Search engine optimization (SEO) is similar to producing a television commercial. That is, it is PREPARATORY work designed to prepare the website for marketing, much like producing a TV commercial involves editing, formatting, and fine-tuning. Once the site is optimized, it is ready to be put in the face of the public (and the search engines). Marketing the site is the process of drawing attention to it and continuing to improve the presence in front of the audience, much like running the TV commercial.

Think of it this way: if you produced a TV commercial and only aired it once, you might get some business from it, but over time, people’s memories fade and no one remembers the commercial. Likewise, submitting your site to search engines (part of marketing) and building links from independent sources (organic marketing) should generate some initial results. But if the efforts stop there, a few months later, the effect wears off. Just as you would think it silly for a business owner to complain 6 months later that no one is responding to their TV commercial (which only aired once six months ago), it’s equally unrealistic to expect a SEO that is marketed only once. to deliver results in perpetuity. It just doesn’t work that way.

Just like the TV commercial, the prep work to get the website up and running is often a BIG one-time expense (with periodic adjustments as the market changes) because of the time it takes to get the job done…and the time it takes It takes to do the job well depends on several variables: the market (competition and saturation), the objectives (local, regional, national exposure), the scope of the site (number of pages, amount of content), etc.

Just like a TV commercial, site marketing and promotion requires comparatively less time to implement, but must be an ongoing, ongoing process to be effective. It’s a shame when a business owner spends the money to optimize their site and then doesn’t do “the rest of the work” in terms of marketing. Initial SEO costs are wasted in such cases.

As with any type of advertising, the business owner must set a budget for search engine marketing (SEM). They may remove snippets from their other marketing methods (brochures, radio ads, yellow pages, newspapers, etc.) to establish their search engine position. Dollar for dollar, a properly managed SEM campaign, whether organic or pay-per-click, generally yields a better return on investment (ROI) for the business.

SEO is a prerequisite for effective SEM. It is the first part of the SEM process and involves conducting market research, defining and refining keyword phrases to maximize what SEO professionals refer to as “keyword density” and minimize the effects of “keyword dilution”. SEO involves editing links, content, and sometimes the structure of a website to prepare it for marketing. SEM site promotion can be handled in a number of ways, using several different strategies (both organic and paid marketing) to achieve the same end: getting your site found when someone searches for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. It is commonly known that SEO has a direct impact on organic marketing efforts with SEM, but unknown to many business owners (and even some web developers) the quality of a website’s SEO will often affect the price as well. of pay-per-click marketing. For example, keywords used in pay-per-click campaigns through Google AdWords are assigned a “quality score,” and sites that are well-optimized will generally return higher quality scores than sites that are poorly optimized or not. optimized. per click for an optimized keyword.

A key point to remember about search engines is that a company’s “competition” is not necessarily its “sworn business rival” down the street or across town that relies on its customers. In search engine terms, “competition” is any website, link, document, advertisement, etc. that is ranked above the company’s website, or appears within a page or two of the company’s search engine listing for a given keyword phrase. This is why proper keyword and market research is so important for effective SEO, rather than simply relying on the words and phrases that intuitively come to mind when a business owner thinks of their own. products and services. Using the “wood floors” example, it’s possible that articles and companies on woodworking, arboretum, laminate flooring, and floor wax could be “competition” on search engines.

The problem with any type of marketing is that a company can always spend more money on it. For example, if a billboard company is asked to advertise a business and is asked, “How much does it cost to advertise my business on billboards?” The answer is likely, “It depends on how many billboards you want to advertise on and where they are located.” A similar answer would be offered to someone asking the question “How much does it cost to advertise in the Yellow Pages?” The answer: “It depends on the city and the size of the ad you want on the page.” Cost questions assume that there is a fixed cost for advertising, which is far from the truth. Not all markets are the same, and it is possible for a company to spend an infinite amount of money on advertising. SEM is no different.

At some point in advertising, whether through traditional methods or over the Internet, there comes a point where the increasing marginal cost of marketing produces a diminishing return on investment. As an extreme example to make this point clear, let’s say a business reaches the number one position in Google’s organic rankings for a particular keyword, “hardwood floors.” No matter how much money is spent promoting the keyword “wood floors”, there will be no improvement in that company’s position because it cannot be better than number one. If the “wood floors” position were number three and five on Yahoo! And MSN, respectively, spending more money on organic marketing may land them number one across the board (there are no guarantees), but those ad dollars would be much better applied to marketing other keyword phrases that aren’t as prominent yet. . In this way, ROI is part of a “best bang for the buck” consideration in terms of effective SEM.

Search engines generally look at three criteria to determine a website’s placement in the rankings: text features, link features, and traffic (or popularity) features. All three comprise the search engine merit of a website. Website developers generally only exercise control over the text criteria, that is, the content of the website itself. Going further, SEO/SEM experts “write” the text content on the site and work externally to the website to influence link criteria by creating and adjusting links to relevant content on the web that point to the site, such as articles, blogs, and other websites. In other words, SEO and SEM address the text and link components of a website. The site’s search engine merit traffic component is largely driven by text and link settings. Eventually, if a site is properly and effectively optimized and marketed, the popularity (traffic component) of a website will continue to deliver placement results over time and allow the business owner to reduce their marketing budget. organic, or maybe realign those marketing dollars to focus We have different sets of keyword phrases.

The company’s budget will largely determine how that company’s SEO and SEM strategies are prioritized and implemented, so it is important for the search engine optimization and marketing company to have limits. If a business owner doesn’t know how much they want to spend on SEO and SEM, then it’s smart to discuss the options in a consultation and perhaps offer the business owner a “good, better, best” style initial pitch for outreach. defined work. Surprisingly, most businesses can achieve favorable results with a fairly modest budget if they find a competent SEO and SEM company. That is, there are many people and companies that “practice” SEO/SEM in the market, but comparatively few dominate it. For this reason, it is always recommended that the business owner insist on references of proven results from a portfolio of other clients, instead of making a decision solely on price.