I attended a search engine marketing seminar last week and wanted to share some of the information that was talked about and some of the VERY interesting statistics provided.
SEM – Search Engine Marketing, stands for all of the techniques and strategies involved in marketing your website on search engines (google, msn, yahoo, etc.). When you do a search you will see two lists of results, one typically on the left hand site, called the organic results. These are non-paid positions, these are the pages that Google thinks you are looking for. The other set of results, usually on the right as well as sometimes at the very top are the paid or sponsored results, these are ads who have said to Google, “Google when someone searches for XYZ I want my ad for XYZ to appear.”
Search engine optimization is the practice of coming up in the first set of listings (the organic listings). Pay Per Click marketing (PPC) is the practice of placing, and paying for the ads on the right side, or sponsored links section.
Pay Per Click Marketing - As the name implies, pay per click ads only cost money when they are actually clicked on. IE, you are only charged when quality, targeted traffic is sent to your website. This is unlike a magazine, or website banner ad, where typically you will pay for general placement and/or the number of times it is shown.
Interesting Statistics:
70% of users click on organic listings
30% of users click on paid listings, but these are much more well informed consumers who are ready to purchase or buy
5.6 Billion searches are currently done each month
95% of searches are done for local products, services, resources
Only 5% of all advertising online is spent on locally targeted advertising
54% of consumers have completely switched from the yellow pages as their primary resource for finding stuff (businesses, services, etc.) to online
Results from PPC are typically experienced from a campaign that has been firing on all cylinders for 3 – 6 months.
Wow! Those are some amazing statistics. Unfortunately the sources were not mentioned, but if they are true they shed some tremendous light on the industry and where it is headed. First of all it is very encouraging to hear that the 30% of people who use the sponsored links are looking to purchase. I don’t feel so bad about trying to break some 25% click-through-rate (CTR) barriers. This stat, if accurate, can be used by search engine marketeres as the true barrier of PPC CTRs.
And 95% of searches are done for local goods and services, but only 5% of advertising online is spent on this market. As heavily involved in both these realms, pay per click marketing and local business, this was a no-brainer, but this statistic really drives the point home. It feels that the online market, especially for local business is here for the taking, and with only 5% targeting this audience (and most NOT doing such a great job), competition is low and so are prices.
So in conclusion, whether you use a professional or do-it-yourself, if you are a small business, your audience is online (more than half have completely turned away from the yellow pages), and you should be using search engine marketing (PPC, SEO) to get to that audience.
21 Jul | Post by Zach Katkin. Filed under Internet Marketing.
At first, we weren’t much for power tools. In fact a few members of our staff were laughed at for not knowing what “Makita” was (it is a brand of tool), but after seeing a catalog with some interesting mascots, our interests were piqued and we got to work. Over the last few months we’ve learned a lot about power tools, about the industry, and look forward to continually marketing wholesalepowertools.com in an effort to make it the #1 online distributor of great price powertools.
I was laying in bed last night thinking about Kevin Costner - as I do most Wednesday evenings. I had just finished watching The Guardian, a terrific tale of heroism, bravery, and overcoming ones past. I decided to get up to get a glass of water, when in my sleepless state I wandered onto 