Driving Traffic and Profit

So is Search Engine Optimization a myth or does it really help in improving the rankings and hence result in more traffic, leads and revenue? How is it different from paid advertising via Google Adwords?

Well you can buy traffic via Google Adwords or other PPC ads of other search engines like Yahoo Search Marketing. However, if you can truly earn traffic by investing in a good website, quality content and do search engine optimization, you will be a winner in the long run.

One should not try and do optimization for too many high traffic keywords but research the right keywords relevant to the business so that only well targeted and focused traffic is achieved and conversions are high.

With PPC advertising via Adwords one can burn lot of cash very quickly and it will probably work only for high ticket items. However, if the product or service price and profit margin is not very high one has to play the SEO cat and mouse game with the search engines. With SEO there is an initial spike in marketing spend but once the ranks have been achieved for the right keywords, one can drastically cut down the online marketing budget and spend a small amount each month or quarter to sustain the ranks else the competition will takeover.

Another big thing is the high CTRs. If one achieves the top 5 ranks in the search results, then the click through rates can be as high as 60% to 90%! And in Adwords, if someone achieves a click through rate of just 1%, it’s a job well done. So you can understand that if someone is only relying on Adwords, then a large chunk of traffic and potential customers are going untapped!

As a part of launch strategy or a short term traffic spike strategy Google Adwords make perfect sense. However, one should also be meticulously planning for SEO as a long term strategy. Many businesses even achieve as high as 80 to 90% of their overall traffic from keyword based search traffic from different search engines and there is no reason why you also cannot achieve high traffic via search engine optimization techniques.

Recently we successfully completed a SEO project for a client in the hotel industry in California, USA. We achieved top 3 spots for some competitive and very very relevant keywords for the client business. Life is Good !

I think in online marketing having a local context can help tremendously. Even if one has a national level business and has a national level marketing plan, it will still make sense to try and have local faces of the business online and then market based on local conditions including using techniques of local search engine optimization.

The chances of success increase manifold since by thinking local one is able to reduce the competition to a great level.

Did not someone say “Think Global. Act Local”.  I think it holds true for online marketing too !!

Often I find people getting worked up and worried about immediate returns from investment into the social media.

I think organizations should invest in building and engaging communities around their products and services more from a long term perspective. Expecting immediate returns like from an adwords campaign or an email marketing campaign will most likely lead to disappointment and one runs the risk of striking off Social Media Marketing from one’s marketing road map. Hence having the right expectations from social media marketing is extremely important.

One has to build and grow the community but the key is that the organization ENGAGES with the community. How will you be useful for the community that will listen to you on a regular basis. Are you providing them useful info alerts in a timely manner? Are you providing them customer support via social media channel? Can they get hot deals and exclusive discounts only via the particular channel ???

Once the organization understands the objective of engagement with its audience via social media and pursues it diligently, the consumers will respond warmly and the community will grow.

One of the basic and well known internet marketing technique is to continually pump in quality content on your website to drive SEO traffic on the website.

However, the cost of full time content writers or even outsourced content writers can be quite daunting. One way to acquire low cost content and then refurbish it slightly or use it as is to buy PLR content.

The concept of PLR content is that you can use the content for your need but the ownership rights remain with the authors. You cannot further resell the PLR content.

You can buy PLR content from www.contentmixi.com and other PLR websites.

The next best option of getting content would be to use freelancer content writers on a per article basis.

Of late the search experience has not been great…often the good websites are coming in page 2 and 3…. This had led to the following chain of thoughts:

Let’s take the scenario of buying digital cameras…. My search result expectation would be manufacturers of the digital cameras which would give me info on the latest models and best prices, or a few comparison websites from media companies to provide neutral views….

However if this ideal case scenario truly happened then the manufacturing companies would not need to spend on ppc ads …. That would lead to great revenue loss for search engines… Hence search engines have to keep tweaking the algos to give a fair chance to even not so great websites to feature in the top 10 search results. That would mean that some of the manufacturing and important websites will have to spend on ppc else their business will suffer..

Now if search engines do not ensure good search experience users will switch over !!

Hence the search engines have to constantly balance the act of optimizing user experience and revenue !

Info as on 5th September 2009:

Thought this would be useful info for the readers:

This info is as on 5th September, 2009.

Both Linkedin and Facebook are excellent social media platforms but both have their independent individual characteristics.

1. Linkedin is highly focused on professional networking. It is a heaven for recruiters as they can gauge the credentials of the potential employees and also contact prospective recruits with the help of their existing network.

Facebook is more casual and diverse in nature and truly encourages interaction amongst its members. As they opened their API for application developers, many interesting applications including games, polling apps, etc. intrigued and caputred the imagination (and time) of the community members of the platform.

2. Linked in has the subscription based revenue model and also has ad based revenue stream. Facebook on the other hand has ad based revenue model as of now. But they are also collaborating with mobile companies like Nokia for OEM deals and must be making big bucks.

3. In Facebook one can upload pictures/videos to share with friends…. Linked in has stayed away from rich media game play. Profile pictures are allowed but in all probability one would find people in their business suits at linkedin. In Facebook one can be more relaxed and opt for more casual profile pictures as they are out there to socialiaze with friends and have fun.

4. Linkedin has added the Q&A module for knowledge sharing. Facebook does not have have such a mandate.

5. Facebook allows building web pages to promote products or service or organization or event. Linked allows the users to add companies which can show in the search results.

In a nut shell, Linkedin is a more focused social media platform. Facebook is a larger giant allowing people to be more casual and encouraging them to indulge on the wall !

Google is synonymous with God in the internet world and its success has inspired tens of thousands of internet companies. Following are some of the factors which I feel contributed/contribute to the Google success story:

1. High Quality but for Free:  Google developed a quality search engine, had the brilliance of coming up with a very simple and user friendly front end design and then offered the search service for free to the masses ! What a disaster it would have been had they charged money for the service.

2. Develop an eco-system for others to make money: Google created an industry in itself for people to make money via Google Adsense. Small companies who could not afford and manage a sales force could now make money simply by integrating the google ad scripts and google search bar on their website. People worked hard to create content and make money out of it. Google gave them hope and created many internet moguls. But in the entire process what actually was also happening was that Google was getting more and more content inventory where they could serve ads; they were now having more locations from where people were searching using Google’s search engine. Yes, Google had gone viral !!

3. Smart Acquisitions: They realized the potential of video content and acquired YouTube. They saw the powerful rise of facebook, myspace and acquired Orkut to compete. The acquisition team of Google is always on the prowl sniffing innovation in the internet world!

4. Smart Hiring: People indeed make all the difference. Very rigorous hiring process ensured inflow of very very talented people in the organization, resulting in great products, smart marketing and aggressive sales. And as the saying goes Good talent attract more good talent.

Sundeep

There are so many different channels for marketing like TV, Newspapers, Magazines, Bill Boards amongst others. However, search engine marketing has an inherent advantage for advertisers. It empowers the advertisers to target and advertise to only those consumers who are actively seeking (read Googling) to know about some product or service.

Its a far cry from the broadcast form of advertisement say in a general tv news channel, where probably millions of viewers will see the ad but they are passive viewers of the ad since they are not seeking info about the product or service being advertised. Out of those millions only say thousands would be interested in the advertised offering and another few thousands “may” be interested in the offering in future and “may” recollect the ad. So in the broadcast form of advertisement there is lot of SPILLAGE !

Search Engine Marketing gives a powerful tool to advertisers  to reach to TARGETED customers only,  based on the keywords they are searching.

Phone help line enquiry services like Just Dial are also similar in nature and help advertisers reach very targeted customers and avoid spillage !