Keywords

Keywords are the words your visitors use to find your site and these words need to be used strategically as you build your site.  You need to know how competitive different keywords are…some keywords are very popular and the small business will have a hard time ranking for them.  You will be much further ahead if you can find keywords that people are searching for, that are relevant to your business but have less competition.

Help People Find Your Web Site






There are over 61 billion searches a month done on the Internet as people try to find the specific answer they are looking for.  With such a large volume of searches and with everyone having a different approach to their search, you need to work to have your site found.  With a little work and strategy you can greatly enhance the number of visitors to your site by helping them find you.  The first step to either a SEO or PPC campaign is keyword research.  Another component that all sites need to work on is the number and quality of links to your site – referral links.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

72% of searchers prefer “organic” listings as they believe the sites that come up organically are more credible and reliable.  It should be no surprise that organic listings require more effort and can take a considerable amount of time to achieve as compared to listings that are the result of advertising (PPC).

I can help you address the three major components for good SEO:

1.       Having strong site architecture so the search engines cleanly navigate and catalog your site.  Components of strong architecture include clean coding, minimizing non-HTML and having strong site maps.

2.       Content – I’ve said it before but when it comes to your web site, Content is King.  This means you need to add content continuously, have a strategy for optimizing content and tags around your keywords and interlinking your internal pages.

3.       Links from outside web sites are also crucial to strong SEO.  All sites have a page ranking and the higher the better.  In order for your site to rank higher you need links from outside sites – links from higher PageRank™ sites are worth more than links from lower PageRank™ sites.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

While the majority of searchers may prefer organic listings and all web owners should strive for strong organic listings – there is still a strong case to be made for PPC.  One advantage that PPC has, is that it is quick.  It could take months to achieve organic listings on page one of the search engine results (in some cases you may not be able to achieve this given your competition).  PPC allows your ad to be shown very quickly usually on the first page – in some cases in less than an hour of placing your ad.  Even if you have good organic rankings you may want to consider a PPC campaign as it will allow you to own more ‘real estate on the first page of the results and contribute to an overall (both organic and paid) increase in click through. There are several PPC programs but due to Google’s dominance I will concentrate my comments around Google’s AdWords.

AdWords

AdWords is an easy to use program, with a low start-up cost ($5 activation) and allows you to control the amount you spend.   The thing to remember with AdWords is that it is an ongoing process, not something you set-up and forget.  You need to TEST everything and to make changes based on your findings to get the best results.

There are three prongs that you will need to work in order to have a successful AdWords campaign.

1.       You need to start out and do your research.  This includes determining your keywords, both long and short tail works and developing your targeting strategy. 

2.       You will likely need to adjust your website to have appropriate landing pages for each campaign, make sure that you are offering something of value and that you can move your visitors towards a specific action (known as conversion).

3.       Then there is the actual PPC Campaign where you will implement your campaign, test the results and make changes for continual improvement.   Testing different options to constantly improve the performance of your campaign – PPC takes time to perfect and to achieve the best ROI possible.

With Templeton Interactive Marketing you have the option of working with me to set-up your campaign and then manage it yourself…or I can manage on your behalf on a continuous basis.