B2B Web Strategy Blog – eMagine

Search engine marketing: Don’t expect to be #1 by Monday!

August 7th, 2008 Posted by: Bill Gadless

We sometimes get a call from a frantic prospect who says something like “I absolutely have to rank Number 1 on ‘convertible frammis’ by Monday.”  Never mind that it’s Thursday afternoon, and that he means through organic search only …no PPC allowed.

We can only speculate as to what motivates a normally sane marketer to take on such a fool’s errand, though naturally a fit of sudden top-management interest/pressure springs to mind (think Dilbert).  Of course, we always do our best to help such people… although they rarely end up becoming clients, because their circumstances generally keep them from even hearing our message that they’re probably 6 months or more away from seeing serious return on their search engine marketing (SEM) investment.

Patience… that rarest of virtues
We were reminded of this sad scenario recently when we came across Erik Dafforn’s piece for ClickZ, “SEM’s Elusive Long View.”  As Erik puts it, “The characteristic most lacking in search engine optimization / SEM clients isn’t an understanding of analytics or page coding or application development.  It’s patience.”

Why is patience so important in conducting SEM?  Because…

• doing SEM properly (i.e., for the long haul) requires doing things that take time to do, and still more time to bear fruit once they’re done;  and
• the things you might do in pursuit of short-term results can have very damaging repercussions that stay with your site for a long time.

Let’s look at each of these approaches:  the short- and long-term.  If you’re only going for the quick fix, you might be tempted to try some of these shortcuts:

• loading up your pages with keywords to the point that they’re barely intelligible, or at best simply boring, to the human visitors you’re trying to attract;
• going to a “link farm” to obtain a large number of inbound links …never mind their marginal relevance to your business;
• using a text generator that purports to be one step ahead of a search algorithm’s nonsense detector.

The problem with such tactics is twofold:  one, you risk turning off the prospects who do respond to your (artificially) high ranking;  and two, the engines sooner or later will deduce your methods and identify your site as the Web equivalent of a spammer.  And once they do, it will take time to lose that stigma, even after you reform your practices.

Investing for the future
And the right way for the long haul?  Well, we’ve written quite a bit about this in the past (see our White Paper, “Best Practice Methods for Driving Qualified Web Traffic”), but it really boils down to…

• discovering and using the keywords that prospects use in looking for products/services like yours;
• posting content that’s relevant, kept fresh, written for the reader (vs. the engines), and that demonstrates thought leadership;
• getting business-relevant inbound links – e.g., from directories and partners.

As Erik concludes, “Taking the ‘long view’ of SEM might seem like a luxury, but it’s not.  It’s absolutely essential for anyone who wants a solid future.  It’s the single best investment in time and resources that you can make.”

What to do while waiting for your SEO results to kick in?  We suggest buying the traffic, via Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) …at least some of your competitors probably are.  Your Web marketing consultants can help you sift through the options and realize the maximum return from your SEM investment.

Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy,Driving Traffic,PPC,Search Engine Marketing