Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Yes. It is an essential part of creating an effective online entity.

Now, some people who create private websites for friends, family, or artists who just want a cool place to post their art may not care about search engine ranking.

However, if you intend to reach a certain audience within Internet users, SEO/SEM is almost implied.

I hope this helps!

Hi rnorth3,

I'm using both (for my customers)

On the SEM side I find it interesting how quickly some competitors adjust their bid price to either maintain their position or gain a new one, regardless of how high they have to go.

I also question whether they are keeping an eye on their ROI. I say this because I know the maximum I can bid and still have a positive ROI (short-term) and I have a very good idea what they are bidding - and it is too much.

However, they also are bigger and may be looking at the long-term branding effect, not short-term sales.

On the SEO side, I have found out how important it really is to have other sites ranked high in popularity to link to you (not you to them). For an organic strategy, this seems to have a bigger singular effect than a change in title, meta, keywords, alt tags etc.

I hope that helps!

I use SEM.

I agree with what has been said above. If a web presence is important to your business, then SEM should be used.

A web presence is not super important for all businesses, and isn't the only way to market. Of course you have local businesses, like a local dry cleaning outfit or hair stylist. Most do not have web sites.

Even companies that could benefit from a web presence can do fine without. I have seen companies who have web sites, but don't seem to use SEM (if you search for their name on Google you find few hits, their page ranking is 0, etc.) yet they appear to be succeeding.

What you listed basically comes down to cost versus results. If it costs too much (time, money) to get a good listing, it isn't worth it.

If you don't know how do SEM, then the perceived cost is even higher as you need to hire someone to do the work for you.

There is also the perceived benefit side. Some businesses don't need to do it becasue they don't see the benefit of a strong web presence. For example, you have a diamond mine. There are only a few potential customers for wholesaling of uncut diamonds (DeBeers is almost a monopoly). With few customers, it is much more effective to build 1 on 1 relationships rather than using broad targetted marketing methods (like a web site).

Another possible reason - in some geographies, web access is not high due to lack of conenction to the internet, low literacy rate, etc. If you were marketing in rural Tanzania, you likely wouldn't use a web site.