In this section of our blog, you are able to find about 300 search engine optimization and search
engine marketing articles written by Serge Thibodeau, professional SEO at Rank for $ales.
Articles on Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
How to lower your client acquisition cost
The whole purpose of search engine marketing is to attract new
prospects and buying customers. In certain cases however, your sales
could become limited, for the simple reason that not everybody is
seeking the products or services your company offers. Across the World
Wide Web, if there are only 6,000 searches a month for the keywords
“industrial pump rebuilding”, it will be hard for you to make more people
search for that keyword phrase when WordTracker tells us there has been
only 6,000 searches for those three keywords in any given month or
period.
Accurately calculating ROI in an online ad campaign
Today more than ever, the need to significantly increase your ROI
(Return on Investment) in your online marketing campaigns
is imperative to the overall success of your company. In order to avoid
loosing valuable market share to your competition and to continually
increase your brand recognition or brand awareness, boosting your ROI
for the short as well as long-term beneficial effects on your
overall sales, market segmentation and penetration.
Bid Management Tools and how they can help you
If you participate in a PFP (Pay for Placement) ad program such as
offered by Overture or a few other companies, Bid Management Tools
(BMT) can simplify your life quite a bit, while at the same time,
they might help increase your ROI. Bid management tools can automatically
adjust advertiser’s bids and their positions on PFP search engines and
can sometimes spell the difference between an advertising campaign that
fails and one that will be a true success. But before I delve into the
finer details, let’s first see what BMT’s are and how they work.
Just what exactly are Trusted Feed programs?
With today's many PPC (Pay per Click), PFP (Pay for Placement)
and PFI (Paid for Inclusion) programs from so many vendors, it's no
surprise that some people can be confused. While organic SEO (search
engine optimization) search results (the ones you see at the left of
Google's screen) are considered the best and usually constitute
the highest ROI, for companies that just launched a new site and
that need sales fast, these various 'paid' programs can make
a difference in their search engine marketing campaigns.
Why SEO is a science as well as an art
By definition, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the science and art of
achieving higher visibility across today’s most important search engines.
Such visibility needs to be delivered to the users on a carefully selected
and pre-identified list of highly relevant keywords and key phrases to be
really effective. Discover the delicate balance between art and science, and
between man and machine in this document.
Effective domain name selection and your rankings
If you think the selection process and the name you have chosen for
that shiny new domain name won’t make any difference in the search rankings
of your new or existing website, think again. Today more than ever, all
search engines do carry a lot of weight to the keywords or key phrases
that are present in your domain name.
The Robots exclusion protocol
Often referred to as
the Robots.txt file, the Robots exclusion protocol can be a very important
part of your search engine optimization program, but it needs to be carefully
implemented to be really successful. In this extended article, I will show
you how to do it correctly.
Optimizing with relevancy in mind
In the world of search engines, keywords, key phrases and search terms are
the important words or phrases that people type into the search box of major
search engines, in a desire to rapidly find the products or services that
interest them and that are relevant to their needs. This article will show
you the correct way to optimize a website with relevant keywords.
Identifying the right keywords & keyphrases
When you visit them, many commercial websites could probably look
successful and appear to be “winners”. Of course, only the site owner
or its webmaster knows that for sure. Optimize a site for the wrong
keywords or key phrases
and you will end up with a site that ranks well, but chances are it will
bring you some very unrelated traffic and you may even get enquiries for
products that your company does not even offer!
Understanding search engines and how they work
Most likely, you have probably used a search engine such as Google or
AltaVista, or a search directory such as Yahoo in order to help you find
specific information on the Internet that is of
interest to you. Did you ever stop and wonder how exactly do search engines
find that information? If you are like me, you are curious in finding out
more, hoping to learn additional techniques or ways that can be used in
order to have your site get better visibility and popularity on the
Internet.
Optimizing for success and a high ROI
Optimizing a website
for success and a high return on investment (ROI) can be easy, if only you
follow the right steps. There are no shortcuts, no easy way out, if you
truly want to succeed. As with any serious undertaking, the right way to
successfully optimize and position a site requires planning ahead and
executing the project step by step.
Is it really possible to be on the first page?
I often get emails and letters asking me if it’s really possible to get
a site placed on top of the search engine results pages (SERP’s), in other
words on the very first page of Google and most of the other major search
engines. The answer to that question is a definite yes- provided you follow
some basic elementary rules of SEO, and if you adhere to some good, sound
advice that time has proven us that it works.
