Search Marketing

When most people think of search marketing, they think “Google,” but search is everywhere: Google Maps, iTunes, Pinterest, TripAdvisor, Yelp, YouTube, Amazon, etc.

There are three “players” involved in search: the searcher, the search engine and the marketer. The Searcher is motivated by relevant results, on anything/everything they’re searching for and they are concerned with “right now.” The Search Engine is motivated by revenue. They serve relevant results to the searcher so that they drive more revenue. They serve popular results to searchers so that they drive more revenue. The keep searches on web properties they own so that they drive more revenue. The Marketer is motivated by rankings in search engines. They want traffic impressions that lead to leads and sales.

Search queries are central to search marketing. There are two critical categories of search queries to target:

• Target Search Queries that make you Discoverable
• Target Search Queries that make you Available

[box] Discoverable: Being found when they are NOT looking specifically for you (non-branded queries)

Available: Being found when they are looking specifically for you (branded queries) [/box]

Queries are made by individual people. Each search query carries the intent and/or context of an individual.

• Intent: What is the prospect searching for?
• Context: Why are they searching for it?

You’ll find groups of people with the same intent. You’ll find groups of people with the same context. You’ll find groups of people with different intent and context. Each intent and context represents a search query.

5 Ways to Research Intent & Context:

1. Sales/Customer Service
2. Common Sense
3. Customer Avatar
4. Intent Based Avatars
5. Keyword Research Tools

Capital Professional Services (CPS) can assist you with most of these.

Customer Avatar (free)

CPS can provide you with a worksheet to help you flesh out your ideal customer(s). Having this profile can aid you as you develop content for your business whether web, social, marketing materials, etc.

Intent Based Avatars ($39)

CPS can assist you in completing intent-based avatars to further define what your customers may be searching for that you can provide.

Keyword Research ($197)

CPS can assist you with keyword research after you have completed the above avatars. The research can help you develop a content marketing strategy and know what keywords you should target in your marketing efforts.

Website SEO Optimization ($25 per web page)

Not all pages in a site need to be optimized for SEO. In fact, some pages you may wish to exclude from search engine results. (CPS can assist with this, too) We can review each page and make recommendations based upon keyword research (if done by us) or your desired result for that page. Each page on a site should be targeted primarily to just one keyword phrase. We recommend that each page have a minimum of 300 words but 500 or longer is better. We optimize the following elements:

1. Title tag
2. Meta description
3. Heading/title
4. URL
5. Body Copy
6. Image Alt

If it is a blog post that needs optimizing, we add two more elements:

1. Social sharing
2. Freshness

Because not even someone who works with Google can guarantee you get listed on the first page of search results (unless you pay to be there), we make NO GUARANTEES on final results. Anyone who promises otherwise is not telling the truth.

Experience Optimization ($197)

If you have had your website at least six months, we can perform a thorough experience optimization audit. We will examine 13 elements at the domain level and 11 more elements for a few specific pages as well as a few random pages in your site. This audit will examine things at the domain level like “How does Google see my site?”, “What happens when people cannot find something on my site?”, “Who is linking to my site?”, “Can people easily find what they are seeking on my site?”, “Is my site accessible?”, “Can my site be viewed across mobile devices?” At the page level, we will look for keyword targeting, keyword cannibalization, duplicate content, value, layout and design, cross-linking and siloing, etc.

Contact us today to get started with any one of these.