The first question we think anyone will ask us is, “Why start here? Why start with Strategic Marketing and not with the development of the website and website content?” Well, it’s not only because the eProfitability Wheel starts with marketing, it’s because you first need to understand the basics of online marketing in order to properly develop your content in such a manner as to efficiently drive traffic to your site, capture leads, make sales, and build revenue.
To use an analogy from real estate, “It’s all about location and curbside appeal.” Your website has to meet the needs, requirements and expectations of your target audience(s) to be effective, just as a real estate listing must in order to sell. As we will discuss in later chapters, websites must meet the requirements of each distinct user type and fulfill each type’s often distinct reasons for visiting your site. This does not have to be an adversarial situation, but it is important to realize that more often than not, different people will have different standards and place different expectations upon the website.
Regardless of what anyone else says or wants, the only reason your website exists is to drive sales revenue. So, everyone else’s interests aside, your website must primarily serve your paying audience–that means prospects and clients first. Secondary user groups have to take second place in your mind, whether they are marketing people, sales reps, distributors, executives, or shareholders. How to best accomplish that small miracle will likely be a conversation that unfolds on a regular basis. However, having a clear understanding of how your marketing efforts will drive traffic to the site and directly impact your ability to convert that traffic into viable leads is critical before we begin the discussion of how to build an effective website.
Contrary to popular belief, these are not separate issues. Online, your website and your marketing efforts must function as a seamless whole–in total harmony–to maximize profitability. Our purpose is to provide you the perspective and tools you need to assess the best ways to achieve your sales and marketing objectives through the internet.
In this chapter we will provide a high-level analysis of the most important online marketing strategies. Most of them will be fleshed out in greater detail in later chapters. For our purposes, we are primarily concerned with marketing campaigns that directly result in website traffic. In the strict context of Online Strategic Marketing, traffic and the associated expenses are really the only metrics that matter. If we cannot statistically account for an effect of marketing, then it cannot be used as criterion of success. In other words, we cannot evaluate the impact that brand-awareness or brand-trust has on your business unless it is converted into the direct benefit of getting visitors to your website. Additionally, we have to be able to create a Cost-Per-Conversion value for the traffic and the sale, in order to evaluate ROI. Without this information, we don’t have the ability to build a strategy or take corrective measures to improve our results.
Because of the importance and complexity of SEM (search engine marketing), the second half of this chapter is dedicated entirely to this subject. For now it is enough to state that SEM will be the cornerstone of all your marketing efforts. There is simply no way around this fact. We are all well aware that the Internet has single-handedly revolutionized the way commerce happens, both online and off. Regardless of your product or service, regardless of your target audience, the Internet has become everyone’s research tool of choice. For the foreseeable future, the search engines have established themselves as the dominant interface for pursuing the product research process, whether the sale event is closed online or not.
Search engines are the gateway for 80-90% of global user interaction with the web, and more than 70% of respondents indicate that they do their research online before they make a purchase. Just ask yourself, when you want to find something where do you look? Most people under that age of 40 don’t even own a land-line anymore; much less use the phone book. If you want your company to be found, you have to be listed in the search engines. Being listed on the first 2 pages of search results for your relevant keywords will provide the highest quantity and quality of traffic online. As you will see, SEM provides the best marketing ROI available, bar none.
To this end, all other forms of advertising should and can be structured to support your SEM strategies. Keep in mind that ranking and search exposure is not solely dependent upon your website: it’s also determined to a very large extent by how your site is connected to the rest of the web.
Banner Advertising
Everyone knows what banner ads are – the often animated, graphical advertisements distributed across the web. They are most often encountered on general information websites like blogs and news sites, where the provider is not offering their own product or service line. Only sites that are not concerned about losing your attention, and thus sale, are going to display banner ads, in our estimation.
