There are two ideas in this post because although simple, these are a bunch of related concepts that seem hard to grasp.These are:
- Your organization creates: —-> Real value to customer (Innovation)——> Puts out web content
- Search engine creates :—–> Real value to customer (better search like Google) —> Delivers search results (and relevant Ads)
Businesses on the web want the red phrases to match up (i.e. have their content found in searches) as much as possible. But first let us understand the two parts above.
The first part is where you create innovation and value for your customer following the marketing definition. And put out the web content explaining the value you create in the hope that your prospective customer will find you on the web. Or better, you might be able to serve your existing customers more easily and at lower cost for at least some of the services you provide.
And the second part is what search engines are trying to do. Led by Google both Yahoo and Bing are trying to create value for their customers. They do so by serving up the most relevant results that speak to what is on the mind of the "customer." Here the customer of the search engine is not the advertiser but rather the individual who does the Internet search. This is a crucial difference and surprisingly hard to understand or "get."Relevant Ads like Google AdWords creates the mammoth Google revenue stream, but if you think about it Google is not in the business of earning Ad revenue from businesses . They are interested in providing you with search results that is exactly what you were looking for. Sort of like a hit TV show that has lots of audience which enable the TV channel to sell ad space at better prices. Except that the Internet works one search click at a time unlike millions of TV viewers who might have very different expectations from TV viewing.
Here are some tips that businesses can use to address the challenge of being found on the Internet .
- Content that helps answer the search query: Also called Search Engine Optimization or SEO, although you cannot really do optimization without linking to your business and what repeatable value you provide. Thus, you might have great content but if the customer does not get real value they won't stay (will bounce) and that's bad for business and search engine rankings. Tip 1: Provide content that really helps the searcher.
- Match search keyword to Ad and landing page: Spending on search advertising alone does not take you far because your Ads may promise a lot but if the content does not keep the customer on your website your Ad quality score will go down and costs will go up, ad position will go down. Tip 2: Deliver on your website what you promise in your Ad.
Both the tips above involve ongoing work, but can pay off hugely. Contact StratoServe.