Online Search Marketing

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For effective online search marketing, here are some SEO Basics:

Keywords:

Keyword phrases are the most important part of your strategy. You’re going to miss your target, but that’s OK. That’s web site development. That’s marketing.

You can cast a big net and grab everything or you can target a specific phrase. I favor a mixed portfolio. It increases your odds of some success. A mixed set of keyword phrases also ensures some commonality among keyword phrases like nature posters and nature posters for sale.

If you go broad, your opportunities to convert a visitor (prompt them to take some action) are more limited. The searcher may very well not be interested in what you offer. If you’re too specific, no one may be searching (or the search traffic may be rare).

Web Site Content for Online Search Marketing

You don’t have a Golden Rule for content and the number of times you need to mention a keyword phrase. Start with few and then add more. Overkill won’t cut it. Some people suggest having 250-500 words per page. I think that can vary site to site and depending on what keyword you’re targeting. I’ve received traffic with 50 keywords and had no traffic with 500.

Focus on page headers, subheads and info boxes (secondary navigation) to other parts of the web site. Search engines seem to like it when you cluster together related keywords and navigation).

Online Search Marketing Analysis:

You can’t look at data in a vacuum. The real story is in the multiple slices of data and how they relate. A keyword ranking is nothing if no one is searching. And a single web site visitor can be worthless or an invaluable piece of data. You need to know how often people search for your relevant phrase. For example, if you see that you only got one visitor, that may be good if you’re ranking #15 and 500 people search for your phrase each month. You can do more with the page that is ranking and create related pages to support that keyword phrase (to help you get on the first page of Google and get more of those 500 visitors). Or, if you’re already ranking #3 for the keyword phrase and you only got one visitor, it’s likely a keyword phrase people rarely use. So don’t dismiss low web site visitor traffic. Keep it in perspective. If the Google tool suggests that relevant search traffic is high and you’re in the ballpark with rankings, you can make some changes and get the web site traffic volume you want.

Learn More

2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors – SEOmoz
 

SEO

  • Competition
  • Domain age
  • Keywords in domain
  • Text navigation
  • Number of pages
  • Amount of content on a page
  • Keyword themes (keyword focus on web site)
  • Anchor text (linked words when cross-referencing pages)
  • Inbound links (from other web sites)
  • Alt tags (text associated with images)
  • Page headers (like headlines – H1 code)
  • Subheads
  • Proximity and density of keywords on page (staggered or limited to one area)
  • Info boxes (secondary navigation with closely related linked text)
  • Page age
  • Programming (prominence of text on page or text lost in mounds of programming)
  • Page load time
  • Splash page (bad for SEO, and limited value for visitors who leave or click on
  • Skip Intro out of habit)
  • Keywords in page URLs
  • Web site traffic
  • Social media (mentions of your web site)
  • Future content (your capacity to add to the web site)

If you want to be successful at online search marketing, these are some of the many variables you need to consider.