What is Social Marketing?
Social marketing is a new form of advertising that is just starting to become popular. Often social marketing is a favorite of small businesses because it is virtually free although in order to use it to drive traffic to a website the company still needs to use traditional search engine marketing and search engine optimization techniques. It is build around the idea of link strategies and using personal networking to drive website traffic.
Before the widespread use of social networking sites social marketing really wasn’t a viable option for most mainstream businesses but now the popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook has made social networking and social marketing very popular. Link strategies that are often used in social marketing involve creating free accounts on these popular social networking sites and then using search engine marketing techniques to increase traffic and network with others who interested in the same topics or with customers. Using search engine optimization to create search engine marketing content on your social networking profile pages can help get your profile listed in search engine results pages and you can use search engine marketing articles to help gain readers and friends across the net.
This type of marketing isn’t just limited to using sites like MySpace and Facebook. You can use search engine marketing and search engine optimization to socially market your blog as well. Many companies these days prefer having blogs to having traditional websites because blogs are much more accessible to people and make people feel like they have a personal connection with the company. Blogging is hugely popular.
Many popular blog sites are free so you can set up a free blog to be the front page of your web page and you can put links throughout the blog that lead to other pages on your web page so that your readers can find your other search engine marketing articles and information or buy your products. The best link strategies for blogs involve taking the time to form alliances with other bloggers. Blogging networks have huge followings and many times if you join a blog network or go to the blogs of people who share your interest or sell complementary products you can leave comments on that person’s blog that link back to your own site.
Even though that type of advertising can be a little time consuming it’s a great way to use search engine marketing to reach your target audience for free. Blogging communities also usually link to one another’s blogs which means that you can use your networking contacts to help you publicize your website. Social marketing can be tricky though because it’s more than just using search engine marketing, link strategies and SEO.
There are a lot of social networking etiquette rules that need to be observed and if you don’t follow protocol you could be ostracized. When you’re using social networking you should never just post links to your website on other people’s blogs, that’s considered spamming. Take the time to read other blogs and leave relevant comments. Usually then you will be allowed to post a link to your own website.
What to Look for in an SEO Consultant
When you want to add some search engine optimized content to your website it’s probably a good idea to hire a professional SEO consultant. A professional SEO consultant can help you decide what SEO services you need in order to overhaul your existing website to make it more search engine optimized and to implement some search engine marketing. A consultant can also tell you what percentage of SEO content you need to have on your site and what Meta tags to use.
If you have never used any search engine optimization on your site at all then you will definitely need to hire an experienced SEO consultant to make sure that your site gets a complete search engine optimization makeover. Many SEO consultants offer more SEO services than just content so if you already have a professional SEO writer you should ask that writer if he or she also does SEO consultations or provides other SEO services.
If you need to start looking for an SEO consultant here are some tips on selecting an SEO consultant. When you are considering an SEO consultant ask to see previous examples of any SEO content that person has written but also ask to see websites that the person has written for. After all, the point of hiring someone to provide SEO services is to get your website noticed isn’t it? So you need to see some of the websites that the SEO consultant has worked on in order to know for sure that the SEO consultant can deliver high quality SEO services.
A good way to tell if a web site that the SEO consultant has worked on is really doing well in search engine rankings and drawing traffic is to look on the Alexa website. You can enter the name of the website or the website address and see the search engine ranking for that particular website over a period of months, weeks and days. If that site is doing well then the SEO consultant probably is experienced enough to provide quality SEO services but if the site is ranked very low or doesn’t get a lot of hits then you might want to look for another SEO consultant.
Another way that you can tell if the SEO consultant that you’re considering hiring is of high quality is by what his or her rates are. Someone who has high rates but a poor portfolio probably hasn’t been working as an SEO consultant for very long and might not have the skills that you need to increase your web site traffic. If the consultant’s rates are very low then he or she might be trying to build up a portfolio of work which shows inexperience. You should always be willing to pay a fair rate for SEO services just like you would be for any other professional services. Don’t expect to get great SEO services for next to nothing. This is your business and your business is important so it’s worth investing the money in a highly qualified SEO consultant.
Search Engine Marketing - Creating A Better Landing Page
Landing pages have the ability to grab and hold us like fly no-fly paper or repel us like jumping on the trampling. The question is what impact does your landing page have on the people who visit your website. As I talk to people who are just getting into SEO (search engine optimization), all they focus on our rankings in traffic. We have to remember that “rankings” in “traffic” or not the end but a means to the end. That end is visitors to your site that take advantage of the solutions that you offer. We can have a lot of traffic to our website but if no one is sticking around long enough to see if our solutions can solve their problems then that traffic does not mean anything.
A lot of thought must go into your landing pages, both from a search engine perspective and from a customer perspective.
Search Engine perspective:
This is covered in Search Engines 101 Paid Vs Natural Search so I am not going to go into detail here.
Customer Focused Landing Pages:
Your landing page has to do one thing, answer the questions that the searcher had in mind when he typed in his keywords. The searcher type in his search terms because he has a problem, needs a solution or is in some kind of “pain”. You have about two seconds to convince him that you understand what he is going through and what he needs. The last thing a searcher wants to see is that you can jump higher, run faster and do it better than the competition. He just doesn’t care (yet). Besides, most of the websites that he already visited probably stated that they do that. The challenge is to show the searcher that you have the answers to his needs. How do we do that?
1. Think of as many questions as you can that might be on the mind of a visitor to that specific landing page.
2. Choose one of the questions to be the title of that specific landing page. Use the other questions as sub points or topics in the outline of the page.
