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Creating and building effective Search Engine marketing
campaigns is like trying to nail jello to the wall for many
companies! As it typically involves deploying very specialized
processes and melding them with technology. Here is some insight
gained from years of experience providing these services to our
own clients.
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1. SE marketing works and drives low
cost ROI
- over 85% of most surfers utilize Search
Engines to find goods and services.
2. Its a zero sum game
if you use
any of the "we submit to thousands" of search engines
service companies, as these submissions do absolutely
nothing to drive viable rankings. If you aren't achieving
listings in the top 20-30 listings then you're wasting your
marketing dollars!
3. Remember the old Hill St. Blues
maxim "be careful out there"?
This advice
fits well in the SE marketing world - its digital warfare out
there for rankings. Significant resources are starting to flow
into this market as well, raising the bar and making it fiercely
competitive.
4. Stringent keyword analysis for
the HTML text
is the underlying foundation of a
successful Search Engine Ranking campaign - it's analogous to
the importance of ad copy for a conventional print campaign.
Most good SE firms use a commercial database service which
enables them to carefully analyze the relative popularity of
keywords and then build a submissions and optimization process
around selected keywords.
5. The actual Title for your pages
will also have a significant impact
on whether or not
a campaign works. It needs to be the right length, typically 6-8
words, have no hyperbole, and pique a searcher's curiosity.
6. Contrary to endless marketing
hype there are no quick solutions in this form of interactive
marketing
- it will take at least 1-2 months before
you see any immediate results. And, for significant results;
i.e. page 1-3 listings via top tier engines add another 2-3
months on top of this on average.
7. Nobody can guarantee absolute
results in this market,
if they do, then ask them for
a bottle of snake oil! The only thing we can guarantee our
clients are detailed reports of what we are doing and some
references to other successful campaigns - it's a leap of faith,
like most marketing expenditures.
8. Web site content development
impacts good SE rankings.
You need to develop content
which is relevant to keywords. We use linguistic analysis
software for our clients and then build a standalone
"stealth web site" which has content expressly
designed for SE spiders (bots). But, this level of
sophistication and proprietary process is expensive and
time-consuming, but very effective.
9) Remember the Armand Hammer quote about Russia? "An
enigma wrapped inside a box buried deep in the ocean." This
is apropos to the Search Engine world, as the top tier SE's all
change their submission rules and algorithms a on a regular
basis. So,
hire a SE firm that
understands the market
- it can be very frustrating
doing it on your own and in many cases unproductive!
About the Author:
Lee Traupel has 20
plus years of business development and marketing experience. He
is the founder/CEO of a Northern California based, privately
held Interactive Marketing Agency and Software Company,
WolfBlast Interactive, Inc., http://www.wolfblast.com
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