Sep

6

Investors Business Daily Talks Search Engine Web Marketing

Filed Under Internet Marketing, Website Marketing | 2 Comments

In Friday’s issue of Investors Business Daily there were two articles about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and its benefits compared with buying search ads (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN, and a host of other sites that sell ads). Search engine web marketing has a paid side and a free side. A large budget may be needed to do run ads in the paid area.

IBD stated that with search engines becoming a bigger source of web traffic – how many times do people ‘Google’ something every day – companies are more interested in getting that traffic.
Many of the larger (Fortune 500 size) companies are doing both. Recently, these bigger companies have increased their SEO efforts after seeing the benefits their website gets back. Small and medium size companies can compete in the same markets as large companies if they do their SEO work correctly, and target the right search terms (keywords).

The free side of search is the organic, or natural, search results that are returned when people type their search words into Google and other search engines, and it really is valuable traffic. Many people will only look at those results – not at the paid ads that appear down the right side of the page and a couple at the top on the left. Under the ads at the top on the left side are the organic search results. In order to rank well in the natural results, your search engine web marketing needs to be optimized for the search engines so that they reward it with a high ranking.

The art of SEO involves finding the right keywords to target for search engine web marketing efforts, and then designing the site so that search engines will not only find it but reward it with a top ranking. In addition, there are SEO strategies and good old fashioned ‘work’ to do on the website that will help its perceived value to the search engine rises. IBD stated that the competition is very intense and not many companies will share their SEO strategies because of that. One way that I have learned to be able to rise above the competition is in the keyword research area.

If website owners are not able to get to the top few spots on the first page of a search engine for their keywords, they are most probably targeting the same keywords as too many other websites in their search engine web marketing endeavors. In some markets, the majority of websites are using the same keywords. They can’t all end up in the top spots. Every market has what we call money keywords, or profitable keywords. These are words or phrases that get significant searches every month, but don’t have as many websites already targeting them. With some SEO work, website owners can rank quickly for these money keywords and start to see lots more traffic come to their website.

The IBD article talked about the long term benefits of SEO. If a company stops their ads today, the ad goes down and no additional traffic can go to the website from that point on. This type of search engine web marketing is gone until the company decides to start paying for the ad again.

In contrast, SEO work that includes good content on the website, and on other websites that link back to the original website, is information that will be up on the search engines for a long time to come. The benefits from this type of search engine web marketing work you do for your website today will continue to pay off for years down the road. With SEO, there is more up-front work and cost in getting the work done, but with long term benefits. And it all centers around keyword, terms, or phrases.

Investors Business Daily states that, “If a company depends on Web traffic for sales, you can bet it’s using search-engine optimization, or SEO, to boost its search ranking.” Some brands do not sell from their websites, but for those of us that do want to do more business from our websites, the time is now to put an SEO plan together and work that plan consistently. It is worth the time and effort for your search engine web marketing, even if you must outsource the basic keyword research if you don’t know how to do it thoroughly or are not getting any traffic to your website with your existing keywords, to secure the right keywords that can take your SEO efforts to a whole new level by helping to put your website far ahead of your competition.

Aug

23

Keywords Websites and How to Do Search Engine Web Marketing

Filed Under Social Networking, Website Marketing | 1 Comment


Keywords websites and search engine web marketing go hand in hand if your goal is to increase business on your site. Internet marketing is centered around keywords and finding the targeted ones to display on the website. The way that people search for a business, product or service, is to go to a search engine like Google and type in some words, better know to internet marketers as keywords. What we try to do is to determine what words people search to find what we have to offer. This is not an easy task.

There are a couple of things to look at during the search for keywords websites. First, many people are simply searching for information. It is great to post valuable content on our websites so that we are seen as reputable and an authority in our industry. Still, many folks are not looking to buy right away. When they do get closer to buying, they continue to search in the search engines, but they change their words because they have found information that helps them narrow their search terms.

That brings us to ‘buying keywords’ or ‘money keywords’ – the terms that people are searching when they have their credit card in hand and are ready to buy. There are money keywords in every industry. How do we find them? How do we know that the terms are profitable keywords? There are tools and services that help us determine this by providing us with search engine web marketing statistics on individual keywords and phrases.

I am frustrated by the number of people who get excited about making it to the first page of a search engine like Google for their keywords websites, but the keywords are not being searched by anyone. It doesn’t matter if your website ranks high in the search engines if nobody is searching for the keyword you are targeting. It’s not going to get you visitors, or buyers.

Next is choosing a keyword or phrase that is so general that the search engine web marketing competition for the keywords or phrase is astronomical. If thousands or millions of other website are already searching a generalized industry keyword, it is going to be very hard to beat them all out to get on the first page of search engine results.

Some website owners choose keywords because they think the words sound good, or fit with their business, or they want to target all of their search engine web marketing, including social media, around the words. I prefer to determine that the keywords websites get a lot of traffic and are not so competitive that I can’t get to the 1st page of Google within a very short time.

Let’s look at some examples.

If you are in the real estate business, the main keyword on your website might be real estate, or some other general keyword. The problem here is that even though there are many searches per month for ‘real estate’, there are millions of other websites that already target those same words. How are you going to compete with all of them? How will you get to the top of the search results so that people find YOUR WEBSITE?

If you are in the real estate business and you target the keyword phrase ‘preparing to buy a home’, first, there are hardly any searches per month so it won’t bring much traffic, and second there are thousands of websites already targeting this phrase. Two things here: the phrase is not good if there are few searches per month, and the number of websites targeting a phrase that isn’t good to begin with is an example of poor keyword choice.

There are also long tail keywords that web site owners will target because they think it will be easier to rank for the phrase. This doesn’t always work because the actual searches per month may be very low, so that even if you can rank for them, it doesn’t bring much traffic to the website. Also, it is more challenging to use long tail keywords because you have to do a lot of work to market for the specific long tail phrase.

Keywords websites and finding the terms that will convert to business is part of the research web site owners need to do in order to find the money words that will help grow their business. Search engine web marketing is a science that requires specific work and diligent research. It is very hard and time consuming to accomplish without internet marketing tools and services that can deliver results based on performance.

To learn more about how to find profitable keywords for your website, including a Key Word Report at no cost to you, visit: web site marketing service for money keywords.

There are money keywords for every market. To learn how you can find the money keywords for your website, visit our KEYWORDS Web Sites page.