SEO is about what you do with the content and coding of the actual site. Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing are about what you do outside of the site.
Directory Listings
First things first: register your site with the search directories. Many of the search directories will pick up your site eventually, but some will not. However, there are services that can register your site with many of the top search directories right away which speeds up the process. Registering with the top search directories is a good idea for all businesses regardless of how large their service or customer radius is.
Local Search
The easiest SEM starts with local search. If you have a business that draws customers locally, this is a must-have. This is listing your business with Google Business Local and Bing Local. Its also good to get registered with Yext but they charge for the privilege. Yext must now be used to register for Yahoo. Even though Google and Bing don’t charge, it’s a good idea to have a professional do all the registry for you at the same time as the directory listings to assure consistency of information. Search engines penalize if NAP [name, address, phone] information is different one place to another. You will pay the professional to register your sites. Again, Yext costs more because Yext charges just to have a listing.
Directory Listing and Local Search are once and done things. However, if you change the company name, address, phone, fax or hours/days of operation, they all need to be changed to assure consistency.
Paid Search Engine Marketing
Now we move outside my area of expertise into paid Search Engine Marketing. SEM includes services to get you higher listings in searches (adwords, keyword purchasing) and clients (through pay-per-click advertising) and ads. You pay for all of these based on the amount of work that the provider does for you and your budget to purchase keywords, ads or clicks.
SEM is not inexpensive. I tell my clients if they aren’t paying at least $250/ month, they may as well flush the money. Good SEM (or SEO as it is often and inaccurately called) is expensive. But a lot of bad SEM is expensive too.
Guidelines for Hiring a Search Engine Marketing Company
When hiring an SEM company, be sure:
- The company has been in business for a while
- They were referred to you by someone that used them with good results, or that you trust to know their professionalism
- They provide references and you call them
- You understand what you are getting – services, frequency, duration
- You clearly know what you are paying for and how much you will need to spend
- The company you are working with offers some way to track results
I have been a web designer for 12 years and have interviewed dozens of people who do this work. I would only recommend two of them.
Keep in mind that , with the exceptions of search directory listings and local search, Search Engine Marketing only works as long as you are paying for it. Once the budget stops, the keywords, ads and pay-per-clicks will also stop.
Be sure to read next week’s post on about Social Media Marketing
View the rest of the series:
SEO, SEM, SMM and your great website
What is Search Engine Optimization?