Real examples of SEO, SEM, and other internet marketing strategies
My employer recently interviewed me on search engine optimization and posted it on our company blog. Robert Payne did such a good job at asking some killer seo questions and making me think hard to get some awesome answers that I wanted to point it out and point people over in that direction so you can review it for yourself.
Search Engine Optimization Interview with Eric Morgan
Popularity: 55% [?]
There are really three main core components to SEO that are easily categorized and have their own unique difficulties, challenges, and strategies. Those who understand these three core components well can begin on basic seo projects inching their way up to advanced seo strategies.
1. SEO Friendly HTML
The html of your website is very important for search engines. Editing HTML is the most ‘easy’ of the three components in my opinion, takes the least amount of time, and is the only seo component that actually has some closure at some point in time. The key focus on the HTML is to make sure it is SEO-friendly; but what does that mean? More often than not it means fixing HTML items that are actually hurting your SEO strategy rather than helping. The most common issues I see are too much javascript, a flash-only site, weak title tags and meta descriptions, use of graphical text in headers rather than HTML text, poor setup of navigation elements, empty alt-tags, spamming or trying to trick the search engines, very slow load time (large graphics are usually the culprit), and more. The good thing with ‘fixing’ your HTML for SEO purposes is that once its done you don’t have to worry about it too much except for a few extra minutes when you add new pages to your website. This step usually requires an SEO expert who has HTML knowledge and maybe a specified HTML programmer or web developer if necessary.
2. Content for Search Engines AND Visitors
After you have patched up your HTML the next step is to ensure you have enough useful information/content/copy on your website. You should note the emphasis on ‘enough’ and ‘useful’. If you only have a three page website with a few paragraphs yet you offer hundreds of different products or services how would you expect the search engines to really understand what your website is about? Once you have identified the core content your targe audience is seeking make sure it is put up on your website. After that stage the door opens up uto endless possibilities of methods you can produce relevant and useful information for your current and future clients. Some simple ideas are adding a blog to your website, adding a press release or news section, setting up a FAQ, having a client testimonials page, have a photo gallery with a description of each photo, post reviews of other products or services that are relevant to the industry you are in, setup a monthly industry newsletter, and more. Content development should never really end unless you start to get thousands upon thousands of pages which most people do not achieve easily. This stage will involve an SEO expert and some good copywriters or strategists.
3. Link Building
Link building is probably the most critical and overlooked strategy of SEO. It is also the most difficult and avoided because of its difficulty to achieve. You have total control over your HTML and copy on your website; you can update and add those to your hearts content. However this is not the case with incoming links to your website. You have no control over who links to you and how they link to you; unless you happen to own some other websites. There are many different strategies to gain links to your website and the most successful is link baiting; but also the most difficult to attain. Link baiting is creating something so noteworthy, sought after, or impressive that other people link to it from their websites or blogs naturally – without you even knowing it. Other methods of link building include directory submissions, viral video distribution, commenting on blogs, buying links, link trading, social media bookmarking, etc. This is the most difficult stage of SEO and also never seems to end, I have not found a website yet that has ‘too’ many links (unless they are bad ones)~
SEO Components Summary
Remember to focus on HTML, Content, and Link Building and your SEO campaign should be successful. Ignoring one of these three components can hold you back from your true potential to success. I recommend tackling them in that order (easiest to hardest) and focusing on seo copywriting and link building on a regular basis after the HTML is squared away.
Popularity: 70% [?]
SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible by Jerri L. Ledford
So a co-worker of mine bought this book because he wanted to learn more about SEO and asked me to review it for him to see if it was any good. Man – was I disappointed. It was so bad I actually told him to not even waste his time reading it and to get a different book.
First off almost all the book is about PPC, not even about SEO – and they are totally different online marketing strategies, similar but very different. I was expecting it to be only about SEO with maybe one chapter on PPC, but as I flipped through I kept seeing PPC everywhere.
Next most of the advice is very dated. There were a few chapters that were good, but they were the exception. Also it lacks specific examples and pieces of advice. It goes over topics in such broad detail if you were not familiar with SEO it would leave you sitting there to wonder “thats great, but how in the world do I actually implement some of this advice?”
If you are new or experienced to SEO this is not the book to buy. It is too vague, jumps around from topic to topic too much, and should be titled “The SEO and PPC Bible” since it covers so many topics specific to PPC.
Popularity: 66% [?]
I have used google campaign optimizer in adwords now for several different websites and have also spoke with many other marketers who have utilized the service as well. So far the results have been much less than impressive and appears to be a system for Google to suck more money out of advertisers than before. Here are the results of three campaigns and the statistics relating to them. Each test only lasted about 2 weeks and in all cases the before and after time period of running ads was much more profitable for the website or business than during the 2 weeks that google optimizer ran. In all three cases the biggest noted change to the PPC campaigns was increased CPC for keyword phrases.
Campaign Optimizer Campaign 1:
* Conversion ratio went down by 126%
* Overall spend increased by 21%
Campaign Optimizer Campaign 2:
* Conversion ratio went down by 243%
* Overall spend increased by 19%
Campaign Optimizer Campaign 3:
* Conversion ratio went down by 64%
* Overall spend increased by 17%
To say the least I have not met anyone who has had positive things to say about the Google Adwords Campaign Optimizer tool. Although it could possibly be useful for those who know absolutely nothing about PPC campaigns, for those who have even a little experience will end up doing much better by setting up their ppc campaigns on their own. If you do plan on testing it out I would highly suggest making a backup of your Google Adwords account so you can restore it later if the results are not what you were looking for.
Popularity: 69% [?]
I have always been a big fan of Bryan Eisenburg including his books and blog. I came across a blog post about website graphics and usability a few days ago and found it very interesting. It is a bit dated (few months old) but a very good read. It talks about how something as simple as the direction a model is facing in a web graphic or the direction their eyes are looking can play an important factor in conversion, website usability, and information architecture.
In his example they had two simple ads that were the exact same except in one graphic the model was looking at the product and not at the user. The one where she was looking at the product had heatmap registers (tracks eye movement) that were much more prominent and kept attention longer. It was interesting as I tested it on myself as well and I found myself naturally looking to where the model was looking as well.
I plan on experimenting with this website design tactic through some analytical mouse tracking software to see if simple changes like this can have enough of an impact to warrant attention and resources for some of the website I work on. This is extremely intriguing though in the fact of how such subtle differences that normally would be overlooked and not even thought about can actually have an impact on website metrics and how every single detail must be taken into consideration to truly have an above than average website marketing strategy in place.
Popularity: 84% [?]
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