Search Marketing
The primary driver of traffic to websites is search engines. Performing searches for keywords is critical to web users’ goal to quickly access information. Businesses’ ability to capitalize on this opportunity to provide exactly what their customers are looking for requires a comprehensive search engine marketing campaign. This includes using keyword data in each web page, organizing link architecture to get maximum leverage of the keywords, search engine optimization and generating relevant inbound links that reference the keywords chosen for the site. The nature of the Internet as an evolving entity requires that search engine marketing be an ongoing process. As competitors emerge and expand their web presence search engines continually review available websites and rank their relevance according to keywords.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process of strategically looking at each element of the website through the lens of the software that ranks the relevance of your site compared to key words. By carefully selecting the verbage used throughout the site to match the search terms being used by your target market, you increase the probability that your site will be found by someone searching with those terms. All the elements of the site such as the text on the homepage, paragraph text, section headings, and the title of the page lend to the overall ranking of the site compared to the key words. Hyperlink text (especially inbound traffic) holds considerable weight in key word searches.
A Google search for the key words, “packaging supplies” brings up a good example of relevance. The first three entries, as well as the links in the right column are paid advertisements targeting those specific key words and are therefore have the top priority for placement on the results page. The rest of the results that appeared are directly related to the search terms entered and the sites overall relevance to the terms. The first result, PackagingSupplies.com, uses the keywords in it’s domain name, as well as in it’s description. The text of the hyperlink also contains the keywords. The keywords listed in the meta data, the homepage and text within the site all effect the positioning of the site based on the results of those keywords. The rest of the results show similar relationships between the search terms and the way the site is optimized based on the chosen keywords.