Dear Software Marketer,
There's a debate raging in
marketing circles: should you use SEO or Search
Engine Optimization techniques on your website
or not?
First of
all, what do I mean by SEO? Search engine
copywriting requires that the copywriter concern
himself with the strategic placement of
keywords, tags and the like within his web copy
to get the web page as high as possible in the
search engine rankings.
According to a survey by Enquiro and
MarketingSherpa on the role of search, over 60
percent of BTB buyers research products online
from 2-12 months in advance of a purchase, and
69 percent of them start with the “organic”
(i.e. search engine) listings. So, ranking high
with the search engines is important.
That
said, there are several other points to take
into consideration:
- How
does “organic” website traffic fit into your
overall sales process? Do you drive traffic
to your website using other means
(advertisements, direct sales calls,
seminars, free white paper offers, etc.)?
And how qualified are the leads that come
from the search engines?
- You
need to make it into the top 10 or top 20
(any lower position is of little or no
benefit). How much competition is there for
the keyword? How likely is it that you’ll
make it into the top 10-20 listings without
too much effort?
-
Search engines are constantly tweaking their
algorithms (partly to prevent the “black
hat” SEO experts from manipulating rankings)
so just optimizing your pages is a moving
target.
-
Ultimately, content is king. Having plenty
of useful (fresh) content on your site will
probably do more for your rankings in the
long-run than SEO will. Moreover, content is
a more stable contributor to high rankings.
-
Incoming links (other website linking to
your site, ideally websites that are ranked
high and are highly respected) are generally
considered more valuable than simple keyword
optimization and the like. See
www.alexa.com to research website
rankings.
-
Keyword optimized pages can sound slightly
strange; they often don’t read well.
Moreover, their selling power may be weaker
than pages that focus first and foremost on
the prospect, rather than the engine.
In the
end, it’s probably best to follow a 3-part
strategy:
-
Focus on writing the most convincing copy
you can, aimed at the human reader rather
than the search engines.
-
Optimize the keywords, if you wish, but
never change a word of strong copy if that
change will weaken the copy, even if SEO
best practices dictate such a change.
-
Once the page is up and working (e.g.
generating strong conversion), optimize it
for the engines by tweaking the copy, but
test to make sure that those edits don’t
reduce conversions.
So, do
SEO, but use SEO intelligently and always put
your (human) prospect first.
There’s
also a larger point here: besides search engine
optimized pages and clever copy, what really
drives traffic to your website – and keeps
visitors coming back – is useful, fresh content.
Content
is STILL king!
That's
it for this issue of "The Software Marketer's
Toolkit". If you have any questions, comments or
an issue that you'd like to see covered, please
send me an email:
paul@paularinaga.com.
To your
software success,
Paul
Arinaga
paul@paularinaga.com
www.paularinaga.com
Tel: +32 2 782 0207
Next
month: "Soft landing: do you need a landing
page?”
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