What is Search Engine Marketing? A Real Explanation For A Business Owner.

Search Engine Marketing covers a huge range of online marketing practices and for a small business owner it can be very confusing. Today we are going to explore what search engine marketing covers with a real world example of Fred and his online pet store. This should help anyone new to online marketing understand the value and the options that are available.

Search engine marketing is a balance between optimising for search engines and optimising for people. The balance between those depends on your goals, immediate focus, and ethics. Here is what the yin and the yang of search engine marketing cover in the real world.

1. Optimising For Search Engines.

Everything done to optimise your site or brand so that you rank for keywords you deem applicable to your site on a search engine.

2. Optimising For People.

Optimising your site so that the content has incredible value for visitors, the highest degree of usability for those visitors, and harnesses the power of your visitors to spread your site’s marketing and information to places you never imagined.

Fred’s Online Pet Store - Real World Search Engine Marketing Example

All this lingo can get pretty old so lets take a look at a hypothetical example of how it all works. Fred runs an online store that sells pet related items and he is new to search engine marketing and not sure how it can benefit him. We are going to walk Fred through the process of applying it.

Analytics and Keyword Research
Looking at the info Fred has on visitors to his store is the first step as well as setting up any that are missing. He needs to know how people are getting to his site, which of those people are converting to customers, popular products, the value of running promotions, coupon usage, and a number of other useful measurements. Just by looking at what searches visitors are using to get to his site currently helps Fred to know which keywords He should be trying to rank for. For example Fred ranks for “buy dog food online” and visitors from that search are converting at a very high rate. Therefore it would probably be beneficial for him to rank for “buy cat food online”, “buy fish food online”, and other related phrases. Using this information Fred can start building a list of searches he would like to rank for and analyse future data that comes in.

Site Review, Structure, and Usability
A site review is needed to make sure the current site is optimised forsearch engines and people. This is an important part of SEO and after you have a ruff idea of what keywords you want to rank for you need to make sure your pages answer those search engine queries. This is core search engine optimisation and doing things like page rank sculpting, on page optimisation, tweaking title tags, content, and a number of other things. The human factor is also key as ranking for a keyword is worthless if your visitors can’t use the site or find value in it. For Fred usability means making sure that when a visitor who searched for “high protein dog food” lands on his page that question is answered with what the user needs. Or when a visitor comes to the main page they can easily understand the hierarchy of the site and how to get to what they need without being frustrated.

Conversions Focus
So now Fred knows what keywords he wants to rank for, his site is optimised for search engines, and the site’s usability has been improved so that the user experience is improved. He is ready to take the first step in the never ending process of increasing conversions. This is just an extension of usability and you want your customer to clearly know where to click to buy, easily checkout, and have clear communication about the purchase. Fred is now ready to increase traffic using pay per click, organic rankings, and the power of people because he knows he will be testing and aiming to convert the highest possible percentage of visitors into customers.

Pay Per Click and Landing Pages
Fred starts using Google Adwords to buy advertising under certain keyword searches on Google. He builds pages specific to those keywords so that user’s who click land on a page that has just what they were searching for and a clear click to buy button. Fred is happy as his traffic and income have increased. He also knows which keywords are converting and has an even better idea of what he would like to rank for in organic search.

Search Engine Optimisation and Link Building
Fred is ready to start getting more traffic from organic search. Just from the improvements from the site review Fred has increased traffic moderately but he wants to rank for the keywords that describe his site. Fred needs to show search engines he is the site that should be ranked first for those keywords and that he is the best choice in answering user’s searches. First Fred starts a blog on his e-commerce site and writes two posts a week, one that reviews a product he has in stock, and one on a pet subject of his choice. The search engines see this and trust him more because they see people linking to his posts, user’s visiting, and they give more credibility to his site. Next Fred builds a widget that let’s people choose what type of pet they have, the pet’s name, and choose an animated picture of their pet. Then they can add this to their blog or site and Fred’s store gets a small mention at the bottom of the widget. This builds user traffic and search engines see the widget as well. Next Fred finds the top 1,000 pet forums and sites and over the next few months works with them to build a name for his site, the search engines see this and trust him more. Slowly Fred is ranking for all his keywords as well as getting more and more traffic from the content he has created. Fred does not buy any links as he knows Google would have him killed for that.

Power of People, Linkbait, Affiliate Marketing, Social Media, and Viral Marketing
The widget Fred built has gotten super popular and people are using it all over the web, it is a good thing he added a small line to the bottom of the widget that told people they could add one to their site. By using each widget created to advertise he used the power of people to build a viral idea. Each widget that got added to a blog spread the idea and helped bring in massive amounts of traffic, links, and trust. Fred also has a talent for writing blog entries that really grab people’s attention, or linkbait. One of Fred’s best posts was “The 10 Worst Ways To Find Out Your Dog Pooped” and was filled with funny personal stories of finding dog poop on his bed in his closet. Bloggers loved it and links spread everywhere bringing him trust in the eyes of search engines and human traffic to his blog and store. Fred also started an affiliate program where he pays people to promote his products and gives them a small percentage of his profit. This has worked out great and his affiliates advertise in places he would never think to try and have written a lot of content about him. He also is using social media to bring in traffic and build his brand by offering his pet widget to FaceBook and MySpace user’s.

Branding, Building Trust, and Reputation Management
Fred doesn’t know it but his brand is already known and helping his conversion rate. People have seen his widgets with a link to his store as well as read an article on his blog at some point. Now when they go to buy pet supplies they go straight to his site or find it through a search engine but remember his name and feel good about ordering. Fred also keeps a close watch on any mention of his brand and site. He wants his reputation to remain stellar and if he sees any bad remarks he responds to help the person and make sure he leaves a positive footprint wherever his site is mentioned.

Community Building
Fred’s store is doing great and he had to buy a warehouse to hold all his pet supplies as well as hire a team of people to manage everything. If Fred wanted he could work to build more of a community around his blog and store by building a forum or a wiki on pets his visitors could all contribute too. He realizes he could even start a new site focusing on just pets and use it to advertise his store.

Conclusion
I hope that helps the people who are new to this. I kept this pretty general and tried to avoid the lingo that I am so used too. Please leave me a comment if you found it useful and with any tips you have.