Statistically speaking, ever since the late 90’s, banner ads have been considered ‘dead’. Before the search engines had established their dominance, and the PPC (pay per click) ad model was created by Google, banners were one of the few advertising opportunities available online. However, the marketplace was quickly saturated with ads that no one wanted to look at. The internet is an antidote to the push marketing model, not an enabler of that same archaic model. Like television commercials, consumers quickly became largely “immune” to the presence of banner advertisements. Most are completely ignored, if not blocked outright with browser plug-ins. This is known as “banner blindness.” For a traffic-building strategy, banner ads are dead-ends. According for Forester Research, a well-placed banner will convert less than 1% of users. Talk about banner blindness!
This is not to say that we are completely against them. Utilized correctly, they are great for building brand-awareness online. Traditional marketing studies conducted over many decades prove conclusively that we as consumers subconsciously pick up and remember advertisements and brand names whether we are paying attention or not. So, if your company can afford to build its brand online, go for it. If your intention is to drive traffic and create quality leads, your money is better spent elsewhere.
Backlinks, a.k.a. Textlinks
For direct traffic purposes, backlinks are fairly weak. However, as we will cover in greater detail in the next chapter, links are a critical component to your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts. There are numerous strategies for building links: they can be traded, purchased on a permanent basis, asked or bartered for, or leased on a monthly basis. The four most important criteria for gauging the value of a link are:
- The relevance and trust of the source website and page your link is posted on
- The anchor text of the link – the actual text that serves as the hyperlink to your site
- The destination page on your site the link is directed to
- The type of backlink (i.e. directory, article, press release, etc.)
Online Directories
Online directories are sites that list businesses and websites like the white and yellow pages of old. In some cases, and depending upon your market, they can successfully drive traffic to your site. For manufacturers and industrial suppliers, Thomas Net, the replacement of the print version of the Thomas Register, is one example of a directory seen to generate direct traffic to advertisers’ websites. In general, though, directory listings are better served for other purposes; namely, as part of a link-building strategy to support your SEO efforts. Directories provide an affordable venue for getting relevant links to your site.
Multimedia Distribution
Video and audio files, in the right places, can be very effective mediums for driving traffic to your site. This became especially true with Google’s purchase of YouTube, and the launch of Yahoo’s video platform. In order to continually improve the search results, all the search engines are integrating video files into the organic search result pages, known as a universal results page.
Additionally, millions of users go to 3rd party websites to watch video content for both entertainment as well as product research purposes, every day (is it any wonder YouTube exceeds 2 billion pageviews a day?). Podcasts for download, streaming content on your site and on YouTube, all make for an enhanced user experience that builds brand, drives traffic and improves your SEO efforts. Audio interviews also provide similar value, though they may not get as much exposure.
As with anything, quality is a key component to success. We all have high expectations on video and audio content, having grown up with television and radio. For example, it’s not enough to just throw something together and publish it; your brand and corporate image are on the line here, so make it worth your viewer’s while. On the flipside, most videos that exist online needn’t be television quality.
Formatted correctly, multimedia should be considered a requirement for any serious online marketing campaign. Testimonials, messages from the CEO, How-To’s, etcetera.
Article Distribution
Publishing valuable information online, through press releases and articles is a great way to drive traffic, boost your brand, establish your expertise in your vertical or market place, and positively drive your SEO. Outside of SEO itself, article distribution is perhaps the most effective online marketing strategy. There are thousands of information-based websites that are continually looking for good content to publish every day. A well-written article has the potential to get published on dozens or even hundreds of websites. Again, formatting is essential, as you will want to include keyword-driven textlinks embedded in the content that point to specific pages of your site that deal with that keyword subject matter. This is called ‘Deep Linking’ in the industry, which means obtaining links to the internal pages of your website, and not just the homepage.
