Any Seattle business with a web presence is most likely already using at least some form of search optimization, whether just for Google, or for all major search engines. SEO is a great way to build your traffic by making tweaks to help search engines see and rank your content. But, one thing traditional SEO often leaves out is making that content appeal to the reader as well as to the search engine, and that’s where search marketing comes in. Because it doesn’t matter how many impressions your page gets if it’s not getting hits.

What is Search Marketing?

Search marketing is the process of making your content, landing pages, and web pages more appealing to visitors, so that they want to click through on the page, and so that they read it all the way down, spend some time there, and possibly even buy something.

How Does Search Marketing Work

Where SEO is all about tweaking the back end of your site, and using keywords and phrases to tell search engines what you’re talking about, search marketing is all about content. Everything, from photos and videos to the title and meta description counts, and it’s very important.
Titles – Titles help Google find your content, but they also have to be clickable. This usually means keeping your title under 60 characters so the whole thing shows up in search, avoiding click bait titles, but making the title informative and intriguing. This can be a difficult balance to achieve, and if you’re trying to decide between intriguing or informative, always go for informative.
Meta Description – A lot of people skip the meta description since Google’s announcement that they don’t really use it in search ranking anymore, but this is a bad idea. Curating the content for your meta description allows you to control what readers see in search before they clip. Google automatically previews the first few lines of the page, these lines aren’t often very inductive to clicking, and might include a repeat of the title. Use meta descriptions to write a short description, and to tell people what they will learn after clicking. Just don’t give them so information that they don’t have to click.
Content – Content is king of search marketing, but it doesn’t have to be written content. Any content, including audio, video, photos, and text are all great, so long as you include keywords, metadata with searchable information, and a searchable description. A combination of different types of media is always a good way to go. Your content should be high quality, aimed at the reader rather than Google or Bing, and only really mention keywords when they naturally fall into the topic. You can use keywords in titles and subtitles as well, but make it natural, and use stop words like of, the, and to when naturally included in the topic.
Optimizing your pages for your visitors, rather than just for Google, is always a great idea, because it improves every aspect of your search marketing. When your pages are optimized for users, your click-through rate goes up, your bounce rate goes down, and these factors both boost your search optimization.

If you want to learn more about search marketing, contact Rory Martin, a local Seattle SEO company, for a free estimate on your search project.