Right now, somewhere, a potential customer is searching for your products. But, who will they find first – your company or your competitors? Search engine marketing is all about getting in front of prospects at the moment they are searching for your capabilities on Google.

But how do you take full advantage of search engine marketing and outshine your competition? The following tips will put you on the path to search engine marketing success.

Choose the Best Keyword Phrases
The most critical step in search engine marketing is selecting the most important keyword phrases for your company. If you do not perform this step properly, your search engine marketing campaign is destined for failure.

When choosing the best keywords, it is critical to choose phrases that are relevant to your business and searched most often by your customers. Begin by getting inside the heads of your customers and brainstorm about potential terms your customers use when thinking about your products. Ask your salespeople, customer service people and best customers what phrases they think are most important. Then, turn to keyword research tools like Wordtracker or Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool to create a list of highly searched terms that will drive targeted traffic to your Web site.

Make Your Web site Attractive to Google
Now that we know your most important keywords, let’s put them to work. You need to make sure your Web site content and coding is optimized to take advantage of these phrases. Begin with your Web site copy – the information people can read on your site. Make sure you skillfully write your copy to effectively market your company, while using your important keywords in a relevant fashion.

Next, focus on your Web site structure – the code under the hood of your Web site that search engines see when they visit. Use your keyword phrases in page title tags, heading tags, director names, file names, alt tags and meta tags. Please note: while the ‘keywords’ meta tag is no longer relevant, the ‘description’ meta tag is very important. This description will show up in the search results below your link, providing a great opportunity to entice the searcher to visit your Web site.

Attract Quality Links to Your Web site
Link building involves gaining links to your Web site from other relevant and popular Web sites. The more quality inbound links you have, the more popular your Web site is in the eyes of Google. And, these links can have a dramatic effect on your search ranking.

A good place to start is to make your Web site content link-worthy. Good content attracts links, so fill your Web site with enlightening content such as best practices articles or a blog about trends in your industry. Next, get your Web site listed in online directories. Look first to important directories within your industry. Then, focus on general purpose directories like Business.com. You can also garner links from vendors, business partners and trade associations. Finally, leverage online public relations and distribute press releases and articles online. By consistently applying these link building strategies, you will dramatically boost your link popularity and your ranking on Google.

Run a Results-focus Paid Search Campaign
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) in the sponsored links section of the search results offers a compelling ROI-driven marketing opportunity. Unlike traditional advertising, where you ‘pay for exposure’ regardless of the results, with PPC you are not paying to be listed in the search results. You only pay if someone clicks on your ad and visits your Web site, providing a compelling ‘pay for performance’ mode of advertising. To manage an ROI-driven PPC campaign, first, bid on the most relevant keywords. Don’t pick terms based on popularity. Make sure your offering will be of interest to the searcher. Second, tie your bidding strategy to results. Think cost-per-lead and cost-per-sale, instead of just cost-per-click. Finally, include a compelling ‘call to action’ in the ad and send traffic to a relevant landing page tied to the ad. A compelling and relevant offer will help lift response and boost your ROI.

Measure Your Search Engine Marketing Success
As with all marketing activities, you must measure success to judge your past performance, as well as identify strategies to improve your results in the future. Since search engine marketing is all about attracting targeted traffic, begin by leveraging Web analytics to monitor traffic increases from search, as well as the phrases peoples are using to visit your Web site.

To make sure the volume of visitors continues to increase, you should also monitor your ranking in the search results. On a regular basis, check your position in the search engines for your keyword phrases to see that you are trending toward a top 10 ranking. Finally, to measure success of your PPC advertising efforts, harness the measurable nature of the Web to track the cost-per-visit, cost-per-lead, and cost-per-sale for your PPC ads.

–Bob DeStefano

Of all the metrics that I struggle and fight with, probably the easiest one I’ve found to correct is a high bounce rate. The reality of website design lies in the fact that many choices are made in page layout, color and image choice based on what the graphic designer or website owner like—not what the customer wants.

Testing on the web has come such a long way in recent years. Once upon a time you had to make a change, and then watch metrics to see if things were better or worse. Now you can make educated choices to determine why people aren’t clicking on a button, or why they’re distracted from beginning your sales funnel with a variety of inexpensive tools and metrics that any webmaster, beginner or expert, can use. Aside from systemic issues such as bad coding that makes pages load extremely slowly, its quite easy to fix your high bounce rate pages.

Fixing high bounce rate pages in two simple steps

The first thing I do when I work on a web page with a high bounce rate is figure out what is distracting the user and making them leave. I always start with the organic phrases used to findthat page. For example, one of my clients offers vacation rental units in a variety of complexes around Mexico coastal resorts. His number two keyword is “Riviera Maya weather.” The landing page for that keyword has a 70%+ bounce rate, and my client wanted to know why. All it took was a quick look at the page to see that it isn’t about weather at all—it’s about renting vacation units in a complex, with weather info pasted in below the fold.