You will hear us speak of this over and over again throughout the book, as it plays a defining role to every aspect of online marketing, and that is Relevance.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing can be an extremely effective method for expanding your sales and marketing network with minimal investment from the parent company. As a service, it allows just about anyone to expand their sales channels exponentially through a network of affiliates that earns money on a customizable commission basis for a Cost Per Action (CPA) event. As the provider, you have the ability to set the commission event and percentage as you wish. Keep in mind, of course, that the more attractive your offering is, the more affiliates you will gain. Here is a brief list of the types of CPA events a business can create through an Affiliate Marketing campaign manager:
- Percentage of Sale
- Lead Conversion
- Pay Per Click
- Anonymous Data Acquisition
As a marketing solution, Affiliate Marketing has exploded in the online environment due to the diffuse nature of the Internet. As we are all well aware, the web is so expansive that it is essentially impossible for any company, regardless of size, to directly manage campaigns across even a tiny percentage of the available opportunities. There are millions upon millions of websites, in dozens of languages that could display your ads, and there are hundreds of thousands of people online that could potentially act as your commission-only sales force.
There are dozens of Affiliate Marketing communities (bringing advertisers and publishers of web sites together) and affiliate management tools available that make it incredibly easy to integrate as a permanent addition to your marketing and sales channels. Google it.
Offline Marketing Integration
While not an internet marketing strategy in and of itself, the value of integrating your offline marketing strategies (i.e. traditional media ads, radio, TV, etc.) and tying those efforts back to your online efforts will provide enormous benefit to all your marketing efforts. Again, all campaigns must be held accountable to evaluate ROI. It is stunning to us how companies are willing to throw millions of dollars annually at campaigns that cannot be assessed. From our perspective, a benefit of an unstable economy is to shake out the rug and get rid of the lice (yuck). Getting rid of wasteful advertising will only benefit those who know what they are doing and drive agencies that don’t know what they doing out of business. Unless, of course, they get artificially propped up by the congresscritters.
Trade Shows: If you frequent trade shows, be sure to make prominent mention of your website. Showcase it. You may also want to allow people to sign-up on the spot for product updates, newsletters, or event calendars on-site. Another tactic we’d recommend, if on-the-spot sign-ups won’t work, is to have people sign up with their names and emails, to receive updates as well.
What better way to build a database of targeted, potential consumers is there? Everyone who signs up is, in one way or another, interested in hearing more from you.
Print and Display Media: Is the perfect opportunity not only to generate brick-and-mortar foot traffic, but online traffic as well. Always tie back these media to your online media, whether it is a specific landing page created specifically for promotion or a best-selling brand product, there’s no sense in making people chase down your website.
If they have to search for you, the chances of a possible consumer finding your competitors is extremely high. And what once was a solid lead opportunity has now been put up for grabs.
Television and Radio: In recent years we’ve seen more and more companies supplementing these media with tiebacks to their online efforts. As with traditional print media, the same holds true for television and radio. Give your possible, future consumers multiple avenues to engage with you.
Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) incorporates all aspects of building a web site’s exposure in the search engines. This includes “Organic Ranking,” “Pay-Per-Click” advertising, and social media marketing. Organic Ranking is achieved through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to acquire natural positioning in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s). Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising refers to the ‘sponsored-links’ fields of the search pages, which enable anyone to purchase clicks and traffic, with front page ad exposure, for any keyword.
The 6 Primary Aspects of Search Engine Marketing:
- Keyword Analysis
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
- Local vs. National Targeting
- Multimedia Distribution
- Web Analytics
All the search engines follow similar strategies for ranking sites in the organic results, and all offer PPC advertising. It is estimated that 80% or more of online queries and sales begin with one of the top 5 engines (Forrester Research, 2007). Therefore, SEM is an absolute necessity for online marketing success and should be afforded more importance and budget in the overall online marketing strategy, than all other forms of online advertising.
Some ‘cold hard’ Search Stats:
- Search engines are the gateway for 80-90% of global user interaction with the web
- Depending on your Target Demographic, Google is the solution for +60% of the market.
- Yahoo is currently managing to hold onto about 25%, while MSN’s systems consistently fall under 10%.
