It’s easy to set up website analytics, track traffic that comes to your site, and find out what keywords are driving visitors to your website. It’s nice to know who is finding your site, but who is not finding your site…and what terms are they searching?
Using myself as an example
From my point of view, here are some terms that I imagine potential viewers may be typing into Google or Yahoo when looking for my services. graphic design grapic design firm chicago chicago design firm marketing
Maybe they are looking for a specific item: brochure design, website design, website, brochure, logo, letterhead, HTML email
What is a potential client wants a firm that has experience with their industry? Construction, Real Estate, Financial, Legal, law, lawyer, food, retail, IT, theater, commercial real estate, medical, dental
Great, cool, I’ve figured it all out. Now I just populate my site with keywords, build links to my site with the keywords (see above), title my pages with the keywords, run AdWords campaigns with the keywords, and track the visitors to see what’s working.
But it’s not so easy…
How do I know if my potential clients are searching some other terms and not finding my site? Well, I don’t. The best advice to to track the traffic and the terms and use common sense. See what’s working and what’s not.
So what do I do?
The lesson here is that search engine optimization is an ongoing activity. Keep studying, changing, and updating your site and know how the search engines work. Trust me, they change it up every day.
Love the internet. You can get good information from smart people for free.
By: Brochure Prints on March 12, 2009
at 5:07 am
You make some good points. In my experience, one of the trickiest aspects of search engine marketing is getting the right terms. A tactic I’ve seen used successfully is to consult people who do not work in your industry what terms they would use if they were looking for your business. This approach is so valuable that I’ve been paid to do it, and I’ve paid for it myself. I have to stress that the most useful keywords have come from people who really would be consumers of your product or service.
By: Dianne Bengtson on June 26, 2009
at 6:37 pm