Search Engine Marketing Guide: Things to Do to Boost Search Engine Positions
& Traffic for 2006 and Beyond by Luke Fitzsimmons
Search Engine Marketing is very important if you want your online business to
succeed. It is all about good quality high value (unique is best) content, it
is what the search engines want, as it is what the searchers are looking for.
This is just a quick list from the top of my head but is enough to keep you
busy.
* Articles: this is the most powerful way for 2006 and beyond to generate good
quality one-way in bound links. Submit them to article directories and
submission services, do a search on your favourite search engine for article
submission services or article directories to find relevant ones for your
industry. Note it is a good idea to use relevant keywords and phrases in your
articles but only if they make sense.
* Press Releases: another sure fire way to generate quality links from
authority sites. Press releases are much more powerful that advertising as they
are objective. Again if you are not familiar with writing press releases do a
search in your favourite search engine for information on how to write a good
press release, for example type in 'tips for writing a good press release'.
Then do a search for good press release submission services PRWeb.com is a very
popular service
* Add regular fresh content to the site: Your search engine marketing will only
succeed if you do this - you could reuse the articles used for submissions
etc... But this would probably not be the best method. Although a good idea
would be to write a series of articles, use a few of them or a shortened
version or an abstract (still with good quality unique content of course) for
submission to the directories. Make sure you tell the readers that further
articles and information can be found on your website, enticing them to visit
your site to read the rest of the articles.
Make a point to add fresh content to your site on a regular basis. For example
if you are in the Overseas property industry you should add new properties,
buyers guides, area guides, country guides, case studies, customer
testimonials, Subscriptions (i.e. weather, travel info, car hire etc... these can
be affiliate links to generate additional streams of income).
Set yourself up a Blog and make regular posts to ping the search engines every
time you add fresh content to your site, this will alert the search engine
spiders, who will come crawling to review and index your new pages. Again if
you don't know much about Blogs, use your favourite search engine to find out
how to set one up. Wordpress.com is a popular service.
* Joint ventures: i.e. you email your database in return for an email to
another company's database. You know your industry; you should know who to tap
up for a joint venture. Don't simply view similar websites as competitors, this
is short sighted; instead view them as opportunities and colleagues. You can
swap links, exchange content (publish each other articles), email each others
databases etc... use your imagination, get creative, there is enough traffic
for most websites to succeed. As long as your website adds value and offers
good quality unique content you will succeed.
* Hooks: you can offer your visitors something of value in return for them
signing up to your newsletter. For example, again if you are an overseas
property company Free Brochures, Buyers guide, legal or tax information
* Competitions: use incentive based viral marketing i.e. enter your site
visitors into a competition for every friend or colleague they tell about your
site or who they get to register for your mailing list.
* Optimise your web pages and articles: as this article is talking about using
fresh content for your search engine marketing strategy I thought it best show
you how to create an optimised page, for those of you that don't know how.
In my experience I have found that it is important to optimise each webpage for
a maximum of two phrases only.
Title
Title = phrase one | phrase two
Meta keywords
Also try to keep your Meta keywords limited to a few, use the same two phrases
first as in your title although you can bulk it out with another phrase, like
so;
Meta Keywords: phrase one, phrase two, phrase three
Meta Description
The Meta description must also start with your keywords but be descriptive at
the same time, like so;
Meta Description: Phrase one, information for about phrase two from your
company / website name
Alt tags
First 3 images on the page should contain the phrases but also describe the
picture/image, like so;
Alt 1: phrase one company name logo Alt 2: phrase two picture Alt3: phrase one
photos
Headers
It is also very important to have header tags with the keyphrase in, like so;
Start the page copy with a header tag
< H >Phrase one< /H >
Copy
The first 50 words must also contain the two phrases.
Copy
Then use another header with a phrase
phrase two
copy
< h >phrase one< h >
etc...
It is recommended to have between 500 - 1300 words on the page with a keyphrase
weight of 2 - 5%
The key phrases should be strategically placed in an hour glass shape in the
copy, i.e. a few at the top a couple in the middle and a few at the bottom.
But don't over do it, make the copy read naturally with all the words in
context.
It is also recommended to have the keyphrases in bold and italic somewhere on
the page as this tells the search engines that they are important, I usually
put them in the footer like so.
Phrase one | phrase two
Links
Last but not least it is recommended to have your key phases in hyper links
i.e. linking text
For example you can have anchor links to the different header tags on the page
for navigation or run of site link at the bottom of the page that contain the
keyphrases of the page they are linking to.
And there you have it, a quick guide on how to optimise a webpage.
Use these web page optimisation techniques for all pages, articles, and fresh
content you add to your site and you can't go wrong, you are giving the search
engines what they want, easy to understand content rich pages, regularly
updated.
In return the search engines will give you what you want good-targeted traffic
that will convert into enquiries.
Follow this search engine marketing guide, build solid content and good links
and your search engine marketing campaign should be a success. if you liked
this article and want to learn more visit loudmouse.biz
Luke Fitzsimmons has been working online for 5 years and is a search engine
marketing and optimisation professional. Luke currently runs the Overseas
Property Webshow http://www.overseaspropertywebshow.com
and looks after the internet marketing campaigns of the webshow client's micro
sites, including SEM, SEO, PPC, and email marketing. Luke's personal site is a
Search Engine Marketing Guide http://www.loudmouse.biz
About the Author
Luke Fitzsimmons has a BA (Hons) Degree in Leisure Marketing from Bournemouth
University (UK), has passed the Google Adwords professional Exam, and the WEB
CEO Search Engine Marketing Qualification.
Luke has been working online for 5 years as a search engine marketing and
optimisation professional. Luke currently runs the Overseas Property Webshow
and looks after the internet marketing campaigns of the webshow client's micro
site
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