Hard driving
- Article 19 of 26
- M-iD, June 2005
It is easy to build a web site, yet difficult to attract and keep an audience for it. But there are strategies organisations can follow to overcome this challenge.
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Many organisations steer clear of this kind of advertising, because they are unsure of it or because they prefer to rely on “search engine optimisation” - that is, trying to get their web site to appear naturally at the top of search results for particular keywords.
This is a highly specialised art, since Google, Yahoo and other search engines all have different ways of rating sites that they constantly change, making it difficult to optimise a site for all search engines.
Usually, optimisation requires frequent content updates; incoming links that use appropriate text and that have been around for a long time, from highly rated sites; and appropriate content, page “metatags” and site title.
For ecommerce sites, it can be even harder to get a “natural” listing without taking extra steps. “If your site is information heavy and text heavy, don't run it as a dot-com,” advises Daniel Mohacek, a sales director at new media marketing agency, The Search Works. “Run it as .co.uk and ensure it runs off UK servers with UK IP addresses.”
The reason? As a dot-com, it risks being swamped among the plethora of US web sites and not seen by the UK consumers that it is aimed at.
Paying for ad words is likely to generate far more results than search engine optimisation. “You can get professional link builders,” says Mohacek, “but it's a lot easier to just buy ad words at four pence per click, than to get someone to scour around at £20 per hour, for hours and hours, trying to build up links. Paid search marketing campaigns are very cheap: the margin on search marketing can be so huge, you can get away with spending a few thousand pounds to try.”
Sponsored links also helps organisations to cope with the changes in search engine ranking techniques that can cause their placing to drop unexpectedly. With 90% of users not bothering to check the second page of any search and many not looking beyond the first five or six results, slight tweaks to search ranking algorithms can cause massive traffic fluctuations. Sponsored links, however, always remain where they are.
Spelling test
Trying to work out which words to sponsor is the most difficult part of this model. Search engine companies will provide details of how many people have been trying particular search terms, which can help, and web analytics can determine which search terms were used by visitors to the site.
“You should stick with generic terms for ad words,” says Mohacek. “Companies can be jargonistic: car companies might be tempted to use specific phrases like 'Jaguar XJ6', but what people actually search for are terms like 'hatchback' and 'small car'.” By using visitor tracking software, organisations can see which search terms led to visitors arriving on their site and even if they came back to make a purchase.
Sometimes the keywords to pick may not be the ones expected. For example, the word “loan” is frequently mis-spelled - 400 people a day type “car lone” into search engines instead. Bidding for placement on spelling mistakes is normally cheaper than bidding for correctly spelled searches, but can sometimes generate just as much traffic.
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