website. Most of these factors can be put under the heading of Relevance (content), Authority (tags and age) and Popularity (traffic). Most of the Tier 1 Search Engines have developed complex and lengthy algorithms to measure this information. Each part of your website is factored in to the equation.
Page Rank
Google has gone a step further and compiled this information into a simple number known as a Page Rank. This information is scored or “weighted” by their algorithm. This algorithm produces an overall score for a website or web page. All websites are ranked from 0 to 10. Everyone starts with a 0 (zero). Only Google itself scores a 10 (ten). ++Update Feb. 2009 - CNN.com now has a ten (10) ++ Google gives Yahoo a 9 (nine). You can, without paid help, attain a Page Rank of 3 (three) or 4 (four) within a year or so.
Search Engines quantify such extant factors as:
• volume of incoming links from related websites • quantity and quality of content • technical precision of source code • spelling • functional v. broken hyperlinks • volume and consistency of searches and/or viewer traffic • time within website • page views • revisits • click-throughs • technical user-features • uniqueness • redundancy • relevance • advertising revenue yield • freshness and other intrinsic characteristics
In order to see what PageRank different website have, you need to download and install the Google toolbar. This is a must for anyone who is interested in Search Engine Optimization.
Google Toolbar
Searching
When you do a search on Google you type in text and then press “Search” and what you get is called a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This is broken out into two main sections; paid and non-paid results. All reputable websites differentiate between paid and non-paid (Organic) results. Some people pay for the privilege of being on top and some do it through SEO but it’s usually a combination of the two
Organic Content
This is everything you do on your website to increase your ranking on the Search Engines. These are the main tools of SEO. This includes everything that you have created, designed, developed and produced.
Specifically, this includes your copy, your images, your links, keywords and your tags. Before you begin any kind of website design or paid campaign, you need to assess what your specific goals are and how they can be turned into keywords.
Keywords
Keywords are the cornerstone of any SEO program. These are words and phrases that help describe and represent your business. These are what you do and where you do it. These are also how people will find you using Search Engines. Think of all the possible ways people might find you online.
Once you have identified these keywords, you should create a strategy to seed them in your website in a logical manner. If the keyword use does not make sense to a human, it will make less sense to a robot.
The more you use a certain keyword, the more Google thinks that word is important to you and must be part of your core competency. They will then weigh it more heavily in their algorithm to asses your website and the relevance it has for a search string.
Related to keywords are tags. Tags are hidden indicators on a webpage that tell the crawlers what to expect.
Site Index/Site Map
A Site Index, or Site Map is a graphical representation of a website that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.
Links
Search Engines like your website to have links. Links to websites related to your industry are best. It has been said that of Organic content, links represent over 50% of what Google and Yahoo deem important in terms of website information.
There are many kinds of links. The best kind is an Inbound link from a website with a high Page Rank. Having websites linking to you means you have some Authority online which can translate into higher exposure.
Social Media
There are many ways to drive traffic that occur away from your website. This is often referred to as Off-Page SEO. Generating inbound links from relevant websites is often the first step. Theh igher the PageRank of the linking website, the better. Make sure that the website linking to you is relevant to your website. A good system is to have clients link to you as part of your Terms and Conditions.
A great next step is to develop a presence on Social Networking and Social Media websites. These are great places to meet users with common interests and to create and share relevant interests and content. Good Social Networking websites include Facebook.com, 43things.com, and LinkedIn.com.
There are also Social News websites where people share articles and videos and other user-generated content. These include: Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com. There are of course many different Social Media websites available to the determined marketer.
The best way to find your niche is to do research. Always remember when trying to get your message across to others to be low key. Never be obnoxious about branding your website or company and and only try to utilize relevant websites and groups.
You can share ideas with visitors and attempt to gain a recurring audience by writing and updating a blog from your website. Or you could develop a subscription list for newsletters and email blasts. Whatever feels more comfortable to you and your business. If you want to be successful, The most important thing is to make sure the content you are transmitting is relevant to your company and your audience.
