Since the recession, SMBs have been trying to figure out the best way to optimize their websites for organic listings due to SEO’s lower cost over time and higher ROI. What many have asked is, “what is the most effective way to get traffic leads and sales.” Everyone out there has come to the realization that SEO is now #1, and email marketing is a close second.

Besides the need to be efficient with marketing dollars, marketers are casting aside old assumptions that SEO is complex and unaccountable. Just the opposite is true on accountability. On the other hand, it doesn’t take much to get started with a PPC account for instant visibility, but many marketers find it gets expensive for popular keywords.

Another factor driving the switch to SEO is the explosion of social media, which can help boost your rankings. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs are all good ways to create content and dialogue, all of which is integrated into natural search. Marketers are realizing their websites need to work in tandem with social dialogues.

Paid search: PPC spending in Q2 this year, across all search engines in the U.S., was down 21 percent compared to the same period last year (Efficient Frontier). The Q1 year-over-year decline was 23 percent.

On Google alone, PPC spending was off by 8.2 percent worldwide in Q2 compared to Q1 this year (Covario). This was the second straight quarter that Google saw global decreases. Yahoo!’s PPC spending was down 30 percent quarter to quarter, while Bing edged slightly upward from its small market share due to its aggressive $80M marketing campaign in June.

SEO:  On the other hand, SEO appears to be robust. eMarketer report, “Search Marketing Trends” released in February said 55 percent of marketers will increase spending on SEO this year, which is more than any other advertising channel. SEO expenditures were forecast to total $3.9 billion by 2014.

SEO gets the most clicks, and its share of clicks is increasing. In 2005-2006, 87 percent of all clicks were on organic links, now it’s up to 91 percent! All marketers are scratching their heads and wondering why they haven’t concentrated more on SEO. Maybe the preference for SEO links is because people know they aren’t ads. Additionally, SEO links have more credibility because they are ranked by search engines to provide best results, and people trust these results more than banners and sponsored links.

Cost of SEO: SEO isn’t free, and skilled consultants can charge big fees. Another problem is the difficulty of getting changes implemented because of poor cooperation between marketing and IT. SEO is a massively time-consuming process and requires a lot of insider knowledge. SEO automation tools are beginning to show up; keep posted for our reviews.

Local search queries are increasing at a rapid rate. Your site can gain additional traffic and conversions by getting listed in Google Local, Yahoo! Local, CitySearch, and appropriate industry-specific directories.

Google Local: Get listed in Google Maps via Google’s Local Business Center, where you can create a free listing with a Google account. First, check to see if you are listed, and if so, ensure your listing is accurate. If not, list your company name, address, phone/FAX, toll-free number, contact personnel, email address, Web site address, and hours of operation. Follow Google’s Business Listing Quality Guidelines and use Google’s Reinclusion Request form if your listing gets pulled.

Yahoo! Local: Get a free local listing in Yahoo! Local Basic, which consists of a profile listing with your address, phone/FAX number, Web site and email addresses, business category, hours of operation, accepted payment methods, and a description of your products and services. Add or update information any time. Adding your address and phone information in a footer on all your pages can get your inner pages listed.

Citysearch:  This online city guide provides local information on restaurants, entertainment, retail, travel, and professional services in major U.S. cities, including contact information, maps, driving directions, editorial and user reviews. You can get a free listing on Citysearch by going to the “Enter Missing Listing Information” page and enter the business information requested on the form. You can use this same form to make changes to existing listings. Search for your business first, check your profile page for accuracy, and then either make changes or start from scratch by filling out the form.

Niche Search Engines: It’s important to get a free listing in all the directories relevant to your business. Some directories are free and others are worth the listing fee. Look for appropriate directories for your business in DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory. Google has an industry-specific directory, and you can find a list of industry-specific directories at NYPL.org. Read each submission guide carefully and provide requested information accurately. Directories are a good source of traffic and help increase link popularity.

Optimize for Universal Search

It’s important to create content in all relevant media. Know what type of content your customers prefer and create content in relevant media. Optimize your multimedia content, which should be tagged and cataloged correctly.

