Search Engine Marketing Speaks to Customers

In last week’s article, Search Engine Marketing – An Internet Marketing Strategy that Needs to Be in Your Toolbox, I talked about why your internet marketing strategy should include search engine marketing.

Between newspapers, education, business websites, personal blogs, social networking, and online magazines, the amount of information available on the internet continues to grow exponentially. Users turn to search engines to sift through it all and find the information they need to solve a problem they have. Search engine marketing is all about making sure your site gets listed within the first few pages of the search engine result for keywords that bring qualified prospects to your business.


Make no mistake, search engine marketing is complicated endeavor. In fact, a whole million dollar industry sprang up around the concept of optimizing web pages so that they rank well in the big three search engines. However, I’m going to share a few simple search engine marketing tips that will give your website the boost it needs to rank well and generate leads.

Search Engine Marketing Tips

Choose Your Keywords Carefully – Keywords are the foundation of your search engine marketing strategy. So to say it is important that you choose the correct keywords to target is an understatement. You are going to have to do some research here and find out the keywords your customers are using to source the products, services, and information you are selling. Luckily there are several tools online that can help with that.

- Aaron Wall’s Keyword Tool will tell you how many times a specific keyword, and variations of that keyword, have been used for in all of the search engines.

- Google’s Keyword Tool will generate a list of keywords based on a starting word you input.

Keyword research is an art in and of itself which we will cover more in-depth in a later article.

Optimize Your Web Pages for Your Chosen Keywords – It is important that the search engines associate your website with the keywords you have picked out. Therefore, for your search engine marketing to be effective they need to show up in the right places on your web pages.

- The title of your articles should include the keyword, preferable within the first 4-5 words and you should use your keyword within the first few and last sentences of your article.

- The keyword should be sprinkled liberally throughout the written content on the page. You want to shoot for a keyword density of 2-3% but definitely no more than 5-7% of the total amount of words on the page. Over usage of keywords can get your website flagged as spam and kicked out of the search results.

- Video and audio need an accompanying text description. Search engines can’t parse video or audio so you need to add keyword rich descriptive text that tells the search engine what it’s all about.

- Images should contain keywords in the alt tags. Not only does this allow your images to get ranked in image search engines but it helps impaired users understand what the image is about. Special browser read the image text and tells the user that there is an image and what it is.

- The categories and tags you use should be keyword rich.

- The description meta tag of both your website and individual web pages should include a keyword rich narrative of what the user will find when they click through to your website. Search engines use this description on the search result pages.

Build a Portfolio of Keyword Rich Backlinks – Offsite optimization is just as important to search engine marketing as onsite optimization. When you or other people link back to your website, you want to make sure they use keyword rich anchor text. This also helps the search engine associate your web page with your targeted keyword.

For example, if you are using search engine marketing to rank high for the keyword ‘home based business’, you want to make sure that when your website is referenced that the keyword ‘home based business’ is used when linking to you. Search engines interpret these types of links as a vote that your website or web page is the best source of information on that particular topic.

This is, by no means, is an exhaustive tutorial on search engine marketing. However, using these tips will get you going in the right direction towards dominating the search engines.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using Twitter and other internet business tools.

(image credit: Edgeworks Limited)

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Increase Traffic with Social Media Marketing

As an internet business owner, getting traffic to your website is an important component for generating sales and leads. It’s really all about the numbers. The more people you attract to your website, the higher the likelihood that you will make a sale or convert a prospect. Social media marketing can help you increase website traffic by getting your name in front of as many people as possible as well as boost your search engine rankings.

Here are a few suggestions for using social media marketing tools to increase website traffic:

Social Media Marketing Tips

Create Profiles at the Major Sites – Your first step to social media marketing success is to build profiles at the major social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. These sites provide a platform for you to network with people who may be interested in your business. Don’t forget to include links to your website. Facebook and LinkedIn specifically allow you to submit the RSS feed of your blog which will help generate website traffic from people visiting your profile.

Bookmark Yourself – Another social media marketing tactic to get traffic to your website is to submit links to your website and articles to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon and Blinklist. When submitting sites, be sure to write an attention grabbing headline and description as well as use general and specific tags to categorize the material so it appeals to your target audience.

Submit Content to Targeted Social Sites – There are a number of social media sites and forums that cater to specific audiences. Many of them allow you to submit original content that is useful to the members. Submitting posts that tap into the needs of the community is a good way to get more website traffic. Be sure to close your articles with a strong call to action that directs the reader to your website.

Use Social Media Marketing Widgets – Your website should be outfitted with bookmarking widgets that allows visitors to submit your site and content to their favorite social media websites. WordPress has a number of plugins such as Tweetmeme, Sexy Bookmarks and OnlyWire that visitors can use to promote your website and increase your website traffic. If you don’t have a blog, or don’t use WordPress, tools like ShareThis and AddThis will work on any website.

Interact with Prospects – Possible the best social media marketing tactic you can use to get traffic to your website is to socialize with people. While the previous suggestions will help you spread your name around, you’ll make yourself more memorable if you actually interact with the members of these websites. You don’t have to have to be active at all of them. Pick one or two that you enjoy using and just starting connecting with people. Show an interest in what they have going on. Not only will you convert a prospect but you’ll make a friend and that is what social networking is all about.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using social media marketing and other internet business tools.