Search Engine Marketing
Isn’t it ironic that you built your website to advertise your business, but now that website needs to be advertised? Nowadays, building and maintaining a website is its own business – data-centric, time-consuming, sometimes painful business.
After building a website, it needs a way to be found (for some reason, that doesn’t happen on its own). Simply telling your friends and family about it doesn’t cut it.
That’s where Optimization Prime can help you, with search engine marketing.
What is Search Engine Marketing?
You’ve probably heard of SEO, or search engine optimization. SEO primarily deals with optimizing your website so it can be placed as high as possible on the “free” or “organic” search results list. No advertising is involved.
Search engine marketing (SEM) is an umbrella term for both free and paid search results. But it is not uncommon for people to use the term SEM to refer strictly to paid advertising, or pay per click (PPC).
What is PPC?
When you search for something, you might notice “sponsored ads” on the top or the right of your search results. They’re usually boxed in, distinctly separated from the rest of the page.
Obviously, those ads didn’t appear on their own; someone (let’s call him John) paid to put them there. Specifically, John paid for the search terms you used. Every time a visitor clicks on those ads, John pays. Hence the term, “pay per click.”
PPC advertising programs include Google AdWords or Yahoo Bing Network. You can also advertise on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. No doubt you have seen some of those ads.
Why do you need to pay for advertising?
Shouldn’t the SEO cover everything?
You don’t need to pay for advertising, of course. After all, people are more motivated to look at the organic search results (stuff below the ads) than the sponsored ads.
But some 20% of visitors according to Google do click on the ads. When you think about it, those visitors are really motivated. Something about the ads spoke to them directly, leading them to click.
It’s this immediacy that makes advertising attractive. All other types of marketing, like social media, content marketing, etc. take time to attract a steady stream of visitors. With advertising, you may be targeting a much smaller group, but it’s a group that’s highly motivated to seek out your service or product.
How can Optimization Prime help?
We understand that you’re a small business owner, so your marketing budget is not free flowing. Because you’re paying for someone to click on your website, you need to make sure your “keywords” (what people are searching for) are not too competitive, yet still have decent search volumes.
This is a lot of work! It’s a lot of poring over data and a lot of analysis to make sure you don’t waste your money. You have an actual business to run. So let us be in charge of your search engine marketing, so we can help you get the most bang for your buck.
