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Search Marketing 101: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at 2007's Hottest - and Most Essential - Internet Marketing Strategy!In this issue, Derek Gehl's going to look at the family of strategies called search marketing … and show why it's more important than ever before to put solid search marketing techniques to use for your business. Search Marketing 101: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at 2007's Hottest - and Most Essential - Internet Marketing Strategy!
You search the Internet, right? You're not alone. More than 6 BILLION Internet searches are done every month in the U.S. alone! According to MarketingSherpa, almost 134 million people in the U.S. regularly use search engines when looking for information online. And of that number, 63% look ONLY at the first page of results -- at most! In fact, almost 25% of all American searchers look only at the first few listings then completely ignore the rest. That means if YOU'RE not listed in the first results page for your top-performing keywords, then 84 million people aren't going to have any idea that your business even exists! In this issue, I'm going to look at the family of strategies called "search marketing"… and show why it's more important than ever before to put solid search marketing techniques to use for your business. I've written in detail about a lot of these techniques in this newsletter. But from the questions my team and I get at seminars and in our forums, we notice that a lot of people aren't clear on how they all fit together. It's as if they've got the jigsaw puzzle pieces, but not the picture on the box. I'll put it into perspective by answering questions like...
Read on to get the big picture on search marketing and where it fits into your Internet marketing strategy. What IS search marketing, anyway? Search marketing is a catch-all term that refers to two major online marketing techniques:
But it's easy to get confused about which strategy is which. Let's break them both down. Search engine optimization -- how to rate HIGH in the free listings Search engine optimization is the umbrella term for all the different strategies website owners use to try to earn top rankings in the listings of the free search engines like Google and Yahoo. These are called "organic" or "natural"
listings because the search engines set their own criteria for ranking
websites. A website's position in the search results depends on how
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The goal is to "optimize" your site so the search engines will consider it relevant -- in other words, so your website shows up high in the results when people are searching online for your product or service. When you're just getting started with SEO, it can seem a little overwhelming to know where to begin. Here are some of the key strategies that we recommend to all our customers...
SEO should be at the core of your overall Internet marketing strategy. It's one of the most inexpensive and effective approaches available to website owners. In fact, much of what you can do to optimize your web site for the organic search engines is totally FREE. However, it can be slow. When you're starting out, you'll probably have to wait a while before you show up on the search results. But you can drive traffic quickly with another search marketing strategy: pay-per-click advertising. Pay-per-click advertising -- how to spend a little and get a LOT of targeted traffic Do a search on Google or Yahoo, and you'll notice a different type of listings set around the organic results. These "sponsored results" are paid ads that appear when people search using the keywords in the ads. There are also special search engines, like Miva (www.miva.com), Enhance (www.enhance.com) , and GoClick (www.goclick.com), where all the listings are paid, rather than organic. As with SEO, PPC advertisers look for keywords that they believe their target market uses to search for them online. Then they bid on those keywords with PPC programs, like Google AdWords (http://adwords.google.com), Yahoo Search Marketing (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com), and MSN AdCenter (https://adcenter.microsoft.com). In many free search engines like Google and Yahoo, the position of the ad in the sponsored listings depends on two factors:
In others, and the paid search engines, the bid price alone determines the ranking in the listings. The pay structure is what makes PPC so effective for small businesses. With PPC you pay only for results. No matter how many times your ad is displayed, you pay only when someone clicks on it. And by watching your results carefully, you can determine how well each ad is converting and if it's worth continuing. PPC ads show up immediately, so you can drive traffic to your site right away, even if you haven't been indexed by the search engines yet. Test your keywords and use the best ones to boost your organic search results. PPC is a great testing tool because you can run several ads simultaneously. If you run identical ads for different keywords, you'll see very quickly which keywords work best. You can then use them to beef up your website for the organic search engines! In fact, you can use PPC to test everything from your product offerings and price points, to your ad headlines and salescopy... and find out exactly how to appeal to your target market. However, keyword bids have been rising every year because competition for the top continues to heat up, especially as more large businesses and corporations get into the game. In fact, according to DoubleClick, spending on PPC campaigns went up 37% between Q1 2005 and Q1 2006! That's why it's getting tougher every year to run an effective PPC campaign. But if you know the right strategies, you can still keep your costs down and your conversion rates UP! Keep PPC costs low by bidding smart:
With a combination of PPC and SEO you can make sure your target market will find you.
In a recent poll of online advertisers conducted by MarketingSherpa, 49% of the respondents indicated that PPC was their most successful Internet marketing strategy in 2006. In addition, 45% indicated that search engine optimization was one of their best internet marketing strategies. So why ARE online advertisers putting so much time and energy - not to mention BIG bucks - running extensive search marketing campaigns?
They key is to stay on top of the latest strategies... what works AND what doesn't work anymore. That's right... the search engines make changes all the time, and techniques that used to work can suddenly turn useless.
Search engines are constantly tweaking the way they rank sites. An Internet marketing strategy that worked like wildfire before can suddenly go cold as the search engines stomp it out. In fact, 2007 is shaping up to be one of the most dramatic years for search marketing yet. The changes promise to increase the importance of some strategies… and blow others away completely. Here are some new ideas to explore...
There's no doubt that search marketing is one of the hottest areas in Internet marketing in 2007... and it's getting more exciting every day! No other set of strategies offers you the ability to dramatically improve your search engine rankings AND direct quality, targeted traffic to your website -- often without spending a single dime! The main thing to keep in mind is that the search engines are in the business of keeping searchers happy. When people go online to find something, they want to see choices that relate to what they asked for, and not have to wade through hundreds of irrelevant choices. People are impatient online, and if they have to work too hard they'll go to another search engine. Bad for business! So YOUR main objective in search marketing -- free or paid -- is to keep those spiders coming back and indexing your site so it will show up in the top results for your keywords. A lot of the techniques in this overview are basic to the way search engines do business. Just getting those right will give you a competitive advantage. But some techniques come and go. Discovering a great new search marketing trick could revolutionize how you run your SEO or PPC campaigns -- and seriously boost your bottom line! As we always tell our clients, one or two effective strategies can sometimes make the difference between an average-performing website and a major success story. It's just a matter of discovering what works for you. Do the basics, try out the new techniques and strategies, and you'll be where your market can find you -- front and center in the search results.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
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The
Affiliate Masters Course has been called... 
The
complete resource for building a client base
Internet
Marketing Center have developed Affiliate / Associate Program software
from scratch and been using variations of it for the last 3 years
(they call it 
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| Search Marketing 101: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at 2007's Hottest - and Most Essential - Internet Marketing Strategy! |
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