Choosing the right internet search engine strategy
- Search Engine Optimisation SEO or Search Engine Marketing SEM?
Choosing your search engine strategy wisely so that you get the most out of your online marketing budget might first seem confusing. Should you use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to drive traffic to your site? Or should you use both? In this article we provide some questions and tips to help you choose the strategy that is right for your company.
Making the right decisions can save your company a lot of money online. The fact is that If you want to to succeed online you have to be ready to spend some money on both your website and on the advertising of it. Even if you would not sell products or services online your company website can improve your brick and mortar business significantly. The spending on internet marketing is growing rapidly so if your company like to convert some of all visitors to customers the right momentum to start is now.
Here are a few questions to help you evaluate the pros and cons of SEO and SEM and make the right decision to choose the search engine strategy that is right for your business. Keep in mind your companys current situation online, the marketing budget and the urgency and time span for your internet advertising. In the end we provide you with some very helpful tips that can save you a lot of your online marketing budget.
Some questions you should ask yourself to help you make the right decisions.
- Do you target some long term keywords that are central to your business - or do you want to run a shorter time span advertising campaing?
- Is your website new or have your business been online for a longer time? How well does your website rank for the specfic keywords you have in mind?
- What kind of products, services and information are you offering online?
- Are you looking forward to sell products, services or information online - or do you want to generate new sales leads? What is your budget?
- How much competiton are you facing online?
- If you are going to sell services, products or information online what is your profit margin in dollars?
- Do you have newsletter or a email marketing list?
If not you should seriously consider to start building your own list. Remember to only use opt-in email marketing. SPAM does not make anyone happy - and sending unsolicited emails can be criminal.
- Or is your business new or entering a new field or niche?
- If you are going to sell physical products, how about have your considered the logistics, shipping costs, returns etc.?
- Are people searching for your or similar products online?
- Are they buying similar kind of products online?
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Search Engine Optimisation SEO is the right strategy to choose for long-term keywords. The drawback is that it takes a long time to acheive a high ranking on the search engines organic listings - and there are no guarantees that your company ever will acheive the highest positions for the keywords you select.
- After all there are likely to be many companies that are targeting the very same keywords and keyphrases as you do. The benefit is that once your company has acheived the a top position in the organic Search Engine Result Pages (SERP)s on the search engines all the traffic is totally free, until the search engines changes their algorithms or your competitors optimise their pages better than you.
For long term keywords and keyphrases we strongly suggest you to use organic / natural Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) because bidding on highly competetive keywords in the long term is expensive.
Keep n mind, that as soon as you quit bidding on PPC Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing SEM - your company is not going to be found any better or in any higher position that it had before starting the online advertising campaing.
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Are people searching for the product or service you are offering?
Now many would be happy to say that their business is unique and noone else is offering the same product or service online. However, if that is really the case - why is it so? Would people really search for your product - if they have no idea that it exists - if it is so new and so different from all other offerings. - Or is it so that people simply do not buy this kind of products online. Perhaps someone else has tried and quitted because it simply did not work! Does people want the product you are offering - is there a real market for it? If there is - can you get the same product at the shop around the corner?
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