Posts Tagged ‘driving traffic to your website’

SEM and SEO Basics

Wednesday, June 24th, 2015 by

Realistic vector magnifying glassWhen you launch your website, it doesn’t naturally sit at the top of the search engines. It takes time, creativity, due diligence & sometimes cash.

SEM, SEO, HOW?

Let’s start with SEM.
SEM = Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing is the process of purchasing ads to get your site to the top of the search engines. Ads always display first, so this is the quickest way to get your site noticed, but it can get VERY expensive! So instead of going straight to Google, which is the most popular search engine and the highest cost, start with smaller lower cost search engines. But do your research & check what the costs are for each one.

With ads you pay per click. So you need to stay on top of your ads and monitor them closely, because they can be quite the cash drainer. So think about how much you can afford to pay each month, and setup your ads to only pay that amount each month. Many ad services allow you to pay up to so much, and then once you reach that amount, the ad will automatically stop until funds are available for the next month.

Google Ads – Google ads and adsense. These are two separate things. But for what we are talking about here, Ads is what you want. Google is used by over a billion people every month!
Bing Ads – Bing and Yahoo are combined, so you get more bang for your buck. Bing & Yahoo are used by over 300,000,000 each a month, so that is around 600 million users per month!
AOL Ads – AOL is used by over 120 million people a month.

There’s more to check out, so do a search for most popular search engines and check out if they have available advertising space. Some search engines use Google’s ads or Bing’s ads, so you get even more coverage across those search engines if you advertise with one of those.

If paying for top spots doesn’t seem like something you are willing to watch over, maintain and work on, plus you don’t have the extra funds for it, then SEO would be the next option for you. I personally recommend both, or pay for ads and work on your SEO and then cancel your ads!

SEO = Search Engine Optimization, this is the process of optimizing your site with the right keywords so your site is relevant for what someone searched for. This is what keyword research services is doing.

Basic SEO is choosing popular keywords & phrases that describe what you are offering and placing them on your site in your content to engage readers. Always be careful with how you do this, because if you are spamming keywords, the search engines don’t like that and will penalize you for it. So, my advice would be to work with a SEO company like https://posirank.com/blog/seo-reseller-white-label-seo/ who can help you and your company develop an effective keyword strategy. For instance, you can list out keywords in your meta tags, but don’t list keywords on your site in a big paragraph, they must be embedded in your content. So make a list of keywords and stick to those keywords in your meta tags and your content. You may also try to look for  to assist you on this.

Meta Tags: Google’s Keyword Planner is perfect for finding a multitude of keywords, and the number of searches for those keywords. For example, do you sell soy candles? Then your keywords would be things like.. soy candles, scented soy candles, vanilla soy candles, home fragrances,  soy wax candles, pillar soy candles and etc. Look at keywords that have more than 1000 searches per month, and use those keywords in your meta tags.

Site Content: In your site content, you don’t want to have big paragraphs of keywords. So in your product descriptions, just make sure that those keywords are repeated in your content.

For example, if the product is a soy vanilla scented pillar candle, my description would be;
Ahh, the lovely scent of vanilla! Enjoy these scented soy candles in every room of your home for a refreshing & calming home fragrance. Our scented soy wax candles come in a variety of sizes; Pillar Soy Candles, Taper Soy Candles and Votive Soy Candles.

That’s just a basic example, if it were my site, I would probably have more to say about it! But this gives you a good idea. So you can see that I used 6 keywords, just in that very small 2 sentence paragraph! So writing your own product descriptions to match your site keywords and of course to add your own personality, is very important!

Have some SEM & SEO tips for our readers? Comment below!

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Posted in Marketing, Online Business | 10 Comments »

Driving Traffic to Your Website (The Simple Free Way)

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012 by

So you’ve done your market research and picked your first product to sell online. You’ve contacted your first drop ship supplier and setup your wholesale account. You even have your website or auction started and your merchant account setup. What’s next? Driving traffic to your site!

There are several options you have:

1. PPC’s: Pay per click advertising (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Bing PPC)
2. Social Marketing (Sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter)
3. Natural Search results (Getting your website to the first page of Google)

I’m going to discuss the option that is simple and free, but it does take a little bit of your time and patience: Natural search results.

To get yourself to the first page of Google you need to focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are several companies out there, like the one on indexsy.com, who will help you with SEO. But before you even start considering outsourcing your SEO, there are several basic steps that you can do that cost you nothing but your time to implement.

Let’s focus on what you can do with your website starting today. The first 5 main areas of your website to start with are:

1. Title of the webpage
2. Meta Description
3. Meta Keywords
4. Images
5. Product Descriptions

Each one of these you need to focus around your main keywords for that particular product page. So let’s use “Pet Couch” as our example for each of these 5 areas:

Your title needs to have what the product page is about at the very beginning of the line.
Example title: Pet Couch for Large Breed Dog – MyCompanyName.com

Your meta description should include that main keyword and don’t get too wordy. Remember this is what people see under the first line in the natural search results, although to get real results, there are also options like organic SEO brives conversion rates which help getting traffic to your site.
Example meta description: A Pet Couch can stop your large breed dog from taking over your living room couch. This dog couch is available in red, green and blue.

Meta Keywords are all the important keywords that your customer is typing into the search engines. Five to seven keyword phrases is a good number to focus on per product page. Hint: make sure to use the keywords you find when doing your market research.
Example: pet couch, pet couches, dog couch, large breed dog bed, giant breed dog bed, large dog bed, large beds for dogs

Images: Name your images with the keywords that are important. Because how you name your images, is how someone can also find your site doing an image search. So instead of img001.jpg is should be pet-couch.jpg.

The Product Description that is displayed on your site next to the image of the product, is the first main area that you can provide a lot of content around your keywords. Make sure to answer who, what, when, where, why and how and relate the product to your customer. Try not to use too much of what the supplier provides to you, as you, and everyone else selling that product will end up with the same description!

So there you have it, 5 simple and free things you can do to your product pages right now that’s going to help you get to first page of Google.

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Posted in Marketing, Online Business, Online Business Advice, SEO, Website | 13 Comments »