What is Search Engine Marketing & what can it do for me?

Search Engines can account for up to a staggering 80% of traffic to a website – and more traffic to a website almost universally means more revenue generated by that website. Enhancing your ranking position in the Search Engine Results Pages can mean spectacular increases in Return On Investment, and investing in a well thought out Search Engine Marketing strategy will achieve this. Search Engine Marketing is the best way to ensure your website continues to pay back dividends in the long term.

Beating your competition to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages for your keywords is one of the most respected methods of marketing your company to potential customers. Each search engine has their own secret algorithms for choosing which sites are displayed and in which order in the organic listings, so it’s not about who has the biggest advertising budget; it’s about having the most relevant website.

Relevance is very highly rated by the average internet user – most people using search engines click on the organic listings rather than the paid listings which are less likely to be relevant. There is nothing worse than clicking on a website from a search engine, only for it to have nothing to do with what you were searching for! A visitor who finds what they were looking for on your website is already on the way to converting to a customer.

The Search Engines use automated software, called Spiders or Robots, which crawl through countless websites and, using their algorithms, return the most relevant sites for a particular keyword or key phrase to the browser. Simply put, we ensure that when the spiders crawl your website, all the information they need to determine your site’s relevance can be easily found, easily read by them, and is telling them the right things.

Our Search Engine Marketing consultants have many tools at their hands to accomplish this, and will work with you all the way. We start by helping you to choose the right keywords to target – getting the balance right between choosing the keywords most relevant for your business, and competitiveness. Some keywords can be so highly competitive that refining your choice can make all the difference between a 10th page listing and a first page listing. We combine this with copywriting, strategic directory submissions, technical improvements to your website, and our expertise in search engine optimisation to push your keywords to the top of the rankings. Together we endeavour to improve your conversion rate to ensure these measures equate to a fantastic return on investment.

So why should you be focussing your valuable marketing budget on the search engines? Google and Yahoo! are the ones to concentrate on with nearly 90% of the market share between them; they have the power to deliver a multitude of benefits to your business.

Search Engine Marketing;

• Delivers increased traffic to your website and raises your conversion rates. If someone visits your site after searching for one of your keywords, they are not the only one benefiting from finding a relevant website – you also receive targeted and relevant traffic. The visitor goes directly to your selected landing page for that keyword instead of having to navigate through your website, which leads to higher levels of enquiries and sales.
• Can actually decrease your marketing costs. By ensuring that the visitors to your site are a targeted audience, your conversion rate improves and the cost per conversion is reduced. Ultimately, Search Engine Marketing sends relevant traffic, to the right pages in your site, for free.
• Improves the usability of your website, perfecting its structure and content to ensure that it is easy to use and navigate, and appealing to your potential customers.
• Raises brand awareness through online press releases, relevant articles and directory submissions.

Search Engine Marketing works alongside traditional marketing campaigns by ensuring that traffic from conventional adverts is delivered directly to the relevant landing pages, as well as offering your company the capability to assess the effectiveness of any new content or products on targeted online visitors before the content is circulated through the usual channels.