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Search Engine Marketing, Finding Them Finding You Part 1: The Quest Hi. I'm Matthew- owner of Creative Graphic Solutions.BIZ. There are two things you should do before beginning a search engine marketing campaign. One is to prepare your site to attract favorable listings. The other is to make your listings to be attractive. A well prepared site can help you get a listing, but an attractive listing gets people to click on it. In Part One of this article I will introduce strategies that you can use to help accomplish this. In Part Two I will provide a list of search engines you can start submitting your site to. Let's get started. Got a Good Website? First of all your site should offer quality content, products, or services. In other words, you should be offering something that people want. You should offer it in a way that is honest and that effectively tells the customer why they need it. This is good business, and it will help you develop a good online reputation. If you have a service or product that people want and that is well presented, other websites will start linking to you. Search engines will see that other people are linking to you and will give you a good listing. Get Ready and Get Organized After your site has been created and has quality content on it, make a list of the main pages that you want to get listed. While some search engines only allow you to submit your domain name, others allow you to submit individual pages. This should be taken full advantage of. If you do not have main pages for the various products or services you offer, consider if there is a better way that your site can be organized. It may even be beneficial to have individual pages for content that is related. For example, a page for "Ladies' Watches" and a page for "Men's Watches" instead of just "Watches". If your site is small, separating your content might adversely reduce the number of keywords on a page, but for large sites it can enable you to target search engine listings more aggressively . By submitting a page for each of the sections of your site, you increase your chances that one of them will get a favorable listing. Increased traffic on one page will result in more traffic to your whole site. As another example, suppose your site sells watches and watch batteries, but that your main focus is on selling watches. Don't neglect what you suppose to be the less profitable areas of your site. Such a page might be just the one that will bring you the most traffic. In fact, a very specific web page like "Watch battery for model W4319-12" as opposed to a general page like "Watches" may achieve a prime search engine listing in a short time. There may be thousands of sites selling watches on the internet, but you may have only a few, or zero competitors selling a specific kind of battery. Now that we know which pages we want to get a listing for, we can focus on making these pages more attractive to both search engines and people. We'll get started on this in just a moment, but first let's create a computer document to keep track of things and to aid in search engine submissions. Use a simple text editor or your favorite word processor. Save the URLs that you will be submitting in this document. Include the "http://www." prefix with the URLs, as many search engines ask for this. I'll let you know what else you need to keep in this document later on. Let's continue with making the actual pages more attractive. Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful! Some search engines such as lyGO.com and Searchme.com display thumbnails or screen-shots of the web pages they list. If you end up with a listing on one of these search engines you should have already done the work to make your thumbnail (or screen shot) attractive. Examining a few of these search engines can help you decide how to design your page. Notice how big a line of text needs to be to be legible, and how much of the page is displayed. You want people who see your thumbnail in a listing to be drawn to it more than the others. Then, when people visit your site you want your actual page to be attractive and useful so they'll stay a while and remember to come back. Landing Pages When it comes to your landing or main pages, don't be afraid to get right to the point with your customers. Tell them what your best deals are and what makes them the best. Don't hesitate to include pictures of your "best-sellers" or special links to your most popular pages. Avoid the typical sales pitch everyone hears. It can be a challenge to keep infomercial vernacular from slipping into your writing, but if you have something real to offer, try to come across as being real, not gimmicky. Next we'll talk about a good company slogan. Slogans are Our Friends A slogan becomes useful when it is used in every area of marketing, this includes search engines. Someone who has read your business card or who has heard your radio advertisement should immediately recognize you when they see your name and slogan in a search engine listing. A slogan should be attractive, memorable, even exciting- something that your customers will grow to love, not grow to hate. It should be short and easily remembered, which is characteristic of a good slogan. It should also be informative, giving insight to who you are, what you do, and what you offer. The more your slogan is repeated on your web site, in your printed material, in your advertising, and on search engines, the more it will reinforce your company image in the minds of your customers. I know we're getting into some heavy corporate-image stuff here, and that large companies can spend large sums on consulting and design firms to try to get this right, but in this article I'm generally assuming that you're doing things yourself. If you don't have a slogan, think one up. If you already have a slogan, now is the time to decide if you need to improve it. You might find some articles online about marketing and advertising that offer some helpful tips. In addition to reinforcing your company image, a short and punchy slogan can attract more people to click on your link. More traffic can in turn bring about better search engine placement. By the way, if you ARE looking for someone to help you market your business, contact me: Matthew@CreativeGraphicSolutions.BIZ. Next we'll work on the descriptions and titles that search engines display. (These are places where you can use your slogan.) How Can I Describe Thee? Many search engines generate a description of your site by displaying snippets of text from the body of your page, and by using your description meta-tag. However, other search engines will ask you to submit a specific description along with your link. Such search engines may ask you to make your description a certain length, to omit hard-sale phrases like "buy now" and "the best ever", or to avoid using only keywords or ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. You can begin thinking now about what these writes-ups should say. Save any ideas you are working on in your search engine document with the URLs they go with. You may want to work up a short and a long description for each section of your site, (around 75 characters and 150-300 characters in length) to have ready when search engines