Make Search Engines Work for You

Right now, a customer wants to buy the product you sell. She's at Google, typing in keywords. Wow. Tons of hits - but your Web site doesn't appear until the third page. She'll never get that far down the list.

Few shoppers look beyond the first page. And studies show that users often associate the top search engine billings with being the most credible or most widely used product/service. A recent survey by iProspect found one-third of America's Internet users believe companies found in top search results are "major brands."

It is true that search engines rank Web sites based on relevance, but companies also have ways to proactively move up in the rankings on the search results pages themselves. Through search engine marketing, which includes search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising, your company can move up and garner sales that accrue to "first pagers."

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? SEO optimizes selected pages on your Web site for the search terms your target audience uses to find what you're selling. It places your site in the organic/editorial rankings on search engine results pages (as opposed to sponsored/paid rankings).

What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)? PPC advertising creates brief, compelling sales messages and then bids for position on search engine results pages. You pay only when someone clicks on your message, which directs them to your Web site. Through this method, your advertisement appears in the "sponsored links" area of the search engine results page.

For business owners interested in branching out into the international market or increasing their market share, search engine marketing also can be an effective method for reaching other countries.

Abacus Solutions, through the assistance of Prominent Placement, created a marketing program targeting potential customers in Latin America. It intermixed search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. Abacus was well established in the U.S. as a provider of new, used and refurbished IT infrastructure products and services. And it happened to have employees who spoke Portuguese and Spanish. It would not take much to begin taking and filling orders from south of the border.

The steps Abacus took to achieve success through search engine marketing are the same steps you can take. Here's what it did.

Step 1: Determine Your Search Terms. A search engine marketing campaign will fall flat if your search terms are off target. Several Web sites exist solely to help businesses determine which key phrases are most searched. Beware of keeping your terms too broad because competition for those phrases likely will be high - and if they're not specific enough, you may have visitors looking for products/services you don't provide. In a nutshell, your search terms need to be frequently searched, not used by most competitors, and applicable to your business. In this phase, Prominent Placement helped Abacus identify which phrases Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking consumers used to locate products/services like theirs.

Step 2: Make Your Search Terms Work for You. To increase rankings through SEO, you need to integrate targeted keywords into your Web site or press release's title tag, meta description and prime locations in body copy. To secure prominent placement though PPC advertising, you pay more based on the popularity of both your key phrases and the search engine you're looking to be featured on. Abacus created - in Spanish and Portuguese - four new optimized Web pages, a PPC campaign on Google and several optimized press releases we distributed by newswire services.

Step 3: Click on Success. Results from a PPC campaign will be visible much sooner than SEO, as a paid listing can quickly appear high in rankings whereas organic results take longer to move up the list. So once you launch your campaign, the game is to track, tweak and improve. For Abacus, success happened fast. The integrated search engine marketing campaign yielded more than a 1,000 percent increase in traffic from Latin America in just one month, and drove more than $2 million in revenue potential.

Step 4: Stay Prominent in the Evolving Web Marketplace. Once you have successfully implemented your search engine marketing program, your job is not over. The Web is constantly evolving, and so should your strategy for maximizing your company's visibility.

When You Should NOT Use Search Engine Marketing. Search engine marketing can be a useful tool for any business - large or small. But if your Web site isn't designed properly to reassure visitors you are a credible and reliable provider, you need to redevelop the content and image. If your site receives thousands of visits each month, but no one makes any inquiries or purchases, then search engine marketing may be useless for you.

By recognizing the key steps, your products and services could be just a "click" away from a great opportunity!

Stacy Williams at Prominent Placement can be reached at stacy@prominentplacement.com or (404) 373-9727, ext. 702.

Pull quote: America's Internet users believe companies found in top search results are "major brands."