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Absolute Top Five Search Engine
Marketing Myths Uncovered!
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 traditional marketing vehicles (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.
Lee
Traupel
Lee@intelective.com
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