Currently viewing the tag: "search engine marketing"
As discussed in my last post, finding the right keywords for your search marketing campaigns is essential for getting the right traffic to your web site at the right price. But many small and midsized businesses should also consider adding geographic keyword modifiers to their search campaigns to really target their search marketing campaigns. In this post, we’ll define geographic modifiers and discuss why they are important to localized search marketers.
What is a geographic modifier?
A geographic keyword modifier is the use of a geographic term in the beginning, end, or in the middle of a keyword term. For example, if my core keyword was “health insurance,” you could geographically modify the keyword by adding the term “Denver” to it, making it “Denver health insurance” or “health insurance Denver.” Pretty straight forward, eh?
Why would I use a geographic modifier?
Even if a business wants to appeal to searchers on a national basis, it’s not a bad idea to start out by targeting a local market, because they will be able to see better results more quickly. Why? Because competition can be fierce on the national level, and the timeline for success can be considerably longer.
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Second in an ongoing series on small business online marketing tips, this post introduces the concept of ‘conversion funnels,’ a guiding metaphor used in online marketing. Read last week’s small business online marketing tip.
Summary: Small businesses that focus on creating effective conversion funnels will generate more leads and more revenue from their online marketing campaigns.
Conversion funnel. It sounds like another highfalutin marketing term, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, when you learn the definition, you’ll notice that the term has a way of creeping into your vocabulary…
conversion funnel: n. a sequence of steps leading (funneling) a prospect toward a desired action, whether it’s a purchase, application, quote request, etc.
In this post, we’re going to focus on one kind of conversion funnel—the kind that stems from ads placed in search engines like Google and Bing.
Once upon a time there was a keyword… » Read More
When a business advertises on a search engine, it bids on keywords—phrases that their prospects typically use when searching for their products and services.
Do you ever get PPC mixed up with the BBC? Or thought that hosting a web site meant that you had to prepare appetizers?
A search engine results page, or SERP, in Google.
My first forays into online marketing left me asking a lot of questions. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. Luckily, for people like us, there is a wealth of resources and expert knowledge available on the Internet to help even the greenest of online marketers get started.
My first step was to get a working definition of SEO. I quickly learned that SEO stands for search engine optimization, the process of optimizing your web site so it is easier for the search engines to find it, thus driving more visitors to your site. More visitor traffic means more chances to communicate, and more communication can provide opportunities to produce more sales.
As you may already know, a major announcement was recently made in the Internet marketing world—that of an alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft in an attempt to create more competition for Google.
Kutenda Has Your Back
Part of the value that Kutenda brings to our partners is to act as a source of ongoing education about Internet marketing trends that you and your clients should be aware of. In that spirit, I’d like to let you know how we believe the Yahoo and Microsoft partnership will impact you, our Kutenda partners, and your customers.
Recommended reading: Greg Sterling provides an excellent overview of the “local search ecosystem” and how it has failed small businesses.
Writing for Local Search News, Sterling describes this ecosystem as “an awkward set of alliances between traditional (mostly yellow pages) publishers, local search marketing (SEM) vendors and search engines, among a few others.”
This unholy alliance appears to be breaking down, and its demise may be a good thing for small and mid-sized businesses.
The current model, Sterling explains, was developed to reduce complexity and make SEM easier to sell to small businesses.
But here’s the rub: simplifying SEM often makes it less effective – leading to bad experiences and a high degree of “churn” in the market, with SMBs bailing after dismal results. Sterling reports that local SEM churn rates are between 50% and 100% each year.