- ‘Eye Tracking’ and Search Usability studies performed by MarketingSherpa®, indicate that approximately:
- 80% of users find what they are searching for ‘above the fold’ of the very first page. In other words, in the top 5 organic or PPC results for any given search.
- 90% of users rarely leave the first page of results, and less than 1-2% go beyond the second.
- The top 3 organic positions receive the most attention
Moral of the story – If your website is not displaying in the first two pages of search results, organically or through advertisements, you are virtually invisible to almost everyone online. (And please, do not think you can make up the difference with Banner Advertising – It’s not going to happen! A good banner ad, appropriately placed on the right website, will convert 1-2% of displays into traffic. As mentioned previously, banner ads are rarely effective for generating traffic.
Keyword Analysis
The backbone of any SEM campaign is the keyword analysis that allows an SEM professional to discover exactly what the public is searching for in relation to your product and service offerings. When we say “keyword,” we also mean “key phrase” or “keyword phrase.” For our purposes, they are fully interchangeable naming conventions of the same thing: the word, or string of words, entered into a search engine to find something online.
Search Engine Marketing constitutes what we like to call ‘Reverse Marketing.’ In the past, marketing was focused on ‘pushing’ the brand and product awareness out into the marketplace to create awareness, loyalty and sales. SEM requires the exact opposite. Traffic is ‘pulled’ in with enticements and relevant keyword matching, or “pull-marketing.” The process of keyword integration on your website encompasses many factors–most importantly the naming of your product according to the predetermined naming expectations of your audience. For someone who is unaware of what a “Gizmo 2000” is, a savvy business owner must include the exact keyword driven name(s) of what that product is and/or does. It’s about creating a convergence of brand and application.
Keyword preferences will change across geographical locations, genders, demographics, and are unique for all industry verticals. The keyword analysis is not just about uncovering words; it’s a window into the mindset of your target audience and the public as a whole. It will provide invaluable guidance for establishing your company and brand online. Without this information, you have no rudder to steer an SEM campaign.
Keyword Analysis Tools
There are multiple keyword tools available that can be used to ferret out this information. In years past, a number of third party solutions popped up to fill the gap, like Trellian Keyword Discovery® and Wordtracker®. The main problem with all of these systems has been accuracy in traffic numbers. They each have their own scheme for projecting traffic amount per keyword, which are broad ‘guess-timations’ at best. Additionally, their keyword suggestions are just as inaccurate because they are based on false assumptions in the first place.
Finally, in 2007, Google began providing generalized traffic data in relation to PPC advertising, with fairly realistic numbers on ad display opportunities for AdWords’ clients. It is called the Google Keyword Tool. However, their numbers are also skewed because they include their content network– all the sites that use Google’s AdSense system to display PPC ads on their site to earn a commission percentage of the PPC cost. That aside, this data is extremely beneficial for all SEM purposes because they provide an expanded list of synonymous keyword terms, the average PPC cost data, and global versus local traffic estimations. Additionally, as with majority of Google products, it’s free.
The trick to properly using any keyword analysis data is to avoid taking the stats at face value. The numbers are not specific enough to make assumptions on the actual amount of traffic. How are they useful then? They are extremely useful in relation to each other. It is not necessarily important to know exactly how many people search per month for “shoes”; I guarantee there are a whole lot. What is useful is to know how many searched for “shoes,” versus “sandals” or “tennis shoes” or “black leather dress shoes.”
Picking the Right Keywords
Ultimately, the most important part of doing a thorough keyword analysis is that it enables us to choose the right words to target. The most common mistake people make is to assume that they should target all the keywords with the most amount of traffic. This may, or may not, be the case. As we will discuss more in depth later, your ability and the associated costs to rank organically, or purchase PPC traffic, for any given keyword is going to be entirely dependent upon the amount of competition. After more than 10 years of keyword research, we have yet to find a situation where multiple niche keywords were not available to be exploited by the savvy SEO specialist.
