Business Investment

SEO Enters the Marketing Mix

Posted by Craig Somerville on Oct 2, 2009 in Business Investment, Search Engine Optimisation | 50 comments

Over the last few years, those in the digital marketing space have experienced a seismic shift in the way businesses approach the web.

Whereas once the Internet was seen as the realm of IT geeks, it is now common for marketing managers to be heavily involved in the planning and implementation of online marketing activities, even to the point of learning to speak the lingo.

However, one area of online advertising has always struggled to secure its share of the marketing mix; SEO.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has often been classified by businesses as being stuck somewhere between a website maintenance item and a legitimate marketing activity. That was, up until now.

Over the last six months, Reload Media has conducted a SEO Survey for business, and the results make for interesting reading.

79% of Queensland businesses surveyed now see SEO as part of their marketing mix, and only 14% of Queensland businesses have never undertaken any SEO in the past, down from 37% at the same time last year.

About this time last year, around 16% of businesses had no idea how they were positioned in the search engines, with that figure reduced to just 11% in 2009.

So whilst it appears that SEO has now become a legitimate part of the marketing mix, there’s still a way to go before it gets its fair share of the marketing budget, although the recent global economic meltdown may have helped its cause.

Popularity: 34%

Choosing an SEO Company – What to Look For When Outsourcing Your SEO?

Posted by Craig Somerville on Jan 12, 2009 in Business Investment | 15 comments

Most businesses are now realising the need to be top of the search engines, and many now realise that search engine optimisation (SEO) is how to do it. But when it comes to choosing the right SEO company or service to optimise your site, many business struggle with what to look for.

For this reason, we’ve put together a bit of a guide to assist business owners and web managers deciding which SEO program is right for them.

Reporting

The first major pitfall for businesses to avoid is signing up to an SEO program that doesn’t provide adaquate reporting. This may sound obvious but there are plenty of dodgy SEO guys out there who’s reporting is an email saying “It’s going great!”

Make sure you find an SEO company that actually sends a report detailing where you rank in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc for the keywords they have agreed to optimise. This is so you can see that in this month we went from page 3 to page 1, etc for each keyword.

Number of Keywords

The next thing to look for is the number of keywords or keyword phrases that will be optimised. SEO programs can range anywhere from 2 keywords to 150. Obviously the more keywords the better, but there’s no point an SEO firm claiming they optimise 150 keywords if you don’t get a report showing where you rank for these terms. It’s easy to say but harder to do.

I have personally seen SEO programs that cost business owners $2000 a month for 10 keyword phrases. This sort of thing is grossly overpriced.

Guarantees

If there’s one phrase that gets thrown about a lot in the SEO game it’s “no one can guarantee you top spot in Google.” While this is true to a certain extent, you still should make sure that your SEO program comes with some kind of guarantee.

If an SEO company only optimises 1 keyword phrase then they couldn’t possibly guarantee you top spot for just that one phrase. There’s too many other factors beyond their control.

However, for a company that optimises 25 keywords, they should be able to guarantee a certain amount of these on the first page. Any company that is not offering some kind of guarantee is not even sure enough of their own ability to perform quality SEO.

No guarantee means the SEO firm is not confident of their own ability.

Setup Costs

The other big thing to look out for is setup costs. Many SEO programs start with a $2000 or so setup cost plus an on-going monthly cost. When working out the overall cost, always budget for a 12 month commitment.

Even if the company says you can leave at any time, don’t pay the up front cost, 1 or 2 months then leave. Always plan for 12 months. SEO is one of those things that doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient, and realise that starting now will yield results in 9-12 months time.

If possible, it’s best to find programs that don’t have any setup fees at all.

The Final Word

So the basic piece of advice here is to make sure your SEO firm is accountable.

Reload Media offers three SEO programs and a brief summary of these programs are shown below. For more on these programs, click here: SEO services.

Use this table as a starting point to do your comparison shopping of SEO programs:

Popularity: 17%

Business Tip – Treat Search Engine Optimisation as Marketing!

