ABOUT ESSENTIAL MARKETER Essential Marketer is a fast growing UK online marketing and software solutions company based in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. We pride ourselves on ensuring that all of our clients receive a clear return on investment (ROI).
Over the last decade, online marketing, and in particular search engine marketing (SEM) have become an absolute necessity as part of business’ overall marketing strategy with millions of companies all aiming for important online exposure.
Essential Marketer takes a methodical approach to online marketing and use best practise techniques to ensure best possible results.
We offer a range of products and services which enable businesses to grow their online presence whilst improving staff performance through bespoke software solutions. We have a huge breath of knowledge and expertise, through years of working in the marketing, IT and finance sectors.
OUR ETHOS Essential Marketer is driven by creativity and results. Our experience and knowledge provides engaging creative and content connecting your customers with your products and brand. Coupled with this, we offer bespoke software solutions to compliment and optimise staffing productivity.
We believe in being 100% transparent with our clients and offer an open approach to how we work. We’re a blend of marketing and IT specialists working together to improve the performance of your brand and business.
OUR SERVICES INCLUDE: * Search Engine Marketing (SEM) * Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) * Pay Per Click (PPC) * Affiliate Marketing * Email Marketing * Display Advertising * Online PR * Web Design * Web Development * Software Solutions
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a highly intricate and time-consuming procedure. This paper provides a methodology and set by set guide that can be used to help to simplify and understand SEO processes.
So what exactly is SEO? A simple definition of SEO is as follows: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the designing, writing, coding and maintaining of your website so that the chances of your web pages appearing at the top of search engine results for selected keywords is good.
Why is SEO so important? Unfortunately, having a nice looking website is not going to result in your site being found by the search engines, so if you your site is not SEO’d you will be ranked so low that you will be invisible to thousands or millions of potential customers - your target audience.
As 85% of all searches are conducted via search engines, a well optimised website is a must and can provide huge volumes of traffic resulting in greater leads and sales. Your competitors who operate online with a strategic online marketing, incorporating SEO, are winning business through being listed high in the search engine results for your relevant search phrases.
What are the advantages of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) over Pay Per Click (PPC)? Many companies choose not to implement SEO as they believe it is too complex to achieve natural (organic) search listings, however, if it is implemented correctly the benefits can be great:
• Click-through rates (CTR’s) are higher than with Pay Per Click (PPC) as users understand these have not been paid for meaning they are more likely to be more relevant to their search query.
• Resulting traffic and business from a site which has implemented and maintained best practice SEO will be long-term.
• Unlike with PPC, with SEO you are not charged for visitors who click-through to your website.
Pay Per Click (PPC) should not be discounted though, as there are additional benefits and excellent Opportunities. PPC campaigns can be run along-side SEO for maximum impact and exposure. It can however be expensive depending on your industry.
SEO: Ethical and Best Practice Methods Adhering to safe strategies that are consistent with search engine guidelines is essential. Essential Marketer employs a strong stance against any person or agency who use non-ethical techniques and spamming.
Often many people and indeed companies do not understand that what they actually doing is spamming. In fact, some know, but don’t care about the risks.
The golden rule to remember is that any attempt to deceive the search engine spiders and/or your visitors is considered as spam and should be avoided at all times.
Essential Marketers Top Tips to successful SEO Best practice SEO campaigns involve many key stages along the process, briefly speaking, they are as follows:
Analyse The Current Situation You must analyse your site to determine the performance through your current SEO activity.
Plan & Set Objectives Accordingly Following analysis of your current situation, you should specify your objectives including a project plan for referral.
Web Analytics You should determine, depending on your industry and marketplace, what and how you will measure key performance. These key performances should be reported to track performance.
Competitor Analysis Understanding your key competitors will provide you with great insight into how they are using SEO to their benefit.
Keyphrase Research & Selection This is the most important stage as this is the basis of your whole Search Engine Marketing Campaign. You need to identify the phrases used by your target audience, then refine and select those most relevant.
Site Optimisation For search engine to successfully index your site, you must ensure the internal site structure is developed correctly. To ensure your site is search engine friendly, you must also develop the sites code structure and architecture.
Links By increasing the number of incoming links to your site, you will increase your sites link popularity meaning you also increase your search engine rankings. You will also gain non-search engine traffic from those sites linked to you.
