Web Marketing help

[Dan Minor]

I need some ideas for the site keywords that I attach to my site. I wanted to know what some of you have put on your sites. I also want to know how to get higher ratings on the search engines and drive more biz to the site. I already belong to wedj and get a decent amount of traffic from that. Please let me know what has worked for you.

[Chris Davis]

Web design and marketing is 33% of my business. I can tell you that search engine ranking is darn near a "black art". Any company that promises to get you ranked higher (for a fee) is a scam.

99.9% of anyone searching for a wedding videographer will use "wedding video" as a search phrase. You don't need to get complicated with your meta tags.

One tactic is to use your competitor's names in your meta tags. If the bride searches for "Bob's Wedding Video", they may find your site. That kind of marketing makes me feel uneasy, but it might work.

Don't forget to include your city and state in the meta tags. Many brides will search "wedding video cityname" to find a local company. You can also include the names of nearby towns.

I'm a strong believer in Google's AdWords. That's the best way to make sure your business shows up when prospects search. You can even limit your listing to prospects in your state.

[Dana Salsbury]

I was under the impression that adwords and the like were for larger businesses and now cost effective for small ones. Is it something you have to monitor and maintain all the time? I was considering Yahoo's version. Thanks.

[Jon Omiatek]

Try google. I advertise with google and the best part is you can be at the top of all google searches in your area for cheap. I believe its around $1 or $2 per click at the moment. Google allows you to target an area only, like Columbus ohio. I have my area set to Columbus and 50 miles outside the city.

I have also set my budget to $25 per day. Once my $25 is gone, my listing goes offline. #1 placement isn't necessary, as long as you are on the first page. (3 listings per page for paid advertisement)

I am not knocking Yahoo, I advertise on Overture as well. I use Google for my search engine and most of the people I know use it as well.


I register the following terms

Wedding Videographer
Wedding Videographer Columbus
Wedding Video
Wedding Video Columbus
Wedding DVD
wedding Videographer ohio
wedding video ohio

If you don't drive people to your website, you will not have any new visitors. Meta tags work for free placement but search engines work off a bunch of factors when it comes to free placement.

Jon

[John Moon]

Google AdWords are cost effective for one simple reason. If you know what your advertising budget is for internet adv then you set the cap. If you only want to spend $100 per month then that is your cap. The cost per click depends on the Keyword and it also depends on the volume history for that particular word. For instance the Keyword "Wedding Video" has a big spike in volume in January so you are going to pay more then as opposed to now. You don't get charged for impressions only when there is a "click through" to your website. Remember to use the wrong spelling as a Keyword too. Like "Weding". Think like a bride not like a videographer. There are firms out there than can significantly increase your internet ranking through search engine optimization technology and other creative ways.

John

[Dana Salsbury]

I'm wrestling with this...

If you pay for only those who click through, wouldn't you want those to be affluent customers? If that follows, then wouldn't you want to disqualify those who cannot spell?

It seems that you would only want keywords that would precisely describe what you offer. Otherwise the visitor you paid for would go to your site and say, "Oh, that's not it."

My thinking would be that if there were not enough qualified visitors, then the rest of my budget I would spend at Yahoo or MSN.

[Matthew Craggs]

Originally Posted by Dana Salsbury

If you pay for only those who click through, wouldn't you want those to be affluent customers? If that follows, then wouldn't you want to disqualify those who cannot spell?

True, but by adding common misspellings you can target those who make typos. Kind of like registering the domain name yaho.com because, of the millions of people who visit yahoo.com every day, at least a few of them make typos.

[Travis Cossel]

I still operate an ad agency, and I can tell you that adding keywords to your webpages barely does anything (and even using the word "barely" is a stretch).

Think of it this way. Google and Yahoo have both spend hundreds of thousands of dollars coming up with their own respective pay-per-click ranking systems. The last thing they want is for it to be easy, or even reasonably worthwhile, to make edits to your webpages to increase your ranking. They want people using their built-in advertising system.

Like the earlier poster said, "free" rankings are really a black art anymore. In the end there is really very little you can do for free and expect results. Things that worked in the past don't work anymore. And like he also said, do NOT waste your money on any company offering to "optimize" your website for a fee.

[Richard Wakefield]

Well for me the single most important feature on my site was cross links to other sites (mainly other wedding vendors). i remember it shot up in google the day i incorporated those.

hell i even link to this very forum seen as over 1000 people have looked at my site from demos i've posted on here...some might think that's silly but if it helps...

and now i'm on the 2nd page of google if you type in 'my area wedding videos/videographer' and that's without pay-per-click, without optimization, but just a few meta keywords and cross links.

best of luck Dan

[Chris Davis]

I see it's been more than a year since my original response to this thread, and I've changed my opinion.

Search engine ranking isn't as random and hard-to-understand as I previously thought. Google has tons of information available to help you get higher rankings. We have increased our web development to nearly 75% of our business, and one of my employees has become quite an expert on search engine optimization (SEO). Within a month we have moved a few of our clients from the second page of results to the top 3 of the first page.

I encourage you to take some time and read up on SEO. It's not as much of a "black art" as I once thought.

I'll give you one hint: Most of the time, brides will search for "(City) Wedding Video". Make sure the title of each of your pages says that phrase. For example:

"Fat Bride Productions - Waukegan Wedding Video"

Phrases in your page title carry much more weight than keywords in meta tags.

[Chris Davis]

Originally Posted by Richard Wakefield

Well for me the single most important feature on my site was cross links to other sites (mainly other wedding vendors). i remember it shot up in google the day i incorporated those.

That's very good advice. The more links to your page, the higher you'll rank with Google. Be sure to add your link in your signature to every post on any message board. The more links to your page out there, the higher you'll rank.

[Chris Davis]

Originally Posted by Dana Salsbury

If you pay for only those who click through, wouldn't you want those to be affluent customers? If that follows, then wouldn't you want to disqualify those who cannot spell?

Even rich people have kids that can't spell.

[Travis Cossel]

Chris,

That's interesting. I'll have to look back into it. I did extensive research on all of this about 2 years ago when pay-per-click was really taking off, and every professional (educational) source I could find said there wasn't much you could do effectively. Maybe that's changed again.

[Tim Harjo]

Originally Posted by Chris Davis

Even rich people have kids that can't spell.

lol... even rich people can't spell either.