SEO - it's only the beginning

source:http://thefreeseoguide.com/

Working in SEO day in day out, can you can be forgiven for sometimes thinking that good rankings can solve every business problems. The issues start when business owner themselves start thinking the same way and have unrealistic expectations of what search marketing can do for them.
In any business strategy, seo should just be one element of a very wide environment including other marketing channels, data analysis, customer management, acquisition and retention strategies.

Business objectives
At the end of the day, the ultimate objective for any commercial business is to generate revenue. So when working on your seo (either in-house or via an agency), always keep in mind what your core business is, as without sales and revenue, there is no business. Of course good rankings are great, but if they don't convert searchers into traffic and customers, then they're financially worth nothing. So always try and integrate seo within your overall business plan so that you can set realistic objectives and measurement methods for this channel.

SEO strategy
Once you've set your SEO objectives, look at your keywords, your rankings, the impact on your traffic and how you can optimise your website based on searchers behaviour. Of course ideally you'd want high rankings, but some of your competitors may generate more revenue than you with lower rankings thanks to a better optimised site. You need to find the right balance for your website, and if your landing pages are well optimised, then the rankings won't matter as much.

The big picture
In today's online world, seo is obviously one of the key elements of any online marketing strategy and it needs to be planned and implemented very carefully, but it is not the be all and end all solution for your business. If you run a company, you need to always keep the big picture in mind. SEO is a tool that can bring great rewards if done correctly, but remember that good rankings won't always bring traffic and conversions, so don't be fooled by agencies promising you high rankings and top positions in search engine results pages.

Search marketing needs to be used in conjunction with a full range of marketing tools like paid search, website/conversion rate optimisation, web analytics and so on to bring the best results for your business and ultimately revenue.

How does SEO work for your business? do you have good rankings and limited revenue? feel free to share your views and get in touch if you'd like to know how to develop a marketing strategy that works for your business

Paid search - getting it right

With paid bids reaching $54 in some industries this week (http://searchengineland.com/study-insurance-loan-related-keywords-are-googles-cash-cows-86113), it is becoming increasingly difficult for new or small businesses to commit to paid search.

So when is the right time to consider paid search? how should you go about it? which keywords should you target?
Here are some answers to help you make the right decision:

What are your objectives?
As for everything else in a business, you need to have clear objectives when considering paid search. These can be conversion objectives, specific revenue targets, number of subscribers.
Working towards those will help you focus your activities and judge return on investment, a crucial element of paid search.

Organic search vs paid search
Ideally you will a apply a mix of both organic and paid search as these two disciplines work hand in hand and support each other. A search started organically may end up converting on a paid keyword and vice versa.
The best advice here if you're just starting your business is to get all the basics of onsite and offsite seo right, and while doing so start your paid campaign to generate some traffic. After a few months, your organic traffic will pick up allowing you to modify the paid/organic balance based on results.

Budgets & keywords
As mentioned at the beginning of this post, some paid keywords are now reaching $54 per click, but don't let this frighten you. If you don't have big budgets, there are ways to run some campaigns at an affordable rate. To limit budgets, bid on your brand terms. These will be your cheapest keywords, but as your brand gets known, they should end up giving you decent traffic and hopefully conversions.
Generic keywords are always more expensive, so try and identify long tail keywords that your users will search for. These may not generate a lot of searches or traffic but should give good ROI.

Use your analytics
Using your web analytics data should give you a very good insight into your users behaviour. Analyse keyword reports and conversions to refine your paid campaigns and give them more focus. Google Analytics is constantly evolving and will provide you with more than enough information to control your campaigns and budgets.

So in short, the ideal time to start using paid search is as early as possible after your business is created. While not compulsory, it should be integrated into your online marketing strategy as it is still a very cost effective channel despite recent increases in costs.

I hope this answers some questions or worries you may have as a business, but as usual feel free to share your views and opinions.

