BW Marketing & Design Blog

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing the content of your website to be relevant to search engines like Google and Bing for important search terms called keywords and phrases. These words and phrases are what someone would type into a search engine to find a website.

The SEO process is a long-term investment and can take anywhere from 1 to 6 months to see any noticeable results from SEO tactics. This is why research and planning are so critical to the success of your website and SEO campaign. Below is a list of 5 important questions that need to be answered before you implement an SEO strategy.

1. Who is your target audience?

It is important to clearly define who your target audiences are. Knowing your audience will not only help with choosing SEO keywords/phrases and website copywriting, but will attract better “qualified” prospects to your website. Is your audience a business or a consumer? Drill down a level and determine who at the business is the decision maker (owner, office manager, facility manager) or who in the home is the decision maker or influencer of a purchase (male, female, child).

2. What is your geographic service area?

Geography is also very important to the success of an SEO campaign. When selecting the geographic boundary, consider that the larger you make it the more businesses there will be competing for those same keywords/phrases. It will also likely take longer to see SEO results. Is your business targeting the city, state, national or international level?

3. Who is your primary online competition?

Once you have identified your audience and geography, you can quickly define your online competition by performing a couple of searches on Google or Bing. Use a keyword or phrase and location that a potential customer would use to find a business like yours. Identify three to five businesses that consistently show up in the search results.

4. What are the leading products or services you want to promote?

Is your business trying to increase sales for your leading products or services or do you want to focus on promoting a new or underperforming product or service? The good news is you can do both. The amount of products or services will determine which pages on your website will need to be optimized for SEO.

5. How will you measure success?

SEO success can be measured in many way increasing web visitors, new subscribers to your newsletter, a request for information, or purchasing a product or service on your website. Whether it is more visitors, a sales lead or making a sale, identifying your top priority business goals will serve as a tool to measure the success of your campaign.

Scheffey’s Internet Marketing Specialist, Brian Weit, works with the firm’s strategic directors to develop and implement SEO campaigns for several Scheffey clients in diverse industries. By combining internet best practices and marketing expertise, we are able to enhance clients’ internet performance and ultimately increase qualified leads.

Posted on November 5th, 2011 by admin
Filed under: Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »

SEO Copywriting

Achieving success with search engine optimization starts with good copywriting. Many people struggle with this because they are good at copywriting, but are not achieving results. The key is to take your first draft and review the copy for keywords and keyword phrases. How will people find you online? The keywords people type into search engines should be repeated through out your copywriting.

Copywriting is not just the content you see on your website there are page url’s, page title, and meta data that help search engines fine your website and copywriting. Over the past couple of years I have worked with many Lancaster PA based websites and needed to make sure that I was being consistent with my content. So, I put together some personal best practices to use as a template for writing website copy. Hopefully this will be a handy resource for others who are working on there websites.

Best Practices

• Keyword Research: Most Important step in the SEO process is finding the most effective keyword categories and phrases that will generate leads and conversion.
• Optimized Keywords: Define the optimized keywords for the copy of each page
• Title: Short description of page
• Meta Description (Max 150 characters): It’s important to add a meta description for every page on your site, the meta description is what frequently shows up under your page title in search results and convinces people to click-through to your site.
• Meta Keywords (Max 10 phrases): While search engines like Google stopped using meta keywords it is still important to add keywords for other search engines and website SEO graders.
• Image Alt Tags (Max 125 characters): The ALT tag is a benefit for accessibility reasons and should describe the image. If you start cramming it in an attempt to add content for a graphic page, it will be seen as attempts to ‘game’ or ’spam’ the system. Keep alternate text short and sweet. Keep in mind in Internet Explorer the alt text will show when you hover over an image.
• Body: This is the content that is visible on your published webpage. A page should contain more text content than HTML-code
  <h1> Heading 1
  <h2> Heading 2
  <p> Paragraph: (Should include 200+ words)

Link Building

In the past good SEO copywriting was the key to instant results. Unfortunately things have got a bit more complicated. With the rise in online business there is more competition fighting for page rank. In a follow up article I will address the importance of website popularity and link building for SEO.

