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How to Soar in Your Search Engine Marketing in the Post
Google Era
Part 3. of the Three Part Series
The Tao of Search Engine Promotion
Still Shows the Best Way
by Kamau Austin
"A Review of Basic Search Engine Marketing is still
Relevant"
I would love to claim that I enjoy great rankings in Google,
Yahoo!, and the new Microsoft search engine through some profound new
insight I discovered. But to be truthful, I discovered a good balance
of conventional basic SEO strategies have been the key to my persistent
high rankings. I try not to over fixate on either SEO copywriting on the
page, or getting thousands of links off the page. I try to put equal balance
on both approaches. Moreover, I try not to make it too obvious what are
my search engine strategies. Less seems to be more in SEO Sales copy-editing
these days.
More importantly I really try to make content king
on my sites. I look at my competitors and try to focus on making my site
more content rich than the other top sites. Therefore, it is in
the best interest of any search engine algorithm to rank my sites as some
of the highest. In this regard I feel a review of basic search engine
marketing is still relevant.
What is a Search Engine?
Think of a search engine as a database with a ranking
algorithm (or system) for web sites that are of a certain
quality or meets certain criteria.
In other words, search engines look for sites it feels
will
be of value to its customers, which are Internet surfers
searching for information.
The most important concept to grasp with a search engine,
is that it uses an automated computerized system to find and rank the
sites within its database of web sites.
How do Search Engines Index the Net?
They follow links from sites already in their database.
Therefore, if you want to get listed for free, get a link from a site
in their database.
Better yet get listed in an Internet Directory because
these sites (since they rely on human editors), are given more credibility
and high ranking page status by the search engines.
What is an Internet Directory?
An Internet directory is a large listing of categorized
web sites. However, the concept that should be understood with the Internet
directories, is that they actually have editors deciding what goes into
the directory. Remember an Internet directory is decided and managed by
human editors, while in contrast, a search engine is ranked by a computerized
algorithm or system. Directories are important to get links from because,
they will raise your rankings in the Google algorithm (which is based
on PageRank™ or links from other quality sites related to
your web site's business sector to a great extent). Going out and getting
countless links from unrelated sites is considered spam by most of the
modern search engines.
Google was once the Most Important Search Engine to Optimize
Your Site for since it powers 66% of searches on the web. I consider it
still the most important site to optimize your site for because if you
can do well in Google with all its counter measures against SEO tactics
you will do well in the up and coming search engines like Microsoft and
Yahoo! Again Google's claim to fame is a ranking concept known as Page
Rank. Which in its most simple form is: receiving links from other sites
as a vote of confidence. The more links your site receives from other
related quality sites, the more it is viewed as an authority site by Google.
But beware link farms which are a free for all for unfocused linking,
because you can be banned if you are apart of one of these communities.
A Whole industry was developed to share links, called reciprocal
linking, Google has recently changed its algorithm to filter or penalize
for excessive reciprocal linking communities. Some people may not agree
with this assertion but this is my position until someone can show me
otherwise. Therefore, I suggest rather than traditional reciprocal linking,
that you instead write articles with link resource boxes, use indirect
reciprocal link grids, and most importantly submit your site to established
Internet Directories to receive links to build higher search engine rankings.
A link from an Internet directory like Yahoo!, DMOZ
, Joe Ant , or Gimpsy
could be worth 20 links from an unknown site.
Why are Search Engines Important?
Search engines will drive about 47% of Internet traffic
according to surveys of Internet users. Links will provide about 29% of
new traffic to your site. Therefore a good link based search engine strategy
will drive about 76% of new business to your web site!
How Search Engines Help Pre-sell Your Products and Services.
The point of most business sites is to turn Internet and
search engine traffic into e business customers. In contrast to advertising,
where people come to your site or business somewhat resistant to your
perceived marketing message, search engine discovery is viewed more as
an empowering and proactive experience. Your site visitors are more inclined
to feel they reached your site from their own self determination or that
they discovered your site. You can tap into the more positive feelings
of self discovery, your site visitor feels if you now have a web site
that has plenty of valuable free content. Just as important is designing
a site that inspires trust, rapport, and builds a long term relationship
with your site visitors. If you do this you will lay the foundation of
eventually turning your site visitor into a long time customer.