Related posts:

• Improve your seo via paid search
• Getting started in PPC

Improve your SEO via paid search

Very good article on how looking at your paid search data can help you refine your organic seo - How PPC Can Improve Organic Search Conversions.

Paid search + organic optimisation = better results

While the article focuses mostly on conversions and how paid search results can help you drive your organic optimisation, it is important to remember another point: paid and organic search work hand in hand.

If you keywords produce results both on the organic and paid side, then customer confidence will be increased and the likelihood of them clicking through to your site will be greater.

Click path matters

Very often searchers will follow a path when looking for something, and this path will involve clicks on paid ads and organic results. if your keywords are present on the 2 channels, your CTR should increase along with your conversion levels if your landing pages are optimised.

The right balance

What's important is to find the right balance in your SEO strategy. I'd always recommend to work on your onsite SEO as well as developing paid search campaigns to maximise performance. And as the article shows, you can then take the learnings from your paid campaigns and apply them to your overall SEO strategy (and vice versa)

SEM Trends For 2011: What To Expect & What To Do

Some very interesting insights into next year's trends. These demonstrate once again the need to understand cross channel marketing and ways to report on activities as the last click wins model is officially dying!

I'm really curious to see how Bing will perform in the UK market as this will definitely affect onsite optimisation for a lot of companies.

Whatever happened to good old SEO?

I've been in the search marketing / SEO industry for quite a few years now (7 to be exact!) and as such I've seen things move from fairly straightforward onsite optimisation to complex link building and social media strategies.

When reflecting on this the other day, I started to feel nostalgic about the days when SEO was all about keyword research and making sure that your site was as optimised as possible avoiding black hat techniques. Call me old school, but to me, this was real SEO where you were rewarded for your hard work by good rankings.

The rise of link building

Now that link building has taken prominence in search engine algorithms (60 to 70% of rankings are based on this) the SEO game has completely changed, and agencies with a network of blog/forums/websites can guarantee you improved links and rankings in a very short space of time. While there's no denying that this strategy works, I've got to say that as an experienced SEO I find this slightly disappointing and very close to a grey hat technique.

I've got nothing against link building if it's done cleverly with good anchor text, relevant keywords and page rank analysis, but I think that by not assessing relevance of links Google is skewing its own results therefore providing searchers with inaccurate results.

So basically, a business with clever agencies (and big budgets) can reach top rankings for specific keywords and get more traffic than a potentially better company with less understanding of search marketing. And to me, that goes against the basic principles of SEO which are providing searchers with relevant results.

What about relevance?

Despite a lot of talk about relevance, LSI (latent semantic indexing) and contextual searches in the past few years, the major search engines still have to implement a lot of these theories into their algorithms. To Google and co, a link to your site with targeted anchor text from a website with a high page rank still matters, even if the site is not relevant to your activity. And until the engines start looking at the relevance of the link, keyword and website content in relation to your website, then there will be ways to fool them by creating thousands of irrelevant links.

Onsite SEO still matters

Despite all of this, onsite optimisation with good keyword research, internal links, metadata optimisation, alt tags, title tags and all the rest still matters. These elements should remain a priority for all SEOs out there, so keep flying the flag!

A the industry evolves, so must I, but I'll never forget my SEO roots as they are what I enjoy the most in my job.

What's your experience with SEO? are you frustrated with link building? How do you feel about the industry changes?

How to deal with paid budget cuts

I've just realised that it's already been a month since my last post, I definitely need to make a better job of writing...but with xmas coming, not sure how this is gonna go...oh well, there are always new year's resolutions.