Posted by Craig Somerville on Aug 20, 2008 in Business Investment | 0 comments

The headline for this article may have some people scratching their heads. Search engine optimisation (SEO) isn’t part of the marketing mix, it’s a technology or web cost, right?

Wrong!

But before I go into why your business should be including search optimisation as part of your marketing budget, let’s go back to the basics of exactly what marketing is.

Marketing is essentially any activity that aims to increase awareness about your brand, its products or services and reach potential customers.

What does search engine optimisation do? It aims to increase your business’ appearance in search engines, and reach more users than before, just like more traditional mediums.

To help with the thought process behind this idea, think of a search engine like you would a newspaper, magazine, or some other traditional marketing medium. The aim of placing your ad (at considerable cost) into a newspaper or magazine is to reach consumers who you wouldn’t have reached otherwise. A search engine is no different.

SEO aims to lift your site’s rankings in the search engines, exposing your business to more potential customers than before.

One major stumbling block for SEO in the past has been the reluctance of managers to spend $$$$ per month on what they considered to be web design costs. However, they are more than happy to spend thousands on print media ads that are fast losing their effectiveness.

The challenge for managers is to realise the need to treat SEO as a marketing item and not as some nuisance or web cost.

But how much should a business spend on SEO?

There are many different SEO services available, but how much you spend on SEO should be consistent with your business’ online goals and objectives.

If you currently, or would like to, achieve 40% of your sales or referrals via the online channel, then you should seriously consider spending around 40% of your marketing budget on SEO and SEM (search engine marketing).

Obviously this depends on your industry and business, but far too many businesses are not maximising their website’s earnings potential because they are not giving it a fair weighting in their marketing budgets.

Popularity: 5%

Spend on Search – The Budget Alternative

Posted by Llew Jury on Jun 29, 2008 in Business Investment | 1 comment

With macroeconomic conditions in Australia meaning that many businesses are tightening their belts, the most common area that spending is being cut from is marketing.

This is evident by the fact that marketing positions are down by 26% across Australia (BRW Magazine) as many businesses look to cut the fat from their advertising dollars.

But there is a cheap alternative to traditional advertising mediums… search.

There are two kinds of ways businesses can spend money on search. One is through search engine optimisation (SEO) where professional optimisers improve your website’s position in search engine rankings. The other is search engine marketing (SEM) which are the paid ads you will see above and to the right of natural search results.

There are a number of reasons why search engine spending is a wise alternative. Let’s do a quick comparison:

A full page ad in many print media publications costs between $6000-10,000 for just one run. And this is occuring at a time when many businesses are noting a distinct drop in conversion to sales from print media.

One of the clients I manage has a Google AdWords budget of $90 per day. One of the great things about investing in SEM is the ease with which detailed statistics can be obtained and sales conversions tracked. Here are the basic facts from four weeks of the AdWords campaign:

• Around $2500 was pumped through AdWords in that time. This compares quite well to the $6000 that would have been splurged on a print media ad.
• The Ads generated about 180,000 impressions. That means 180,000 people actually had the ad appear on their screens. Even if the readership of the print publication was 200,000, this does not mean that 200,000 people saw the ad, especially if the ad is buried on page 37.
• As a result of these impressions, over 1200 visitors were sent directly to the site.
• This translated into 350 conversions at an average cost per conversion of around $6.50. With the print media ads, it is often very difficult, if not impossible, to tell exactly how many sales have been generated.

So when we sit back now and look at the final figures, this particular client spent half as much money and generated around the same number, if not more, views of the ad. But the thing is, they know exactly how much they spent, how many views they had, and most importantly, how much it cost them per sale to undertake the advertising.

It is this combination of factors that makes search such an attractive alternative to traditional marketing.

But SEM is just half of the picture, as that $6000-10000 can also buy your company a whole lot of SEO. By putting that money into professional SEO you’ll get around 12 months of continual optimisation for Google and the other major search engines.

This means 12 months, not one print run, of potential customers seeing your site up the top of search engine results, and that translates into sales.

So despite many business’ financials being quite tight around Australia at the moment, SEO and SEM remain highly lucrative options as their relatively cheap nature and ease of tracking make them a smart solution for all businesses.

Popularity: 2%