PAID SEARCH MARKETING 101: PART 2 OF 3

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

SEO is often seen as the black magic of online marketing; instead of toad’s wart and ox tail, marketers use keywords and inbound links to somehow move pages around in Google’s SERP (save the toad’s wart and ox tail for calculating social media ROI). However, as complicated as it may be at the expert level, the fundamental goal of SEO is to give search engines clear, consistent, and trustworthy signals on what your website or webpage is all about.

Within the vast array of ranking factors (there are hundreds), there are several that are quite effective and very much accessible to the every-day online marketer.

• URLs – Use real words in URLs. Avoid URLs like www.mysite.com/?postid=123
• Title Tags – Use clear, concise titles for pages on your website with targeted keywords incorporated into them.
• Use targeted keywords throughout the copy as well as in
  • H1 headers
  • Images’ “alt” text
• Build Inbound Links – Inbound links to a website or webpage indicate to search engines that other people think it’s important/relevant too.
  
  Reminder: Before you do anything that feels like a shortcut, ask yourself it is primarily providing relevant, valuable content to searchers (hint: paid link services rarely do).