Incyte Marketing

Tips for Search Engine Marketing—September 22, 2011

Do economic pressures and a pinched budget have you contemplating writing or editing your own website content for SEO? Our company is helping a lot of people who came to us for Search Engine Marketing services after having spent considerable time, effort and money getting poor results—either by attempting to do it themselves, or by using someone with a related but non-specific skill set (such as their web designer). When it comes to writing content (or "copy") for your website to strengthen your online presence, and ultimately your sales, I strongly encourage you to invest in a professional copywriter with solid SEO experience. The potential long-term benefits of good SEO copy makes it too important to skimp on. Here are some of the tasks a professional will accomplish for you:

• Increase website visibility: By the skillful use of keywords, links, social media and other (often proprietary) SEO techniques. A reputable SEO firm can boost your online presence and move your website up the search engine rankings, but be very careful! There are a lot of self-proclaimed “SEO firms” and "SEO gurus" out there selling snake oil. You can sort out the good, the bad and the ugly by reading, How to Choose a Valid SEOFirm, at www.incytemarketing.com/blackhat
• Write great copy that grabs attention, engages and converts visitors to sales. This is where style, tone and writing technique are crucial. It takes specialized knowledge and artful skill to write engaging content that keeps visitors on your site while weaving in effective keywords and links without compromising copy readability and flow. Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger, says that using the right words in the right way will help consistently convert visitors to buyers and determine “how well you rank in search engines and how much traffic you get.” Simply “stuffing” your pages with SEO keywords can make content awkward and repulsive and it can backfire in another way—Google may penalize your site if it determines you are playing the system.
• Keep your online content fresh. According to a September 21, 2011 article, Is Branded Journalism Still Journalism? on www.socialtimes.com, "The static corporate website is quickly becoming obsolete, and many smart businesses owners have realized the importance of [frequently] generating relevant, community-focused content to keep their brand top of mind." Your SEO copywriter should be keeping up with the most relevant topics, keywords and links that will help you progressively grow your online presence.

A retainer arrangement for ongoing services is usually recommended for sustained, long-term results. Here’s some of what you should expect from a reasonable and efficient retainer:

• Every few days: Write new content for your social media that is likely to spark conversations, sharing and sales (minimum of 2 hours a month). Visit our website and blog at www.incytemarketing.com for social media marketing tips.
• Weekly: Compose keyword-rich content for your blog and e-newsletters (minimum of 4 hours a month).
• Monthly: Compose keyword-rich articles, white papers and media releases for you—yes, media releases can boost your SEO (Minimum of 2 hours a month).
• Quarterly: Re-vamp your website content so it stays interesting, relevant and search engine-friendly (about 4-10 hours a quarter, depending on the size of your site).

All of these tasks will strengthen your search engine presence and provide interesting, educational and relevant information to increase your customer base and keep them coming back. Considering the important benefits professional SEO copywriting offers your business, it’s well worth the investment to do it right!

Kelly Walker, M.S. is Partner and Brand Communications Director for Incyte Marketing. For more information, visit www.incytemarketing.com

You want your website to show up on page #1 of the search engines, but should you choose Pay per click (PPC) or organic SEO as your main strategy?

According to the e-book, SEO, PPC and Analytics by Search Marketing Now, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of generating traffic from free or organic search engine results. All major search engines, including Google, Yahoo! and Bing have such results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Paid search (PPC) advertising, on the other hand, are the search engine results that marketers pay for in an attempt to raise the ranking and visibility of their listings. Industry experts agree that SEO drives 75 percent of search traffic yet only 15 percent of budget; PPC gets 80 percent of budget yet generates only 25 percent of search traffic.”

PPC requires a monthly fee to the search engine—a fee per click—so you will need a substantial budget and a continual outflow of cash. David Blackburn, of Marketing Quotes, explains that, “Each click will cost you, and the clicks normally are not cheap. The cost of each click is determined by the popularity of the word/phrase. If it is very competitive (like car insurance) then each click could cost you up to $20. There is no money back, you pay for people to click (students, competitors, foreign companies) and there will be a high % of waste. Competitors that are researching will click on your links which cannot really be helped or blocked. Controlling who clicks on your adverts is down to chance.”

Our own firm’s SEO strategist, Mike Johnson, says that he “watched the cost-per-click (CPC) go from $0.74 for ‘Home Loans’ to $3.50 per click in one year. The following year, anything related to mortgages, home loans and the like were hovering around $18.00 per click for the top six listing positions (on the first page of Google).” He adds that, “there were over 6 million results for the term ‘adware and spyware’ when I worked with Symantec back in 2005. Today those same keywords produce over 35.7 million results. This is major reason why search marketing requires professionals who retain the experience to develop and manage both PPC and SEO campaigns.”

The vast majority of consumers are looking for organic results, not PPC ads. Eye studies show that only 10-20% of searchers even look at the PPC portions of search engine results, whereas 70% or more focus on organic results. In addition, there is a perception that the businesses the search engine pulls up are legitimate and trustworthy, while the PPC ads often don’t carry the same credibility. After all, ads are ads. Justin McGill explains in his blog entry, Why do SEO Professionals Dislike PPC? “Increasingly, users have become immune to obvious advertising, resulting in decreased effectiveness of PPC campaigns. This behavior can be attributed to higher levels of trust in the organic search results, natural aversion to the sales pitch, or expectations of better content on a page listed by Google as opposed to one listed by a paying advertiser.”

The goal of SEO is to get your website listed on page one of the search engines. It offers a higher ROI and better results over the long run than PPC, and you should see benefits for years to come. There is a cost associated with SEO and it may take longer than PPC to realize top search results, but once gained (where an ongoing campaign is managed properly) top listing results should continue to appear. Most, if not all, of your site’s pages will be easily found by search engines and consumers at a fraction of the cost of a PPC campaign over time. It’s difficult to maintain a PPC campaign over the long-term, and once you stop paying, you stop appearing. On the other hand, once SEO is in place, it will continue producing results for years to come, if properly managed.

Ideally, if you have the time and the budget, you can integrate both methods to put your website’s pages in front of the highest number of search consumers. It’s highly recommended that you hire a Search Marketing Professional for best results, since both PPC and SEO require specialized strategy and technical know how to get you and keep you on page one. PPC can be useful for short-term campaigns, but in the long run, organic SEO provides more bang for the buck.