This will not only build recurring traffic to your website but it will also get other websites to link to you. It's very important to keep a schedule if you are going to publish unique content.
Analytics
Every website has analytics. These are statistics (or metrics) of your website and should be contained in your Log Files. These should be provided by your web host and accessible by your webmaster. Analytics are the best way to track progress on your website. you can monitor and benchmark activity on each individual web page in your website. This is especially useful when testing different content or Landing Pages. These are often referred to as Key Performance Indicators (KPI). These should include:
• Number of unique visitors – tracks by IP address and within certain timeframe. More accurate than hits and can tell you about repeat visitors. • Average time spent on your website. • Page views. Paid analytics companies might provide other information like: • Sales conversion rates • Shopping cart/Order Form abandonment rate • Search strings – what the user typed into search engine to find you. • Entry site – what website user was at before your website. These metrics let you know how effective your website is to a visitor. These are also a great way to monitor an online advertising campaign.
Paid Search
Paid SEM is when you buy AdWords or PPC (pay per click) services from a Search Engine like Google or Yahoo. These can be extremely helpful whether a website is selling products and services or directing online traffic to a physical location.
The basic concept is that you pay (through an established account) when users get to your website via clicking from another site. The sponsored links are comprised of keyword phrases. These can cost between 5 cents and $100 dollars (depending on your bid) every time a unique individual clicks through to your targeted web page (or landing page) through a sponsored link. The higher your bid, the more likely your ad will appear at or near the top of a SERP. How much you bid is not necessarily the most important factor in determining your PPC ad ranking.
Quality Score
Google uses another algorithm to determine a Quality Score for every advertisement that is submitted. They consider factors like relevance and click through rate (CTR).
Google and others are very good at determining which ads have the higher click through rate (CTR). They will run a well-written $1 ad all day long that has a 2% click through rate against a $2 ad that has a .75% click through rate because it not only makes them more money but it is more popular with users. The more popular an ad is with users shows that the ad had a lot of relevance to the Search String and therefore means those users will come back because they have found what they wanted.
This is why it is so important to get your website optimized for search engines. Once you start spending money, you want your website to be relevant to what your PPC campaign is advertising. Do the keywords in your ad copy match the keyword on your landing webpage? The more they match, the more relevant your ad is to Google. The higher your relevancy, the higher your Quality Score.
Does your ad copy motivate people to click on your ads more often or less often than similar ads in your industry? The higher your click-through rate (CTR), the higher your Quality Score.
What are you bidding to pay for certain keywords? If you bid too low, your placement may be too low for most users to see your ad. However, even if you bid the highest, you are not guaranteed number one placement. If Google knows your CTR is three times higher than a competitor who bid twice as much per keyword, then they will generally favor your ad more because the Quality Score of your CTR trumps the bid. They also make more money this way.
So before you do any kind of paid campaign you need to do your homework and figure how much a new client is worth to you. Figure that a click-through rate of customer conversion is less than 1% to start. This means that for every 100 people that click through to your website, at best, only one of them will become a customer. You can increase that rate over time as you improve your advertising copy and your website.
User Experience (UX)
A website should always have a purpose. Whether that purpose is to direct vistors to buy your birdfeeder or collect email addresses for a marketing campaign, the overall plan remains the same. Users to your website must have a clear path to accomplish these goals.
In order to build these paths, a website must be free of Friction. Friction is anything that will give a user pause or raise doubt as to whether they should complete their intended goal. A website must be full of reassuring copy and follow several simple rules.
The first is the 5 second Rule. This is also known as the 4 second rule, the 7 second rule, etc. This rule stipulates that if a complete stranger were to land on any one of your web pages, would he or she know what the focus of that page was within the referenced time period? In other words, a web page has to be clear and concise to be easily understood while at the same time be compelling to keep the user's attention.
