The Fundamental Elements of Search Engine Marketing

There are many misconceptions regarding the search engine marketing business. Many people have been lead to believe that search engine marketing refers only to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on platforms such as Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing. In fact, search engine marketing refers to every possible facet of turning a search referred visitor into a paying customer/client. These facets usually include; search engine optimisation (SEO), PPC, conversion optimisation, conversion tracking and general web analytics. These can all be summarised into the three fundamental elements of search engine marketing;

• Increase traffic
• Measure results
• Convert visitors

Increase traffic: This element refers to the process of generating a larger amount of traffic to a website which is not only targeted, but also qualified. Through search engine optimisation, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, it is possible to send visitors to a website which is not only interested in a product or service, they are in the final part of the buying cycle and ready for their money to change hands. With Google AdWords in particular, paying for each individual click through to your website means that a high traffic count, means a high investment has to be made. With this said, it is important for that investment to not go to waste. The AdWords system is advanced and so the results seen by a company that outsources professional account management is sure to see a far higher return on investment (ROI) than a company managing their account in-house with un-qualified staff.

Measure results: As interesting as it is to continually refresh your page and watch your metrics grow, there is really no improvement that can be made from this doing this. Google Analytics provides the technology needed to measure the interaction regarding every aspect of your website. You are able to track how many people came to your website from any given source at and given time and whether they did or did not convert. Also, you can track the exact paths people are navigating throughout your website and which pages cause them to drop off. There are endless tracking options in Google Analytics, those are just a few. So once you have the data, what do you do with it? This data is probably one of your most powerful marketing tools. It tells you exactly what you are doing well and what you need to improve on. If traffic which is driven to the home page is not converting as well as the individual pages for your products or services, you would consider using similar conversion optimisation techniques for the home page. If no notice in your flow visualisation that there are numerous people not completing the conversion once that arrive at a certain section of your check-out process, there is most likely an issue there which is making it difficult for users to continue the conversion or they feel at that point that the site is not trustworthy. After discovering this though your data you would diagnose and amend the issue.

Convert visitors: Conversion optimisation was touched on quite significantly in the measure results section. This is because the action taken after receiving data is an element of conversion optimisation. However, as an element of search engine marketing, this phase usually refers to the development or redevelopment of an entire website with data-driven conversion optimisation techniques in mind. Landing pages (one page website solutions), complete conversion websites (multiple pages) and online stores are the three most widely recognised forms of conversion optimised websites which stand to see massive results when traffic is driven through them.