Does Your Website Need Search Engine Placement?
by Dave Davies
Introduction
For many, the value of their websites can be measured
in visitors, for others it is the amount of revenue
that the site generates.
Regardless of how you measure the success of your
website, you are going to have to bring visitors
to it that are looking for the information, content
and/or products that you are providing. So how
do you do this?
For many businesses the yellow pages is a first
choice for promotions and marketing. A standard
yellow page ad runs for about $1,200+/year for
a smaller ad and serves only a local market. You
further have to consider the cost of ad development,
which can often run into the thousands of dollars
as well.
While this may be an essential form of advertising
for many businesses which serve only local areas,
it is certainly not the only one.
On the Internet there are many forms of advertising
that have and are being used to bring traffic
to websites. From banner ads and sp@m email to
PPC and natural search engines there are countless
methods for promoting your website online. So
how do you choose which marketing tactic to utilize?
One thing to consider is that over 80% of all
Internet traffic comes from search engines with
Google currently responsible for the vast majority
of that. With such an overwhelming amount of traffic
coming from a single identifiable source it makes
sense to put a lot of weight on what traffic from
this source can mean for your website, and for
your business.
In this article we will explore the difference
between sites that should consider search engine
placement as a viable choice in their marketing
strategy, and those that would benefit little
from top placements. As well we will look at ways
to insure that you are maximizing the effect and
potential return on investment of your search
engine placement campaign should you choose to
go that route.
Who Should Consider Search Engine Placement
An ethical search engine placement firm will
tell a client honestly if search engine optimization
will benefit their website. Of course, not every
company is ethical and further, how do you know
until you have undergone search engine optimization,
whether it will benefit your website? By this
point you have paid the firm and they have done
their job whether it helped you or not.
There are a few things you should consider before
you apply search engine placement tactics to your
website, or consider hiring a search engine placement
firm. I include "apply search engine placement
tactics to your website" as, even though
it may be "free" to do it yourself you
can detract from the overall visual appeal of
your site if not done correctly, and also it is
a very time consuming process to both learn and
perform.
Questions You Should Ask Yourself:
What do I stand to gain from higher search
engine traffic? As search engine optimization
has a built in cost of either time and resources
should you choose to do it yourself, or through
the direct cost of money should you hire a search
engine placement firm, you have to insure that
what you hope to accomplish will be at least equal
to and preferably greater than the cost of time
and money it will take to do successfully.
For more information on this you will want to
read the section below "So You're Going To
Market Your Website On The Search Engines …
Now What?" for tips on establishing whether
there is truly enough traffic to be had to make
your efforts worth it.
Can I compete? The short answer to this question
is generally always "yes" however there
are many factors to consider. While any site,
with enough work, can rank well you do have to
consider whether the effort will be worth it.
For example, if you own a small computer store
in Michigan that repairs computers and troubleshoots
software issues, it is theoretically possible
for you to rank your website well for the term
"Microsoft Windows". To do so would
require an ENORMOUS amount of both time and money.
And so you have to consider, is it really worth
investing years of time and money into this one
ranking? The answer is "probably not"
but that doesn't mean that search engine placement
would not be beneficial for you, just that those
keywords are not worth targeting. There are suggestions
for choosing the right keywords below.
Do I make money from my website traffic? This
question isn't the end-all-be-all however it's
certainly relevant if you're considering hiring
a search engine placement firm to optimize your
site. If you plan on "going it alone"
you may want to put in the effort for no money
in return simply for the "fun" of it,
however if you're planning on spending your hard
earned money on a search engine placement firm
you have to make sure that it is in your economic
best interest to do so. This may be from either
direct product /services sales or from the sale
of advertising on your site.
If, after answering these questions to yourself
you have determined that search engine placement
is indeed a good choice for your marketing strategy
you will now have the task of determining exactly
what tactics will produce the greatest Return
On Investment for your efforts.
So You're Going To Market Your Website On The
Search Engines … Now What?
