Atilus Internet Marketing & Web Development

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.

Amidst internal office discussions, as we love to keep the watering hole occupied, Pay Per Click marketing became a topic of discussion- as it often does.

I had a thought, “The constant changing of the Google PPC algorithms has refined the process to a science. Does that mean individuals who participated in early stage PPC marketing, who failed to achieve the results promised at the time, would be discouraged in pursuing modern day strategic PPC campaigning?”

Many things have changed over the years, making PPC internet marketing subsequently far more precise, effective, and cost efficient. However, the unfortunate early pioneers who dared to dabble before its refinement period may have produced a permanent bad taste on their marketing pallets.

I am here to challenge those pioneers to smell a coffee bean and pop a Mentos because it simply doesn’t get any better than PPC! There may have been a time in which thousands of your dollars were dumped on text ads that were loosely and arbitrarily placed based on erratic, weak, simplistic, easily manipulated and ill thought out algorithms, but Google has since dumped millions of their own into creating arguably the greatest method for todays big and small businesses alike to capture the consuming audience in the emotional buying moment, as quickly as they ask for it by simply running a textual search query. And the arsenal of tools offered by Google and the like to maximize ROI are only growing and getting increasingly more effective.

So put that cigarette out, cap the whiskey, stop feeling sorry for the past, and put on that suit that you once wore to take on the business world at large and get back in the internet marketing game. The game just got fun again.

This ain’t yo Daddy’s PPC anymore, son!

10 Jul | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Internet Marketing, Pay Per Click.

I know internet marketing is still very mysterious, difficult to comprehend and often easy for marketers to hide behind fraudulent or misleading web analytic reports and false promises, which ultimately lead to zero delivery.

It sucks. I know. But I’m here to help…

Here is a list of the 5 questions you ABSOLUTELY should be asking your Pay Per Click marketer before signing into a business relationship:

Read the rest of this entry …

18 Jun | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under AdWords, Pay Per Click.