In other words, there are always ‘hidden’ keyword opportunities to target, that enable a business to affordably get in the game to obtain search visibility and traffic with relative ease. Therefore, picking the right keywords is the foundation of the SEM strategy that includes both short and long term objectives. The only limitation will be your budget.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO, again, is the implementation of keywords, content, and links to clearly define your products and services to search engines and users alike, in order to achieve top positions in the SERPS (search engine results pages). Keep in mind that you are dealing with an algorithm, a computer-driven mathematical equation, with set limitations and parameters of evaluation. There is nothing intuitive about it, with little to no comparative capabilities. In essence, this means that targeting “shoes” will not help your rankings for “sandals”. Algorithms can make associations, but they are limited. Therefore, it is best to be decisive and clear about what you do.
There are numerous strategies to achieve top organic rankings, both ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ The bad SEO is referred to as ‘Black Hat’ and should be avoided at all costs; punishment is a one way ticket to the void– your site will be removed from the search index entirely. We do not advocate, teach or use black hat practices. ‘White Hat SEO’ includes strategies deemed acceptable by the search engines and is based upon simple logic–what is good for the user is good for the search. Done correctly, SEO can provide the highest marketing ROI available today. However, putting keywords onto your site is just the beginning, and is generally not enough to drive a successful rank-building campaign. There are dozens of alterations to be made for every page of a site, which often require ongoing refinement to improve results. There are two primary aspects to SEO: Onsite and Offsite.
Onsite SEO
As the name implies, Onsite SEO is specifically concerned with the proper presentation of information, and the integration of keywords on a website. Simply put, search engines quantify a website’s relevance and domain-level trust based upon what a particular website says about itself through content and internal anchor text (we are talking about onsite SEO only here). The search engines are directed to look at specific areas of a website to determine exactly what that site or particular page is about in order to define rank. An added bonus is that when done correctly, SEO will simultaneously improve your lead conversion ratios because your content becomes easier to digest for human users, follows a logical format (or argument), and is thus relevant to your target audience’s needs. Keyword content considerations necessarily include:
- Heading Tags, Page Titles and Meta Data
- Site Platform and Coding concerns and requirements
- Content Visibility – just because you see it, does not mean the search engines can
- Site Navigation/Menu naming conventions
- Internal linking opportunities from every page
- Site Usability considerations
- Image naming conventions
- XML and HTML sitemaps
Offsite SEO
Offsite SEO is concerned with obtaining keyword optimized links to appropriate pages on the website. This is best summed up as what other websites across the web “say” about your website (now we are referring to offsite SEO). Links act as highly effective signals that attract the search engine’s attention. Inbound links from trustworthy sites are used to both confirm what you are saying about yourself (with your onsite SEO efforts) and establish the trustworthiness and relevance of your webpage (website) content. Industry experts agree that offsite optimization is a critical component for successful SEM.
Offsite optimization is fueled by what are commonly referred to as “Backlinks”. These are links obtainable from a variety of online sources, such as directory listings, press releases, blog posts, etc. Google revolutionized the search marketplace by including a website’s interconnectedness to the rest of the web as a primary factor for determining rank. Therefore, your website’s ranking is determined by the effective implementation of keywords both on your site and as dispersed across the internet. The object is to appear as a credible source of information and provider of your product and/or service, in relation to your keywords. In the industry, this is referred to as ‘establishing authority.’
The search engines determine this through both the quantity and quality of inbound links to your site. Quantity is simply the number of links that point to your webpage or website as an authority–in most cases the more the better. Quality is a bit harder to define, as it is primarily a function of relevance and importance. Links from a site that is relevant to your industry will have a greater impact than one that is not. Furthermore, a link from an important website (as identified by Google Page Rank) will also maximize the impact.
Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC (Google’s “AdWords” and Yahoo’s “Sponsored Search” systems, etc.) is the Search Engines’ way of leveling the playing field and generating a sizeable income in the process. It is, in fact, Google’s only sizeable source of income (other than maybe their financial investments). PPC lets anyone willing to purchase website traffic the opportunity to bid for keyword searches. The client gets the needed front-page exposure without the difficulties of SEO, and because of the bidding system, the market sets the value of that placement. Costs accrue on a per-click basis, as the name implies–not on a pay per display basis (CPM), as with banner ads.
One click through might cost the advertiser $0.10 or $30.00. It primarily depends on how much the competition is willing to spend. However, this does not mean you have to break the bank to get results. The engines offer customizable restraints into the system so that daily spending limits can be set for each ad group and campaign, to fit any budget. Keep in mind though, there are multiple other factors involved with how the search engines determine the cost of a click through, and having professional help is the key to maximizing your ROI. This is to say, PPC success is NOT simply a matter of out-bidding the competition for a given phrase.
The PPC cost per click (CPC) is also determined by the relevance of the target keywords, the ad copy and the content of the page the ad points to, known as Quality Score (a fairly new development within Google’s PPC). This is particularly true with Google, whose revenue lifeline depends on their ability to provide the best results for searches. If they allow their SERPs to become cluttered with garbage, people will turn to another engine. To maintain their dominance in the search market by providing the best results, they have established a very effective system to weed out the chaff in the PPC market. Once again, it is a factor of relevance. Creating ad campaigns for keywords not directly reflected in the content of your website will exponentially increase your PPC costs. Thus, SEO becomes increasingly important for your site as even basic onsite SEO will have a direct impact on your PPC campaign costs.
Effective PPC Strategies:
- Only target keywords your website content can support
- Evaluate Position – while being in the first position can be important, it is often not cost effective. Additionally, lower positions can provide higher click-through-rates and better conversions – seems counter-intuitive, but it is true nonetheless
- Incorporate Negative Keywords: an extremely important filter for weeding out irrelevant traffic
- Focus on both the obvious and obscure keywords to find niche opportunities to:
- drive quality traffic
- minimize click through costs
An often-overlooked value of running a PPC campaign is that it can be the best approach for determining keyword effectiveness and ranking strategies for SEO. Knowing that “Manhattan Real Estate” is not the same as “Manhattan Townhomes for Sale,” figuring out which is more relevant to your target audience, in addition to knowing which will be easier to target, can be of critical importance. PPC lets you find out within weeks what that difference will be, before committing to a long and expensive SEO process. Test the market with PPC before engaging in SEO. Within a few days, anyone can have a top-positioned marketing campaign underway.
Local versus National Search
An increasingly important function of SEM is the local versus national (or global) search opportunities available for businesses that service geo-specific areas. Local search is now integrated into PPC management systems so that businesses have the option to display their ads by zip code, state, region, country, internationally, and even to be multilingual. With regards to SEO, integrating your geo keywords is critical if location matters. In most cases, it will be easier and more affordable to target your customers on a local basis.
Additionally, the major search engines provide opportunities to integrate your business location into their mapping tools. In the example below, you will see that the top section of the SERP is dominated by the map with 10 results that include name, website, and phone number. To ensure placement and the display or your correct information, you will need to login to each of the search engines and provide that data directly.
SEM Strategy
Site traffic from the search engines is critical, but traffic is only a servant to the Goal, and is not the Goal itself. Traffic is a “must have,” but should not become the all-encompassing goal of a SEM strategy. All marketing campaigns, including SEO, exist to increase sales leads and profitability.
Traffic is a requirement to achieve this goal, thus SEO is enormously important. But keep in mind that your website must simultaneously meet the requirements for a multitude of equally important, co-existing strategies, which must function together to be effective. Arguably, the most important factor to marketing your company successfully online is the development of a strategy for presenting web content to the appropriate audience(s). Therefore, good SEO is not just about ranking for keywords; it’s the definition of online branding.
