How Search Engine Marketing Can Increase Your Web Site's Presence on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.
- 1/15/2008 -
The Internet has become an
increasingly important tool in business and marketing communications.
While having a well-designed, highly-functional Website is critical to
business success, that in and of itself is no longer sufficient.
Companies also need to understand the vital importance of being found
and ranking highly on search engines. This is where Search Engine
Marketing comes into play.
The two main components of Search Engine Marketing are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search
Engine Optimization refers to improving your site’s “organic” or
“natural” rankings in search engines. The search engines index your
site using what’s referred to as a “spider” or “robot.” This program
(or algorithm) is designed to view the code of each page and determine
its relevance on a page-by-page basis, as well as its relevance in
relationship to the rest of the site. There are many different factors
that determine your site’s listing in search engines result pages
(SERPs) and optimization can be quite a time consuming task, depending
on the number of pages and amount of content on your site.
Industry
statistics show that, even with an increase in the number of PPC
campaigns, 60% of searchers still click on organic listings. That does
not appear to be changing anytime soon. As competition increases for
many popular keywords, search engine optimization can be one of the
most affordable and valuable steps to take for the long-term success of
your site. There are many instances where both can be optimal for your
site and actually increase the probability that your link is clicked on
by almost 90%.
Pay-Per-Click
Pay-per-click
ads commonly appear as sponsored links or sponsored ads next to or
above the “natural” or “organic” results on search engine results
pages. When a user types a keyword query that matches a keyword or
keyword phrase in your list, the ad may be displayed. There are a
multitude of equations that factor into if and where your ad will
display with each major search engine.
The major players in
pay-per-click ad serving are Google AdWords, Yahoo! SearchMarketing,
and MSN adCenter. Each search engine varies, but minimum bid prices are
as low as $0.01 and can easily run upwards of $0.50 for more popular
search terms.
A common misconception is that the cost of
pay-per-click campaigns can get out of control. However, by setting a
maximum daily budget you control the amount spent each month.
Successful pay-per-click advertising is dependent on comprehensive
keyword research, writing highly targeted ad copy, relevant &
optimized landing pages and on-going optimization of campaigns.
Analytics
Web
Analytics plays an important role in search engine marketing. The most
effective way to gauge the success of search engine marketing efforts
is to assess the amount of incoming traffic and the paths that visitors
take when they arrive. Analytics provides important insight to what
content works your visitors want and what items need should be updated
regularly or addressed in redesigns. (Bizzuka is in the process of
adding a new Web analytics component that will give you comprehensive
metrics for your site.)
