It seems that search marketing best practice requires a blended approach of techniques. Having a good SEM plan often requires that you balance out certain risk and requirements for any given web project or campaign. Gone are the days of snap your finger results. If you want to take advantage of what search marketing has to offer, you must be prepared to invest into your campaigns.
Search Marketing Fundamentals
Everything in search starts with research. You want to find the keyword demand that relates to the products or services you want to sell on the web. Prior to research you must define what your site is going to be. Are you an informational site or perhaps a transactional website? You must identify your competitors and their campaigns so that you can reverse engineer them. Once you have your keywords, competitor research and campaign concepts, then you must ensure that your website is structured in such a way that it can be indexed by Google.
Natural Link Building and Social Media Buzz
So now that you have researched everything about your market and you have built your site based on keyword themes, it is time to invest in content. There are two types of content that you will want to invest in, the first is content on your site and the second is content for other sites i.e. guest blogging, article marketing or press releases. The natural way to build links is through good relevant content and social media buzz. If people on Facebook or Google+ share or like your content this sends a favorable signal to the search engines as it is a vote of popularity.
Panda Has Changed The Search Marketing Game
So what is the Panda update? It’s a series of updates that Google has incorporated into their search algorithm that filters out low quality or thin content sites. This update has put a greater emphasis on high quality authoritative content and public relations type of outreach for your link building campaigns. You either have quality links that people are naturally linking to or you must connect with high authority sites that are willing to allow you to post content on their site as a guest blogger. Most of the web 2.0 link wheel stuff that you have seen in the past will get your site torched by Google.
The Search Marketing Truth Is Typically In The Middle
Using a blended approach to your marketing so you are not too aggressive or over the top with search marketing tactics is well advised in a post Panda world. Put your investment into high quality content, infographics and web relationships that can earn your website search engine credibility.
Here is a great example of infographics and search marketing logic by Aaron Wall.
The Convergene of Search and Social
So SEO is absolutely critical to your web marketing because you must generate web traffic that converts. In the process of marketing your website you can no longer ignore the influence of social media. Social has become a positive signal which can influence your rankings based on popularity. This social media link building is a similar concept to traditional link building in the fact that we are now tracking Google+ shares and FB shares as metrics.
So your search marketing strategy should be all about making the right investments into research, site structure, content and community building around your brand. You as a business operator must run your search marketing with an eye towards total quality!
What is Social Search?
Search marketing is even more powerful now as it factors in social search. Have you done a Google search lately where you now see photos of people in your Google+ circles who have liked or shared content that is relative to your search query? This is powerful stuff and this new dynamic should prove interesting as it evolves. so search marketing with social results is exciting for people that can syndicate high grade content!
Search marketing best practice in the future will involve wise investments into a team of people that can deliver quality over quantity! Marketing for positive results will be very much about authority and solid web connections!