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SEO Basics: Pages vs. Website
Filed Under SEO
A common myth about SEO is that you are optimizing your “Web Site”.
“How does my site rank on Google?” is really a misnomer.
You are optimizing page by page. Search Engines care about the specific page on your website, not the site as a whole
Now, you can definitely use your site’s structure to promote different pages and “lift selected pages up” in the eyes of the search engine.
For example, if your home page ranks well – in terms of Page Rank and Search Engine Position – you can use that to your advantage to drive some of that “ranking” or “Google love” to other pages on your site. So, it’s not to say that the pages on your site each live in a vacuum. But when you are looking to optimize for various terms, you need to focus your attention page by page.
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SEO Basics: What is SEO?
Filed Under SEO
Search Engine Optimization is the art and science of convincing the Search Engines that you are the most relevant option to display to their customers in a search.
This involves strategically designing your site and your pages to clearly position their relevance. And it involves getting other sites to identify you as relevant.
The components of SEO are actually fairly basic:
- On Page factors - Keyword placement & density
- Site Structure – Navigation, organization and spider-friendly factors
- Off Page factors – Number and quality of inbound links – Consensus among the inbound links as to what your page is about.
These SEO basics all come together to serve 3 major goals:
- Tell the Search Engine what your page is about
- Make it easy for the Search Engines to index your site
- Tell the Search Engines what Other Sites think your page is about.
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PPC vs. SEO
Should you focus your attention on PPC or SEO?
How about Both?!
The best SEO strategy starts with a PPC campaign.
Why?
No matter how much keyword research you do on the front end, you have no idea, really, which keywords will work for your business. Which ones bring the most traffic based on your offer? And most importantly, which ones CONVERT?
Running a PPC campaign before you begin your SEO efforts is a surefire way to find out the answers to your most important online marketing questions:
- How is my target market looking for what I offer?
- What kind of offer will they respond to?
Create your PPC campaigns based on your keyword research and refine them until you have your answers. Then, take the highest converting, most expensive keywords and optimize your site to rank for these keywords. This method will save you from optimizing your site from non-converting keywords and will save you money on PPC when you start ranking organically for the expensive keywords.
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The Truth about Social Marketing
Filed Under SEO, Social Media
Social Marketing. It’s all the buzz. Everyone’s doing it.
Some say with Social Marketing, SEO is dead . . . ???
NOT!
SEO will never die unless the Search Engines themselves die. (never say never . . .)
SEO = Search Engine Optimization = Optimizing your page/site/video to be presented when a user searches for what you are offering.
What IS changing and will continue to change are the methods you need to use to appear relevant to Google for the search in question. Google’s mission is to create algorithms that can provide the most relavant results to their visitors.
In the beginning, you used to be able to just “tell” Google “My Site is About This” – then they figured out we could just make that up – (keyword stuffing anyone? )
Then you could make Google think “everyone likes me”. Paid links, reciprocal link exchanges. Again, they figured it out.
Social Marketing is the most recent method that Google can and does use to figure out what the masses are thinking about and finding useful.
This is why social media is becoming such a popular topic in the SEO world. Social Media has some great PR and general marketing benefits, but Google also recognizes that there is a lot of power in understanding what the populations within the social networks are finding relevant and interesting.
And as with all SEO techniques: Use it wisely. Don’t try to "game" Google. And it will be a useful and powerful technique for you.
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All Traffic is NOT created Equal
Filed Under Marketing, Traffic
So many online marketrs today are focused on getting traffic. The more traffic the better. What is the Alexa ranking? Just a measure of the traffic your site is getting.
But what good is traffic if it doesn’t lead to sales?
You can find ways to get traffic all day long, but if the traffic you bring to your site isn’t interested in your offer, you are wasting your time and money. There are ways to benefit from traffic in terms of branding, etc., but the typical small online business needs to monetize the traffic directly through a sale.
What you need to focus on is Targeted Traffic.
Traffic that you know will have a very high chance of buying what you are selling.
How do you find this traffic? This is where your Market Research comes in.
You have to really understand your target market.
- Where do they hang out?
- What do they think about?
- What are their concerns or issues?
- What makes them happy?
Based on all of this target market analysis, you can start to piece together a strategy to “be in the right place at the right time” for your potential customers.
Be there when they are searching for your product or service.
Be there when they are searching for a solution to their problem.
Be there when they are discussing their problems or concerns with others.
The key is – you need to be out where your customer are at the time when they need you.
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