Jun
14
PPC, SEO and Search Marketing
Guest Post by Henning Madsen.
If you’re running a business, there are at least two things that you have to keep in mind at all times: providing quality goods and/or services, and keeping abreast with (or even ahead of) the competition. As difficult as that may be (considering just how many competitors you have, perhaps several in your local area alone), there are many ways that you can try to improve your business’ marketing aspect.
Advertising In Mass Media
Because of the high level of competition in the business world today, many are turning to mass media to help draw people to their products and services. Off course, you can still run a small business via the old way (word of mouth), but it’s likely that you won’t expand much further than your local area. Other businesses with the same niche will likely outstrip you and be able to expand more rapidly. People do this through magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, and more recently, the Internet. Each of these types have their advantages and disadvantages, and one has to be familiar with them in order to use them effectively in any advertising campaign for a business. One of the most rapidly developing type of marketing now is search marketing.
What Is Search Marketing?
Search marketing is basically a way of “putting yourself on the map,” the online map, that is. It is a method by which you can make your business more noticeable in the virtual world. Remember that if people can’t find your website, fanpage, web content, etc., then you are not accessible, no matter how inviting your design and content may be. If you’re not accessible, then people simply won’t know about you, or even if they do, they will have a very hard time finding you, which, of course, will hurt your business significantly.
Pay Per Click, or SEO?
There are two main approaches to search marketing: pay per click and search engine optimization (or SEO). “Pay per click” refers to those ads that you see posted as banners or sidebar boxes, or as ad boxes in between posts, among others. These ads act like posters, except they also double as links to a website that hosts the particular business, product or service that is selling whatever is being featured in the ad. Because you can click through these ads, they are commonly referred to as “pay per click.”
SEO, on the other hand, is another approach to search marketing that makes sure that you come out at (or near) the top of search engine results.
Each of these approaches utilizes a different approach, reaches out to different sub-markets, and will give you different opportunities. So which one should you use? Well, there are a few things to remember, such as the short and long term costs of both approaches, the different results that you can except to get out of them (you will have to consult a professional to get accurate projections on this). This time and budget that you have in mind for your campaign will also affect your choice.
Working for one of the leading search engine optimization companies (interesting to know is that the Danish term is søgemaskineoptimering) in Denmark allowed me to learn a lot about SEO. However, another thing I like is sharing all my tips on popular blogs such as Search Engine People.
