Absolute
Top Five Search Engine Marketing Myths Uncovered!
Absolute Top Five Search Engine Marketing Myths Uncovered!
It's no secret that Search Engine marketing can drive significant
amounts of very qualified traffic to a web site – as 85% of
Internet users utilize search engines to find/research for goods
and services. The problem for many companies is the difficulty they
face sifting through conflicting information and hyperbole! Here
is my top five list of myths that need to be run to ground.
Big Picture Myth One – Search engine ranking
leads are not as good as those which originate from other forms
of traditional marketing (print, direct mail, PR, etc.) –
this is absolute hogwash, the truth is many agencies don't have
a clue about s/e ranking, so they push their clients to ignore this
form of advertising. They simply don't want to recommend anything
they don't understand and/or utilize an interactive marketing vehicle
that requires a blend of very specialized technology and processes.
We've in fact found just the opposite when we've analyzed s/e traffic
versus other types of leads for our clients; i.e. search engine
traffic can be much better, as it is comprised of individuals who
are actively seeking info, not just people whose curiosity has been
piqued by an eye-catching publication ad or press release. And,
when we've analyzed the data by tracking leads via a landing page
(on a web site) we've discovered that CPL (cost per lead) numbers
can be much lower for s/e ranking than other more traditional marketing
methods.
Big Picture Myth Two – Effective s/e marketing
can be done in house – this is rarely the case, the sheer
complexity and online competition (digital warfare!) for rankings
makes this extremely difficult for most companies. Based upon our
analysis over 73% of corporate accounts don't understand the basic
fundamentals; i.e. how to properly use keywords, meta tags and titles
and worse, don't submit their web sites to top tier Directories
(Yahoo, LookSmart, OPD) and the hundreds of second tier directories.
Most companies delegate the s/e submissions to the webmaster or
web site development staff and they just don't have the time to
understand the daunting complexities required to generate page 1-3
rankings - or to stay abreast of the shifting submissions and ranking
criteria standards, as modified monthly by top tier search engines.
And, in many companies the s/e ranking is added to the over worked
webmaster's tasks purely as an afterthought – as opposed to
being addressed formally by the marketing department, with dedicated
personnel and a budget.
Big Picture Myth Three – off the shelf software
that submits a site to thousands of web sites and presents snazzy
reports can do it all. This is so inaccurate and nothing can be
further from the truth – it takes a tremendous amount of labor
and time to identify keyword sets (not just words), optimize the
content for these keywords, submit the pages while obeying the rules
of the road and then continually analyzing rankings and tweaking
to maintain and drive rankings (web site visibility).
Software can certainly help to automate some facets of the process
and be used for back end analysis – but you can't expect any
application to make the job easy, there is too much inherent complexity
in the processes. And, competition for keyword sets is fierce –
as there are an estimated 5-10M registered domains (the numbers
vary widely) with 60K new domains being registered every day.
Big Picture Myths Four and Five – Any page
listing will help to drive traffic to a web site – this is
another misconception. If you are aren't achieving page 1-3 rankings
then your wasting a great deal of time and resources – most
people never drill down below these pages. Another common mistake
is trying to achieve s/e rankings for a specific URL or product
– if people know the name of a company or product they will
find your web site easily, it's a waste of resources to optimize
for these specialized terms in 80% of most cases.
About the Author Lee Traupel has 20
plus years of marketing experience He is the co- founder of a Northern
California and Brussels Belgium based, privately held, Marketing
Services and Software Company, Intelective Communications, Inc.
(http://www.intelective.com). He can be reached at Lee@intelective.com
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