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Why
invest in search engine marketing?
What is internet marketing?
What is search engine marketing or
search engine optimization?
Can my website design affect my search
engine rankings?
Will my website visitors always enter through
my homepage?
How do search engines work?
How do search engines rank websites?
What makes a website search-engine-friendly?
Can search engines index and rank my inside
pages?
Looking at my website traffic statistics,
what are hits and visitors?
After optimization, how long does it take to
receive traffic from the search engines?
What results can I expect to see?
Have the search engines changed within the last year?
Glossary of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Terms
Why invest in search
engine marketing?
Over 319 million searches are performed each day by potential leads looking
for specific businesses, information, services and products they want.
This is a large pie you don't want to miss taking a bite of. Consider
your own buying habits. When was the last time you used the yellow pages
or newspaper to locate a product or service you needed? How frequently
do you use search engines to locate a new product or service?
What is internet marketing?
Internet marketing is simply driving traffic to a website. An internet
marketing campaign will define the overall online marketing objectives
and use strategies and techniques applied on the Internet to support this
goal. The objective may include driving targeted traffic to a website
to create a desired call to action. Internet marketing may also include
keyword and meta tag strategies, newsgroup and mailing list postings,
banner advertising, reciprocal linking, online promotions, content positioning
and email marketing strategies, among others.
What is search engine optimization
and search engine marketing?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of choosing targeted
keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well
when those keyword phrases are part of the natural listings of a web search.
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a combination of search engine
optimization (SEO), paid placement programs and pay-per-click advertising.
Search engine marketing is used to gain prominent placement on a search
results page for a company's products and services either through optimization
services or paid advertising. Utilizing the latest technologies, BLineMarketing
educates, updates, submits, monitors and adjusts your online marketing
to assure the best possible sales, conversion and traffic numbers.
Can my website design affect my search
engine rankings?
Yes, the design of your website can be a large factor in how your website
is received or indexed by the search engines. For instance, if you have
a website that uses frames, you are not likely to be well indexed in the
search engines. Since this is the case, it is important to speak to a
professional search engine marketing company before developing or rebuilding
a website. Taking this into consideration at the onset, can save you lots
of money and resources.
Will my website visitors always enter through
my homepage?
No. Visitors to your website can enter through any indexable/searchable
webpage. This means that any page can be a doorway that leads to your
website. Unlike a book, visitors often head straight to the "chapter"
that is most relevant to their questions. Since this is the case, search
engines will generally index and rank inside pages. If you consider each
page a billboard, a website with many pages can provide numerous more
opportunities for exposure.
Can search engines index and rank my inside
pages?
Yes, search engines usually index and rank inside web pages. However,
poorly linked pages and dynamic pages such as shopping cart pages can
prevent search engines from indexing a website. If a webpage is found
not to be search-engine-friendly, there are possible workaround strategies.
Determining the "friendliness" of a site is evaluated in the
needs assessment test or initial analysis.
How do the search engines work?
The search engines have algorithms or mathematical equations that
they use to "score" or determine how relevant your website
is to a search term or keyword phrase. The rankings for a website
are made up by several elements/variables associated with this algorithm,
including internal linking, page content, HTML tags, page rank,
link popularity (or "votes" to your site) among others.
What makes a website search-engine-friendly?
Search engine-friendly websites can easily be "digested" and
do not contain barriers to prevent search engines from indexing the page
and content on a website. For instance, frames and Flash-heavy websites
are not search-engine-friendly techniques and make it difficult to obtain
high search engine rankings. A general rule of thumb is KISS (Keep
It Simple Stupid) and offer lots of relevant content for the search engine
to "read".
Looking at my website traffic statistics,
what are hits and visitors?
A hit is the sending of a single file whether it is an HTML
file, an image, an audio file, or other file type. Since a single
webpage request can bring with it a number of individual files,
the number of hits from a site is a not a good indication of website
traffic. However, it does have meaning for the website hosting provider.
The website visitor statistic tells you how many actual viewers
there were during a given period of time. A website visitor is someone
with an actual IP address who is entering a website for the first time
that day (or some other specified period). A unique visitor is
a visitor that returns within the same day or month and is only counted
once. A unique visitors count tells you how many different people there
are in your audience during the time period, but not how much they used
the site during the period. Either of these numbers is a more accurate
depiction of your website traffic and should be used for measurement in
place of hits.
How long does it take the search engines
to index a webpage?
Each search engine has a different timeline for website inclusions and
rankings. It can take as little as a few days up to 8 weeks. However,
during the waiting period, search engine rankings will gradually climb
each week. Generally, a rank report is run after 6 weeks to measure the
progress since initial submissions. Once a new website is indexed and
it meets all of the necessary criteria to be search-engine-friendly and
well-optimized, inside web pages are usually indexed as well. Once a website
is ranking for keyword terms, on-going submissions ensure that the website
remains ranked well.
What results can I expect to see?
Results vary based on various factors including the competitiveness
of the industry, number of website pages, website construction,
search engine compatibility, in-bound link structure, keywords targeted,
budget commitment and the like. Generally the initial search engine
marketing efforts produced by B Line Marketing result in a 100%
to 400% increase in website traffic within the first quarter.
Have the search engines changed within the last
year?
Yes. Search engine optimization becomes more challenging as the web grows,
technology gets more complex and search engines get smarter. What worked
3 years ago may have been effective then, but will not produce the same
results now, and in some cases may even get you blacklisted from the search
engines for spamming. Using poor optimization techniques or automated
submission services is gambling where you risk losing your website traffic,
qualified leads and domain name.
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SEO Tips and Facts about Search Engines:
"Online search’s exceptional targeting
capability is why eMarketer expects advertising paid search revenues to
surpass $2.5 billion in 2004 and reach nearly $3 billion by the end of
next year. At that point, nearly 35% of the total online ad spend will
go to search." (eMarketer 2004)
* 41% of those who went to a website to research a product purchase got
there via search engines, the top referral choice. (DoubleClick, Dec 2002)
* If you're not marketing to the search engines, you're missing thousands
of qualified leads who are trying to find you. (Internet.com 2003)
* As of January 2003, there were 319 million searches per day at the major
search engines. (Nielson//NetRatings 2003)
* Paid search listings will total $1.6 billion by the end of 2003, making
up 25% of total online advertising spending. Two years ago, it made up
only 10% of spending. (Jupiter Research, July 2003)
* According to Jupiter Media research, the most common ways of discovering
new websites found 45% through search engines, 20% random surfing, 21%
word of mouth, 14% other media. (2001)
Click for more interesting internet and
search engine usage statistics.
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