Have you changed your marketing strategy yet?

Contributed By Sayed Osama Naseem

Even today there are site owners who are not convinced that they must use a Search Engine Optimization. Now days every IT professional knows that search engine Optimization is an indispensable part of any site in order to make money online or attract attention. But it might be possible that may not realize and understand the reason behind the need to optimize site. Maybe they have more money invested in all Conventional methods of advertising and banner ads, or even have paid for advertisement in other sites as well. Then why do they need to spend more time and money?

For high ranking in search engines?

You might start by asking them where they think the traffic for their website is coming from. Although what they think the majority of web traffic driven by the large commercial search engines: Yahoo, MSN, Google, and Ask. (Until now, the search engine AOL uses Google to search Results). According to several

Studies, most people prefer to click on organic search results rather than the sponsored results, by a large margin.

But it does not mean that ads placed on search engine programs (like Google AdSense) are worthless and it also does not mean that they should be all about marketing the company’s website campaign. Search engine users end to trust organic results more than paid advertisements, which means that they are more likely to click on them – and is likely to change.

There is a catch, though: you have to be visible so that they can click on you. Good position in search engines cannot be bought as banner ads or sponsored ads. Studies have shown that most search engine users do not click past the first three pages of search results, many do not even click past the first page, if they don’t find what they’re looking for. Your own experience in the search engines probably confirms this. What does this mean? No matter how many search engines to spider your site if it is not listed in the first three pages, you might as well be invisible. In fact, to get the page first, among the top three results is even better.

Here is a thought that should really give them something to chew on. They might not be doing SEO for their website, but it’s an even bet that their competitors are. In that case, their rivals are getting all that lovely website traffic that they should be getting for themselves. That should make them sit up and take notice if nothing else will.

Search Engine Marketing helps site owners meet their various online marketing objectives such as generating leads, sales or simply building awareness. So there is indeed a need for change in the marketing strategy. There is more to search engine optimization than just marketing, as companies can derive many businesses benefits from using SEO. Let’s take a look at a few.

Cost-effective Customer Acquisition

There is no payment for search engines for being indexed. This is important for high volume, low intent phrases which can be expensive in paid-search (e.g. ‘insurance of car’).

It can also be useful for generating visitors on the long tail of search. Many companies bid on these phrases through paid-search, so giving opportunities for those who use an SEO strategy for the tail.

Fixed Costs

The cost of SEO is relatively fixed, independent of click volume. Effectively, the cost per click from SEO declines through time after initial optimization costs and lower ongoing optimization costs. Conversely, paid-search is essentially a variable cost.

Brand Visibility

Think about that search on ‘car insurance’. The big insurance companies are all desperate to make it on Google’s first page. The ones that don’t need to buy PPC ads to be seen, which is expensive for such a competitive search query.

Focus on Web Standards / Accessibility

Designing a website for search is an exercise in designing a best practice website. Search engine crawlers notice errors in your code, so valid code is a must for SEO. And that makes for a healthier, more accessible website. Accessible for Google’s crawlers, and for people.

Repeat Business

Customers referred from search engines tend to stick around for longer. Increase customer lifetime revenues via SEO!

Customer Acquisition – Targeted Prospects

Search is demand-driven, so anybody referred from a search engine is hoping that your web page matches their search query. If it does, and you show them all the information they need to see, they may be next customer.

Focus on Unique Content

We are big believers in quality content. Original content, Google loves it too. And so do many SEO experts – the general advice these days is to create subject-specific content on your website, and to categorize and label that content in a way that will deliver a boost to your keyword strategy. Blogs are good for this. Remember that quality content attracts quality links. And that links are still very important for SEO. So if you invest in unique content you are building a valuable intellectual property asset that will benefit other areas of the business as well as improve your search rankings.

Credibility / Brand Perception

“Why aren’t you in Google for ‘car insurance’”? Consumers expect big brand businesses to be prominently placed in Google, so what is the effect if you aren’t on the first page or two?

Findability

Search engines allow you to find relevant web pages even if you only remember snippets of information. A song lyric, a company name, a product review, a person.

If I am still unable to convince you in changing your marketing strategy yet, then let me assure you one more time. Each part which I have listed above can actually lead you towards a high rank and better visibility.  Follow each step carefully and you will know why I asked you to change you marketing strategy, if you haven’t already.