Navigating through the many web sites and companies providing search engine and Internet marketing services can be challenging at best. As such, we've tried to clarify what your options are and compare each of them.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - much of what Idea-ware Digital provides, can be extremely effective if done properly. As an in-house solution, it can be complicated, time-consuming, and expensive. As a do-it-yourself project, it can also fall short of what one would hope to achieve. SEO involves building content-rich websites and web pages that are optimized for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Effective SEO involves generating a lot of quality, comprehensive content that serves its users rather than just the search engines themselves. Ineffective SEO can cause more harm than good: spamming, cloaking, and other items discussed in our what to look out for section can cause dropping from the search engines, and sometimes, banning from them entirely. As such, it is vitally important to utilize 'non-spammy' techniques; to create genuine, quality content that makes both your visitors and the search engines happy.
When done properly, SEO can be extraordinarily effective. It can produce results that cost much less than pay-per-click (PPC) advertising - in fact, in Idea-ware Digital's case, the results often average between 500% and 4,000% less expensive than PPC.
SEO can also produce long-lasting, permanent results. Since the process of smart, thorough SEO involves developing quality content, the search engines recognize that it is just that; and if the pages are optimized properly, each and every one can remain well-positioned in the search engines for months or even years to come.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - a process we can augment our efforts with for clients, PPC has become much more popular in recent years with the implementation of Google's AdWorks program and the services provided by Overture. PPC is a means of bidding on top positions for search engine placement, and it is a fast and potentially effective method for getting visitors to your website(s). It is also expensive, sometimes very expensive. As mentioned previously, our SEO efforts compare very favorable to PPC and are usually 500% to 4,000% less expensive.
While PPC can be implemented in as little as 5 minutes (with Google), it has another significant drawback: it is not building assets that will last for days, weeks, months, and years to come. In fact, the moment you stop your PPC campaign, your entire Internet presence disappears.
Inexpensive, 'submit to a million search engines' services - essentially to be avoided at all costs, these services, ranging in price from $29.95 to approximately $299.95, sometimes one-time, other times monthly, simply do not work. In fact, we have tested these services over the years, and the most effective of them generated exactly 200 visits to a client's website -- over the course of an entire year. The reality is that these services rely on a cookie-cutter approach that is fundamentally flawed, primarily because fewer than 15 search engines are actually worth targeting, while the other 995,985 are for the most part worthless, untargeted and irrelevant.
In addition, many of these services bundle features like 'guaranteed inclusion' and the like. Well the reality is, the search engines themselves offer 'guaranteed inclusion' for a lot less. And another important point is that guaranteed inclusion means just that: you are guaranteed to be included in their directory. But whether you are included at position number three or position number 3,000,000 is another story. Inclusion is only inclusion. Spend your money elsewhere. |