Other User Excellence guidelines include the One Page Payoff. This is the practice of making sure that anything that is highlighted or advertised on your website be accessible in One Click. A website cannot drag a user through several web pages to attain the advertised item. If a web pages has a form with a "Click Here" button to sign up for a free webinar, you cannot have interstitial ads or other promotions interrupt the clear path to the stated goal. This turns users off in gigantic numbers.
Your website should be simple and clear and leave visitors with a sense of satisfaction. Chances are, they found your website through a Search Engine query or maybe a personal recommendation. Either way, they visited your website for a reason. You need to let them achieve their purpose. If they do so in a seamless fashion, they are twice as likely to return and also tell others about their positive user experience.
Control Your Information
When you create your own website, it’s critical to make sure your business information is well presented so people can find it. You need to make sure that everyone who is looking for you can find you. Everything starts with identifying the goals for your website.
Are you launching an ecommerce platform? Generating sales leads? Are you publicizing events? Increasing ad revenue? Driving traffic to a physical location? These are all scenarios that require different plans. Whatever you’re doing online, you need to develop a specific strategy.
Please call (773) 360-1459 for a free estimate. Our services are more affordable than you might think.
Your website is a representative of your company. Think of it as your best employee. It has to always represent you the best way possible. You want it to have critical information like what you do, where you do it, your business name and probably some contact information like a phone number, physical address and email. But do you know how and where that information should be displayed? Better yet, do you know why?
Your website has to serve two audiences. The first is your human audience; an endless pool of potential customers who want to read compelling copy set inside well designed architecture complemented with alluring pictures and easy to navigate forms and features.
The trouble is your second audience. This audience is comprised of a handful of Search Engines who will automatically read (crawl) your website using self-contained software programs (known as spiders, robots or bots) and send the information it deems important back to the home base. The robots who crawl your website can’t see your pictures and don’t understand visually stimulating graphic design. They only care about the information and the structure.
The idea is to make all of your important information readily available to people already at your website and the people who are actively searching for it online. In serving two masters, the balancing act of providing accurate information to both humans and robots becomes both an art and a science.
SEM + SEO
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an umbrella term to describe any efforts used in order to drive more traffic to a specific website or web page. These efforts can generally be divided into two groups; paid and non-paid (more commonly referred to as Organic). To begin, let’s focus on the Organic side of SEM. This refers to all the things you can do to your website that make it easier to be indexed and catalogued by the major Search Engines. These collected practices and concepts are commonly referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Internet Landscape
Google accounts for over 50% of all searches online. This is an overwhelming market share. Yahoo is the second largest with somewhere around 30%. Four other players account for about 15% of all search traffic. These are: MSN, Ask.com, AOL and Local.com. These six Search Engines are referred to as Tier 1 Search Engines. Hundreds of others make up the remaining few percentage points. Throughout this article I will often refer solely to Google. When I do this please know I am referring to all of these large search engines. Google is the industry leader but the others are very similar (overall) to Google. Google is also the innovation leader, so at least for now, look to them to lead the way. However, bargains in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can be had at other search engines.
Search Engines
The way a search engine works is that it indexes websites and web pages according to certain criteria such as unique content, traffic, links and age of a website. Most of these factors can be put under the heading of Relevance (content), Authority (tags and age) and Popularity (traffic). Most of the Tier 1 Search Engines have developed complex and lengthy algorithms to measure this information. Each part of your website is factored in to the equation.
Page Rank
Google has gone a step further and compiled this information into a simple number known as a Page Rank. This information is scored or “weighted” by their algorithm. This algorithm produces an overall score for a website or web page. All websites are ranked from 0 to 10. Everyone starts with a 0 (zero). Only Google itself scores a 10 (ten). ++Update Feb. 2009 - CNN.com now has a ten (10) ++ Google gives Yahoo a 9 (nine). You can, without paid help, attain a Page Rank of 3 (three) or 4 (four) within a year or so.
Search Engines quantify such extant factors as:
• volume of incoming links from related websites • quantity and quality of content • technical precision of source code • spelling • functional v. broken hyperlinks • volume and consistency of searches and/or viewer traffic • time within website • page views • revisits • click-throughs • technical user-features • uniqueness • redundancy • relevance • advertising revenue yield • freshness and other intrinsic characteristics
In order to see what PageRank different website have, you need to download and install the Google toolbar. This is a must for anyone who is interested in Search Engine Optimization.