ask for them. For serious search engine marketing, give similar attention to these write-ups as you would to a paid newspaper ad. You can also incorporate these descriptions into the actual pages of your site. If given the choice, I favor descriptions that are short, attractive, and to the point. However, long descriptions on search engines that allow them take up more page space. This might make them more noticeable in certain listings. Now let's prepare for search engines that use your title tags and description meta-tags to present your listings. You may use your company name for the title, and your slogan for the description. Another strategy is to include your slogan in the title. For example: "Creative Graphic Solutions.BIZ - Design, Web, and Print Services". This allows you to use a somewhat longer description containing just the right keywords. If your site is diverse, you may need to omit your slogan on specific pages in favor of more appropriate keywords. For example: "Creative Graphic Solutions.BIZ - Custom Logo Design". Be aware that search engines place limits on the length of title and description tags. Excessively long meta-tags or over repetitive keywords can result in unfavorable or rejected listings. This is another reason it can help to have specific pages for the different sections of your site; it allows you to focus your search engine marketing without overreaching. There are free page-checkers available on the internet that will automatically examine your page and offer advice if it is not search engine friendly. It's a good idea to test some or all of your pages with such a service to make sure you're not missing anything before you start submitting them. Next let's discuss choosing the most effective keywords and using them in some of the less obvious places. Key Phrases versus Keywords This article assumes you understand basic web coding and the importance of using keywords. When a search engine examines your page, the keywords it finds have a big influence on how your page will be listed. When deciding which keywords to use, remember the advantages of being specific. Think in terms of key PHRASES instead of keywords only. Rather than going head to head against your online competitors, a good key phrase can help you eliminate them. For example, instead of using the keyword "mugs", you may have more success targeting the fewer people searching for "coffee mug for my boss". If you have in idea for a key phrase, do a search on the internet using it. If few related sites come up but the phrase is one that someone is likely to type into a search, you have discovered something valuable. Take the time to consider how your site is unique from all the others, and incorporate into your website those specific phrases your customers might use in their searches. With the same strategy in mind, another way of going around the competition instead of going up against it is to include common typos in your keywords meta-tag. (This is a good place to include typos because your customers won't see them, only search engines.) Also consider what variations of keywords people might use. Will they search for the plural of an item; "cactus" versus "cacti"? Will people search for a product or service within your region; "Bluegrass bands" versus "Nashville Bluegrass bands"? Wow. I Didn't Know I Could Use Keywords There! Besides the title tag, the description and keywords meta-tags, and the body of your web pages, there are some other prime locations you should use keywords and phrases. One of them is in your filenames. For example, instead of naming your files something like "watches_1.htm" and "watches_2.htm", come up with something more descriptive like "wrist_watches_ladies_manual_wind.htm" and "wrist_watches_mens_swiss.htm". You may use key phrases in your directory names as well. A well chosen filename can help convince search engines you're serious about what you're offering. Take at least a moment or two when choosing a name for a new web page. The longer a page remains under the same name and directory, the more time it has to become established in a search engine listing. You should avoid moving or renaming your files as much as it is practical. Your domain name is another great place for keywords or phrases. Take this into consideration if you're deciding on a name for your business or if you're choosing a domain name. If your business serves a specific region, including the state or town in your domain name may help drive local traffic to your site. (TheCabinetShopKnoxville.com is an example of such a domain name.) On the other hand, if you have a national market or you are going to do a lot of advertising, you may want your company name to be a word that you've made up. This can eliminate a lot of search engine competition as long as your trademark is protected, but your customers will have to know who you are through your sales literature, in-store marketing, radio ads, or other forms of advertising. A made up name can give you a unique company image, just do enough research beforehand to be sure that the name really IS unique. In addition to domain names, directories, and web page filenames, you can also use key phrases in your image filenames. Instead of naming a graphic file something generic like "main_splash.jpg", name it after what the image is promoting. This may help you get listings on image searches. Another way to increase the number of key phrases in your HTML document is to use the ALT specification with your IMG tags. You should be aware that in Internet Explorer the ALT tag does not stay hidden, but pops up on the screen whenever you hover your pointer over the image. This has the potential to be annoying. It's up to you to decide how you want to use ALT tags. You may decide to use the tags for some images but not for all of them. When creating the main write-up for the body of your page, include choice key phrases which both search engines and your customers will appreciate. One strategy for keyword placement here is to use text links instead of images for your navigation menu. If your menu is something like "Men's Watches - Lady's Watches - Antique Watches - Watch Batteries" you will quickly see the advantage in this. Of course, getting text-based links to look the way you want can be tricky, and using an image-based navigation menu with ALT tags may also have it's advantages. Another good technique is to include the title of your page in the body, not just in the title tag. Before you start the main write up of each page, include the full title in the appropriate font and style, just like you would in a magazine or newspaper. This is not being repetitious because the title tag only shows up in your browser's title bar, (which is not really a part of the page) and you can't often use full-length titles in your navigation menu. Something to keep in mind is your page coding. If your code is extremely complex, a search engine might not finish indexing all of your keywords before it reaches its limit of data. It may be to your disadvantage to include a script in your HTML that is quite long or that search engines have a hard time reading. Next up is Part Two: The Search Engine List. I'll see you there! Copyright Dec 2008, Matthew Shockey |
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