Posts Tagged ‘Online Marketing’
SEO Snake Oil
I was reading an article on ‘SEO Snake Oil‘ recently posted to Search Engine Watch, and recall that isn’t the first time I’ve heard of Search Engine Optimisation being referred to as ‘Snake Oil’ , a derogatory term used by Chinese medicine practitioners for medicines or potions that make false promises, or in more modern times, the idea that the product being sold simply doesn’t do what it claims to.
The article from SearchEngineWatch defends the industry, and deals with the bad publicity and issues that Search Engine Optimisation Companies are facing in trying to promote their business, and build or retain confidence and good-will in their business.
Unfortunately there are SEO Practitioners in the market who either make false claims, or overestimate what they’re capable of delivering, or take your money and do very minimal work with very little impact on increasing traffic (the very goal of SEO). Given the price tag on some SEO Campaigns, it is understandable that some companies would have a hard time parting with their advertising dollars without assurances.
Search Engine News believes that Education is the key to building consumer confidence in SEO. Just as anyone can mow their own lawn themselves, or choose to pay for a mowing company to do it for them, a business owner can choose to do some research on SEO and online marketing and attempt to implement it themselves, or they can pay a professional to do it for them.
A few important things to remember about SEO and Online Marketing:
A good SEO Campaign may take 6 months to mature and show positive signs of success, but SEO can often be a long-term and evolving project which should be maintained and revisited regularly.
SEO is not a silver bullet. SEO is only one part of your online marketing campaign, and may take a while before you start seeing results. Ultimately, SEO is a preferred method of attracting customers through the web, because once you have a high-ranking site, visitors clicking on your link are free.
SEO is a bit more than having a few links pointed at your site, adjusting your link structure and adding content.
PPC can offer instant return on investment, but can be quite expensive, and requires close attention to ensure you aren’t bleeding your whole budget into a campaign that might be delivering very little return. You can extend your PPC Campaign through to the Google Content Network to have your adverts featured on Content-Rich websites that deal with your subject matter, product or service, and these Content Network ads are then directly targeted at your audience, with a much higher number of impressions, and often a much lower cost per click than traditional PPC displayed in the SERPs.
Online Marketing isn’t just SEO and PPC. Online Marketing may involve engaging with your audience through Social Networking, Newsletters, Viral Marketing and much more.
SEO is never guaranteed. Search Engine Optimisation can be considered a smart, but risky strategy for your business. Google and other Search Engines may change their algorithm, resulting in your rank being wiped overnight.
There is also the age-old saying “if you build a bigger mouse-trap, they’ll build a bigger mouse”, and in this I’m highlighting that you can spend months on an SEO project getting your site to the top, but if you sit on it and do little work beyond that project, changes in algorithm and other companies “out-seo’ing” your campaign may result in you losing your rank.
To protect yourself from bad SEO, be sure to follow Google Webmaster Guidelines, or check that your Search Engine Provider uses ethical search engine optimisation techniques.
To help retain your high rank in the SERPs, remember that new content is the key, so a daily or weekly blog update will keep Google and your visitors coming back to the site again and again, and as long as you spend an hour or so each week doing minor updates to content on your site, and focus on a little on-site and off-site SEO, that should help you retain your high rank.
For more info on the SEO Snake Oil article, and a very good defense for the SEO Industry, check SearchEngineWatch.com
Is this what you paid for?
The new 2009 edition of Yellow Pages has been arriving on doorsteps of businesses and homes around the country, or in this case conveniently placed in the stair-well of SearchKing’s premises.
Are your customers fingers walking or typing?
Phone directories were once a reliable customer acquisition and search tool, and getting your listing in on time for print was crucial for businesses to be discovered by their customers.
Here at the SearchKing premises however, the new edition of Yellow Pages is nothing more than a door stop, and much like the 2008 edition of the White Pages (still sitting under the stairs after several months) will likely go unused, in favour of more modern search tools.
Listings in the Yellow pages are often in excess of $500.00 AUD, for a return that is difficult to measure, and given the non-searchable nature of the format, being significantly overlooked for Search Engines and web directories.