Google Toolbar
Searching
When you do a search on Google you type in text and then press “Search” and what you get is called a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This is broken out into two main sections; paid and non-paid results. All reputable websites differentiate between paid and non-paid (Organic) results. Some people pay for the privilege of being on top and some do it through SEO but it’s usually a combination of the two
Organic Content
This is everything you do on your website to increase your ranking on the Search Engines. These are the main tools of SEO. This includes everything that you have created, designed, developed and produced.
Specifically, this includes your copy, your images, your links, keywords and your tags. Before you begin any kind of website design or paid campaign, you need to assess what your specific goals are and how they can be turned into keywords.
Keywords
Keywords are the cornerstone of any SEO program. These are words and phrases that help describe and represent your business. These are what you do and where you do it. These are also how people will find you using Search Engines. Think of all the possible ways people might find you online.
Once you have identified these keywords, you should create a strategy to seed them in your website in a logical manner. If the keyword use does not make sense to a human, it will make less sense to a robot.
The more you use a certain keyword, the more Google thinks that word is important to you and must be part of your core competency. They will then weigh it more heavily in their algorithm to asses your website and the relevance it has for a search string.
Related to keywords are tags. Tags are hidden indicators on a webpage that tell the crawlers what to expect.
Site Index/Site Map
A Site Index, or Site Map is a graphical representation of a website that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.
Links
Search Engines like your website to have links. Links to websites related to your industry are best. It has been said that of Organic content, links represent over 50% of what Google and Yahoo deem important in terms of website information.
There are many kinds of links. The best kind is an Inbound link from a website with a high Page Rank. Having websites linking to you means you have some Authority online which can translate into higher exposure.
Social Media
There are many ways to drive traffic that occur away from your website. This is often referred to as Off-Page SEO. Generating inbound links from relevant websites is often the first step. Theh igher the PageRank of the linking website, the better. Make sure that the website linking to you is relevant to your website. A good system is to have clients link to you as part of your Terms and Conditions.
A great next step is to develop a presence on Social Networking and Social Media websites. These are great places to meet users with common interests and to create and share relevant interests and content. Good Social Networking websites include Facebook.com, 43things.com, and LinkedIn.com.
There are also Social News websites where people share articles and videos and other user-generated content. These include: Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com. There are of course many different Social Media websites available to the determined marketer.
The best way to find your niche is to do research. Always remember when trying to get your message across to others to be low key. Never be obnoxious about branding your website or company and and only try to utilize relevant websites and groups.
You can share ideas with visitors and attempt to gain a recurring audience by writing and updating a blog from your website. Or you could develop a subscription list for newsletters and email blasts. Whatever feels more comfortable to you and your business. If you want to be successful, The most important thing is to make sure the content you are transmitting is relevant to your company and your audience.
This will not only build recurring traffic to your website but it will also get other websites to link to you. It's very important to keep a schedule if you are going to publish unique content.
Analytics
Every website has analytics. These are statistics (or metrics) of your website and should be contained in your Log Files. These should be provided by your web host and accessible by your webmaster. Analytics are the best way to track progress on your website. you can monitor and benchmark activity on each individual web page in your website. This is especially useful when testing different content or Landing Pages. These are often referred to as Key Performance Indicators (KPI). These should include:
• Number of unique visitors – tracks by IP address and within certain timeframe. More accurate than hits and can tell you about repeat visitors. • Average time spent on your website. • Page views. Paid analytics companies might provide other information like: • Sales conversion rates • Shopping cart/Order Form abandonment rate • Search strings – what the user typed into search engine to find you. • Entry site – what website user was at before your website. These metrics let you know how effective your website is to a visitor. These are also a great way to monitor an online advertising campaign.
