30 October 2006

As published in the Irish Marketing Journal and the Sunday Tribune.

The Internet is increasingly being recognised as a very important channel for businesses big and small.  Building good visibility in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN has the potential to drive a large volume of visitors to a web site. 
Good search engine marketing, like any marketing, stems from detailed research, careful planning, smart execution and rigorous measurement. Ed Field, MD of Digino, one of Ireland’s fastest growing digital marketing agencies, offers us his Top 10 Search Engine Marketing tips:

Top 10 Expert Tips

1: Conduct keyword research:  The words you use to describe your product or service may not be the words people are actually using when searching.  Online keyword tools can help you discover relevant search phrases and keyword combinations.

2: Target niche search phrases:  Choose niche phrases to bring a higher quality visitor.  If you sell children’s books, then focus on that niche.  Broad phases such as ‘books’ may bring a high volume of traffic to your site, but won’t result in a high R.O.I.
 
3: Focus on the paid listings for fast results:  Boosting your natural search listings can take several months.  Using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) paid listings is a good way of delivering immediate initial results.

4: Talk to your audience:  With Pay-Per-Click, write different ad copy for each group of search phrases you target.  Research shows that users are much more likely to click on ads that have the search phrase in the ad copy.

5: Use your Meta Title Tags wisely: The search engines do place weight on the title tag’s on your pages.  Many companies put the company name or page names such as ‘home’, ‘contact’ in the title tag.  It’s better for your rankings to place some keywords here that accurately describe that page.

6: Keep your site search engine friendly:  A website's natural search engine visibility can be greatly enhanced if it is designed, written, built and managed in a search engine friendly manner.  Use of complicated scripted menus, or over reliance on Flash on a site, can prevent it from reaching its full potential in the search engines.

7: Get more links:  Get your website listed in plenty of global, regional and industry directories. Request links from other relevant sites.  This process takes times and effort but is crucial for natural search rankings.  Be discerning though, a link from a shoe manufacturer in Hong Kong, to your children’s books website won’t provide much benefit.

8: Don’t cram:  Focus different pages on different phrases.  The engines will rank more than your home page so don’t try to cram all your important search phrases onto your home page.   

9: Be ready to convert:  Make sure your website is fast, easy to use, looks good and clearly presents your key benefits.  Present clear calls to actions e.g. buy, request a call back, download a free copy, subscribe to last minute offers.

10: Rigorously track results:  Tracking and measuring marketing activities can be tedious but with digital marketing it’s fast, easy and accurate.

Competition for the top slots on search engines is growing but if your target market is using search engines to research or buy your product then high search engine visibility will deliver significant results.

Baby-sit your search engine marketing campaign, measure constantly, find out what works, trim the fat, target new niches, and get more inbound links.  Keep up the effort and the hard work will pay off.

Return to Digino News Index