Search dominates the Internet when consumers are looking for products and services. Google’s market share in the U.S. is 67%, and their market share dominates throughout most of the developed world, no search engine is more important. To generate traffic from Google, or any of its competitors, you have two options:
Search engine optimisation (SEO), which allows you to boost natural rankings in search engines to generate free clicks. Pay-per-click marketing (PPC), which allows you to purchase your way the top of the page.
SEO and PPC go hand in hand. When you get them right you will manage to be more profitable and have more sustainable growth over long term.
To achieve the above you will need to continuously improve how you attract qualified visitors to your site, convert them into customers, and retain them as loyal customers over time.
If you do these two things better than your competitors, you will have a steady growth strategy and will be a leader in your product niche.
Even after you get the SEO and PPC right, you will be bombarded with calls and emails that tell you how you can get qualified traffic from Search Engines, Social media, Radio Ads, Print Ads, and database lists.
There are many channels and strategies/tactics you can choose from. As a small or medium business owner your time is limited and at precious. If you spread yourself all over the place your marketing efforts will slow down and you will not get a great ROI. The smart thing to do is to focus on the most lucrative marketing channel.
Research shows that for small and medium businesses the most profitable channel is search engines especially Google as it has the major market share amongst Search Engines.
So your marketing efforts should be – maximum on Search engine optimisation (SEO) and PPC (pay-per-click traffic)
Pay-per-click results will have premium real estate on the page. Organic listings appear farther down the page, but they are still the most important because more people click on organic listings than paid listings.
SEO is slow and steady. You will have to plan long term for this by providing original useful content for your website visitor.
Both have their pros and cons. You can find out your ROI for both of them by:-
Calculating your CPA = total marketing cost/ number of conversions.
Once you know which one is more profitable for your business you can adjust the marketing spend to get bang for your buck.
For SEO a focused onsite optimisation will be helpful in getting a better rank in Google. Use Google Analytics to find out the keywords that are repeatedly coming up in your reports. Connect some of those keywords to your conversions and the most profitable products.
Once you have a list of keywords separate the categories as per your product range. You may end up with 4-5 very profitable category or sub categories. Use words in those sub category pages and product pages relevant and useful information that the visitor will benefit from.
Rather than using keywords and variations when you focus on related concepts and give useful information, Google will rank you better for those keywords and you will provide a good user experience to your website visitor. Both of which should give you better conversions.
As SEO is long term, once you break even after your costs you will reap the benefits from the campaign for months and years to come.
Recap
If you create and tweak your SEO and PPC campaigns better than your competitors, you will have a steady growth and will be a leader in your product niche. As a small or medium business focus on Search more than anything else as the ROI is highest.