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 At OurChurch.Com, one of our goals is to inform and educate people about various aspects of having a website and how to make those websites successful. One of the most important things you can do to make your website successful is marketing.
Search marketing is one of the best forms of marketing today. Unlike just about any other form of marketing, search marketing has the ability to provide you with an ever increasing amount of free traffic to your website. With this in mind, I want to encourage you to start actively marketing your website in the search engines if you aren’t already doing so, or step up your game if you’ve already done some search marketing.
On this page you will find information and links to articles about Search Marketing as well as Christian SEO tools and Christian SEO tips to help you in your search marketing.
Articles With SEO Tips:
Get top rankings with OurChurch.Com's SEO Management services:
As you get started with the marketing of your website, here are 5 free SEO tools you can use to get the SEO ball rolling: (click the heading to display more info)
1. Search Spider Simulator:
The first step to SEO is making sure the search engines can read your site. Many people think search engines can see everything we can see when we view a page, but that’s not the case. There are many things, such as images, videos and Flash, that search engines cannot see. There are also some things, like META tags, alt tags, and title tags, that search engines can see and we may not. The SEOchat spider simulator shows you what text search engines are able to see.
2. Keyword Popularity Research:
When you choose what keywords you want to target, you want to make sure those keywords will actually bring in traffic. Brainstorming is great, but you need to check your “gut feeling” against actual search estimates. Using the Google Keyword Tool will show you which keywords are getting searched for and which are not. Keep in mind these are only estimates, but they are estimates based on Google search data.
3. Keyword Competition Research:
Just as important as making sure the keywords you target get traffic, you also need to see if your website actually has a chance to rank well for keywords. To do that, you want to look at your web page’s stats and compare them to the websites that currently rank well for the keyword you are thinking of targeting. SEOquake is an add-on for the Firefox browser. Once installed, you will be able to see stats like Page Rank, number of backlinks, site age, Alexa ranking, and much more which can give you an idea of the competition you face.
4. Keyword Density:
Once you have chosen the keywords you are going to target you will want to use those keywords on your web pages. One of the tricks to good SEO is making sure you have the proper keyword density. Keyword density is basically how much you use a particular word or phrase in relation to the rest of the content of a page. You want to make sure you use your target keywords enough while not using them too much. The SEOchat keyword density checker helps you do that.
5. Web Page Analyzer:
There are several places on a web page that you will want to use your target keywords. Some of these page elements are the Title tag, headers, anchor text, and the text content itself. The Escape Web Page Analyzer breaks down the various elements of the web page so you can see if you are using your keywords where you want to be using them.
There are certainly many other SEO tools out there that you could use, but these five tools should get you started…and you can’t complain about the cost. So, now it’s up to you.
If you have started marketing your website in the search engines, That's great! You’ve taken a big step to making your website a success. Once you’ve started search marketing for your website, it’s important to track how you are doing in the search engines, measure the success of your efforts, and find ways to improve your results.
Here are five free SEO tools to help you measure the search marketing for your website:
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1. Ranking Reports:
You’ve put in hours of work researching keywords and optimizing your website. It’s time to see how you’ve done. Searching manually can take forever, so it’s best to find a search ranking tool to do the work for you. Mikes Marketing Tools has a nice ranking reporter that allows you to check your websites rankings. It’s important to check your rankings regularly as the search engines results are constantly changing.
2. Alexa:
Alexa is a website that collects website traffic information. If your website has been around a little while and gets some traffic, then Alexa probably has some traffic stats for your website. You can see information about where people are coming from, what keywords they are using to find your site, and see how your site’s traffic compares to other sites with the Alexa traffic ranking. BTW – The lower the ranking number the better.
3. Link Reports:
On page SEO is important to do, but it’s also important to get backlinks (other sites linking back to your site). Generally, the more backlinks you have the better. So, it’s good to keep track of how many backlinks your website has and whether that number is increasing. We have a free link reporter where you can check the backlinks on a variety of search engines. SEOmoz also has a good link reporter for that information. I should note that while having more backlinks is generally better, you really want to have links from relevant and authoritative sites.
4. Website Grader:
Websitegrader.com is great tool that tracks several online marketing metrics and then gives your website a grade. The higher the grade, the better you’re doing. The report also breaks down the grade so you can see where you need to improve. One thing to note, however, is that the websitegrader.com includes social marketing metrics in their grade, such as blogging and social bookmarking, in addition to SEO metrics. So, if you haven’t started social media marketing, then your website’s grade will be a little lower.
5. Google Analytics:
The piece de resistance is website analytics. Website analytics can give you a vast amount of information about your website traffic, marketing campaigns, and how visitors interact with your website. Google Analytics is among the best analytics programs and it’s completely free. When you start off you may just want to track the over all traffic and keyword information, but if you want more information, you can track individual marketing campaigns, set goals for your website, and much more.
Knowing how well your marketing efforts are working allows you to make better marketing decisions in the future. For example, if you find that after optimizing your site for a particular keyword your website still doesn’t rank well for it, then you can either decide to target a different, less competitive keyword, or work on targeting that keyword with link building. With better marketing decisions you can continue to increase the effectiveness of your marketing and the success of your website.
OurChurch.Com also offers a variety of Search Marketing services to meet the needs of any business or organization. If all this seems a bit overwhelming, we would love to help. Please visit our Marketing Services section to learn more about the various search marketing services we offer then request your free, no obligation marketing services consultation.
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