These are tough times, no doubt. The pinch is on every business
to cut unnecessary costs and improve efficiency. Those
businesses that were squeaking by to begin with are now in
danger of closing their doors.
Advertising is usually one of the first items on the chopping
block (though it shouldn't be). You've got to cut costs, and
you certainly don't want to lay off any employees if you can
help it, so you start looking a bit more closely at your
marketing budget to see where you can rein in ad spending.
It's a natural reaction to a tightening budget, and there is a
good reason for it. Most business owners know that you need to advertise. Sure,
word of mouth is great - there's nothing like a referral from a
happy client to instill trust in a prospect - but you still need
to be proactive in getting the word out. The trouble with
advertising in the traditional sense is that it is difficult to
know whether your efforts are working and what is generating the
best value for your dollar. The uncertainty makes it hard to
keep throwing money into your ad spend. When your budget
tightens it is even harder to justify the cost when the benefits
are fuzzy at best. But marketing on the web is different. The costs are lower,
return on investment can be much higher and traffic data allows
you to chop out the dead wood and optimize your budget. Search
engines are a primary driver of traffic on the web (second in
use only to email according to a report (http://zi.ma/ef920a)
by Pew Internet & American Life Project and comScore). Search
engine optimization (SEO), as a result, has received an
increasing amount of well-deserved attention. For most small businesses, SEO is new. Some have considered it,
perhaps even done a bit of research on the topic, but haven't
yet invested in it. Others have invested in it in the past and
found themselves disappointed with the results. A few have
found real success. In this economy, why should a company consider a new marketing
channel like search when they're already looking to cut their
budget? What about the risks involved in such a new endeavor?
What if it doesn't work? These are all valid questions. For
those who spend most of their time building and maintaining
their businesses and systems, reading up on what makes search
engines tick is unlikely. Understanding SEO enough to truly
leverage it for growth can seem a long way off. So why SEO, and why now? 1. Unparalelled ROI
A 2006 MarketingSherpa (http://www.marketingsherpa.com/)
survey of 3,053 client-side marketers determined that SEO
was viewed as the most valuable marketing solution in terms
of ROI, even higher than email marketing to in-house email
lists. ROI is everything - especially in uncertain economic
times. 2. Targeted Traffic
Traditional "push" marketing/advertising options often
have you publishing an advertisement in a place where
you're hoping it will get a lot of eyeballs. That's great,
but the real question is: who owns those eyeballs? Are they
the right people? Do they want or need what you're offering?
With SEO, up front keyword research can tell you a lot about
your market and what kind of language they're using. When
you choose your keywords and optimize for them, you're
addressing an existing need or desire - and you know that
at least a good portion of visitors referred from search
engines through your target keywords are looking for exactly
what you're offering. In short, SEO helps to drive high
quality traffic to your website and gets your message in
front of the right people at the right time. 3. Precise Tracking
Web analytics allow you to track your users with a great
deal of granularity. The most basic and easy to set up
analytics platform is Google Analytics - and it's free. Out
of the box, Google Analytics will tell you where visitors
are coming from (including what search engines and
keywords), what pages bring in the most users, what
keywords have the lowest bounce rates (the measure of users
who immediately leave your site after viewing one page),
what keywords drive the most pages per visit and average
time on site and a lot more. With basic conversion tracking
you can even tie keywords to conversion rates - an
incredibly valuable way to identify the most valuable
keywords and focus on them. Bottom line: with web analytics
you can identify the dead wood in your campaign and focus
on better opportunities to optimize your marketing budget
in real time. How should you approach SEO?
If you're considering investing in SEO as a marketing channel
there are two basic options: 1. Take the SEO work on in-house
2. Hire an agency or consultant and outsource SEO The In-House Option Hiring for an in-house SEO position is often out of the budget
range for small businesses - in this economic climate
especially. Existing employees, on the other hand, can play an
important role - especially those who are already regularly
updating your website. It requires careful research, planning
and execution, but with the right training and guidance much of
the work required can be handled in-house. There are also some simple things you can be doing in-house to
improve your SEO.
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Mike Tekula is the President and Founder of Unstuck Digital,
Inc., a Long Island SEO company (http://www.unstuckdigital.com/
search-engine-optimization-seo/) that provides clients with
effective and affordable search engine marketing strategies.
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