Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
How To Drive More Qualified Traffic To Your Website 

Search engine marketing (SEM) should be a VITAL part of any enterprise's overall marketing mix.  There are literally millions and millions of search queries entered into internet search engines every day!  For instance, back in February 2003 Google reported 250 million searched a day at its Google sites and search partners' sites.  Overture, now Yahoo Search, reported 167 million per day at that time, while Inktomi reported 80 million and LookSmart 45 million.  And that was just a partial list.  (See the stats snapshot below for one of our clients who has an online store!)

Internet Searches For Local Goods And Services

Nielsen/Net-Ratings reports that a full 15% of the active Internet population in the US visited a real estate or apartment web site in April of 2005 – an increase of 26% in six months.

85% of people who use print yellow pages also use online yellow pages ( Yellow Pages Association, January 2005).

But know this: Failing to be seen on the first page of [search engine] results means that over 40% of potential visitors will not find your site. ( IProspect Search Engine Users Attitude Survey, April 2004). 78% of web users will abandon their search if the first 3 pages don't provide an answer to their question (November 2002 Media Post article reporting results of Spring 2002 IProspect survey).

Online Purchasing
Nielsen/Net-Ratings reports (July 11, 2005) that 53% of the active Internet universe, or 74 million people in the US, conduct finance activity online. Online retailers have increased their advertising spending by 77% in the last year.

Business Executives
In a September 2003 study by Survey.com for Forbes.com and Gartner2 (source: CyberAtlas - JupiterMedia) 51 percent of executives surveyed named the web as the most important business information resource. The 2,800+ respondents included 1,721 presidents, CEOs, and board members; 236 vice presidents; and 154 other C-level executives. Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO, Forbes.com, said "We can now unequivocally point to the Web as a primary business information resource for today's business leaders."  Obviously, that percentage has only increased since the time this survey was conducted.

Putting up a good content-rich website is simply the first step in Search Engine Marketing.  You also have to OPTIMIZE your site for the search engines. That's a KEY step in the search engine marketing process. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and technology of making your site visible and relevant to both the people visiting it, and the search engines.  First and foremost your site must make sense and be relevant to the people you are trying to attract.  But in order to attract them, your site must be "considered" relevant by the search engines before they will include your site in the list of websites that come up in response to a user's search query.

Google, which is responsible for almost half of all internet searches, searches through billions of documents, files, and websites in seconds. It then provides a list of results with the most relevant information at the top. This list of files, documents, and websites is called the Google Search Results. Notice how many times we're using the word "relevant" in this article!  That's because Google and other search engines aim to provide their users with RELEVANT content.

A web page is "relevant" if the content on the page matches the subject matter of the search queries that people are typing in at the search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. On the internet, content is king! 

There is a lot of know-how connected with optimizing your site for the engines.  We use a checklist that has well over 50 items on it for ensuring that every "legitimate" thing you can do to optimize a site is addressed. We don't employ each item for every site, as different sites have different needs.  In fact, in some cases we knowingly "violate" certain items because the specific objectives for the website override the importance of a particular item(s) in the checklist.  You have to know how to think with SEO tools and techniques and know which apply and which don't apply to a particular situation.

But there are a LOT of items that can apply to many sites, and some key ones that are important for EVERY site, including linking strategies wherein other relevant sites, certain directories and "authority" sites link to yours. A good linking strategy is another key part of the search engine marketing process. Again, these links should be relevant links: coming from sites whose own topic matter is in some way logically related or connected to yours. 

Search Engine Marketing Tricks That Get You Into Trouble

CAUTION: Do NOT participate in "link farms."  Part of Google's ever-changing ranking algorithm (a very complex and detailed software-program sequence that reaches a result after a finite number of steps) takes into consideration the QUALITY of your incoming links: where they are coming from - how relevant the sites are that are linking to you - and the text of the links themselves. Getting loaded up with links from sites that are irrelevant to the topic or subject matter on your site, is USELESS. It's an attempt to "fool" Google's algorithm. It can cause your site to be dropped down in the rankings on the search engine results pages. It's not just quantity, it's quality links that are important.  

