SEO Consultant Ireland

The Search Marketing is probably the most misused term in the marketing industry in general. At least 50% of the marketers use the term incorrectly! Why?

Half of marketing people would define Search Marketing as buying paid search listings. The other half would with the paid listings within the search marketing realm include the natural search results listing within the term of search marketing.

Half of them must be wrong – but which half?

The split is actually really down to the middle. While even the top online marketing institution: Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) includes search engine optimization (SEO), most of the Marketing Agencies who are providing the service to the customers would do a very basic onsite SEO, and pour the clients budgets in the paid search advertising. Google AdWords Pay per Click (PPC) program, would in most cases take at least of 80% of the search marketing budget.

So although in theory the Search Marketing should include the SEO, the reality is that if the client doesn’t specify exactly what they are looking for – most of their money goes to PPC. This is excellent for any short term, once off publicity campaign. It is great for a rock concert ticket sales or political activists in a month before the election (and silent for the next 4 years). But for a site where you need a constant stream of new web site traffic, and you plan to run the site for more than a month or two – Google AdWords or any other PPC is probably your worst enemy. It is quick and seductive because it delivers within hours. But it will also drain your budgets if not planned properly, and leave no funds left for the SEO.

The Search Engine Optimization on the other hand is extremely slow (in Interment marketing time). Some search agencies will tell you that you have to wait for months for the results! It is not measurable up front, and a lot of SEO experience is required to properly plan the SEO budgets.

So next time you think of ordering the search marketing services, think about what your goal is (long term or short gain), and ask your search marketing company where in the SEM will they spend your money in – Is it PPC or SEO?

Here is a short checklist for creating your online marketing budget. Print it and try to set a figure next to each of the activity listed below:

Copywriting

• Web site copy
• Blog
• Press Releases
• Whitepaper
• Newsletter

Link Building

• Related Industry Directory
• Geographical Directory (your Local, or your  target market’s Local)
• Link exchange with related sites
• Blog commenting
• Forum participation

Branding

• Social Networking activity
• Company blog comments maintenance

Paid Advertising

• PPC
• Banners
• Link Purchases
• Blog or blog post sponsoring

As a general rule the best results are achieved if the budget is evenly spread between the marketing activity groups above. The tasks should be performed more or less in the sequence as listed above.

Each online marketing plan is specific to the companies activity on the web. It will contain clear goals and targets to be achieved. Make sure your online marketing budget is adequate to achieve your online marketing goals.

Your Internet marketing strategy should start with creating of the Internet Marketing Plan. It should start with the definition of all the aspects of your web site content.

Here is a short guide for developing an effective content marketing strategy.

1. Research
In a nutshell, do your homework:

•Research competitors web sites content. Whether you’re launching a full web site or just a blog, see what the competitors are doing. What do you like from waht you see and what not? Can you replicate the good aspects and perhaps even build upon?

•Concept your style based on audience and type of content. Conversational for B2C, More professional with B2B communication. Your style should be reflect who you write to.

•Define the clear goals and message of your content. You will most likely confuse your audience if you do not have a strong definition, and if you do not follow it.

2. Design
Step 2 is all about planning

•Determine responsibilities. Before deploying a content marketing plan, ensure that you’ve outlined who will be responsible for the content. If you are not in a position to hire a dedicated resource, it’s essential to appoint someone to incorporate content maintenance into his or her current responsibilities (be realistic here). Content maintenance could also entail tasking each employee to contribute one piece of content per week or month.

•Organize content. Think structure here. Make it easy to search for a particular topic? If your readers have a difficult time navigating through your site to find useful content, they’re not likely to stick around for very long.

3. Build
Steps 1 and 2 complete, you’re ready to start putting the wheels in motion:

•Plan a style guide. Include as much information as possible regarding everything from tone and voice to target word count. Provide best practices for optimizing content. Include writing checklists.

•Create a copy deck. A copy deck is essentially a roadmap for your content pages, including text, graphics, advertising and links. It can be developed in stages, starting with writing a few paragraphs to describe the content.

4. Publish
With the first 3 steps in place, a content marketing strategy is finally ready for deployment:

•Maintain. It’s crucial to have a plan in place to continuously update content. Outdated content will quickly turn readers away. The stagnant site will not flourish in search engine results.