Content is King Fresh, updated and topical content is key to success, as this will result in higher search engine rankings and more effective experience for your visitors.
Site Submission To begin gaining exposure it is necessary to submit your site to the major search engines, however, this isn’t a major concern as your site will be found by the search engines, usually within a couple of weeks.
Analysis & Reporting Using one of the web analytics packages you should analyse and report on your sites progress.
Maintenance Once the site is up and running and achieving your goals, it is imperative to ensure maintenance of the site whilst also implementing continuous improvements where necessary.
Implementing Successful SEO Analyse The Current Situation Prior to implementing any SEO work, it is important to analyse your sites current performance. If you do not know what the current situation is, unknowingly, you could make things worse.
Undertaking analysis of your current situation will provide you with greater understanding into your strengths and weaknesses. This analysis will also identify potential opportunities. Essential Marketer recommends you analyse the following:
Search Engine Inclusion Identify how many of your sites pages are indexed on each major search engine. If your site is not indexed then trying to increase ranking positions is a waste of time.
Check Your Link Popularity Identify how many incoming links from relevant sites you have as this is a determining factor for improving search engine positioning. Search Engine Rankings Do a check of where you rank in the major search engines for your chosen phrases.
Analyse Unique Visitors You need to measure the current number of unique visitors to your site as this is used as a benchmark for measuring future campaign successes.
Analyse Conversions You need to measure the current number of visitors that convert into sales prospects. This is measured by an action or online sale, for example, on a loan website a conversion would be a customer filling out an application form. Conversion rate is measured by Unique Visitors divided by Conversions.
Analyse Key Pages Analysing your key pages will provide you with which pages are most critical to your SEO campaign.
On-Page Factors This is the technical side of things, it shows you how well you have optimised your pages for the search engines. You must look at things such as page titles, keywords and descriptions, code structure and link structure.
Off-Page Factors This identifies whether there is anything about your website that could affect your search engine rankings, such as detecting the use of spam techniques.
Plan & Set Objectives Accordingly Analysis of the current situation will provide you with information so you can set your SEO campaign objectives. It is useful to use the SMART acronym as this will improve your focus and improve measurable feedback. S Specific, Significant, Stretching M Measurable, Meaningful, Motivational A Achievable, Agreed upon, Attainable, Acceptable, Action-oriented R Realistic, Relevant, Reasonable, Rewarding, Results-oriented T Timely, Time-based, Tangible, Trackable
Common measurable goals include Conversion Rates, Search Engine Positions, Incoming Links and Unique Visitors, for example: • Increase application signup to 50 per month by June 2008 • Achieve Top 10 positions for 10 selected search phrases by June 2008 • Increase the number of incoming links to 400 by August 2008 • Increase the number of unique visitors to 10,000 per month by June 2008
Include a project plan for referral so you know what you have achieved and when. By using a project plan you can break down all the stages of the campaign into manageable sections. The speed at which you implement your SEO campaign is determined by your resources so you must be realistic.
Web Analytics To avoid implementing your SEO campaign ‘blindly’, you must ensure the first to stages are in place. You must use reporting tools which show campaign progression. We recommend you use, at the very least, the following reporting methods: Search Engine Positions Tool Track all relevant phrases across all major search engines. Web Analytics Tool Measure all relevant traffic, unique visitors, source of traffic and more
As part of our managed Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services, Essential Marketer provides an analytics package.
Competitor Analysis It is very useful to identify and learn from competitors who are currently effective with SEO. You should remember that your competitors for search engine users are not only your traditional competitors but all online content providers related to your market. Select 5-10 of your most important high volume keyphrases and also some niche high intent phrases relevant to individual products. Search on these and identify sites which most commonly occur in the top 10.
Keyphrase Research & Selection As this is the most important stage of your SEO campaign we’ll spend a little time looking over what you must do.
Always ensure sufficient SEM project time is allotted to keyphrase analysis, demand evaluation and selection. As detailed keyphrase analysis and selection will enable you to:
• Review possible phrases which enables you to connect with potential customers as they search for your products, services, content or experiences.
• Select keyphrases which indicate intent on the part of your target audience which help to qualify which phrases should prioritised upon.
