"Search, Search and Search" has replaced "Location, Location, Location" as the most important marketing strategy

For many years the most important marketing strategy has been "Location, Location, Location". This has been replaced by a new approach to marketing: "Search, Search and Search". The best prospects are customers that are actively searching for your products and services!

The first kind of search is ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ search engine optimization. This is the practice of designing your website so that search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN rank your site highly in their results. Over 62% of consumers are now aware of the difference between the natural search engine results and paid listings, and they prefer to click on the natural results.

There are three critical factors in improving your site for search performance: page content, links to your site and the meta tags on your site.

If you want searchers to find your website, you need to have the words they are searching for on the pages in your website. Sounds pretty simple, huh? You should have between 250 and 1000 words per web page and each page should focus on two or three keywords or key phrases that people would search for when looking for your product or service. You can find out how many people are searching for terms at: http://www.globalpromoter.com/search-engine-optimization-tools.cfm .

Next, Google (and other search engines) highly values the number of relevant sites that link to your site. Find out how many o ther sites are linking to your site by searching this on Google "link:http://www.yoursiteaddress.com" (make sure you replace ‘yoursite address with the URL of your website). Trade links with o ther complimentary sites, write articles and work at getting links to you!

Lastly, make sure your site’s Title, Description and Keyword metatags use the search terms a potential customer would use to look for your site. You can view these metatags by opening your website in a browser, clicking on ‘View’ and scrolling down to ‘Source’, if your site’s Title is ‘welcome to mysite.com’ find a new webmaster who understands natural search or engage a professional search engine marketing firm. Ano ther valuable tip is to search the top keywords in Google, click on the top natural search results and click ‘view’ and ‘source’ on the top sites to see what their metatags look like. What copy do they have on their pages how many links do they have to their site.

Paid Inclusion (PI) is the second ‘search’; this is the strategy of submitting customized data to the Search Engines to ensure that your site gets reviewed by the engines and gets included in their directories. This strategy is most appropriate for large catalogues or companies with large complex and changing inventories. PI opportunities have been shrinking on the web, however many PI marketers are still generating tremendous return on investment (ROI) on Yahoo!

Thirdly, Pay Per Click (PPC) Search is the practice of purchasing "Sponsor Listings" on Google, Overture and o ther top Search Engines. This is an extremely effective form of marketing as you can adjust your bids on keywords based on the performance of each term. Setting up an account at Google or Overture is easy and inexpensive; give it a test drive at http://www.google.com/ads !

Jay Berkowitz, the Chief Marketing Officer of Moniker.com is the author of The Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing and the Webmaster for www.tengoldenrules.com , an internet marketing portal.

Mr. Berkowitz is a popular presenter at conferences and events such as The Association of Internet Marketing and Sales, The Direct Marketing Association, The Global Benchmarking Council and the American Marketing Association.

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