If you have a website, you are part of online marketing whether you want to be or not. As soon as Google, Yahoo or other search engines notice you have a live website— boom! Like it or not, you are thrown into the world of search engine marketing. So what?
Would you make a television advertisement and run it untouched for months on end? Would you make a radio commercial and let it run unedited for months and months? Unless you have got one heck of an advertisement, edits to the ad will be made depending on results, seasonality and your audience.
The difference between a website and a radio or television ad is a website is already in an advertising space. Aside from paying a site-hosting fee, a website is automatically placed on an advertising platform (Google, Yahoo, etc). This is true even if you are not running a paid search campaign. A simple search results page (the page that turns up after entering your search in any search engine) can be considered an advertising platform. Additionally, you can be confident that your competitors will also be on this platform. Two thousand and nine expects advertisers to shift ad spending to search in place of traditional media. One way to use search as a form of advertising is the well-known paid search— quick with very quantitative results and general success. The second is natural search, or SEO. SEO can be a particularly wise investment in a down economy. Consumers in 2009 are less likely to be shopping and buying— therefore clicking less on an ad meant to sell. However, consumers will continue to look (search) for industry information, reviews or product information; any conception not automatically connected to “buy.” A solid SEO effort can help make it easy for consumers to find your site. As these people find your site and find the site useful, they are more likely to come back…even after a down economy turns up.
