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What Does It Take To Get Consistently Great Search Results?

06/26/2009

Getting onto page one of the major search engines is the ultimate goal of an online internet marketing strategy. Getting there greatly increases the search engine visibility of the client’s website. According to Marketing Sherpa, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is "the ultimate cost-effective, online guerrilla-marketing tactic that generally has the highest ROI of any type of Internet marketing."

The bottom line is that if you are not in the top 4-5 results on page 1, a client’s traffic drops dramatically. The goal of an internet marketing strategy is to:

· Drive an ever increasing numbers of qualified users to the client site

· Keep the visitors from quickly bailing

· Get the visitors to convert. Conversion means different things to different clients. E.g. for a B2C client offering vitamins, the conversion would be the sales of vitamins. For a B2B client it could be the capture of an identity for future dissemination and sales follow up.

There are basically just two ways to get a web site onto page one of the major search engines:

1. Sponsored links or Pay-per-click (PPC): this is basically advertising and uses the auction model where the client bids against the next business to be listed at the top of page one of the paid listings listed to the right of the organic listings. If you are lucky the ad might even appear above the natural listings.

Even if the long term goal is to get organic search results using SEO (search engine optimization) and not do advertising, a PPC campaign can help with the SEO results as there is a fast feedback on the selected key words. I.e. which keywords are converting well and which ones are not. Another piece of the puzzle it the pricing of PPC keywords—the higher a keyword is priced by the competition gives a good indication of its value.

2. Organic or natural search results using SEO. This system is a four step process:

 a. Extensive keyword research and strategy development. As SEO is a mid to long term strategy, the selection of the keywords is a vital step. Many months of effort could be wasted by getting a keyword onto to page one that didn’t convert very well.

b. Optimizing the website by rewriting the content and Meta tags using the researched keywords. Quality of the content counts!

c. Ongoing SEO actions including link building

d. Keeping good metrics (stats) and adjusting the campaign as it goes along.

Since some 80% of all website traffic comes via the search engines, and most websites lose over 65% of their traffic right off the home page, it is essential to optimize your website for maximum ROI. A well executed internet marketing strategy will greatly increase the search engine visibility of a client’s website.

 Author Biography

Doug Hay is the co-founder and CEO of Expansion Plus Inc, a leading Los Angeles-based interactive agency specializing in SEO, Social Media Marketing and online public relations. E+ was an early adopter of these new technologies while leveraging the principals’ multi decades of experience in marketing, public relations, sales and business development.

Doug is a sought after speaker and has presented at: Search Engine Strategies (SES); E-Tourism Summit; Gilbane Content Strategy Conference; City of Los Angeles Community Development, Business Service Training; Yellow Pages Association PR Summit; SES Travel; PACE (Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment); FIDM/The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, Los Angeles; Marketing & Advertising Club of Michiana at Notre Dame University, Sonoma County Tourism Board and SearchFest Portland.

 

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