Do not be fooled, the internet is a highly competitive place.  If you have a good idea, product, or service, and there’s value in it, chances are someone else has it already up for sale online.  Take heart!  If there’s no money to be made, there wouldn’t be competitors.  A healthy competition is a sign of a healthy niche, and in internet marketing a healthy niche can sustain you, so long as you are properly positioned.  Getting into that position requires getting and maintaining traffic to your site, and in sales terms it means structuring your online presence as an entry point into your sales funnel.  A lot of marketers have experimented with both search engine marketing and search engine optimization to reach the largest possible audience, and we have experience working with both of these approaches.

First, let’s explain what we mean.  Search engine marketing is using search engines themselves to carry your marketing message to your desired consumer demographic.  This generally falls under the rubric ‘Pay-Per-Click’ advertising, or PPC, although search engine marketing is tied directly to links spread through a search engine results page, while PPC campaigns can extend through content networks and are offered by more than just search engines.

Search engine optimization is the practice of creating sites and linking to them in such a way as to increase the visibility of those sites to search engines themselves, naturally bringing the best information to the top of search engine results pages.  Or at least, what the search engines determine to be the best information through the algorithms by which they’ve been programmed.  Because of the vast complexity of the internet, and the limited (although staggering) capabilities of search engines themselves, the practice of search engine optimization has become an ever-evolving discipline, where a few very basic rules can be said to remain stable over time.

Both search engine marketing and search engine optimization have serious flaws.  Playing entirely by one approach or the other will slow the development of any online endeavor, and a good web designer will be familiar enough with the basics of search engine optimization to save you headaches down the line.  We recommend creating sites with sitemaps to help guide search engines as they explore your site, and rely on a few content rules to expand your presence rapidly.

We also provide an in-depth review of keywords and the costs associated with aggressive PPC campaigns on search engines, yet we will likely advise against search engine marketing except in precision demographics for local businesses seeking to reach out only within a certain zipcode, for example.  The reason is simple – in organic search people are looking for something specific, relevant, and of lasting interest.  Creating a site filled with the details a searcher is seeking provides ongoing value to the searcher and the owner of the site, and that value remains even after the searcher leaves the page.  If you’ve merely purchased a PPC link, the result is clearly marked as an advertisement, you are paying for the click through to your site, and once you’ve paid for that click, even when it doesn’t end in a sale, you’ll have to pay for the next click.

I have seen this pay off handsomely in terms of local return on advertising investment.  At the same time, indiscriminate use of search engine marketing can quickly suck all the money from your advertising budget, leaving you with only a temporary bump in your site’s traffic.  Search engine optimization, on the other hand, only goes so far if you’re in a very competitive niche where much has been written about the service, product, or information you provide.  In these situations, constant, unique, and high-volume media posts to an associated blog may be enough to start drawing attention to the site from the search engines, but breaking upward in terms of traffic may require the kind of boost only a few well-crafted Google Adwords or Search Advertising on Bing can provide.

If you’d like to learn more, ask us a question, or find out what we suggest for your specific situation, drop us a line:

Further Reading

• March 10, 2009 -- Search Term Research
  We survey keywords connected with your site to find ways to connect you with those who are actively searching for your p...
• November 3, 2009 -- Website Design and Competitive Keyword Analysis
  Here at Domozych Media we understand that building web sites is more than just designing a beautiful web page. Web sites...
• March 8, 2009 -- Podcast: Why People Use Search Engine Optimization
  Learn about the three types of searchers! You can download this podcast directly or listen to it using the player below....