SOM Report

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.

Strategically, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) program management and media buying provide an quick means of getting traffic to your site with placement and top rankings on Google, MSN, and Yahoo, plus a number of other high-quality, lower-cost PPC search engines. Writing targeted titles and descriptions for your keywords and key phrases, and developing targeted landing pages to give your site multiple points of entry can significantly improve PPC results. These landing pages also need to be optimized to attract natural traffic and increase your PPC results. The design of landing pages becomes all the more important as they can either compel a visitor to take action that you want him or her to (fill up a form, make a purchase, register for newsletter, etc.), or result in a “bounce off.” If a landing page isn't designed properly the number of hits your website gets are immaterial, however what's critical are the conversions. To extend your budget even further, it is important to “blend and balance” placements on higher-priced PPC search engines with listings on less-expensive search-engine accounts. The right combination can reduce your per-visitor costs by up to 40% or more.

To maximize ranking, visibility, frequency, and reach, a specialist needs to include:

• Strategic Pay-Per-Click (PPC) program management and media buying.
• Conduct extensive keyword market research.
• Develop search-term-specific, keyword-rich landing pages.
• Select the most popular, targeted, and convertible search terms.
• Identify which keywords/keyword-specific phrases are most effective.
• Conduct continuous, industry-specific linguistic research.
• Coordinate all traditional marketing with SEM efforts.
• Use PPC strategic information in your SEO efforts.
• Set up web analytics including click fraud monitoring.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Gerry Grant CEO/Founder Search-Optimization.com, an Orange County Internet Marketing Company, has been actively involved in search engine marketing since 1994. This is a series on search marketing best practices.