SEO and Marketing: Basic Tips and Definitions


SEO and Marketing: Basic Tips and Definitions

In its simplest form, promotion is a tool or strategy under the marketing umbrella. The marketing umbrella covers the creation or manufacturing of a product or service, R&D, distribution, and any other elements needed to get a product from creation to the consumer. Promotion creates visibility.

Utilizing online promotion means you will be using the internet, search engines, and SEO. SEO is the process of getting the search engines to find and rank your content. You obviously want a high ranking so when a searcher (potential customer) types in a search term (keyword) your site may be one of those on that first SERP.

Marketing and especially SEO can be confusing and seem like a daunting task to undertake, but once you understand the basics it becomes less intimidating.

SEO and Marketing Definitions

1. SEO – search engine optimization: “the process of creating and adjusting website content with the goal of improving search engine rankings.” (according to Compendium.com)

2. SERP – search engine results page – the page results from a search query.

3. Keyword – “any word or phrase a searcher might use to describe or identify a desired resource on the Internet.” When using keyword in your title, it’s important to use the keyword in the beginning of the title. Rather than use “How-to-Guide for SEO,” opt for “SEO: A How-to-Guide.” (according to Compendium.com)

4. Organic Traffic or Marketing – free strategies, such as Twitter, blogging, article marketing, etc.

5. Paid Traffic or Marketing – utilizing paid/sponsored ads, such as Google adwords, etc.

6. Ranking – your position (how high up) on the SERP: the higher the better. In other words, you want to be on the first SERP, or at least within the first few pages.

7. Anchor text – linking to other websites and/or pages directly from text within your content. This strategy should be used to bring the reader to your products, to other related articles you’ve written, to another site that has useful information pertinent to your post, and/or to link to a site you’re mentioning.

Providing readily accessible information and links through anchor text will give your readers more “bang-for-the-buck.” It will give the reader a broader reading experience, and she will definitely appreciate it – this builds a relationship . . . and trust.

Using anchor text links will also help search engines, such as Google and Bing, relate your content to other relevant content, and create a target for searchers to hit.

One last note about SEO, keep your keywords simple and concise. And, often it’s of greater benefit to use long-tail keywords. These keywords may not get as many search hits, but they do get a much more targeted audience; this leaves you with less competition.

An example of a keyword might be, “allergy relief.” Allergy relief is a very generic and heavily used keyword. In order to make it more specific and hone in on a narrower audience/searcher, you might use, “allergy air cleaners,” or maybe, “remedies for allergies,” or, “allergy sinus medications.” You want to narrow the playing field.

There are free tools to test out and analyze keywords; here are three of them you might try:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
http://www.wordstream.com/keywords/

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Learn about writing and marketing with Karen Cioffi at http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com. Sign up for her free newsletter, A Writer’s World, and get TWO free site-related e-books - get ONE more just for stopping by. For professional and affordable writing services check out http://dkvwriting4u.com

Check out the eBooks pages on writing and marketing for useful information - it's at my Karen Cioffi Writing and Marketing site, the link is just above.

16 comments:

D. Jean Quarles said...

What a great post. I find I'm a bit intimidated by all this, so thank you very much!

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for giving our free keyword research tool a mention! As Karen has mentioned, order certainly matters when you choose your title! Our keyword popularity tool can also help writers find the most popular keywords to make sure their topic is something that is already frequently searched about.

Internet searchers may also search keyword sets that are more long tail, so definitely try out our free tools. Unless you work for an agency with a nice ad spend budget, I wouldn't recommend our more extensive tools.

Victor from WordStream

Karen Cioffi said...

Jean, I'm so glad this helped you. I know there are so many authors 'intimidated by SEO, and it's really not difficult.

Karen Cioffi Writing and Marketing

Karen Cioffi said...

Victor,

It's a pleasure having you visit our site!

Karen Cioffi Writing and Marketing

NancyCL said...

Thanks much for this article!

Carolyn Howard-Johnson said...

I think you are getting to be the SEO QUEEN!!, Karen! Everyone, Karen recently gave more information on SEO for writers on my SharingwithWriters blog: http://sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com/2012/02/increase-traffic-to-your-site-five-seo.html. I mean do you know what a long-tail keyword is?

The blog is a Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites pick. Hope you'll drop by and subscribe.

Best,
Carolyn

Karen Cioffi said...

Nancy, I'm so glad the article is helpful to you.

Carolyn, LOL, I like it!

Here's the link Carolyn is talking about - I hope it works:

Karen Cioffi said...

Blogger wouldn't accept the link!

Fani Nicheva said...

Karen, thank you for organizing this techy information for us. I love
definition lists.

Magdalena Ball said...

Fantastic, truly simple tips on SEO - a topic that is often over-complicated. Those tools are really helpful too for developing a growing (slowly for some of us) understanding of what makes for a good keyword.

Magdalena Ball
Author of new novel Black Cow

Heidiwriter said...

Excellent. I've never understood SEO, etc. but now I think I have a little better handle on it. Thanks!

Unknown said...

Thanks for your excellent tips Karen.

Janice D. Green said...

This is excellent information. I'm cataloging this information for future reference. Thanks, Karen.

Mary Jo Guglielmo said...

Excellent info. I'd love more info on your experience with paid markets.

Karen Cioffi said...

Fani, I'm glad you found it helpful!

Maggie, It's so true that the idea of SEO is much more intimidating than the actual process!

Heidi, Glad you can use this information.

Kathy, You're welcome!

Janice, Great! That's when you know you've provided something that hits home - when it's saved for future referenced and SHARED!

Mary Jo, Thanks!. I'm not sure what you mean about paid markets. You can email me.

Thank you All for stopping by!

Karen Cioffi said...

David, Funny coming from an SEO site.

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