Search engine optimization is probably one of the widely used tools for online advertising and marketing. We have seen in the past that the search marketing efforts of several companies in spite of their high spending on their online advertising missed almost 80% of their target audience. As of today, most search marketers will to the fact that around 70%-80% of all the clicks have come from organic/natural search results and only 20%-30% have actually come from PPC (Pay Per Click) or the sponsored listings.  Yet in spite of these facts staring at our face, the only thing that most B2B marketers like to talk about is PPC campaigns.

However, you can even try and leverage both PPC as well as SEO to create maximum online visibility and to get you targeted traffic. Before you can start work on leveraging these two powerful internet marketing tools, you need to think and strategize how you can actually improve the overall performance. One of the sure shot ways of doing that is through integration. Bringing together PPC and SEO might sounds quite easy but successful integration is not as easy as it seems and can be quite a daunting task because there are pitfalls. So here are some of the things that you need to avoid:

Cross communication: This is an integral part of any online advertising or marketing strategy. Communication is a critical driving factor but cross-communication is not. In fact, cross-communication can cause your internet marketing strategy to fall apart. Cross-communication has been on the top of the list of SEO and PPC pitfalls and can be identified only during the integration process. The fact is that lack of communication has actually caused several organizations, companies and businesses to fall apart and hit rock bottom in the last couple of years. This happens because there are several companies who adopt a modus operandi on the lines of divide-and-conquer instead of leverage both SEO and PPC.

Play to the strength: This is very important and is considered as one of the top mistakes made most often by internet marketers. There are several companies who have failed to leverage the actual strengths of PPC and SEO. The truth is that both PPC and SEO have their advantage and disadvantages. But the key lies in using the advantages and strengths of both to your benefit and not falling for the weaknesses.

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There is so much talk out there about what the ‘perfect’ web page looks like.  In this article we give you tips on what we consider perfectly optimized as well as tips on helping turn the page into a great conversion tool.

Step #1: Know your target audience
As with any marketing campaign the first step in optimizing ANY web page is to know your target audience.  Is your site B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer).  This is important because this not only affects the tone of your site, but also the keywords you chose. It is imperative that you nail who your target is before you do anything else because if you don’t it doesn’t matter how big your site is, or how many pages you have.  If you don’t write to the right crowd you aren’t going to get too much business.

For example, your target may be a 30-45 year old female, in middle management, who drives a mini-van and takes her 3 kids to school before she goes to work.  She makes $45,000 per year and has a bachelor’s degree in finance.  This is the type of detail you need.  Once you know who you target is the next step is choosing keywords.

Step #2: Choosing the right keywords
This may be the most difficult part of your journey, especially if you don’t fit the target profile.  That is, picking the keywords they will use to find your site. You can start by using free tools like Yahoo!s keyword suggestion tool.  It gives you a good place to start picking keywords. Start with a phrase you know your site is about (i.e. if you sell widgets, then simply put “widgets” in the search box).  The tool will then not only spit out other related words, but also the search volumes associated with each for the previous month.

NOTE:  Sometimes, depending on when you use the tool, the search volumes are from a couple months ago. So if your product is seasonal based, the numbers may actually be lower or higher than represented.

Don’t be afraid to get a few hundred words to start.  Remember, right now you are just gathering ideas – phrases that could drive traffic to your site.  They aren’t all necessarily being used by your target customer. You can also go to Google’s Adwords site and perform the above steps.  Start with a phrase or two which describe your site or product and use Google’s suggestion tool to help expand your list.

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Internet Marketing has come a long way in the last five years and is now an integral part of corporate or business online branding strategies. Over the years, strategies have changed, new benchmarks have been created and internet marketing trends have been followed. Here are the top 5 internet marketing strategy trends:

1. Search Engine Optimization

Here’s the fact: Natural Search Engine Optimization is growing rapidly. There are several companies that have started to invest in upgrading their existing websites and optimizing them using keyword driven content and persuasive architecture. All this is in order to capture 76% of those internet visitors who are able to click on natural search results instead of the paid results.

2. Websites: Usability Testing

According to a research and survey conducted by Jupiter Research, it was found out that corporate America spending will hit and go beyond the $5.6 billion mark as far as search engine marketing (SEM) is concerned in 2010. This just goes on to show that the corporate players have recognized the importance of the top search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo! Etc. Now the corporate sector believes that the internet and especially the search engines can deliver consumers right at their doorstep through the company websites. As a result, the corporate sector is spending more time and money now on usability reviews as well as testing.

