Companies are getting fewer results for a higher spend using time-honoured marketing techniques. So we now need to look carefully at where the commercial market-place is going. It’s commonly understood that all businesses need to be online. But a web presence by itself won’t bring results. Customers HAVE to be able to find you!

Capture this scene – a new retail shop is opened… Stock has been bought, and the overhead is high. The doors swing open; they’re ready for the crowds – And only then realise they’re out in the sticks in a no-through road. What’s worse, they haven’t told anyone where they are. Who’s going to find that store? This is exactly the scenario for 99% of ALL commercial websites in existence.

The web has turned marketing on its head. As we left the 20th century, we all thought we had to have a web site. Getting a presence on-line became the be-all and end-all. Companies often spent a fortune on the latest features for their site. This trend was cheerfully encouraged by on-line design companies, who relished the business! Then everyone started to notice that they weren’t getting any traffic to their site. They’d thought that simply having a site on the web meant customers could see them. But unfortunately, this turned out to be completely false…

Websites have to be marketed, and in a completely different way to previous methods. A traditional marketing guru would tell you that your website is your online catalogue or advert of services. Therefore, you’ll need to utilise all the normal marketing channels (print, radio, TV, media etc.) to drive traffic to that site. In other words, doing what they know. First they make a nice looking catalogue. Then they utilise various marketing methods to get people to look at the catalogue. This is a fundamental misconception of the on-line economy.

The World Wide Web isn’t simply a passive display board. The internet is a hugely interactive environment that allows billions of users to research, discuss, offer comments etc. Enormous website indexes have been developed by the major Search Engines. These make it easy for people to find their way around. Off-line Business Pages would be useless if they weren’t properly structured: You’d never find what you were looking for.

Search Engines have sorted all this. This means, of course, that long established marketing methods are irrelevant! Because now, if you want to be found in the vast sea that is the internet, you have to be indexed in the Search Engines. But indexing alone isn’t the answer – as it’s a waste of time if you’re several pages down. Studies have proved that the vast majority of traffic goes to the first 5 slots on page 1.

So to give all companies a chance to be on the first pages, the Search Engines came up with a new form of paid advertising. It’s called Pay Per Click, and advertisers are only charged when someone ‘clicks’ on their ad. It was revolutionary. Because now you didn’t have to spend anything until an interested person looked at your web page. This is an incredibly targeted way of advertising, and done properly, can yield some exceptional results.

However, most fields are completely over-run with PPC ads today. Predominantly because of a wealth of new bidders who lack experience, the cost per click has been driven upwards. So it’s often the case now that many are priced out of the market. Particularly where it takes a large number of enquiries per sale. This has brought Search Engine Optimisation to the fore, where driving a site to page one is the goal.

Do this small task – Bring up a major Search Engine now and enter a number of keywords for your products or services. Then check through as far as page three. Can you find your website? Chances are – the answer’s no. Consequently, like the situation we described earlier, you’ve got no visibility! Or if you did answer positively, are your keywords likely to be used by real purchasers?

It could be that you are currently doing some Pay-Per-Click marketing, and getting a degree of success. Can you be sure you’re working it as efficiently as possible? Is your ROI satisfactory? Are you aware of how to assess the quality and viability of each campaign? Testing, measuring and split-testing are some of the most important factors with all PPC campaigns. Without accurate statistics, you can’t get the best ROI.

Sales and Marketing statistics reveal a massive trend towards more and more online trading. There is no other choice but to deal with it – and ensure you’re taking full advantage of all the opportunities.

Search Engine Optimisation takes into account the factors used by Google, Bing etc. when they position web sites in their natural listings.

When we search for anything, up come the natural search lists. They’re in addition to the PPC lists. On the major Search Engines, you’ll see a box at the top, and a column down the right hand side. These are the paid adverts. The ‘natural’ listings are straight from the main index. They show sites listed in the order of importance and relevance – according to their algorithm.

We want to be right up there where we can be seen. No-one’s going to find us if we’re listed on page seven. It’s impossible to know about all the SE’s rank determining factors. The SE’s really don’t want anyone to know – so you can’t manipulate or ‘game’ their system.

So, over the years a complete industry has grown up around this. On the one hand there are SE’s purposely filing a wide array of new patents. Causing much mystification about their methods! On the other hand, there’s Search Engine Optimisation. This utilises a series of tests and measurements to determine the most pertinent factors.

There are two sides to SEO: ‘On-Page’ factors & ‘Off-Page’ factors. Geography and demography are also factors that influence page ranking. For a full discussion of Off-Page factors, please refer to our other article on this subject.

On Page Optimisation

If we can make changes to our site to make it more friendly to Search Engines, this is called ‘on-page’ optimisation. It’s not too complex – it just requires setting up your web site correctly. For example: The correct use and density of keywords and internal linking; H1 and H2 header tags and meta tags.

It doesn’t matter if all that sounds very confusing.

In reality, this is very easy to control, but not wildly effective. Some would argue its effect is so small it’s irrelevant. There was a time when SE’s were ‘duped’ by On-Page optimisation. Not any longer though.

On-Page can still be important though if Off-Page has been taken care of. If that’s the case, internal linking and a certain amount of on-page fine-tuning can reap rewards.

Some Words Of Caution…

Don’t try hugely listed phrases and keywords in your early attempts at Search Engine Optimisation. The phrase ‘car insurance’ yields 70,000,000 results in the United Kingdom alone! It’s not rocket science to realise that competing in this area wouldn’t be productive.

On the other hand… The phrase ‘Southampton Car Insurance’ only brings in three hundred thousand. (Assuming I was a car insurance provider in Southampton.) This still seems quite a large amount, but it’s actually not in search terms.

I would have a far better chance of getting ranked for that phrase quickly than I would for just ‘car insurance’. In actual fact, it takes very deep pockets to get a premier listing for a term like ‘car insurance’. My competition would be the huge corporations. So not a great idea – especially, in fact, when there are much better ways to go about it.

We should concentrate on more accurate ‘phrases’ that give us less competition. These ‘long tail’ phrases might contain a number of specific keywords. They could be anything from two to seven words in length. Typically they will be 3 or 4 words long.

In general, our recommendation is to begin SEO’ing with keyword phrases that reveal fewer than 500,000 results. (There are occasions when we might accept a higher yield figure at the start – when the top entries are not well optimised.) Then, as we build back-links, we’ll automatically start to gain some ground on the bigger search phrases. If we’ve worked well, we can start hitting the bigger terms in a few months time. It’s a much more targeted strategy. Frankly, we’re only interested in the customers who are looking specifically for what we offer. There’s much more chance these people will buy!

Don’t just limit building back links to your website’s home page – link them up to various sub pages as well. Google and the other Search Engines like this ‘deep linking’. Try back-linking product group pages. They often have links to several other sub-pages about individual products. So don’t limit the back links to one page. Google and the other SE’s are looking more and more at how individual pages on your site are listed and treated.