The best time to get a message about your product or brand in front of your customers is when the subject is on their mind. A customer entering a related keyword into a search engine is definitely one of those times. By tying to those key words, search engine marketing – using search engine optimization, search engine advertising or both – is a powerful way to get customers to consider your product right when they're thinking about purchasing it. This provides high quality conversions as users click through to your brand website.
The goal of search engine marketing is a combination of unpaid (or natural) results through search engine optimization and paid results through search engine advertising.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Delivers Unpaid Results
When a user enters keywords into Google, Yahoo or other search engine, the search engine returns a list of search results. This list of Web pages, often called natural or unpaid results, can be many pages long. By making it easier for search engines to index and list individual pages, search engine optimization (SEO) can move your Web page closer to the top of a search results list. Optimizing your Web pages to get your brand ranked on the first page gives you a big advantage, considering users rarely browse deeper than a page or two. Techniques for improving a page's rankings – or "optimizing" it include increasing keyword density, establishing relevant in-bound and outbound links and coding HTML that search engines can easily read.
Search Engine Advertising (SEA) Controls Your Message
In addition to their unpaid, natural results, most search engines also provide an opportunity for search engine advertising (SEA). Also known as "paid search," SEA lets you use text ads to promote your product. These text ads typically appear under the heading "Sponsored Links" on search engine return pages. SEA is an immediate way to drive your customer to your Website for more information. It gives you more control when you want to engage customers in a promotion, to make a sale or to capture data such as contact information for future one-to-one marketing. One advantage of SEA over other kinds of advertising is that since you usually pay on a cost-per-click basis it virtually eliminates wasted impressions. You are charged for the placement of your SEA text ad on a particular search results page only when a customer clicks on it.
Combine SEO and SEA for Maximum Impact
Combining SEO and SEA makes sure your brand is always in front of consumers. A search engine marketing strategy where SEA and SEO work together can reflect your consumer's buying cycle and may target different consumers Combining SEO and SEA lets you to test the effectiveness of various promotions and verify which offer the return on investment.
MS3 Provides Expert Assistance
Best practices in both SEA and SEO are constantly evolving. Search engines create new algorithms for determining a page's relevance, for example. The hot-button keywords customers prefer are in constant flux. That's why MS3' search engine marketing experts constantly update their training in both search engine optimization and search engine advertising by staying current in the most recent search trends.
Let us draw on our expertise to help you use search engine marketing to target your most profitable customers right when they are most interested in your product.
