BlodgettVentures.com

   
The most popular SEM method is called “Pay Per Click”.  This uses an online advertising strategy where you must pay each time a person clicks on your ad.  Your web designer will submit your website to one or more of the SEM programs, such as Google, Yahoo or MSN.   The ad can be targeted to a certain geographical area, close to your business location, nationwide or worldwide.

You begin by establishing an account for your site with each search engine. You and your webmaster then write an ad for your company/product/service, and choose a range of keywords that relate best to your business based upon popular search activity. When those keywords and keyword combinations are searched, your ad will begin to show up highly ranked on the search results page, either at the top or right side of the page.  The best visibility results from the appropriate choice of keywords for your site.

When a customer searches for a keyword in a search engine and clicks on your ad, your account will be charged. This is called “Cost per Click.”  Each keyword has an established dollar amount determined by the SEM program, and based on the popularity of that keyword or phrase.  You and your web designer will establish a daily budget cost for your account.

 
When your account has reached its’ maximum daily budget cost, your ad will disappear from the paid search results pages.  The next day your ad will again be visible in a high ranked position until you have reached your daily budget limit.  
Your Webmaster will analyze your click through rate and the performance of your competitors' ads.  If your keywords are incurring higher costs than desired, the Webmaster will search for keywords that have lower cost per click without sacrificing popularity, and will optimize your website.

The ultimate goal is to achieve Organic Ratings (see Search Engine Optimization) at or near the top of the page without having to pay a cost per click.  This takes time. The more popular your website becomes; i.e., the more visitors over time, can create higher Organic Ratings and place your website listing at a high rank on the left side of the search engines results page with no click through cost to you.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO). Search Engine Optimization is the technology of generating the highest possible search page results for your website on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

When properly applied, it can lead to the generation of high traffic to your website and the creation of new leads and sales for your business.  It is the most cost-effective form of Internet marketing.  When your web pages are properly search engine friendly, they are considered "optimized."

Achieving top ranking is a long-term proposition, and it usually takes several months to reach high ranking. It is both a science and a skill, requiring special knowledge of how search engine ranking works as well as the application of consistent keyword and content-development strategies.

There are several steps to the Search Engine Optimization process.
 
1.    Selecting the right keywords

This is the most important step and can easily be the reason for your ranking ahead or ranking below your watch sites (the competition).   Words or phrases must be related to your website and they must be the words or phrases people will search for on the Internet.   

2.    Analyze the competition

This is the process of determining who the competition is; in other words, these are the sites that show up above your page.  There are several methods of determining this, including finding out how effectively the competition has used their keywords.  

3.    Page creation and optimization

When your website is created there are various codes, tags, and text placement within the pages that you can’t see.  The web designer must make sure the correct keywords or phrases are in the right places.  If these keywords are incorrectly placed, search engines may not index your site or the keywords may be considered Spam and your site will be banned.

4.    Content is Critical

The content of your web pages must be informative and easily readable.  Good content, written for the Web, will ensure that your page appeals to your potential customers as well as the search engines.  A badly written page may get good ranking on search engines, but a potential customer will move away from your site with the same speed they came in.

5.    Link Building

It is desirable to link to other websites and for them to link back to you (called "back links"). If the theme or content of the other sites with which you are sharing links is related to yours, it will increase your ranking with the search engines.  It's important that you don't misuse back links, as the search engines will penalize you for links that have no relevance.

6.    Submitting to Search Engines

After your website is created the web designer should submit your site to at least Google; and preferably other search engines such as Yahoo and MSN.  


7.    Submitting to Directories

Search Engines consider web (directories) as expert documents.  A presence in popular directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo!  World Wide Index, and Microsoft Central can get your web pages better ranking on search engines. This is not nearly as important as your Google listing, however.


8.    Maintenance

Search Engine Optimization is a continuous process.  Popular Search Engines keep making changes to the way they rank web pages.  It is imperative that web pages are continually optimized based on the current keyword search activity to achieve high ranks.  Rankings should be measured each month, and pages re-optimized that drop in rank.  The web pages are then re-submitted to the search engines.  


9.    Tracking

The web designer uses a file analysis program to find out which keywords bring in the most visitors to your pages and uses this information to optimize your pages better for the new terms and search engines.  

Every good business must have a website. Here's what you need to know about website design and content.

Sites are used in two basic ways:

• A web domain to send people/prospects when they want to know if you have a website, as well as learn more about you/your company.
• A site that is searched for and found through common internet search processes such as Google, Yahoo! or MSN.

