Friday, December 30, 2011

All Hail the SEO


When it comes to effective marketing and advertising, the web is King.  In 2008 the Direct Marketing Association performed a study on the use of different marketing tactics.  Radio ads had fallen about 3%, telephone marketing down about 2%, and newspaper ads way down to almost 8%.  These campaigns dwindled with the ability to have search results at your fingertips within a flash.  If someone wants to find, compare, and research a product, they’re going to the internet.  The study in 2008 showed that search engine marketing had grown almost 20%.  Can you imagine what it is now? 
            Now there are two types of search engine marketing; paid and organic.  Paid ads are referred to as Pay-per-click (PPC).  There are dozens of online marketing firms who will set you up with paid per click advertising.  You can also do an AdWords campaign through Google.  Be careful though, this type of web advertising can quickly become expensive without ever generating good leads. In my opinion, it’s better to grow and enhance your organic search results also known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  Organic search results are created by how you manage your website manually.  There are plenty of easy things to set in place to help your website appear on that first page of search results. 
            One of the key factors is to think about what someone would type in their search engine to find a particular product or service.  You want to take those words and phrases and incorporate them into certain areas of your website.  If I want my website to show up on the first page of results when somebody types in “Peachtree accounting triad NC,” I’m going to do the following.  “Peachtree accounting” is going to be part of my web page title.  It will also be part of my page description, as well as incorporated into multiple bodies of text on my website.  The content provided on your page plays a huge helping hand in SEO.  If you talk about Peachtree accounting in multiple places as well as words like “traid NC,” search engines will find it and match it up.  Another factor that helps is fresh content.  Your page needs to be updated frequently.  You can still use the same key words and phrases in your text, just switch them around and find different ways of using them. 
            The content and foundation of the web page design can play a huge role in getting found on that Google search.  Keep posting fresh and unique content relative to what people are searching for and avoid spending money on short term clicks.  

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