3. The content underneath each heading will be a description of the problem. It is very important that when you describe the problem you do it from your client’s perspective.
4. After describing two or three scenarios that your client may fall into closeout with the paragraph that describes your qualifications for dealing with the above scenarios. This is where you put in how me years of experience, the combined experience of your team or your experience in the marketplace.
5. The last thing is to have a call to action. The idea is that if your client falls into one of the scenarios described it would be natural for them to do the call for action to get help with their problem.
For example, if someone is doing a search on long-term care insurance they may only have a general idea of what you’re looking for. When they come to a landing page that has a question like “what happens to your nest egg if you suffer an illness or an injury that requires long-term care?” Then in the description of the problem they read that one year of long-term care can cost between $90,000 and $130,000 and as a result of this high costs it will either force you into bankruptcy or dependency on your children or family to take care of you. (Not a pretty picture.) After you add your qualifications, whatever they are, you put in your call to action. It could be something like “for a free quote and help in understanding what your options are fill out form below and one of our experts will contact you within the next 48 hours”.
So the question remains, are your landing pages flypaper or trampolines? Customer focused landing pages are worth the time and energy to produce. If you are not sure give us a call and we will do a free evaluation of your site. This will help determine whether or not changes or in order.
Why Is Search Engine Optimization Important?
Search engine marketing is the process of using search engine optimization to make sure that your webpage consistently is at the top of the heap when customers and client do an Internet search for terms that are related to your product or service. When search engines send out spiders or bots to collect information about different websites that is then used to decide which web pages show up first in search listings these spiders and bots are looking for search engine optimized content, or SEO content. SEO content drives search engine marketing by repeating certain keywords or key phrases a certain number of times.
When the search engine spiders and bots pick up those keywords or key phrases then they put that webpage higher in the search listings then pages that don’t have SEO content. SEO has become very important to businesses in the last decade because no matter how much you spend on advertising when you’re doing business on the Web your webpage needs to be at the top of the search listings page. Search engine marketing can target the major search tools that people use like Google or Yahoo so that you can be sure your webpage will show up somewhere near the top whenever anyone searches for a keyword or key phrase that is found on your website.
SEO content needs to be original though, just copying and pasting the same paragraph over and over won’t help you with SEP. The spiders and bots are programmed to not list sites that repeat the same word or the same phrase over and over. So if you were planning on taking one paragraph or one page of content and using that for search engine marketing it won’t work. For effective search engine optimization you need to have original SEO content.
If you want your website to really be successful good SEM is the key. Lots of companies place online ads and online ads can be effective at reaching particular target markets but when it comes to sheer numbers the highest number of hits that you will get to your site will come from SEO content and using search engine optimization in creative ways to get your webpage listed higher up in the search rankings.
Studies have shown that a majority of people will never click past the first page of search results when they search for a certain keyword or phrase so you have to make sure that your webpage is at the top of the search results page in order to get the most visitors to you site who are looking for the product that you sell. Using search engine optimization can be tricky until you get the hang of writing SEO content and using search engine marketing but once you figure out how it all works or hire a professional to show how it all works you’ll be amazed at the increase in traffic to your website that you will see.
Beware Of Doorway Pages
You’ve probably come across a doorway page before when you were surfing the Web. Doorway pages are similar to landing pages except doorway pages are practically empty. Doorway page are created specifically to utilize search engine optimization techniques and search engine marketing to get listed in the highest spot possible on search engine results page. Sometimes the person who stumbles onto a doorway page will need to click through the doorway page to get to the actual website that they were trying to get to and sometimes the page uses a Meta refresh, or an HTML code that instantly redirects the reader to another website.
Doorway pages often use a sneaky form of SEO strategies where the text on the page has nothing to do with the actual product that the company is selling but uses popular search terms in an effort to get a higher search engine results.
Doorway pages are essentially a form of the old bait and switch technique. For example if you were looking for a site on natural dog food and you did a Google search for natural dog food and you clicked on the first link at the top of the search engine results page because the description of that site that is listed under the link said that page was about the best kinds of natural dog food. Then after you clicked on that link you were taken to the web site of a nationally known pet food manufacturer who was trying to sell you their new line of natural dog food. That company is using a doorway page as a method of search engine marketing. By using search engine optimized text on the doorway page the company was able to get ranked very high by the search engine spider and was able to draw you in with a search engine marketing article but instantly sent you to their page hoping that you would buy their new dog food line.
Because a lot doorway pages are set up to act essentially as spam and to use any method available to get a particular website to the top of the search engine results page search engine spiders now are on the lookout for doorway page. The search engines will sometimes ban pages that use doorway pages from being indexed or showing up on the search engine results page. Doorway pages that have an instant Meta redirect or Meta refresh are usually not banned by the search engine spiders. Websites that use doorway pages will often use a redirect so that the webpage will still show up on a search engine’s search results page. Some website creators try to get around the ban by creating search engine optimized and content rich doorway pages but the search engine spiders are adapting are now learning how to spot doorway pages that are set up to try and attract web traffic using black hat SEO that has nothing to do with the actual content of the website.
Search engine marketing is a great tool and most play fair. For those who do not beware, the search engines engineers sit around all day figuring out how to stop the cheaters. If you stumble across some “top secret” strategy that someone is trying to sell you, be assured that the search engines already know about and have adjusted their algorithms to deal with it. Instead of wasting time and money, just do it right.