SEM - Research Measures Success

SEM - Research Measures Success

Search engine marketing success comes from good research. By applying research to understand your competition and target audience, your optimization efforts will succeed.

Remember when homework from school often required some research on your part to complete? It is much the same scenario for search engine marketing: you need to apply yourself by researching in order to understand your competition and target audience. Your visitors need to relate to you and understand your message and what you want them to do.

Know Your Industry

You must spend time understanding the industry you are trying to make a profit from. If you sell widgets, know everything you can about widgets: where they come from, how they are typically sold, why people need them, etc. You can learn a great deal from your competitors. Research using industry communications such as online magazines, forums, newsletters and blogs. Read articles written by industry leaders and keep up on the latest news about your industry. The more you know, the better your basis for building an authoritative website.

What's Your Point?

Ok, so you've got this product you want to sell online. What are you saying to your audience? Make sure you write in a clear, concise way so your message does not get lost in the process. Just because everyone in your company understands your message doesn't mean the visitors to your site will. Have a few test scenarios set up; ask a few objective readers what they understand from your website and see just how much your message is getting across. You'd be surprised that what may be obvious to you is not necessarily obvious to your website visitors. If you are having trouble creating a clear message for your website, consider hiring a copywriter to convey what you want to say.

Know Your Target Audience

Who buys your product and why? Who needs the information you have on your website? Who would you like to have visit your

website that isn't already there? Who is visiting you? Are they professionals who understand your technical terms or visitors of varying levels who all need the same information from you? What do you offer that a certain market would want from you? Take the time to get a good look at what is out there and how your competitors are presenting their information to online visitors. Use your log statistics reports to track who comes to your website. Get familiar with the keyword terms they are using in the search engines to find you. Research the domains that most visit you. Find out why visitors are clicking away from certain pages before going deeper into the content of your website. Is it a lack of information? Too many choices to click on? Is the language used or instructions given easy to understand? Don't give your visitors a reason to leave before they understand your message.

Know Your Competition

Take a good look at your top competition and see what they are offering online. Even looking at websites that are not direct competitors may give you an idea of what to offer your visitors. Think of it this way: someone put effort into creating those websites. Visit your competitor's website. Search in the major search engines for your most important keyword phrases and see if your competitors show up in the top thirty search engine results. Learn what you can and see if what they are doing is something you should be doing. It's always good to know if your competitors are using SEO, Paid Inclusion, PPC, Link Building and other means to rank well.

Make Your Website Accessible

There's nothing worse than muddling through a website looking for what you want and clicking so much you finally give up. Use easy navigation, make sure your information or products are easily accessible to your visitors. Create written text that is easily understood in order to get your message across readily. Give your visitors plenty of written information. There's no such thing as "too much text" when it comes to search engine robots "understanding" your web pages. What's good for the visitor is often good for the search engine robots.

Do The Work

Research is the cornerstone to your success. The more you know about your subject, the better you will be able to inform your visitors. By informing your visitors you build trust and interest in learning more about your website. Do the math - get searching!

Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Marketing company serving small businesses. She has specialized in Search Engine Optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O'Reilly Media, Inc., a technical book publishing company.

Permission to reprint this article is granted if the article is reproduced in its entirety, without editing, including the bio information. Please include a hyperlink to http://www.searchinnovation.com when using this article in newsletters or online.

RELATED ARTICLES

When to Hire a Professional SEO Firm?
In efforts to increase sales and profitability, more and more companies are turning to online marketing initiatives ? specifically, search engine optimization. Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) is the art and science of blending technical and marketing skills together into a finely tuned website that is both search engine-friendly, ranks well for specific keywords and phrases, and is tailored to your audience from a buyer and seller perspective.

Meta Tags - An Important Part of Every Web Page
Meta tags are an absolute must from a search engine optimisation perspective, there are many mistakes that can be made by not including these or even trying to 'spam' the SE's using them so heres a quick summary of the three main ones:

8 ways to build a really bad web site for Search Engines
Some web sites receive hundreds or thousands of unique visitors a day, whilst others only get a handful or none. The reason is often because the web designers or Webmaster has built the site in one 'really bad way' or other. This can end up hindering the potential success of the web site. If you want to make sure your site is not a 'traffic flop' then here are some simple rules to follow.

