Search Engine Marketing - First Page Results

Understanding What the Fuss Is all About
by Melissa Darnay, Marketing Director for Plonka Interactive in Plano Texas

Imagine standing on the beach as the waves lick your toes. If the weather doesn’t change, you’ll be fine. But something has changed. Search engine marketing is no longer a little wave that just affects a tiny portion of the population—it’s a tsunami that is taking over the world. Unless you’re prepared, you won’t just get wet, you’ll be washed out to sea.

Search engines have changed the landscape forever. Whereas we used to let our fingers do the walking, we now let our mouse do the surfing … with search engines as our surfboard. Because we’re a society based on instant gratification, we only spend 1.5% of all of our online time on a search engine’s site. This means if your company isn’t appearing on the first or second page of search results, you’re missing out on an entire revenue stream.

Being listed on the first page of a search results page is like having a brick and mortar store in the very center of a busy mall. Unlike retail, though, you have a choice of how you can get prime real estate. You can either pay for it with paid placement (such as pay-per-click advertising, where you pay more to get a better listing), or you can get listed for free. That particular f-word has a nice ring to it, and it’s not as tough as you think. Being listed in the first grouping of search results has nothing to do with the amount you pay in rent or your website design … and everything to do with how relevant your site is.

But who decides relevancy? Ah, Grasshopper, now you are asking the right question. Each search engine has developed a complicated algorithm that determines how to find and rank the most relevant pages. If you leave the relevancy of your site to chance, it’s like competing in a beauty pageant with a paper bag over your head. Let’s face it, you’re not going to come close to winning the pageant unless you put on makeup and spend some time on your wardrobe. The same is true for optimizing your site. In a sense, you’re just using your Internet wiles to “makeup” your site, ensuring each page of your site matches what people are looking for.

Instead of guessing what the criteria is, find a firm that specializes in search engine marketing. Search algorithms change on a regular basis to stay ahead of the would-be cheats, so it’s important that the firm you choose is up-to-date on the latest techniques. BMW was recently blacklisted by Google for using unethical methods, and the cyber-slap was heard around the world. BMW fans can rest assured, though, because BMW fixed their wayward methods, and Google manually reinstated them.

The tsunami of change is here. You can either embrace search engine marketing and watch your sales increase, or resist it… and risk being washed away into oblivion.

Melissa Darnay is the Marketing Director at Plonka Interactive in the Dallas Texas area. To learn more about how your website can benefit from search engine marketing, contact her at 972-381-1311. You can also email her directly at melissa.darnay@plonka.com.