9/23/2008
7 Common Errors of Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing (SEM) can be a black hole of expense or a business generating machine. Here are seven ways companies get tripped up and fall into the hole.
- No testing. A little up front keyword phrase testing goes a long way. A/B split testing on PPC ads and landing page content goes an even longer way. You can’t improve results unless you test different approaches.
- Not enough repetition. In direct mail, messages don’t sink in until the fourth, fifth, or tenth receipt. Same applies to PPC advertising. Some SEM campaigns don’t fail, they simply stop before they succeed.
- Not enough diversity. Conducting a one prong SEM campaign is like eating rice with a one prong fork. It just doesn’t work. Everybody focuses on Google, but you never know. Bidding keywords on other search engines could wind up producing better results.
- No goals. Embarking on an SEM campaign because everyone else is doing it isn’t sufficient. A company needs to establish objectives, just like with any other business undertaking. Frequently companies fail to establish goals because they don’t know enough about the medium to articulate them – that’s where a professional search marketing firm can really assist.
- No measurement. If goals are established, the next step is to define how results will be measured. One of the distinguishing features of search engine marketing is that it’s performance can be quantified. Yet, many organizations put programs in place and never identify their key metrics.
- No checking of stats. Amazingly, even when measurements are in place, firms fail to check their statistics and see what actually happened. If they did, they might see opportunities to do some testing (see #1 above).
- No budget. “What’s your SEM budget?” If I had a quarter for every time I asked that question and got a blank stare, I wouldn’t be worried about the collapse of the world banking system. The fact is, it’s impossible to construct an effective SEM program without clear budget parameters.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Pay Per Click (PPC) Summit LA Announces New Agenda Geared to Boost Marketing Return on Investment
- Web Analytics For (SEM) Dummies Part 3, And More
Back to Top