Clients will use it as a ready reference when they want to show others why they're paying you the big bucks, and they'll actually use it to look up your phone number and contact information. It's kind of like an online brochure, only more. It is a key component of your branding effort. It can pay big dividends in credibility if the site is good, and, if the site is bad, it can be a huge negative.

I know a business that spent close to $100,000 on their website. I know lots of companies that have spent $15-30,000. And, I know a number of companies that spent under $5,000. Which have the best sites? None of them!
Nearly all of them aren't worth a thing because they don't provide the content that their clients and prospects want/need to create the desire to initiate an inquiry to the company, much less buy something. Even worse, the sites aren't search engine optimized so the buying community can't find them unless they know the correct URL.

What's in a good site? First, a Good Web Name (URL, Domain Name, Website Address). A good web name should be short and easy to remember. Whenever possible, it should also align with your business theme. For instance, we have three sites: www.FIRSTBRANDinc.com for our marketing corporation. For our consulting business, I have www.BlodgettVentures.com. For my book, I chose www.YourOwnConsultingBusiness.com. The names fit the criteria.

JONESCUSTOMERSERVICECONSULTING.com would have it's challenges, but JonesCSEnterprises.com or JonesCustomerSolutions.com would be better, or even JonesConsultants.com.

Relevant, Search Engine Friendly Content. Content is absolutely vital to a good website, and there are several types of content:

1. Relevant Text with Key Words and Phrases. About your business. About you. About what you offer, and how you deliver it. Benefits to the prospect. Testimonials. Appealing Articles. Stories. Resources. Links to other relevant websites. How to contact you. The key to good text in a website is that it not only is interesting, informative, educational, enlightening and pertinent to your field but it also is Search Engine Friendly. That means that at least 10% of the content contains popular key words and phrases that someone searching for you on the Internet would use.

2. Search Engine Friendly (SEF) Text. It should contain keywords that people are currently using to search for information about the field. Remember earlier when we searched Google keywords and found words relating to your field? The most popular ones should be incorporated, where appropriate into the content of your site.

3. Search Engine Friendly (SEF) Meta Tags. These are Title, Description and Keywords embedded into the html programming code in your site. They are invisible to the public, but important to Search Engine Spiders and Crawlers. You want these to be properly done for each page of your website. Much is written about Meta Tags, and whole semester college courses are out there to teach the science and practice of Search Engine Optimization. In short, though, you need a Title Tag on each page of code that describes what that page is about; a Description Tag that is a bit longer and describes what's in the content; and finally, a list of Keyword Tags on each page that include those popular search words and phrases that you found in your Google Adwords research. That's it. You'll generally need a Web professional to carry out this part, but if you've done your homework and provided the words, it will be low cost.

4. Photos, Video. Use high-quality (relevant!) photos that have been optimized for the Web. An optimized photo is one that has been converted from a large .jpg image to a smaller .jpg image without sacrificing significant image quality. Web pages display and refresh faster with optimized photos. We've all been annoyed by those pages that take forever to load! You can use free Web tools like Picasa (google.com) or Web Resizer (webresizer.com) to accomplish this. Your professional website developer will do it,  or a friend with Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements software.
Video on websites is becoming very popular and can work well, again if it's professionally done and optimized. On the web, amateurish sites are quickly abandoned, so plan to do this right.
Good Design. The best way to check this out is to search your competition as well as other consulting sites. You'll see what you like and don't like from the standpoint of good design. Besides great content and related photos, is the information organized logically and intuitively? Does the site engage and motivate to you to read the content and check out every page. Stickiness is a term used to describe a website's ability to keep the visitor interested and on site as long as possible. You want visitors to see, read and explore your entire site, so you know it has to be good to do this. Think Sticky!

5. Logical, Functioning Navigation. First, does the navigation take you effortlessly from page to page, topic to topic, link to link. Are there broken links that don't go anywhere? Not good. Are there links that take you offsite, but don't link you back? Not good, either. You'll want your site to keep your visitors at home, so links pages need to open within the page on your site and easily get the visitor back to the page on which they began.

6. A Call to Action. A good website has a Call to Action, meaning something for the visitor to do next, before leaving. The simplest of these calls is to Join Your Mailing List or Sign-up for Your Newsletter. Or take advantage of an offer that is only on your Website. Or presents an Offer With a Specific Duration. Make them get in touch with you, either by email or phone.