The answer, my friends, is simple. If you have a website, then you needsearch  engine optimization.

 But there is an epidemic facing online companies, and this is addiction to pay per click advertising. Let's face it, PPC advertising works, it's dead simple, and it is addictive. You find a keyword, write an ad and place a bid and almost immediately, you've got traffic! It's easy, go ahead, try another keyword...and another, and another...you get the picture. As we've discussed before, there has been a dramatic rise in PPC per click prices. But so many companies are spending tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on PPC. But despite their focus on being #1 for PPC results, companies are missing the opportunity to either reduce their marketing spend, enhance their brand positioning, or eliminate the competition by focusing on search engine optimization.

On a typical Google page, there are several spots fir natural and paid search placement. Typically, you will have 1-3 paid search listings on the top, 3 down the side, and 5-10 visible organic search listings per keyword search result. If you have a good PPC campain, you can take up 1 of the 6 paid spots. So, you will own 1 out of a possible 16 primary spots. So, that is pretty good, right? Sure.

 Now, let's do a little imagining, shall we? Think about your top traffic keywords. Let's say that one of them is "foosball". Great. So you have bid like crazy and you are #1 for "foosball" in the paid listings. But, if you are nowhere to be seen on the organic results, you have just given your competition an opportunity to take up to 11 spots on that page (10 natural search results and 1 paid). So how do you defeat these wily folks?  By optimizing pages for the word "foosball". So, www.yoursite.com is #1 in paid. And with a good optimization, you could have www.yoursite.com/foosball.htm and www.yoursite.com/best_foosball-tables.htm, and www.yoursite.com/foosball_blog.htm in the top 10 results, too. If that were the case, you would own 25% (4 out 16) of the available screen real estate for your most important keyword. That is the way to crowd out your competitors.

Further, your potential customer would see your brand name 4 times on one page. How do you think your brand impact will be affected? If you are the most frequent name on the most desired result page, don't you think that your most valuable clients will have an enhanced image of your brand? I think so!

Also, organic results typically drive more traffic than paid listings. So those 3 top 10 listings would probably out pace your PPC traffic by lets say 9 times, potentially. If you are a frugal marketer (and who isn't these days) do you think that you'd really need to pay to be #1 in paid listings when you could drive 9x the traffic for free? (Oh, and did I mention that organic traffic tends to convert to sales at a much higher rate?). I think the smart marketer will opt for the higher-quality, free traffic, don't you think?

 So the onlypeople who need search engine optimization are the people that need more traffic, more sales, a greater brand impact and lower costs. Does that describe your company? Call us. We can help.