Current surveys show that over 90% of web users use search engines to find information. Generally, search engine traffic accounts for at least 20% of a site’s first time visitors although this figure can be as much as 80 or 90% in the case where a company has little or no existing brand awareness.
These figures clearly show that if your website is not registered or visible in the major search engines you will almost certainly be losing potential visitors and more importantly, potential customers, making effective Search Engine Marketing an important aspect of your company’s overall online marketing strategy.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO involves optimising your website to achieve the highest position or ranking in a search engine’s natural or non-paid listings. Optimisation is however fairly complex with a number of factors affecting page rank. It can also take several months before a site is fully optimised and appearing in the search engines and therefore requires more initial investment and unlike Pay Per Click, provides no immediate return.
Despite this and despite the current emphasis on Pay Per Click marketing, 60 – 70% of search engine traffic is still referred via natural listings making this a valuable source of website traffic which should not be overlooked. It’s also important to consider that once a site has been successfully optimised it can continue to receive large volumes of traffic with minimal SEO maintenance (relative to the initial optimisation) and without the ongoing click-through costs of Pay Per Click.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
As the name suggests, Pay Per Click marketing involves paying for each user that clicks through to your website via a paid or sponsored link on a search engine. To advertise in these listings (which are separate from natural listings), companies bid against each other to determine the position at which links are displayed which in turn determines the cost per click when a user clicks through to the advertiser’s website.
One of the main advantages of PPC is that results are immediate and can be controlled in terms of cost. This is important since PPC marketing can be fairly costly if not properly managed, particularly in competitive market sectors. However a well managed PPC campaign can provide highly targeted website traffic with relatively high conversion rates, making it a cost effective form of online marketing.
What can Prime Web Solutions do for you?
As standard, all our websites are developed to be search engine friendly. However, this in itself will not guarantee high rankings in the search engines. Prime Web Solutions can tailor a Search Engine Marketing package to meet your specific needs, combining both Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimisation for best results.
Working with you to assess your online marketing requirements, and following a thorough search phrase analysis process we can begin to optimise your website, submitting it to the major search engines (Google, Yahoo & MSN). We can also create an optimised Overture Pay Per Click campaign and working according to predetermined budgets and bidding strategies, we can implement and manage your campaign, tracking response and conversion rates.
This combined marketing strategy provides the immediate benefits of Pay Per Click marketing with the long-term benefits of a search engine optimised website. Our end goal? To achieve a cost-effective balance between SEO and PPC that over time provides maximum return on investment.
For further information or a project specific quotation please contact us.