Web marketing is gaining popularity as the economic downturn forces business owners to find less expensive forms of marketing. Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) have both shown huge returns for those who have taken advantage of the new technology.
Search engine optimization generally refers to the tactics that are used to make a website more appealing to Google. While there are things that can be done to the site itself, there are also things that can be done off of the site to improve the rankings on Google. We’ll start with some of the more important on-page factors. Then we’ll hit on the #1 off-page factor that should never be overlooked when marketing any site.
On-Page Factors:
- Content – It’s true what they say. Content is still king on the Internet. Sure there are other important factors but content provides the dual benefit of adding content for Google to read (and rank your site for) and content for your visitors to read. While writing great content for your visitors, you’ll simultaneously fill your pages with relevant keywords that people are searching for. By writing great content, you’ll boost your odds of being found on Google when people look for your topic.
- Code – Poorly written code generally results in poorly ranked sites. Sites that are programmed using tables are naturally ranked lower than those that use cleaner, more concise CSS coding. Google looks at webpage and they read through the code looking for the paragraphs of text to read the content on the page. If the code is long and bloated, it’s difficult for Google to find the actual content. By shortening the code, you mak Google’s job easier. If you make their job easier, they’ll reward you with higher rankings.
- Frequency of Updates – Google is constantly looking for new content. They’re in the business of selling advertisements to put on their pages. The more content they find, the more blank billboards they’ll have. So, Google is constantly looking for new material. Sites that add new stuff are also rewarded. If your site sits there stagnant, they’ll all but quit visiting your site. You may post a new press release on your site and not have it picked up by Google for months if your site has a reputation of not adding new content. Adding a blog to your site can make it easy for you to put new content on your site. Google loves blogs so much that the word has become known as an acronym for Better Listings On Google. Adding a post every few days is often all it takes to get Google to read through your site every few minutes and show preference for the content you write.
- Internal Linking – This one is often overlooked. Sure you naturally link your pages together because you use navigation menus, however, strategically linking your pages is important to how Google ranks your pages. It’s not just about your visitors and how they navigate the site. It’s also about Google and how they see your pages. Unfortunately, the topic of internal linking is far too complex to address in this post but we’re happy to discuss our process if you’d like to learn more.
Off-Page Factors
There are a number of things you can do on your site to improve your rankings on Google’s search results pages but believe it or not, what happens on other sites is actually more important to your site’s rankings. You see, Google is in a constant battle to assure that their results provide relevant results. To ensure that, they have turned to the voting public to help determine any given site’s rankings. How? A site casts a vote by linking to it. The more sites that link to your site, the more votes your site receives. Get a ton of votes and you’ll likely rank at the top of Google.
Don’t run out and start asking sites to link to your site though. I see sites all the time that have hundreds of links pointing to them, but they still fail to rank well. There are many small considerations to make before asking for a link and if you do it incorrectly, all of your efforts will be for nothing. Don’t spin your wheels any longer, give Red Rocket a call now and we’ll walk you though our link-building-process. We’ll explain what we do and why it works.
Improving your traffic
Now, we’re going to take a look at search engine marketing and the things that you can do to improve the traffic to your site utilizing search engines. Search engine marketing generally encompasses all of the tactics that are used other than SEO.
These things include:
- Web 2.0 marketing
- Pay-per-click advertising
- Social media
There are dozens of other tactics but these are just 3 of my favorites. Some of you might be thinking that a couple of those bullets aren’t actually related to SEM but let me explain…
Web 2.0 marketing is one of the most powerful SEM tricks because it can help you to dominate more than one of the top postions on Google and knock your competition out of the first page all together. You see, the more websites that you can rank on the first page of Google, the better your odds of getting the clicks. Create pages on multiple web 2.0 sites, link them together, optimize them and watch how all of the pages can dominate the SERPs.
Pay-per-click advertising is one of those things that can require months of experience to understand it so I hesitate to attempt to tackle the topic in this blog post. For more information of PPC, read Aaron’s earlier post on SEO vs. PPC or visit Wikipedia to learn more.
Social media is often considered a tactic unto itself, however, social media can help you to be found on Google. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace are huge. Google loves ’em. In fact, they’re more likely to rank your posts on those sites than your own website. Utilize each of the major social media sites and you can once again dominate the search results. If your listings occupy the first 10 positions, your competition won’t be found. No matter which listing they click on, they’ll be directed to one of your pages. Ultimately, they’ll find their way to your site. It’s a beautiful thing.