Search Engine Marketing is a hot and important topic to understand for your website’s success. Gone are the days when you could create a website and leave it out to dry, expecting amazing results from a search engine. After hearing clients ask many of the same questions about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), we decided to interview search engine marketing specialist Brent Curry, Founder of Lodestone Generation. Lodestone Generation is a search engine marketing firm specializing in Google AdWords, BingAds and Lead Generation services. They help businesses develop a strong online presence and optimize their sales, lead capture, and lead quality.
Being a newcomer to the science of online search myself [Ed. note: this post is by our brilliant L13 summer intern], I began the interview with Brent by asking him to explain exactly what search engine marketing is. Here are his tips for how to start understanding this concept:
Under the umbrella of search engine marketing (SEM) there are two tracks:
1. SEO (Search engine optimization, or “organic search”)
2. Paid Search
What is organic search?
When you search a phrase, for example “search engine marketing,” your search engine spits back at you the most relevant results. This process is an organic search.
What does “organic” mean?
Organic search is “nonpaid” and relies on the search engine’s algorithm that ranks the relevancy of its pages. The problem with this is that the algorithms are advancing – making organic search a black box of the unknown!
A tip from Brent: SEARCH YOUR OWN WEBSITE! See what pops up. Are you easy to find?
After performing your own organic search, you may want to improve your website’s position to make it more available to your desired audience. This brings us to paid search.
What IS paid search?
Paid search is an auction-based system where competitors bid on specific phrases on a pay-per-click basis. Paid search strategies are specific to your business or industry. With the help of a SEM specialist, you can target exact phrases to get more and more specific, using an incremental approach to refining your website’s search results
The advantages of paid search:
-Paid search is EXTREMELY precise
-You have complete control over the phrases you choose to target and the phrases you want to avoid coming up in the search results for
-Over time and with continual data analysis by a specialist, you can refine and optimize your website’s search results. You can do so much more than with organic search, where you have less direct impact and control over where your page ranks in the results.
What are the long-term and short-term strategies with SEO and paid search?
If you’re looking to build up your search rank in the long-term, for example, if you have years to be patient and grow, you can improve your organic search results by having a content-rich blog on your website. Within this blog, focus on writing content around specific keyword phrases.
If you’re looking to improve your website’s standing within the next 6 months, paid search is your guy. Paid search strategies are more effective the longer your specialist has to analyze what phrase targets got the best search results. Paid search is a process of incremental improvements over time, so it is ideal to commit at least six months to the process of gathering data, analyzing and adjusting your advertising through several iterations.
Look out for the next blog in our search engine marketing series! We’ll help you understand how to make your website more visible online. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to us here at Lucky 13 Strategies or to our friends at Lodestone Generation.
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Christine Buckley, Lucky 13 Strategies’ summer intern, studies Economics and Scandinavian literature at UCLA. A San Diego native, she enjoys exploring funky cafes to write and satisfy her coffee addiction. She now happily blogs for Lucky 13 Strategies, combining her two loves, business and writing.