Images: Use images on your site for illustrating your products and services. Optimize your images with descriptive, keyword-rich file names and ALT tags. Use accurate descriptions of image files.

Videos: Create videos using descriptive file names that are keyword-rich. Also use keywords in your title tag, description tag, and video site map. Create a Web page to launch your video, optimizing the content for SEO and using anchor text wherever possible. Submit to Google Video, Blinkx and YouTube.

News Releases: Submit your press releases for display as “news,” but make sure your story is truly newsworthy. It could be information about new products or upcoming events your site is involved with.

Blogs: Smart companies communicate with their customers and stakeholders via blogs. Tag it (digg, del.icio.us, reddit, stumbleupon, etc.), submit to Google Blog search, and expand your visibility in the SERPs.

Resources and SEO Training

You will need a depth of knowledge to do your own SEO. Below are some resources for learning the basics, keeping abreast of the constant changes in search, and finding answers to your questions. This list is not exhaustive but includes many top assets.

1. Search industry conferences: SMX Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo, Webmaster World Pubcon, and Search Insider Summit.
2. Search marketing news and information sites: Search Engine Land, SearchEngineWatch, iMedia Connection, MediaPost Publications, ClickZ, Search Marketing Standard, and Website Magazine.
3. The Top SEO Blogs are listed on the Online Marketing Blog. Subscribe by RSS or email for the latest information on optimization tactics and search engine rules.
4. SEO training courses: SEMPO Institute’s online basic and advanced SEO courses, DMA Search Engine Optimization Certification Program, SEOToolSet Training, Search Engine Workshops, SEOClass, Search Engine College, and SEO Book.
5. SEMPO Learning Center provides access to articles, research, editorials, case studies and webinars on search engine marketing.

Conclusion
Any way you look at it, saving money is a good idea. However, it’s also important for SMBs to save time. A comprehensive SEO strategy requires an investment of time, personnel, and money, especially since SEO is an ongoing process, not a one-time event.

When you do SEO yourself, you’ll find the tasks are time consuming. SEO tools can save time and simplify your tasks. Some tools are free and others can be very reasonable on a subscription basis. Below are some tools for analytics, keyword research, competitive research, and link analysis.

Analytics Tools: Used to optimize site content and design, maximizing performance.

1. Google Analytics: Robust analytics tool
2. Google Website Optimizer: Test and optimize site content and design to maximize performance
3. Piwik: Open source web analytics
4. Webalizer:  Free Web server logfile analyzer

Keyword Research Tools: Used to discover keywords to target, and tell you how competitive the keywords are.

1. Wordtracker Free Keywords: Generates up to 100 related keywords and get an estimate of their daily search volume.
2. Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool: Generates keywords based on your keyword/URL input
3. Keyword Discovery: Free search term suggestion tool generates the top 100 keywords
4. Microsoft adCenter Keyword Forecast: Gives impression count and predicts demographic distributions of keywords

A tool like MySEOServer crawls your site or blog identifying each page to be optimized for Google, Yahoo! and Bing. It searches content on each page and selects three keywords based on traffic, relevancy and keyword density. This can save you or your webmaster a lot of time and is cost effective.

Competitive Research Tools: Used to determine how much traffic your competitors get and which search terms send them the most traffic.

1. Alexa: Gives you traffic trends for competing websites
2. Compete.com: Track and compare competitors with free site metrics for the top 1,000,000 web domains
3. Google Search Insights: Compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames

Link Analysis Tools: Used to analyze your link profile compared to your competitors, identify and fix broken links, and find new linking sources to give your site the authority needed for top rankings.

1. Xenu Link Sleuth: Free software identifies broken links, verifies internal links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets.
2. Backlink Watch: Free tool shows details on your backlinks including anchor text

Tip: Download FireFox for SEO plugins that streamline many SEO tasks.

