Search engine marketing basics

Search engine marketing is one of the most effective form of advertising available today and offers a much higher return on investment than traditional methods of marketing . With nearly 85% of all businesses initially getting found on search engines No business today, however small or large can afford to turn a blind eye to search engine marketing.

Why should you invest in Search Engine Marketing?

The objective of Search Engine Marketing is quite straightforward. Search engine marketing is aimed at improving your web site’s rank on major search engines like Google and Yahoo and increasing the number of visitors to your website. The resulting traffic from search engines is highly targeted and valuable to your business.

What does Search Engine Marketing include ?

Simply put Search Engine Marketing includes anything that improves your websites visibility and rank on major search engines and getting the maximum possible coverage for your website online. Search engine marketing is a highly competitive field. There are nearly 40 million websites on the internet but only a handful can appear on the first page of a search engine’s results page.

The diagram above shows some of the proven techniques of an effective Online marketing strategy; all with a common aim of increasing sales and leads for your business.

Search Engine Marketing Tip

Websites that rank on the first page of Google usually have thousands of other websites linking back to them. Search engines treat back links to a website as a form of voting system that adds authority to your website over others. This greatly improves the chances of ranking higher. When you hire a Search engine marketing consultant to work on your website, a majority of their time will be spent on increasing the number of external websites that link back to yours.

Organic Search engine optimisation versus Pay Per Click Advertising

When you first consider or research search engine marketing to promote your business, the first two search engine marketing techniques you are most likely to come across are Organic Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click Advertising such as Google Adwords. Both these methods are concerned with getting your website on the first page of search engines when a user searches for a product or service that your business provides. However there is a big difference between how the two.

Organic search engine optimisation refers to the free listings that appear in the main part of the search results page. Organic results are non-biased and a result of a website’s quality, content and it’s overall popularity on the internet which can take time to build. Once achieved the benefit to your business is priceless as your website’s listing on search engine is relatively permanent and will often result in high traffic to your website.

With Pay Per Click on the other hand, your website will not appear on the main centre section of the search results but on the right side of the page usually under the ‘Sponsored Listings’ section. Your website will start to appear on search results for your chosen keywords instantly but you will be charged per click i.e. each time a user clicks and visits your website. Pay per click results are also temporary and your listing on search engine will completely disappear after payments are stopped.