SUBMIT 2.0

No matter how experienced you are, how good your product or service is or how pretty your web site is, it’s always challenging to rank well in the search engines. Let’s go over some of the steps necessary to maximize your SEM efforts.

There’s a good deal of confusion about how necessary Page Rank is to ranking well. Page Rank is sufficient but not necessary for solid rankings. Let me explain. Focusing on building Page Rank, although important in the long term, should not be the only thing you try to do. Note that Google calculates Page Rank as part of their very closely guarded ranking algorithms. We, as marketers, have no say in how Google assigns PR. Understand that Page Rank is simply a measure of your site’s authority. It is not a measure of your bottom line.

If you want decent rankings, be prepared to work for them. The approach may include trial and error on your part truly understand what methods do and do not work. The first steps you must complete have nothing to do with ranking. They have everything to do with ensuring your site actually converts. Even if you spent a fortune on web development and design, that doesn’t mean your site will convert your traffic. The process of converting search engine traffic into opt-ins, buyers, followers or fans is the very essence of search engine marketing. Remember this is search engine marketing - with an emphasis on marketing. You’re a marketer first and foremost.

First and foremost, your site design, navigation and content strategy must be based on keywords and keyphrases. Furthermore, your marketing scheme is going to revolve around these same keywords and phrases. How should we be spending our time marketing? Step one is a backlinking campaign. Not all backlinks are created equal! The backlinks we need have our keywords and keyphrases as anchor text. The higher the Page Rank of the site where your backlink sits, the better it is for you. The more links you have, the better it is for you and one link is better than none! Given that we need backlinks, what’s the magic number? Only your competition can answer these questions. If you have little or now competition in your niche, you’re good to go - a handful of links will do! Of course no one is going argue that the more links you have, the better your rankings. But, and here’s the kicker, your choice of keywords and ultimately your anchor text is more important than sheer numbers. Good search engine rankings are necessarily a matter of marrying your anchor text to your keywords. Get this wrong and your site is bound for search engine oblivion.

Once you’ve got your anchor text and keywords sorted out and you’re beginning to see some traffic, we come full-circle to conversions. I’m going to leave a more detailed post about conversion tactics and strategies for later. I want to let some of this sink in before the real fun starts. So - stay tuned! The most fun you can have online is converting your visitors so don’t be afraid of digging in and getting your virtual hands dirty!

Source: Ezinearticles

Filed under: Search Engine Marketing