SEO Marketing

Search Engine Marketing Overview

by April Reeves

Search Engine Marketing is the continual changes you make to your website to gain higher or top search results with keywords that are specific and relevant to how your customers search for your particular business.

There are two types:
SEO (search engine optimization) which are the changes you make to your website so that it shows up in the natural or organic search results (on the left hand side).

Paid search engine advertising – this is where you bid on the amount you pay to increase your position higher (or lower) for the advertising on the right hand side of the page.

Advantages for equine – horse websites
One is not more important than the other. They work in accordance to the size and needs of the site. All websites need to do both.

For most horse websites, especially smaller ones, there’s more advantages for you to start with paid advertising because you will get immediate visibility and you have control over the keywords you use to target customers or viewers. If you use SEO first, it will take a lot of hard work researching, learning new skills, changing areas daily, and will often take months before you even show up because you are now allowing algorithms to determine your position, and on what keywords you will be found.

Keywords
Let’s split equine/horse websites into 2 categories: general worldwide appeal (community sites) as in retailers and publishers (equisearch, horse.com) and personal sites that showcase a person/trainer/clinician (Jay O’Jay, Adiva Murphy) or local venue (boarding stable, breeder).

Let’s start with the boarding facility. You board and train out of one geographical location. You clientele is local. You don’t want to target the keyword ‘boarding stable’ as the keyword is too large and not specific enough, and the search will yield thousands of stables. You also don’t want to waste time with boarders from other areas of the country.

The keyword to use to pinpoint your audience must be a geographical location. Also the more keywords in the phrase you use will give you a higher ranking. For example, ‘boarding stable Alberta’ will not rank as high as ‘reining boarding stable alberta’

The key to finding the keywords people are using for ‘boarding stables in Alberta for western and reining horses’ is to go to this Google tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Google gives you additional words that may or may not be relevant, but helps you find words you may not have thought about. Identifying a number of keywords is a really good starting point, especially ones that are consistent with the way your audience searches for you.

Now that you have identified those keywords, you need to compare them. Go to:
http://www.google.com/trends
This is where you can check if there’s enough volume for your chosen keywords. Because boarding can be searched under ‘boarding stables Alberta’ and ‘boarding facility Alberta’, check them both to find which one has higher volumes.

How Many Keywords
Depending upon the business, you may need only a few keywords (2 – 10), or you may need lots (thousands). If your business is in a narrow or niche market, you will likely have a smaller keyword buy than a large hotel chain or big retail store. Again, here is where research pays off. Find out how your customer/viewer looks for you. What group of words do they use to solve their problem?

Title Tags
The first piece of html code in the head statement of your document should include your keywords. Many of them say ‘welcome’ or ‘home page’. If yours does, change it to include or contain your keywords. Your Alberta stable  should say ‘Boarding stable for reining and cutting horses, Alberta’.

Next is your body copy. Use the same keywords in the body copy of your home page and other pages. If you use graphic images for wording, the search engines cannot read the text; they only see the image as a file, either .gif or .jpeg.

Common Mistakes
Step outside your own mind to find keywords. Most people don’t think the same as we do, so it’s important to research how others search. People search for branded keywords (Marriott, Clinton Anderson) or purpose/function of the business (boarding, stables, rates). For small businesses, unbranded keywords work more efficiently.

People search for ways to solve their problems. If you manufacture feeds you may want to investigate words like ‘organic’ or ‘allergy’.

Research which days and time periods people search for boarding stables. Are the searches higher on weekends or weekdays? Are they higher during spring or fall?

Why?

When buying keywords, most people give Google a chunk of money and it gets eaten up by viewers who have no intention of using your service. Narrow your days and times to capture quality click-through. 

Everything on your site communicates: your advertising, articles, body copy. And it all comes back to search engines. It’s all about search engines. Build your site around keywords: learn how to write so that you obtain the ranking you need without the overuse or abuse of specific terms.