By Aisling M. Brennan
Account Director
Search Engine Marketing has become an integral component of the marketing mix. Cost-effective and quantifiable it's easy to see its appeal. According to a variety of recent surveys this appeal is forecast to get even greater. Direct magazine's "2005 Online Marketing Survey" reported 60% of direct marketers plan to raise their online spending in 2006 - and they are shifting money from traditional channels to do it, with most of the funds going to search engine marketing.
So, how do you choose the correct search engine marketing strategy? How do you ensure you're focusing on the right program? Well, that depends on your core objectives.
What is the desired call to action? Are you interested in driving traffic, online sales or branding opportunities? What's the campaign timeframe? Are you interested in short-term or long-term results? All of the above? Each of the above necessitates a different SEM strategy being implemented.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a long-term program involving an intensive analysis of a website's underlying code, architecture and content and making enhancements so that it appeals to the search engine crawlers and algorithms and is returned prominently in the search engine's organic results. This can take upwards of three months to see any improvement and necessitates continuous work and effort. But the results are extremely effective as the costs are fixed irregardless of the volume of traffic delivered.
2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC advertising involves bidding and paying for a specific search engine ranking on a specific search engine. The advertiser pays only when a user clicks on the ad and visits the site, hence the term pay-per-click. As PPC is budget dependent because you pay for each visitor it tends to be a short term program, unless you have very deep pockets.
What's interesting to note is that conversion rates on paid traffic tend to be greater than organic traffic as your message reaches consumers the moment they demonstrate interest--when they conduct a search for a relevant keyterm. Therefore you have already pre-qualified the lead before they click on your ad and reach your site. This results to greater ROI.
There are a number of PPC providers on offer:
(I) Tier 1 Networks:
-Google Adwords
-Yahoo! Search Marketing (previously known as Overture)
(II) Tier 2 PPC Networks:
-Ask Jeeves
-Miva (recently rebranded from eSpotting)
-MSN (Beta only at present; launch due end of Nov '05)
Depending on your target market advertising on a combination of the above networks works best to guarantee effective reach.
3. Paid Inclusion
Also known as (Pay for Inclusion) or PPI (Pay Per Inclusion), Paid Inclusion is the process of paying search engines to index pages from your site. Does this mean that those participating in paid inclusion get to be ranked ahead in the editorial organic results? No. The major search engines offering such programs are emphatic that payment does not provide any ranking boost.
This option is popular with both site owners and search engines. Site owners that want to get indexed quickly like it because they don't have to wait for the search engines to find their sites naturally through incoming links and listings in directories. Search engines like it because it is a way to increase revenue by charging the site owners for this service. If you have the budget and you don't want to wait, this is a good option.
- Annual-fee directories. Yahoo! Directory charges $299 annually for commercial listings for express review and inclusion (inclusion is not guaranteed). Know the methods and guidelines and you can get great traffic.
- Yahoo!® Search Submit Express. By subscribing to Search Submit, your Web pages are reviewed for quality and submitted to a database that provides search results to Yahoo!, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, FAST and others.
- XML feeds. This is the last and possibly most powerful type of paid inclusion. It's not for every site. To qualify, a site must contain hundreds of unique pages. XML paid inclusion is a CPC-based search engine advertising model that can be as effective as auction-style listings. XML-based paid inclusion is particularly powerful for large database-driven sites listing products, content, or services. Examples might include catalogers, e-commerce merchants, business-to-business manufacturers and distributors, travel, music, or auction sites.
To conclude the key elements that must be addressed when selecting the most appropriate search engine strategy for your business are desired call-to-action and timeframe involved. Determination of these will allow you to devise and execute the most appropriate search engine strategy to achieve those objectives.
