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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.

If you are currently using Google Adwords, you may be interested to hear that Google just made some improvements to its quality score algorithm. In case you are not entirely sure, Google Adwords quality score is a major determinant in how much an advertiser ranks and pays for their keywords relative to competitors. Google’s quality score is based on several factors including but not limited to:

1. Click Through Rate (CTR)
2. Relevance of keywords in relation to its Ad Group
3. Quality of your landing pages
4. Account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
5. Relevance of the keyword/ad to the search query

Essentially, the new quality score adds several new components to increase the relevancy of Google’s search and content network results:

1. Real-time calculation of relevancy of keywords/ad to search queries
2. Keywords will no longer given “inactive” status
3. First page bids will replace minimum bids

Probably the most notable variable above is the real time calculation of keywords and ads because campaign optimization enhancements will have an immediate effect within Google’s network. As the landscape of PPC advertisers is highly dynamic, changing ad text and keywords will likely occur more frequently as competitors will want to continually want higher positions and strive for a lower cost per click. In addition, “first page bids” will enable advertisers to see how much it will cost to receive first page exposure without too much guessing with max bids.

There are a lot of mixed opinions on how the above will benefit an advertiser. Over at the Marketing Pilgrim, Andy Beal has a humorous ending to his post in that he claims these new changes will immediately translate into more revenue for Google. I have to say that although I agree with that statement, I believe that there are many positive outcomes for SEMs that keep a watchful eye on their PPC campaigns. Moreover, I look at these changes as weeding out lesser experienced campaign managers or do it yourselfers that don’t understand the importance of a well structured and organized Adwords account, one of the most critical components in setting up a PPC campaign in my opinion.

In any regards, if you haven’t read about these recent changes and are a Google Adwords advertiser, I would take a moment to familiarize yourself with these recent enhancements.

I spoke to a good search engine marketing friend of mine the other day, in which we discussed the pro’s and con’s of search engine optimization (SEO) vs. pay per click advertising (PPC.) But, first I want to tell you who won, which was me of on my soap box of PPC course…just kidding. We both presented great arguments, but in the end I think we both came out a little wiser.

According to a recent 2007 SEMPO survey, most search engine marketing firms report that a greater portion of their revenue comes from SEO vs. PPC. I found this extremely interesting due to the increasingly high-emphasis of building link popularity when it comes to achieving high SERPS in SEO campaigns. Regardless of whether you agree with the above statistic or not, building great quality link popularity to boost rankings can take time when you are going after highly competitive keyword phrases. And when you are all done trying to sell to the CEO on the benefits of all these great linking efforts…the CFO usually would like to have a word with you. Plus, (as Rodney Dangerfield would say) I’m not sure you’re totally familiar you runs that department, but I assure you it isn’t the boy scouts!

Making the connection and trying to prove immediate value for SEO can be a difficult game when there is high money at stake. In addition, ROI is of the utmost importance proving your firms value which is usually tied to a short window. If you are unable to measure, deliver, or maintain a healthy ROI (which is typically difficult for any medium at startup due to sunk costs), most companies will turn their head to what they know best.

Sure, immediate on-page optimization can deliver immediate results for some company rosy scenarios, but most online business models and websites I run across aren’t that easy. There are typically many fundamental issues with the corporate website that will prove to deliver poor results unless significant attention is turned to fixing the website to make it conversion friendly. This usually ends up in a redesign or a refresh that can delay results even further, which makes achieving the desired goal even longer to attain. A tough sell for most companies at a high level.

Lastly, measuring ROI for SEO is more difficult due to the benchmarking (and agreeing among internal resources) required to do it effectively, where pay per click advertising is relatively straightforward due to the known advertising expenditure that can’t be argued. Its a straight input output game as they say. Additionally, once real ROI is achieved through paid search, it provides a guided roadway for search engine optimization efforts, where the guessing game has been taken out of the question.

In reality, both are really important and should be considered equally if adequate resources exist. However, i think the above presents a strong argument for gaining immediate “honeymoon” trust, is easier to measure, and will guide a path for continued success.