SEO News Bytes January 2005

By Shelley Murphy

There seems to be some confusion between Search Engine Marketers (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies. Now that TrendMetrix Software offers full Search Engine Optimization services, I get the opportunity to speak with many people from various companies requesting our services and the first question I am usually asked, " is SEM the same as SEO", in short, NO. All too often companies hiring Search Engine Marketers do not specialize in Search Engine Optimization, and so if I may repeat the infamous saying, "buyers beware"

To find the SEM firm that's best for your business, analyze your site's needs. If you're unwilling to modify the site design and copy, a search engine advertising campaign is your most viable option. You'll only need to find an SEM firm that specializes in search engine advertising. If you're in the process of redesigning and rewriting your site, a firm that specializes in SEO is probably your best choice. Shop around for the firm that suits the needs of your online presence.

What exactly is the difference between a Search Engine Marketing and a SEO Company

Search Engine Marketing is everything that can be done to utilize the technology of search engines with the goal of promoting a web site and increasing its traffic and ultimately increasing revenues for your business. First of all just to be clear, search engine advertising is not the same as search engine marketing, but rather only one component to search engine marketing which includes various elements such as; Marketing campaigns which involves branding, sales, customer service, distribution, trade shows, radio, TV, direct mail.

When hiring an SEM company, be sure it provides a variety of services, not just SEM advertising. Search engine advertising includes, sponsorship, pay for placement ads (PFP), guaranteeing you in the top placement in a search engine's results and within the distribution network. PFP incorporates elements such as, keyword selection, bid price, ad copy, ad distribution and effective landing pages.

In the case of an SEO company, it is their primary function to design, write and code a website to achieve high "natural" search engine rankings. This would mean keyword-rich text, insuring, a crawler-friendly site navigation scheme and URL structure and Link Popularity.

In order for people to find your site on the search engines, pages must contain keyword phrases that match the phrases your target audience types into search queries. Keyword phrases must be carefully selected and placed strategically throughout your site.

All the major search engines emphasize page title, visible HTML text, text placed in and around hypertext links. Most search engines don't use meta-tag content to determine relevancy. Search engines must be able to find that text.

How pages are linked to each other, and the way sites are linked to other sites, has considerable impact on search engine visibility. The last component of a successful SEO campaign is link popularity. That's the number and quality of links that point to your Web site. Link quality (links from popular, related sites) carries far more weight than link quantity and Google does not like "free for all sites", therefore it is best only to seek out relevant links at the onset, rather than being penalized.

Finally, if you are going to outsource your website and hire an SEO firm, make sure the firm has staff that specialize in search engine optimization, copywriting, design, development, programming, marketing, and link development.

Last but not least, do your homework and research the SEO Company's proven track record or success rate.

Focusing on return on your investment...

Every website owner wants to ensure their marketing dollars are turned into additional sales, leads, subscription sign up, downloads whatever maybe the conversion point they feel justifies spending their money on search engine marketing.

As an SEO company we also share this philosophy, without tangible proof that for every dollar spent on search engine optimization there is at least an equivalent return on your investment in sales or qualified leads. The calculations are really simple to see if your website could benefit from search engine optimization.

We know how much it cost to acquire visitors at the present with pay per click advertising, it's probably in the 20-30 cent range on average at Google Addwords or Overture.

Let's assume you are holding top 30 positions for 10 of your keywords and they bring in an average of 4,200 visitors per month, this translates into 50,400 visitors a year.

At a cost of 25 cents as a visitor you would spend nearly $12,600 dollars a year on Overture and/or Addwords.

By doubling your top 30 positions you can attract an additional 50,400 visitors a year, but it would cost you a whopping $25,200 dollars. This is where search engine optimization truly out performs pay per click advertising in both return on investment and long term lasting value.

Targeting the same 20 keywords with a search engine optimization campaign may cost you only $5,000 dollars which would equate to around 10 cents per visitor.

You may want to consider some of the other factors when choosing search engine optimization over pay-per-click advertising.

• The cost of the SEO campaign is known up front vs the costs of pay-per-click advertising which is ongoing and can fluctuate widely as other advertisers enter your market.
• Long term benefit of your natural search engine rankings can be maintained for years to come with a minimal amount of maintenance and link popularity building vs. your pay-per-click adds are here today, but may be gone tomorrow if your bank account runs dry.
• Many statistics pointing to natural rankings having much higher click through ratios other than pay-per-click ads because natural rankings are perceived to be more relevant.

Closing Comments

Some may argue that reputable SEO companies don't offer up any type of guarantees when taking on your SEO project, I on the other hand dispute that claim. If you are a small to medium sized company with a limited marketing budget, truly you would want some sort of guarantee as to where you will rank based on your keywords especially when you are held accountable for the spending of those marketing dollars.

As in the case of TrendMetrix Software, we will guarantee a top ten placement on any one of three top search engines, Google, Yahoo or MSN within six months. For further details, please visit our SEO services Page.