Google SEO vs SEM
Article written 2010/06/25 by Pageseven Studios staff writer PG7Daniel
In this article we will look at the benefits vs. drawbacks, the proper implementation and the expectancy any website owner should be aware of.
Google SEO or search engine optimization is a hot topic, everyone has an expert opinion on.
Hypothetically speaking we will assume that you own a website JoeSoap.com and like everyone else want to be first or "top listed" on Google searches.
Since there is only two proper ways you can be on the top of Google search results we will be focusing on these.
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A properly designed website with SEO.
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Search engine advertising through search engine marketing (Google AdWords SEM).
Part One: The deep end - having a properly designed website.
A webpage is a medium for your business to communicate to the huge potential client base out in the real world.
The perfect scenario is to have a great looking website people can actually find.
Making a pretty website is the easy part. Focusing on getting people to find your site website is the real challenge.
The most likely start point for your potential clients is a search engine.
The biggest of these search engines are Google Inc. based in the USA and actively working across the globe with offices in most countries.
In recent years there has been a slow but definite decline in search engines, as these others failed to make headway against Google.
Google Search is the most popular search engine in the world, with a
84.96% market share currently.
Google developed most of its technologies that makes it popular like the Google Web Spider aptly named GoogleBot, that searches the web for new content while refreshing old content.
Whilst most companies have really awesome rich multi-media websites, these are not really Google's favourite. To understand why, you have to look at rich media in depth as the reason is the technology itself.
Abobe Flash and various other of these rich media consists of designs, functionality and text packaged together to be one item - a bit like an interactive movie file for your browser.
A browser unfortunately sees that there is one file to open, and then asks a movie player take over and play the rich media movie in the browser window for you.
GoogleBot loves nothing more than a properly designed website and needs to be able to read and navigate through your site, but unfortunately these rich media websites just looks like an empty page to Google.
A good way to be safe is to ensure you have a HTML/CSS3 compliant website, one where Google wont struggle to see what is happening on your page.
Moving along, how can you be sure that Google will show your site in the search results. Since Google reads what a human reads, you need to have content that is actually worth Google and a potential visitor's time.
Remember that the content on your site will be saved and be added to the masses of data Google uses to search through whenever a user types in his search criteria.
So the less relevant your site content the less likely the search user will find your website.
There are very few websites that can be found by entering a website owner name or even related keywords due where the search rankings is in reliance on website content alone.
Google are a clever bunch, as they take other things into account as well, like
good quality links to and from your site.
Each link of relevance on your site is given points by Google and is noted by relevance.
The score is then weighed based on factors like links back to your site and the amount of relevant links.
These scores across your site all contributes to a page rank, the higher your page rank the more likely your site is to be at the top when someone searches relevant keywords your site contains.
Lots of new clients come to us and ask for good rankings, but some are only willing to invest in a one page website.
Me and the rest of the team at Pageseven Studios are often reluctant to accept these briefs, although we will assist if there is reasoning towards alternate SEO options.
Since the small amount of relevant data on such a site is normally inadequate for search engines like Google to search and index we know they won't fare very well.
However there are very good options available, like Google AdWords we will discuss in the next section. This will ensure your site is featured on the first page - no questions asked.
Since there are a large portion of the bigger sites that, even though they are properly recognised by Google, is only a paragraph or two worth of data for Google to allow searches on.
People invest heavily in Flash and other high end multi-media websites that cannot even be read by Google making the searchable representation of the website on Google's servers worthless.
How to go about if your site is even smaller?
The real question in knowing this is whether you willing to invest in a full website or rather in Google AdWords SEM with this knowledge?
Part Two: Someone to do it for you - Google AdWords SEM.
Google AdWords is a wonderful tool, although it's a bit of a hit and miss that can end up making a real difference or a costly pet project if you do not know what you are doing.
There is nothing like getting the traffic coming in and seeing your website in the top 5 on Google.
But when Google bill you for visits to your site that brought in no business it makes it quite difficult.
There is a couple of things that makes Google AdWords search engine marketing the choice for many due to great positive returns.
However to be brutally honest this can cost a lot of money especially since the visitors you will get, might just browse your site and then navigate away.
In a Pageseven Studios Google AdWords case study where we did an comparison between two clients with the goal to generate a modest 20 additional visitors per day to these specialist websites using Google AdWords SEM campaigns.
Our results showed that in case one, the cost outweighed the benefits to the client (monthly cost to achieve target cost more than the website).
However in case two, our results showed the benefits massively outweighed the cost to the client at
ZAR 798.00 (USD 106.00 or GDP 53.00) for top 5 placing in AdWords advertisements on Google.
Results as per the Google AdWord SEM estimates:
- First client estimate of
ZAR 15.00 / USD 2.00 / GBP 1.00 per click on Google advert.
- Second client estimate of
ZAR 1.33 / USD 0.17 / GBP 0.09 per click on Google advert.
Thus as per our findings search engine marketing is great and definitely worthwhile endeavour for anyone selling a product or service, especially when the public doesn't know about it yet.
This is also perfect for when you have a big marketing budget and want additional exposure.
In closing
There is some noteworthy warnings regarding SEO Companies that have caused a stir and should be public knowledge.
These SEO companies merely implement dirty tactics to improve website ratings for clients, something Google openly frowns upon.
Tactics they employ are cheap and abuses Google ratings systems, very often these changes makes your expensive and well designed website look like it was developed by a toddler.
These websites are then riddled with links to websites that the SEO company services added, with some even dedicating whole pages on the client website to this.
Unfortunately this extra unrelated content appears to search engines as a data gold mine and temporarily boosts your rankings, whilst the SEO Company charge excessively for the service.
All of these are nasty practises and makes it harder for proper websites to get to the top of the rankings, which might cause Google to
remove you from their listings completely.
This makes it a bad proposition for any client - Pageseven Studios does not recommended these SEO companies or practices to anyone.
So save yourself the effort and do it right the first time around, go to a reputable design company like Pageseven Studios and relax in knowing you are in the right hands from the start.