22 December 2008
Find out what you can do to improve the effectiveness of your search engine marketing strategy.

The aim

The basic aims of a successful search engine marketing campaign are:

attract more visitors;

ensure visitors become customers;

keep your campaign fresh so this cycle continues.

Attract more visitors

Whatever the nature of your business, search engines should be a core element of any marketing campaign. Ensuring that your website makes the most of search engines is referred to as 'search engine optimisation' (SEO).

Think naturally

SEO refers to 'natural' or 'organic' search engine rankings. This is to distinguish from paid listings where an advertiser pays a search engine to appear in (or have an advert placed near to) the search engine's results.

Natural SEO relies on search engines looking at your website and deeming it relevant enough and respectable enough to be listed when a user types in particular search terms. By crafting a coherent strategy based around focused keywords, site structure, build quality and 'link-building' it is possible to improve your search engine rankings.

Search engines calculate the relevance and reliability of a page by reading its content and evaluating other sites that link to it. When high quality sites link to a page, search engines will assume that the page carries more authority and the page's ranking in search engine results will often increase. Increasing links from high quality and relevant third party sites is therefore a key SEO strategy.

Tip 1: Post in popular online discussions relevant to your business, linking directly to appropriate pages within your website through your signature or posted content.

Tip 2: Call in favours to create links to your website from suppliers or affiliates. If you can, try and match the context of the link with the subject of the target page on your website.

Tip 3: Avoid blatant 'link farms' and other directories that contain unorganised links which are not checked for qualilty. These sites sometimes seek to undermine search engine's attempts to return genuinely relevant results. For this reason search engines sometimes penalise such directories and those who use them.

Tip 4: Search engines are built to behave like people, so think of each popular page with direct incoming links as a 'landing' page for a human visitor. Ensure that they can quickly recognise the product or service they require and also the next steps they need to take to satisfy this requirement.

Tip 5: Try to focus each page closely on a particular subject, such as a key service or news story. Emphasise subjects by repeating key phrases in titles and content, but make sure your content remains intelligible and write in natural language with short, direct sentences. See our writing for the web article for more information.

Tip 6: Periodically review the structure of your website with a search engine marketing expert to ensure that your navigation is logical and 'search engine friendly'.

Turn visitors into customers

Once your website is receiving traffic through search engines (and other direct marketing tactics not discussed in this article), you need to convert that traffic into leads.

To increase your conversion rate your website must:

answer the questions your visitors are asking;

build trust;

generate a contact with the visitor.

By continually improving the content and design of your website you can address these issues and increase your conversion rate. This is the satisfying point when you begin to see the direct financial benefits of the money you have invested into your website and marketing campaign!

Tip 7: Ensure your site has a clear and honest description of your organisation and the services you offer.

Tip 8: Be as transparent as possible about processes, previous clients and pricing. This all builds trust with potential clients.

Tip 9: Make it easy for your clients to make contact and think of creative ways for your client to engage with your site before they make the decision to use your services.

Evaluate and refresh your campaign

Evaluate

To run a successful marketing campaign it is essential that you can measure your results. This will allow you to evaluate which elements of the campaign are proving most successful and focus more on those areas.

Your website is not an end in itself. Set clear objectives (such as value of work won, number of clients gained, etc) and hold your website to account!

Tip 10: When transactions are completed, gather information from your customer about how they found you and what made them choose you.

Tip 11: Ensure that you are gathering statistics data and that your data is being analysed appropriately.

Tip 12: When transactions are completed offline, make sure you are handling your leads appropriately and your visitors feel they are valued. The internet is built on trust, and a poor review can be very damaging.

Tip 13: Tie in your website marketing with other marketing material. Use every opportunity to make people aware of your website.

Refresh

Search engines change their methods and your website will evolve over time as you add content and improve the design. You should therefore think of your marketing campaign likewise and ensure that your approach is adaptable and open to change. Try to build on the insights you gain to improve future performance. New opportunities and techniques may also become available as web technologies are developed and used in new ways to improve the landscape for your customers and for you.

Tip 14: Keep up to date with new website technologies and standards. These may unlock new marketing possibilities.

Tip 15: Encourage new ideas for increasing traffic and improving conversion rates and try them out.

Tip 16: Consider engaging professionals periodically to review your internet marketing strategy and ensure that it remains focused and effective.