Internet marketing should be easy. You just cobble together a website and wait for the sales to roll in, right? Well, if it was that simple we’d all be internet millionaires by now, smugly sipping cocktails on a beach somewhere.
But unfortunately for us, there are a few barriers to remove before you can expect the enquiries to come flooding in. Firstly, people have to be able to find you. Otherwise your investment in a website is waste of pixels.
To get noticed, you have two main options: pay per click advertising or search engine optimisation.
Pay per click (PPC)
Launched in 2000, pay per click (PPC) is the system of sponsored ads that have amassed Google its fortune. PPC is a quick, easy method of generating traffic. You simply choose which keywords to target, work out a budget and wait for the visitors to arrive.
What makes PPC attractive is its measurability and ability to show its ROI in clear numerals. Campaigns are also simple to manage, with clear data on conversions and how your money has been spent.
What’s less appealing is the high cost of popular keywords (although a way around this is to target the less obvious but cheaper ‘long tail’ phrases).
Another problem is that PPC is only a short term solution. If you decide to cut spending then your website will simply disappear into the depths of the search listings, never to be seen again.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO, on the other hand, is the long term alternative to PPC for getting to the top of the natural listings (and attracts 72% of clicks).
Working how to optimise websites to appear in response to certain queries is a complex process, and has given birth to an entire industry. Legions of SEO bloggers and consultants diligently work away trying to guess what line of code will magically push their clients’ sites to the top of the rankings. The problem for them is that nobody really knows for sure (and Google isn’t telling).
What we do know is that SEO involves having the correct page structure, tags and back links that tell Google what your website is all about. But SEO isn’t just a job for the technically minded or IT department. It’s also the quality of your content that impacts your ranking, making SEO the responsibility of marketers as well.
Good quality content improves your ranking due to the nature of Google’s business. Their success relies on providing the most relevant results. Consequently, it’s the websites regularly updated, with articles, blog posts and other keyword rich content, that receive the thumbs up and get pulled to the front.
Useful, well written articles can also attract links from other relevant websites (aka blogs), which is another key figure in the mysterious equation for getting onto page one.
Content marketing
Being able to drive traffic to your website is one hurdle, working out how to convert that traffic into sales is another. Your website needs to be able to change how people think and feel about your company if it’s going to convert them into customers. You can achieve this through your content.
Well written articles that offer to solve a problem, provide useful info or valuable insight can build trust and confidence in your expertise. They can also make your website ‘sticky’, keeping visitors glued to your content and engaged with your website for longer. This gives you more time to encourage them to take action and leave their email address before they leave.
PPC or SEO?
Investing in a content driven SEO strategy offers long term benefits compared to PPC. Once your website starts ranking highly for your key terms it’s likely to stay there. The drawback is that reaching such lofty positions can take weeks, months or even a year for competitive search terms. This makes SEO difficult to justify if you want quick, quantifiable results.
Ultimately, deciding whether to rely on PPC or SEO to generate traffic depends on the nature of your business and structure of your website. A sensible approach is to treat PPC as a quick, easy way of attracting customers, and SEO your long term objective.
Either way, internet marketing is a complex, evolving puzzle. You can endlessly spend your time making tweaks and word changes to improve your website’s conversion rate. So any images of sipping cocktails on a beach will have to stay on your desktop’s background for now.
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