SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING Search Engine Marketing Strategies YOU ARE HERE!

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING STRATEGIES

An Integrated Approach to Search Engine Marketing Is the Most Effective Way to Achieve the Best ROI

Effective website marketing solution should include promotion across search engines and directories. Generally, it is considered that there are two specific areas of website marketing:

• search engine optimization
• search engine advertising.

Ethical search engine optimization (SEO), including various user and search engine friendly techniques, is utilized to maximize the chances to obtain top natural / organic listings. If achieved, top organic listings act similar to free advertising. But, typically it takes a few or more months to achieve top organic listings in not highly competitive fields. Achieving top listing in highly competitive fields can take years. As new competitors are constantly being added to search engine indexes, fine tuning and maintenance are also required to keep these listings.

Websites submitted through a paid-inclusion program should also be expertly optimized to achieve higher rankings. Search Engine Optimization Basics >>

SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING

Search engine advertising includes sponsorships, contextual advertising, and pay-for-placement (PFP) advertising. Most often utilized search engine advertising solution is PFP advertising, also called PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, as the advertisers are charged when a searcher clicks on the search listing.

PPC search engines rank their results according to the bid amount. Top placement in PPC search engine results, both on the search engine and its distribution network, are guaranteed if you pay. When a search is performed, the ranking of search engine listings are arranged from the highest to the lowest bid for that keyword. Essentially the highest bids get the highest rankings, and a higher ranking brings more traffic.

Two most popular PPC programs are the Overture listings and Google AdWords Select. Overture listings are the 'sponsor listings' that appear on the top of search results of partner web sites such as MSN, Yahoo and AltaVista. Although Google Adwords Select is also a PPC program, it has a relevancy factor built in, which ensures the most relevant ads appear the highest.

Advertisers supply the following details:

• listing, which includes title, description, and URL;
• keywords and phrases that apply to the listing;
• bids, e.g. amount paid per click, which varies by keyword.

Effectiveness of the PPC advertising campaigns depends on: price of the bid, Ad copy and distribution, keyword phrases selection,and effectiveness of the landing pages.

There are three key advantages to bidding on keywords in the pay-per-click search engines:

• the listing of your site is very quick on PPC engines almost immediately (from a few hours to a few days);
• you can get top rankings by outbidding other competing sites;
• you pay only when someone actually clicks through to your web site.
  

But, typically:

• click through rates on PPC listings are not as high as those for natural / organic SERPs,
• Overture and Google have strict editorial and relevancy policies which must be conformed to,
• the bid amount could get rather high,
• campaigns require active management, which can be both time consuming and complicated,
• some experience is needed to determine the best strategy to sufficient quality and quantity of targeted visitors for a particular product or service.

Increasing the site's ability to convert visitors into customers is critical to the success of a PPC campaign. One of the key advantages of a PPC system is delivering more visitors to a website, but one of the largest downfalls is the possibility of getting too broad. If the terms you bid on are too broad, your website might acquire more visitors, but with no real interest in your products or services. In short, you get huge but untargeted traffic, and your conversion rate crops. That's why creating a website architecture and design that ensures that users quickly and easily find what they look for, while motivating and helping the transactions is critical.

Opinions are quite divided regarding the usefulness of PPC search results. Those against PPC results indicate that PPC search results are contrary to the very essence of the Web, and not useful in finding information. Those in favor state that the free market always brings the best results to the top.

According to Jupiter Research, paid search listings total $1.6 billion in 2003, making up 25 percent of total online advertising spending.

A survey by Search123 revealed that two-thirds of the respondents regarded PPC as their most effective method of online advertising, followed by the search engine optimization (SEO), and more than half combined PPC and SEO to improve rankings.

An integrated approach is obviously the best way to exploit the strengths of both SEO and PPC advertising, and achieve the best ROI. Also, Conducting at least a limited PPC campaign at the beginning of your overall marketing campaign is recommended, because of its positive effects on branding.

CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING PROGRAMS

Contextual advertising, a relatively new form of search engine advertising, actually has nothing to do with SERPs. Contextual ads are text-based ads (similar to Google Adwords), displayed on other quality websites, when specific keywords are searched upon. They are based on the content of pages people are viewing, thus very relevant to what the user is looking for. Nevertheless, some advertisers state that contextual ads are less effective than ads displayed on search engine results.

Google includes all AdWords advertisers in the content targeted advertising program called AdSense, treating this program as an expansion of the AdWords PPC program. The technology used is the same as for search, and all contextual ads are reviewed to ensure relevancy. AdWords advertisers can choose not to utilize contextual advertising, the same as with syndication on AOL, Ask Jeeves, etc.

Overture's contextual advertising program is called Content Match, and the ads appear on MSN Search, Advertising.com, etc. The technology utilized is a combination of human editors and algorithmic engine.

LOCAL PAID SEARCH ADVERTISING PROGRAMS

According to a new research report, 60% of all searches are local in nature. The survey also showed that 60% of small business advertisers state that three-quarters of their business originates within a 50-mile radius (Kelsey Group)

Both Google and Yahoo's Overture Services (on AltaVista) experiment with a local search. As top search engines Google and Yahoo add more local search options, local paid search advertising is forecast to grow from $1 billion today to $2.5 billion in 2008. This could very well be the future of paid search, which might allow participation of the 10 million small and medium sized businesses in the US

BANNER ADS

Banner ad is one of the oldest search engine marketing method. The goal is to present the banner ad to the visitors most likely to be interested in specific product or service. The most suitable technique for the directories is to serve the banner ad when a particular category, or the closest category match, is clicked on by the visitor. The other technique is to link the ads to specific keywords or phrases, and serve them whenever they are searched for on the search engine or directory.

Clicking on the banner ad takes a visitor to the advertiser's website. The rate for the display of the ad is paid based on a cost per impression (CPM), depending on the popularity of the category or search phrase. This type of advertising became less popular because it was abused in the past, to present less relevant ads to search engine and directory users. Although banner ad advertising is not as popular as it once was, targeted banner ad technique is still very much in use today, to ensure better product exposure and branding.

Although the significance of successfully online marketing of your product or service almost equals the significance of its quality nowadays, the other half is still the actual quality of your product or service itself. While the traffic can obviously be delivered and retained on the website by effective search engine marketing, your product or service, its features and benefits, will still be the crucial factor for making a sale. So, beside quality search engine promotion, all other important factors, and particularly the quality of products/services that you offer and the quality of your customer service, determine the success of your website. However high your search engine rankings might be, if the quality of your products or services and level of customer service are not satisfactory, there would be no actual increase in sales, no matter how high and targeted the traffic is.

User Oriented Design & Ethical Website Marketing Strategies by Distinctia, 2006