Search Engine Marketing Strategy Guide (smm Sem Seo) - Part 1
July 11, 2007
This is the first post in a long series, and yes I’m actually going to write all the follow up articles. I’ve decided after a lot of contemplation to write and distribute a guide to search marketing and social media marketing through this blog.
I’m going to take a large portion of the search marketing knowledge in my head, rip it out and dissect it in this book for all to take from it what they will. I’m going to give it to you straight, unlike most of the other similar documents on the web, which are too full of overly idealistic “they way the world should work” mentality or are too focused on individual tactics to actually be of much use to the average business professional.
Search marketing is one of the disciplines that is defined by its limitations. It’s meaningless to talk about in terms of an endless budget or without directly referencing competing sites and alternative strategies.
There is no right way to promote a site and at any given time there are multiple strategies which could work. Search Marketing, social media marketing and cross disciplines that involve all the industry buzz words are fundamentally about forming a strategy, executing it, seeing what worked, what didn’t and then readjusting. It’s a process, like most things in life, where you have to leverage what you have to get what you want.
All sites, companies, individuals have limited resources; you can never have a perfect website, a perfect marketing campaign, or do a perfect job at community building, promotion or any individual methodology. Perfectionists beware; search marketing is all about living on the point of diminishing returns and that’s exactly what we’re going, but first a quick overview of the basics. I’m a large fan of the question and answer format for easy scanning of basic material so I’ll use that on and off.

















[...] Run your site through an html validator. Don’t worry, it probably won’t pass, and that’s not what we’re looking for anyways. We’re just looking to correct any major errors and, if possible, get it to valiadate or come as close as we can without spending too much time (remember from the step 1 SEM article - its all about ROI). [...]