Paid Search
Paid SEM is when you buy AdWords or PPC (pay per click) services from a Search Engine like Google or Yahoo. These can be extremely helpful whether a website is selling products and services or directing online traffic to a physical location.
The basic concept is that you pay (through an established account) when users get to your website via clicking from another site. The sponsored links are comprised of keyword phrases. These can cost between 5 cents and $100 dollars (depending on your bid) every time a unique individual clicks through to your targeted web page (or landing page) through a sponsored link. The higher your bid, the more likely your ad will appear at or near the top of a SERP. How much you bid is not necessarily the most important factor in determining your PPC ad ranking.
Quality Score
Google uses another algorithm to determine a Quality Score for every advertisement that is submitted. They consider factors like relevance and click through rate (CTR).
Google and others are very good at determining which ads have the higher click through rate (CTR). They will run a well-written $1 ad all day long that has a 2% click through rate against a $2 ad that has a .75% click through rate because it not only makes them more money but it is more popular with users. The more popular an ad is with users shows that the ad had a lot of relevance to the Search String and therefore means those users will come back because they have found what they wanted.
This is why it is so important to get your website optimized for search engines. Once you start spending money, you want your website to be relevant to what your PPC campaign is advertising. Do the keywords in your ad copy match the keyword on your landing webpage? The more they match, the more relevant your ad is to Google. The higher your relevancy, the higher your Quality Score.
Does your ad copy motivate people to click on your ads more often or less often than similar ads in your industry? The higher your click-through rate (CTR), the higher your Quality Score.
What are you bidding to pay for certain keywords? If you bid too low, your placement may be too low for most users to see your ad. However, even if you bid the highest, you are not guaranteed number one placement. If Google knows your CTR is three times higher than a competitor who bid twice as much per keyword, then they will generally favor your ad more because the Quality Score of your CTR trumps the bid. They also make more money this way.
So before you do any kind of paid campaign you need to do your homework and figure how much a new client is worth to you. Figure that a click-through rate of customer conversion is less than 1% to start. This means that for every 100 people that click through to your website, at best, only one of them will become a customer. You can increase that rate over time as you improve your advertising copy and your website.
User Experience (UX)
A website should always have a purpose. Whether that purpose is to direct vistors to buy your birdfeeder or collect email addresses for a marketing campaign, the overall plan remains the same. Users to your website must have a clear path to accomplish these goals.
In order to build these paths, a website must be free of Friction. Friction is anything that will give a user pause or raise doubt as to whether they should complete their intended goal. A website must be full of reassuring copy and follow several simple rules.
The first is the 5 second Rule. This is also known as the 4 second rule, the 7 second rule, etc. This rule stipulates that if a complete stranger were to land on any one of your web pages, would he or she know what the focus of that page was within the referenced time period? In other words, a web page has to be clear and concise to be easily understood while at the same time be compelling to keep the user's attention.
Other User Excellence guidelines include the One Page Payoff. This is the practice of making sure that anything that is highlighted or advertised on your website be accessible in One Click. A website cannot drag a user through several web pages to attain the advertised item. If a web pages has a form with a "Click Here" button to sign up for a free webinar, you cannot have interstitial ads or other promotions interrupt the clear path to the stated goal. This turns users off in gigantic numbers.
Your website should be simple and clear and leave visitors with a sense of satisfaction. Chances are, they found your website through a Search Engine query or maybe a personal recommendation. Either way, they visited your website for a reason. You need to let them achieve their purpose. If they do so in a seamless fashion, they are twice as likely to return and also tell others about their positive user experience.
Control Your Information
When you create your own website, it’s critical to make sure your business information is well presented so people can find it. You need to make sure that everyone who is looking for you can find you. Everything starts with identifying the goals for your website.
Are you launching an ecommerce platform? Generating sales leads? Are you publicizing events? Increasing ad revenue? Driving traffic to a physical location? These are all scenarios that require different plans. Whatever you’re doing online, you need to develop a specific strategy.
Please call (773) 360-1459 for a free estimate. Our services are more affordable than you might think.
