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How To Gain Visibility On The Search Engines For Your Website
April 27th, 2010 | Posted in SEO.It’s the age old question. Should you use Pay Per Click service such as Google’s Adwords so that people can find your website, or should you invest time and money in getting your website properly optimized so that it can be found in the organic ranking results?
If your site is brand new then there is a high probability that a combination of both would be the order of the day. However, without knowing what your company’s philosophy is, or know what how much of a budget you have and what kind of return of interest you are looking for it would be hard to make a solid judgement.
Not that we are trying to cop out of giving a straight answer, we just want to be honest so the client’s expectations are realistic, and most importantly they are met.
If you are unsure whether you should set about running your own search engine marketing campaign then hopefully this article will give you a little baseline knowledge so you hit the ground running, or at the very least know what you should be looking for from a search engine optimization company that you might employ.
So what do you want to do? Search engine optimization or search engine marketing? There is a difference.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization, also known as Organic Search Engine optimization, offers quite a few advantages over Pay Per Click (PPC) and other paid advertising campaigns, however the results are very rarely seen in the very short term. Good techniques (also known as White Hat search engine optimization) need to employed so that your website enjoys lasting benefits and doesn’t find itself barred from the major search engines.
The reality is that most people have more trust in the organic rankings than they do for the paid advertising they find on the top or side of the search engine results pages. Because the organic rankings are unbiased the perception is that the information contained within those sites is more trustworthy. Of course that isn’t necessarily the case, but that is the perception. One study showed that only 14% of people who searched on the Internet stated that they trusted the paid listings on the search engine results pages. Even more alarming was that almost 30% stated that they found the paid ads to be “annoying”. What you can’t get away from is the fact that any work you do on search engine optimization is going to have a lasting effect on your website search engine rankings. Whereas paid ads only have an effect while you are paying for them to be displayed. There is a cost though for search engine optimization, even if you carry out this work for yourself or pay an expert to do it for you….whether that cost is time or money there is a cost. So don’t let anybody tell you that it is cheaper to do SEO than it is to run your paid advertising campaign. If you do either wrong then the cost could be a lot more than you initially thought it would be. Do it correctly and both of these techniques could pay off financially for you.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
Search Engine Marketing really encompasses everything that you do in order to promote your website on the search engines. When done well it will not only increase your traffic, but in the case of businesses it will hopefully increase profits. Search Engine Marketing actually includes Search Engine Optimization as a sub-set. So when people talk about Search Engine Optimization they are talkig about a part of Search Engine Marketing rather than the subject as a whole. Other aspects of search engine marketing include:
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
This is the act of setting up short text advertisements (usually) on major search engines or social network sites. You then link these ads to your chosen set of keywords and key phrases and then bid a maximum amount that you would be willing to pay the host site each time your ad is clicked. The position that your ad appears on the page when the chosen keyword is typed in depends on how many other companies that you are competing against for that specific word or phrase and where your maximum bid is in relation to their bids. It is really important that you carefully monitor how you are using this type of service to ensure that you are getting a good return on yourinvestment.
- Paid Directory Inclusion
This is basically paying a directory to include your website immediately rather simply the practice of paying a search engine or a directory to add a site to its database immediately, rather waiting for it to be natuarally included over time after it has been picked up by other directories. In some search engines and directories, paid inclusion is the only way you can get your website listed. In others, it’s an option that, if taken, will get your site listed quicker
Why would you want to pay to be included in a directory if most people use Google or one of the other major search engines to find businesses? Well you might be targeting a niche group of customers who use that directory on a regular basis. In those kinds of cases it may be a good investment to pay to be included, especially if your competitors are showing up there.
- Paid Advertising
Some websites give you the opportunity to place ads on their pages where you pay for the ads based on how often they are shown on their pages. Unlike Pay Per Click advertising, with this method you have to pay regardless of whether or not your ad is clicked once it has been shown on the web page. You really need to have some form of measuring tool on your site to see how many referrals these sites are sending you, otherwise you could spending a lot of money with no ROI.
The above search engine marketing practices, in contract to pure search engine optimization, offer immediate satisfaction in terms of your website becoming visible on the search engines and directories.
Pulling together all, or some of these techniques could, and should, help you to increase traffic to your website, which after all is the main purpose of this exercise. So if time and/or your budget allows then Search Engine Marketing could be just what the doctor ordered for your website.
Having said that though I wouldn’t suggest any kind of paid search engine marketing efforts without having a search engine optimization program running in tandem.
Without running a search engine optimization campaign you really are at the mercy of how long your budget will allow you to continue paying for the paid ads and PPC campaigns. Once the budget runs out, or you decide you don’t want to pay anymore then your search engine visibility is back to the point you where it was before you started all of this search engine marketing.
Something you should consider when deciding to eliminate your search engine optimization techniques from your search engine marketing campaigns is that most people click on the organic rankings (usually on the first page of the search results) than those who click on the sponsored results on the sides or top of the pages.
Studies show that only 30% of search engine users actually click on the paid or sponsored listings, compared to the 70% who only click on the organic listings. 30% may not sound too bad, but since your add will be competing against many other sites targeting the same keywords, then the chances of them clicking on your ad diminish considerably.
If you are getting 3% of those people who search your key words clicking on your paid ad then you are doing really well. So if you do take this route make sure that you have a well written and appealing ad to entice prospective customers to choose yours above the others.
Finally I would like to mention ‘analytics’. Regardless of whether you choose one or more of the techniques you really need to be measuring the performance of all your hard work. Install something like Google Analytics on the back end of your website so you can measure things like how many visitors are coming to your site and where they are being referred from. If your hits don’t improve as a result of your search engine marketing efforts you definitely need to revisit what you have done and then make the required adjustments so you get better results.
I wish you the best of luck and all the hits your heart desires!
Alchemy Digital Media are the search engine optimization experts in Fort Myers. If you would like a quotation for yoursearch engine marketing needs then visit us at www.alchemydigitalmedia.com.
Related posts:
- Submitting Your Website to Search Engines
- How To Gain High Quality Links To Your Website
- Get More Traffic by Increasing Your Website’s Page Ranking in the Search Engines
- Optimization Techniques for Search Engines
- The Importance of Search Engines
