search engine marketing
As part of your overall internet marketing strategy, it’s important to dedicate resources to search engine marketing. This component of your marketing mix has become increasingly critical due to the importance search engines and directories play in how prospects access information. Search engines have the advantage of generating highly qualified traffic due to the self-selection process initiated by the searcher when choosing their search query.
Research shows that there are more than 800 million people in the world who are in the habit of accessing the Internet. 86% of them tend to locate information through search engines. Furthermore, research shows that most people will only look at 2-3 pages of search results, so your ranking among results is becoming more and more important.
When developing your search engine strategy, you need to understand how search engines work, how they differ from directories, and how to maximize their effectiveness to ensure your business gets as much exposure as your budget allows.
Search engines populate their databases for search results through robotic software programs that crawl the web for content to index. This crawling requires the software to find text-based, machine-readable content in order to index and categorize a site. The content accessed comes from the meta tags (title, description, keywords, alternate image tags), file names, and content on the pages of your site. Spiders tend to search the root directory, first level files, and will occasionally crawl your site to second level content. To determine the meta tags for a site, right-click and select View Source.
If your site hasn’t been developed with search engines in mind, you might have a hard time getting your content indexed properly. Search engines also determine the relative rankings of results based on certain algorithms that include factors like link popularity, site traffic, site content, etc.
When search engines first evolved, they were based on a “free” business model, where conceptually all sites had an equal chance of being indexed and displayed in search results if their developers optimized them with a few basic steps. While the basic steps are still an important part of your search engine marketing strategy, they are no longer enough. This is due to the fact that many search engines (and point pumps) discovered that it is not just about catching glances, but also about making money. This has led search engines to modify their business models to capitalize on all possible revenue streams generated by their traffic and/or technology. The traffic was seen as a logical source of ad revenue and the technology was seen as transferable for use on other sites that required robust search engines.
To date, most search engines have not chosen to adopt a subscription-based model where search engines are charged for accessing information. These new business models require site developers to work even more closely with marketing strategists to ensure the most effective business decisions are made.