Used to be, you could sort of fool the search engines.  For instance: by stuffing irrelevant "keywords" in the underlying code of your web pages that made the engines "think" your site was all about whatever was expressed in those keywords. ("Keywords" are the words or phrases that people type in at the search engines when they are looking for something.)  Trouble is, everyone started stuffing their pages with keywords just to attract traffic, even if the subject matter on their site was only marginally relevant, or not relevant at all, to those keywords.  Really dumb when you think about it. A not-so-distant cousin of "bait and switch."

Then a similar fad occurred with links. And there have been many other fads along these lines.  Even if they are legitimate, Google's algorithm eventually takes these fads into consideration and adapts accordingly.  Why?  Because Google wants to provide its user with... (let's hear it chorus!) RELEVANT sites!  And, ultimately, it's CONTENT that determines relevancy.

Today if you try to fool the search engines by using underhanded tricks, your site can get blacklisted.  At the very least, you will drop way down in the search engine page results once the engines catch on to what you are doing. And they will.  Believe it.

Once basic site-optimization is complete - using legitimate techniques - there are many other ways of attracting traffic to a site: email campaigns, cost-per-click ad campaigns, affiliate programs, forums, blogs, news groups, Internet PR, offline items and actions (fliers, postcards, ads, commercials, brochures, etc., that mention and push your website), and so on.

The image to the left is a screen shot of the statistics of one of our clients for whom we built a website with a shopping cart. Notice that the Revenue figure totals $165,852.94 -- and it was generated in three and half months.  Four things were at work in this case: 

(1) He was quick to get the rights to manufacture the products featured in a recently popular movie. (2) He broadly issued a product release and a news release which were picked up and published by various online and offline media outlets. (3) We constructed a site - aimed at a particular market - that did the job it was supposed to do. (4) We fully optimized the site for the search engines so that people looking for his type of products would find his site quickly and easily.  (Full particulars of this case history are on file.)

Now, here's what's really interesting about this case history: We had to talk this client into putting up a consumer site for these products.  He was already a successful wholesaler, but the consumer site was a new idea for him.  Needless to say, he's pretty happy about the results.  

A properly executed Cost-Per-Click campaign can be very profitable. With cost-per-click (CPC), you can have visitors arriving at your site within 15 minutes of starting your ad campaign.  For one thing, you can test ads by doing "split runs" where you compare how well one ad pulls compared to another ad or several other ads. (As you can see by the logo above, Robert Nelson, one of our principals is a Qualified Google Adwords Professional.)

Web Metrics are key in determining how well your search engine marketing is working.  The most basic metrics are, typically, cost per order (CPO), cost per action (CPA), return on advertising spend (ROAS) and return on investment (ROI).  CPA is especially key for sites that don't sell products online.  They need to measure cost-per-action.  How much are we spending to get somebody to sign up for our newsletter, or download our free software trial, or fill out a form indicating they want us to contact them, and so forth.

With our knowledge of how the internet marketing works, combined with the sophisticated suite of software programs we use, we can compute where your traffic is coming from, how they are finding your site, where they enter and exit, how many pages they viewed and for how long, what the best keywords are for what you are trying to accomplish, which of your online ads are pulling best, how many times your ads have to show before someone clicks on them, how well optimized your pages are for the public you are trying to attract...  on and on.  This is basic stat management or metrics for the web.

Put that together with good natural or "organic" search engine optimization, plus marketing, promotion and copywriting skills, and it's a very potent, effective combination that gets results.

Bottom Line:  We know how to conduct highly effective search engine marketing campaigns that drive targeted traffic to your website.  And we know how to make your website create want and SELL whatever you are offering, whether products, services or information. (Also see our article on Search Engine Optimization or "SEO".)

Need some good search engine marketing that gets measurable results?  Contact us.   727.442.9137