Search engine marketing is a wide, wide world, and it’s easy to get lost in all of the information and advice out there. You can’t try all of it at once, so how do you put together a solid marketing plan that will get the job done without being overwhelming? It’s actually not rocket science. All you need to do is take a step back and focus on the critical essentials for your marketing plan.
Begin With The End In Mind
Be clear about your goals. At the end of the day, what are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to increase the amount of traffic to your site? Are you looking to increase conversions on a specific product offering? Do you just want greater brand recognition?
I see too many search engine marketing plans fail because they don’t start with clear objectives. You can waste a lot of your personal time and resources doing the wrong thing, or even just trying to do everything. Focus on what you want to do and then plot the shortest path to get it done. This will help you stay on task with your plan, and keep you from being tempted to buy a ton of unnecessary ads and gizmos.
Research
Research is not the most glamorous part of the web game, but if you leave this out, your plan is sunk before you’ve ever started. Once you’ve set your end goal, you need to define your target market and then research the living daylight out of them. Where on the web is your next customer, and how can you get them to you?
You will want to know the basic demographic data of your desired customer, as well as what makes them tick online. What kinds of ads do they click, what makes them convert, what links do they collect, and what are they already buying now? This kind of information will guide you in creating your copy, your feature pieces, and your partnerships.
Focus On Earning Natural Traffic
As you lay out each element of your plan, don’t fall for any gimmicks that aren’t based on sound organic traffic development principles. This is especially true if you are outsourcing the execution of your search engine marketing plan. You win by building trusted relationships based on quality content and solutions—not link spam and black-hat work.
Keep It Alive
Search engine marketing plans should never be considered done deals. Since the way rankings are tabulated continues to change and evolve, your marketing plan should also include plans for keeping current with the latest changes. As many have learned with the ongoing Google algorithm updates, it is prudent to stay aware and keep on your toes. Of course, that’s also why it’s worth hiring the experts to do this for you—to save your own organization the time, hassle, and effort.
Even a simple maintenance plan for continually testing your marketing elements will put you a cut above the crowd. Whether it’s weekly, monthly, or quarterly—remember to pull your plan back off the shelf to keep your rankings and traffic levels high.
Until Next Time…
George Chaney
President
SEO King, Inc.
