Search Engine Marketing

How do I get found on search engines and get more business?

Search engine optimization (seo) has been a buzzword for the last few years and it is often a concern for small business owners. While there are companies out there who specialize in search engine marketing (Deep Ripples is a great one to check out), they are often outside the budget of the typical small business.

How do search engines rank websites?

The most critical factor for most search engines is that the results they give are relevant to the terms that you enter into the search box. They determine relevance in many different ways, but for my purposes the only ways that matter are content, internal optimization, external optimization, and video.

Content strategy and blogging wins searches.

The easiest way to win lots of searches is to blog regularly. We’ve found that after you’ve written 80-100 posts on your blog, it becomes fairly easy to rank well for lots of search terms. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to rank for the specific terms that will help your drive conversions if you don’t include an internal optimization strategy.

Internal Optimization – Winning the search terms that will win you business.

Internal optimization is the key to making a blogging and content creation strategy work effectively. Internal optimization is not particularly difficult, but if done well, can dramatically increase the effectiveness of your other internet marketing efforts.

External Optimization – Creating paths back to you.

One of the ways that search engines rank websites is by the number of other websites that link back to it. By creating paths back from other similar sites you’re also providing new paths for visitors to find your site. External optimization can be difficult and expensive to execute effectively, but it should definitely be taken into consideration in your marketing strategy.

Video – an unlikely champion.

A great way to give your website additional search effectiveness is to include online social video from sites like YouTube or Vimeo. For more information on using video to win web searches check out Vidloader.