How do you look for information? You search the internet, right? And you’re not alone. With two-thirds of all Australian households now broadband connected the “always on” internet is now the preferred option for searching out all services and products.
A majority of consumers regularly use search engines when looking for information online. If you want your site to rank high in search, you need to put a family of strategies called search marketing--a catch-all term for search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising--to work for your business.
Search engine optimisation
SEO encompasses the strategies for earning top rankings in free search engines. With “Googling” now embedded in our every day language, it is the organic search or the “natural" listing that is the most highly sought prize. This is the essence of SEO. You can improve your website’s ranking by giving the search engines what they’re looking for.
Here are some key SEO strategies:
- Find the most relevant keywords for your market. This is the starting point for any search marketing campaign. You can use sites Wordtracker and Google keyword tracker to assist your analysis for the key worlds.
- Place keywords into the right locations in your website. Your website includes headings and source code. Put your keywords in the headlines, subheads and body copy of your web pages. Search engine experts say that a business seeking to attract qualified leads to its website needs to have an optimal “density” of key words in the content of the website. They suggest 3-5% ‘density’ in terms of total word count.
- Tools such as blogs or forums are excellent at ensuring that content is relevant and timely. Commenting on blog posts is one of the best things you can do online. Credible comments add to any discussion and can help position you as someone with expertise in a given niche.
- Collect links from other sites that are considered reputable and relevant. Relevant inbound links are search engine gold. Focus your strategy on requesting one-way links from sites with high traffic volumes.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Virtually every search today will produce a page where you’ll notice a different type of listing set around the organic results. These "sponsored results" are pay-per-click ads that appear when people search using the keywords in the ads. PPC has some definite advantages for a business seeking online traffic of customers or leads:
- PPC ads show up immediately. You can drive traffic to your site right away, even if you haven't been indexed by search engines yet.
- You only pay for results. No matter how many times your ad is displayed, you pay only when someone clicks on it. And by watching your results carefully, you can determine how well each ad is converting and if it's worth continuing.
- Ease of testing. For marketing-oriented business owners, this is a near perfect environment for employing the test, test, test mode of marketing. Test different keywords, change copy and test again. Move content around, and re-test.
Using social networks to promote your business online
The chances are that if you run a small business in 2009: ignore social networks at your own peril. Many of your competitors have already jumped on the bandwagon, and are successfully networking their way to a stronger Web presence, enhanced credibility, and more customers. Check them out on Facebook and see what they are doing.
Next time you Google for a product or service check out the first page ranking; you will almost certainly notice listings from MySpace or FaceBook.
Experiment with one or two sites
- MySpace is the largest social networking site, but is full of teenagers with limited capital to spend.
- LinkedIn is clearly for professional networking; it has positioned itself well for that.
- Facebook is much broader than that. I see it as having more utility.
Write profiles that establish your particular expertise. Most social networking sites start you off with a profile page. Seize this opportunity to position your business and market your skills, as well as providing necessary contact information and a Web site address. If you are an expert on a given topic, brand yourself as such. Facebook, among other things, allows you to build a business page for news about your company.
Some final thoughts
- Promote your blog on social networking sites.
- On Facebook, for example, by setting up a blog on Wordpress.com, your posts can automatically be pushed to your profile page, along with recent comments.
