Search Marketing
Search Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Reporting
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “organic” search results. The higher your site ranks in search results, the more customers will visit.
Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Sometimes a site’s structure (the relationships between its content) must be altered too. Because of this it is, from a client’s perspective, always better to incorporate Search Engine Optimization when a website is being developed than to try and retroactively apply it.
Key SEO objectives to increase your search engine presence, rankings, number of visitors:
- Create a detailed competitor analysis: Who are your top competitors, and what online strategies are they employing
- Define your ideal client: develop content and site features that caters to your audience
- Keyword research and analysis – Determine what keywords your clients are searching for and build content pages targeting specific keyword phrases, useful sites include Wordtracker and Google Keyword Tool
- Content development: Content development must be an ongoing process for the life of your website. Content is king.
- Inbound link development: Page Rank is directly influenced by the number and quality of websites that have a link on their page directed at your website.
- Submit your website to Google: Google Webmaster Tools allows you to submit your sitemap. A variety of other useful tools are available as well.
- PPC Strategy (optional, additional budget allocation) – Allocate a monthly budget to show up on the first page of Google in the sponsored result sections on the top and right of the page.
- Implementation Timeline: Websites that adhere to SEO best-practices and actively build content on a daily and weekly basis will reach a favorable position for a variety of keywords within an average of 6 months. Reaching an optimal search rank for high-demand keywords will naturally take longer to achieve than low-demand keywords.
- Success Metrics: Watch and understand your web traffic. It will reveal online synergies and help you understand the web browsing habits of your audience. Google Analytics is a free and easy-to-implement tool that is more than sufficient for this purpose.