Effective SEM strategies require:
- Extensive keyword research to:
- Broadly uncover the range of keyword variations and opportunities in the marketplace in relation to your product
- Narrow the results to the best keywords available to match your target audiences’ expectations
- The integration of keywords into the appropriate places of your site for both search engines and various and distinct User Groups alike
- Manipulation of existing content
- Serves to improve content relevance in relation to your target audiences’ searches
- Creation of new content and Landing Pages when needed
- Expands the scope of available keywords to target
- Landing pages are specialty webpages with targeted content for maximizing conversion ratios from both PPC and SEO traffic
- Various conversion opportunities to acquire leads and sales
- Contact forms, Request For Quotes, etc
- Downloads, PDFs, CADs, etc
- Multimedia: videos, audio interviews, etc
- Direct Sales events
- Analytics software to track all conversion activities to source and marketing campaign
- Integrated phone analytics to track calls generated from online marketing efforts
- The renaming of products, when possible, to match consumer expectations, which creates Relevance
- Information Architecture and Site Usability evaluations and improvements where necessary
- The integration of online and offline marketing efforts
- Ongoing evaluation and testing to continually improve the effectiveness of your strategies
How much should SEM cost?
The answer will always be a direct correlation to the amount of competition in your marketplace –and your budget. The answer will also depend on the experience and skill of the SEM team you choose to involve. The general rule: the more experience and skill, the more the cost.
Like it or not, that is the determining factor for all forms of advertising. The more competing firms stand in your way, the more it’s going to cost to dominate the engines for your keywords. Just keep in mind, the longer you wait, the more expensive it becomes. Every day, more companies are jumping into the game–and only the top 20 or so players, between natural and sponsored sections, are going to reap the benefits.
SEO vs PPC & PPC vs SEO
Advantages of SEO vs PPC:
- Organically ranked pages generally receive the highest click through ratios, averaging 5-10x more than PPC, depending on the market.
- As PageRank and the influence of SEO expand, a site’s position in the search engine result page will appear higher, which increases legitimacy, increases trust afforded by the consumer, and boosts the appearance of expertise. SEO has long-term benefit.
- Once solid rankings have been established, the cost of maintaining or increasing that rank will be substantially less than a comparable PPC campaign.
- SEO, if done correctly, will simultaneously improve the user experience of your site. It will benefit your customers, because your content will be relevant to their search, efficiently cataloged, and easier to use.
- At this time, SEO has a direct impact on PPC costs by increasing keyword relevance, which serves to decrease costs through what is called a ‘Quality Score’
- Patience is a factor! Building a strong search position for keywords is a slow process and requires dedication. It may take 2 months, or 2 years, there is no way to exactly determine how long it will take to reach your ranking objectives. It is dependent upon how aggressive you are, the skills of your SEO provider, and the amount of competition in your vertical or market place.
- Because it is a long term process, you will not see a great impact on your ROI in the short term. This does not mean it’s not possible, but it is the exception rather than the rule.
- Immediate Results!
- Allows anyone to get top ranking exposure
- Customizable daily spending limits per keyword
- Real Time Tracking: Click Through/Spending Stats
- Fairly easy to use and control
- Allows user to set and compete for unlimited keyword fields
- Provides invaluable conversion feedback on keyword targets in real time
- Potentially expensive – just imagine a retailer paying $10 cash to everyone who walked into their store! PPC costs add up quickly, especially if you don’t know how to effectively leverage your opportunities.
- Requires daily/weekly/monthly maintenance in most, if not all, cases
- Provides little long-term benefit to your site in terms of SEO efforts
Disadvantages of SEO vs PPC
- Patience is a factor! Building a strong search position for keywords is a slow process and requires dedication. It may take 2 months, or 2 years, there is no way to exactly determine how long it will take to reach your ranking objectives. It is dependent upon how aggressive you are, the skills of your SEO provider, and the amount of competition in your vertical or market place.
