The Reality of Search Engine Marketing

If you work in Internet marketing, you know search engines are vital to the success of your online marketing efforts. There is often a lot of confusion about what is and is not possible, what it takes to succeed and what kind of budget is needed. You or somebody in your organization needs to understand the possibilities whether you choose to handle search engine marketing in-house or hire an agency (which can be a confusing time sink in and of itself)

Search engine listings come from four different types of databases.

Free directories - Web directories employ humans to review each and every site submitted. You typically have to fill out a form when you submit your site and depending on the directory may only be able to obtain 1 or 2 listings for your site. The most important web directory to be listed in is The Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org). All editors are volunteers; it may take up to a year to get listed, and you can't buy an express review or listing. Direct traffic from an ODP listing is very low but since most search engines rely on The Open Directory to seed their databases it is a very important listing.

Zeal (owned by LookSmart) is a free directory that supplies search results in the "web directory" section of MSN. It is for non-profit and non-commercial sites. If you have such a site there is no limit tothe number of pages you can add and if your listings are submitted correctly you can expect to receive around 200 visitors per month from each listing.

Pay per click directories - LookSmart is the prime example here. Companies can buy as many listings as they want. Small businesses can purchase one listing and pay $0.15/click larger businesses can buy as many listings as they want and typically pay at least $0.25/click. Setup is fast and traffic starts flowing quickly.

Spider Based Search Engines - Search engines rarely use humans to review listings, instead they use robots known as spiders to find pages in your website and add pages to their indices. Some search engines like AskJeeves and AltaVista accept payment for inclusion in their search results, but other search engines like Google do not.

Pay Per Click Engines - Pay per click advertising engines assign rankings based on the amount you are willing to pay for a click. Your bid amount per click determines your rankings and you are only charged when someone clicks on your listing and visits your website.

If you need to generate traffic quickly...

Setup and account with Overture, Google AdWords, FindWhat, and LookSmart to get started. Pick your keywords and set your bids. The number of keywords you bid on and your budget will limit the amount of traffic you generate. This is fast, relatively easy and may appease whoever in your organization wants to see the website get more "hits" or visitors. Generating sales is a different matter entirely but this will get the traffic flowing.

If you need to generate traffic quickly and have no budget...

Your best bet is to exchange links with popular sites that offer content similar to yours. If you have no budget and no time, you simply will not be able to generate search engine traffic quickly. Many people who have no clue about search engines think it is just a matter of adding or adjusting meta tags to your web pages. It's not; it's a large undertaking. Results can be seen in as little as two months but it typically takes 4 months to a year to increase your rankings and significantly increase free referrals from search engines.

Check to make sure optimization efforts will not be in vain

Search engines have a hard time with:

• Flash sites
• Dynamically generated sites that have more than on question mark (?), ampersand (&), equal sign (=), and other non-alphanumeric characters in the URL. These are common among database driven sites.
• Framed sites
• Sites created primarily with images and no text
• Sites that make extensive use of JavaScript, particularly in the navigation system
• Sites that use session IDs

If any of these design elements characterizes your site, you'll need to review them and address them before content development efforts will have a significant effect on your search engine rankings and traffic. If these barriers cannot be removed, resign yourself to participating in paid search engine advertising programs and getting links from other sites to generate traffic.

The keys to free search engine traffic include:

• Attaining listings in the Open Directory Project
• Getting other sites to link to yours
• Creating keyword and user focused content on your site
• Patience - allow 3 months to a year to achieve maximum results
• Lots of time for researching keywords and the inner workings of search engines
• Hiring a consultant to help guide you through the optimization process
• Making changes to your website
• Persistence

You should avoid:

• Hidden links
• Hidden text
• Bulk search engine submission programs - they just don't work
• Optimization companies that promise overnight results - Quick results are possible, but they will come from paid placements, not free placements that require optimization
• Creating doorway pages with little informational content
• Creating mirror domains

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