Search Marketing - Just Add Water

A short post today, since its been a while since my last post. A 'how to' recipe for search marketing success:

1. Optimize your site for the technical requirements of search engine recognition. There are resources on the web and tips on sites such as Google.

2. Conduct search engine optimization (SEO) PR activities - to ensure coverage in the 2nd layer of the web - mentions, links, etc. This covers the content to influence target audiences plus the quantitative link-to requirements. Hiring an affordable guru in this area should definitely be considered. (I know one for anyone who needs a reference).

3. Pay for spider-linking technology. Essentially, hosting your site's page files on a 3rd party server, then automatically indexing your site to auto-optimize each individual page. Preliminary work requires developing keywords, key phrases, and lists of competitors. Hiring a linguistical genius is recommended here for the keyword and key phrase portion. (Again, I know someone, available for a few hundred dollars who is from Amazon.com)

4. Paid search advertising. You should know this routine by now. Though, know that images are now accepted on sites like Google, etc., and that they extend to blogs and other sites (including blogs) that you can hand select which sites to have your ads appear on.

5. Doing all this is just the groundwork. Your #1 most important task = ensure your site is visitor friendly, well-designed, has interesting + valuable content (per each targeted audience segment), and can be easily navigated. Importantly, this requires org. buy-in and the ability to move an organization where it's best interests reside - usually the most difficult task, particularly if you don't call the final shots.

Happy marketing.....