Which three letters bring on sweaty palms and sleepless nights for business owners and web masters everywhere? IRS?  FBI? Good guesses, but the culprit is… SEO.

If you do it wrong or put it off, then your website will spend its days lost in the endless pages of search engine results, like a message in a bottle floating in a vast, dark ocean.

But what if you crack the code on the secret language of meta keywords, H1 tags, and inbound links? Will all the riches and glory of Page One Google Ranking await you?

Well, no.  As with most things, good SEO is less about uncovering “the secret”, and more about taking the time to understand and implement best practices… and then to keep applying them religiously over time.  (Sorry!)

This leads to the big question regarding your website’s search engine optimization… do it yourself or hire an SEO expert?

According to a recent Marketing Sherpa report, just over half of businesses manage their SEO in-house, while about 45% use an outside expert or are considering one… So whichever way you decide to go, you’ll have plenty of company!

Here are a few pointers to get your started down the path to SEO success.

If you’re going to do your own SEO…

• Learn the basics first. Invest in a couple good books on SEO.  There are lots, so find one that lays out the material in a format and style that works best for you.  Browse Amazon to see what other readers are recommending, or just head to the business section at your local bookstore and flip through what’s there.

• Subscribe to SEO information sources. Get a daily stream of advice, tips, and tricks from experts.  Check out this list of 15 good SEO blogs, or if Twitter is more your thing, follow TheSEOList, a great curated list of folks that tweet about search engine optimization.

• Don’t approach SEO as a one-off project. Instead, think of it more like going to the gym – consistent effort over time is what will bring results!  If you need more traffic right away, you should read our previous post, Should You Do SEO or Paid Search?

If you’re going to hire an SEO consultant…

• Educate yourself on what you’ll be paying for. This article from Search Engine Journal, What’s My SEO Charging Me For?, is a great place to start.

• Ask (smart) colleagues for referrals. Part of an SEO consultant’s job is to understand your business and customers, so finding someone who has worked with businesses like yours before can really help get things moving quickly.

• Remember there are no SEO guarantees. Be wary of any consultants making claims that guarantee you a specific ranking or position. Search engines are complex, the algorithms are nuanced, and results take time. Reputable SEO practitioners will happily agree to goals and measurable milestones, and factor these into your billing and payment terms.

And in either case…

Don’t worry about every possible tweak you could make – just start with the basics and you’ll be well on your way. So wipe off those palms, get a good night’s sleep, and we’ll see you on Google’s Page One!

(P.S.  We’re here to help… so feel free to give us a call at 888-330-3236)

Do you know how many times  the search engines (Google, etc.) were used last month? Well if you guessed 15.9 billion times then you win the prize! And that’s only counting searches done in the U.S. market… according to comScore, a digital research firm.

Cool factoid, by why should you care? Because many were prospects searching for products and services like yours. So the name of the game is making sure your website shows up in search results!

Your website can appear in search results in two ways:

1.  Natural Search. The search engines find (index) all the websites on the Internet and then decide what to show when a user does a search. This is called natural or organic search. The search engines determine how relevant your website content is for a given search… based on their own (super-secret) algorithms.

The good news is you don’t have to pay when your website appears in natural search results. That’s the whole point of search right? The bad news is that Google and the search engines have millions of other web pages to choose from besides yours.

But you can influence this. That’s what search engine optimization (SEO) is all about!

2. Paid Search. As the name implies, it means you pay to have your ad show up in the top and right hand side “sponsored listing” sections of a search results page. Of course, your competitors want those spots too… so you get to bid against them to see who’s ad gets the highest ranking (what fun!)

In either case, if prospects can’t find your business when searching the Internet… then you won’t be in business very long. That’s why whole industries (and lots of consultants) have sprung up to help with your search engine optimization and paid search efforts.

So which should you do, SEO or Paid Search?

Let’s do a search “smack-down” before we answer that question:

Natural search is free. It’s worth repeating this one. You don’t have to pay Google or any other search engine to show up in natural search results. With paid search, you pay, and pay, and pay (you get the idea!)

Winner: SEO and Natural Search

With paid search, you control what, where, and when… your ad shows. You control what your ad says and in which search results it shows up. You can also start and stop your ad at anytime to stay within budget. Plus, it’s easy to test different paid search ads to see which works best… since you’re in control!

Winner: Paid Search

People mostly click on natural search results. About 80% of the time users click on natural search listings versus only 20% on sponsored listings.Why? Because people trust natural search more since they know that the sponsored listings are ads.

Winner: SEO and Natural Search

Changing natural search results takes time. Figure it may take 6 to 9 months before your search engine optimization results really pay off. SEO is an ongoing process of big and little changes to your website… to make it easier for search engines to find you, understand what your business is about, and to see that other website owners think you’re important too. And that just takes time.

Winner: Paid Search

Now we’re (finally) ready to answer the question of whether you should do SEO or paid search. The answer is… both!

If you’re starting a business or just bringing your offline business onto the Internet then you can’t wait around for your SEO efforts to work. You need to find prospects and generate sales now. This is why paid search is so great. Once you’ve set up your paid search ad, you’ll start driving potential customers to your website right away.