Now that you’ve built your site, you should get it listed in local search and industry-specific directories. Part 4 tells you how to get more traffic with local search, universal search, and also gives you tips on SEO training.

Let’s hope your site was designed by following Webmaster guidelines from Google, Yahoo! and Bing. The best way to attract search traffic is to create a lot of keyword-focused, customer-centric Web pages about your product, service or niche. Remember that your long tail keywords add up and create more traffic than your highly competitive keywords. This is especially true for newer domains. You also need logical, keyword-focused site architecture with good navigation.

Title Tag: Keep your title short (65 characters or less), forming a sentence beginning with your primary keyword(s). The title is the first thing users see in the SERPs so be descriptive and enticing. Create unique title tags for every page.

Meta Description: Create your description tag to attract users. Use keywords as soon as possible and keep it short (150 characters or less) since snippets can be truncated by the search engines.

Header: Include primary keywords, spark interest, keep it short and relevant. Use only one H1 tag per page.

Body Text: Create pages that have a purpose for your visitors and are focused on 2 to 3 primary keywords. Include your primary keyword at the beginning and at end of the page. Support your primary keywords with related keywords to establish context and facilitate spidering. Close with a call to action. Write in conversational style while focusing on the needs of customer and search spiders. Let your headers organize the copy with the use of bullets and bold text for emphasis. Leave plenty of white space. Use anchor text for internal and external linking and vary your anchor text by using related keywords.

Internal Links: Link relevant pages to each other internally throughout site content. Ensure keyword-focused anchor text is relevant to the destination page. Use navigation text links rather than images or Javascript. Use breadcrumb links, subject/topic group links, and sitemap links.

External Links: Get listed in DMOZ and quality directories in your niche. When looking for one-way links, search your primary keywords to identify competitors, then find out who is linking to them. Create a list and be prepared to offer something of value in return for a static link with relevant anchor text. Start a business blog and post valuable information on other blogs relevant to your business. Write hot content in your area of expertise and submit to relevant publications or post on your blog.

Images: Use images to lend credibility to your content and create interest. Keep image size to a minimum for fast display. Use relevant alt text.

Sitemap: Create a sitemap of all the pages in your site to reveal link structure. This helps search spiders find all relevant pages of your site available for crawling.

Site Validation: Ensure your pages are indexable and links can be followed with the free W3C Markup Validation Service.

Doing it yourself takes time, but there are tools out there that can save you time. Part 3 is about SEO Tools.

Website Goals

Your objective depends on the purpose of your site. For instance, an ecommerce site wants  to increase sales. Here’s a few more examples:

1. B2C site: increase sales
2. B2B site: increase leads
3. Content management site: increase readership
4. Self service site: increase customer satisfaction/decrease customer support calls
5. Blog site: create links and interest in product/service/topic/celebrity

You want to target your site goals by identifying and measuring your site’s key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs should be measured before and after you optimize your site to see what gains you’ve made. A few examples of SEO KPIs:

1. Traffic from branded keywords vs. non-branded keywords
2. Number of unique pages crawled
3. Number of pages yielding traffic
4. Number of visitors per keyword

Knowledge of Web analytics is crucial because that helps you improve site performance. You can hire a consultant if you don’t have analytics expertise. Or you can subscribe to an SEO tool like MySEOServer that takes care of optimizing your site and does analytics for you.

Know Your Customers

You must be in touch with the demands of the marketplace if you’re going to create successful SEO copy for your Web site. To really understand your customers, interact with them as often as possible. Here’s how you can do this.

1. Gather keyword intelligence from your site logs or site search
2. Survey customers to get feedback after every sale or periodically
3. Provide customer reviews on your site or conduct an annual customer audit
4. Use blogs and social networking to interact with customers
5. Communicate with customers through newsletters based on their interests

Before optimizing your site, it’s important to conduct a site review to see how well it’s currently performing.

SEO Site Review

Assess the current search effectiveness of your site to identify what can be done to improve performance. You can also use this data as a baseline to track performance over time. Your SEO site review can reveal unknown factors about your site’s code and structure that could be keeping you from better search engine rankings.