It is important to realize that most people will not buy
at your site the first visit. Therefore, make sure you have a way to capture
email addresses with a great free offer. Capturing email addresses with
a valuable free offer is still the best way to build a more trusting long
term relationship with your site visitors. It is the only way, in most
cases, that you will be able to turn site visitors into site customers.
Remember in order to drive lots of potential customers
to you site via the search engines be open to using both Pay-Per-Click
and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Tips and Tricks in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
* Watch Your Costs because PPC advertising is One of the
most expensive Forms of Advertising
* Avoid Bidding Wars - and bidding frenzy
* Create a Landing Page - with a Most Wanted Response (MWR)
and Backup Response
* Make Sure You Have Site Statistic Software to monitor
conversion rates... by obtaining usable and comprehensive site statistics
* Do Extensive Keyword Research
* Develop Effective Sales Copy.
Capture E-mail addresses to Cultivate Trust and Rapport
with your site visitors.
Since PPC advertising is so expensive use it in moderation
by setting daily and monthly budgets (otherwise for high volume searched
keywords you could go broke). After setting budgets, which you do in the
Overture and Google advertising interfaces, use PPC to test your conversion
rates for subscribers, sales, etc., and constantly monitor it and fine
tune it. You want to increase your conversation rates.
Revealing the Truth on the Expense of PPC advertising
This is critical because as we alluded to the expense of
PPC in earlier in this article the typical major ad agency or corporate
brand only spends $5 - $15 dollars to reach a thousand people (CPM). Although
they may go higher for a responsive direct mail lists like $100 or $150
to reach a thousand people. In PPC advertising small business are usually
paying at least 35 cents on the dollar (for any word with any real competition)
to reach a thousand people or $350 dollars. I have seen and experienced
people paying $2.50 a click or $2250 dollars to reach a thousand people.
The True expense of PPC is never discussed by experts in that industry.
Any small business using PPC should have an outstanding product ready
for prime time to see any return in investment. Alternately, they should
only use it for limited testing or to get a product quickly to market
Online.
Given the expense of PPC some small business people might
be better off buying classified direct response advertising in a niche
publication or obtaining ad space in ezines.
How the Major Internet Companies stab
their advertisers in the back.
Another point to discuss in PPC is how the major companies
hurt their advertisers (stab them in the back) by using pop-up blockers,
which hurts the advertisers ability to collect email addresses on the
front end, and with spam filters which block even legitimate marketers
ability to reach opt-in subscribers on the back end. Google is more of
a front end pop-up blocker, AOL is more of an email blocker, while Yahoo
is both. As mentioned earlier there are better ways to stop email and
search engine site spam.
What is important is that small
business, if it is not careful with PPC could be paying AOL, Google, and
Yahoo/Overture to put them out of business.
Conversely speaking, SEO is a long term process that you
never really control. It takes about 2 months to see any decent rankings
using traditional SEO. However, once you have a higher ranking it will
save you a lot of money. Furthermore, once you know the basics and constantly
keep up on new developments you can really boost your traffic via the
search engines for free. SEO shouldn't be your only on-line strategy because
you don't want to trust your business to the whims of the search engines.
Do other forms of web marketing like responsible message
board posts at large portal sites, Web PR, Blog listings, write articles,
build ezines or e newsletters, and buy PPC advertising in moderation and
soon you will be getting thousands of site visitors to your site. If a
regular guy from the tough streets of Bed Stuy Brooklyn can do it... so
can you!
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Here
Kamau Austin, helps small and minority business make more
money, by creating, search friendly web sites. He is the owner of Ebizbydesign.com,
Einfonews.com,
eBizEliteMembers
and the creator of the Free Search Engine Promotion Tele-course at: SearchEngineplan.com
. He can be reached at: 973-655-8866
Coming Soon Book Reviews
of Top SEO Books: The Nitty Gritty
of Writing for the Search Engines by Jill Whalen, Search Engine
Visibility by Shari Thurow, Dr. Wilson's Plain Spoken Guide to
Search Engine Optimization by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Search Engine
Fast Start by Dan Thies, Maximizing Your Web Traffic by Robin
Nobles and Susan Alexander, SEO Book by Aaron Matthew Hall, Search
Engine Optimization on an Extreme Budget by Non-stop Internet, and
others to be announced.
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