Search Engine Marketing

Link building is an important component of an SEO campaign. While it's absolutely necessary to have a well optimized website, relevant inbound links that build gradually over time is what instills search engine trust and improves search engine ranking. In addition, links that are spread across the web help to build a brand. When it comes to link building, it's important to think outside of the box and get creative. Sure, it's important to produce articles, blog posts, videos, and press releases but what else is there? Plenty. You just need to leverage your offline marketing to help your link building.

Before starting any kind of search engine optimization, it's important to conduct keyword research for every page of a B2B website. The search engines rank pages individually, so it's important to focus on all pages, not just the homepage. Each page should target keywords that are most specific to the content on that page. Targeting the same keywords on every page can result in lots of missed opportunities.

Optimum SEO can be achieved with proper website design and by keeping up-to-date with how to drive visitors to your site. Here are a few recent optimization shifts you need to know about.

eMarketer estimates US search ad spending will continue on a strong upward trajectory this year, supported by a major election season as well as the Olympics. As growth rates overall taper off in the next few years, revenues will become more and more concentrated at the top search properties—especially Google and Microsoft.

SEO is a three step program that involves research, on-site optimization, and link building. An important part of the research phase is checking out the market and seeing what your competitors are up to. Their strategies should never be copied; instead the information that you find can be used to ensure that you do things that much better than them! The first step is to understand who your competitors are in the online space, which is based on geographic and business size factors.

Online marketers intimately understand the importance of SEO, yet few know the tools that can help them achieve their goals. Use these six down and dirty techniques to build a Google-friendly keyword list.

Sometimes it seems like almost anything can be done in "3 easy steps" these days. Losing weight, building a business, earning extra income, getting over an ex, and the list goes on and on. SEO can also be categorized as a 3 step program, but it certainly isn't easy. In order to find SEO success, all three steps must be carried out efficiently. No one step is more important than the other.

The search engines don't take kindly to sites that try to manipulate the search results in their favor. Black hat SEO firms and spammers are constantly looking for new ways to twist the ranking factors. For instance, having a lot of links pointing to your site is important for SEO, so spammers get links from low quality, spammy sites to boost their link number. Never mind that these links are coming from spam blogs, they choose quantity over quality.

The most important thing to remember when it comes to conducting your keyword research is that you have to understand your user. If you don't understand how people are searching for your product, you'll never be able to target the right keywords. For instance, you might call your product a "workforce analytics and planning software" but your potential clients are searching for "business intelligence software." While the two keyword phrases may mean the same thing (more or less), how is a search spider supposed to know that? That is why it is important to revisit your keyword research from time to time and make sure you are in-line with your target audience's search behavior.

Social media and SEO are more intertwined than ever before; just look at the creation of the latest social network, Google+. Google, the undisputed king of search, is making a viable attempt at entering into the realm of social media, solidly owned by Facebook. Meanwhile, Facebook and Bing have formed a partnership to personalize the individual SERP of every Bing searcher. What does this mean for site owners? If you want your SEO to succeed, you have to start incorporating elements of social media into the