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Benefits of SEO for your
business website
Optimizing your website will take a little time and thought, but it will
also have the potential for delivering an excellent return on your
investment., including:
 More
clicks or "hits" to your website which give your business better
rankings.
Business
exposure
A
better experience for your potential clients.
Organic or "Natural" Search Results
Natural search results is what happens when a search engine finds your
website "naturally" according to it's content, keywords and page
make-up.
Why Natural Search Results are Better
You may think that paid advertising, known as Pay-per-Click (PPC) would
be more effective at getting people to your website, but take a look at
the chart below and you'll see that "natural" searches (made more
effective through SEO) account for over 60% of the nearly six billion
search clicks that occurred on the Internet in March of 2006 alone.
|
Popular
Search Engines |
Searches |
Natural Clicks |
Paid Clicks |
| All
Engines Combined |
5.9 Billion |
60.5% |
39.5% |
| Google |
2.9 Billion |
72.3% |
27.7% |
| Yahoo! |
1.3 Billion |
60.8% |
39.2% |
| MSN |
644 Million |
50% |
50% |
| Others |
1.06 Million |
28.8% |
71.2% |
Others includes AOL, My Way Search, Asl.com, etc.
So the lesson here is that optimizing your website for the free search
engine placement is one of the best ways to get more people (possible
customers) to your site and grow your business.
Let ATG's SEO experts analyze and optimize your current website to it's
maximum potential. ATG will discuss with you the keywords and content
that should be within your pages to help the popular search engines
drive new customers to your website.
Search Engine Optimization or Sponsored Advertising?
This article describes how firms can use natural search engine rankings,
sponsored advertising or a mixture of the two to yield effective results
on the search engines.
Introduction to Search Engines
No-one can deny that search engines are one of the most important
resources to drive traffic to your website. Google now processes more
than 150 million searches every day (Google, 2001) and therefore it is
essential that your business product or service can be found.
It is surprising that there are still many businesses that do not fully
understand and appreciate how important and influential online marketing
can be.
There are currently a number of methods that you can use to promote your
website on search engines, however the main two that are used are
natural rankings (by using search engine optimization) and sponsored
advertising.
Natural Ranking & Search Engine Optimization
A natural ranking is a listing on a search engine that has not been
directly paid for. These listings can be seen down the left hand side of
your Internet browser. Natural rankings can only be achieved through
hard work and meticulous thinking which is known as search engine
optimization and marketing.
The objective of search engine optimization is to increase your
businesses online visibility and traffic by ranking highly in search
results for the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your
website. If you search on your target keywords, you will see the leading
website in the rankings. Your businesses aim should be to better that
number one website.
Optimization of your website is the starting block for achieving the
results you are looking for. Once this is achieved it is vital to
continue to market and promote your website online to ensure that it is
noticed and viewed. When choosing the right search engine optimization
company to optimize and market your website, it is very difficult to
justify spending money on an intangible service. The only way to select
the right company is to see their previous search engine optimization
results. From the results you can begin to understand and appreciate the
online visibility your own company could achieve.
The great thing about natural rankings is the fact that the consumer is
searching to find your business rather than your business pushing to
find the consumer. Natural rankings can only be achieved over a period
of time rather than over night and therefore requires dedication and a
high level of understanding within the market. For this reason it can
potentially give the consumer a great deal of confidence in what your
business has to offer. Ask yourself the question – “When I type in a
search phrase, which listing am I likely to click on?” Most if not all
of us would automatically click on the top 5 or 10 listings. We would
seldom scroll through page 3 and onwards because we would have found
what we were looking for within the first few listings.
Advantages
Agreed
fixed cost to optimize, market and achieve results
Long
term listing with natural placement
Higher
click through ratios due to improved trust
Pull
demand rather than push demand
Improving
your brand potential
Improved
overall cost effectiveness and ROI
Disadvantages
Higher
initial investment
Increased
time taken to achieve effective results (between 6 and 12 months)
No
guarantees compared to paid placements
Heavy
competition for many popular keywords
Finding
the right search engine optimization company
Paid Placements – Pay Per Click (PPC)
Paid placements are listings on search engines that are paid for on a
pay per click basis. These listings can be seen predominantly down the
right hand side of your Internet browser. Each time someone enters one
of your selected keywords or phrases and then clicks through to your
website via your paid listing, you have to pay a click fee which is
dependent upon the level of competition visible for that specific
keyword. You have to bid your highest click fee for each of your chosen
keywords and the higher your click fee with respect to others, the
higher your advert will be in the sponsored listings section.
Although these figures are not exact, they give you a good indication to
the level of competition and costs potentially involved when using paid
placements.
With paid placements, there is no requirement for search engine
optimization or marketing and results can be seen instantly. Using paid
placements does not require any initial investment and can be designed
and controlled precisely to suit individual business needs.
Even though paid placements allow tangible results and will certainly
cost less from the start, results are fully dependent on your business’
financial situation. If you have no money, you have no online
visibility. Google and other PPC providers have the ability to remove
your listing if bills are not paid, therefore leaving your business
vulnerable by removing the large online channel that a PPC promotion
creates.
Paid placements are much the opposite from natural rankings. Your
company is pushing to find business rather than the business wanting to
come to you. This can have a negative impact on the success of the
overall PPC promotion but due to the pay as you go nature of paid
placements, this negative impact certainly does not remove the need to
try and test its possibilities.
Many companies can manage a PPC campaign for you. Most will charge
either a standard monthly fee or will charge you based on a percentage
of your monthly PPC budget. For larger scales campaigns it is always
best to find a PPC management company who are certified and have credit
facilities with the PPC providers. This will ensure the company
understands all the different functionality available when setting up a
PPC campaign which will give your business the best advice and
recommendations specific to your needs.
Advantages
Quick
tangible results
No
initial required investment
Set
budget that can be meticulously monitored
Reduced
risk through pay as you go nature
Minimal
human resources required to implement
Easy
to setup with or without a PPC management company
Disadvantages
Continuous
investment required on a monthly basis
Overall
cost can sky rocket
Reduced
consumer confidence in sponsored advertising
Competitive
keywords can be very expensive
Conclusion
After looking at these methods of online promotion, both have pro’s and
con’s that will suit some but not all businesses. Selecting the right
method for your business will be down to budget, time frames and
internal resources available.
In a perfect world, choosing between the two should not necessary.
Implementing both methods is the only way to achieve results from all
angles. With natural rankings taking in between 4 to 8 months to achieve
effective results, paid placements can balance this out until the
natural rankings begin to make a difference. As this happens, the PPC
budget can be reduced incrementally until eventually it is removed
leaving the long term natural listings with a higher percentage of click
through ratios to take over.
Online promotion is an extremely powerful tool but only for businesses
that are willing to invest their time as well as their money to achieve
results. Finding the right SEO Company to either optimize and marketing
your website and/or setup a PPC campaign is a decision that will
determine the success or failure of your overall campaign. The most
effective way to ensure this is through previous portfolio examples and
a proof of methodology. These will give you a good level of
understanding and confidence in what that company can offer your
business and the level of results you will be driving to achieve. |
