Friday 12 March 2010

Ethical Search Marketing - making the most of the longtail.

How Long Tail Search Marketing is incorporated into an overall SEO strategy – and why. Here we discuss how to make sure your site isn’t excluding potential customers using more specific search terms in your long tail search marketing strategy. Long Tail Search Marketing – fishing with a net versus a line.

Capitalising on long tail search marketing is a vital component of an effective SEO campaign. Long tail keywords are typically three to six words in length and may incorporate phrasing and (sometimes rather ‘interesting’) spelling variations that would not typically appear on a list of optimum keywords or phrases. However, rather than just restricting yourself to the most popular and obvious keywords, long tail search marketing brings in a much wider potential audience – hence the analogy between fishing with a net or a line. Obviously, you’re going to catch more fish using a net, despite the fact that your line may be specifically baited to hook one particular kind of fish.

The most effective and immediate way to incorporate long tail search marketing into your overall strategy is to use systems such as Google Analytics to find out what long tail phrase people are using to locate your site. It’s also useful to have a brain-storming session with your SEO experts, friends, family and co-workers to try to ascertain what potential combinations the general public would use to locate your site on a search engine. The trick is to then incorporate these long tail search marketing phrases into fresh, new copy, as the only way to actually make use of these phrases is to include them in your site. Keyword density isn’t really an issue any more – in fact keyword ‘stuffing’, as it’s commonly referred to, is now penalised by the search engine algorithms and is considered a black hat technique.

For more information, please visit the Search Marketing Group.

How to Juice Up a Site's Rank

If your Web site isn't getting the attention it deserves on the Internet, it may be running low on Google juice.

Google juice, for the uninitiated, refers to how high a Web site ranks in Google's search results -- the higher the ranking, the more juice. Google juice is all about links. As many people know, the Internet search leader ranks Web sites based largely on the quantity and quality of other sites linking to it.

It's no wonder that a whole new industry has arisen around mining the Web for links and other page-tweaks that can help sites boost their Google rank and reel in more visitors. This industry deals with “search-engine optimization” (SEO), and search engine marketing companies specialise in this.

Many of these search marketing companies focus on natural search marketing and helping people get, and keep, their websites in the top ten of Google searches for their particular search term. This is done by having lots of links from other websites to the site, as well as the website itself containing good quality written content. It is important too that this content includes terms which are relevant to the purpose of the website.

Google, however, takes a dim view of attempts to artificially manipulate search results, and can indentify unnatural content (content which is stuffed with links and search terms). This is why it is best for businesses trying to get to the top to consult a search marketing agency that knows exactly how Google works and the criteria it uses to rank websites.

For more information, please visit the Search Marketing Group.