SEOnotes

After the Philippine SEMCON 2007, it has become more pronounced that Web 2.0 is all about relevancy. As Aaron Wall puts it in his keynote address, relevancy has been the name of the game in today’s search engine marketing game. This is proven true by the various blogs, Technorati pages, and forum posts that crawl up the search listings for the hottest key phrases. This is the reason why CMS (or blog-software-like templates), social media marketing, and all forms of buzz marketing have been playing essential roles in marketing online. The challenge is to build relevancy.

But how does one become relevant?

1. Specify the target audience and conquer the space where they actually read. SEO practitioners are well-bombarded by all sorts of social networks and bookmarking sites that they forget the essence of it all - to connect with your audience. So be picky in joining groups and registering in sites. Have a feel of the people participating in a particular social media site before creating yet another account.

2. Build interest for your product or service. Don’t just sell on what you’ve got. Don’t forget that people visit a particular site not because of a product, but primarily because of an interest. Capitalize on that by having blogs or bloggers write about what’s interesting in your product/service or topic to offer.

3. Meet the right people offline. Yes, socialize offline. Shake hands with the right people. It will always be necessary to be in personal contact with people who are interested in your subject. That way, you truly build relevancy.

Aaron Wall is right in saying that search engines follow what people follow. It is not easy to rank for trophy keywords, but it is easier to build relevancy by catering more to the “human” side of search engine optimization.

Every webmaster of an Adsense site has one main goal - it’s to profit from conversion. And there is only 1 secret in achieving the goal - traffic.

It is a given fact in the search engine marketing world that the most profitable Adsense sites cater to the aged and non-techie market. These people don’t mind exploring on links without having to think if these are paid or not. They’re after the information they need. Now the question is, how do you get to them? If traffic is the means to conversion, here are the means to traffic:

1. Blog and allow comments

Let your site be interactive where people can feel at ease and involved. That way, they’ll be coming back to your site

2. Try your best to rank on the first page of search engines

Since most people who have less of the tech-savvy side are more prone to just looking at the first page of Google and other search engines, you should aim to be part of the prime list of the first page. This has been the very essence of search engine optimization through the years.

3. Be picky in joining social networks. Choose those were the fishes are.

Although there are so many people of all age range joining social networks, you have to do your research and observation of where they usually make profiles of themselves. This way you’d be saving time and energy in making bulletin announcements and making friends.

4. Join forums where they can be found

Almost all sorts of niche has its own forum. Choose where your topic is god, and observe if the treasure (target market) can be found there. You’d have to check who are actively participating.

5. Share your content

In most social content sites, networking using relevant tags to your topic can be done. Utilize this by saving other people’s posts and then sharing what you have to say. Exchange bookmarks, in other words.

In any niche marketing venture, the most important task is to position yourself where the target market is most abundant. You save on time and effort. You gain in conversion.

Websites of various businesses fail for many reasons, it may be lack of search engine optimization, unattractive web design, or some lousy web copy. But the most often overlooked aspect of website owners selling online is the call-to-action link.

A lot of websites show off great call-to-action buttons. They can be attractive to the eye of the visitor. However this does not guarantee sucess for a business website. Some notes about call to action buttons and links:

1. Make use of Google Analytics’ Site Overlay. This tool is fundamental in testing which position of your call to action button is most prominent to the eye, and most promising for clicks as well. Site Overlay tool (at Google Analytics, click on Content, then check out the link named Site Overlay) displays your web page and each of its links. The links have a corresponding click meter that shows how many clicks the link got. This is useful when you want to experiment various layout positions for your click to action button. 

 2.Call to action LINKS. Some people just don’t go straight clicking on navigation bars and call to action buttons. Yes, there are several skeptics out there that wishes to know and read more about your product or service first before clicking on a button. This is where call to action links embedded in your paragraph content is most necessary. Some people read first. Your duty is to take on that lead until you convince them that it’s time to click on that, “Product Details here…” or “Reserve Now”.

3. Anchor text links. Make relevant words act as call to action links. Words or phrases in your paragraph like “affordable hp Printer” can be call to action links. People normally follow anything in blue and underlined since 1: these register to mind as links, and 2: your product is the subject of your content, thus it is the most interesting stuff your visitor is looking for. Again, Site Overlay tool is excellent to be of use.

Remember: Your goal is conversion, whether that is email/newsletter subscription, sign-ups, or sales. And call to action links and buttons are the keys to these. Placement of your call to action comes up as a major factor for the success and failure of a business website.