Impact Media's SEO Blog

As Social Media continues to expand and lure in vast volumes of Internet traffic, where does its fustier, slower (methodical if you will) and more derided website marketing compadre, SEO, now fit in?

Search Engine Optimisation has been saddled with a reputation for being something of a shadowy practice; online alchemy, created to appease the search engine gods. The thing is though, it works. Better still, it continues to work to this day.

Social Media has emerged from the Friends Reunited Petri dish and exploded into a full-grown living organism, consuming everything in its path; or, at least, nearly everything. Facebook has experienced the most meteoric of rises, propelled by the slipstream of fading stars like MySpace, it has slipped seamlessly into the top 3 sites in the world (2nd by some metrics, 3rd in others) and gained itself over 350 million users.

Thanks to Facebook, along with Twitter, YouTube and a whole multitude of bookmarking cohorts, Social Media has got the world communicating in real-time. This free network of conversations has engulfed the Internet and opened the door of opportunity to marketers. Inevitably, when something huge comes to dominate an entity as the Internet, something has to make way; but is that thing SEO?
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With the dawning of a new year, we have the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start over again with renewed vigour. Search engine algorithms have undergone a significant makeover in the past 12 months, perhaps it’s time your website does the same.

Websites aren’t a static marketing tool. They can’t be left to stagnate and simply tick over. So don’t let lethargy undermine your efforts so far; if your site is to succeed in 2010 than you need to be prepared to take the fight to your competitors, which means investing time and effort into each of your pages.

The Internet is a constantly expanding organism that mutates at a similarly speedy rate. The techniques and principles that worked just a few years ago will be almost redundant today. So if your website is suffering in the search engine rankings or isn’t getting the levels of targeted traffic you were hoping for, perhaps it’s time to take a fresh look at it.
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Christmas is the time of year where retailers, etailers and marketers go into overdrive. A surplus of consumers means that opportunities for good sales figures are abound.

But it would be churlish to suggest that preparations start as we peel back the first door in our advent calendars; in truth, it goes back to the time where summer is turning to autumn, when ice, snow and Christmas Eve panic buys are the furthest things from most people’s minds. Or at least it should.

Despite still being in the grips of a recession, UK consumers aren’t shy when it comes to parting with their cash at Christmas time; as evidenced by this year’s typically frenzied rush for gifts. More and more consumers are turning to the Internet too when buying goods; with recent reports showing that online shopping in November increased by 11% compared with the same period in 2008 and 25% more than the preceding month of October. So the need for ecommerce websites to be fully optimised as the rush begins has never been more evident.
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And so we enter the difficult second post. My defence of SEO so far has centred on its ability to get content noticed, rather than relying on divinity or good fortune. With this post, I want to tackle the accusation that it is to blame for clogging the Internet with spam.

If you haven’t read the original article, Is SEO Essential or an Outmoded Scam Touted by Charlatans? Part I, then first and foremost I recommend it, and secondly you may be completely oblivious as to what the purpose of this follow up is. Essentially SEO comes in for a lot of criticism, often from those in and around the website development sphere; this post comes in response to a particularly stinging criticism from Derek Powazek – a noted designer.
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Despite going to great lengths to critique the Internet throughout my Friday post, aptly entitled ‘Is the Internet too noisy?’ I acknowledge my own part in the dispersal of noise, as well as the benefits it can bring. However, elsewhere the baton appears to have been taken on even further; a little too far in fact, which explains this impromptu follow up.

Management Today published an editorial piece this morning on why ‘the Internet ain’t all that great’. The more than slightly wry comparison of the Internet and the traditional media that it is slowly replacing, takes a far more acerbic and negative approach to the online world.  It should be said that this isn’t a lone voice, it’s an argument that crops up time and time again; however, it’s one that ought to be tackled.

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The Internet has completely changed the way that customers look for and get what they want. It has also changed where they search for and where they buy goods and services. Consequently, those businesses that wish to remain profitable are changing their marketing methods to respond to this transformation in their customer’s buying habits.

Traditional forms of marketing such as newspaper and television advertising, direct mail and cold calling simply do not integrate well with the powerful medium of the Internet and have become less and less effective as a result.

One of the most beneficial ways that the Internet has changed marketing is the dramatic reduction in cost. With direct mail for instance, someone has to be paid to produce the materials that are sent out. This involves designing, writing, editing and printing costs. It’s an expensive way of connecting with a limited number of potential customers and its difficult to measure the success of direct mail. In comparison, email marketing can be performed by anyone with rudimentary marketing skills and a computer.

In the past, a company in Southampton could not easily market their products/services to potential customers in Australia without great cost. Yet the Internet has no geographic boundaries and whatever marketing is prepared for Hampshire can easily be tailored for Queensland. Internet marketers can target customers anywhere in the world and anyone with a computer can respond to their advertising/marketing and purchase goods or services with the click of a button.

With the vast increase in popularity of the Internet, the speed of marketing has changed. Customers can be immediately responding to advertisements that were posted only seconds ago. These adverts can be changed with equal speed to respond to need.

The Internet is driven by information or content. The more high quality content you can provide a potential customer with, the greater your credibility and the increased chances that they will spend their money with you. Both building and web-based businesses need to address this issue and provide potential clients with the information they need to make the decision to buy from you. Again, the production of content is time consuming but not a costly activity, allowing companies of different scales to compete with each other.