3. Press Releases

Press releases were treated as an effective medium for highlighting new launch, new business, services, products etc some 10 years back and it is still considered as important. In fact, according to a survey certain news search engines seem to have a higher readership than BBC or CNN. These news search engines are rated as the best choice for news especially in the larger age group of 18 - 54. A day has come that the loyal newspaper readers have started to make a move towards online news. Hence, the experts feel that optimized press releases can help people find the news in real time.

4. Blogging

There are mainly two types of blogging: one is the personal blogging and one is the business blogging. The business blogging are for those who want to drive traffic to their website in order to generate higher sales and get higher revenue. Business blogging is more like a content driven advertisement as well as a top PR tool. The more optimized the blogs are, the higher the readership!

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If you are suffering with the problem of high bounce rate, then you surely be having a tough time with your business. There is absolutely no doubt in the fact that making people to come to your site is not as difficult as making them stay at your site to do shopping. However, you must always try to achieve the second task as this will help you to stay in business. But, if bounce rate is your problem, then you must be having some glitches in your website design.

Website design is one of the most important things for online businesses. Gone are the days when websites were there only to provide some contact information along with a little product detail. Today, websites are used to achieve bigger things. Websites are designed after considering the search engine ranking algorithm to get more traffic. However, if you are having a high traffic because of your website design and other marketing strategies, then it surely doesn’t mean that you will be having high sales as well. In recent researches, it has been told that people decide to stay or leave your site in mere 8 seconds. Isn’t it such a small time to create an impact on them? Well, it surely is, but, there are some tricks that can be used to stimulate the interest of people.

First of all, you must make people comfortable as they visit your site. This can only be done by ensuring them that they are at the right site. Here, effective web headlines will help you to a considerable extent. Now, you must be thinking about the way to create an effective headline. Well, this can easily be done by keeping few things in mind.

•    Always make the best use of your main keyword. This will be the keyword that you use to divert people to your website. Using this keyword in a prominent way will inform your visitors that they are on a right site.
•    You must inform your visitors about the benefits that are associated with your products. However, you must stay away from making such claims which may be too hard to believe. Instead of using promotional language, try to use informative wordings. Let them believe that you are not claiming to achieve an impossible thing, but, you can help them to get closer to achieve that.

If you will keep only these two things in mind, you will surely be have to bring down your bounce rate as visitors will be having greater confidence because of abovementioned factors.

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Almost all of us at one time or another has been on a computer and used the Internet.  No doubt a lot of that time was spent using a search engine to look for something we needed.  How easy was it to use?  Was it easy to locate whatever you looked for?  In many cases the answer to the first question is ‘pretty hard’ and the answer to the second question is ‘no, not at all’ or ‘I didn’t find what I was looking for’.  Most likely the reason for this is improper keywords.  If a consumer uses the wrong keywords it directs them to sites definitely not what they wanted.
When the Internet Marketer does it, it sends the consumer looking in the wrong spot.  Confusing huh? You never seem to be able to track down who used the wrong keyword.  Remember these tips and there will be less consumer confusion and quite probably more business for you:

Correct Spelling:  Be sure all your keywords are spelled correctly. This is essential so that consumers can find your items quickly and purchase what they want.  A mis-spelled word can lead to trouble in more ways than one.

Correct Department:  Be sure that all your items are listed under the correct department they are supposed to go in.  For example, you wouldn’t list a lawn mower in the pharmacy section would you?  If you would I predict your business chance of success at zero.

Stay On Topic:  When writing your ads, be sure to describe your item fully so that when a potential customer clicks on your link they get the information they want and need by reading your ad.  A good rule here to follow is to be brief and to the point.

Test It Out:  Get somebody to test out a search engine looking for your product using both broad terms and specific terms.  If they find it with little to no difficulty then no change should be necessary.  If the difficulty is moderate, a few changes can be made to tweak your site. If they have extreme difficulty then an entire site rework may be in order.

If you follow these to the letter - literally, then you should have no problems with your site not being visited due to keyword problems. If you keep everything where it’s easily within reach of the search engine, then you will see a lot of business coming your way.

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