The toughest part of online marketing is driving people to your website. No online search strategy = no visitors = no payoff. No money means it's a movie and a diner on Saturday night — not the theater and The Capital Grille. See how important search engine optimization can be?
You can change all that. Pay-per-click advertising can be counted on — to be expensive. Results can be great; results can be spotty. Either way, it’s sure to be expensive.
Enter the world of search engine optimization, or SEO. Results can be lousy here, too — but at least it's free. Results can also be great: driving online search visitors to your site day after day, year after year. For free.
SEO for your website can have an awesome payoff if you do it correctly. Here are SEO instructions that are simple, clear and easy to implement without being a, you know, geek.
This is the same online search marketing strategy I've used to push my website to the top of the search engines. Just because the first few pages are hard to get into doesn't mean it’s impossible — even for us small firms.
First, think of three phrases that people will use to search for your products, services and what you have to offer. You'll use these phrases on your landing page or articles posted on your site. These three phrases are the first number in the "3x5 search matrix."
Unless you have tons of money, don't select the most sought-after terms. You're not going to beat out the online marketing team of Apple for the term "computer operating systems." Be realistic.
Pick key terms people will search for if they're ready to buy your products or services. For example, key buying words in a search term may include "prices," "colors" or "delivery" — these signal someone is ready to purchase. Why would someone want to know delivery dates, the cost or what colors it comes in if they aren't ready to buy?
Your phrases should use three, four or five words in each. These phrases, called "search strings," are the search terms for which you'd like to be ranked on search engine sites. The longer strings are called "long tail search strings."
The three phrases for this article are "online search," "search engine optimization" and the “3x5 search matrix." I selected this last term because it's a term I coined: I can always type it into Google and find where this article appears. Nice trick, right?
If you were a direct mail copywriter like myself, while the two-word phrase "direct mail" might sound good and attract lots of searches, you'd be on page 421 in the search. "Direct mail articles" would narrow the search to people searching for copywriters who are writing articles.
So instead of competing for the 159,000 people searching "direct mail," I'm competing for the eyes of 18,000 people searching for "direct mail articles." Whew, that really narrowed the competition. In theory. Oh well, at least I'm on page two for this search.
"Direct mail article writers" narrows the field even further and qualifies more targeted searchers. Search this four-word search string, and I'm on page one.
Write your search phrases five times on your landing page or an article. Use it:
- in the URL if you can,
- in the main headline (H1 header tag).
- in the first sentence,
- a few times early in the first few copywriting blocks. If you can use it a few more times throughout, all the better.
Now just give Google some time to scan your site, and presto: higher SEO ranking.
And yes, I'm definitely available to go to the theater and The Capital Grille with you.
