If you manage a company, you probably have a website. You may have heard of search engine marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) but may not be totally clear on what those things are. Basically, these refer to strategies to make your web site appear higher in search engine searches. While it is not brain surgery or rocket science, there are things you should do to try to get your strategy right. Here are a few tips:
- Be selective with your keywords. Keywords are the terms and phrases people will use when they are looking for the goods and services you provide. Picking the right ones is critical to the success of any search engine marketing campaign. Any SEO services company worth its salt will tell you that. To get the right keywords — that are relevant to you and your business and which produce sales for you, you need to test, test and test some more. One thing that many companies suggest doing is using longer keywords or phrases because they allow you to get more targeting with your search terms. You may find you get less traffic when you use the longer keywords but that they people who find you are more likely to buy from you. Your search for the right keywords will never end but that is the point of this kind of marketing.
- Add your location. More and more people are using the “near me” feature that is part of Google searches. If you own or manage a brick and mortar establishment, such as a restaurant, you are going to want people looking to eat out to be able to find you by your location. For example, if you are a web design company in Fort Worth, Texas you may want to make “web design Fort Worth” one of your keyword phrases.
- Make your website look good on mobile devices. More and more people are using mobile technology to find what they need on the web. This is really important if you cater to local clients because if they are out and about looking for a place to eat, they are probably going to use their smart phone or tablet to find their options. Also, even if you are an online business, you will miss out on a lot of business by not having a website that looks good on mobile devices.
- Make sure your website loads quickly. Some people do not see this is as a part of good search engine marketing plans but if people find your site only to leave because it does not load quickly enough, what is the point? You have to remember that people only give a site a few seconds to load. If it does not pop up immediately, they give up and go someplace else. You may have the best content on the planet but no one will see it if it takes too long to load.
- Have great content. Even the best search engine marketing campaign will not turn web visitors into clients or customers if you do not have great content on your website. It should be well written, professional and, above all, it should help the people who are visiting your site. If you are giving people something that they need, they will come back. They will buy from you and they will tell their networks about you. Those are all very good things.
- Use your keywords everywhere. People do not always realize that the spiders that search through the internet can only read text. Images mean nothing to them. What you need to do is tag your images with your keywords. You should also use it in your headings, URL and names of your posts. Write about it and your site will be found.
It has been estimated that over 99% of all experiences on the Internet are started with a search engine search. You need your site to pop up at the top of the search results because the vast majority of internet users never venture past the first page. When you are working out your search engine marketing strategy, these tips can go a long way to help.
