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If your company hasn’t felt the pinch of a slowing economy yet, you are one of the lucky few.  However for many businesses, the onset of a recession has led businesses looking for more cost effective ways of getting their message to their target market without breaking the bank. 

Businesses are side-stepping this recession by bringing their products and services online, where the cost of maintaining a website is only a fraction of what other mediums charge.  But having a website is only half the battle. If you do not market online or do so in a limited capacity, you should consider reexamining your integrated marketing campaign to include allocations for search engine marketing.  Ideally this would include both search engine advertising and search engine optimization. 

Let’s first consider search engine advertising.  According to IDC analysts (www.idc.com), online advertising grew 27 percent in 2007 and is unlikely to be affected by a continuing downturn in the economy.  What’s even more encouraging is the number of adverting dollars spent during the fourth quarter of 2007 which topped “$7.3 billion for the fourth quarter of 2007, about 28 percent more than the same period in 2006….” IDC findings continued.   Given these overwhelming statistics, it becomes apparently clear that online advertising is growing despite a recession.  The reason for this is simple.  It gets results! 

Let’s turn our attention to search engine optimization.  The good news is that if you have a website, you already have one key component.  The bad news is that it’s unlikely “search engine optimized” unless you or somebody else properly optimized the website for search engines.

Thankfully, there are numerous resources and companies that have considerable experience in this growing field.  However, buyers should be aware that not all search engine marketing firms or individuals are the same.  In fact, search engine giant Google warns against hiring a “search engine optimizer” that uses unethical practices to manipulate search results and, in addition, has a search engine advertising certification process.

The process of search engine marketing can vary greatly depending on the skill of the agency or individual.  For example, properly search engine optimizing a website will involve researching the right keywords to integrate into the website along with a strong linking campaign that will favorably increase the likelihood of being found for those keywords. 

In short, every business should have a search engine marketing plan.  Ideally, the search engine marketing plan should encompass the company’s business model, objectives, and return on investment goals. This will lay the foundation for how much visitor traffic and search engine optimization is required to meet the above goals.  One last point to keep in mind is that the internet is a dynamically changing landscape that never sleeps.  Search engines are constantly innovating and competitors are hungry.  What might be working today may not be working tomorrow.  Have a solid search engine marketing plan backed by a qualified agency or individual to manage the plan and your business will reap the benefits at your competitor’s expense.

Labor Day is behind us, which can only mean that Christmas and New Years is just around the corner.  Whether you are ready or not, these holidays along with others are big search engine traffic generators.  For search engine marketers, this means that planning is essential to be as successful and effective as possible.

What I find truly find perplexing is that although everyone regards “Christmas” as the grand poobah of all holidays, Halloween tends to go under the radar by some.  From experience as a parent, I can tell you that kids are just as ecstatic over Halloween as they are for Christmas.  Plus, if you think it’s all about the candy…it isn’t.  Kids love the whole idea of Halloween starting from throwing up the decorations, watching their favorite movies, to choosing what they want to be for the big night.  Retail outlets are littered with entire Halloween sections that are nearly impossible to navigate through.  To reinforce a suspicion, I ran some common holiday keyword terms in Google Trends for fun to see where Halloween ranked among holidays.  To my assumed inclination, Halloween was second in line only to Christmas.  In addition, Halloween traffic has slightly increased while Christmas traffic as flattened and declined.

For search engine marketing, this means that SEO and PPC campaigns could be developed or revised from the year previously.  In addition, keyword research can be done to determine what this years hot products may be such as depicted below.  Just check out the top 10 KEI keywords from Wordtracker:

Well, it looks like Gene Simmons and Slipknot are big winners…at least for this year.  (Side note- I didn’t even know what Slipknot was until I Googled it) Ok, I know what you are thinking.  What about the tricks or treats?  Using Google Insights for search, amazingly candy wasn’t in the top ten.  Not saying that this tool is perfect, but you could argue that candy was hidden in the treats.

