Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEM and SEO)
One of the key components of the online mix is traffic. Having an engaging web presence with all your spokes driving towards your hub is useless if no one is seeing it. For some people, recognition is the main reason for undertaking a project. They want to be recognised as having created the best ‘insert whatever you like here’ I personally see huge opportunity with these people.
They can’t see the potential but I can. Identify the market and then put that message/product/service in front of that market. That market is the traffic you want visiting all your various online real estate. So how do we get traffic?
First of all, we have to make sure that one or two of the other pieces are in place. After all, there is no point sending thousands of visitors to a web site that is incapable of actually dealing with this. By dealing, I mean, engaging and capturing those visitors, so that you are actually getting these visitors into your list and building your database of interested people, who you can then market to at will using email marketing which is another piece that we will cover in another post.
Search Engine Marketing is a great way of getting traffic based on the fact that your markets are shifting online and rather than looking through the Yellow Pages they are using search engines to find the solution to their problem. Obviously you need to now get in front of your market, so you need to rank in the search engines. The higher you rank, the more likely you’ll appear in searches and the more traffic you will get. Position1 Page 1 is the holy grail. It’s a fact that 60% of search traffic clicks on the 1st result. The remaining 40% is split between the other 9 positions on the page!!! Search Engine Optimisatoin is one of the methods under the SEM banner. Optimising your site, both on page and off page is how you get the Search Engines to recognise that you are there and talking about something relevant to what the market is typing into the search engines.
The below mind map breaks SEO down in to some sub categories and the beauty is, that if you don’t understand any of it, you can outsource it to someone that does. SEO work is not necessarily difficult, but as with most things, you have to have the knowledge of how to execute and where, as well as the time to do the necessary admin work. This is why so many companies have ‘SEO companies’ working on their behalf. Aside from SEO though you also have Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising as a form of SEM. PPC in my opinion when done correctly is one of the quickest ways to drive that integral ingredient, traffic, to your website. There are many figures thrown around about the percentage split between organic search engine rankings and PPC advertising when it comes to traffic figures, but from personal experience I know that PPC is a fantastic way of getting targeted visitors to your site. Having said this, the success of your PPC campaign lies in the setup. It’s a science unto itself and you need to have someone that really knows what they are doing to get the optimum results.
Take a look at Maximum Net Gain SEO for some further insight into services we actually offer. Or give me a call or drop me an email if you’d like to discuss this element of the jigsaw further – 0507198467 or strategy@maximumnetgain.com
