SERPs as an Adwords Supplement

Lately I’ve been reading alot about adwords in my feeds, to start off i’d like to make it perfectly clear that i have never used pay per click advertising (except for once where i was just trying to burn some money) at the moment I’m not really keen on spending money on google or any other payper click ad network.

Its important to know your traffic sources and to know which you should choose, as for me I choose SEO since its free and i get to have whatever i want over a certain amount of time without spending that much money. SERPs are usually how i promote my sites, ranking for better keywords and getting traffic for it as well.

If you think about it most of the traffic you receive at your site from adwords is from google search anyway, and thats only the 10-20% of the people who actually care to look alll the way over there for sponsored links and the rest just go with the SERPs. Now think about it, wouldn’t you rather spend $0 and be in the 80-90% clickable area?

Getting good rankings is not hard as long as you take care of a few simple tasks.

1. Link Exchange with similar relevant sites
2. Make sure your site is interactive ( to make sure you keep the visitor you get )
3. Use your keywords wisely (dont spam your site with loads of keywords of different niches)
4. Use other of your similar sites to get some link love
5. When linking to inner pages use the keyword you are targeting for that page not the general overall keyword for the site/homepage
6. Make sure all your content is unique
7. Submit/Update sitemaps frequently

Wouldn’t you rather Optimize your site to earn more rather then spend money on adwords?

Success through Planning – A Guide to Effective Web Business Plans – SWOT Analysis

SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and is a cognitive tool used in business to evaluate both the internal and external aspects of a business entity. SWOT analysis is used in conjunction with the Mission Statement (see here for the article on Mission Statements) The general rule is that strengths and weaknesses are internal, that is they are aspects of the existing business. Conversely opportunities and threats are external to the entity, and include the business world at large and competition. Using again my own business as an example I have developed the following strengths and weaknesses.

As a general rule of thumb, there should be as many weaknesses as there are strengths. This is because it is natural for many of us to focus on the positive things about our businesses. Whilst it is important to focus on the positive it is equally important to focus on our weaknesses so as to develop strategies to combat them. Focusing now on the opportunities and threats

Again it is important to assess the threats in as much detail as one assesses the opportunities, as really knowing the limitations of the external environment will help to develop the strategies needed to maintain the competitive edge. From the use of SWOT, as well as having a good Mission statement, the business owner will be able to develop a good Balanced Scorecard, which is the focus of the next article. For more information on SWOT analysis see www.quickmba.com/strategy/swot/, a good site with much detailed information on SWOT analysis, it is also probably a good idea to look briefly at PEST analysis, which takes SWOT a step further and details on this can be found on www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_PEST.htm , but the level of detail here is sufficient to develop our business plan.

Success through Planning - A Guide to Effective Web Business Plans - Mission Statements, Aims and Goals and Benchmark measures

I have written about mission statements before in my series on Strategic Content Development, where the mission statement was used to help define and keep on task, content development projects. Essentially for the business plan the format is the same, it is a short statement which encapsulates the Mission of an organization and from it a set of aims and goals are developed to measure success of the site. Common mission statements include a general statement about the business such as

“TimK Copy Writing Plc is a dedicated web content development company which provides laser focused SEO tailored content for Webmasters in any Niche.”

This is included to give an immediate idea of the scope of the business, and should only include what it is, not what it isn’t. The second part of the Mission Statement should include the specific things which the organization aspires to in order to differentiate from its competitors. Such as

“TimK Plc will deliver low cost content within strictly defined deadlines. It will individually tailor unique content, relevant to the SEO needs of the individual Webmaster to the highest levels of professionalism.”

Increasingly Mission Statements include a little detail about the future of an organization as well, for example

“TimK Plc will grow organically to steady monthly targets, and increase its reputation on the Web for its level of proficiency in delivering content.”

From this mission statement it is possible to develop a set of Aims, which are the specific actions that are going to be undertaken to fulfill the mission statement, and Goals, which are the targets which can be measured to prove the success of the aims, so for each Aim, there should be a Goal. Here are my Companies Aims and Goals.

From these two tools, the mission statement and the aims and goals, it is possible to develop the benchmarks of success. From my example it is clear that I measure success by being competitive on price, developing SEO targeted content, and by having customer’s satisfaction. (Shameless plug, although if you would like help with content development contact us,Benchmarks are important because its how we know we are on task, and they help you to develop the Balanced Scorecard, along with SWOT analysis (seen in later articles in this series)