Selecting and Evaluating Keyphrases for Search Engine Marketing

Many businesses recognize that search engines can bring volumes of highly targeted prospects to their website, typically at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. Unfortunately, these same companies often overlook the most important part of their search engine marketing campaigns, which is keyphrase selection and evaluation. Keyphrases (those phrases that potential customers are using to find products or services on search engines) are the building block of any search engine marketing strategy. It is essential that they are chosen carefully, or else the remainder of the campaign, no matter how effective the implementation, will likely be in vain. What follows is a three-step process that goes over the process of compiling, selecting, and evaluating the ongoing performance of keyphrases for search engines

Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 2 – Title Tags

As part of the continued series “Getting Back To Search Engine Optimization Basics”, Andy Beal turns his attention to the much talked about Title and Meta Tags (while a Title Tag isn’t really a Meta tag the two are commonly discussed as such). This week he takes a closer look at the Title tag.

When I decided a few weeks ago to write a series of articles for those new to search engine marketing (SEM), I considered whether there truly was a need to discuss the topic of Meta Tags. After all, this topic has been so heavily discussed that anyone remotely interested in search engine marketing would already have grasped this basic of techniques. My decision was justified just a few days ago when I was asked by the American Marketing Association to provide a workshop on how to create Meta Tags and discuss their benefits. It was at this point that I recalled starting out on my own quest for search engine marketing knowledge many years ago and researching the basic topics that today seem so fundamental. So for the next few parts of this series, I hope to enlighten those of you who are discovering SEM for the first time and maybe refresh the knowledge of those more seasoned marketers.

Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 1 – Keywords

 

As highlighted a couple of weeks ago, I have decided that with the growth of the search engine optimization (SEO) industry, it is important to ensure that we don`t forget the many newcomers. With many new business owners and webmasters exploring SEO for the first time, this series of articles looks to assist with the basic information needed to start a search engine marketing campaign.

In the first part of the series, I wish to ensure we discuss the importance of a solid foundation. When starting any SEO campaign it is tempting to leap straight in and start tweaking meta tags and changing text. However, like any successful marketing strategy, it is vital to ensure that you know whom your audience is and how to reach them. In the same way traditional advertising agencies survey their demographic audience, search engine marketers must ensure that their SEO campaign targets the correct keywords or search phrases. Target the wrong search phrase and you could end up with great search engine rankings for keywords that have no search requests. A few hours now spent ensuring that the correct search phrases are targeted, can save months of useless optimization.

Optimizing Paid For Inclusion Search Engines

Paid for Inclusion is a paid per click mechanism often neglected by companies. It is, however, an extremely successful and cost effective way of driving qualified visitors to a website and through careful management can produce ROI figures in excess of 10 times the investment placed.

A quick look back at history shows that paid for inclusion was one of the first pay per click mechanisms that was available to a marketer. Pioneered most visibly by Inktomi, and then soon followed by engines such as AltaVista and FAST the PFI market really took off providing a welcome manageability to getting your site listed quickly and efficiently. The paid for inclusion market has not changed much since then, with the exception of submission method maybe, but the biggest challenge to a user is how best do I use it?