Toronto Search Engine Marketing

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Ataraxis Web Design Company

Greater Toronto Web Design, GTA Development, Managed VPS Hosting Canada

Search Engine Marketing

Online Advertising Solutions For Small Business Marketing Campaigns

Search Engine Marketing Defined

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a process of promoting your website, or a particular product or service, via an online advertising campaign. SEM and Internet marketing, though often used interchangeably, are related but there is a clear distinction between these small business promotion methods. Popular online advertisement outlets also include directories, portals, or even domains developed for writing about topics of popular interest for a purpose of displaying advertisements. Essentially, SEM is paid advertising whereas Internet marketing is leveraging Internet promotional strategies through non-paid methods.

Search Engine Marketing Solution For Business Online Advertising

If you read my SEM introduction on my homepage you already know that I am not a professional marketer. That in itself is not a hindrance to explaining small business promotional solutions as it relates to online advertising from a common sense as well as technical perspective.

Many traditional media marketers have difficulty figuring out online business promotion methods. They often times have difficulty implementing successful search engine marketing solutions because they do not understand crawler algorithm logic. The Internet industry, more specifically optimization companies, whether knowingly or unknowingly, create an exaggerated mystery surrounding search engine algorithms. They want us to believe it's hard to place high in search engine results so they can promote their SEO services. I have a background as Computer Programmer Analyst myself, as well as a well-rounded overall understanding of fundamental design and development principals. I am familiar with these programs. Examples in my developer portfolio case studies also provide evidence of my optimization abilities to successfully accomplish high placement on search engine results pages of targeted descriptive keywords or terms.

In order for your online business venture to be successful you must be able to achieve what in Internet development is known as high search engine placement through “natural or organic” methods. Personally I think it is a ridiculous term to apply to something that is as far away from a definition of what natural or organic means and stands for. But I guess like most everything else in this world of ours whenever there is an opportunity to take advantage of a popular term for financial gain someone will find a way to do it. I will refer to it as non-paid results.

Non-paid placement results are ones that appear in the body on search engine results pages from queries. Search engine marketing results are paid advertisements that you will typically see above or possibly to the right of non-paid results. I have tried SEM to be qualified to discuss it. From what I've seen, even if someone has selected your targeted descriptive keyword in their query they are still only likely to click on an advertisement about two or three percent of the time compared to almost one hundred percent if you appear on a first page of non-paid results. That should paint a very vivid picture of how effective, or ineffective depending on your point of view, unsolicited online advertisements are. People are tired of advertisements, it is becoming known as ad blindness. They have trained their visual senses to ignore them. The more an ad stands out, the more likely it is to be ignored. My business Internet solutions developer discussion provides more insight.

When Or Why A Search Engine Marketing Solution May Not Be Required

For purposes of my work and individuals or companies that I may be able to help with their development requirements I do not incorporate a search engine marketing solution into an overall plan. I am confident in my ability to achieve high placement in search engine results without your company having to pay extra to advertise a website after it goes live. It takes approximately six months from time of launch; less time for some portals, before positive results begin to materialize.

There is no real great mystery to high placement in engine results, it simply requires proper optimization as well as balance of content. It is not hard to get a regionally or locally focused domain placed into top results for their targeted market audience if there is room among sites occupying those spots; I'll explain.

My method of determining whether or not there is a chance is to perform a query on three major engines; Yahoo, Bing (MSN), and Google using your targeted descriptive keyword combined with targeted geographic name or names. I will then study results to determine if sites coming up are sites that would eventually be considered competitors of yours or are there directories or portals among results.

If there are directories or portals within the first page or two then there is a very high probability of placing your website above them in ranking results. Other directories and portals are competition. They probably would rather not display competitors in query results. However, when no matching high quality regional or local business is available to match a query term they will display them rather than send you somewhere that doesn't provide any answers to your questions.

Secondly, major searching engines want people using their sites to have a good user experience so that people can quickly find what they need. If searchers quickly find what they came looking for there is a greater chance they will continue coming back and that supports their advertising revenue model. If their results only return other directories or portals then it produces a bad user experience when it duplicates their efforts. It's duplicated because they have to begin searching all over again. It is in their best interest to provide direct results to businesses rather than filter them through other online directories or portals.

When A Search Engine Marketing Solution Becomes Necessary

An online advertising solution for small business marketing campaigns almost always becomes necessary when trying to compete on a national or international level. If you are unlikely or unwilling to include city names or regional terms into content it usually means that you don't want to restrict yourself to smaller regional or local markets. In this case your requirements may be beyond my project design and development scope of focus.

If you do require a search engine marketing solution the three most obvious, as well as most reliable sources, would be Microsoft AdCenter, Yahoo Search Marketing, as well as Google AdWords. These are popular destinations where people perform searches so you might as well advertise where audiences are in highest concentrations. An increasingly popular alternative marketing choice for content publishers is OpenX.org. It is an open source ad server and ad manager platform that allows you to take full control over offering advertising space inventory or purchasing advertising space on specific domains.

I recognize that there are scenarios where it will be required. Search engine companies provide us with a very valuable service for free. We can go to their portals and with a few keystrokes there is an ability to find important relevant information quickly. Someone needs to support this service. That is where business online marketing picks up the tab.

In spite of what I previously explained about query portals being eager to place your domain high in their results pages they still will not hand it to you on a silver platter. You must still work at producing a very well structured presentation. It must be presented with professionally written high quality accurate relevant content. And finally you must weave your web together with successful optimization strategies. After all is taken into consideration it is likely your domain will achieve success in online promotional strategies.

Defining Terms Of CPM, PPC And CPC

CPM is short for Cost Per Mille (French meaning thousand). Cost Per Mille advertising revenue models determine a cost to an advertiser for every thousand times an advertisement is shown on a webpage. In this model an advertiser agrees to pay a publisher whether advertisements are actually clicked on or not. This advertising model would be attractive to high traffic volume pages, it would assure a base income.

Next is PPC which is Pay Per Click. In this one the advertiser only pays the publisher a typically pre-determined fee if someone actually clicks on the ad and follows through. It does not matter if the ad is even shown ten thousand times. A Pay Per Click model is typically more attractive to advertisers because it is highly targeted and usually if someone is clicking through they mean business!

Finally is CPC which stands for Cost Per Click. CPC runs in unison with PPC because it is the method that establishes a pre-determined fee of the PPC advertising model. A Cost Per Click method of advertising will typically be slightly more expensive because typical advertisement click through rates are low. Typically somewhere in the neighbourhood of two to five percent.

Summary Of Best Practices

An SEM solution becomes necessary when competition is high on a local or regional level. This is especially true if other popular companies that you share the market with have successfully achieved front page placement on results pages. I have an unwritten moral guideline that will prevent accepting an opportunity to design and develop a website if there is little chance of helping your company gain in position of popularity without incurring the added long term recurring expense of SEM. Analysis of design and development begins with assessing probability of high placement in results without imposing additional advertising expenses on your business. I do not want to be a contributor to increasing your cost of promoting your business online. Expenses should be limited to initial design and development costs as well as long term maintenance and managed hosting.