SES Toronto: Essential Return To Basics
Posted by Lisa Tarticchio on June 17th 2008 in SES Toronto
The word on the street is that Search is all business all the time. Rapid change while good, underscores the need to get “Back to Basics”.
While many recent developments in search are important to understand and harness both Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder of SEO-PR , and Kevin Ryan VP, Global Content Director of Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch believe that prioritizing your time and effort among 9 major areas will result is big pay-offs later on.
Bring the SEO love to these 4 areas and you will not be remiss.
1. Keyword Research
2. Design/ SEO Copywriting
3. Link Building
4. Social Media
Essential Elements of Search Engine Marketing
1. Keyword Research:
Keyword Research is essential to SEM. You need to have the right terms and the ability to identify them correctly otherwise all other efforts will be fruitless. YOU MUST SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF YOUR CUSTOMERS!
After the help of collective brainstorming and select tools is finished you will enter the evaluative phase where you are able to eliminate certain words and phrases that don’t fit. Typically long tail keyword terms although more difficult to optimize for, convert at a higher rate because the more sophisticated the search the further along in the buying cycle the searcher is. Thus, emphasis is well placed researching and evaluating here.
Tools can be helpful although each has their own strength. There are a few:
Word Tracker,
Keyword Discovery,
Google Adwords, and
Microsoft Ad Center.
2. Design/ SEO Copywriting:
If you design a site that spiders can’t crawl. You might as well be invisible! Keep things simple when optimizing your site. Google has over 200 factors in their algorithm which encompass everything from on-page factors to linking. Be sure to employ only “white hat” tactics on your site because Google, like your crazy ex-girlfriend will find you.
Good copywriting is essential, never forget although spiders crawl your site people actually read what you have written. Building valuable content is difficult (I know I do it every day). It must grab the attention of people while encompassing keywords in order to be successful. When in doubt think inverted pyramid.
3. Link Building:
The first thing you must know that you need links, and the second part is influencing the right people to give them to you. REMEMBER: QQR! Quantity, Quality and Relevance.
All links count towards your ranking. Two strategies that are excellent for building links are Online Press Releases and Buzz Blogging. There are 1.6 billion post put out on blogs each day and on average each post has 1.5 links. Creating good content pays off big time!
4. Social Media:
We all understand the value of word of mouth advertising. Social Media is becoming the virtual equivalent to word of mouth. Each time a piece of content is socialized others are able to add to it, giving their honest opinion.
One such example is a community that Sheraton Hotels put together for their visitors to upload images and rate their stay with the hotel. This strategy has preformed very well for them, generating user driven content and virtual word of mouth buzz!
Lisa Tarticchio is a member of Search Engine People, a Toronto SEO and SEM firm whose mission it is to provide quality solutions that meet your business’s goals.
