Making a web site succeed is indeed a tricky business. The Internet is flooded with an overwhelming amount of promotional offers aimed at making you get rich quickly. Selecting an approach that will work for your web site can be a very difficult decision.
Over my years involved in Internet promotion, I have dealt with thousands of businesses all focused on achieving maximum exposure for their web sites. Standing clearly from the crowd of promotional options is one winner - search engine marketing, or SEM.
With Christmas fast approaching, SEM will be playing a vital role for the promotion of many retail web sites. There are 2 options available when using SEM - Paid and Organic.
Paid SEM requires direct payment to a search engine for results. Organic SEM involves paying a specialist to accelerate your web site’s climb in the natural search results. While Organic SEM takes longer to achieve, the rewards are well worth waiting for.
The difference between 'paid' & 'organic' results
The difference between paid and organic results can be illustrated by visiting Google.com.au and entering a search for ‘christmas shopping’ (see Figure 1). Paid results are visible to the right hand side of the screen. Organic results appear to the left.
Organic results twice as Effective as Paid
An interesting study by Eyetools Inc. recently revealed that Google users are 2 times more likely to view natural results over paid results (Adwords). Appearing in the top positions naturally will therefore ensure that you are achieving the maximum exposure possible for your web site.
Key Preliminary Findings of the Study included
The key location on Google for visibility as determined by the eye activity in the study is a triangle that extends from the top of the results over to the top of the first result, then down to a point on the left side at the bottom of the "above the fold" visible results. This key area was looked at by 100 percent of the participants. In the study, this was referred to as the "Golden Triangle". Generally, this area appears to include top sponsored, top organic results and Google's alternative results, including shopping, news or local suggestions.
Organic Ranking Visibility (shown in a percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location)
Rank 1 – 100% Rank 2 – 100% Rank 3 – 100% Rank 4 – 85% Rank 5 – 60% Rank 6 – 50% Rank 7 – 50% Rank 8 – 30% Rank 9 – 30% Rank 10 – 20%
Side sponsored ad visibility (shown in percentage of participants looking at an ad in this location)
1 – 50% 2 – 40% 3 – 30% 4 – 20% 5 – 10% 6 – 10% 7 – 10% 8 – 10%
Credit: Research conducted by EyeTools, Enquiro & Did-it Available online here.
Although it receives less exposure, Google Adwords can be a very valuable tool in providing immediate traffic benefits for your site. In a matter of minutes, your Ad will be visible to Google users.
While writing this article, I took a moment to set up a Google Adwords campaign for NetRegistry targeting 'christmas shopping'. In less than 5 minutes, NetRegistry appeared in the number 1 position for the paid results. To achieve the number 1 position for the ‘christmas shopping’ search on Google.com.au (in July), I had to agree to an average of $1.50 per click when anyone clicked my Ad. In comparison, if I wanted to target the number 1 position for ‘web hosting’, I would need to agree to pay an average of $10 per click.
Adwords expensive as long-term solution
Adwords is a great way to kick off your search engine campaign however over time this form of SEM can prove too expensive for many businesses to maintain. For long term viability, every web site needs to consider Organic SEM. This option will prove to be the more affordable long term option for achieving search engine exposure. The time to achieve results using Organic SEM can vary. In 4 months, existing web sites on average should be seeing good results using Organic SEM. New sites need at least 6 months before good results can be achieved.
The process of elevating a web site organically is commonly referred to in the industry as Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO. A specialist in SEO will understand how search engines build top results. A SEO specialist will work at improving your web sites ability to communicate with search engines in addition to establishing a strong network with other web sites within your industry.
The benefits of Search Engine Optimisation
To demonstrate the benefits of Search Engine Optimisation lets compare our Paid to Organic SEM for ‘web hosting’ on Google.com.au. For the cost of 90 Adword clicks for ‘web hosting’, NetRegistry was able to pay for 6 months of Search Engine Optimisation. After 6 months of Search Engine Optimisation Netregistry.com.au moved into a top 3 position for ‘web hosting’ on Google.com.au. This top 3 position now results in 1000’s of clicks every month for NetRegistry. The monthly cost to maintain this position is the same as paying for 15 Adwords clicks.
Get going now to make the Christmas Rush
If you haven’t started Search Engine Optimisation already, you will need to get going now to make the Christmas rush. Don’t be caught out like many retail businesses last year who thought that November was a good time to start. They were simply too late and they missed their window to make online sales boom.
If your alarm bells are ringing and you’ve decided to get started with Search Engine Optimisation, here’s what you need to do now:
1. Make a decision on a see here). These are great guidelines that cover the major issues with Search Engine Optimisation. Making the decision to go with Organic SEM could be the best business decision you will ever make. Do your research today and start moving towards greater exposure for your web site.
References
Australia's Leading SEO service - NetRegistry's TheTrafficAccelerator