Search Engine Marketing
for Local Businesses
|
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
is a big part of any marketing campaign
these days and if done properly it can
realistically boost your business's profits.
| SEM
is a system of online marketing
techniques to be performed with your
website (or even without a website) in
order to obtain a highly visible
prominent position for your business
listing within search results based on
your geographical location in major
search engines like Google, Yahoo or
Bing. |
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Why search
engine marketing? |
First,
because the trend for online searching for
locally based products and services is growing
at enormous rate and, therefore, the potential
of increasing sales and profits for local
businesses from online activities is growing
daily.
Second, big phone books, which not long ago were
one of the major marketing resources for many
small businesses, are dead and online search
engines are taking over their business.
According to various studies and surveys nearly
70% of people looking for local products and
services are using one of the three major search
engines.
That's where a lot of your potential customers
are looking for you and that is where your
business must be listed and eventually found by
those people.
The better position you have in the search
engines listings the more prospects and new
customers your business can attract.
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And
the good part that it does not matter
anymore if your business name starts
with 'A" or with "Z" like it was with
phone books or printed business
directories.
Any business can be listed and
effectively positioned in search engines
if some specific marketing strategies
are implemented.
If you are not properly listed in search
engines, or even worse, not listed at
all, you are potentially losing a lot of
business to your competitors. |
These days more and more local
business owners including your direct competitors
become more educated and realize the incredible
power of the Internet marketing technology and,
particularly, online search engines marketing
potential.
Effective positioning in all types of listing within
search results becomes a necessity for many business
operators and that's why many of them started
investing in SEM to establish their presence in
major search giants.
|
What exactly is
Search Engine
Marketing? |
Building a
search engine marketing (SEM) system normally involves one or both of the
following:
 |
Search Engine
Optimization
(SEO) |
 |
|
Pay-Per-Click
Marketing
(PPC) |
| |
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|
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Optimizing
your website for a better ranking in
search results.
It's a free
listing within "organic" and "local"
search results.
|
Advertising
your business in the sponsored section
of the search results
You pay for
each click originating from your ad.
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The simple
illustration of SEM can look
like this:
Basically, SEM system
is a process of developing and implementing marketing
strategies for three types of search engines
listings:
We all know that the best
type of advertising quite often is free.
Apparently, the listing in search engines is
free as well. That means if your business
has a presence online people can potentially
find your business when they search for
products or services you provide.
The goal of SEO is to gain a prominent
position within "organic" and "local" search
results when people search for a specific
geographically based product or service
like, for example, "Calgary plumber".
|
|
Local
search
listing |
Local search
(also known as "geographic location based search")
has practically erupted in recent years mainly due
to increasing popularity of mobile Internet devices
which led to increasing search activities for
locally based products and services such as
restaurants, shops, services, etc.
All major search engines spotted this rapidly
increasing trend and created special sections within
their search results called "local search listing".
|
This type
of listing normally shows up among top of
search results and usually contains few
locally based business related to the search
term.
As an example, you can see the search result
for "Calgary plumber" on the image on the
right.
The listing usually contains a business
title, physical address, website, telephone
number and often is accompanied by a local
area map locator. |
 |
The companies listed within
those local search results get the most of the
business from the search engines users.
This is the most desirable
place your business wants to be for relevant to your
product or service search terms.
The listing is free to any business but to get on
top of the local search results is not easy and is
possible only by doing a deep research within the
niche your business operates in and implementing
some specific local listing optimization strategies.
|
|
Organic
search engine listing |
This is the most common
type of listing and is the primary source of
all search results.
The terming "organic
listing" was first introduced by search
engines because this type of listings shows
up in search results because of their
natural relevance to the search terms.
The search results differ
from engine to engine and are strictly based
on each individual search engine's own
algorithm.
Websites with higher
level of relevancy are listed on top of the
search results.
The
real issue is that there are thousands
of relevant websites to any specific
local search term but only a
few make it to the top of the search
results.
|
Why
are those websites getting on top of
organic search results?
Because the website owners know and
follow search engines' rules and meet
their very specific algorithm criteria.
That is why search engine see those
websites as the most relevant for that
particular search term and that is why
they list those websites on the top.
If your
business listing is not following the search
engine's rules people will never find your
business no matter how good your website or your
service is. |
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That means that in order for your listing to
show up within top search results your listing
has to be optimized to meet search engine's
algorithm criteria.
Being listed on the first page of search results
for your service related search term is
extremely important because 80% of searchers
will not look past the second page of search
results.
In other words, if you listing is not showing up
within first two pages on related search results
then chances are it will never be found by
people.
Prominent top positioning in the search engines
is the key to overall success of your online
marketing campaigns because all potential
prospects will see and check your listing first
before they go to your competitors who are
listed below you.
And if you give those prospects enough reasons
to use your service or product in first place
they will never go to the other guys.
This is a
bid-based paid listing appearing on the right side
of the search results in a form of small ads.
Among others the most popular PPC service providers are Google
AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft
adCenter.
| The basic of Pay-Per-Click marketing is pretty
simple and its name actually fully reflects what
it's all about. You buy
the keywords phrases related to your product
or service from a PPC provider.
When someone searches
for any of those keywords your ad appears
within paid (also known as 'sponsored' or
'featured') listing on the right side of the
search results.
|
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If that person clicks
on your ad and visit your website you pay
for that click.
It's a pretty
aggressive type of marketing and with this type of
listing you can start generating interested
prospects or sell your product or service instantly.
However, due to high popularity of PPC marketing all
search engines provide this service under a
bid-based auction style model.
Essentially, they
offer you to place a bid for any particular keyword
phrase and the highest bids advertisers get the top
positions in paid listing while advertisers with
lower bids get their ads listed on lower positions
or secondary pages where effectiveness of such ads
significantly diminishes.
Like with everything with
online marketing while it looks pretty
simple at the first glance there are some
specific rules and guidelines you have to
follow in order to have effective marketing
campaigns.
For example, each PPC provider has its own
criteria how they provide the service to the
bidders. Incorrectly done PPC campaign can
bring you significant financial losses
literally overnight while properly planned
and executed PPC campaign can drastically
boost your profits bottom line instantly.
It is highly advised to consult a
professional Internet marketing consultant
before you approach PPC marketing.
Let us assist you
We can assist you to
perform all necessary research tasks and
implement proper strategies to help you to
get your business on top local search
positions which will make your business to
stand out of the majority of the competition
which may lead to significant increase of
your chances to attract more customers and
accordingly to increase your sales and
profits.
We can help you to
optimize your listing in the search engines
in order to bring it to as prominent top
position as possible for the search terms
related to your product or service.
Once your listing gets on the prominent
positions we'll continue to monitor it and
implement necessary strategies to ensure
that it maintains top positions at all
times.
If your competitors are currently dominating
the search results and enjoying all the
benefits of being on the top we'll help you
to knock them off of their positions so you
can have your fair market share.
Ready to start with Search engine
marketing?
Just contact us and we'll guide you through
the whole process of setting up and
monitoring all your search engine marketing
campaigns.
