If you are like most small companies and don’t have a large budget to initiate a complete search engine optimization campaign, what is the best approach to marketing yourself online? Should you invest your entire budget into a cost per click campaign or focus on optimizing your HTML tags to target spider-based search engines like Google? .Or should you use a combination of both approaches?
On a limited budget, you will probably want to get the best of all worlds for as little as possible. From our experience at Cyber-NY, we feel that a combination of both keyword buying and selective search engine submissions result in the best return on investment. If you have a limited budget of approximately $2,000 – $2,500, we would recommend devoting 60% to site optimization, and 40% for an initial keyword buying campaign. It can take 3 to 6 months to see results from submitting your site to spider search engines, but ultimately this pays off if favorable rankings can be maintained. Combined with an initial keyword buy campaign, (which starts immediately), your company can achieve both short and long term goals. The important thing to remember about optimizing site traffic and performance is to monitor and evaluate your optimization and keyword strategy on a monthly or quarterly basis. The time and money invested will yield a desirable return that can continue to increase through ongoing optimization.
I’ve listed below some of the advantages and disadvantages of both a cost per click campaign and search engine registration.
COST PER CLICK CAMPAIGNS
Since the demand to be first place under targeted keywords for the majority of search engines is extremely high, Overture has implemented a directory that allows customers to bid for a placement/ranking within search engines or directories. However, the power of Overture lies in its partnerships. Overture’s partners include Yahoo, MSN, Iwon, Altavista, Lycos, InfoSpace, and CNET. Google, which launched a cost per click program about 4 months ago has a partnership with AOL.
HOW OVERTURE’S COST PER CLICK MODEL WORKS
Overture works like an auction – whoever pays the highest for a keyword gets the best placement for that keyword. The top 3 bidders for a keyword receive placement within all of Overture’s partner’s search engines or directories under the first results for the keyword. These results appear under ‘Sponsored Matches’ in most of Overture’s partners and the rest of the directory results appear as they usually do in most partner search engines and directories.
HOW GOOGLE’S COST PER CLICK MODEL WORKS
Google’s Pay Per Click system is not as simple as Overture’s. Advertisers pay per click, but to become number one under sponsored matches in AOL or Google is not as simple as that. To become number one under a targeted keyword, you can not simply buy the placement. It depends on how much you are willing to pay per click and how many times users actually click on your link. If users click on your link often and you are a high bidder, then your chances of becoming number one are very strong. Results are based both off popularity of your link and the amount of money you are willing to pay per click.
TRADITIONAL SEARCH ENGINE REGISTRATION
Before the days of a cost per click model, web developers would optimize their websites and tailor it to each particular search engine in order to receive favorable results under keywords. As opposed to the pay per click system offered by Google and Overture, search engine registration puts you in a search engine’s regular directory of results and involves no costs per click. The catch – you are not guaranteed to hold any position within that search engine and you may never even gain a desirable position.
The good news is – you won’t pay per click and search engine optimization requires only a one-time fee for the campaign, although many firms recommend performing search engine registration every 4 to 6 months so you don’t lose your rankings.
More good news – your site does not get listed under ‘sponsored matches’ which is often perceived by consumers as a paid placement and thus decreases your credibility as a ‘true’ search result. You get placed in the normal search engine or directory results. Google – which is reported now as one of the most popular search engines is used by many people because it yields such excellent results. To be placed in the regular results within Google shows more credibility than to be placed within their sponsored matches.
Summary: Pros and Cons
PROS FOR A COST PER CLICK CAMPAIGN
CONS OF A COST PER CLICK CAMPAIGN
PROS OF TRADITIONAL SEARCH ENGINE REGISTRATION
CONS OF TRADITIONAL SEARCH ENGINE REGISTRATION
From our experience – optimizing your site for search engines and active registration/site submission is a better long -term investment and should be completed on a continual basis. Because individual sites/companies can maintain multiple targeted URL’s within one search engine, having a desirable placement in these search engines will add credibility to your company or organizations message and thus result in higher traffic to your web site.
Kevin Fitzpatrick has been a project manager at Cyber-NY (http://www.cyber-ny.com/) New York City based online marketing agency for over 3 years. He has worked on numerous projects that involve search engine optimization and has secured top placements for numerous clients.
