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The goal
The main goal of Search Engine Marketing is to Capitalise on the
growing use of Search Engines for users to find information about
products and services online. More and more people are using the
internet to research and buy products and services online, so it is
important to understand that the market is changing and that there
is value in internet marketing.
Search Engines
Search Engines provide users with information regarding the
search queries that they perform, so ideally you would like to
appear every time a user types in products and services related to
your product. The problem with this is that there is a lot of
competition these days and it is difficult to appear in the top 100
listings for some industries these days. If you sell used cars in
South Africa and you type "cars" into Google, you will almost
certainly not appear in the first 10 pages of the results (showing
10 per page). To get around this we target our keywords or use the
first type of search marketing called SEO or Website Optimisation.
Website
Optimisation
Through the use of
website optimisation we can
target users that might actually find us. So from the above example,
we could rather target a user typing in "used cars cape town", this
would give us a much bigger chance as we are now targeting potential
clients looking for what we have on offer in the area that we
operate in, which is in fact the target market. The only draw back
to SEO is that it can take months for the search engines to pick up
and "index" your keywords and other changes.
Google Adwords or
Pay per click advertising
Option two is by using
Google Adwords or
Pay per click advertising. PPC adverts appear above the
search results and on the right hand side and are also referred to
as sponsored links. These ads are a fast way to boost your traffic,
however you get charged every time a customer clicks on the advert
so it is important to set your budget and also to make sure that you
select the correct keywords to activate the adverts, much like SEO,
but a paid for service. Usually the most you are willing to pay per
click, the higher you will appear in the list of Adwords displayed
and once again the higher you are the more likely you will get
clicked on.
What do we
recommend?
Initially to get your traffic statistics up it is a good idea to
rely on PPC advertising as they are instant and show immediate
results. We use these while the SEO is being implemented and while
we wait for Google to pick up on the SEO on the website. Then
overtime it may be possible to reduce the amount of money you spend
on Google Adwords as you start to get more organic/natural hits from
the search results. |
