Q: Hello, as a medium sized business I keep hearing that I need to make sure our web site is Optimised and that we should be doing search engine marketing. At the moment our marketing consists of our web site, product brochures and a (very) small amount of paid advertising. Is search engine optimisation easy? Who does it,? How do I know what we need and what they are talking about. Same for search engine marketing. Every time I ask someone who purports to know, I get different answers. Do we need it or is it a passing fad?
Mansour - Parramatta
BrandQuest Repsonds:
Mansour, we can understand your frustration and it’s something we see and hear a lot in our BrandQuest Marketing Workshops. I’ll try and simplify our response as I believe the answers you need are best and most likely found going direct to the gurus.Before we direct you there however, let’s be very firm about both SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing or paid search engine advertising).
SEO and SEM are NOT passing fads and the sooner you embark on your learning and exploration to discover the benefits and costs the better your business will be. Of course, some businesses and services are better suited than others to leveraging the enormous potency of the world wide web to drive customer awareness and leads. But at BrandQuest ,we have NOT yet seen a business that hasn’t benefited from utilising both or either SEO and SEM.
So, where to start your journey to SEO and SEM?
First in order to arm yourself with a layman’s understanding of both terms and applications, we suggest you go to the Google Home page and click on the ‘advertising programmes’ and ‘business solutions’ buttons to gain some first-hand knowledge.
Then, your next step may be to actually experience the power of both SEO and SEM to find a business within your local region that may be able to assist you.
In other words, go to the Search Engine of your choice and type in the following:
search engine optimisation - parramatta.
You’ll then find some local expertise for your needs. Firstly you’ll see some companies listed in the RIGHT HAND columns and others listed in the main section. Those companies in the right hand column use SEM to gain their spots (ie they are paying to be there), while those listed in the main column have used SEO to gain their ‘natural’ ranking – the higher the better. Good luck, and as always, it pays to talk to more than one supplier so you can make a balanced judgement.
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