• Set goals for returns on SEM based on the number of relevant searches and the cost of achieving results.
• Select SEM strategy for achieving results for each keyphrase - which combination of SEO, PPC & Affiliate Marketing works best?
Keyphrase analysis needs to form the backbone of an SEO campaign for future SEO stages like Site Optimisation, Link Building and Copywriting.
There are a number of methods you can use to research and assist you when undertaking keyphrase analysis, such as:
• Reviewing your current website content and keyphrase selection.
• Researching and benchmarking competitor website’s and their keyphrase selection.
• Undertake analysis of real-time searches and results.
• You can also use specialist tools available.
Your resulting findings from keyphrase analysis should provide you with a comprehensive list of search phrases relevant to your products and/or services. You should sort your keyphrases in order of usage volume and the number of competitor sites.
It is very useful to identify and learn from competitors who are currently effective with SEO. You should remember that your competitors for search engine users are not only your traditional competitors but all online content providers related to your market. Select 5-10 of your most important high volume keyphrases and also some niche high intent phrases relevant to individual products. Search on these and identify sites which most commonly occur in the top 10.
Site Optimisation Clearly identify different levels of target keyphrase for each page, for example: primary, secondary and tertiary.
Site Optimisation incorporates re-working your site pages, HTML code and internal linking structure. Site Optimisation will help to:
• Improve the HTML code structure of each page. This ensures search engine ‘spiders’ can effectively crawl your site.
• Improve you sites internal linking structure through using selective keywords and site maps.
• Optimise your sites page elements, such as titles and META keywords & descriptions.
• Ensure your site is search engine friendly through removing any negative off-page factors that might hinder the search engine spiders.
• Optimise your page content so it includes more relevant keyphrases, which increases relevance to search queries.
Making sure your site is search engine friendly is the key objective here. Reviewing your Inclusion Analysis from your Situation Analysis will show you whether the search engines spiders are crawling your site successfully.
There are a number of issues that may occur on any sites. Some typical issues include poor linking structure, lack of site maps (including XML site maps), incorrect use of frames and tables, and incorrect use of web content management systems.
Links One of the most crucial factors for successful online marketing
Link Building involved the procurement and development of inbound links to your website from other relevant website’s and directories. An effective link-building strategy is an essential part of SEO, not an afterthought.
It is important to remember that link-building should target a range of internal pages for topical external links, not just the home page. Ken McGaffin in his ‘Linking Matters’ resource (www.linkingmatters.com) suggests you: “Create great content, link to great content and great content will link to you”
The best practice approach for building links is as follows:
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Try to gain inbound links without a corresponding outbound link where possible before reciprocal links.
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Request links from pages which combine a high PageRank with an appropriate link context for the phrase you are targeting.
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Request links personally. Templated link spam requesting links which is generated by software is easily identifiable by the recipient. Instead craft each e-mail personally and use relevant flattery and humour to appeal to the site owner. Refer to specific URLs. A phone call will be worthwhile for high-value sites.
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Provide a prompt or facility for other sites to link to you. The first question you should ask yourself when attempting to build links is: “Why would or should other people link to me?”
If your website doesn’t have valuable information or content then why would anyone link to it? By identifying what is missing from the marketplace, through researching your competitors, you should be able to identify what is missing and fill the gap.
As well as the MUST-DOs there are the MUST-NOTs
It is our recommendation that you DO NOT:
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Use link farms as they will do more harm than good
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Link to website’s that do not provide no value.
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Request links from low-traffic website’.
Link Building provides the following key benefits:
• Higher rankings • Driving relevant traffic • Brand building • Improved integration with your target audience
Higher Rankings - When determining a sites ranking, most search engines place huge emphasis on Link Popularity. Link Popularity is determined by the number of incoming links to your website. The more incoming links you have means the greater priority your website will be given.
The typical principal applied by search engines is, if you provide outbound links to other resources then your site is considered more valuable; and if other sites link to you then you have content of value to the online marketplace.
Driving Relevant Traffic - incoming links will drive relevant non-search engine related traffic to your website. Many people use links as a way to find new sites or information. When website’s you respect provide links to additional resources, your tendency to to follow it, meaning the more inbound links to your site, the more potential of it being found.
