When not to rely on SEO
October 23, 2008
While investing in SEO in today’s market can be one of the most cost-effective and import things a business can do, there are certain cases where it may not be ideal. As discussed over on searchengineguide.com:
If you have created a completely new product that serves a completely new niche, there simply may not be enough people searching for it to make search marketing efforts worthwhile. If this is the case, you’d do far better to spend your money engaging a good public relations firm or working on a social media strategy that will help you break into the marketplace by engaging your customers in the places where they have conversations. You’ll have to educate them before you have any shot at selling to them.
Akin to balancing your financial portfolio, its important to properly balance your marketing strategy. Sure, SEO can be incredibly impactful, but its not a magic bullet. Its critical to perform the necessary market reserach to best determine how much search volume there is about your particular area and what the best course of marketing a promotion should be in your case.
ROI on SEO vs. PPC
October 21, 2008
Just as savvy investors see opportunity in down markets, internet marketers and SEO experts do the same when they notice a disproportion in spending on PPC (pay-per-click) advertising compared to SEO. The often referenced “Google Heat Map” indicates that the lion-share of clicks for search results are within the organic listings. That said, recent reports show PPC spending is over ten times the amount invested in SEO and organic search. So what does this mean?
PPC is an expensive band-aid.
While it may drive traffic to your site, the chances of false positives resulting in no sales conversion is much higher than if organic search results bring traffic to your site based on proper SEO and good site content. Since so many folks are focusing on the easy PPC fix and not concentrating on what really matters in the long run, they will lose their ability to compete effectively as other website become more SEO-aware.
In these uncertain economic times, it is critically important for businesses to invest in proper SEO in order to ensure their ability to be competive in the search engine space both today and tomorrow.
