Creating and building effective Search Engine marketing campaigns is
like trying to nail jello to the wall for many companies! As it
typically involves deploying very specialized processes and melding
them with technology. Here is some insight gained from years of
experience providing these services to our own clients.
1)SE marketing works and drives low cost ROI - over 85% of most
surfers utilize Search Engines to find goods and services.
2)Its a zero sum game if you use any of the "we submit to thousands"
of search engines service companies, as these submissions do
absolutely nothing to drive viable rankings. If you aren't achieving
listings in the top 20-30 listings then you're wasting your marketing
dollars!
3)Remember the old Hill St. Blues maxim "be careful out there"? This
advice fits well in the SE marketing world - its digital warfare out
there for rankings. Significant resources are starting to flow into
this market as well, raising the bar and making it fiercely
competitive.
4)Stringent keyword analysis for the HTML text is the underlying
foundation of a successful Search Engine Ranking campaign – it's
analogous to the importance of ad copy for a conventional print
campaign. Most good SE firms use a commercial database service which
enables them to carefully analyze the relative popularity of keywords
and then build a submissions and optimization process around selected
keywords.
5)The actual Title for your pages will also have a significant impact
on whether or not a campaign works. It needs to be the right length,
typically 6-8 words, have no hyperbole, and pique a searcher's
curiosity.
6)Contrary to endless marketing hype there are no quick solutions in
this form of interactive marketing – it will take at least 1-2 months
before you see any immediate results. And, for significant results;
i.e. page 1-3 listings via top tier engines add another 2-3 months on
top of this on average.
7)Nobody can guarantee absolute results in this market, if they do,
then ask them for a bottle of snake oil! The only thing we can
guarantee our clients are detailed reports of what we are doing and
some references to other successful campaigns – it's a leap of faith,
like most marketing expenditures.
8)Web site content development impacts good SE rankings. You need to
develop content which is relevant to keywords. We use linguistic
analysis software for our clients and then build a
standalone "stealth web site" which has content expressly designed
for SE spiders (bots). But, this level of sophistication and
proprietary process is expensive and time-consuming, but very
effective.
9)Remember the Armand Hammer quote about Russia? "An enigma wrapped
inside a box buried deep in the ocean." This is apropos to the Search
Engine world, as the top tier SE's all change their submission rules
and algorithms on a regular basis. So, hire a SE firm that
understands the market – it can be very frustrating doing it on your
own and in many cases unproductive!
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 Intelective focuses
exclusively on providing services to small to medium sized companies
that need strategic and tactical marketing services. He can be
reached at Lee@intelective.com