Search Engine Marketing Services: 4 Evergreen, FREE Ways to Get More Traffic (& Sales)

When search engine marketing services is mentioned, many times, a listener's eyes will start to glaze over. They think it’s some type of complicated “geek speak.” But it's really not. Search engine marketing is fairly easy to understand, once you commit to learning the process. And what’s even better is, most of it can be done for free.

Search Engine Marketing Services Food for Thought: How High do You Want to Go?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about getting your site to rank well in search engines like Google, right? But, how high do you want to go? As in, how high do you want to rank. Conventional internet marketing wisdom is that if you’re on the first three pages of results returned, you're doing pretty good. Why?

Because,according to an April 2008 survey reported by eMarketer.com, an industry leading analyzer and researcher of online and digital media businesses, web surfers don’t look past the first three pages of results returned, The survey found that:

Nearly seven out of 10 respondents said they clicked a search result within the first page of results, and 92% clicked a result within the first three pages of search results. . . . fewer search engine users surveyed were willing to click results past the third page . . . .” [Source: eMarketer.com, Searching for SEO: Searchers prefer organic results]

So this brings us to the question, how do you get there? Following are four proven search engine marketing optimization tips that pave the way.

I. Search Engine Marketing Services: The Value of Keywords

If content is king when marketing online, then SEO content is undisputed royalty. Because SEO articles contain keywords relevant to your niche, they help to push your site higher in search results, making it much easier for web surfer to find you.

If you continuously (this is key) write and distribute informative, relevant SEO content, your site has a good chance of outranking those in your niche who don’t employ this strategy.

What are Keywords?

Just in case you’re new to search engine marketing, the words that web surfers type in when they search for products and services on the web are called keywords. You want lots of content with lots of these on your site. Professional SEO copywriters can provide this.

Let’s illustrate by way of example.

If you were looking for used trucks Detroit, you'd probably type in "used trucks" and "Detroit.” If you wanted your site to be on the first few pages of the search results, you (or a freelance SEO writer or an SEO copywriting services firm) can write articles with these keyword phrases in them and put them on your site, as well as distribute them to free article directories like Amazines.com.

What type of SEO articles would you write? Well, it could be anything. It’s up to you. Some SEO articles that come to mind using these keyword phrases are:

How to Buy Used Trucks in Detroit;

Used Trucks That are Good on Gas in Detroit;

Where to Find Cheap Used Trucks in Detroit;

Used Trucks in Detroit: What to Look for in a Dealer;

Used Trucks in Detroit Under $3,000.

Get the idea?

II. Search Engine Marketing Services: The Value of Quality, Informative SEO Content

While SEO content is important in search engine marketing, it should be informative and educational. That way, readers will start to trust you because you’re an “authority” on the subject. Trust leads to sales.

Look at it this way, if your content is stuffed with keywords and provides no value to the reader, how likely do you think visitors will be to return to your site? While SEO content is a good way to get visitors to your site, to get them to trust you and to keep coming back -- which is what it takes to make sales -- you must give them what they want: ie, helpful, informative content.

Never forget to make this a priority when writing SEO content.

III. Search Engine Marketing Services: Develop a Link Strategy

What is a link strategy? It is simply a plan to build traffic-driving inbound links to your site to help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERP results). There are two components that make up an effective link strategy -- backlinks and anchor text linking.

What Are Backlinks and Why are They Important?

Backlinks are simply links from other websites and blogs back to your website/blog. These are also called inbound links. While outbound links (links from your site to another site) are important, it’s backlinks that do the heavy lifting of driving more traffic to a site. Why?

Because search engines like backlinks. When a site links back to your site – especially a site that is very popular – it is akin to telling the search engines that this site is “important enough and relevant enough” that they recommend it. When you have lots of these, then search engines say, “Wow, this must be a good site because so many other sites are linking to it.”

One other type of link you should know about is reciprocal links, ie, you link to my site and I'll link to yours. Search engines give less weight to these because it’s like a conspiracy.

Think of it this way, would you trust someone who recommends a site when they get nothing out of it (eg, link to the site because it has good info), or a site that links to another site because the site also links back to them (reciprocal link)?

FYI, a great way to get lots of backlinks is to have quality SEO content that others will want to link to and share. It always comes down to good content.

What is Anchor Text and Why is Anchor Text Linking Important

The second component of a successful link strategy in search engine marketing is anchor text linking. The words that you choose to make a hyperlink are called anchor text. They literally "anchor" the text that is highlighted.

Search engines use it to help determine what the content is all about and how relevant it is.

Note: Your anchor text should always be highly relevant to the page you link out to. For example, if backlinks is your anchor text, then the page a web surfer lands on when they click out should be about backlinks – and nothing else. Otherwise, you could get penalized by search engines for it.

2 Ways to Effectively Use Anchor Text

The first way is to drive visitors deeper into your own site, eg, linking to other pages on your site. This is called intra-site linking.

The second way to effectively use anchor text is to link to other highly regarded, relevant sites on the web. Think of it as an introduction of a friend to your visitors. Try to only recommend highly ranked, relevant sites in your niche. This helps the positioning of your site in search engines.

IV: Search Engine Marketing Services: Why You Should Concentrate on Google

While ideally you want to rank well on all the major search engines (eg, Bing, Yahoo!), Google is the most popular search engine -- period -- by a wide margin.

Proof?

In a July 2008 article on the respected SearchEngingWatch.com blog, it was reported that "Google grabbed 69.17 percent of all U.S. searches . . . Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 19.62)."

While you should never completely ignore other search engines, as Google brings in the most traffic, this is the one you should focus your search engine marketing optimization efforts on.