- Because it is a long term process, you will not see a great impact on your ROI in the short term. This does not mean it’s not possible, but it is the exception rather than the rule.
Advantages of PPC vs SEO
- Immediate Results!
- Allows anyone to get top ranking exposure
- Customizable daily spending limits per keyword
- Real Time Tracking: Click Through/Spending Stats
- Fairly easy to use and control
- Allows user to set and compete for unlimited keyword fields
- Provides invaluable conversion feedback on keyword targets in real time
Disadvantages of PPC vs SEO
- Potentially expensive – just imagine a retailer paying $10 cash to everyone who walked into their store! PPC costs add up quickly, especially if you don’t know how to effectively leverage your opportunities.
- Requires daily/weekly/monthly maintenance in most, if not all, cases
- Provides little long-term benefit to your site in terms of SEO efforts
As more and more people and companies are utilizing search engines as their primary shopping and purchasing medium, the Internet provides a business marketing cosmos unlike any other. Your product can be viewed by a larger audience than is afforded by any other form of advertising–an indisputable fact. Therefore, it can be easily argued that a savvy business will dedicate the largest portion of its marketing budget to the internet, with the majority going to SEO and/or PPC campaigns.
As with any marketing strategy, a sufficient budget is a must. The question is one of priority: Immediate or long term results? The best campaign will encompass both. A 50/50 approach is recommended, or something close to it; half to SEO, half to PPC. Utilizing this strategy, and assuming your budget is sufficient for your market, you are assured exposure and traffic now, and for the foreseeable future.
Another thing to keep in mind is that once organic ranking has been established, and the website/page is in the top 10 results for your keyword, the PPC budget for that keyword can be directed to new targets to expand your scope and exposure. Conversely, you can reduce or eliminate it if desired. However, as competition grows, continued vigilance will be required to ensure those hard won organic rankings are maintained, providing efficient ROI, and sufficient results. Many companies with top organic rankings are maintaining PPC advertising for the same keywords to guarantee top placement in both fields, for maximum exposure.
Tools of the SEM Trade
Google Systems
- All tools use the Google account user info, includes:
- Google Docs – implementation tracking
- Webmaster Tools – sitemap.xml file, search engine QA, detailed site CTRs
- Google Analytics – primary analytics, included on all sites
- AdWords – PPC accounts (limited accessibility)
- URL Builder for campaign tracking in Google Analytics
Google’s Traffic Estimator – the AdWords Keyword Research Tool
- Designed for PPC, this tool can be used for SEO as well, to determine the most effective KW (Key Word) Targets
- No credentials required
SEO Tools
- Wordtracker
- KW research tool
- Subscription service requires purchase
- SEM Rush
- Expanded/long-tail KW ranking list
- Paid Search Competitive Data
- Subscription service requires purchase
- SEO Quake
- Provides a website evaluation tool set for backlinks, site, competitive evaluation tool
- Toolbar available for download and installation for your Browsers (preferably Firefox)
- Only use as necessary – if it is left on, your IP will be blocked
- SEOMoz
- SEO community resource center
- Subscription service requires purchase
- Key Lime Tie
- Site scan system, sitemap.xml builder
- Download and install program
Link Building Systems
- Link Diagnosis
- Link evaluation tool, can be used for your own site or others, to see all search registered Backlinks to any website you enter.
- Download and Install browser plug-in, and begin your evaluation
- Directory Submission Package
- Affordable, mass directory submission package
- Credentials – none, use the submission form
- PR Web
- Press Release syndication system
- Sponsored Reviews
- “Web Reviews” aka blog reviews, for link building
- Subscription service requires purchase
SEM Management Systems
PPC Specific Tools
- SpyFu – Deep competitive data on specific market place competition. International available. Subscription service, requires purchase.
- Google’s Web Optimizer – Part of AdWords, this tool facilitates conversion rate improvement across unique landing pages or destination URLs
- Acquisio - Management Tool
- Clix Marketing: Management Tool