In the previous issue we explored Google’s popular Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Tool Adwords. In brief Adwords allows advertisers to secure a high listing on Google and charges them each time someone clicks on their listing. As an alternative to a PPC campaign, website owners can implement a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy to achieve a high listing in the organic section of the search page, that is that section of the page that is not paid advertising. Now whilst it doesn’t cost website owners each time someone clicks on an organic listing, significant costs can occur if you pay for experts or consultants to administer this campaign for you.
As you can see from the diagram below organic rankings appear on the left hand side of your search result, underneath the sponsored (paid) links. The aim of SEO is to make it easier for potential clients to find your website when searching and maximise the number of targeted visitors. A well optimised site is seen to be the most relevant to the keywords that users have searched by. Essentially, the better your site is optimised, the higher your organic ranking will be.
Ways to optimise your site include:
- Regularly review the content of your website to keep it fresh and up-to-date. The more relevant the content, the greater visibility your site will have.
- Create a blog that is regularly updated with topical articles. It is important to ensure that any content you publish includes the keywords you aim to be ranked for.
- Link building. Your ranking can be boosted if you have a healthy number of others websites linking to your site. Target sites that have a similar client base to yours – not necessarily the same product but the same type of customers – and offer a reciprocal arrangement where you place a link to their website on your site and they return the favour.
There is value in pursuing SEO in conjunction with, or instead of, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising for a number of reasons.
- As some potential customers place greater trust in organic results over paid results.
- While there are costs to update and maintain you site, SEO costs can be considerably less than the costs of PPC advertising.
- SEO boosts your sites overall relevancy and produces long-term results. The effects of PPC are immediate and if you stop, your visibility will almost instantly decrease.
- SEO can provide you with multiple listings for one search term, where PPC can usually only provides one listing for any one search term.
If you’d like to find out about how to introduce an SEO campaign to your website contact Deborah from Clarity Marketing on 0411 139 881 or email dcq@claritymarketing.com.au.
