Companies are getting fewer results for a higher spend using time-honoured marketing techniques. So we have to look at updating our modus operandi. We all know it’s vital that all commercial organisations are on the web. Yet that in itself isn’t sufficient. Buyers MUST know how to reach you.

Picture a new retail premises opening up shop: It’s cost a packet to get to launch time. The staff are all poised - But the street is deserted, and they discover it’s way out of town. Nobody will know how to reach them. What kind of sales do you think they’ll manage? Almost all the sites on the web have the same problem!

Marketing has undergone a huge change because of the internet. As we left the 20th century, we all thought we had to have a web site. Getting a presence on-line became the be-all and end-all. Companies often spent a fortune on the latest features for their site. Naturally, web designers were very happy. Then it became apparent that no-one was visiting these sites. They’d thought that simply having a site on the web meant customers could see them. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Modern internet marketing requires a fundamental shift in thinking from traditional marketing. Traditionalists might see your site in the same way they’d view a sales catalogue. So to drive traffic to that website, you’ll need to use the regular methods of marketing. They’ll recommend media advertising and promotions in the press. Sticking to the familiar routine. They start with a flashy sales site, and then try lots of ‘off-line’ avenues to get people to look at it. Yet in the web economy, this approach is way off the mark!

This approach purely sees the web as a viewing portal, which it isn’t. It’s a hugely dynamic environment with complex interactivity. Users drill down to investigate the services they’re interested in. In addition, terrific site indexes have been created by several major Search Engines (SE’S) so customers can find the things they’re looking for. Think of the chaos involved if the Business Yellow Pages wasn’t in alphabetical order: We’d be forever frustrated and disappointed.

The SE’s have got it all sussed. However, this means marketing is no longer the same. Now, if you wish to be visible online, you must be indexed by Google, Bing and/or Yahoo etc. Even that isn’t enough though. You might as well forget it if you’re several pages in!

So to bring in more profit and give all sites a chance to be top dog, the SE’s gave businesses an ingenious paid facility to promote themselves. You Pay Per Click, so you’re only charged for your ad when someone clicks on it. This created a lot of excitement… Basically, the only time you now paid was when someone who was already interested asked to look at your site. This is an incredibly targeted way of advertising, and done properly, can yield some exceptional results.

Alas, the market is bombarded with this form of advertising these days. Prices per click have rocketed in some areas. This is due to more and higher bidders entering the market. Today, it can sometimes be impossible to make a profit using PPC. This is particularly true if a lot of clicks are needed for every sale. So Search Engine Optimisation is now becoming a preferred method for many to get to page 1.

As an exercise: Go to Google or Bing RIGHT NOW and type in a few product or service keywords. Does your site appear in the first 3 pages of results? It’s very doubtful. In other words, you’re no-where to be found. If it is there, would clients really use those keywords?

If you’re familiar with paid advertising on Google, you might be reasonably satisfied. Are you managing your campaign well though? Are you getting the best return on your investment? Do you know what the most successful areas are - with accurate statistics to track and measure the quality of your campaigns? All truly successful Pay Per Click campaigns must be fully monitored and split-tested. Without accurate statistics, you can’t get the best ROI.

Global figures clearly demonstrate that commercial marketing is swiftly moving online. There is no other choice but to deal with it - and ensure you’re taking full advantage of all the opportunities.

(C) Jay Kendall. Browse EvolveSEM.co.uk for quality business tips on SEM Consultants and SEO Consultants.

Tags: advice, computer, education, hobbies, home, money, self improvement, SEO, shop, software, technology, Uncategorized, web, work

Companies are getting fewer results for a higher spend using time-honoured marketing techniques. So we have to look at updating our modus operandi. We all know it’s vital that all commercial organisations are on the web. Yet that in itself isn’t sufficient. Buyers MUST know how to reach you.

Picture a new retail premises opening up shop: It’s cost a packet to get to launch time. The staff are all poised - But the street is deserted, and they discover it’s way out of town. Nobody will know how to reach them. What kind of sales do you think they’ll manage? Almost all the sites on the web have the same problem!

The web has turned marketing on its head. Around the time of the millennium, it was thought that having a website was everything. Complex graphical websites costing thousands (or tens of thousands) were regularly launched. This trend was cheerfully encouraged by on-line design companies, who relished the business! It started to become obvious though that these sites weren’t receiving any traffic. There was a belief that if you built it, they would come. In fact, this wasn’t the case at all.

A traditional approach to marketing breaks down on the web. An expert in old-style marketing would compare your web presence with a catalogue. Therefore, you’ll need to utilise all the normal marketing channels (print, radio, TV, media etc.) to drive traffic to that site. Basically keeping it within their frame of reference. Make the clever looking sales catalogue, and then promote it everywhere so customers want to buy from it. However, this process illustrates an absolute misunderstanding of website marketing.

The internet itself is not just a viewing portal. It allows us to search and research - to discuss ideas and interact with others. It’s completely interactive, bringing massive choice to billions of people. The Search Engines - such as Google and MSN (now Bing) - have made this easy for us as customers. They’ve put together massive directories to guide us. Just think how hopeless it would be trying to find something in a Business Directory with no index! How on earth would anybody get anywhere?

