SEO is part of SEM

Time and again I see people getting upset because their pages don’t rank as high as they want them to rank on the few words or phrases they try to optimize them for. But what makes an SEO consultant successful? Is it the ability to make a web site rank high on certain words or phrases?

The answer is plain and simple: “No!”SEO is part of a bigger thing called “Search Engine Marketing”. Any SEO consultant needs to know at least a bit about Search Engine Marketing (SEM). A few things are important and at the same time very helpful for getting those pages rank high in the Search Engines:

What is your targeted audience?

Which people are interested to visit your web site? “The people that look for my keywords.” is the easy answer, and of course you reach a big group with that logic. But there are so many more people that are interested as well; they just need to be confronted with your web site. Example, somebody that is interested in vacations in the south of France , may very well be looking for sun vacations or warm water beaches.

So look for who is interested as well. A good way to do this is to just do a search on your existing search term, and open some of the results in the range of rank 20 to 100. Just quickly look over those sites and you will

definitely find some words you never thought of before. Of course using WordTracker is also a good way. But some alternative ways definitely work too.

Write good copy

Good copy writing is very important. Writing copy that makes the search engines rank your pages higher does not necessarily change those visitors into buyers. The search engines think different from your visitors. Even though the web crawlers do try to look at it in the same way, they are not human beings. Web crawlers are not sensitive to the feeling that a text creates while reading it. So often, when writing for the search engines, the writer switches off his/her own feelings as well and starts to think like a web crawler.

Combining the 2, writing for the search engines and your visitors, is almost a form of art. But it is not as difficult as you may think. Just write for your visitors and edit the text afterwards so that the search engines like it also. It really is as simple as that. And if you can not manage to get your key words in, you may need to consider choosing other key words. If you can not come up with your pre-chosen key words, then how do you expect people to use them when while looking for what your web site has to offer?

So basically it comes down to 2 things: Knowing your audience and knowing how to write for them. Once you know these 2 things, the SEO work will be easier and more effective.