Inbound Marketing Blog

How To Get Found Online: Search Engines Presence

As I normally state in these Inbound Marketing blog posts, the information below was created for businesses & professionals looking for inbound marketing strategies. Inbound marketing professionals should already be familiar with this information but I do encourage marketing professionals to share this blog post with their readers.

There are generally two forms of search engine results:

1.    Sponsored or paid results
2.    Organic or natural results.

Sponsored Results:  Paid search engine results (sponsored results) are those listings that require a fee for the search engines to list their link for specific, selected keywords or keyphrases. The most widely used form of paid listing is Pay Per Click (PPC). This is where you pay each time someone clicks on the link in your advertisement on the search engine results page (SERP). The price increases with the level of competition of the selected keyword.

Organic Results: Natural or organic search results are gathered by search engines’ web crawlers and ranked according to relevance to search terms. This relevance is calculated by criteria such as:
•    Extent of keyword match
•    Keyword prominence
•    Keyword frequency
•    Keyword relevance
•    Number of links into that website or web page

Ranking in the organic search results is better because not only is it FREE, but research shows that people click on the organic results 75% to 84% of the time and paid results only garnish 16% to 25% of the attention. Part of the reason for this is that consumers are intelligent enough to understand that money alone can get a web site to the top of a page through these sponsored ad purchases but organic results are dictated by the direct relevance as determined by Google or the other major search engines. This gives organic search results and those web sites that achieve these results much more credibility.

How Do The Major Search Engines Decide Page 1 Rankings?
Google and the other major search engines rank websites in search engine results pages according to relevance to the search terms. This relevance is calculated by looking at both on-page factors such as the content on your site and off-page factors in the form of inbound links to your website. Off-page factors (number of links to a given web page or web site) are the biggest influences in your website’s ranking in search engine results. With these factors as the primary influence, any web site with inbound marketing as a priority, needs to learn how to do some or all of the following:

1: Research & Develop Master Keyword Inventory    
•    Search Volume – Given two different keyword phrases, optimize for the one with the larger number of searches.
•    Relevance – Choose keywords that your target market is using to describe and search for your products and services.
•    Difficulty or Competition – Consider your chances for ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword phrase. Look at the sites ranked in those first 10 slots, their authority and relevance to search terms, and gage if you will be able to overtake them to secure a spot on that first page.

2: On-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
•    Place keywords in the page title, URL, headings, and page text.
•    Optimize your page description for maximum click-through-rate when your site ranks in Google searches.
•    Place keywords in other “invisible” places on your web site, including meta-keyword tags and alt-text on images.

3: Off-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
•    Build more inbound links from other sites into yours. Each link serves as a recommendation or a reference.
•    Build more links within context, i.e. those with valuable keywords in the link anchor text (the text that is hyperlinked to your site). Link anchor text provides context for the search engines to understand what your site is about.
•    Build more links from trusted websites. Just as references from well-respected friends and experts offer more value, so do links from trusted and well- respected websites.
•    Link-building tips:    
      o    Submit your website to directories like the Yahoo! Directory and Business.com
      o    Communicate with others in your industry through blogs and other social media    
      o    Create compelling tools (such as an interesting calculator) and content (via a blog, for example)

4: Measure, Evaluate, Analyze  & Modify
•    Track number of inbound links, keyword rank over time and compared to competition.
•    Measure real business results: number of visitors, leads, and customers from SEO.

Below is an example of search engine ranking results produced for my company. This is some of the data I use to help understand my inbound marketing productivity.

Inbound Marketing Successes & Experiences Shared

Today's blog features a graphic design firm in Norwood MA and is an interesting Inbound marketing participant. My assessment is that this firm absolutely understands the movement from outbound marketing to inbound marketing and understands this from first hand experience. Like many business Peartree is and has been studying and experimenting with various internet marketing options. They have used SEO, sponsored advertising, blogging, social media and traditional marketing methods. Peartree graphic design's inbound marketing strategy, like many of us in the business world, has evolved over the past couple of years. They used to do "this and that" but learned that maybe they really need to "try this and that" instead. For the record, this is exactly why I created this inbound marketing blog series. It seems to me that with companies like Peartree willing to share these experiences, all readers can avoid mistakes that have been made by others. We don't all need to recreate the wheel.

I believe this graphic design firm is close to isolating a system that meets it's needs and budget. The important thing to learn from this case is their desire and efforts to learn and listen. Even more importantly, this company has shown to be willing to take risks and apply inbound marketing elements in an effort to grow.

Featured Business: PearTree USA Graphic Design

Business Name: Peartree USA
Business Web Site: www.peartreeusa.com
Business Location: Norwood, MA
Marketing Decision Maker: Kevin Poirier
Business Description: Graphic Design, Logo Design, Brochure Design Services

What are your current marketing activities?: Yellow pages, email marketing, Google Adwords & now business.com. We used direct mail in the past with some return success.

What is your primary marketing method?: Email marketing

What changes are needed (if any) in your marketing methods?: A more aggressive strategy with alternative methods and execution, analysis is front burner for us to understand what we need to focus on first.

Do you know what Inbound Marketing is?: Yes - Driving people to contact me and  our web site.

What percentage of your marketing budget is applied to Outbound marketing? 30%

How are you measuring ROI?: We use tracking codes for all of our promotional activity so either direct mail, email marketing or web site coupons, we track any activity through these codes.

Have you ever executed a keyword development strategy?: Yes, we hired an SEO company about a year ago and that was part of the first steps.

How are you measuring your web site's traffic?: Google analytics

How are you measuring your web site's conversions?: We use a contact form for site conversions while we ask all inbound callers how they got our name.

What search engine strategy has been employed?: We started with a Google Adwords campaign and other than securing one good client, we haven't seen any impressive results. Last year we hired an SEO company to optimize our site with limited results. We are now trying business.com with the idea that we will receive more qualified traffic.

Are you using a blog? If so, how often are you posting a new article?: Yes, 2 a month but I know I need to do more posts. I have a hard time creating subject matter and don't really understand why a business will take any time to read random information about graphic design. I do understand that in theory, its an important tool and I will continue to develop my blog.

Who creates each blog article?: I do

Does your business have a Linked In account?: Yes - Kevin Poirier

Does your business have a Twitter account?: Yes - PeartreeUSA

Does your business have a Facebook account?: Yes

How would you define your lead generation system?: No specific software being used but we are researching options.

How would you define your lead tracking system?: Tracking (promo code) through inbound phone call records and contact form.

How would you define your lead nurturing systems?: I don't believe a newsletter would make sense for some of the same reasons I have trouble grasping the blog value. I do think I need to discover new methods of interaction.

Have you considered developing an Inbound Marketing Plan, if so, what are your challenges?: Yes - Driving qualified businesses to my site

On a scale of 1-10, how important is developing a focused inbound marketing?: 8

How soon do you plan on developing a better inbound marketing plan?: This has started as explained earlier.

What would be your first step in creating a better inbound marketing plan?: We are in the middle of investigating more complete Internet marketing solutions. Our biggest concern with some solutions is the costs to start the process. Some of the solutions we looked at involved migrating our site at a significant cost so we were then locked in to using a specific CMS. I don't like that idea.

Stay tuned for "Part 5" by subscribing to this inbound marketing blog.