•Monitor. Leverage analytics tools to gauge what worked best and what failed. Look for patterns in the most popular types of content—i.e., checklists, charts, case studies. What search phrases do visitors search for when they come to your site? What do they read? What is the best article length for your site? What titles work best? Do images help?

5. Rinse & Repeat
The final step to creating an effective content marketing strategy is ongoing:

•React and Respond. No content marketing strategy was made perfect. Based on analytics reports, continuously tweak your content efforts to maximize results.

What steps would you add to create an effective content marketing strategy?

Read any good SEO books lately? No? Me neither.

Why is that?

SEO is evolving far too quick for the traditional book publishing process. If you have even been involved in book writing – you know well enough that it last for months if not a full year.

A year in ‘Internet Time’ is a long as a Geological Era really. Think about what the Internet looked like a year ago. Than one more year ago, than one more… and you can see Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, WordPress Blogs, Blogger, …. diapering.

If you start writing a SEO book today on you will write it from the today’s perspective (at best). The day the book gets published the data it describes will have more Historical value than the real one. You might as well call your SEO book: ‘Internet, as it once was…’.

To learn about the search engine optimization, do not try to find a magic SEO book that will teach you all. That SEO book does not exist. That SEO book cannot exist.

Read blogs. Like this one. Forget SEO books!

First there was Marketing.

Then they invented the Internet, Google, and the search engine optimization was born!

Marketing people felt under the threat. Is SEO going to replace the need for marketing in general? Where we are today in the evolution of the online marketing is that the SEO is the key ingredient of most of marketing campaigns online.

Why SEO Marketing?

Why would I bother with SEO, when I can just purchase the traffic via Google AdWords? Both SEO an d PPC have their advantages. PPC is instant, and that’s why people love it! SEO is long term investment, and is far less transparent.

SEO Marketing is unavoidable if your PPC campaign cost is getting higher and higher. Historically almost every search keyword is getting more and more expensive. There is a point where a cost per click (CPC) becomes so big that it eats up all your profit of an online sale.

When SEO Marketing?

When CPC costs overflow! Your cost of sale should be (far) below your margin, so that there is some profit at the end. Your margin is not likely to increase, but with the cost per click rising – any business gets to the stage where the cost of the visitors is simply greater than the margin – in it becomes unprofitable business model. PPC is a short sighted marketing planning. SEO Marketing is what builds sustainable long term online businesses.

If your online business is depending on the constant flow of fresh web site traffic, your best choice is the SEO marketing. If you have a once off event, like opening of a new cinema, and you need to fill it for the opening night – PPC is your best friend.

Blogging for Business article described where and how blogging falls into your company organisation structure. The Chief Blogger was the role. A year later blogs still have the tremendous importance in the online marketing but the social networks are here, and are here to stay. The online communication technologies are changing in the accelerated pace, so we know now that the next year is again most likely to bring jet another way we will communicate online. Hence the online marketing title for the ‘Public Online Representative’ of your company should be:

Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing

Senior – Why Senior? Think about it, it is that one position, that one role, that will represent your whole company.

Emerging – Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Social Networking,… we cannot be sure what will even the next few months bring in the online marketing arena. The person needs to be forward thinking and listening to what is happening online worldwide and in their own market.

Marketing – Remember that your blogger is not your IT geek. IF you sell IT geeky stuff – you can get your IT geek who maintains your web site. If you sell anything else, you need to find a person who will appeal to your target market.

Here are a few tips to get you started on your selection program in finding your future Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing:

Requirements:
LinkedIN profile – 100% completed, with +500 connections, +10 recommendations, +5 Best Answers…
Twitter – with +1000 followers
Facebook – again decent account like the above
Active Blogging experience for +12 months. Multiple blogs are the advantage. Blog comment posting and management experience.
Understanding of the acronyms: RSS, SEM, SEO, PPC, CPM, CPC, LOL, IMHO, WTF, API, B2C, B2B, CTR, IM, PV, RON, WWW, TTYL, LMAO, ROTFLMAO, WYSIWYG and, most importantly, RTFM
Copywriting skills

Nice to have skills:
Search Engine Optimisation – samples of high rankings in Google for search phrases with large search volumes (cars, phones, insurance,…)
Google AdWords and Google AdSense experience
Link-baiting skills – creativity!