Now that you have determined that search engine
placement is indeed an avenue of marketing that
can produce beneficial results for your site and
for your business, you have to decide on a "plan
of attack". Many SEO firms will "help"
you determine keywords to target, and some will
even build links for you from "valuable"
sites. In many case they may be entirely truthful
but how do you know?
The choosing of the keywords to target is probably
the most crucial step of the entire search engine
optimization process. This will determine the
success and/or failure of your promotions. Even
if you attain all the top placements that were
targeted, if you target the wrong terms these
rankings will produce little or no results.
So how do you determine for yourself which keywords
to target? Without getting into anything too technical
there are a couple of great resources out there
to help you isolate the keywords that you should
target.
The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
Advantages – The Overture Search Term
Suggestion Tool is free and produces a large number
of results for related searches.
Disadvantages – There are two main disadvantages
to the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool in
determining your keywords. The first of these
is that it puts everything in terms on the singular
and further will correct misspellings where you
may want to know how many people searched for
a misspelled term. If you run a shopping site
that sells gifts you will not be able to determine
whether the main searched phrase was "gift"
or "gifts". The second major disadvantage
to the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool is
that it doesn't give you alternative search phrases
that are related but that you might not have thought
to punch in ("presents" for example).
Which brings us to the second tool.
WordTracker
Advantages – WordTracker addresses all
the disadvantages noted about the Overture Search
Term Suggestion Tool. It differentiates between
singular and plural and will allow you to search
for misspellings.
Further, it searches a thesaurus and will make
a number of suggestions for other terms you may
not have thought of but which may be related to
your industry. It will then analyze the variety
of terms that you have searched and chosen and
actually make recommendations on which keywords
to target based on the number of competing pages
and the specific search engine you are targeting.
It will also give you a predicted number of searches
per day for each phrase.
Disadvantages – The only real disadvantage
to WordTracker
is that it has a cost. There is a free trial
on the site which you can use though the results
it produces are far lower in numbers and it does
not give you information on all of the major search
engines.
Certainly worth checking into even if you only
try the demo mode (not a download – this
is an online resource).
So you now have a list of possible keyword phrases
… now what? The next step is to determine
whether you can compete with those currently holding
the top positions and, more importantly, whether
it will be economical to do so. The first place
to look when you are trying to determine this
is the search engines themselves.
Let's assume for a second that you have determined
that there are a good number of searches for your
product and that the main keyword phrase you would
like to target is "acne cures". The
next step is to run a search for "acne cures".
Most people are interested primarily in their
Google rankings and so you would run
that search on Google.
The site currently holding the #4 position is
www.approvedcures.com.
Take a look at the site.
There are two major things that you will first
be looking for:
Is this a large site with a lot of content related
to the search phrase? In this case the answer
is "yes". They have a very large site
and all of it is related to the topic the search
was for.
How many incoming links do they have? You will
now want to find out what sort of link popularity
you will be competing with. Links are not the
end-all-be-all of search engine optimization,
if fact it is just one of a large number of deciding
factors, however the links help determine your
Google PageRank and this PageRank is a final multiplier
in determining your position.
Because the number of incoming links is easily
determined it is something you should look into.
To determine the number of links simply enter
into the Google search bar "link:www.approvedcures.com".
They do not have a large number of incoming links
and thus, this is not going to be a significant
factor in determining their ranking.
And Now You're Ready For Search Engine Placement
At this point you should have a pretty good idea
as to whether search engine placement is a viable
choice for your website promotions, which keywords
you should target, and what competition you will
be facing.
Assuming that your website needs to be optimized,
you will now be faced with the choice of doing
it yourself or hiring a search engine placement
firm.
If you will be doing your own optimization I would
highly recommend reading an article by the CEO
of StepForth Search Engine Placement entitled
"A
10 Minute Search Engine Optimization".
Dave Davies is the marketing manager for StepForth
Search Engine Placement Inc. Visit them online
at http://www.stepforth.com
or
email him at dave@stepforth.com.
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