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eMarketing Resources Introduction to Search Engine Marketing: Consider: Less than a quarter (23%) of online surfers looking for a particular company's Web site will actually type the URL into their browsers, according to a recent Jupiter Media Metrix survey. That means more than three-quarters of Web surfers head right for a search engine to find what they want. And when they get a results page on their search, very few people click past the results shown on the first page. It is a known fact that business owners typically invest less than 1% of their marketing budgets in securing highly placed listings. It's time to get serious. The biggest issue with search engine marketing is that it keeps changing as the algorithms and rankings change, just when you think you have a handle on it, you don't. As a result, experts suggest you concentrate on honing what doesn't change: the keyword search phrases and meta tags (HTML tags that sum up information about each Web page) that are picked up by the engines. As a point of departure, you need to figure out how people were looking for you when they stumbled onto your site, to get the phrases that work, you need to get inside the heads of your customers and figure out how they see your business or market/products . Because the name of this game is the quality and kind of visitors you draw, not the volume of traffic. If you sell ski trips to Vermont slopes, and your keywords are "ski" or "ski package," you'll attract hundreds of disappointed vacationers who were looking for Aspen. When selecting search phrases, you're not just trying to make the right submissions or get top rankings. What you're trying to do is improve the odds of how your site is "seen" by the engines so the audience you want can find you. Some tips to identifying effective search phrases: 1. Brainstorm with senior staff and salespeople to come up with words and phrases that are the epitome of your business. 2. Visit competitor sites to get ideas — don't use their exact phrases. Right-click on their pages and select "View Source" to see which keywords they use. 3. Ask customers what words they use to talk about your products. 4. Review Web logs to find phrases and search engines that delivered visitors who registered and/or purchased. 5. Rely on services like Wordtracker.com to monitor popular phrases. This is an ongoing process. To keep directing the right traffic, you must continually update and refine keywords. You can be surprised at what works. E-mail: info@trafficonomy.com |
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