For a one man band situations the following will come handy:
Basic HTML skills
Basic PhotoShop skills

Did I miss anything in defining my Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing job specification?

Any Business Plan has to include a Marketing Plan of some sort. For the Internet based businesses our Marketing Plan will most likely be one of the main sections. When it comes to writing the Online Marketing Budget, the whole list of problems start. Why is that?

Pay Per Click Budget

Online Marketing people will like budgeting for the PPC. Why? Simply because the cost of the PPC is predictable. And the whole PPC business is accountable (if you build in the Click Fraud in your formula somewhere). There is a cost per click, and volumes, and targets and markets… lots of figures you can work with – something an accountant will love.

SEO Budget

Where is where serious question marks are raised under the accountants head! What is the budget required for the search engine optimisation? What is the units, deliverables, and values of each? With SEO it’s all far less specified and defined than with the PPC. And SEO also consists of so many areas that it might be defined very differently by various vendors. The needs for the SEO are very different by every client.

I want to be #1 in Google!

In most cases marketing people with little online experience will have serious issues when defining the Budget for the SEO in their Marketing Plan. They will ask the SEO Experts, and base their SEO Budget on the quotes from the SEO Vendors. Most likely their definition of their SEO Marketing Goals will be – We want to be #1 in Google for …! In other words, they will tell the SEO Companies nothing really relevant that is needed to create a plan of actions and analyze the market and keywords in question to be able to establish the real amount of the work required – hence the cost of it. Ballpark figures and even figures completely imagined are therefore quite common in SEO. People ordering SEO Service do not understand what part of their Marketing Plan do they HAVE to disclose for the SEO Company to give back the realistic estimate.

What’s the cost of SEO?

Marketing people with no online marketing experience usually call the SEO Companies and simply ask – What’s the cost of SEO? The tendency is to disclose as little as possible of their real needs. With a bit of shopping around – hey choose the Best SEO Offer. Not asking themselves much why do the SEO offers differ so much and why does one vendor charge sometimes 100 times more than the other. Not 100% more, 100 times more!

The reason is that the one ordering the SEO service needs to understand the exact deliverables of the SEO web site optimisation. Understanding the tasks involved in the web site optimization work also greatly helps. Understanding the whole process and timelines – well that defines the Perfect Client for SEO!

Unfortunately that is almost never the case.

Those who understand SEO tend to find time to do it all themselves.

You can read a ton of eBooks, guides, or whatever else, but none of them will describe what is Twitter really, and how is it used better than the Scott’s cartoon:

Scott Hampson: “Twitter Bird In Real Life”.

How do you use Twitter for Business?

There are three basic stands you can chose when it comes to Online Marketing.

I don’t care about the Web!

You can simply chose to ignore it. Here are the reasons for it:
Your target market might not the using the Internet.
Your product or a service might not be applicable to be advertised online.
The scenarios above are less likely as days go by. So sooner or later you will have to face the fact. Internet is here!

I am monitoring it all!

Cybersleuth is by definition a person who searches the Internet for information about a company, both positive and negative, to keep abreast of public opinion by using the Web, Blogs and Social Networks.
This defines the ‘Passive’ activity on the Web. Cybersleuth absorbs information, cybersleuth is not a publisher.
Understanding your digital footprint is the core and the first step before you start managing it. You need to understand where you are, what the starting point is. You need to set your media marketing goals, and define a path how to get there from where you are.

Online Media Marketing Manager

Online Media Marketing Manager replaces the Cybersleuth with active publishing. Online Marketing is not just monitoring the media but actively publishing. Blogs, and Social Networks, Forums, Directories and all related web sites are the publishing tools. Your own web site is the main one tool an Online Marketing Manager has. Search engine optimization has the major role since it will help drive the publish to your site – traffic landing on the marketing messages you control and serve to your visitors.

Managing Search engine Results Pages (SERP) positioning of your site via the search engine optimization (SEO) most important task.

Online marketers around the globe (particularly in the UK) are increasingly turning to search marketing tactics.
Fifty-five percent of respondents said they planned to raise spending on SEO, and 45% said the same of paid search.

In addition, 31% of SEO and 32% of paid search users said they intended to maintain their budgets.