If you want a tried and true way of generating heaps of
traffic to your website - day in, day out - you can't
afford to ignore search engine marketing. And it's not as
complex as it may first appear. In fact, let me outline
some search engine basics...
The major search engines - Google, Yahoo (a directory as
well as a search engine) and MSN - generate "natural" or
"organic" search results or listings, as well as sponsored
(advertiser paid) listings, whenever someone performs a
search on particular keywords or keyphrases. As you might
imagine, listings that appear on the first page of results
- whether paid or organic - tend to attract the vast
majority of clicks on the links included in their listings
and, consequently, traffic to their websites. Therefore, if
you know that the target market for your website typically
uses particular keywords or keyphrases to search for the
kinds of information, products or services you offer... you
want your listing to appear as high as possible in the
search engine ranking pages or "SERPs".
While it might seem as though your best bet is to be ranked
number one in the SERPs for a certain keyword or keyphrase,
this may not always be the case. Most search marketing
practitioners certainly advocate becoming first in the
organic results. However, there are diverging views about
the efficacy of being first in the paid results. Some
search engine marketers believe that it's more profitable
to be in the middle of the list of the paid results, as
long as your ad appears on the first page of results.
Additionally, the question arises: should you advertise in
the paid results as well as strive for a high ranking in
the organic results? There's no hard-and-fast answer; it's
really something to experiment with.
Since SEM incorporates both paid and free search engine
rankings, the means of getting high up in the free versus
the paid results necessitates a somehwhat different
methodology. Search engine optimization (SEO) is how
marketers get their websites and webpages ranking highly in
the free results. This is part-science, part-art. The SEs
use complex math to rank different sites and pages.
Therefore, if you understand how this math works, then,
presumably, you'll know what to do to get a high ranking.
Trouble is, no-one knows how this math works! The SEs keep
their algorithms close to their chests. Consequently, it's
a bit of an art to try to work out the science!
Meanwhile, paid search incorporates pay-per-click
advertising and pay-per-impression advertising.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is as the name suggests:
advertising where you pay each time someone clicks on the
link in your ad. Some of the major advantages of PPC are
that you only pay for the results you want - prospects
clicking on your ad - and you can readily measure the
effectiveness of a given keyword or ad by means of the
click through rate (CTR).
The other form of paid search is pay-per-impression, where
you pay a certain amount per 1,000 ad impressions (CPM).
Google, in fact, uses a formula to determine how much you
ultimately pay for a given advertising campaign that
incorporates both the cost per click (CPC) and the CPM. I
won't get into the complexities here, but suffice to say
that you can end up paying the same amount of money
regardless of whether you pay based on a click or an
impression, depending on your CTR. Also, Google actually
favors ads with a higher CTR and takes that into account
when ranking them. So you can actually get a higher listing
and still pay the same per click than someone else,
provided your ad is more effective for that keyword or
keyphrase in question.
Paying to appear in the SERPs can be a good way to get
started in SEM. You can identify which words are the most
effective in pulling customers to your website. You can
test the popularity of a new product or service. And you
can test the layout and copy on your landing pages (the
specific pages that people see when they click on your
listing).
No question, understanding search engine marketing involves
a bit of a learning curve. But the benefits are definitely
worth the effort. As many Internet marketers have
discovered, an effective search engine marketing effort can
yield all the traffic, and customers, you could ever want.
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Steve Renner is a well known Internet Marketing Expert,
author, consultant and speaker. Get Professional Internet
Marketing training at http://www.imtrain.com
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