Brand Building - You can build brand awareness through increasing the number of incoming links to your website. When popular or trusted website’s link to you, people will perceive your company In a better light.
Improved integration with your target audience - Effective link building campaigns will integrate you into your relevant sectors online communities. As each industry area on the net has its own community of popular website’s and resources, if they are linked to your information and you link To them, you will establish you as part of each online marketplace.
Content is King After identifying the most suitable keyphrases to target for your SEO campaign, the next step is to create content that will appeal to potential customers when they search for your keyphrases. This is not a case of simply providing content which you think will appeal to search engines, as this could be classes as spamming.
Keeping content fresh, up-to -date and integrated with keyphrases are key to your success. When choosing and writing content you should always:
• Produce new, focused content that will integrate easily with your current website’s theme. • Optimise the current content with the correct selection of keyphrases. • Review your website and implement changes that will improve conversion rates. • Review your website and, if necessary, improve the usability and site navigation.
Site Submission Site submission represents probably the most easy stage of SEO, however there are some things you need to avoid:
• DO NOT use automated submission tools that advise will save you time, as these can have negative effects, such as your site being ignored or banned.
As well as submitting your website to the crawler-based search engines, it is important to submit your site to the human edited directories like Yahoo!, dmoz, and business.com, etc.
Analysis & Reporting Monitoring your SEO campaign is a must, just like with any marketing campaign, analysis and reporting enables you to asses where things are going well and not so well. It is also essential to measure how successfully you are achieving your goals set out from the start.
It is useful to provide reporting via an Excel Report that will provide a central location for the metrics you wish to track and monitor. Some key metrics to monitor are:
• Unique Visitors - This is important as you measure the number of unique visitors to your site as well as the pages they visit.
• Search Phrase Analysis - Ensure you monitor your chosen keyphrases and the traffic they deliver. • Conversion Rates - Your conversion goal will vary dependent on your market and industry. However it is true across most industries, that it is useless driving traffic to your site if this traffic does not result in conversions. It is essential to monitor which keyphrases deliver the highest traffic and the highest conversion rates.
• Link Popularity - As ongoing link building is a key stage of your SEO campaign, it is essential to monitor your link popularity. The more links to your website the popular your website is and will become.
• Search Engine Inclusion - You need to monitor how many pages of your website are being indexed by the search engines. Maintenance As with like every marketing campaign, ongoing improvement is a must with SEO as search engine algorithms change and evolve.
To continuously improve it is essential to: • Continue Building Links - Link Building is a continuous process and should be a key activity.
• Report - Report key findings and progression at least monthly to monitor campaign.
• Update Content - Continue to update and create new and relevant content.
• Watch for Algorithm Changes - Monitor changes and implement changes where necessary.
• Review Optimisation - Review tactics and makes changes where necessary.
• Analyse Keyphrases - Monitor original keyphrases as a reference point and if necessary discover and implement new keyphrases.
Essential Marketer Essential Marketer is a fast growing UK online marketing and software solutions company based in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire.
SERVICES Online marketing services and software solutions to help your website shine and your business grow
Essential Marketer offers a blend of professional marketers and IT experts, meaning we understand your needs, the outcomes you require and how to achieve your objectives.
We understand that online marketing is more than just about HTML, keywords and links, we fully utilise our experience in marketing, advertising, design, usability, brand management and copywriting to achieve bespoke strategies aimed at helping our clients to where they want to be.
Our team come from diverse backgrounds, sharing similar passions and ambitions; to deliver online marketing strategies that are right for your brand.
We take an integrated approach to online marketing by providing a centralised strategy, planning and creative design. Our team plan and deliver strategic solutions which include affiliate marketing, web design and development, online PR and viral marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing and social media strategies.
We fully understand how online marketing can be utilised for response-driven marketing, but we also understand how online marketing can be used for brand engagement. This understanding and knowledge enables us to build sites that balance usability and design, providing a superior experience for the user.
Our services include
* Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
* Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
* Pay Per Click (PPC)
* Affiliate Marketing
* Email Marketing
* Display Advertising
* Online PR
* Web Design
* Web Development
* Software SolutionsLike more info?
If you would like more information about any of our services, then please contact us to learn how your business could benefit Essential Marketer.