Your Quick Guide to Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing is one of the fastest ways to build your business... if it's done correctly.
There are some basic things that you need to do for massive success with your search engine marketing:
Fast contact: You need a quick contact form for your customers to use to reach out to you. The smaller, the better. It should go on the right hand side, just below the header. This will allow your customers to reach out to you quickly and easily.
The reason you need to put in the right hand corner is that studies show that web surfers look at pages in an F pattern. They look down the left side, then over to the right, and then across the header to the contact form.
Studies also show that a form that only asks for a first name and an email will give you a better response than one that asks for lots of info. Just an email is even better.
Coming in for a landing: It does matter what you call it – a landing page, a minisite, a microsite or a marketing site – this type of website can be your best friend. Less information, faster reading and more customer responses are what a great landing page will give you.
The nicest part of landing pages for people who are surfing is that it only takes them a few seconds to scan it. This combined with a short contact form, as mentioned above, will give you some great responses.
If you could those reports on my desk by.... Not only is it vital to create a great page, but you also need to track what's happening. Google Analytics is great for tracking where the traffic to your site comes from and where your customers went while they were on your page.
You can also use analytics systems to track keyword responses and even to see what graphics and links are working best.
Filling the negative space: No matter how pretty the graphics are or how many wonderful videos you put on your page, if there is no great content, your customers will never do anything.
Your content should motivate and inspire people to click, type or follow through. It should also tell them something about what you do or are selling. Have you ever landed on a page where you read all the way to the bottom and still had no idea what they did. Do be coy. Tell them exactly what they need to know, short and sweet.
Keeper of the Keys: Keywords are the herders that bring people to your site. One of the most important things to know about keywords is that you can't just put them on the site. You need to work the keywords, checking your reports to see which ones will give you the best response. After you have tried several combinations, you will ht on the keywords and combinations that can take you the furthest toward driving traffic to you.
Do NOT just shove a bunch of keywords on a page and think that that will be enough. The new incarnations at Google and Bing and all the other search engines will shove you in a black hole. Worse, you will disappear for a long time, because if Google blacklists you, you have to beg and scrape to get back.
Now for the obvious:
Action – If you don't have a call to action, you have wasted your time. A phone number is huge. A button to click to contact you. Another button to buy something. Give them something to do.
Get Social – If you aren't using social media to get your message out, your crazy. Social media is free and powerful, if you do it right.
Now that you're social, get tested – Keep trying things. You can have three sites that all are trying to do the same thing, but do it differently, Testing your site will tell you what works and what won't.
This is your quick guide to Search Engine Marketing. We now return to your regularly scheduled life.
