The single most overlooked aspect of website development is an Internet marketing strategy to drive true business results through your website. Without implementing a sound Internet marketing plan, your chance of increasing business through your website is severely limited.

Of all the Internet marketing programs available today, search engine marketing (SEM) has proven to be the most effective at targeting prospective buyers of products and services. Search engine marketing is ranked as the number 1 website promotion method used by commercial websites and the most cost-effective method of increasing online revenues.

While there are literally thousands of search engines on the Internet, the top 4 search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL) account for about 85% of all the search engine traffic. So the important decision to make is not how many search engines should list your website. The most important decision to make is how to get your website ranked within the first 2 pages of the most important search engines. Most people will not review websites beyond the first 2 pages. If your website is not listed for relevant key phrases within the first 2 pages, your company basically will not receive any exposure on the Internet through search engines.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site ranks well when those keyword phrases are part of a web search. Also known as organic search listings, SEO requires optimising the website in such a way that the algorithms employed by the various search engine companies rank the website as most relevant according to certain key phrases. At a high level, SEO techniques focus on key phrase analysis, content optimisation, coding, and link popularity.

Locations of Search Results

Google organic search engine listings displayed as a result of search engine optimisation are listed on the left side of the page and are identified by “Search Results”.

Yahoo! organic search listings are displayed below the Sponsor Matches under the heading of “Web Site Matches”.

Market Research

It is important to fully understand your markets, products, competition, and marketing objectives. You need to research all the key phrases that are currently being used in searches, the Internet market demand of your products and services, the level of competition and the current market value of each related key phrase. From this very detailed analysis, a search engine strategy can be developed for implementation. In addition to the key phrase analysis, you should analyse your own website for any coding issues or improvement for the optimisation efforts. Look at some key competitor’s websites to understand the level of competition. The result of the market research is a blue print or road map to ensure high rankings in the top search engines.

Content optimisation

It is critical that your website content supports the key phrase(s) you are optimising. Effective content optimisation accounts for about 50% of the factors that search engines take into consideration when ranking your website. The website with the most focused content on a key phrase will be considered more relevant and will rank higher in the search engines if all other factors are equal.

This improves the overall optimisation efforts and increases the importance of other pages on your website. Other important factors in your website are website usability, compelling content with a call-to-action and the benefits of your products and services.

Meta tag creation and web page code optimisation

Having great Title tags and Meta tags on each page of your website is extremely important to the overall optimisation of a website. Just adding good Title tags and Meta tags to the page(s) being optimised without having strong supporting Titles and Meta tags on other important pages within the site hurts the ability of the site to rank well overall. Knowing how to effectively write the Meta tags is also very important.

Likewise, coding on a web page, such as JavaScript and style sheet coding, can work against the overall effectiveness of optimisation. Many programmers do not understand the effects of web page coding on the overall effectiveness of website optimisation.

For this reason, for every page that is optimised on a website, you need effective Title and Meta tags for up to 3 additional pages on the website. This will help ensure that the optimised theme you are building for the website is supported by other pages within the site.

By ensuring effective, professional Title tags and Meta tags as well as optimised coding on the additional pages, it will greatly enhance the search engines’ ability to more easily index the website and will help improve your overall ranking.

Link strategy

Your link strategy and implementation will account for the other 50% of the factors that search engines take into consideration when ranking your website. There are 3 types of links related to your website structure: incoming links, internal links, and outgoing links. Link popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site. Since link building has become a critical element of any SEO effort, all SEO plans should be implemented with some level of link building.

Not all incoming links are equal, so it is important that you research and obtain high quality incoming links that are considered by search engines to be of high value.

Performance management

SEO is not a static process. Search engine rankings fluctuate constantly. Millions of additional websites will come online across all industries and markets in the next several months, constantly increasing the level of competition. SEO is recognised as one of the top performing Internet marketing programs, but it is not always realistic to do optimisation one time and obtain the results that you desire over a long period of time. You must have ongoing performance management to understand your progress and improve your results over time.

You should also research and monitor all the major search engines to ensure that only approved search engine optimisation techniques and methods are used in your programs. You should not implement any SEO techniques that fall outside the guidelines of the search engines.

Link building

The quantity of high quality incoming links to your website is critical to effective SEO efforts in achieving high search engine rankings for websites. The major search engines now factor Link Popularity into their relevancy algorithms.

Link popularity

Link popularity is an example of the move by search engines towards off-the-page-criteria (outside of content optimisation) to determine quality content. By adding off-the-page-criteria to their algorithms, search engines feel this adds the aspect of impartiality to search engine rankings. Citations from other authors (other website owners) in the Web community help define a site's reputation

Link popularity assumes that not all inbound links are equal. For example, an inbound link from a major directory carries more weight than an inbound link from an obscure personal home page. The value of incoming links is as follows:

• High quality directories
• High quality portals
• High quality, content-rich industry websites
• High quality related websites

High quality directories and portals typically provide a one-way inbound link. While reciprocal links with related directories and websites can help in building link popularity, one-way inbound links are of greater value to increasing your link popularity.

Search engine advertising – Pay Per Click programs

Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine advertising is a performance-based form of search engine marketing. Your ranking on a search engine results page is determined by your bid amount, or the price you are willing to pay for a visitor to your website. You are charged when a searcher clicks on the search listing or text ad that is displayed on the search listings results page.

Location of advertisements

Google AdWords Pay Per Click text ads are displayed in the far right column (and “occasionally” across the top of the page) under the heading of “Sponsored Links” as identified by “AdWords Ads”

Yahoo! Text Ads are displayed at the top of the page in Yahoo! Search and MSN results under the heading “Sponsor Results” or “Sponsor Matches”.

Cost per lead comparison

Search engine advertising or PPC can be highly cost effective. A report from US Bancorp Piper Jaffray reveals that the cost per lead from search engines is approximately £0.16, compared to £0.67 for yellow page advertising and £5.68 for direct mail inserts. (Costs converted from US$).

You only pay for those visitors who click on your text ad and come to your website.

So should you use SEO or Pay Per Click?

In the long run, Search Engine Optimisation usually proves to be cheaper, however:

It is important to know which key words or phrases generate the best Return on Investment (Is it more profitable to have 100 orders from 1000 searches, or 50 orders from 250 searches?)
Pay Per Click can easily achieve this.

• Can your business cope with a large influx of orders?
• Pay Per Click can be switched off at a moments notice

Pay Per Click can be used very effectively for seasonal or special offers.

It must be kept in mind that approximately 50% of users ignore the sponsored adverts, however if your advert is written correctly, then visitors from a good Pay Per Click campaign are looking for exactly what you have to offer. We would normally recommend running a Pay Per Click campaign for 6 to 12 months before considering Search Engine Optimisation.

By Edward Andrews

Website: http://www.wsivitalwebsolutions.com
Email: edward@wsivitalwebsolutions.com