SEM: SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING IN 2010

I know this is a bit over the top and alarmist, but it’s also just common sense.

If your competitors are in the dominant positions online, and you are no where to be found or are found rarely, then your competitors win.

Why?

Because your future customers are online. (Nearly 80% of Americans are online searching for information, products and services.)

It just that simple.

How many customers are they stealing?

Are they stealing 1…, 2…, 5…, 10…, 20…, or 100 customers per day?

And how much is that costing your business every day, every week, every month, and every year?

Wouldn’t you like to know the answers to these questions before deciding how much to invest in your online marketing?

Even if the lifetime value of a customer is only $100…

and you only miss two sales per day…

that is over $50,000 per year in lost potential income.

In order to take back those future customers, a small business owner needs to think like a General.

The first page of Google search results is quickly becoming the most important business battlefield for most small businesses.

Nearly 70 in 100 people on the internet now use Google to navigate and search the web.

And Google continues to take market share away from traditional offline advertisers like yellow pages, newspapers, magazines, even radio and television.

If your message cannot be found using Google, you are relegated to, at best, a minority share of your market.

And how about page two or page three of the Google SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages)?

It’s estimated that less than 5% of searchers will make it past the first page of search results.

There are only 10 positions available in the natural search results of the first page of Google and the majority of traffic is generated from these natural search results on the left hand side.

Google as Main Street, Internet USA

The first page of Google is like a geo-political battlefield – a zero sum game – meaning for each position you control, you deny your competitor a position.

If you have one listing on page one then you have left room for nine of your competitors.

If you have five listings on page one then you have effectively “kicked-off” five competitors from the battlefield.

When we can take multiple positions on page one of Google we have effectively dominated the market as the biggest player.

If Google is the Main Street of the internet, then its like you have the ability to move your competitors business locations off of Main Street.

This should be the ultimate goal of your lead generation and online marketing strategies.

So now that we know what we’re fighting for, we can assess how much of a fight we can expect by gathering good intelligence.

If you knew your competitors were spending $3000 per month to be on page one of Google, month after month, would you say they’re getting a return on their investment?

It would seem so, or otherwise how else could they continue to spend so much month after month?

In addition to knowing how much your competitors spend, wouldn’t you also want to know which keywords (search phrases) they were targeting?

Using a mix of proprietary tools and knowledge of the market, this information is available.

Armed with this information we can effectively outline goals and objectives for dominating page one of Google.

1. Your primary objective is to generate new, highly targeted leads for your company.

2. You will accomplish this by dominating your online competition with multiple positions on Page One of Google (See Case Study).

3. You will begin your promotional efforts with lower competition niches in order to build a base of properties and authority to later attack high traffic, high competition niches.

Now we are in a position to employ action-driven tactics:

Tactics: Seven Step Online Marketing Strategy

You will use numerous and diverse methods to meet your objectives. It is precisely because your methods are diverse, that you will build long term natural search traffic. These are the steps.

1. Niche/Keyword Research

2. Competitive Market Research

3. Local Search Optimization

4. Paid Advertising on Google Adwords (PPC)

5. Tracking & Analysis

6. Diverse Link Building and Promotional Tactics

7. Monthly Reporting