The Search Engine Marketing Process
As online marketing becomes the method of choice with many companies, more and more websites are looking into understanding the process involved and learning how they can benefit from search engine marketing.
Business assessment - What are the needs, goals and direction of the business as a whole. How would a business meet their strategic goals. Does a website fit into the business, how would it help, what would it accomplish? Work with an online marketer to uncover the website’s objectives.
Keyword Analysis - Research relevant keywords and key phrases appropriate to the industry and business. Tried and tested keywords can be mapped throughout the content of the site, in search engine optimization, site structure, pay-per-click advertising, internal links and in a social media strategy. Develop a strategic plan on how those keywords would be used to drive additional traffic to the website. Remember to always test and measure the effectiveness of the keywords. A well performed keyword analysis is crucial in a search engine optimization effort to make a website the most relevant in a query.
Linking- The process of acquiring links from other websites directed to your own to improve direct referrals and search engine ranking. Search engines likes popular sites, they would view a sites with similar links as being “link popular”. Always use links that can benefit the visitors first and not just for ranking.
Setting up a Pay Per Link Promotion - Before creating a landing page, map keywords to the landing web pages and not to a website homepage. If a visitor clicks on a link, they expect to find more information about the offer presented to them and not go looking for it. An advertisement for the offer can be prepared on the landing page with a compelling headline to catch a reader’s attention. If this is the first time developing a pay-per-link campaign, enlist the help of a good sales copy writer or a search engine marketing company. As every single word on the ad is crucial, they can help write commanding headlines that would catch the attention of visitors. Using the researched keywords or key phrases, bid on the selected keywords and ready for business! With any campaign, always track and measure.