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.

Now that’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?  However, as harsh as it can be, the cold hard truth of the matter is that it’s still true.

The moral of the story is simple.  Attracting traffic one way or another is what almost every website owner works so diligently at doing because we all know exactly how important visitors are to having a site that’s meaningful and successful.

But wait…There’s more to the story!

Indeed there is.  So as a website owner or developer, you work really hard at getting the ever-important visitor to pay a visit to your site.  In fact, if you are like most of us, sometimes we work towards this goal with so much ambition that we totally forget the whole purpose of attracting visitors in the first place.  That purpose is to either put your unique information or story in the hands of your visitors or to drive leads and sales of your product or service.

Once you have targeted traffic practically beating down the door to your website (in a figurative way, of course), the next logical thing to do is to ensure that all of your hard work is not wasted.  Turn your visitors into opportunity!

• Be friendly and conversational with your visitors.
• Give visitors a taste or sample of your product.
• Share relevant and practical niche information with them.
• Find out how you can help them learn more.
• Suggest that they sign up for your very informative newsletter.
• Encourage them to follow and participate in your ongoing blog conversation.
• Offer them solutions based on a problem they’re clearly eager to solve.
• Recommend products or services that fit the situation.
• Make sure visitors are able to figure out exactly how they can contact you without having to dig for the details.
• And by all means—ask your visitors for the sale with an appropriate call to action!

While it’s not always about converting a website visitor to opportunity in one swift visit, it is about making absolutely sure that once you’ve attracted the visitor to your site through all of that hard work, you don’t become forgettable or become that book that’s disappeared forever into the dust behind the bookshelf.

Create a site that earns the trust of your visitors and guides them kindly through the conversion funnel.  Don’t push.  Don’t prod.  But do work hard to create a site and a process that your visitors will not forget.

Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.