Alright, today's post is going to be about something that most marketers dealing with paid search campaigns will know, especially during a recession; budget cuts.
As you probably already know if you're running ppc campaigns with Google Adwords, Yahoo search marketing or Bing, changes in any elements of the campaigns can have a very big impact on results, so here are a few tips to make your reduced budgets go further:

• Whatever you do, do not pause your campaigns - Google especially likes consistency, so it is always best to avoid stopping campaigns as it could take you months to rebuild history and raise your quality score again. Even running a very minimal budget is better than stopping everything.
• Bid on brand terms - although many people may question the fact of bidding on your own name, results are very often showing that brand terms /keywords are some of the bets performing ones. And they are cheap, especially if you've trademarked your name, so go ahead and use your name. This will also help you display results in both paid and organic rankings for the same search, increasing customer confidence.
• Focus on top converting keywords - This is a bit of an obvious one, but if you lack budget, make sure you bid on keywords that have converted for you in the past (conversions being sales, sign ups or whatever other metric you use for performance).
• Look at visitors click path if available - I know this is not really easy to get, but if you can, find out which keywords your users have searched during their research. The keyword they converted from may not be the one they searched for the initial phase of their product research. Visitors may initially use a very generic keyword and as they learn about what they really want, they will tend to use more specific, long tail keywords. Knowing the click path will help you bid for these all important initial search terms.
• Optimise your landing pages - Again this should be standard practice, but make sure your campaigns are as optimised as possible, from keywords, to creatives to landing pages. The more relevant the search keyword is to your creative and your landing page, the higher your quality score will be. This in turn will have an impact on your ads rankings.
• Look at your competitors - look at what your competitors are bidding on and if need be, bid on their brand terms. Remember that you cannot use your competitors' brand in your creatives if they are trademarked, but nothing stops you from displaying a creative by bidding on their search terms.
• Use common sense - as in everything SEO related, use common sense when managing your paid campaigns, and as the market recovers, so will your budgets.

Enjoy your Sunday

SEO on a shoestring - the free tools that could save you a headache

You're a new business, you've got a shiny new website with all the bells and whistles and you're ready to do business online....it all sound great up until now, but how do you get people to your website??
Even though people are more and more internet savvy these days, it is still clear that Search Engine Optimisation, aka SEO, remains a bit of an unknown subject for a lot of companies (lucky for me, keeps me working :) )
So if your marketing budget doesn't allow you to use the services of a search marketing agency or SEO professional, where do you start? I thought I'd compile a quick list of tools that should get you started and put you on the right track. Many of the tools listed below are the ones that I use on a daily basis and even though they may not be the best, I find them really useful and I'm sure they can help you achieve some good results.

Google Webmaster Tools
Although I do not want this post to sound like a huge endorsement for Google, I have to admit that they offer some of the best free tools for SEO on the market. Webmaster tools allows you to verify your website with the biggest search engine in the world and gives you a rather impressive list of options to choose from to check that your site is being indexed properly, so it should definitely be on your SEO checklist.
And if you're completely new to SEO, reading the Google Search Optimization starter guide should give you all the basics in an easy to understand format.

Keyword Research / website trends
Staying with Google (I can see a theme building up here!), make sure to use Trends, Insights for search, and trends for websites to understand what keywords are being searched for across the world, seasonality, country specific searches and find out how websites perform. The keyword tools will help you decide which keywords to focus on for your business.
To help you decide which keywords to use for your business, use the Google Keyword Tool. Start with some core/generic keywords for your business and expand your list with suggestions made by the tool. Don't forget that long tail keywords (very specific search phrases with 2 or more keywords) can sometimes convert at a higher level than generic and very competitive keywords.
I'd suggest using more than one keyword research tool, and WordTracker is one of the best out there. Other options are keyword discovery and Bing webmaster tools

Web Analytics
Yes, you've guessed it, my tool of choice for analytics on a budget is.....Google Analytics. I'm sure I've talked about Analytics at length before, but despite its flaws, it is still the best free analytics tool out there, and it will give you great insights into your website when looking at search engine activity, keywords referrals and much more.

Link popularity
Because link popularity is such an important part of search engine rankings these days, you need to make sure that you increase your LP on a regular basis. While this remains largely a manual process, you need to check that what you're doing is working. I've been using MarketLeap for years now to check LP, but all the major search engines provide functions to check your incoming links.

