Search Enging Marketing-An Introduction
May & June 2009
We interviewed our new CBWD associate, Craig Harkins. Craig is working with us on our new area of Search Engine Marketing.
Craig is also the owner of Fencing.Net. He has worked tirelessly to build a community from the ground up and also runs the ecommerce end of the business. Craig has learned from the trenches of his own successful business the ins and outs of Internet marketing. In the process he discovered that in addition to he passion for fencing, he also has a passion for Internet Marketing. We are now offering this invaluable service to boost search results and grow business.
In this interview, Craig answers a few questions on this vital topic. Please feel free to contact us with more questions or to develop a plan with you to grow your business using the Internet.
What does SEO mean?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is focused on the question “How do I get an Internet presence ranked better for X phrase or key word.” SEO is tossed around quite a bit these days as some sort of magic bullet, but it’s not. I prefer the broader “SEM” or Search Engine Marketing. There is only so much optimization you can do on your own website before you need to get to the nuts and bolts of online marketing to really use the Internet to generate leads and business for your company.
Years ago I worked for MindSpring and created online marketing guides for our small business customers. Back then, you just needed a web site, some good titles for your pages, and a link in Yahoo’s business directory and you were pretty much set. Today there are many more websites online and it takes a much more focused and long term strategic effort to pinpoint where you want to be online to generate the most profit for your company.
That said, the core fundamentals of Internet marketing are not that much different than traditional marketing – find your out your customer’s needs, figure out where they are going to find the solutions to their problems, and make sure they see you when they are searching for that solution.
What are the best ways to be listed?
The best is to own both of the top areas: Pay Per Click (PPC) and organic search listings. Professional service firms like law offices, dentists, or personal trainers really benefit from local search. Any company offering hard goods can submit their product catalog to Google’s Product Search.
The best thing is that getting listed with local search and Google Product Search is free. You just have to fill out a few forms and upload a data file for Google to use. Organic search is also “free” in the sense that you don’t have to pay every time someone clicks on your link. I don’t call it a free placement, however, because you have to do a lot of work and expend a lot of resources to gain that type of a ranking.
PPC is one of the fastest ways to gain business from the Internet. You have to know your key metrics set and be disciplined. With PPC you pay for each time someone clicks on your ad and goes to your website. Once they are on your web site it’s up to your sales funnel to kick in and turn that lead into a paying customer. If done correctly, PPC is a great way to bring in profitable business, but if done wrong you can lose your shirt.
What do I do if my business is in a very competitive market (a.k.a. lawyers vs. monkey groomers)?
Work harder! The great thing about competitive markets is that there is money there! If there were no money, then there would be no competition. When I’m looking for new markets to get into I actually want there to be healthy competition for the top searched keyword phrases because that tells me there is a ROI (return on investment) to be had.
It’s really important in the big competitive fields (lawyers, insurance) to know the buying phrases vs. the research phrases. If I search for “insurance”, do you think I’m ready to whip out my credit card and buy right then? Probably not. This is more of a research phrase – indicating someone that is looking for information before being ready to buy. However, if I search for “Auto Insurance VW Jetta” you can be pretty sure that I’m a lot closer to making that buying decision.
The mistake a lot of new Internet marketers make is they go after the high volume search phrase (like “insurance”) where they are going to spend a lot of time and money rather than finding those other phrases that are closer to the buying decision.
Those other phrases don’t see as much traffic, but there is less competition and the people using those phrases are closer to making their buying decision. Instead of going after the big phrase first, go after those smaller phrases and build upon your success there to be in a position to go after the big phrases.
If I want to DIY what are the top three free tools to help me?
I have several tools that I use that are in the hundreds per month that I use for anything from competitive research to improving the conversion rate on my ecommerce sites.
Starting out, I bootstrapped a lot of that using the free tools that were available. These days there are a lot more and better tools out there.Three that I recommend:
Google Webmaster Tools: – This is a suite of tools that Google offers to web site owners. The core package is the Analytics package, which helps you measure your overall web site traffic and monitor which key words or web sites are driving customers to your site.
The webmaster tools also provide reports on how well Google is seeing your site and if there are problems with any pages. There are also a lot of webmasters who actively share tips on how to get the most out of the tools that Google provides.
Niche Watch: – With this free service you can type in a phrase (like “Atlanta lawyers”) and your web site address and the tool will return not only the top 10-20 web pages for that phrase, but also tell you how well your page ranks.
It’s a great tool for getting a feel for a market and seeing how optimized your competition is. I like to use this tool when I’m researching for a client to figure out how to break into the first page of Google’s listings.
Google Trends: – Is it a good idea to launch a patio furniture store in September? Hit Google Trends, type in your keyword phrase, and you’ll find out that people aren’t really searching for patio furniture until March, with searches peaking in April/May. Launch the site in September to start building up your rankings, but be ready for the lean months until the warmer weather gets your customers searching for patio furniture.
You can use Google Trends to scope out any market and see the seasonality. That will help let you know if the reason why you’re seeing a boom in business is because you are just that awesome at search marketing, or if it’s an indication of the overall industry increasing.
How do I measure progress and success?
I let my bank measure the success. We’re talking about business success here, so I approach my online efforts just like any marketing spend. The first thing you need to know is your key metrics. What are you willing to spend to get a new customer in the door? What is the lifetime value (or LTV) of a new customer? Once you get a customer to buy from you (either a hard product or a service), how many more times can you sell to them and what other products do you have queued up to offer them?
Once you know what your sales funnel looks like and what your metrics are, then you have a good idea of what you are willing to spend to get that customer in the door.
What is the difference between Google and Yahoo? Do I just need to place on Google?
Google is the biggie. ComScore said that 64.2 percent of the searches conducted by Americans in April were at Google sites, up from 63.7 percent in March. Yahoo!’s share of the search market slipped 0.1 percentage points in April to 20.4 percent while Microsoft saw its share fall by 0.1 percentage points to 8.2 percent.
If you want to be a player in your field, you need the Google searches, both the “organic” (on non-paid) search and the PPC. It is far easier to generate leads by paying for them with PPC while you work on the long term search engine strategy.
What a lot of online marketers do is focus just on Google. However, you can still pick up new customers from Yahoo! and MSN with a little less effort. The new networking sites like Facebook also offer new ways to get your message out to customers. Over the next few years’ companies will need to fold the social media sites into any online marketing strategy.
Cordelia Blake Web Design is now offering Search Engine Marketing services. We are offering both a coaching package where we guide you on how to effectively manage your own campaign and a consulting package where we manage the whole process on your behalf.
Please contact us today to learn the many ways that Search Engine Marketing and and Effective Website can increase your bottom line.
Would you like us to speak to your business group about a technology topic of interest? We can discuss Search Engine Marketing, Internet Presence, Email Marketing or another topic. Please contact us today for more information.
You are welcome to use this article on your website, blog, or in your newsletter as long as you include this complete credit line: Copyright 2009 * Cordelia Blake Web Design. CBWD provides websites, blogs, search engine marketing and technology education in the Atlanta metro area and across the country. Visit http://www.CordeliaBlake.com to find out how you can use the internet to increase your bottom line and to receive Cordelia’s Tech Tips delivered to your inbox.
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