Savvy Marketers Are Increasing SEO in Their 2008
Marketing Plans

By Hillary Bressler, CEO

Are you involved in preparing a marketing plan for 2008? You'll probably notice a major shift this year as more companies continue to move their dollars out of traditional media and into search engine marketing.

A recent study by Radar Research states that 75 percent of advertisers use tactics for improving a site's organic search engine optimization (SEO) results, making it the most popular form of search engine marketing (SEM). Paid search came in second, with 71 percent of advertisers using this channel. Paid search comprised about 86 percent of total ad spending, while organic search accounted for a mere 12 percent of ad spending in 2006.

As you can see, more dollars are spent on paid search, but organic search is more popular with less dollars being dedicated to it.

What is SEO?
Search engine optimization is the process involved with appearing among the top results of a search engine such as Yahoo! or Google. The higher a website ranks in the search results, the greater the chance that the site will be visited. SEO is not to be confused with paid search, or pay-per-click (PPC), where an advertiser pays when their listing in the "Sponsored Links" section of a search engine page is clicked.

What are your SEO options?
If you or your clients are considering SEO as part of your marketing arsenal, you'll find a dizzying array of options from vendors: phone consultations; website audits; on-going SEO consultation; and SEO consulting with implementation. You'll likely also consider undertaking SEO in-house versus outsourced professional services.

Why hire a SEO consulting firm?
Dollar-for-dollar, search engine optimization offers the most cost-efficient website traffic-building tactic and can also deliver significant competitive advantages.

Search engine-friendly website design
Many companies that come to .Com Marketing for our SEO expertise proudly tell us they just launched a new website and the web designer told them it is search engine-friendly. All too often we are the bearers of bad news, as their site has major issues that require changes to become a SEO-friendly site. While traditional ad and web agencies are capable of designing great-looking sites, few of them are designed to be search engine-friendly. The best solutions are either to find an agency that has both SEO and web design expertise under one roof, or to involve your SEO consulting partner early in the website design and programming process.

Undertaking website audits
One of the first tactics a reputable SEO firm will implement is a website audit, allowing them to make specific recommendations to improve its search engine-friendliness. While some audits concentrate only from an SEO perspective, it's also common to see better consultants audit site usability, navigation and, especially for e-commerce sites, conversion issues.

Setting expectations
Getting the most out of search engines as part of a marketing campaign is an on-going process, not a one-shot deal. Professional SEO consulting includes strategic direction, client education and implementation of recommendations. This last point is critical—my SEO account team prefers to make the necessary changes to our clients' sites themselves, since failing to implement in a timely manner can undermine the campaign results and ultimately waste the investment in SEO.