Finally, now that you've got all the tools to get you started, make sure you read about SEO as there are a lot of blogs and forums that will provide you with a lot of information. Consider SEOmoz, search engine land and the Google blog amongst many others.

Happy optimising, and remember that as for many things, common sense prevails and always keep your customers in mind when doing SEO!

Getting started in PPC - Make the most of your paid campaigns

Ok, atfer a few weeks talking only about social media, I thought it was time for a change...so today we're going back to one of best online marketing channels in terms of ROI: Paid search.
There's very often a debate as to whether companies should focus on organic or paid search...and the answer is that to make the most of your marketing efforts, you should use both.
Paid and organic channels complement each other and in the long term can bring you a regular amount of leads and business.

So how do you get started if you've never been into the paid search world before? here are some simple tips that should put you on the right track:

1. Before attempting to launch paid campaigns, make sure you have clear and measurable objectives for you site: sign ups, sales, document requests....
   Remember that paid campaigns are all about return on investment, so measuring /reporting is crucial.
   
2. Optimise the conversion channel/ sales funnel on your site: the 3 clicks rule applies here - visitors should be able to get to the content they want in 3 clicks, so make sure that your site is clear and directs visitors in the right direction
3. Look at what your competitors are doing and benchmark your business against theirs. If their ideas work, why not take inspiration from them (I did not say copy, ok!?)
4. Do some keyword research to identify core keywords and long tail keywords for your target market
5. Choose which paid programme you want to go for. I guess at this point everybody's thinking Google Adwords, and there's a reason for that. The google tool is the most comprehensive out there a will give you the widest coverage. However, it is also worth looking at Yahoo Search marketing and MSN/Bing.
6. Allocate a budget to your campaigns and stick to it.
   
7. Build your campaigns within Google making sure to have a wide range of keywords, creatives and landing pages. There is no magic formula to get it right so getting your hands dirty and testing is vital. Always give some time for your campaigns to run before making changes.
8. Optimise your landing pages - build ppc specific landing pages on your site using the same keywords as your creatives and clear calls to action. Google uses a quality score for landing pages so consistency in messaging and optimisation matters.
9. Track, measure and report on your campaigns. Review results on a regular basis and updates campaigns accordingly. Bidding high on keywords is not always the best strategy, so you need to aim for high click through rates (CTR) and low cost per acquisition (CPA)
10. Make sure you website is organically optimised too and is ranked for your core keywords, as a presence in both paid and organic results will boost customers confidence.

Paid search can take a lot of resources from a business so make sure that you plan accordingly, and if you have a sufficient budget, going with a reputable search marketing agency to manage your campaigns is always a good option.

As always, if you need help planning your online marketing activities, let me know!
Have a great weekend

Choosing a search marketing agency - a quick checklist

Since I'm currently trying to choose a search marketing agency for my company to help with our SEO/SMO strategy, I though it may be useful to give a quick reminder of what you should expect from a good agency before hiring one:

• A comprehensive content and technical audit to identify potential problems
• A level of support and consultancy adapted to your needs: since many agencies charge quite a significant amount per hour, it is worth having clear requirements before signing a contract
• An integrated strategy: all elements of the strategy should be working together
• Beware of companies offering top rankings, no self respecting agency would ever promise number 1 SE rankings for specific keywords
• Good reporting: since you're likely to spend large parts of your marketing of your budget on SEO/SMO and PPC, make sure you're provided with the right reporting tools as you'll need to measure ROI going forward
• Check for references, see who the agency is currently working with
• Remember, you may not need all of the bells and whistles on offer, so make sure you get the basics right (onsite optimisation / link building) before signing for complicated and expensive social media activities
• Always negotiate rates and never let an agency treat you like a small customer, no matter what your budget is
• Don't be afraid to ask questions if you're not sure about some of the terms mentioned
  
• Whichever agency you choose, responsiveness is key, so a good account manager needs to be available for you when you need

These are just some pointers to get you started and I'll go more into details of strategies in a future post.
If you want to know more, feel free to ask!
see you next, have a good weekend