International Search Engine Marketing Blog

Search engine optimization and search engine marketing are not the same. Rather SEO is a one part of SEM. SEO focuses on top search rankings, which are certainly important in any internet marketing campaign whether local or international. However, SEM takes search engine optimization to the next level. Instead of focusing entirely on high search positions, a SEM campaign encourages individuals who click on a website’s link to then contact the website’s owner or purchase a product or service from the site.

Many website’s have top positions in the search engines, but still fail to achieve any meaningful return on the investment spent in obtaining these top rankings. The same companies or individuals who own these websites oftentimes hired a search engine optimization firm in order to achieve these results. Even after spending all that money, little or no return on investment is seen. 

Not surprisingly these marketers will call the SEO firm they hired and unfortunately a common response is, “We did our job. Take a look at the rankings, the rest is up to you” or “We have another package you may want to consider purchasing…” I cannot count the number of times a prospect has told me such a story or one analogous to this.

What is a webmaster or marketer to do? Fix it. It does not matter the size of your campaign or if your target demographic is local, national, or even international. The positive news is that anyone who already has top search rankings is one step closer to owning a profitable website. I suggest taking the next step and follow through on the efforts of the previous SEO company. Devote resources to take your site to the next level and start monetizing the traffic obtained from the high search position. This could include doing the work on your own or hiring a company such as the one I own to help with your efforts. Either way additional time is needed to make the site profitable. 

For those who have yet to hire a marketer or SEO company then my best advice is to learn from others who did and remember there is much more to internet advertising than a top listing in Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Search engine marketing takes into account these other considerations. 

Typically a search engine marketing campaign includes SEO. However, that is all that is in common. There is a reason most people visits the first page of a website then hit the back button on their browser. There are thousands of items to keep in mind regarding the design and content of a website, all of which influence whether a visitor will stay on the site or click away. One of the more common reasons visitors leave a website is that it lacks something to grabs the visitors’ attentions and there are no calls to action of any type. Another typical reason is that a page does not meet the visitors’ expectations.

Fortunately, marketers and webmasters do not have to guess. Installing a comprehensive analytics program is oftentimes a smart starting point. This way visitor browsing habits are tracked and marketers can modify a site based on data rather than assumptions. What one should modify based upon this data requires a whole new blog posting. One of the key takeaways from this post is to remember that while SEO is important, it is only part of a well thought out search engine marketing campaign.

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