SOM Report

The impact of economic downturn is prominent in almost every aspect, including Search Engine Marketing. Recent reports said that SEM weakened 8 percent in the fourth quarter, 2008. More…

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A natural search optimized website will be more trustworthy to a user than a PPC (pay-per-click) advertisement, thus increasing the ROI (return-on-investment) on the website. Although, optimizing the web pages to a natural SEO takes significant amount of time, still, the ROI and the rewards reaped through this process are extremely satisfactory. It is like paid advertising vs. public relations. The best part is about 70% of the traffic from the search results is free, Google gives these valuable clicks away at no charge. 

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Holistic Search Marketing:

A business is only as good as its marketing strategy. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) is essential for a business to thrive in the online environment. These indicators can be categorized into 'Online Indicators' and 'Offline Indicators.' A few online indicators can be:

1. Visits: A well structured and maintained website will be visited more often by potential customers. The rates of visits on the web page contribute to the success rate of the online endeavor.

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The number of online video viewers is on the rise today. Taking the survey reports of US alone, we can see that there is a positive increase in online video viewing. In 2003, there were only around 55 million online video viewers; however, in 2007 the number has gone higher to be 140 million. And the figures are only expected to grow with time. Therefore, online video marketing is going to be a key player in the time to come. Web companies that desire to reach masses efficiently would feel only a greater need of turning to online video marketing companies.

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Podcasting is a fairly new term which was coined in 2004. Fusing two words: iPod and broadcasting together we have what we call podcasting. What is being listened to has been around since the mid nineties in various forms but not as convenient as it is now due to the ability to subscribe and automatically download them.  However, it doesn't mean that you can listen to a podcast only on an ipod, instead you can listen to podcasts on any other portable player including a desktop computer. Today podcasting is becoming an ever increasing rage both among everyday users and business.  

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What is Social Media Optimization (SMO)?

The various forms of Social media would include Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Social media is a term to define the varied activities that integrate technology, social interaction and the construction of words and pictures.

Today most of us use, social media applications like Google (reference, social networking), Facebook (social networking), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality) and Flickr (photo sharing). But in relation to Internet marketing, Social Media could be referred to as a collective group of web properties that are driven by users for example, blogs, discussion boards, vlogs, video sharing sites and dating sites.

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Best practices SEM requires utilizing the skills and expertise of varied professionals. Typically these professionals entail: a market researcher with knowledge in linguistics, a professional copy writer with a knowledge of SEM, including thematic linking and topical community, a graphic artist, a database manager, someone knowledgeable in creating dynamic websites, a PPC management expert, a web analytics expert, a linking strategy expert and a project manager, all with a knowledge of marketing.

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As with traditional marketing, search engine marketing best practices begins with in-depth market research and benchmarking.

The biggest search engine marketing mistake is made right from the beginning-choosing the wrong target keywords or key phrases, that's same as premising on invalid market research data to conceive  marketing plans.

Keyword market research and analysis is the foundation of SEM best practices, including brainstorming keywords, phrases, and synonyms, assessing key-phrase popularity, and identifying related or industry-specific words. One must identify key-phrase popularity and related or industry-specific words—these will be the most popular, targeted, and convertible search terms.

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1. Due to the competitive nature of business online today you need to address more ranking factors than just the Title and Description tags. My list currently has over 100 known ranking factors.
2. If you have a dynamic site you need to use dynamic SEO techniques. Due to the size and nature of the Long Tail potential this is a must.
3. Set up A/B and even multivariate testing on your PPC program using a professional copywriter to create the ads.
4. Expand the PPC program to additional traffic sources.
5. Submit to both paid and free additional directories.

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By Gerry Grant, CEO/Founder, Search-Optimization.com

ABSTRACT:

Search optimization marketing (SOM) is the most effective form of marketing available today. A critical element in search optimization marketing is creating content that's search engine friendly and utilizes both natural/editorial and pay-per-click (PPC) tactics to enable users the ability to locate relevant content on your site. This is called search engine marketing (SEM). While there's no one shot solution, consistent use of best practices over a period of time will achieve maximum results. If companies want to remain competitive in the age of fast changing information technology, then a properly built, professionally-optimized website isn't a choice anymore.

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