Search Engine Marketing is vital today. So we now need to look carefully at where the commercial market-place is going. Without a doubt, an on-line presence is now absolutely essential to every business that retails any kind of product or service. It’s not enough just to be online though. If nobody can find you, you might just as well not be there!

Look at it this way – imagine a retail enterprise with new premises: Heavy investment has gone into fitting it out and setting everything up. They open the doors… And discover they’re in a tiny backstreet, 3 miles out of the city centre on the 4th floor, and the road outside is closed due to a diversion. What’s worse, they haven’t told anyone where they are. How do you think they’ll get on? Nearly all commercial sites on the web are in exactly the same situation.

The internet has dramatically changed the shape of modern marketing. As we left the 20th century, we all thought we had to have a web site. Businesses scrambled to get themselves an online presence, often spending tens of thousands to create fancy graphical sites. (A happy situation for web design businesses…) But just the existence of the site didn’t bring in the customers. It had been thought that simply building a website would lead to sales. This proved to be a complete fallacy…

A traditional approach to marketing breaks down on the web. A traditional marketing guru would tell you that your website is your online catalogue or advert of services. As a result, they’ll try to get you to promote the site on radio, TV or in the press. In other words, doing what they know. They produce the pretty brochure and then market every possible avenue to generate enquiries to send that brochure to. This view is completely and utterly flawed in the internet economy.

The internet is much more than a portal to view ‘online brochures’. It is a completely interactive place where billions of people can research, examine, discuss and choose services and products in the comfort of their own home. And to help us perform these tasks there are now vast online directories that have been indexed by the likes of Google, Yahoo and Bing. Think of the chaos involved if the Business Yellow Pages wasn’t in alphabetical order: How on earth would anybody get anywhere?

Google and the like have fixed this problem. But in doing so, they’ve radically changed the face of marketing forever. Now, if you wish to be visible online, you must be indexed by Google, Bing and/or Yahoo etc. Even that isn’t enough though. Unless your customer spends half their day on the internet, they’ll never find you on page 6.

So to bring in more profit and give all sites a chance to be top dog, the SE’s gave businesses an ingenious paid facility to promote themselves. The only time you pay the Search Engine is when someone clicks on your advert. In other words, you literally Pay-Per-Click (PPC). It was revolutionary. Effectively, only people who’d expressed an interest in your product cost you any money. Professionally monitored and targeted adverts can bring spectacular results.

Alas, the market is bombarded with this form of advertising these days. Predominantly because of a wealth of new bidders who lack experience, the cost per click has been driven upwards. We’re now experiencing some costs per click that make profits unattainable. This happens mostly where lots of clicks are essential to get one buyer. This has brought Search Engine Optimisation to the fore, where driving a site to page one is the goal.

Have a go at this – Type a handful of relevant keywords into one of the Search Engines. Is your site listed on pages one to three? Probably not. So you might as well not be there at all! And if your site is listed, is it appearing for keywords that your customers will actually enter?

You may have some successful experience of PPC advertising. Can you be sure you’re working it as efficiently as possible? Are the returns you’re getting good enough? Which are your most successful areas? Every thriving campaign is dependent on split testing and measuring. If you don’t know what your stats are, then guaranteed you’re not getting the best results for your money.

It’s very evident today that both global and local commerce are moving swiftly onto the internet. Make the most of this trend. Unless you embrace the internet and utilize all of its advantages, your business will become a dinosaur.

(C) S. Edwards 2009. Look at Jason Kendall or Click HERE.

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