South West eCommerce

OK, so you want to work on your search engine ranking, but where to start? There are basically two ways to go about it: short term (quick) results, and long term (slow) results.

If you do a search in Google for your keyword, you will notice the results are split into two sections: Sponsored Listings (along the top and down the right hand side), and the Free Results (also called the Organic Results) down the main centre of the page. The Sponsored Listings are paid advertisements, and the Free Results are the results from the search engine database.

The two approaches to increasing your rankings are:

1. Long Term (free results) – Unfortunately, gaining a top position in the free results can’t be guaranteed, but there are things you can do to help improve your ranking significantly. These involve making changes to your website coding so that your site is better optimised, and also increasing the number of inbound links to your website (link popularity), which is also crucial for high search engine ranking. However, there are dozens of factors involved in optimising your site, and building links is a long term process, so the overall work required for increasing your ranking in the free results is quite labour intensive and it also takes time to see results.
   
   There are services around that will do this work for you, which normally includes a complete analysis of your site, as well as ongoing monthly reports, further analysis, and link building (see ours at our Search Engine Optimization page).
   
   Because it can take quite some time for changes to take effect, it can often take 3-6 months of work (or even more for new sites) before you begin to see noticeable changes. The long term benefits, however, are very good, because your site is then much better positioned in the free search results, which then provides ongoing free traffic well into the future.
   
   
2. Short Term (Sponsored Listings) – if you want to be on the first page of results immediately, then you can take out sponsored listings (called Google Adwords). The way these ads work is that it is actually free to list on the first page of results, but you pay “per click”. That is, each time someone clicks on your ad you pay $0.50 per click or whatever the amount you have specified. Ads are generally ranked according to bid price (although other factors are involved).
   
   You do actually have a lot of control over these ads, including how much to bid (eg. $0.50 per click), how much to spend in total (eg. $200 per month), where the ads should appear (eg. WA only, Australia wide, USA, Worldwide, etc), and what keywords to appear for. The ads can also be tracked so that when someone clicks on the ad, then purchases something from your site, the system records it so you have full statistics on how many sales/enquiries you are receiving through the ads.
   
   Again, there are services out there that will manage all of this for you, including creation of account, ads, monitoring bids, budget, monthly reports, and more (see ours at our Search Engine Marketing page). Just be aware that on top of any management fee you pay, you also will spend your budgeted amount in Google clicks (eg. $200 per month, or whatever you set your budget at).
   
   As an example of the kind of return you can receive on this advertising, if you were spending $200 per month, at $0.50 per click, that would result in 400 visitors to your site. And they aren’t 400 random visitors, they are 400 people who have searched for your targetted keywords, seen your ad, and then clicked on it. In other words, 400 targetted visitors, which we think compares well with a $200 spend in other types of advertising media.
   
   The advantage of Google Adwords is that you can be on the first page of results very quickly. The disadvantage is that the benefits are short term. As soon as you stop spending, your ads come offline.

So which option is best for you? Overall the service which will provide better results in the long term is Option 1. However, Option 2 provides instant results, and is also a good option if you only need to target certain keywords in the short term. In some cases, people take out both options for a while, so that they can get the results of Option 2 while the benefits of Option 1 kick in. After 3-6 months, they can then make that decision to either keep Option 2 going, or drop it if they think they don't need it anymore. Some people even continue both options indefinitely.

If you want any advice on search engine ranking, just contact us.