Search
Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing
Date Post : Saturday, March 08, 2008
SEO
means your website has been fine tuned to satisfy the needs of both
search engines and people who do the searching. SEO is more about
doing the technical things in website design than providing content
that will bring in targeted traffic to your ....
1.
Title tags - each title tag should be different. The description
tag should entice the searcher to click on the link. SEO experts
know that this tag should contain very specific keywords as they
relate to that page's theme. He also knows that search engines don't
want us to spam them with too many of the same keywords on the page.
You get penalized for such spam.
2.
Attention to keywords and key phrases - each page should have a
specific focus on the idea you want to impart there. Perfecting
key phrases is the work of SEM.
3.
You want to be sure you do not confuse the search engines by overusing
website technology. The search engines are getting better about
handling flash presentations, for example, but I would not depend
on flash entirely. CGI scripts can cause a web page to open slowly.
Use scripts sparingly.
Search
Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM
includes SEO since it strives to bring in good traffic. However,
SEM addresses the content of your web pages more than the technical
aspects.
First,
we need to define "traffic"? Simply put, traffic is people
who visit your website. How they get there is another issue. There
are different types of traffic. Essentially there is lousy traffic
and good traffic (also called "targeted traffic" in SEO
lingo).
People
who search for something but are surprised that what they see on
your site has little or nothing to do with what they wanted to find
are obviously not the kind of people you want. This is the least
effective type of traffic to promoting your product or service.
Then
there are people who arrive at your website and spend some time
there because you are offering something very much in line with
what they were looking for. If you are an expert at editing online
articles, for example, and a searcher searcher was looking for someone
to edit his new book he may have typed in "editor". He
would quickly leave your site after he discovered you only edit
online articles.
But
if you did edit books for a living, he would be an excellent prospect
for you. People these days are more apt to type in "search
phrases" instead of one word generic terms because they are
internet savvy. They know they will get poor results from one word
searches.
There
are quite a few valid ways to steer traffic to your website. SEM
addresses how to get people to your site directly through the search
engines rather than through bulletin boards or through social networking,
for example.
SEM
experts will often recommend that you employ Google Analytics or
similar tools. Analytics will tell you what people do after they
get to your site. Which page do they most often leave on? Can you
improve that page? What do people do before they buy your product?
SEM
experts know the value of reciprocal linking and how to get people
to link to your site. Some say that reciprocal linking is a dead
issue while others understand that it can strengthen your site.
A
SEO sage's advice should be heeded, in my opinion. Jill Whalen of
High Rankings says it like this: Put up content for your visitors,
not for the search engines. Make a great site and you will be very
happy with the results. Good advice.