Get
Your Business Front and Center
There's
no denying the power of search engines in driving customers
to your business. A whole new realm of opportunities for marketing
your business online has opened up just in the last few years,
and the landscape of online marketing changes almost daily.
To take advantage of the opportunities online marketing provides,
you must first navigate the sometimes perplexing maze of search
engines, search results, paid placement, keywords, natural
results, PPC, SEO, ROI and other fairly baffling jargon that
didn't even exist just a few short years ago.
The good news is that understanding some of the terms and
techniques of search engine optimization ("SEO" for short)
can result in unprecedented success for your company. I guess
we have your attention now.
The bottom line is that paid placement (paying to show up
on a search engine's result page for a given search term)
and search engine optimization (optimizing your Web pages
so that you show up in results naturally), can provide an
extraordinarily high return on your investment.
Paid Placement
Paid placement is the standard for getting top positioning
in search engines. You're in control of how much you spend,
and you only pay when your link is clicked-also known as PPC,
or "pay-per-click." That's performance marketing, and it's
an unprecedented opportunity for businesses just like yours.
With paid placement, you can capture significant traffic in
key categories, and you can position yourself against your
competitors in a way that's much more affordable than traditional
advertising and marketing.
Paid search engine placement allows you to go after niche
markets, perhaps even those markets your competitors haven't
found yet. Paid placement allows for analysis and monitoring
so that adjustments can be made in your strategies, optimizing
not only your effectiveness in reaching your customers, but
also allowing for refinements that will result in more qualified
traffic at less cost.
While the benefits of paid placement are many, there are some
drawbacks.
First, bid costs are rising dramatically in many sectors.
You probably already know this if you've done investigation
into paid advertising. It's often tough to go head-to-head
with the big boys. The lesson to be learned is that pay-per-click
campaigns require active, skilled management.
Many businesses find that they do not have the time or budget
to manage a paid placement program in-house. Proper management
of such programs requires an investment in training and tools,
a strategy to stay on top of best practices, and an intimate
knowledge of the always-changing PPC landscape.
It probably won't surprise you that we recommend working with
a company specializing in online marketing to overcome some
of these obstacles.
The cost-effectiveness of paid search engine placement, or
ROI, "return on investment," explains why so many B2B marketers
are transferring a significant portion of their advertising
budget into their online marketing programs.
Natural Results
The best online marketing plans include not just paid placement
but also include a plan to optimize "natural results."
Natural results are those results that appear on a search
results page "naturally" or just because a certain page has
a high relevance to a given search term. Natural results are
worth their weight in gold, because natural results bring
in business at no cost, other than the cost of preparing your
Web pages to maximize their likelihood of appearing prominently
in search results.
High natural rankings can deliver significant visibility and
credibility. Many customers who use search engines view natural
results as more trustworthy than paid, or "sponsored" results.
It takes some time to achieve high natural rankings, but the
effort is more than worth it.
Creating pages that result in high natural rankings is a tricky
business. Search engines change their search algorithms ongoingly,
and keeping up with those changes could be a full-time job
(and is for many in the online marketing field).
Done right, pages that result in high natural rankings can
reap great rewards.
Front and Center
It's time to optimize your search engine results.
It's important to remember that your online marketing programs
should always be designed to be profitable. The world of search
engine results isn't a crapshoot where you throw keywords
around hoping something will stick.
Some say it's part science part art.
Ultimately, building the most attractive, user-friendly site
in the world won't mean much if you can't get customers to
stop in and buy, so search engine optimization is well worth
your valuable time.
Next, we take a look at specific goals, and how search engine
optimization and having a sound online marketing strategy
can help you reach your goals.
