Can I be successful running an SEM campaign on my own?
Running a typical SEM campaign can consume around one hundred hours per month at the outset and, because of that, is normally outsourced to SEO companies. While the do it yourself aspect might be tempting, re-dedicating a hundred hours to an employee or yourself is not going to be the best allocation of labor, especially there isn’t anyone in-house with SEM experience.

How do I know if SEM is working?
Contrary to advertising via traditional media, internet related activity is highly measurable. You will be able to track visits, click throughs, conversion rates, and a host of other metrics. Tracking is normally summarized by SEO companies on a monthly basis. Additionally, you can always check the keywords and phrases that are being optimized to see where your web pages are ranked on the search engines. One word of caution, any SEM campaign will take some time to show results so don’t be frustrated if you’re not on page one after two weeks. The timeline for significant results can vary widely depending on the level of competition for the keywords you are optimizing and your monthly budget.

How do I go about choosing an SEM/SEO company?
You’re going after results and the firm you go with should be able to deliver them. The best way to determine that is to check out how their existing clients are doing, i.e. how they rank, increases in traffic, conversion numbers, etc. If all other things are equal, lean toward a larger rather than a smaller one to ensure continuity should there be some turnover in personnel. Again, this is about results. You’ll have your choice of firms so be ruthless about demanding proof that each company can live up to its own billing.

2) Branding – According to search engine user studies, 36% of searchers believe that company pages that rank at the top of search engine results are the top brands in their field. Consider the amount of money it would take for that kind of brand recognition using offline methods and suddenly the money being paid for SEO services looks like a bargain at ten times the amount.
3) Credibility – Running alongside the branding benefits, occupying real estate on page one of the search engines translates into higher credibility with searchers. Multiple listings on page one can lock up the credibility factor even further.
4) Proactive reputation management – SEO that results in multiple listings on the top pages of the engines can act as a pre-emptive reputation management technique by making it difficult for negative content to get to the front pages of the search engines. Compared to the process of moving negative content off of page one once it’s embedded, keeping it from getting there in the first place is a much better outcome. With statistics showing that nine out of ten users never go beyond page one and virtually no one goes past page three, a search engine optimization plan that occupies a lot of listings in the top thirty spots can keep damaging content from ever seeing the light of day.
5) A better user experience – Following basic optimization guidelines should mean that visitors immediately get a sense that they will find what they’re looking for, a key factor in keeping them on your site. Ease of navigation and quality content results in a positive user experience and increases the site’s trustworthiness, keeping visitors coming back to the site which improves the odds for…
6) Conversions – Combine branding, credibility, a great reputation, and a positive user experience and you are going to get conversions at an increasingly higher rate. Continuing search engine optimization and analysis to improve weak spots on the site can further improve the site’s overall performance and conversion ratio.

An experienced SEO company can deliver benefits which go far beyond a high ranking and targeted traffic. In fact, when measured against a typical advertising budget, the money spent on search engine optimization can provide deliverables and a return on investment that dwarfs what could be expected from traditional and offline efforts.

A Search Engine Overview

When a search engine user goes to a specific search engine and searches for a specific keyword phrase, a listing of websites will come up in the browser. A good example of a search engine is Google (as they are the biggest and most impressive search engine). Google, MSN and Yahoo! are the big three search engines, and they all have one specific goal in mind. Their goal is to produce the most relevant results for the users of those search engines.

More than half of all Internet users take advantage of the search engines on a daily basis.  With that said, you can see why they are so important. It is the best way to find information quickly and effectively. In order to understand Search engine optimization (SEO), you will need to understand how the search engines work.

A Look Inside SEO

The practice of SEO can be very complex, but has two different main tasks to accomplish. The first is all about keywords. A keyword is a specific phrase that is searched for in the search engines. As someone that would be doing SEO, it would be their job to figure out which keywords (related to the websites topic) people search for. From there, they can pinpoint the keywords they want to rank for in the search engines.

After the keywords have been discovered, the next step would be to implement different methods to rank for these phrases. The most basic concept of SEO is to be sure that these keywords are placed throughout a website in the proper places. If they are, then that is a good first step to having good SEO on the website.

The complexity of SEO

While many think that Search Engine Optimization is just simply adding keywords to your content, it really is much more. The way your site is designed, the quality of your content, the uniqueness of your content and the amount of quality inbound links to your website are all very important factors. Along with that, there are still literally hundreds of other things that could affect search engine rankings both negatively and positively.