How I Suddenly Stumbled Onto No.1 In Google and Yahoo Without Search Engine Optimization - So What?
Sometimes, the search engines act really strange. And this story will prove how I've got top positions (80% on no.1) into the major search engines - such Google, Yahoo!, MSN - without lifting a finger! What is REALLY strange? I did not optimize my page!

How To Really SEO Your Site
Search engine optimization is one of most popular online marketing tool for any website. With more websites coming online every day the competition gets larger, so you have to make sure you can out SEO them before they out do you. In this article I will tell how to increase your ranking and how to out do your competition.

Article Marketing: Fox in the Competitor Hen House or Chicken Little?
I recently was asked by an author to remove a free content article from a client web site where we had posted it (with several others from different authors) to increase topical relevancy at a site that fit the article perfectly.

SEO Basics - 8 Key Strategies For Online Business Success
The world of search engine optimization (SEO) can be a big scary place for newbies. Most SEO professional companies charge astronomical prices that may or may not guarantee success.

Link Popularity
In today scenario when we talk about Search Engine Optimization, we also talk about one of the most important aspect of SEO, which is Link Building. But there are different types, aspects and limitations of Link Building, which would be discussed now under

PageRank and How It Gets Assigned
We know that each and every website page is assigned a Google Page rank, based upon a mathematical algorithm. Pages rank on a scale of 0 (zero) the lowest, and 10 (ten) the highest. Linking between websites both internally and externally pass a value or Page Rank.

The Business Case for SEO
It's interesting how potential clients have preconceived notions about which aspects of search engine marketing have the most value. In fact, they tend to fall into two camps that are 180° apart. The first camp believes completely in the value of pay-per-click marketing (PPC). It's easy to understand why. PPC provides immediate and measurable benefits. The ROI of PPC marketing is obvious. This group doesn't understand why it's necessary "to bother" doing SEO. The second camp believes the only way to go is SEO. Clicks are free and the branding benefits of high rankings have been well documented.

Agressive Linking Strategies Help To Get Your Site Noticed
A good link building strategy has become an essential part of search engine marketing and positioning. It has been the topic of many web conferences around the world for quite some time now.

Everything You Wanted To Know About Google -- But Were Afraid To Search For!
(A Reflective look at the little search engine that soared!)

Do It Yourself SEO
Internet surfers use search engines more than any other tool to find things online. Search engines rank their results using a complex formula that considers web page content, link popularity and other details. This is why you should Search Engine Optimization (SEO) your web site.

A Naive Mistake Cost Me My Google Rankings
Little do you know but you too could be making mistakes with your website that are costing you your search engine rankings.

Make Quality Content Your #1 Priority
It is by now a proven fact that content is the most important element for getting better pagerank and, consequently, more traffic.

Playing By Googles Rules
As the undisputable leader in search engines, Google places a very high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search results, especially now that the company is public. The know that in order to keep the shareholders and users of the engine happy, the quality of returned results are extremely important. For this reason, doing the wrong thing, purposely or unintentionally could result in a severe penalty or even get you get you banned from the listings. Below is a short list of ideas to consider when drafting your search engine optimization campaign.

Search Engine Success & The Google-Vision Secret
Want to know the secret to great search engine listings? Ignore Google.

SEO for CEOs ? Search Engine Optimization Unmasked for CEOs
If you're like most other CEOs, the term "search engine optimization" will mean very little. Either that or it means expense! But it doesn't have to be that way? If you feel like you're standing in a dark room handing money to strangers to get you in the search engines, then this article is for you.

How To Get Your Web Site Banned ? or Search Engine Promotion, How Not to do it!
Search engines constantly strive to advance their technology and algorithms in order to provide the most relevant search results for their users. Achieving effective results require the identification, and ultimately the complete eradication of, manipulative search engine optimisation tactics. As Internet marketers, it is up to us to achieve high listings for our customers and this requires that our search engine marketing tactics change and grow with the new technology.

Press Releases Can Increase Search Engine Positioning
When you write a press release, what is your ultimate goal? No doubt, getting the information to as many publications and on as many Web sites as possible. The focus lies in moving outward? taking the press release to as many *other* sources as possible. We buy lists of journalists, pay public relations companies to distribute the release to thousands of targeted leads, use online press release distribution services, and create our own in-house list of reporters to touch base with. This is