Brian Weit
Internet Marketing Specialist

Posted on February 27th, 2010 by admin
Filed under: Internet Marketing | 4 Comments »

SEO Tools

Successful Search Engine Optimization in its simplest form requires quality website content that people are looking for. With SEO becoming more popular and competitive there have been hundreds of tools developed for website analysis, reporting, grading, page rank and on and on. With so many tools available it is hard to choose. Many companies become so dependent on tools that it seems that they forget what the goal is, to generate leads and make money. With that being said, it is important to find the right tools for you and your company and remember that there is a human side of things that you should be keep in mind, you know your business and customer best. No tool will tell you exactly what to do to optimize your website to generate leads.

Free SEO Tools for Firefox Add-ons

Lately I have been searching and comparing various SEO tools that range from Free open source software to monthly subscriptions that can become very costly. After spending hours in comparison I found some of the most effective and informative tools right in my browser. Firefox is equipped with a variety of add-ons for the browser that are efficient and easy to use. Just click on the tools tab at the top of your browser and select add-ons. This will open a small window, click on the Get Add-ons tab and search for SEO tools. I found the SEOpen tool to be very helpful for my current needs. There are many to choose from and hopefully this will be a helpful tool to aid in your SEO research.

Posted on December 16th, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »

Driving Traffic to your Web Site

There are a number of great ways to drive traffic to your website. Perfecting SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the best and least expensive ways to drive relevant traffic to your web site by way or organic search. Pay Per Click advertising, using services like Google Adwords, gives you the advertiser more control of search results by bidding on specific keywords. This is a fantastic way to instantly increase traffic and define specific keywords that will potentially convert to sales. Providing compelling content through Email and Newsletter marketing are also very effective ways to provide traffic to your site. While traffic sounds good and looks great from a web tracking perspective, the big question is how do you convert all that traffic into sales?

The biggest factor in converting traffic is analyzing the foundation of your current web site. Do you have a well designed web site and a easy-to-use navigation? Does your web content stimulate emotion from your visitor to get them excited about what you have to offer? I have provided a few suggestions on things you can do to improve your chances of converting traffic to sales.

Quality Traffic

Not all traffic is quality traffic. If someone lands on your page and does not find what they are looking for, they are going to leave. Researching keywords and recognizing which keyword phrases are most likely to convert to a sale is the first step in optimizing your return on investment. Avoid using general keywords, the more specific your keywords are the closer you are to helping a visitor find exactly what they are looking for. In Pay Per Click advertising the conversion optimizer is helpful for identifying keywords that are performing best for your business.

Website Credibility

Your web site should be well designed, trustworthy and credible so that customers will feel more confident about your product or service. Otherwise, your visitors will go elsewhere for a more credible site. Clean design and easy-to-use navigation is key to success. Your customers need to be able to find your products or services quickly. If customers don’t find what they are looking for quickly, they may leave before making a purchase. Think about your own buying habits, if you arrive at a site that appears to be low quality, what is that saying about there product or service?

Compelling Content

Good copy should be informative, short, and to the point, list all of the features and benefits of your products in words your customer understands. It is a proven fact that most customers buy for benefits. How can your product or service help make me make money or save me time and money. Once your copy is written, analyze it to make sure it is optimized for search engines.

Call to Action

Have the visitor take action while they are at your site. Don’t make the  mistake of getting your customer excited and then leave them wondering what to do next. Each landing page should have a clear call to action. Whether your purpose is to collect email addresses, register online, call or buy now! Consider using promotional and limited time offers to put a time limit on making the decision.

Follow Up

Internet marketing studies show that first-time visitors will not purchase your products even if they are ready to buy. The convenience of the Internet makes comparison shopping easier then ever. It is extremely important that you follow up with any warm leads to keep them interested. This is a great time to present and additional offers you make have to offer. It takes multiple touches for a customer to commit to making a purchase.

To learn more about how to generate leads specific to your website
Call or email me for a free consultation

BW Marketing & Design:
717-475-3666
bwmarketingdesign@gmail.com

Posted on November 13th, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Internet Marketing | No Comments »

This video was sent to me today. It is filled with interesting facts about how far social media has come and how quickly it is changing the way we communicate.

Posted on August 24th, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Internet Marketing | No Comments »

Looking to be a web designer/developer? Need to brush up on your HTML or CSS? I highly recommend taking some of the web building tutorials from w3schools.com. If you are going to learn to be a web builder learn from the creator of the web. Having access to information like this for free is more valuable then any paid college course or book.

Posted on August 8th, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Design | No Comments »