The search engines have secret algorithms that they use to decide what websites rank for what keywords. They have a lot of different variables that come into play and nobody knows exactly what they are. This is the main reason why SEO is such a lucrative and high demand service for SEO experts. A very big part of Search Engine Optimization is theory and guesses to what will work and what will not. There are a lot of proven facts out there about SEO, but there are also a lot of secrets. The number one rule for SEO is to simply create quality and value for the Internet. The rest will all fall into play, including search engine optimization.

The business owner goes with the guarantees and low price of the cheapest bid. In real life, a nephew, a friend at the lodge, or his wife’s friend’s son just out of college can be substituted in place of the cheapest bid. At this point there are three possible outcomes for the endeavor:

1) Nothing – Either the winning bidder doesn’t have the wherewithal to deliver on the guarantees made or he does but ends up with a bigger, more lucrative project that takes most of his time. After dedicating long hours to the design, marketing, or whatever else the bigger project entails, there is just not enough time or energy to do what needs to be done on the smaller project. Both paths lead to the same destination; frustration, money spent, and no traffic to the site.
2) Something, but it’s not good – Trying to optimize a site by taking shortcuts and trying to trick the  search engines is one way to offer a labor intensive service for pennies on the dollar. Unfortunately, search engines are very good at detecting shortcuts and trickery and don’t take very kindly to either practice. “Black Hat” techniques, as they’re called, may be the only way to deliver on a guarantee for these types of companies but it also results in the site being black-balled from the search engines. The business owner is now put in a position where he has to shut down the original site and start from scratch with a new site.
3) The Business Owner Decides That Search Engine Optimization Doesn’t Work – Getting ripped- off with no results or getting them and then getting penalized for it, quite frankly, sucks. The bad experience convinces the owner that SEO simply doesn’t work and if there is going to be another website it will be one that people can find when they see its address on his business card.

This is a story that gets repeated on a daily basis which is unfortunate because search engine optimization/marketing, when done properly, can do exactly what it’s supposed to do. Doing it properly takes experience, creativity, and time. How much of each depends on the size of the market the business plans to address and how much existing competition there is in that market. A company in the business of supplying side view mirrors for ’55 T-Birds, for example, will require less SEO than a company trying to get on page one for cell phone accessories.

Prior to starting a project, a responsible SEO firm will be able to determine keyword traffic, competition, and whether doing search engine optimization/marketing makes sense for the company. A viable project may take 100 hours of work to get started and 100 hours of work per month to achieve the desired end result of getting listed on the front page of the search engines. That works out to about $2 per hour for the guys bidding $200 per month for your project. As the saying goes, “If it seems too good to be true…”

For more information about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) visit www.gervaisgroupllc.com.

* Black Hat Techniques – Black hat SEO is the catch-all phrase used to describe a variety of tricks and shortcuts that are considered unethical by the SEO community and the search engines. Use of these techniques can be tempting because of their lower costs and the fact that they can work temporarily. Basically considered a short sighted solution to a long term problem, these techniques will ultimately hurt the ranking of a website at best, with the worst case being that the website gets banned or blacklisted by search engines.
* Cloaking – A bait and switch technique designed to fool search engine crawlers. This tactic has a site’s server feed keyword rich content to the crawlers but if a visitor clicks on the link he will see completely different content.
* Doorway Page – A doorway page is meant to trick the search engines into thinking that a page is rich in relevant keyword content. These pages typically contain only keywords and are therefore useless for visitors.
* Hidden Text – Relevant or keyword rich content that is programmed into the html code which is invisible to the reader but will be picked up by search engine crawlers.
* Keyword Stuffing – Just like it sounds, the practice involves cramming as many keywords into the text as possible to increase the page ranking. Readers know keyword stuffing when they see it because of the blatant repetition of the same terms throughout the copy on a page. Keywords can also be stuffed in comment tags, alt tags, and in hidden text on the pages of the abusing site.

These are but a few of the unethical practices which describe black hat SEO techniques. The search engines are very aware of “search engine spam” techniques and are always on the lookout for them. Getting caught using them is costly both in terms of rebuilding a site that has been banned, and from the lost sales opportunities as a result of getting tossed out of the search engines. Also hurt in that type of situation would be any branding efforts involving the offending website. Building and marketing websites can be extremely lucrative over the long term when done correctly. Trying to cut corners using black hat techniques is a sure way to turn a short term problem into a long term quagmire.