Search Engine Marketing

There are various ways of making yourselves heard and none of it involves screaming from the rooftops. Though search engine marketing isn’t the sexiest sounding term, its efforts are proven to be the most effective way to get your business business with 93% of all online experiences beginning with a search engine. Luckily for you, we just so happen to have a bit of knowledge in the field and understanding the inner workings of search engine marketing is what runs through our veins. But before we get into the sales pitch, we’d like to offer you a little more insight into the weapons we wield.

It’s no secret on how much we rely on Google for most any curiosity the universe throws our way, so it seems natural that depending on where businesses rank on a Google page can also help determine their success.Enter Search Engine Optimization; this handy little tool can yield a hefty punch when it comes to the ranking of your site and it does it all by (surprise!) optimizing your site to correspond with specific search queries. This includes everything from regularly updated content (ie blogs), to social media activity, to generously scattered keywords, linking, user experience and everything else in between. All of this and more contribute to how search engines perceive your site’s worth and subsequently Paid search advertising is another form of marketing that also falls within the SEM scope.

The use of Pay Per Click methods are most common in search engines and consists of companies bidding for ad placements and keywords within search engines to ensure they get first dibs at claiming traffic to their site. How it works is that every time a PPC ad is clicked, the company will pay a fee to the publisher (ie Google). This way you only pay when a genuinely interested party is looking, otherwise PPC ads cost nothing to display, hence “pay-per-click”. Though less competitive than SEO which relies on organic traffic, PPC is essentially a way of buying visits to your site, though other advantages include a better understanding of who your audience is and a more refined way of reaching out to them.

There are a number of reasons why you should choose to add search engine marketing to your toolkit, for one it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Let’s put it this way, over 70% of your site’s traffic will result from a search query. Gaining more exposure on search engines will encourage more traffic and increased traffic will contribute to a higher overall ranking and result in more visibility and value of your business to future clientele.

The effectiveness of search engine marketing, simply put, is its multifaceted approach.

Where traditional marketing techniques might target only one or two areas, good SEM covers the full spectrum of marketing possibilities. It works with the natural patterns of the internet and capitalizes on everything from digital advertising to social media and of course, search engines. Not only does it deliver a significant amount of new traffic to your site, it’s cost effective considering it offers 24/7 exposure (a feat that would blow any budget out the window by any other means), creates brand awareness and delivers an unparalleled marketing ROI. Essentially it’s a way of understanding how best to with the internet and that’s right where we come in.

Without revealing too much of the trade secret, implementing SEM to your marketing pursuits can be just as multifaceted as SEM itself. Before any kind of in depth strategizing takes place, the first place to start is with your website and making any sort of improvements that need to take place, however big or small. We’re clearly big fans of having a stellar website and huge advocates of engaging web design and if you’re going through the efforts of getting people to come to your site, you at least want to make sure they stay there.

Your next plan of action would be determining a marketing strategy and if you haven’t the slightest on where to start, our marketing professionals are happy to provide you with a platform to jump off of. Start off by figuring out the answers to some simple questions: what are your long-term goals? What are your short-term goals? Budget? What are you hoping to achieve? Amongst other considerations dependent on your business, the answers to these questions can help you to determine the best strategy that’s right for you.