There are so many types of internet businesses you can get yourself involved with. Whether the business is based off the most popular online business models revolving around affiliate marketing or drop shipping, the most important thing is obtaining targeted traffic. Without targeted traffic from people interested in what you have to offer, you won’t have much success in running and growing your online business. However, with proper search marketing techniques, you’ll be able to drive tons of targeted traffic to your website. And in this article, we’ll teach you some of the techniques many use to help them in the initial phases of beginning a search engine marketing project.

There are two types of search engine marketing. One being search engine optimization (SEO) and the other, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Also, depending on the type of business you’re operating, there are 3 types of places you can show up (refer to the to the image below). 

• Pay-Per-Click Advertising: This is where you bid on the price you’re willing to pay for a click to your website and depending on the industry you’re in, this price can be pretty steep.
• Local 7 Pack Listings: This is generally more of a concern if you’re running a local business.  techniques will be able to help you optimize for the 7 pack.
• General Search Results: This is where most online businesses will show up if they’re properly optimized for search engines.

The Process

The process for any type of search engine marketing strategy begins with keyword research and analyzing the competition. In Google’s Keyword Planner tool, it’ll tell you the approximate price per bid for the keywords if you were to run a PPC Campaign. It’ll also show you the type of competition you’ll be up against if you were to bid for that keyword. However, this information is ONLY important if you’re planning to run a PPC campaign. If you’re planning to run an SEO campaign, the competition and suggested bid columns have no relevance.

The only reason to use the Keyword Planner tool for an SEO project is to get an idea for search volume. This will help you put your money into optimizing for keywords that will drive a substantial amount of traffic to your website.

SEO Competitor Analysis

To analyze the SEO competition, I’d recommend that you download the Moz Toolbar for your browser. This toolbar will show you domain authority(DA), page authority(PA), and backlinks to websites that show up in the search results.

You then want to look up some of the keywords you found using Google’s keyword planner. Type them into Google and observe their DA,PA and backlink count. A website with a much higher domain authority, page authority, and backlink count than your website will require more work to surpass in the search results than a website with a low DA,PA and backlinks.

So this will give you a good idea of how many links you need to build to your website and approximately where your site stands comparatively in terms of overall authority online.

Conclusion

Having a strong foundation in SEM will undoubtedly help you really grow and push your business to the next level. And with this guide, you’ll now be able to find high value keywords, and perform a competitor analysis to help you determine which keywords you should go after and target.