The SE’s have got it all sussed. However, this means marketing is no longer the same. Now, if you wish to be visible online, you must be indexed by Google, Bing and/or Yahoo etc. Even that isn’t enough though. You might as well forget it if you’re several pages in!

To solve this problem, and bring in a huge chunk of revenue for themselves, SE’s introduced paid advertising. And it has an interesting twist… You only pay when someone actually chooses your advert - hence the name ‘Pay-Per-Click’. It was revolutionary. Essentially, you now only paid for someone who’d already decided they were interested in your service or product. Pay per Click is a very well targeted method of marketing. With the right knowledge it can produce a good return.

Today however, most search terms are overwhelmed with pay per click adverts. New online marketers have forced up the price per click, largely through over-the-top bidding. So it’s often the case now that many are priced out of the market. This happens mostly where lots of clicks are essential to get one buyer. This has brought Search Engine Optimisation to the fore, where driving a site to page one is the goal.

As an exercise: Go to Google or Bing RIGHT NOW and type in a few product or service keywords. Does your site appear in the first 3 pages of results? It’s very doubtful. In other words, you’re no-where to be found. If it is there, would clients really use those keywords?

You could be relatively happy with PPC. But is your campaign properly managed? Is your investment really paying off? Have you got an eye on the stats that measure your results? Testing, measuring and split-testing are some of the most important factors with all PPC campaigns. There will always be an element of guesswork (and consequently less than perfect results) without accurate stats.

It’s very evident today that both global and local commerce are moving swiftly onto the internet. Companies must acknowledge this, to survive and flourish in today’s economy.

Tags: advice, computer, education, hobbies, home, money, self improvement, SEO, shop, software, technology, Uncategorized, web, work

SEO is essentially a constantly evolving study of what factors the search engines take into account when they ‘rank’ you in their natural search listings. ‘Natural’ search listings are the main lists of results that come up when you search for something. They’re in addition to the PPC lists. The PPC (paid) entries tend to feature at the top and right side of the page. All the others are ‘naturally’ listed from the Search Engine’s index. Search Engines use algorithms to determine a website’s relevancy and importance. This is how they decide on which order to place them in.

Of course, we would like to be as high as possible on page one. If we’re the 7th listing on page 9 then we’re hardly going to get prospects beating our door down! It’s impossible to know about all the SE’s rank determining factors. It isn’t something they publicise to the rest of us!

So, over the years a complete industry has grown up around this. And so we have on one side Google and Bing purposely patenting different technologies. Causing much mystification about their methods! And then you have an industry built around SEO. This uses empirical testing and measuring of various factors to determine which ones are the most important.

Search Engine Optimisation deals with both on-page and off-page issues. Geography and demography are also factors that influence page ranking. To understand factors relating to off-page, please see our additional editorial.

SE ‘On Page’ Optimisation

On-Page SEO is all about changes you can make directly to a site to make it more Search Engine ‘friendly’. It involves ‘correctly’ configuring your website. For example: Internal-linking, using H1 & H2 header tags, seeding keywords at the correct density (and in appropriate places,) and to some lesser degree, using meta-tags.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand the technical terms. In reality, this is very easy to control, but not wildly effective. To be fair, it’s generally assumed now to have very little import indeed. Previously we could make an impact with On Page configurations. But that door has been completely closed down for several years now.

If a site has a lot of in-bound back-links though, on-page factors can still be beneficial. If that’s the case, internal linking and a certain amount of on-page fine-tuning can reap rewards.

A Few Handy Pointers… Don’t try hugely listed phrases and keywords in your early attempts at Search Engine Optimisation. For instance, if you typed into a Search Engine the term Car insurance, seventy million results would be listed for the UK alone. That’s a huge number to pitch yourself against.

However… If I typed in “Southampton Car Insurance”, then there are only around 300,000 results. (If car insurance in Southampton was my business!) So a much more realistic target.

The extended phrase makes all the difference. Trying to get a ranking for CAR INSURANCE would take a huge amount of time and money. My competition would be the huge corporations. Not the best way to do things at all!

It’s far better to choose phrases that are more specific to our offering. In SEO terms, they’re referred to as Long Tail Searches, as they include several relevant words. It depends on your competition, but long-tail searches can be up to 6 or 7 words. They’re usually around three or four.

In our opinion, phrases returning fewer than five hundred thousand results are a good start. (If the sites on the front page haven’t used SEO techniques, then we might go with bigger yields). As our back links increase, we’ll start to rate more highly on the bigger search terms as well. With some effort, it will be possible to have a stab at the big ones within a year. A line of attack like this makes business sense. Basically we zone in on people who are specifically searching to purchase.

Back Links should be shared between several web pages on your site and not just restricted to the Homepage. We call this ‘deep-linking’ - and Google in particular likes this. Try back-linking product group pages. They very frequently link up to a range of sub-pages, so driving appropriate terms to them can be very worthwhile. Thus - don’t restrict the back links to just one page. The managing and listing of individual sub-pages is receiving growing attention from the major Search Engines.

Tags: advice, computer, education, hobbies, home, money, self improvement, SEO, shop, software, technology, Uncategorized, web, work