You can hire an external consultant to conduct the site review, or use an SEO tool that provides a blueprint for success. Such tools can tell you if Google is indexing your site, how quickly it is indexing new pages, or point out duplicate content and canonical URL issues. After your site review, you can make the suggested changes and start building Web pages.

Advantages of PPC

• Immediate search presence.
• Great for seasonal or promotional items.
• Useful for sites with challenges getting organic listings.
• Good for new sites that have not yet ranked organically.
• Easy to track performance and ROI.
• Allows for quick and easy testing of new site design
• Easy testing of organic keywords.
• Quick feedback on market conditions or demands.
• Split test to a live audience for real time results.

Drawbacks of PPC

• Can be expensive.
• Bid prices always rise and can create bidding wars.
• Time intensive to set up and monitor.
• Benefits disappear when campaign is turned off.
• Possibility of click fraud.

Advantages of PPC over Organic SEO

• More control over placement (i.e., 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.).
• Better control of titles and descriptions in the SERPs.
• Match keywords to specific landing pages to increase conversions.
• If set up correctly, PPC can lead to improved branding.

Advantages of organic SEO over PPC

• Users prefer organic over PPC links.
• No cost for organic listings unless you pay for SEO consulting.
• Easy to track performance and ROI.

PPC Strategy for SMBs

Start a PPC campaign to gain visibility in the SERPs and define the best keywords to target for SEO. As you gain SEO visibility, you can reduce some of your PPC spend, but not all, because you need both PPC and SEO for best results.

While PPC search engines have similar rules, they are not all the same. They have different demographics, a different reach, and the cost-per-click will vary.

Bidding Strategy

It’s important to define a bidding strategy. What position do you want to be in? Which positions convert better than others? The number one spot is not always your best choice. It’s crucial to monitor the first few hours of your campaign to determine answers to these questions. It’s also important to avoid bidding wars.

Planning Your PPC Campaign

Start with smart keyword research. Use a keyword tool like Keyword Discovery or Word Tracker. Many engines also provide keyword tools. You may find that longer word phrases will convert better and that single words rarely convert well. You must select the best keywords for your campaign and also understand your matching options.

For instance, at Google, you can set each search-targeted keyword to have one of four settings: broad match, phrase match, exact match, or negative match. These four keyword matching options help control who sees your ads.

• Broad match allows your ad to show for searches on similar phrases and relevant variations.
• Phrase match allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase.
• Exact match allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively.
• Negative match ensures your ad doesn’t show for any search that includes that term.

Note that broad match can eat up your budget quickly. That’s why you need to understand the matching options and don’t forget to use negative match. If you are not using exact match, remember to use negative keywords to keep your budget under control.

Writing Ad Copy

You can write the best ad copy possible by testing multiple ads with different ad elements like the title, call-to-action, benefit statement, display URLs, etc. You want to use keywords in your title because the engines will bold keywords if they match the search query. You really can’t tell which ad is going to perform best until you test.

In creating ad copy, give users an incentive that will garner the click. This might be a discount, time-sensitive offer, etc. Ask a question (Do you need kick-ass web design?). Compelling copy calls for benefits rather than features. Try to differentiate yourself from the competition by reviewing their ads. You can also pre-quality prospects by age, price range,  geographical location, etc.

Creating Landing Pages

Your landing pages are very important. They must be optimized for targeted keywords. Test various versions of your landing pages the same way you tested your ad copy. Create consistency between your keywords, ad copy and landing pages for maximum findability. Landing pages don’t have to be part of your website. You can exclude them from indexing by using the robots.txt file. Don’t use your homepage as a landing page; it’s not specific enough. Your landing page has to be specific to the ad and should focus on one action per landing page. That means it should be simple. Establish trust on landing pages by showing BBB affiliation and by offering secure transactions.

Conclusion

SMBs need a balance of organic and paid listings for best results. The more search real estate you own, the higher your click-through rates. Ultimately, more exposure in the SERPs will build your brand.