Would you pay $500 for your ad to be featured in an almost redundant format which poses a potential tripping hazard, or would you allocate your budget toward an online marketing or other campaign?
The cost of dead clicks
It’s 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon, the peak period of the week for sales on your website.
Something obscure is happening: Your inbox is empty, and your phones are not ringing. A quick check of your website shows a page could not be displayed error message.
Panic!
Your web host has gone done yet again. The third time this month.
For some businesses, this is an encounter they can afford, but when your business relies so heavily on the Internet for sales leads, not to mention other operational functions of the business, you can’t afford a minute of downtime.
The impact of having your web host go down is not only costing you from leads that are unable to convert, there is an immeasurable non-financial impact of damage to your reputation for having your site down all the time, and let’s not forget the cost of a dead click.
If you have a google adwords or yahoo search marketing account for online advertising, you’re paying each and every time someone clicks on one of your ads.
If you’re running a new campaign or product launch and have allocated a large budget to online marketing, and your website is offline whilst countless number of potential customers are clicking on your link only to find your website is down, you’ve just wasted a lot of money and lost a lot of sales.
Here are a few tips from Search King few tips to minimise the potential for dead clicks:
- Pick a good web hosting company, and avoid cheap hosting plans
- Check the hardware specifications of the hardware you’re hosting on, make sure your hosting provider has redundant internet connections, power supply and most importantly good uptime.
- To ensure maximum uptime, ask your hosting company for an SLA, or service level agreement. This means they’re agreeing to give you a certain level of service (ie 99% uptime), and if they fail to meet this expectation, you can lean on them.
- Make sure your hosting company has upgrade options. If you start small but begin to grow, your server needs to keep pace with your traffic. Make sure if you have disk or bandwidth quotas, that they can be increased
- Keep an eye on your website,
Don’t stick around listening to the same excuses from your hosting company. Downtime costs you money, so vote with your feet and make sure you move to a quality web host.
You may also find that a standard web hosting package just isn’t enough for your very busy website, and this is when it’s time to make a decision on buying or renting your own server, but these are things you should discuss with your hosting company, do your homework, and shop around for the best options (remember, don’t always choose the cheapest!)
This article was brought to you by SearchKing.
Getting the most out of your PPC Campaign
So, your boss has told you that Google is the great new channel for sales, or so he believes, and as the IT guy, it’s obviously your job to manage a new online marketing campaign.
Your boss has given you a budget, and an expectation that he’s going to see some return on investment, so where to from here?
There are a few things you need to ensure you get the most out of your PPC Campaign:
- You should setup landing pages and ensure they are well laid out and presented with good information. If you’re running a particular campaign, then directing your customers to a landing page tailored to the search results will produce far better results than pointing them to your general homepage and making them try to find what they’re looking for, give it to them straightt up.
- More importantly, your landing page will need to have an order process, or some way of contacting your sales team, otherwise your leads will never convert.
- Try a different mix of advertisers. Remember: Google has around 50% of all web traffic in Australia, so a Google Adwords account is a no brainer, but Yahoo and MSN also represent a large proportion of the SEA Market where web surfers are searching outside of google, so if your budget allows, you may want to experie
- Setup Google Analytics to monitor your conversions, this will be give you indications of success.
- Keep a tight leash on your campaign. Monitor your spend, and see which search terms are giving you the best return on investment.
- Monitor the terms that give the best ROI, and cull the terms that aren’t performing.
- Turn off your campaign when you’re not getting any return. The term tyre kickers is used amongst salesmen to describe potential customers who look around, and ‘kick tyres’ (referring to a potential car sale) and essentialy waste the salesman’s time. If your core operating hours are 8am-6pm, and your customers do most of their browsing of your site and purchasing during these hours, it’s likely that anyone who clicks on your paid links in non-peak times will be less interested in purchasing, and therefore increase your cost of acquisition whilst reducing your return on investment.
- Wherever possible, monitor your sales performance before the campaign and then reflect after a week or even a month into the campaign to see if the online advertising is having a positive impact on sales. If it has, this is where the IT guy goes to his boss to show the benefits of online marketing and asks for a payrise.
This article is brought to your by SearchKing, Specialists in SEO, Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Advertising.