The Importance of Search Engine Strategies

The Importance of Search Engine Strategies
By Jason Olson - Ultimate Web Designing 07/09/02

Some people call it search engine optimization (SEO), some
call it search engine marketing (SEM), some call it search
engine strategies (SES). Regardless what you call it, it is
one of the most cost-effective and targeted means of marketing.

According to a report from Jupiter Media Metrix in September
2001, consumers find products online by:
*28% … typing a product name into a search engine.
*23% … going straight to the URL.
*9% … typing a brand name into a search engine.
*5% … typing a company name into a search engine.
*5% … going to a search engine shopping channel.

With these percentages, wouldn’t it be beneficial to know how
search engines work and better yet, how they can work for you?

It is said that 85% of Internet users use search engines to find
what they’re looking for. The traffic search engines bring to
your site is comprised of individuals who are aggressively
seeking web sites that contain what your site contains. Which
means…they want to see your marketing message.

Repetition is the key to making an advertising campaign
successful. Every potential client is not going to hear your
radio ad the first time it is aired. Therefore you may need to
run it 10 times just to get a number of listeners to catch it. It
is said that the average consumer needs to be exposed seven
times to your product or service before it registers in their brain
that your operation exists. They also might need to hear it
another 10 times to realize that it MIGHT be something they
could use someday.

How many times would your ad need to run before a portion
of the market knows they could use your service? 70? 100?
700? Who knows, but it’s not something that you can just run
once and test the results.

How much is a radio advertising campaign? It varies. But,
for a spot to play 70 or 100 times, it’s expensive. 700…now
that’s buku bucks!!! This is coming from someone who has
sold, written, and produced radio ads.

Search engine strategy campaigns can range from hundreds
of thousands of dollars for the big companies to FREE for
any size company. The small business can perform its own
campaign, submit to the search engines, receive visitors who
are CURRENTLY interested in what they offer, test the results, and
make the necessary changes to improve its rankings in the
search engines.

Although search engine marketing can be done in-house, it
must be done right or it’s a waste of time. Many businesses
perform their own search engine marketing but it’s done as
an employee’s side job and they don’t have the time, nor
knowledge, to make the site rank well. Search engine
marketing requires someone to be up-to-date on the changes
search engines make in their rankings, submission guidelines,
and fees. To make a campaign work, you must know the
fundamentals of how to use meta tags, keywords, titles,
descriptions, and how and when to submit to the search
engines…and which ones.

A search engine strategy campaign is too valuable of a marketing
tool to not take seriously. Of course, if you don’t have the time,
nor resources, to perform a solid search engine marketing
campaign, there are companies like Ultimate Web Designing
that can perform these tasks for you.

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Jason Olson (mailto:jason@ultimatewebdesigning.com) is the owner
of Ultimate Web Designing (http://www.ultimatewebdesigning.com)
which offers web designing, web hosting, search engine strategies,
and search engine submission.