By now, the internet is filled with research that shows the importance of having your company’s website rank on the first page of the search results. When someone searches for something online, regardless if it’s on Google, Bing or Yahoo!, their query will be answered by a multitude of search engine results pages or SERPs.
Each of these pages contains a limited number of search results that are ranked based on a multitude of factors. Whether or not your website is on the first page is crucial for your company’s success. Here’s why search marketing is essential for your business.
What Is Search Marketing?
In short, search marketing is the process of promoting a website by increasing its visibility and rank in the SERPs through paid and organic advertising. While organic advertising is achieved mainly through search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertising is achieved through pay-per-click marketing campaigns.
So, is it important? Yes, it is. And here’s why: every day, hundreds of millions of people use search engines to find answers to their queries. Whether they’re looking for certain services or specific products, search engines will provide a tailored response based on the keywords used in the initial query.
In the vast majority of cases, people will settle for the results on the first page of search results. Study results indicate that 91% of people never reach the 2nd page of search results. It’s understandable why ranking on the first page is crucial if you want your business to succeed.
Search Engine Optimization
You want your business to rank on the most used search engines in your area. In most cases, those would be Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Each of these search engines uses its own crawler bots to review and index the content of your website.
For the purpose of this article, we’ll consider Google as your main focus. Google takes multiple aspects into consideration before ranking a website on its SERPs, such as text content, meta tags, internal and external links, mobile optimization, and more.
Enter search engine optimization. Relevant, high-quality content, matching keywords, well-written meta tags, valuable links (both internal and external) and active social media presence are all part of a good SEO campaign. Unfortunately, SEO isn’t easy and results take time to surface. When it comes to organic marketing, the results are slow and lasting.
Pay-Per-Click
Unlike SEO campaigns, a pay-per-click marketing campaign is all about fast results. You have full control over how much you spend and what you get in return. It’s as simple as choosing the keywords you want to pay for and letting Google know about it.
What happens is that every time a user searches for those particular keywords, your pages will show up at the top of the search results in the form of paid ads. For each user that clicks on one of your ads, money is deducted from your account and the user is sent to your website.
Naturally, some keywords or keywords strings are more expensive than others. There are multiple factors that come into play here, with niche and keyword authority being two of the most important. Similar to an SEO campaign, your PPC campaign will need continuous care in order to remain competitive.
