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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.

Its been a very busy week for us here at TMA E-Marketing…

iBizRadio- Thanks to our talented web developer, our business podcasting radio is back on the air.  Its been a rather bumpy road to get this back up and running since our server was attacked earlier this year.  Long story short, our podcasting radio station had to be relocated to another server and reprogrammed.  Its still in its beta format, but we plan on working out the bugs in the near future.

Radiospectives- We are pleased to announce that we are on our 3rd consecutive week and are thrilled with the response we have received.   So thrilled, that we have decided to more forward with more interviews in 2009.  If your a business that would like to be interviewed, please don’t hesitate to contact us.  As a side note, Radiospectives was recently approved and available via iTunes store.  (It’s free)

TMA E-Marketing- This week we were approved by the SEO Consultants Directory which only showcases 114 SEO firms (as of this writing) from around the world.  Each SEO firm is reviewed by a peer group from which only 30% of the submissions are actually approved.  In any regards, we are happy to be part of a great SEO resource.

That’s it for now!

If you didn’t recently hear, there was a RageRank update a couple of days ago. As webmaster’s across the country take notice, many either panic or sit back and relax. This raises a fundamental question to many newcomers of SEO: “Does PageRank really matter?”

Although I’m not the first to tackle this issue, i have always found humor in this subject because many die-hard SEO experts say that PageRank doesn’t matter, but secretly are happy to see if their little green bar goes up or down a notch. This was evidently clear when the last major PR update caused the blogosphere to light up like a Christmas tree of bloggers complaining about losing pagerank in dismay. But frankly, I like the the little green bar because of its ability to quickly delineate a websites link popularity. Sure, it may not be exact, but what other tool do you know of that gives you immediate feedback about a sites link authority just by logging onto a site?

For me, seeing PageRank may not tell the whole story, but it certainly gives me how much work needs to be done at a quick glance. The argument about regarding PageRank is that its not a true measure of a sites linking popularity. This i believe to be true in that it doesn’t give you the best understanding of all the sites that may be linking to a website. In addition, if the website is fairly new or was recently redone, PageRank either will not show up for the whole site or may be missing for some pages. If you are unsure of a websites link popularity, i recommend using the following free tools:

1. Google’s Webmaster Tools
2. Yahoo! Site Explorer
3. Market Leap

Regardless, as a good rule of thumb, the higher the PageRank, the easier it is to rank a site. However, its improtant to note that this is not the single or most important attribute when it comes to search engine optimization and achiveing high SERPS, but it certainly helps. If a SEO expert tries to tell you it doesnt matter, he likely has a rationale of its underabilty to truely describe a sites linking archedteure. But don’t be fooled, although its a simple 1 - 10 ruler, it’s still a good measure of how Google values the overall importance of a websites linking partners. Futhermore, if i could push a button to increase your websites PageRank a couple of notches, i would be hard pressed to find a SEO that wouldn’t want a little extra link juice:)

If you’re a search engine marketer, you’ll be glad to hear that Google recently updated its keyword tool to include traffic estimates. Although this may not appear ground breaking at first, estimating actual search engine traffic has been rather difficult since the disappearance of Yahoo’s overture keyword tool after their panama update.

Up until now, only semi-reliable tools have existed such as the ones offered by KeywordDiscovery, WordTracker, and Spyfu. With Google, search estimates are provided by keyword in a previous month format as well as average monthly search volume:

Implications

One video i caught on Robin Good’s site discussed that by using AOL’s organic search engine ranking data, search engine marketers can see exactly the kind of traffic they can receive by achieving a #1, #2, Etc position in Google. As the vlogger discussed, this will play an essential role in planning search engine optimization campaigns.

In addition to the above, I find that the above tool will provide useful for preemptive ROI analysis for paid search engine programs. As prospective clients will continually demand more analysis on how their hard earned dollars will be spent, this above tool can easily be used to estimate search volume and the associated PPC click costs to determine the “investment” portion of the equation. When combined with a predicted response and close rate, an initial ROI baseline can be determined.

As these are likely only a few new implications, I think its safe to say that this tool will become an essential component to any search engine marketer’s toolbox.

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.