Regardless, the main point from the above analysis says that if Halloween isn’t in your search engine marketing arsenal, perhaps I have made an argument that it should be.  Now if could only figure out what I want to be this year…

Last week marked the launch of a total new search animal named cuil. Developed by ex Google and Altavista engineers, cuil promises to be…well “Cool.” Although I’m not sure exactly where I first read about cuil, I quickly clicked on the link to visit this new revolutionary search engine. With eager anticipation, I began doing searches that I knew our company ranked for in Google. First “business blogs”, yielded mixed results. Currently, we rank #2 in Google (www.iblogbusiness.com) for this keyword term. However, as the picture depicts below, our site isn’t ranked above the fold.

This raises an interesting question. Does cuil rank sites left to right or top to bottom? Because below the fold, we rank #3 or #6 depending on how you look at it. Since most search engines read top to bottom, I guess I would count it at a 3, but cuil’s layout certainly doest draw my eyes down there. Additionally, Google returns over 83 million web-pages for this keyword, where cuil only delivered a mere 83 thousand. Since one of the main points this engine claims is number of pages in its index, i was puzzled to see such a low number by comparison.

What I really found disappointing was that i couldn’t find our parent company TMA E-Marketing on the first page by doing a simple search with our company name “tmaemarketing.” Shouldn’t that be a dead ringer to find your website or am I missing the point here? Nevertheless, cuil has been bombarded by mixed results from the entire blogging and web community. From what i have gathered, most of it doesn’t seem to be all that positive. But given the competitive search engine landscape, I wasn’t expecting a newcomer to be welcomed by the red carpet. Needless to say, it will be interesting to see how cuil fares in the long run.

On a completely different note, I bumped into a website called Hulu. Now I’m not sure if i have been just living under a rock, but it wasn’t until recently that i ran into this website that has one of the most compelling business models I have seen in a while. In my defense, I know I’m not the only one, because I asked several other youngster’s if they have come across this website and nearly everyone said no.

Why i found this site to be so intriguing is that its the first of its kind that features full featured TV shows and movies. As a Family Guy nut, It was love at first site. As you probably have encountered when searching for videos online, most copyrighted content that’s worth watching is a no-no that that has been ripped down for copyright infringement. Not the case with Hulu. You can watch your favorite shows because they have been sponsored by companies that inject commercials during your video session. Sure, we would all love commercials to disappear, but I’ll take them as long as i can watch free TV online. Now only if my iphone (which I ordered on Saturday) would get here!

I have always found humor in how things sometimes get their name. For instance, do you know what the difference is between an herb and a spice? Do you the people that know the difference say, “Hey honey, can you pick me up some spices at the store?”

In any regard, I’ve always struggled with the notion of search engine marketing (SEM) actually being labeled “marketing” when most companies/professionals refer to it as search engine optimization and pay per click advertising. These alone are great mediums for marketing products and services, however, aren’t enough when you consider all the elements that are involved in really marketing online.

Developing solid search engine marketing strategies involves more than a process of getting high search rankings and managing a pay per click budget. To really market and be successful online, you need to know your customers and how your company’s offerings will solve their problems. Once these important questions are answered, they need to be communcated in a way that not online increases traffic, but also communicates how the company competes, the kind of demographic that uses their products, and how to get them. These are done in a variety of ways:

• Web Design & Development- you website needs to look in keeping or better than its competitors as consumers re savvy and will likely shop around before making a decision. It should present a compelling story that answers “Why should i buy from you.” Additionally, your website should include vital information that makes it easy to understand how to purchase or get in touch with your company.

• Website Content- your website content is the voice of your company and should be written in a way that communicates value to your target market. This is definitely not as easy as it sounds, as web objectives do vary company to company. As a general rule of thumb, starting from the end result you want is a good point of reference. For instance, a technical company that markets to electrical engineers may want to place more emphasis on finding spec sheets so that they can determine if your products fits their specifications.

• Interactive Features- using a video or a flash demo can do wonders for waking up a website and make it convert. Those companies that offer complex products and services usually benefit the most out of these features since consumers are increasingly demanding easier ways to disseminate information.

To put it clearly, i don’t deny search engine marketing as a marketing practice. However, achieving high rankings or buying keyword traffic alone is only a component to the above equation. To really be successful, fundamental marketing principles apply. Use you website as a tool for your target audience and you’ll reap all the benefits of what search engine marketing as to offer.