I have decided that with the expansion of the search engine optimization (SEO) industry, it is crucial to ensure that we don’t overlook the many newcomers. With many new business owners and webmasters checking out SEO for the first time there’s a need to share information on seo basics with each other. Here is the first in a series of articles designed to assist with the basic information needed to begin a search engine marketing campaign.
To start with, I wish to ensure we discuss the importance of a good foundation. When starting any SEO campaign it is tempting to leap straight in and begin changing text. However, like any successful marketing strategy, it is essential to make sure that you understand whom your audience is and the way to reach them. In the same way traditional advertising agencies survey their demographic audience, search engine marketers need to ensure that their SEO campaign focuses on the correct keywords or search phrases. Focus on the incorrect search phrase and you could end up getting great search engine rankings for keywords that have no search requests. A couple of hours now spent ensuring that the correct search phrases are targeted can help to save months of useless optimization.
Brainstorm
When you started your organization or created your products, you no doubt sat down with your friends, relatives and business partners and talked about the requirements of your target audience. You would have been foolish to stubbornly press ahead with all your products without first testing the market to see if there was a demand. Likewise, when you start out on your SEO campaign it is important to brainstorm search phrases that are prone to bring qualified visitors to your website. Sit down with your co-workers and business partners and go over which keywords are relevant to the products and services you offer. Compile a preliminary list of 5-10 search phrases that you feel best represent your company and which you believe people would type into a search engine when trying to find you.
Consider the following factors when brainstorming:
1. Is your audience likely to look for industry standard terms or simple layman phrases?
2. Which of your products are in stock? There is no point targeting search phrases that are popular if you don’t actually stock that item.
3. Which products have the highest profit margin? If you had just a $.20 mark-up on a extremely popular product, is it possible you could sell enough online to produce a profit? A product that is less searched but has a higher profit margin would be easier to obtain a search engine ranking and would produce higher revenues.
4. Identify your largest competitors. View competitor websites and see which products they may actually target; which search phrases do they have rankings for?
Make use of any PPC data
Odds are, your choice to start a SEO campaign is fueled by your desire to reduce costly pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. While dependence on PPC will be reduced with a decent SEO campaign, you can make use of your present PPC efforts when researching your search phrases to target. Analyze your PPC keywords and check to see which of them have brought the highest traffic levels, best click through rates and greater sales conversions. It is likely a search phrase that brought successful results through a PPC campaign will be really appropriate in your quest to obtain top search engine positioning.
Expanding your Keyword list
Once you have completed your brainstorming and have compiled your list of 5-10 core keywords, you’re ready to move ahead and expand that list. A list of 5-10 search phrases will not, as I am sure you will know, bring the amount of search engine traffic required to make your website successful. However, that list will be an important tool when determining which phrases to add to the mix. At this point, you have to turn to the search engines themselves and research which search phrases are actually being typed into Google, Yahoo, Bing et al. Fortunately there are some very helpful tools you can use to grow your list. The most well known are: WordTracker, WordStream and Google Adwords.
This is a 3 part series. Look for the other 2 parts to this series: Part 2: Determining Competition and Part 3: Selecting Your Keywords
For more information about seo marketing make sure to check out seo marketing, and The Cab System This article, Search Engine Optimization Tips – Part One: Brainstorm is released under a creative commons attribution licence.
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