Increasing
Profits For Small Businesses Through Search Engine
Marketing
Dale Goetsch
Search Innovation
June 19, 2002
The Problem: Increase Profits
As a small business owner or manager, you have
one principal goal: increase your profits. Whether
you are a sole proprietor looking to increase
your own income, or a corporate manager looking
to increase shareholder equity, your bottom line
is the bottom line. Whether you need to move more
widgets or provide more services, ultimately you
need to increase your income by expanding your
revenue while decreasing your expenses. You need
to reach new customers, and keep your current
customers coming back for more.
How do you solve the problem: Communication
If you want people to purchase your goods and
services, they need to know that you exist, and
what you can do for them. You need to communicate
information about your products and services to
as many potential customers as possible. This
requires more than just broadcasting your message.
To be truly efficient, you need to tell your story
to those who will actually want to do business
with you. You need to focus your efforts.
How do you communicate: Advertising
There are several media available to you for
getting your message across. The most basic is
simple word-of-mouth. This costs you nothing,
but you also have very little control over how
your message is communicated. For a small, local
business, this may work fine, but in the Internet
age, where your customers probably don't come
from a small neighborhood, this is not enough.
Traditional electronic media are available to
you. Local radio and television spots can reach
a great number of people in your community. The
question here, however, is just who your message
is reaching. These ads are focused on a rather
broad demographic: sugary cereals on Saturday
mornings, razors and fast cars on sports shows,
and so on. If this is sufficiently focused for
you, you may be in good shape, except that these
spots can be fairly costly. A 30-second radio
spot can cost $100 or more, depending on the market;
a television ad can cost over $1000 for the same
spot, with network spots going for much more.
In addition, there are production costs, with
professional actors, editing, and so forth. They
are also pretty ethereal--when the ad is finished,
it goes away.
Print advertising has the advantage that it doesn't
disappear when the reader has finished looking
at your ad. They can go back and look at it again.
For local coverage, print advertising can be pretty
inexpensive. A four-line classified ad in the
local newspaper costs practically nothing. Even
display ads can be fairly inexpensive, given that
you will reach a large number of people. For national
coverage, print can become quite expensive. The
rate sheet for a respected national new magazine
charges over $200,000 for a one-page color ad
in their national edition!
In all these cases, you have to look at who is
being targeted. In print ad, you are looking at
everybody who reads the magazine or newspaper.
Does everybody who reads that publication want
to buy your product? If not, then this is probably
not the most efficient use of your marketing dollar.
Even with focused traditional electronic media,
you may be reaching a broader segment of the population
than you want to--you may not be interested in
all women in the 18-49 group, for example.
What about the World Wide Web? We've all seen
banner ads on websites. These may get your message
to a more focused group, but there are problems
that come with banner ads. Banner ads have become
so ubiquitous that many people simply ignore them.
Or worse, they have software that will actually
remove them from web pages as they view the pages.
Your message doesn't get to anybody that way.
Pop-up ads and their newer incarnation, the pop-under
ad, are often not appreciated by users on the
Web. Having several browsers opened on a user's
desktop can be quite disconcerting for them.
What is the most cost-effective, focused way
to communicate with your market: Your Web Site
You probably already have a website; otherwise
you are probably looking seriously at creating
a presence on the Web. Your website works for
you 24/7; people can always come to your site
to see what you have to offer. You reach people
who want what you have, because they come looking
for you. They want what you have, and they want
to hear your story.
How do people reach your website: Search Engine
Marketing
If you have a famous brand, people will have
an easy time reaching your website. If, however,
you aren't a Fortune 500 company, it may be a
bit tougher. Search Engine Marketing may be just
the thing for you. You want your website to have
high visibility, with the goal of leading qualified
traffic to you. How much more qualified could
your prospects be than to have them actually looking
for you?
Marketing via Search Engines may be the most
cost-effective techniques available to you. Many
Search Engines will list your site for free; others
for a relatively small fee. Just because your
site is listed on the popular Search Engines,
however, doesn't mean you're home free. Have you
ever done a search and seen that there were a
million matches for your search terms? Have you
ever tried to look at the one-millionth match?
Usually people are interested in only the first
page or two of results--typically the first thirty
matches or so. If you happen to be number 31,
you are out of luck.
How do I get on top: Search Engine Promotion
We know how to get you to the top of these lists
of Search Engine returns, and to keep you there.
While nobody can guarantee results, we can greatly
improve your site's ranking on the major Search
Engines. If anybody tells you that they can guarantee
you a #1 ranking, don't believe them. There are
no tricks to achieving a better ranking, but there
is hard work, combined with experience, that will
move you up into the coveted "top thirty" spots.
We have that knowledge; we have that experience.
Search Engine Promotion: How we do it
We want you to achieve a sustainable high ranking
in Search Engines that people actually use, and
to do so at a price you can afford. Our Code of
Ethics is your assurance that we will put all
our efforts behind your site. The details are
important to you, and they are important to us.
We can work with you and your website developer
to make sure your site ranks as highly as possible.
Working with your small to mid-sized website,
we can:
- Prepare an initial ranking report, to help
you better understand how you are already positioned
in the Search Engines
- Work with you to select appropriate keywords
to incorporate into your site.
- Select an appropriate category for your inclusion
in the human-edited directories.
- Perform a thorough website review, to let
you know which parts of your site could be made
more Search Engine-friendly.
- Make suggestions for additional content you
may wish to include on your site.
- Verify the usability of your site. Getting
people to your site is important; keeping them
there, helping them to find what they are looking
for is vital.
- Test the functionality of your site.
- Perform an analysis and review of websites
of your competitors. If you want to rank higher
than them, you need to understand the strategies
they are employing.
- Provide a complete set of Search Engine optimization
components for you to include in the pages on
your website.
- Provide detailed instructions for you or your
website developer on how to implement the suggestions
and components.
- Submissions to the major free Search Engines
and Directories.
- Submissions to the major paid Search Engines
and Directories.
- Re-submit your site as necessary.
- Provide a follow-up ranking report, to see
how your site's ranking has increased through
implementation of these recommendations.
- Link popularity strategy campaign, to assure
that other sites are pointing toward you.
- Ongoing traffic analysis to find out how site
visitors are finding you.
We look forward to the opportunity to put our
experience to work for you. Drop us a note at
info@searchinnovation.com
and see how we can help increase your ranking
in the Search Engines and Directories.
About the Author:
Dale Goetsch Technical Consultant for Search
Innovation Marketing , a Search Engine Promotion
company serving small businesses and non-profits.
He has over twelve years experience in software
development. Along with programming in Perl, JavaScript,
ASP and VB, he is a technical writer and editor,
with an emphasis on making technical subjects accessible
to non-technical readers.
Copyright © 2003 Search Innovation Marketing.
All Rights Reserved.
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