Make Time for Web Marketing 2.0

By Andrew Wetzler
E-Commerce Times
April 24, 2007

There are many opportunities to increase the flow of qualified visitors to a Web site by utilizing more advanced tactics. In order to be truly successful online ⎯ in addition to having a very good site ⎯ a company needs to effectively employ both search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO and SEM, although different, share a common thread. SEO is nonpaid traffic and its purpose of SEO is to make the site better for both search engines and usersIt's everything that can be done to utilize the technology of search engines with the goal of promoting a web site and increasing its traffic. It uses the practice of paying a search engine or a directory to add a site to its database immediately, rather than setting up that site so that it will be found by the search engine spiders on its own. Both efforts are driven by keywords, and the more well conceived the list, the more favorable the end result will be.


Key SEO Tactics

Search engine rankings are a function of sophisticated algorithms. While it is true that the algorithms are a moving target, which no one can fully explain, the factors that lead a Web site to perform well in the natural results are fairly consistent.

• The first issue is the degree to which a site contains hearty content that aligns closely to the keywords which are most important to the site.

• Limiting the number of keywords and phrases per page to two or three is also important. Incorporating content about more than two or three keywords onto any Web page will weaken your message on the page, which won't be viewed favorably by the search engines.

• Another step in making sites as search engine-friendly as possible is to ensure that the architecture doesn't present any obvious roadblocks. Flash is probably the best example of a technology that is much more aligned for the end user than for the search engine spidering process. It's reasonable to have some Flash on the site, but it's not a good idea, from a search engine ranking perspective, to have a home page that is all Flash. In general, the less, the better.

• Both content management systems (CMS) and template driven Web sites can be problematic for SEO. The problem with many of these frameworks is that the site owner has very little ability to make modifications to the coding of the site and the majority of templates are not SEO-friendly to begin with.

• Incrementally adding relevant links to your site is also a very good approach. Link popularity is an important component of the ranking criteria for the major engines, particularly Google.


Advanced SEM Methodology
There has been a dramatic improvement in the tools that are available to figure out what's working and what isn't. Variables include engine selection (MSN vs. Google, etc.), keywords (broad vs. narrow, exact/negative match, etc.), as well as factors like which pages of your site are moving a prospect toward your objective in contrast to others that may be hindering a conversion.

It used to be that the cost associated with analytics programs was substantial, therefore only the largest online players could justify the expense. With free and low-cost programs like Google Analytics, the investment is now limited to the time required to set the tools up properly (including coding the site) and the post click analysis of the data.

For more information, check out: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/9stHwNbCIanrWd/Make-Time-for-Web-Marketing-20.xhtml



The beauty of Internet marketing is its mass appeal. But these days it’s not only important to have a website. It’s important to utilize the advancing technologies to bring ads to people’s attention. Web sites have to be designed in a certain way so that they get ‘short-listed’ by search engines. Understanding how search engines work is probably the first main step all businesses need to comprehend, and then build or update sites that are in sync with the engines. This popularizes the website, which eventually leads to more traffic.

Web marketing has dramatically changed the way advertisers think and design their campaigns. And as the Internet becomes more and more enculturated throughout the world, it’ll be the best way to reach customers on a global basis. (not that it isn’t on its way already).