3
2010
Search Engine Marketing Matters And The Data Backs This Up
Is your website appearing on page one of search results?
You may be wondering why I am writing about search engine marketing (i.e., pay per click) and including a chart about natural search results. Here’s why. There are 10 natural search results per search results page. If your website is not in the top 10 (i.e., on page one), you are not being seen in more than 95% of searches.
To bring this to life, lets explore a scenario. Imagine you are a car dealer. It is widely known that the internet is heavily used as a research tool by prospective car buyers. One of the first places a car shopper typically visits online is a search engine. If your dealership website is not appearing on page one of the natural search results, you have a problem. You are not being seen by over 95% of searchers. That is, 95% of people looking for information about their next car are seeing your competitors websites or listing sites such as cars.com or other aggregators. They are not seeing your dealership in the results.
Do you want to get in the game but not sure what can you do about this? There are three things you can do (as I see it).
1) Stick your head in the sand and do nothing. Not only will this get your face and head dirty and be uncomfortable, it won’t help your website visibility.
2) Optimize your website to appear high in the natural search results and rankings. This is a great option and one I recommend but keep in mind this is a solution that generally can require more time to finesse.
3) Initiate a search engine marketing (a.k.a., SEM, Pay Per Click) campaign. If you need to increase your visibility now, generate traffic to your site and grow qualified leads, SEM is one of the best options. It has immediacy and has trackable, accountable results.
After reviewing the data in the chart above and considering your business objectives, which option makes the most sense? With SEM, you can name your budget, track results and gain visibility almost immediately. If you need help navigating the search engine marketing waters, let us know. We’d be glad to educate you and assist with setting up a campaign. If you are not sure if your current campaigns are getting the results you want, we can help there as well.
