SEO Blog Me!

How to get started on an SEO campaign

There are two main elements to Search Engine Marketing:

• Search Engine Optimization refers to the optimization of your own website so that the search engines show your site in their 'natural' or 'organic' rankings on your desired keywords or keyword phrases.  This ranges from meta tags (most known and least important element),  to keyword density and placement, social networking elements, interactivity of your site, links to your site, popularity of the site, etc.

• Search Engine Advertising refers to placing paid ads on search engines. This is more commonly referred to as Pay-Per-Click. Where your ad appears depends on how you bid on the keywords you want in relation to everyone else's bids.  Where your ads appear also depends on the keywords you choose.  See our blog called "How many keywords should I have?" for help on this topic.

It is the general consensus that you should do both types of search engine marketing simultaneously.  Optimizing your own site is just good business sense.  If you can get ranked on the first page of the results for all your keywords and phrases 'naturally,' then you should do it!  And most companies/sites can.  However it takes a great deal of time - generally about 6 months to a year - to accomplish your SEO goals.   If you combine your SEO with Pay-Per-Click (PPC), then you gain a couple of distinct advantages.  One is that you are immediately on the desired page of the results for your keywords and keyword phrases.  Secondly, you can get your site on the first page of search engine results for many more keywords and phrases than you can accomplish with just SEO alone.  Most companies should be getting traffic for thousands of keyword combinations.  (See my blog called "How many keywords should I have? for more information on this topic).  There are definite limits to the keywords you can optimize any single page on your site for.  However, there is no limit to the number of keywords you can bid on for the same page.  Thirdly, your PPC campaign helps you get your natural rankings faster!

There is one all  important fact that many companies overlook, however.  Before you start ANY campaign, you must - you simply MUST - decide what it is you want to accomplish.  The single biggest mistake we see companies make is to spend money on their SEO,  but with no discernible way to  make money from it.   So the very first thing you need to decide is what your goals are.  These are generally referred to as a 'conversion' goal, because you want to 'convert' a visitor into a user.  That goal could be to actually buy a product or service or it may only be to build your list.  But defining it means you can more effectively create the SEO campaigns that will be effective for you.

Stay tuned for my next blog on this very subject!

How many keywords should I have?

One of the most often asked questions we have is, "How many keywords should I have?"  The answer to that question really depends on what type of SEO program you are working on.  If you are working on your organic or natural search engine rankings, then the answer is ideally about 2 keywords per page of your site.  If you are working on Pay-Per-Click programs (PPC) then the answer really depends on how many services or products you have.  I cannot think of a single company that should have less than 100 keywords. And most should have thousands, and that is even if you just offer a few services. 

The reason for these high numbers is that you really want to focus in on the long-tail keywords.  So what are those?  Long-tail keywords are simply a more specific set of words to identify the search. For instance, if someone is looking for a Pet Store, a generic keyword would be "Pet Stores".  But most people realize they are not going to find a local pet store using such a generic keyword, so they will probably use a more specific keyword, such as "Pet Store Phoenix, AZ."  And more and more people are adding in the exact item they are searching for.  For instance, someone might search for "Pro Plan dog food Phoenix, AZ".  As you can see, it would be very nice if you came up on the top of the rankings when someone searched for that 'long-tail' keyword.

There is also another reason to make sure people can find you on the long-tail keywords.  Conversion rates are MUCH higher on long-tail keywords than they are on the more generic keywords.  This probably has to do with the fact that if they find you using a keyword like "attorney accident victim grand rapids mi" then you DO offer exactly what they are looking for, in the area they are looking to buy in.

So if you offer products for sale, and you are doing a Pay-Per-Click campaign, just to give you an idea on the keywords you can use on just ONE product, take a look at these suggestions for the product called "Acer AL2216WBD 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor".  We are assuming that this vendor sells online, so their market is a national one:

• Acer 22" Widescreen Monitor
• AL2216WBD
• AL2216
• Then, for each of the three keywords above, add EVERY city name to the end of it.  Examples are: "AL2216WBD San Diego"  and "AL2216WBD San Francisco" and "AL2216WBD Grand Rapids" ETC.  There are thousands of city names, county names, nicknames.

What you will want to do is to obtain a list of all zip codes, all city names, all county names and append each one to the end of each of your primary keywords.  As you can see, for each product you could have thousands of keywords.  If you sell thousands of products, you would (and should) be set up with over a million keywords in a PPC campaign.

How you manage all those keywords is subject for additional posts to this blog.  We look forward to sharing more information with you. 

Welcome to SEO Blog Me!

Welcome to SEO Blog Me!  My goal here is to impart tidbits of information regarding Search Engine Optimization that everyone will fine useful.  Some of the information is tips that you an implement yourself.  Some will be ideas or technical solutions that you will need to have your web tech person do (or yourself if you are comfortable with it).

The goal here is to make sure you are armed with the information you need to make wise choices regarding your optimiztion and internet marketing strategies.  There are many, MANY options and there is a lot of ways to spend your money.  Woudln't it be great to have a full understanding of all the options so that you can make the best decision for your individual needs?

Some of the topics we will be covering are (but not limited to):

• Keyword Analysis - how to find the right keywords to target
• Landing pages
• Links to your site
• Pay-per-click issues

We'll jump right into it next week. See you then!
Vanessa