Through social marketing, word of mouth or buzz is instantly created around products and brands. Again, social marketing is a low-cost/high benefit method of marketing online. Traditional marketing cannot possibly compete with the efficacy of Internet marketing for speed, accuracy of qualified leads and low costs.

Traditional marketing has been badly affected by the change to Internet Marketing. One only has to see how the commercial television stations have incurred massive debts associated with rapidly decreasing advertising revenue.

In the past 12 months, the traditional marketing department has all but died. Any company that wants to succeed in the new Internet-changed marketplace must create an integrated approach, a strategy for marketing that fuses together limited traditional methods with the multi-faceted approaches of Internet marketing.

In the past, Internet marketing has been ignored, labeled a ‘fad’, a phase that will eventually pass. Those businesses that do not want to disappear in the global recession can’t afford to share this outdated viewpoint.

One of the benefits of online marketing when compared to offline alternatives is the huge reduction in costs. There are many financial benefits to Internet marketing, here are just a few explained:

Cheap but Effective
Kicking off, one of the major benefits of marketing online is that it is very cost effective. In fact it’s not only much cheaper than traditional advertising, but it’s also many times more efficient because it only targets the people that you want to target, rather than blanketing whole groups of people by location or broadcasting region.

With online marketing, you only pay for what you use. Take a look at Pay Per Click or PPC, you only pay for when interested people from your target market click on your ads, that saves money, time, and only attracts the already interested to your website. With lower costs and more precise targeting, online marketing seems like a no-brainer!

Cutting Expenditure
One of the top financial benefits of online marketing is that you can reduce your annual expenditure by making most of the process from advertising through to purchase automated. You will need someone to direct your online marketing, but you can reduce your sales and marketing salary costs.

If most of your sales process now takes place online, you can move to smaller premises, because you won’t need the physical space and that means a reduction in rent, utilities and insurance. What’s more if you use a catalogue for your products, you can avoid costly printing and distribution costs.

Global Marketing Power
Online marketing means that you can sell to anyone at any time. You don’t need a physical store because you have an online store that is open 24/7. This means you can sell your products to anyone, anywhere around the clock. You’re no longer restricted by time and location considerations. Your revenue potential just increased while your costs have diminished!

Staying Power
When you use article marketing as a tool, you may pay once for someone to write that article, but it will stay on the Internet for many years to come. Where else can you place a marketing proposition and have it stay around pointing at your products and services indefinitely for no added cost?

Emails Cost Nothing
Compared to direct marketing or telemarketing, email marketing costs relatively nothing, yet you get to deliver your proposition directly to your target market. You can send thousands of targeted messages directly into the homes and offices of your potential or existing customers with immediate responses.

Measure your Return on Investment
Unlike traditional methods of advertising, you can immediately measure you ROI with online marketing. This is particularly the case with PPC advertising where analytical tools help you to track sales from specific ads through to conversion. This helps you to reduce costs even further by discontinuing ads that aren’t working. With a television advert or billboard, it would be impossible to test the success as accurately.

Online marketing has revolutionised marketing, advertising and sales, it offers great financial benefits and if you’re not using it to its full potential then you’re wasting a great opportunity!

The importance of Local Search, the industry term for Local Search Engine Marketing, is rising.  Over the past few years, Local Search has gained in sophistication and taken an increasingly significant role in Internet Marketing. Local Search is yet another vital revolution in the way that we search for, buy and sell products and services on the Internet.

Since the Internet first became a major marketplace, online retailers have competed for the attention of the world’s consumers.  This has been great for global business; it means that a small business in Southampton, England can compete with key retailers and sell its products to customers anywhere in the World.  But it also means that any trader with access to the World Wide Web can sell to Southampton too!  Online retailers who want to attract local customers to them need to work to compete on a local level.

In order to increase the profile of local businesses to local customers, Local Search was created.  In 2006, over 20% of all searches made on the Internet were intended to find something local.   The big Search Engine companies like Google and MSN are all spending huge sums of money developing their own search technologies and experts reveal that Local Search is the biggest area of research and development that’s likely to start affecting the way we all buy and sell our products and services from now on.

In order to benefit most from local searches, your company should dominate all local keyword searches. Local Search isn’t going away, it’s only going to develop and grow as a direct, cost-effective method of online marketing.  It’s important to know that any online business wishing to compete locally will need to carefully construct a local search engine marketing plan.

So what are the benefits for online retailers of using Local Search Engine Marketing to reach their target customers?

• Local Search is a cost effective way of marketing.  You only pay to market to customers who are searching within your specified geographical area.
• Local Search Engine Marketing is like placing a giant advert for your product or service in front of qualified traffic. Your ads are positioned to appear to people that are already looking for what you offer within your designated area.
• Unlike the potential expense of dominating keyword searches on a national or international level, Local Search Engine Marketing allows you to completely dominate keyword searches in your area and save money by specifying local searches.
• See increased sales as customers search for you; get a superior ROI for your marketing costs.
• Customers use the Internet to compare potential retailers but are more likely to trust local retailers over those located further away.
• Local Search increases offline traffic such as footfall and telephone enquiries for those businesses with a physical storefront.

Whereas Local Search Engine Marketing was once an optional extra, for businesses retailing on the Internet, it’s now a real necessity! We offer a complete Local Search Engine Marketing Service for any UK business looking to increase visits from searchers in their geographical area.