Search Engine Marketing Companies

By Author: Larry Tang
Total Articles: 512
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If you are looking for a Search Engine Marketing Company you must know by now that there are many of them. However, if you think through your goals and objectives, your Search for an SEM Company will become focused very quickly. Consider what your goals are; asked yourself the following key questions:

1. What would I like to be able to say about the performance of my website one year from today?
2. Be specific! What do you want in sales and profits (net of all expenses) in the first 12 months? In 3 years? In 5 years?
3. What investment are you willing to make to achieve these sales and profitability goals?

There are plenty of additional questions. However these questions must be answered by you. Without these answers, you can't possibly make a well-balance decision.

Further these questions are all about one thing: RESULTS. It is important that you understand what the results you are seeking are.

So if you are looking for results, it should seem intuitively obvious that the Search Engine Marketing Company you select be focused on RESULTS YOUR RESULTS. Here is what I mean and here ...
... is how you can make the necessary distinctions so that your choice of Search Engine Marketing Company becomes much more focused:

1. Search Engine Marketing Companies are many times not focused on the key results of sales and profitability.
a. They sometimes are focused only on PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising without considering your budget, the click-through rate (% of ads clicked) and the conversion rate (% of clicks resulting in a purchase, lead form, etc).
b. Similarly they may only be focused on the search engine organic rankings. While this is critical, #1 rankings by themselves yield zero conversions meaning no sales and negative profitability.
2. Does the Search Engine Marketing Company get paid whether or not they actually achieve even the visibility objectives?
3. Conversely, does the SEM tie their compensation to achievement of high organic rankings? Are they at risk for a significant proportion of their compensation? In other words, are you ultimately paying for services, regardless of the outcome or are you Paying for Performance?
4. How do they define SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
a. Are they really talking about PPC or true Organic Search?
b. If it's Organic Search, how do they define and describe the sub-specialties that are part of their SEO service? Which, if any, of the following are part of the service:
i. Social Media
ii. Social Bookmarking
iii. Information Feeds like RSS
iv. Copywriting Services
v. Online Syndication
vi. Online Indexing (Manual Submissions)
vii. Industry-specific backlinking
viii. Multi-media submissions
c. Do they mainly speak of meta tags, title tags and internal structure? They shouldn't as these are only basic issues in Search Engine Marketing.
5. Do they emphasize both keyword and competitive research BEFORE they make any prognostications for your Search Engine Marketing program?
6. Do they consider CONVERSION and rates of conversion to be part of their service?
7. Can they demonstrate existing client VISIBILITY and CONVERSION in competitive markets?

I hope that the point is clear. Your results are not achieved unless sales are made and at profitable levels. If the Search Engine Marketing Company takes no ownership of the results as measured in CONVERSIONS, then you are not speaking with a company that has its goal aligned with yours.

TACTICS VS. STRATEGY

Goals require well coordinated strategies. Strategies can include tactics but tactics in a vacuum are rarely successful. The strategies must be focused on ROI and the coordination of necessary services to effect a successful strategy. For instance, we rarely employ a PPC strategy by itself to achieve a client's sales and profitability goals. Rather we use PPC as part of a coordinated Internet Marketing Strategy. The role of PPC is not long term in our model; rather we use it as a bridge to achieve immediate results while longer term, longer lasting and improved ROI strategies are taking shape. In other words, different components of a strategy have different strengths and weaknesses.

Even if you are speaking to a potential Search Engine Marketing Company and the discussion does focus on an array of Organic SEO strategies as we suggest here, it is not enough to achieve optimal results. Organic SEO is really all about Google. Let's say the SEO is highly successful and you are getting 80% of your traffic from Google or the major search engines. But, what if Google changes the game for some unforeseen reason (it's happened) and that visibility and associated traffic is instantly gone? This comes down to putting all of your eggs in one basket and we all know those risks. So, it is important for the Search Engine Marketing Company to be really an Internet Marketing company with a broad approach to online marketing. The social media, viral marketing are just two additional components that must be pursued as part of a successful Internet Marketing Strategy.

So, it takes more than leafing through for a Search Engine Marketing Company. You need to really know what your business objectives are AND to select only those SEM's that are focused on the same ROI objectives as you have. In addition, the SEM must share the marketing risk by tying a significant piece of their compensation to actual performance as measured in search engine rankings, website traffic and website conversions. Without this, the your company and the SEM will be out of step from the start. In addition, you must be sure that you know what it is you are contracting for. What is SEM? What is SEO? What defines success?

By selecting the right Search Engine Marketing Company with goals, activities and focus that are aligned with those of your company, you will have done yourself a great favor.
For more click Search Engine Marketing Companies. Optimum7.com is an Internet Marketing Services Company with primary focus on Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises (SME's). Optimum7.com offers a rich consultative approach that our clients find refreshing. We actually listen to our clients to learn exactly what their problems and objectives are.