The problem? the searcher is mislead to believe the page is about weather. When they land on the page and don’t see the weather information they’re expecting, they leave right away, their queries unanswered. In this scenario we’ve learned the first rule of fixing high bounce rate pages: Make sure traffic to the page is targeted and you’re giving users what you promise in the search query on the landing page they arrive on.

After determining the traffic to the page is targeted and should be engaging with the content, I look at the layout itself. I use a few tools for this depending upon the timeframe I have for research. If I need immediate results I capture a .jpeg of the above the fold portion of web page, and run it through the Attention Wizard tool from Site Tuners. This tool simulates the eye tracking on a page via an algorithm and generates a heat map of the hot spots and path the typical eye will take around the page. This provides really quite remarkable insight that can help you find fast ideas for improving engagement on a page. Attention Wizard is also great for testing page layouts you want to try, because the page doesn’t have to be live anywhere. If you can create a .jpg of a page you can test its potential results.

If I have more time to test, and want results based on the eyetracking from actual visitors rather than that simulated by an algorithm, I use ClickTale, which I’ve talked about previously.

Either tool will help you determine where they eye and the mouse is going instead of into your sales funnel. Use this data to improve page layout and get users to your message faster. The second rule of fixing high bounce rate pages: Make your conversion path so easy to follow that a monkey could figure it out.

Bounce rates can kill your conversion path, but in reality they’re pretty simple to fix. Can everyhigh bounce rate page be fixed with these steps? Probably not, but I bet you can address 75% of the issues caused by high bounce rate pages by following these steps.

–Carrie Hill

Does the prospect of creating Web video fill you with fear? If you’ve never done it before it can certainly seem overwhelming. But you can relax, because I’m going to walk you through the process.

Why should you be using video on your websites? Video is highly persuasive, and users have come to expect it. A well-produced video can deliver your message in a way that engages and persuades visitors to take an action that you specify. For example, my weekly WebTV show (www.HelpMyBusiness.com) attracts thousands of new viewers each week, many of whom buy various products and services I recommend to them. You can do something similar for your niche, regardless of your industry.

The number one key to creating an effective Web video is simple: Preparation. Unfortunately, most people dive in head first and end up with an awkward, disjointed mess. Preparation might not be the most fun part of the process, but it is critical to success.

Here’s a simple, 10-step process you can follow to ensure an effective Web video:

STEP 1: Decide on the primary purpose and objective of the video. Do you want to sell a product or service? Is it to educate the audience about a commonly misunderstood topic? Is it a product demonstration? The video must have a single overriding purpose — otherwise, the audience gets confused. Try to state your objective clearly in one sentence. For example, “the video will overcome any negative perceptions toward hiring new staff from an online employment agency.”

STEP 2: Who is your target audience? For example, based on previous buyers, how much do they know about the subject already? What are their backgrounds, languages and abilities to comprehend the topic? Are they naturally interested in the topic? You would make a very different video for children under the age of 10, than you would for lawyers who specialize in divorce cases.

STEP 3: Decide how you will present the topic. Will you use a documentary style? Will it be dramatic or humorous, sensitive and factual, or light-hearted and lively? There are other considerations too. Should there be a presenter on screen, or an unseen narrator? Also, try to achieve a balance of information and persuasion. Do you want to appeal mainly to intellect or emotion? At one end of the spectrum you could present the information like an instruction manual — purely factual. The other extreme is to persuade the viewer by feelings, emotion, and entertainment. A balance of the two is usually best.

STEP 4: Plan the structure of the video. It’s helpful to think of your video as a story — it must have a beginning, middle and end. The introduction must grab the viewer’s attention, the middle should balance emotion and facts, and the end must contain a powerful call to action that can not be ignored.

STEP 5:Work out the best duration for the video by boiling down the essence of the message and conveying that in the shortest possible timeframe.

STEP 6: Decide who will “own” this project and follow it through to completion. It’s no use assigning it to a staff member who is already over-stretched with other work.

STEP 7: Set a deadline. It might be a few hours or days for a simple video, or several weeks for a complex production.

STEP 8: Research and acquire information and elements to include in the video. Do you own any existing footage that could be used? Other elements might include artwork, logos, graphics or music.

STEP 9: Write the script. A script is the blueprint for your video. It includes not only spoken words but a detailed description of the visuals and music that accompany the words. Don’t expect to sit down and write the finished script in one session. It will evolve.

STEP 10: It’s time to record. Find a proper setting within the theme of the video and eliminate distractions and ambient noise.

Preparing your Web video will ensure a smooth recording process and a polished finished product. Users are viewing more video than ever on the Web and they are becoming discerning viewers. Stay ahead of the curve. A properly prepared video will always achieve better results than a haphazard effort.

–Peter Prestipino

Larry Sivitz, founder of SearchWrite Search Marketing, shares some ideas on how online entrepreneurs can increase traffic to their website and best allocate their time and money during recessionary times.

He says, “Young companies receive a much stronger return on investment by improving their organic rankings on search engines than pay-per-click advertising. But that’s not the end of the story. Companies win only when increased site traffic converts into paying customers.”

He also recommends:

Tags: new media, social media, Web 2.0, web marketing
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