Marketing Strategy Directs Search Engine Success

Your site is up, but can people find you? With Search Engine Optimization, a potential client enters key words on a search engines like Google. The search results appear as short descriptions of sites that feature those words.

Search Engine Optimization is a collection of techniques that can get your site to the top of the list.

This can be the most inexpensive and fastest way to dramatically improve website results. With SEO, your website is like a business card shared with the world. Without SEO, you could have an "invisible" website.

You want your site to be on the first page of listings, because that's as far as most people look. A successful SEO program will get your site on page one for your name, business type, and area. It's like having a Yellow Pages ad (and most young people under 30 go to the Web instead of the phone book).

Web Marketing Goals:

1. Top Ranking in Search Results
2. Search Engine Descriptions that Inspires Clicks
3. Website Content that Inspires Readers Response

You can achieve these goals when you understand how each of these marketing steps works.

Keywords are Keys to SEO Success

What keywords will work best for you? Start with what you want people to know, like your business name, service, and location. Then research what works for similar businesses. Then feature these words in your web content. The keywords should be on the pages search engines see as meta-tags, and in the titles, headlines, and page content. Once the site content is right, share it with the world by submitting your site URL to all the major search engines.

Marketing Strategy Directs Search
Engine Success

What are you excited about? How can you share that excitement? Business success comes when you communicate your gift so that people see personal benefits.

It's no different on the web.

Search Engine Optimization works best when you begin with an overall marketing strategy, not as an afterthought once the site is done. SEO is just one part of the process to turn page views into clients or customers. Web marketing is about using the keywords that match readers' needs with the services and benefits they're looking for. Web design and content presents these services in a way that invite response.

The Optimization part is not just for the Search Engines. The strategy should start with finding the Keywords that your Target Audiences are searching for. The tech strategy points the way to convert those viewers into clients – to communicate what people want, based on a marketing strategy and site design. It does no good to attract thousands of hits if viewers don't respond!

But put yourself in the viewers' minds. What are they looking for? "What's in it for me?"

Identify Target Audiences and Their Needs, then Present your Service in
Keyword-Rich Headlines

Who are your potential viewers and what are they looking for? Those are the keywords to feature.

The Marketing Strategy asks Who is looking, What they want, and How to Reach them. The website reflects the answers to these three, and the SEO strategy does too.

For example, if you're selling Cat Box Furniture, your customers could be a cat lover (a little old lady, perhaps) looking for a frilly way to cover the ugly box; but if you're a pet store owner, you're looking for a new product.

Different benefits, different keywords, different search strategy.

Read more about marketing: see "Five Minutes to Understand Marketing with the Sender -- Message – Channel -- Receiver Communications Model" and "Write Your Marketing Plan" at the Good Cause Marketing articles page.

Most people start with websites that are an extension of their person-to-person, "warm" marketing. Perhaps two of ten personal contacts become clients or customers. On the net, with free "organic" hits from search engines, the beginning response might be two in one hundred. If SEO can turn that one hundred into a thousand hits, that's twenty sales. And once we know the cost of buying ten thousand more, and the profit is greater then the cost – we can create exponential growth that will make us rich!

Tool: Google Analytics. It's free. Learn more about how many and what type of viewers come from where.

SEO Goals:

Goal #1: Rank high so people can find the site and it gets many hits.

Goal #2: Turn those hits into action: send me money! (or call; or sign up for newsletter; or – what else?)

These are the obvious two, but keep going to focus the strategy.

Goal #3: Help clients and friends find me on the web – people who know my name or my business name.

Goal #4: Help local folks who don't know me or the name of my business find the site.

For most of us, websites start as an extension of our relationship marketing – presenting full-color, detailed info for the people we meet. Meeting Goals 3 and 4 could be first priorities. For example:

Jane Smith of Ashland, Oregon, is looking for a Widget.

Ferd Jones owns "Gadgets and More" store in Ashland.

Jane Googles "Southern Oregon, Widgets for sale."

Ferd's got the exact Widget she's looking for, but his website doesn't say Medford, much less Southern Oregon.

Walmart's site, of course, pops up. Jan doesn't find the exact widget listed, but she jumps in her car and goes to Walmart. They don't have the widget so she buys it on Ebay.

Ferd joins the Ashland Internet Marketing Group and discovers what to do. Ferd can research the KEY TERMS his customers are looking for and put them on his site.

The goal is to get high rankings AND meet your business goals. Business goals are part of a marketing strategy: the web is just part of it. Why is this important? The web is only part of an INTEGRATED MARKETING STRATEGY. How does web marketing serve each audience?

For example, those kitty litterbox castles could be sold to pet stores through a distributor. There are probably only fifty distributors in the country. Reach them with a letter, a phone call – and a reference to a website -- a website that looks very different then one for the granny cat-lover.

Test to Improve Response for
Exponential Growth

If you get 10,000 hits and no action, it doesn't help the bottom line. For this you'll need clear, measurable Calls to Action. Here's where sharing the excitement comes in. Here's where credibility is important – both are part of your content and web design strategies.

With a marketing strategy in place, the right type of viewer is coming, looking for a service and benefit the site offers.

Content Presentation:

Fortunately the content presentation strategy to inspire viewer response also works for SEO.

Look at your goals. Create "Calls to Action" that will tell viewers what to do. Put them in headlines.

How will you measure success? Create a tracking system, using an analytics program. Don't even think of buying Adwords until you can measure success, it's throwing money away!

Good web design will meet both SEO goals and reader needs, to help convert viewers into clients. Readers scan sites, they don't start at the first word and go to the end (we wish!).

Content presentation includes placing keywords in text, title, tags, and headings.

See the article "Keep Readers on the Page with the 30-3-30 Strategy." Author and Good Cause Marketing Consultant Robert Gluckson offers free how-to articles and provides SEO services and writes Marketing Plans. See www.goodcausemarketing.com to see articles and subscribe to a free newsletter. Robert Gluckson started in mail order rare book sales as a teen and now specializes in internet marketing. He has two Master's degrees, in Communications and Popular Culture. This article copyright 2008. This article may be reprinted free in entirety as long as no product sponsorship is implied.