Achieving top positions in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN is not an overnight success. There are many factors involved in search engine marketing that can lead to grabbing those top spots. You cannot just upload a webpage to the web and expect instant traffic and ranking without a lot of work first. Of course you can always PAY for advertising to get more instant exposure in the search engines, but what I will outline in this article is what you need to do to gain increasingly more traffic and higher ranking positions in the search engines. Successful search engine marketing means an ongoing cycle of submission, tracking, measuring results, modifying submissions, resubmitting the submissions and then re-evaluation.
There is a basic formula at the core of any online venture and search engine marketing is no different:
If you want to make money it takes 2 things: traffic and content.
You can have all the traffic in the world, but if you do not have what they want, they are not going to buy in.
In the same sense, if you have tons of content on your site but no one ever comes to see it, you are not going to make money. Content without marketing that content does not mean as much as it did a few years ago.
Traffic and website content go hand in hand and are the necessary evils in making money online.
There are numerous ways to gain traffic to your site, some free and some for a price. Since we are focusing on the free stuff, here are some examples:
- submit articles related to your niche to online content sites (such as EzineArticles.com)
- create a blog with the theme around your niche and ping it
- submit your web site to the search engines
- submit online press releases
- participate in forums related to your niche
- create a newsletter that visitors can opt in to
- trade links with other sites that have similar themes
- create a short eBook that could be given away at sites related to your niche
- create a short video on your niche and submit it to video sharing websites
Guess what – it is going to take a lot of work. This is not something you can just choose to do once a week or whenever you feel like it. Think of your search engine marketing campaign as a plant. If you do not water the plant on a regular basis – it dies. That plant has to be nurtured all the time – for as long as you want that plant to exist. The same is true for your marketing campaign. If you have heard the hype that it is easy to “make it” with internet marketing, you have been led astray. I would hazard to guess you will probably spend more time working on your search engine marketing campaign that your full time job! Stick with it, and you will have success – not over night, not next week or maybe even next month.
A short word on the content side of the formula.
No more are the days that you can just pick up and reuse other people’s articles on your site as a fix for populating website content. The search engines are more and more savvy to this and you could potentially harm your chances of getting higher rankings. You have to be original and create your own content these days.
Original content is key these days to any search engine marketing campaign – so get out a pencil and paper and start writing as much as you can. It doesn’t all have to be 1000 words plus or up for Oprah Book of the Month. People are always searching for helpful articles. Always write from the perspective of the searcher. You are the master of your niche, so get at it and give them what they want – informative, unique and original content.
Once you have established a routine for submission and development, it is time to stand back and evaluate what works and what does not work. You know that saying, “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”? Hey if you get something that is working – for Heaven’s sake, leave it alone!
Campaign strategies that are not working need to be looked at from another angle and re-developed and working for you. Consider your audience as well – is it too narrow? What can you do to broaden the viewing audience without losing site of the niche?
Are you ready for really hard and labor intensive work? To be honest, if you are not, then search engine marketing might not be for you. Before you waste money on all the get-rich fixes out there, give it a go on your own. Everyone makes the same mistakes in the beginnings – trying to find that golden egg to search engine marketing only to discover shortly after wasting their money, the golden egg was just a rotten egg.
Good luck in your endeavors. Keep a stiff upper lip and be determined that you will make it.