The WebSiteMarketingPlan.com Network News, February 11, 2005

Often, people confuse marketing programs or strategies with end goals. You may hear someone mention his/her Website marketing goal, for example, as to “bring more traffic to the Website.” Ultimately, however, traffic isn’t the Website-related goal. The goal is something like online sales or leads. In my head, an example of a goal (with drill down to specific marketing strategies and programs) looks something like this:

* Website Goal: Increase online sales by Y%.
* Strategy: Improve number of targeted visitors to the site.
* Programs (Tactics):
(1) Improve organic / natural search engine rankings for specific keywords.
(2) Launch a pay per click search engine campaign.

For those of you with similar goals and strategies, today’s guest articles explain how to implement the two supporting programs I mentioned in the example. “High Rankings’ SEO Process” by Jill Whalen gives step-by-step instructions for optimizing your Website for organic search results. In “Overture vs. Google AdWords,” Ed Kohler explains the differences between Overture’s pay per click program and Google’s AdWords.

For a more general marketing discussion, with some examples, you can read “Superbowl 2005 Advertising and Marketing Lessons.” If you missed my previous two Superbowl articles about marketing and the Superbowl commercials, have a look: “Superbowl Ad and Marketing Techniques,” “Superbowl Advertising and Marketing Lessons”

Search Engine Optimization Articles…

“High Rankings’ SEO Process”
One of the most difficult marketing strategies for many online marketers is ranking well in organic search engine listings. Here, Jill explains how to improve search engine rankings through keyword research and search engine optimization.

Search Engine Optimization FAQ:
Many of the same SEO questions arise again and again. Jill answers three: Is Web content really important?, Is Google penalizing my site?, and Where should I place key words and phrases?