Search Marketing
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How to Use Search Engine Marketing to Get More Hits on Your Website
When a business owner wants to know how to use any online marketing strategy to grow their business what they're really asking is: "How do I get more hits on my website?" And this is a fair question.
Discovering how to get more hits on a website requires that the business understand the fundamental principles of search marketing and then make a strategic decision to market their website more effectively. This is the goal of Search Engine Marketing, or SEM.
Search engine marketing is a marketing discipline that focuses on learning how potential customers and clients search online for products and services that your business offers. That information, in the form of "keywords", is then used by a search engine marketing firm such as our company to increase the prominence of your company's website on the Internet. Prominence is generally measured by the website's search engine ranking, or SER, when a prospective customer performs a search using a popular keyword. The higher the ranking for a popular keyword, the higher the chance of getting a visitor to your website.
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Why Search Engine Marketing Can't Make Up for a Poor Website
The success or failure of any ongoing search engine marketing (SEM) strategy is largely measured by a website's search engine ranking (SER) and the number of unique visits to the site. In short, search engine marketing answers the question "How do I get more hits on my website?"
But while a successful SEM strategy can deliver a high ranking and the subsequent visits, the website itself must deliver the “conversions” once the visitor lands on the page. In short, the website must be carefully designed to “close the deal” (however that is defined), or at least lead to that ultimate goal in a measurable way.
If a poor website consistently fails to make customers out of visitors then the best search engine marketing services in the world will be wasted. Click to learn more about website design usability. -
Is Your Website's "Quality Score" Hurting Your Search Engine Marketing Strategy?
"Quality score" is a term that refers to a score of relevancy that Google assigns to each of the ads placed by its advertisers.
In very simple terms, if you perform a search on, say, "waterproof Swiss watches" Google wants to display the most relevant ads to you. Google figures that If you're happy with the results it has displayed there's a good chance you'll use their search engine again in the future. And if you happen to click on a Google (paid) ad that just puts more money in Google's pocket -- which is how the search engine giant makes its money.
So, search engine marketing firms like ours understand that Google has a very effective (and complex) way of determining the quality (i.e. relevance, value) of your website to its intended topic. The higher the quality of the information you are providing on the site the easier it is to gain prominence and a higher search engine ranking. Conversely, the poorer the quality of the information on the site the more difficult it becomes for visitors to find your site.
How Search Engine Marketing Can Bring New Customers to Your Business
But first, what is Search Engine Marketing?
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Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is the strategy of making your company's website highly prominent so that users can more easily find the products or services that your business offers.
Website prominence is reflected in your website's Search Engine Ranking, or SER. SER, in turn, is determined by several key factors -- all of which reflect the degree of relevancy of your website's content to certain keywords. Your target customers use keywords in online search engines to find products or services they want to acquire from you.
Website Prominence
--> is measured by Search Engine Ranking
--> which is determined by a website’s Relevancy
--> to Keywords in the website’s content that describe your products or
services.
Generally speaking, a highly prominent website yields high website traffic.
Unfortunately, keyword relevance is a highly competitive commodity when marketing your business online using a website. For that reason your website’s prominence which is reflected in its search ranking is not something that just happens. Achieving and maintaining a high search ranking requires constant focus on:
- Search rankings for competitors and how they achieved them;
- Changes in keyword search patterns used by your target customers;
- Level of website authority relative to the products or services you offer;
- Level of content quality and relevancy at your website; and
- Frequency of adding fresh, high-quality content to your website.
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Paid Search Marketing vs. Organic Search Marketing
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows you to “bid” on one or more keywords in order to promote your website on a first page search listing immediately. Google Adwords, the most popular PPC ad programs, costs nothing to set up and is chock full of helpful tools to help you launch your PPC ad campaign.Paid search marketing, more commonly referred to as “pay-per-click” or “PPC” advertising, is a strategy whereby you “bid” on one or more keywords relevant to your products or services. A bid that’s high enough will enable you place a small ad featuring a link to your website on the all-important first page of a search. Your PPC ad will appear when someone uses one of the keywords you bid on in a search.
Most small businesses simply don't have the time or experience needed to effectively leverage this advertising strategy without making very costly mistakes. They risk blowing their entire advertising budget in a only a few days instead of the three-month period they may have planned. Despite claims by Google, Yahoo! and Bing about how “easy” their PPC programs are what they’re really telling you is how “easy” it is for them to drain your advertising budget – really fast.
With that word of caution, PPC advertising can be an extremely cost-effective way of bringing highly-qualified prospects to your website. Most businesses, however, would be well-advised to seek professional help in order to avoid costly mistakes and maximize their return on investment of every dollar spent to pull traffic to their website.
Organic Search Marketing
Organic, or “natural” search marketing is the search ranking a website achieves by the very nature of its relevancy and value relative to specific keywords used in an online search. A high organic search ranking is not one that is “paid for” in the same way that one pays for position in a PPC campaign. A high organic search ranking also does not normally occur soon after a website is published to the Internet. In fact, achieving a high organic search ranking generally requires at least 3 to 6 months of intensive work to “earn” a prominent ranking on the first page of a search result.
While a high organic search ranking takes hard work and a great deal of patience to achieve, there is another advantage to organic search that makes it all worthwhile. That advantage is the fact that “click-throughs” from organic search listings “convert” at a rate approximately 30% more frequently than do paid search listings. In other words, a prospect who clicks-through on an organic search listing is 30% more likely to become a paying customer than if the prospect clicked-through on a paid listing.
Why You Should NOT Choose One Type of Search Over the Other
We used to tell our clients that they should start out using a paid search (PPC) campaign while waiting for their website’s organic search ranking to reach the first page of a search result for our keywords. At that point they could end their PPC campaigns and concentrate on keeping their organic rankings. But now that the competition for “first-page” ranking is so intense we advise our clients to not choose one type of search over the other. The reason for this should be clear to any competent online marketer.Click here to read the full article
For more information about our Search Engine Marketing services... Please contact today us via toll-free phone (877-898-3957) or email (info@melcooper.com).