But don’t put off your SEO efforts. Otherwise, you’ll be kicking yourself later… and running out of cash since paid search bills add up quickly (that’s why Google makes tons of money).

Even if your business has been online for quite awhile… you’re probably still looking to increase your website traffic and find more qualified prospects online… without spending an arm and a leg to do it! So you’ll want to do both SEO and paid search for all the reasons we’ve already outlined.

Once your SEO efforts start paying off, you’ll have a steady stream of (free) visitors coming to your website from natural search. Plus you’ll still be able to tap into paid search… for when you launch new products, need to generate more sales fast, or want your website traffic growing while your search engine optimization efforts continue to improve.

So, definitely do both SEO and paid search.

Now it’s time for a word of caution regarding SEO and paid search (sorry!)

Remember, if you’re website doesn’t show up in search results then your business doesn’t exist… as far as your online prospects are concerned.

You or someone on your team must invest the time to learn at least the basics of SEO and paid search. Read blog posts, download white papers, or buy a few books on the topic. It’s that important. It really is. Or hire an expert if you have the budget. It will be worth it!

Here are some good blog posts (including ours) to get you started:

Guide to Search Engine Marketing for Small Business

SEO Flows Through Everything

SEO Copywriting

Don’t Make These Search Engine Marketing Mistakes

Do You Want to Know What Keywords to Use for Your Website?

And as always… let us know if we can help!  Just give us a call at 888-330-3236.

What? I’m being charged $6.65 per click! I don’t understand what happened (I really didn’t) with my search marketing program. I only knew that my credit card showed I’d been charged $665 for a marketing program that I thought would cost me $150. Yikes!

So what happened here? First some background…

When advertising on search engines (yes, there are more choices than Google) you’ll be buying advertising space on a “pay-for-performance” basis. This means you only pay if someone clicks on your ad when it shows up in search results you care about. Pay per click. Sounds pretty good right?

Totally is… but buyers beware! You need to know what you’re doing AND keep a close eye on your advertising campaign as things can move really fast. Why? Because you’re competing against many other advertisers that also want their ads to show up in those same search results.

So what you pay for those clicks can be pretty volatile (translation: get expensive fast!) And the best way to manage your ad campaign pricing is to first decide on the key elements of your bidding strategy:

• Maximum bid price: What’s the most you’re willing to pay (or bid) to have your ad show up when someone types in your target keyword phrase? The higher your maximum bid the more often your ad will show up in relevant search results. But the more you’ll pay per click!

• Average bid range: What are others (your competitors) bidding? Most search engines will show you the average range that other advertisers are willing to pay. This gives you a sense of how expensive those clicks are going to be.

• Daily cap: This is the most you want (or are able) to spend on a daily basis for advertising. If you set your daily cap at, say, $50, then your ad will keep showing until you’ve generated $50 of clicks for that day. No more.

Now back to our story…

I’d set my maximum bid price at $6.65 even though the average bid range was $0.73 to $1.54. I figured this assured me the top positions for my target keywords (resulting in lots of clicks) and would only be hit if pricing was really bid up. But I wasn’t too worried about that since the average bid range was much lower.

To protect my pocketbook, I set my daily cap at $25 so there was no way I could accidentally pay for more than $25 worth of clicks on any given day.

And then I got really busy… with clients, life, cool and fun stuff. You name it and I was busy doing it. Plus I was happy seeing lots of quality clicks coming from my search marketing campaign. Two weeks later I decided to check my credit card and… well you already know the rest of the story. = (

What mistakes did I make with my search engine marketing program?

• Setting the maximum bid (way) too high. You should set your maximum bid at the most you’d truly be okay paying. In this case, I should have set my max bid at $1.50 given the number and quality of clicks I was looking for.

• Assuming the average click range reflected the highest bids. Remember that the average bid range is just that… average! There will be lots of advertisers that are willing to pay (much) more than the average to get their ads seen the most.

• Not keeping a close eye on the search campaign. You need to check back often (daily or multiple times a day for new campaigns) to see how your ad campaign is doing and make adjustments accordingly. You can always increase your maximum bid if you need more clicks or if the quality of the clicks is better than expected.

• Having a daily cap that was too high. You should set a low daily cap to begin with and then increase it over time as you get a sense of the trade-off between the number of clicks and the price per click (PPC). But always use a daily (or weekly) cap as things can change quickly… and trust me, my surprise would have been much worse if I didn’t have a $25 daily cap in place!

• Not first testing and learning what works best. Sometimes it’s best to start with a low maximum bid and then move up as you better understand the quality and volume of clicks you’re getting. In other cases, it may make sense to start with a high maximum bid to get in front of lots of prospects to see if your ad performs well. You can then lower your max bid over time. The important lesson? Test, test, and test!

Hopefully, you can learn from my mistakes… so that my “out of pocket” investment ends up being your marketing gain.

Stay tuned as I’m sure I’ll be making plenty more mistakes that you can learn from… = )