Posted by Daniel Shlifer on Sat, Feb 27, 2010
The best search marketing must be complete search marketing.
To be clear, as a search marketing professional, my experience tells me that the more complete a search marketing strategy and plan is, the more effective it will be. Maybe that is nothing more than common sense to some but others don't seem to be clear about the various elements that are available when creating a comprehensive search marketing project.
Use the search marketing checklist below as a basic road map for your search marketing project. The more of these components you have included in your plan, the better. Remember though, don't just include them, pay them attention and develop them consistently.
Best Search Marketing Checklist:
- Compelling content: Make sure you offer the visitor what they were searching for in the first place. This helps your efforts from both the visitor and the search engine's perspective.
- Blog: This is critical for developing your timely content, attracting links and increasing the total number of pages on your web site.
- # of Indexed Pages: Pay attention to the number of your web site's pages that are indexed by Google. The more, the better.
- Readability Level: Make sure your writing and the content is developed for your target market and not too difficult to understand or too elementary.
- Meta Tags: Make sure all the HTML tags on each of your web pages have been optimized for the relevant keywords or keyphrases. These include title tags, description tags, header tags, image tags and keyword tags at a minimum.
- Domain name renewal term: Make sure your domain name is renewed for more than 2 years into the future. The search engine see this as a component of stability.
- Domain name redirect: Make sure you have a permanent redirect for the http://domainname.com portion of your sita as search engine may see this and the www.domainname.com as two separate web sites.
- Inbound links: The more links from other web site's that point to your web site the better. One way links are your goal as reciprocal links don't carry weight anymore. You also want links from related web site's with good traffic.
- Directory listings: Secure as many free and certain paid directory listings as you can. Ex. Yahoo Directory
- Linked In account: Especially if your products or services are business to business related, this is a good social media web site to connect and promote.
- Twitter account
- Facebook or Facebook Fan Page
- Utilize del.ico.us bookmarketing
- RSS feed: Make sure you make it easy for others to receive your developing content
- Landing pages: Be sure to have your web site configured to provide targeted information to targeted markets and keywords.
- Conversion forms: Make sure you have conversion forms in place to convert traffic to leads.
- Lead generation software
- Lead tracking software
- Lead nurturing software
- Comprehensive search marketing software: Manage all of these and other elements of your search marketing plan with a complete software application.
These elements have much more detail than what I have listed in this best search marketing checklist. My recommendation is to use the advice of a search marketing professional coupled with search marketing software. There are other components of a comprehensive search marketing strategy but this best search marketing checklist is a great place to start the analysis of your project.