How to generate good, targeted traffic to any website
One of the biggest challenges in search engine marketing today is getting
enough visitors to your website. Attracting good and targeted traffic
entails a lot more than what most people initially think. Plus, there
isn't one “standard” or perfect way to do it. Search engine optimization
(SEO) is an art as well as a science. However, in many ways, when all the
proper SEO techniques are used as a whole integrated process, they will in
fact bring you a nice stream of targeted visitors.
The importance of keyword density in SEO
Improving the keyword density on your web site is one of the
fastest and simplest ways to increase your site's visibility in the search
engine results pages. To better explain this reasoning, we will refer to a
keyword as a word that your
typical web surfer will input in the search box when searching for specific
information about a product or service.
Optimizing your web site for content
When a company or individual needs to
rank high in the major
search engines, a number of important steps are necessary in planning a good
content strategy. To be really efficient, a good corporate web site needs
to effectively communicate the content it offers its visitors. That content
should describe the topic, information sections and the purpose of the site.
Visitors will want to come to a company's web site more than once if the
content it offers exactly matches the topic or subject of their initial
search query.
Business Blogs to help your search rankings
For the past several months now, there has been a new development used more
and more by businesses and companies of all sizes:
Business Blogs.
First, for those of you who may be wondering what “blogs” actually are, they
are an abbreviation for “web logs”. First popularized by journalists, tech
geeks and by teenagers, “blogs” are now increasingly in use by the business
community and Fortune 500 companies.
SEO done with careful thinking
It used to be that for some people, when the subject of search engine
optimization was discussed, there was a good chance that doorway pages,
gateway pages or some general information pages probably came to their
minds. Since about 1995 or 1996, these have been the main techniques used
by some web marketers. If you even happen to be a search engine optimization
(SEO) professional, you probably have some clients that still request these
types of pages for the optimization of their web sites.
The successful optimization of dynamic web sites
The successful search engine optimization (SEO) of a dynamic web site
requires complex search engine technology and methods that are substantially
different and much more sophisticated than the SEO techniques used for
ordinary, more conventional "static" web sites. In this section, we will
explain how Rank for $ales successfully optimizes these dynamic web sites.
Content relevancy explained
Content relevancy is the search engine’s measure of how well a particular
Web page accurately matches a searching question. Relevancy is important
to understand if you want your web site to thrive in this Internet-connected
economy.
Optimizing framed web sites
There are many that say a framed web site is next to impossible to optimize
for the major search engines. Discover our own little secrets about framed
web sites. There are actually a few ways to get around them. This section will
show you how.
The Google API's and their uses
Lately, I’ve been getting a few questions about the Google API’s. Although
mostly intended for Web developers, search engine implementations or Internet
applications that query the Internet using the Google database, Google’s API
could be of some help for you, depending on your general level of knowledge
or expertise in Web technology and your programming skills.
A diamond mine, just waiting for you to harvest
You have invested considerable amounts of money in search engine optimization
for your website. You might even participate in a PPC (Pay-per-Click)
campaign or other forms of advertising. Yet, you would like to know just who,
when, how and where did they go while visiting your site. Maybe you are
also asking yourself the eternal question: Did they buy from me? If not, why
did they leave without buying anything?
How to seriously increase your site conversion rate
Having a lot of traffic that is of good quality and well targeted is the
whole idea of having a site well optimized. If you do get all of that, it
would mean your site brings you a lot of sales and that your online business
is successful, right? Well it would be too easy if that were true.
5 steps to successful SEO and e-commerce
Building an efficient and successful e-commerce website takes a lot of
learning, preparation, “tweaking” and, most of all, dedication. If you
follow these five simple steps, it should greatly simplify your life
so you can get on with your real job of managing your business and e-commerce
storefront.
Optimizing a website for your local market
Having a site globally optimized for certain keywords is great, if
you happen to have a business that sells its products or services all
over the planet. But what if your industry is a local one, or if the
products you sell only cater to a specific city or county? Does it make
sense to be in competition with hundreds or even thousands of other
companies like yours when dealing for a local, smaller market? Get all
your answers here.
Ethical practices in search engine optimization
Unfortunately, the marketplace today is still littered with many
unscrupulous search engine optimization firms that claim to be experts
in the field. During my day-to-day job as an SEO, I often encounter
so-called search engine marketing companies, SEO firms or individuals
that always promise you the world but fail to deliver any worthwhile
results or any serious ROI. This article tells you the right way to
do it.
