Digital
Geek Tips on Search Engine Marketing
Digital Geek Tips on Search Engine Marketing
Creating and building effective Search Engine marketing campaigns
is like trying to nail jello to the wall for many companies! As
it typically involves deploying very specialized processes and melding
them with technology. Here is some insight gained from years of
experience providing these services to our own clients.
1)SE marketing works and drives low cost ROI - over 85% of most
surfers utilize Search Engines to find goods and services.
2)Its a zero sum game if you use any of the "we submit to
thousands" of search engines service companies, as these submissions
do absolutely nothing to drive viable rankings. If you aren't achieving
listings in the top 20-30 listings then you're wasting your marketing
dollars!
3)Remember the old Hill St. Blues maxim "be careful out there"?
This advice fits well in the SE marketing world - its digital warfare
out there for rankings. Significant resources are starting to flow
into this market as well, raising the bar and making it fiercely
competitive.
4)Stringent keyword analysis for the HTML text is the underlying
foundation of a successful Search Engine Ranking campaign –
it's analogous to the importance of ad copy for a conventional print
campaign. Most good SE firms use a commercial database service which
enables them to carefully analyze the relative popularity of keywords
and then build a submissions and optimization process around selected
keywords.
5)The actual Title for your pages will also have a significant
impact on whether or not a campaign works. It needs to be the right
length, typically 6-8 words, have no hyperbole, and pique a searcher's
curiosity.
6)Contrary to endless marketing hype there are no quick solutions
in this form of interactive marketing – it will take at least
1-2 months before you see any immediate results. And, for significant
results; i.e. page 1-3 listings via top tier engines add another
2-3 months on top of this on average.
7)Nobody can guarantee absolute results in this market, if they
do, then ask them for a bottle of snake oil! The only thing we can
guarantee our clients are detailed reports of what we are doing
and some references to other successful campaigns – it's a
leap of faith, like most marketing expenditures.
8)Web site content development impacts good SE rankings. You need
to develop content which is relevant to keywords. We use linguistic
analysis software for our clients and then build a standalone "stealth
web site" which has content expressly designed for SE spiders
(bots). But, this level of sophistication and proprietary process
is expensive and time-consuming, but very effective.
9)Remember the Armand Hammer quote about Russia? "An enigma
wrapped inside a box buried deep in the ocean." This is apropos
to the Search Engine world, as the top tier SE's all change their
submission rules and algorithms on a regular basis. So, hire a SE
firm that understands the market – it can be very frustrating
doing it on your own and in many cases unproductive!
About the Author Lee Traupel has 20
plus years of marketing experience He is the co-founder of a Northern
California and Brussels Belgium based, privately held, Marketing
Services and Software Company, Intelective Communications, Inc.
(http://www.intelective.com). He can be reached at Lee@intelective.com
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