Search engine marketing is an ongoing process that includes site analysis,
keyword research, page optimization, search engine and directory submissions,
re-optimization and resubmissions, ranking monitoring, and traffic monitoring
and analysis.
Patience is the Key
First, you need to know that search engine marketing is an ongoing process.
It's not something that you can stop and start like banner advertising
or bulk emailing. Each step in the process builds on the previous one.
And it takes time.
While it doesn't necessarily take us a lot of time to initially optimize
your web site, it does take time for search engine marketing to take
root in the search engines. Some search engines, like FAST and its partner
Lycos, may add your web site quickly and your listings begin showing
up in a couple of weeks. On the other hand, past experience shows that
other engines, like AltaVista, refresh their indexes much less frequently.
It may take six months or longer for your web site to show up in those
search engines.
Sometimes, though this is becoming less of an issue, listings need
to age. This means that the longer that the listing stays in the database
without being updated (only submitted until it gets into the index regardless
of ranking) the better it does in the rankings. This can take six months
to a year or longer.
In the beginning it may seem that you are spending money on search
engine marketing without seeing any results, but in the long run, if
you are patient and stay with the program, you will see an increase
in traffic and customers through search engine marketing.
Search Phrase Research
Once you sign up for our search engine marekting services, we need to
decide on the search phrases that are appropriate for your web site.
You may submit a list of search phrases that you would like to be found
under, defer to us and let us select the search phrases most appropriate,
or a combination of both.
Regardless of who suggests the search phrases, we research the suggested
keywords and phrases to determine the amount of competition and the
frequency the particular phrases are used in Internet searches in the
search engines. This research will tell us which search phrases have
the most potential to get you top 30 rankings and still drive significant
amounts of traffic to your web site. These phrases are submitted for
your approval before we move on to the next step.
Page Optimization
The next step is to optimize web pages with the selected search phrases
so that they have the best chance to turn up high in a search. We revise
pages that already exist on your web site, optimizing them for the selected
keywords and phrases. These pages are part of your web site and visitors
will be able to access them through links on your web site.
We can also develop pages with the selected search phrases and integrate
them with your existing web site. For example, you sell a variety of
products, one of which is cordless screwdrivers. We could develop a
page comparing your cordless screwdriver to competitor's cordless screwdrivers
along with ordering information. This page would then be fully integrated
with your current site design. We don't develop "doorway pages"
for the sake of having doorway pages. Any additional pages we develop
for you are fully integrated with your current site, and visitors can
access them from internal links on your site as well as from the search
engines. The types of sites that are good candidates for this technique
are dynamic sites, database-driven sites, or sites utilizing a large
amount of Flash or other technology that does not facilitate indexing
by the search engines.
Finally, we can set up a separate domain and optimize the entire site
for several search phrases around a central theme, such as bobbin head
dolls for a site that sells baseball cards. We develop the content,
design the site, maintain it, retain ownership (unless you wish to purchase
the domain after optimization is completed), and route traffic from
the theme site to your web site. These theme sites are generally informational
in nature. For example, a bobbin head dolls theme site for a baseball
card site might contain content about the history of the dolls, where
to find them, auction information, etc. We have successfully deployed
many of these theme sites for several different clients. We can also
develop several of these sites each with a different theme for you.
The types of sites for which this technique is appropriate are sites
with a diverse information and/or products in which there is no true
central theme, such as an online store that sells a variety of unrelated
groups of products.
Submissions
Once the pages are optimized and uploaded to the server, we submit them
to the major search engines. We stay on the cautious side when doing
so, only submitting one page from the same domain to each search engine
every 25 hours or so. Some search engines consider several submissions
within a 24 hour period spam, and will refuse to add your site. So we
stay on the safe side and submit pages slowly.
We also submit your main site to the major search directories, namely
Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project. Although these human reviewed
directories are tougher to get listed in, we have been successful in
getting sites added to these directories. While we aren't always successful
in getting the exact titles and descriptions we want, we are able to
get sites listed. In our opinion, getting into the directories with
a less than perfect title and description is more important than not
getting in at all, and aalmost as important as getting in with the perfect
title and description. Remember that Yahoo! charges a fee for review
and an annual fee to stay in the directory if accepted. If you wish
for us to submit your site to Yahoo! the charges are in addition to
the search engine marketing cost.
The Waiting Period
Now that the submissions have started, initial search engine marketing
process is complete, and it's time to wait. We start checking the search
engines to see if your site has been added about a month after the first
submission, along with the rankings. We can also check your referrer
logs for spider activity if we have access to them. If your site has
not been added to a search engine after the known approximate time that
it takes to get added, we submit your site again, and continue this
step until it gets added.
Maintenance and Resubmissions
If we find that your site has been added, but the rankings are not as
high as we feel they should be, we will refine the page optimization.
If your site has been indexed by the search engine in question, we normally
will not resubmit the page or site. We feel that once indexed, it is
better for the search engine to return on its own schedule and find
the changes. Again, it will may several weeks or months before we see
results on these refined pages. (This only applies if you purchase our
Maintenance Program.)
Additional Issues
Whether we optimize additional pages to be placed on your domain, optimize
and integrate existing pages from your web site, or develop theme sites
and route the traffic to your site, they must be related to the focus
of your web site. If you have a site that sells computers online, we
won't perform search engine marketing services for content and search
phrases about unrelated topics for two reasons. First, the search engines
consider content unrelated to your web site as spam. That's bad. Second,
you won't get the conversions from the traffic generated, and that's
even worse. If people looking for online DVD rentals get pulled into
your computer site because you had us build a page about online DVD
rentals, they will leave just as fast as they arrived.
We suggest to the editors at Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project
the titles and descriptions that we would like them to use. However,
they often change them for no apparent reason. But as we said, it's
the listing that is the most important thing. Since these are important
places on the Internet, search engines that use link analysis as part
of the ranking algorithm will often rank sites with listings in the
directories higher than those without them. If the titles and descriptions
assigned by the directory editors do not describe your site adequately
we will appeal to them for a change. However, the editors rarely change
their titles and descriptions.
Conclusion
The search engine marketing process is an ongoing process. Patience
and perseverance is the key to a successful search engine marketing
program. Be sure that you have enough time and money to invest in the
program or you will be disappointed with the results. If you have the
patience, you will be rewarded with pre-qualified, highly targeted traffic
from the search engines, and new regular customers.
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