MINIMIZATION (NOT OPTIMIZATION)
Let me downplay the importance of search engine optimization or SEO. The real job to be done is search engine marketing or SEM. You’ll want to find a smart companion for this journey. It takes a lot of patience, intuition, and insight to read through Google’s abundance of traffic statistics and come up with priority areas of strategic focus. How you trade against this knowledge decides whether it will go up or down.
Before looking at a list of activities that constitute “the real work” to improve Google rankings, consider the following:
1) Everyone wants more visitors online, which makes the market very competitive. This is not miracle marketing!
2) The best in SEO simply puts you “in the grid”, which means that people will find you somewhere in the results returned by Google, but not in the top 5 positions where more than 75% of the traffic gravitates.
3) SEO can only be successful where real research is involved, which means it takes a smart marketer to navigate Google’s data and separate real opportunities from millions of searches. Once these decisions have been made both cleverly and scientifically, then it’s very easy to leverage that knowledge to get results on your website.
4) Search engine optimization is misleading. It should be “search engine minimization” as it’s the least you can do to get your website into the game (too many think it’s ALL they need to do).
5) The real difference is made with search engine marketing, where you allocate a budget to an ongoing campaign of measures that raise your optimized website in the rankings. A professional can help you prioritize which measures provide the greatest return in the short term.
So what are the various service areas included in search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) services? There are two main components: increase visibility and improve conversion. The latter is the process by which prospects first become leads and then customers. While SEO falls completely into the former category, SEM straddles both sides of the categories. One thing must be clear. It’s not enough to convert consumers to your product. You have to motivate them to buy!
INCREASED VISIBILITY
Online Niche Discovery
keyword research
local google listings
Google Organic Rankings
Google Sponsored Ads (Pay Per Click, PPC, Adwords)
blog
local forums
customer feedback
Merchandising of articles
Press releases
link building
business directories
industry memberships
IMPROVING CONVERSION
brand consulting
Web-page design
Website Copywriting
electronic commerce
Management of contact forms
Building email lists
Electronic newsletter (quarterly)
RSS feed management
media development
WordPress BlogSoftware
Content Management System (CMS)
Audio/video content development
google analytics
Progress Report