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CEO / CMO Best Practices
 Online Marketing - The
New Frontier
CMO's Guide to SEO vs. SEM
Linda Kimeisa
Master in Marketing & Public Relations
What is Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the
practice of redesigning/re-editing your website (code + content) and
promoting your web pages online to rank your website higher on the
search engine result pages (SERPs). Once you achieve a higher
ranking, your customer traffic, brand and revenues will increase
exponentially. The following figure illustrates the
SEO ranking results for one of our clients as compared to their
competitors:
Note: The search phrase "US Economy Risks" is one of the most
valuable online media phrases in 2007-2008 for the business and
finance sectors. The client's site ranks among the top 10 of more
than 17 Million competing pages from leading global media and
universities. There are 2 benefits from being ranked on the top
of the results
-
Increased visitors = increased leads =
increased revenues
-
Increased brand awareness worldwide
-
Increase media, public relations and
journalists visibility
SEO Vs. SEM
What is the difference between
search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of paid
search engine listing (see the figure above). SEM is an advertising
program, in which you bid against your competitors to rent the
Advertising space. Depending on your industry and how competitive
your market is, the cost can be as high as $50 per click! The more
competitive your market is, the higher the advertising rate (lead
acquisition cost).
On the other hand, search engine optimization
(SEO) is a form of online public relations and technical wizardry,
where you are ranked as the most relevant site when potential
customers search for a product or a service using related keywords.
It is also called natural SEO or Organic SEO. Achieving a higher
ranking in such a globally competitive market requires exceptional
technology expertise, marketing knowledge and creative skills. The
SEO cost is fixed, so after the initial investment is set, all your
traffic is free. The best part is that your traffic can grow
exponentially (no limit) without having to pay for each click. Your
customer base grows while your online marketing budget remains the
same. The key challenge for all companies is that SEO technology and
online marketing is very difficult to master and the internet
websites keeps growing and content keeps changing, so very few
companies have the necessary expertise to rank your website higher
and maintain its ranking.
Can a company guarantee first
place ranking for all my keywords?
No company can guarantee first ranking for all
your keywords. Google, MSN, and Yahoo spend tens of millions of
dollars to develop and protect their ranking algorithms. A company
that advertises such guarantees will face huge trouble with the
search engines. Additionally search engines keep changing their
algorithms every few months in order to protect against reverse
engineering efforts. On the other hand, an expert SEO firm will have
enough track record to show consistently higher ranking for their
clients (for example top 10 results).
What does SEO involve?
As an online marketing strategy for increasing
the ranking of your website on search engines, SEO experts consider
how search engine algorithms work, how your clients search for
relevant products and services, and how your website is designed to
meet the search ranking criteria. The SEO process
involves internal and external optimization efforts. Internal
optimization takes into consideration the website design, including
the content, the code, the navigation structure and many other
factors. The external optimization involves the promotion of your
website on the Internet to increase your credibility. From our
experience a successful ethical SEO project requires the fine tuning
of more than a 100 parameters, each with a varying weight. A simple
change in one or more parameters in relation to the other parameters
can result in altering your ranking significantly.
Advanced SEO efforts involve the analysis of
online customer behavior, website content, HTML coding, information
architecture, site usability, page presentation, structure, menus,
content management systems, meta elements and XML sitemaps, as well
as fixing problems that could prevent search engine fully indexing
your site. A SEO project may also involve off-site (external)
optimization and promotion efforts like social media optimization,
relevant link exchange and ethical back links. Other complementary
efforts may include adding unique content to a website, ensuring
that the content is easily indexed by search engine robots, or
making the site more appealing to users.
Without a doubt, an ethical SEO project requires
a combination of technical and marketing genius along with a
dedicated online promotion team. Technology or marketing experts
alone will not be able to provide you with the best results.
Which one is better for my company, SEO or
SEM?
The combination of SEM and SEO can be very
effective in lead generation and customer acquisition. However, if
you have a limited budget or must choose one over the other, here
is one way to make a decision:
Comparison of cost/benefits between SEO and SEM:
-
Let's say your monthly online marketing
budget is $2,000 and the SEM cost of "pay per click" (PPC) bid
is $1. For an SEM budget of $2000, you can expect to have 2000
clicks.
-
If your SEO company can guarantee more than
2,000 clicks per month for $2000, then it is better to go with a
SEO project. If not, then SEM is a better choice.
In general, if your market is highly competitive,
then SEO is a much better investment.
SEM and The Problem of
Click-Fraud
Based on our experience, customers have been more
satisfied with SEO than SEM due to the rising costs of Pay per
click (PPC) and the Click-Fraud issue. There are many stories of
wasted SEM budgets that generate a lot of clicks but do not deliver
any qualified leads or clients. The term "Click-Fraud" describes
some unethical SEO marketing firms that use automated software to
click on SEM Ads or use some pay-to-surf schemes to have users click
on your Ads, although they are not interested in buying from you.
This is done to generate income by the advertising websites. Even if
there is no financial gain, your competitors can use automated
software programs to click on your ads to increase your cost. You
have to be careful when investing in SEM. We recommend using web
analytics to continuously measure the traffic, the conversion rate
and ROI whenever you pay for SEM campaigns. Since SEO projects are
fixed cost projects, they do not have the same problem as SEM
because you do not pay per click.
What is Ethical
SEO?
Ethical SEO is the practice of
designing and promoting your website to rank you higher without
misleading or tricking the search engines by using illegitimate
techniques such as paid link farms, keyword stuffing or hidden text.
Ethical SEO takes more effort and expertise to achieve results, but
at the same time it is very difficult to beat (it provides a
sustainable competitive advantage). Any webmaster or SEO firm
that promises you quick results (or short cuts) for cheap budgets is
simply using illegitimate search engine spamming techniques (Blackhat
SEO). Such techniques may rank you high for a week or so, but your
website will be easily discovered, penalized and possibly even
banned from all the search engines. Google, MSN and Yahoo continue
to refine their advanced search engine spamming detection
algorithms. More recently, Google has allowed other webmasters to
report any sites that use paid links or similar unethical SEO
techniques. So your competition is on the lookout for any unethical
practices by your webmaster or hired SEO firm. Like all fraudulent
schemes, the end result is a loss of time, effort, investment and
reputation.
Online Marketing Pro
To Learn More contact Linda Kimeisa at contact(at)onlinemarketingpro.org
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