Do I need search engine marketing?

Many people are skeptical regarding search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) agencies. They assume that the efforts put forth by online marketing are fruitless. Unfortunately, the old standby "if you build it they will come" doesn't apply to the Internet world.

If you were to open a storefront wouldn't you purchase a sign to hang out front? Search engine marketing is done for the same reasons. With tens of billions of other websites out there it takes a little effort to ensure that potential customers are able to find you when they need your products or service.

What types of search engine marketing are available?

There are two main approaches when it comes to ensuring your website is listed at the top of the SERPs (search engine results page). The first is what is traditionally called search engine optimization (SEO) where the content and architecture of your website is altered to make your content more easily readable by the search engine spiders. The other approach is to advertise your website with key searches that will attract customers with the highest rate of conversion. A conversion is defined as a visitor to your website that turns into a sales lead or a complete sale.

Should I start with paid or organic search?

There are some major differences between pay per click (PPC) and natural or organic search. When you spend advertising dollars it is generally referred to as paid search. When you change the content of your website it is called natural or organic search optimization. A notable difference is that with paid search, you have the luxury of advertising on a wide variety of key phrases and are able to track the results on an individual basis. With natural search you will be forced to focus on a small set of well-trafficked key phrases.

By starting with paid search you will be able to gather valuable data regarding your most effective key phrases. Using this data you will be able to better target key phrases for a natural optimization campaign.

Unfortunately, most search marketing agencies still start with natural or organic search optimization. Generally this is done as it is more profitable for the search marketing agency. This is because less money goes toward the agency with a paid search campaign than with a natural search campaign. With a paid search campaign, the bulk of the budget is used to pay Google, Yahoo and MSN for advertising rather than for work within the agency itself. However, there is an exception to this rule. If your business has an extremely niche market then the effort to optimize your key phrases organically is rather minimal. In this situation it would make more sense to start and end with natural search engine optimization.

Finally, with paid search marketing you will only be paying for actual visitors to your website. Natural optimization requires that you invest funds in the prospect of sending visitors to your website. For this reason, your investment in online marketing is better protected with a paid search campaign.

What are considerations in the key phrase research process?

A key phrase is the actual search term that your customer will enter into a search engine in the hopes of finding a suitable website. Key phrase research with paid search marketing allows you to evaluate thousands of key phrases at once. Natural search requires focusing on a select few before expending significant resources. Ideally, once the key phrases have been selected the performance will be recorded and analyzed for a click through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR). This data can then be compared with the competitiveness of the key phrases to find to most cost effective key phrases. The price of advertising on each key phrase will vary based on the competitiveness of that phrase in that particular search engine.

How are the results measured and reported?

Measuring the results for paid marketing is much easier than for natural optimization. Still, it can be done for both. Most of the time you will receive a report that shows the placement of your best ranking key phrases. However, they should also be talking about tangible things like measurable traffic (visitors) and conversions. If your agency does not provide you with plentiful reports you should be asking why not.

The best reporting will tie the marketing efforts directly to the goals of the website. If the website's purpose is to generate sales directly, the sales must be able to be tied directly back to the source of the traffic. Similarly, if the website generates leads then the lead needs to be traced back to the key phrase and originating search engine.

How will my site be submitted to the search engines?

Be very cautious when a search marketing agency indicates that they will submit your website to search engines. The fact is that the only effort it takes to have your site indexed by the search engines is to have it exist in cyberspace. Search engines regularly crawl lists of newly registered domains. For this reason, to be listed in the top search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) you should not need to pay anyone.

If you search for a website submission program you will undoubtedly find companies offering to submit your site to thousands of small search engines for a fee. Keep in mind that nearly all of your search engine related traffic will come from Google, Yahoo and MSN. Submitting to these other search engines is generally a waste of time and money. These types of mass submissions can also been seen as SEO spam and in a worst case scenario could have your website removed entirely from the major search engines.

What is the process of your link building strategy?

Link building is extremely important to your ranking in Google. This is because link building is the result of a 3rd party endorsement for your website rather than on-page efforts that you can perform yourself. Ensure that your search marketing agency provides link building on a regular basis.

Some agencies simply drive traffic to your site rather than place high quality links. They do this by building their own websites and then linking to yours. While this will produce results for your search marketing campaign, it's important to keep in mind that your success is riding on the shoulders of a website in complete control of your SEO agency. If you choose to discontinue your relationship, your website ranking will fall extremely quickly and you will be starting over. An easy way to avoid this is to ask for a backlink report to be included in your regular reporting portfolio.

Have any of your clients every been blacklisted?

There are a group of search engine optimization techniques that are high risk and can result in penalties being given by the major search engines which include removal from their index entirely. While it is not impossible to recover from this situation, it would be preferable to never be placed there in the first place.

Have additional questions?

At Walden Websites, we provide search engine optimization in Milwaukee, Wisconsin along with search engine marketing and website design. If you're not located in Milwaukee, don't worry, we can still work remotely as we do with many clients. Check out our website at Website Design Milwaukee, Website Development & Search Engine Optimization.



Author Bio

Article by Jeff Walden. Jeff is an author on Blogtoid.com which is an online resource for free articles on a variety of topics.