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
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
