There are two main elements to Search Engine Marketing:
- Search Engine Optimization refers to the optimization of your own website so that the search engines show your site in their 'natural' or 'organic' rankings on your desired keywords or keyword phrases. This ranges from meta tags (most known and least important element), to keyword density and placement, social networking elements, interactivity of your site, links to your site, popularity of the site, etc.
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Search Engine Advertising refers to placing paid ads on search engines. This is more commonly referred to as Pay-Per-Click. Where your ad appears depends on how you bid on the keywords you want in relation to everyone else's bids. Where your ads appear also depends on the keywords you choose. See our blog called "How many keywords should I have?" for help on this topic.
It is the general consensus that you should do both types of search engine marketing simultaneously. Optimizing your own site is just good business sense. If you can get ranked on the first page of the results for all your keywords and phrases 'naturally,' then you should do it! And most companies/sites can. However it takes a great deal of time - generally about 6 months to a year - to accomplish your SEO goals. If you combine your SEO with Pay-Per-Click (PPC), then you gain a couple of distinct advantages. One is that you are immediately on the desired page of the results for your keywords and keyword phrases. Secondly, you can get your site on the first page of search engine results for many more keywords and phrases than you can accomplish with just SEO alone. Most companies should be getting traffic for thousands of keyword combinations. (See my blog called "How many keywords should I have? for more information on this topic). There are definite limits to the keywords you can optimize any single page on your site for. However, there is no limit to the number of keywords you can bid on for the same page. Thirdly, your PPC campaign helps you get your natural rankings faster!
There is one all important fact that many companies overlook, however. Before you start ANY campaign, you must - you simply MUST - decide what it is you want to accomplish. The single biggest mistake we see companies make is to spend money on their SEO, but with no discernible way to make money from it. So the very first thing you need to decide is what your goals are. These are generally referred to as a 'conversion' goal, because you want to 'convert' a visitor into a user. That goal could be to actually buy a product or service or it may only be to build your list. But defining it means you can more effectively create the SEO campaigns that will be effective for you.
Stay tuned for my next blog on this very subject!
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