In our previous lessons I wrote a lot about great advantages of PPClick advertisement in search engines. Now that you know what the benefits are, we should talk more about the details.
The Best Search Engines
Just to confirm what I wrote in Lesson 1. The biggest search engines are: Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. Each of them presents sponsored links (advertisement section) next to traditional (organic) search results.
How Search Engines work?
Search engines use automated software programs known as spiders, crawlers or bots to survey the Internet and build its database. Web documents are retrieved by these programs and analyzed. Data collected from each page are then added to the search engine index. When you enter a query at a search engine site, your input is checked against the search engine’s index of all the web pages it has analyzed. The best websites are then returned to you as hits, ranked in order with the best results at the top.
Search Engine Marketing vs Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Marketing is a set of marketing methods to increase visibility of a website in search engine search results. By some marketers Search Engine Optimization is a part of SEM, but we will treat as a different activity. By SEM we understand advertising in search engines. Your ads appear next to organic search results and in most cases they are called Sponsored Links.
Search Engine Optimization aims to index and improve rankings for the webpages which are most relevant to the keywords searched for according to the algorithm of each search engine.
SEM provides immediate effects. Soon after campaign is configured, your ads start to display and you pay for each user who clicks on it and goes to your website. This type of advertisement is called Pay Per Click.
Successful SEO strategy requires more time, because reaching top positions in organic search results isn’t simple. Search Engines look into many factors to evaluate the website and you will have to improve all of them if you want to get results.
Search Engine Marketing
These are steps needed to launch your Pay Per Click campaign:
1. Decide on keywords
Before you start configuring your campaign you have to decide on which keywords you want your ad to be displayed. Probably you will use the same keywords, which you have chosen for your website, before you started building it (Lesson 3).
2. Choosing PPClick program
The biggest and the best PPClick programs available on the Internet are:
– Google Ad Words (ads are displayed on Google.com, AOL.com, Netscape.com, Earthlink.com, Ask.com, Lycos.com, Infospace.com, nyt.com and many other websites, which are part of Google network) – http://adwords.google.com
– Yahoo Search Marketing (Yahoo.com, Altavista.com, CitySearch.com and many other websites in Yahoo network) – http://www.overture.com
– MSN Ad Center (MSN.com) – http://adcenter.msn.com
– MIVA (network of websites) – http://www.miva.com
The most popular are Google Ad Words and Yahoo Search Marketing. MSN.com should be growing faster in next coming months as development of this part of business is crucial for Microsoft now.
All programs, except Google Ad Words, work the same way and the only factor which decides on your ad position is price. So if you pay more than your competition your ad is placed higher. So it is traditional bidding model.
On Google there is additional factor, which decides on your position. This is relevancy, which is evaluated by Clickthrough Rate (CTR). CTR says how large percentage of users click on your ad from total number of users who search for selected keywords. So if there are 100 searches for “dentist Chicago” but you received 3 clicks only, it means that your CTR is at 3%.
3. Campaign configuration
Setting up your own campaign is pretty easy. You have to create advertiser login and then program will help you to create campaign step by step.
What is important, when you create your campaign?
– Text: it should describe your service and invite users to visit your website. It can’t be too long as most search engines allow having only 160 signs in ad text. You have also to experiment with few different ads to see which one works the best. Never rely on one ad text only,
– Keyword selection is crucial,
– Do not be afraid to use additional features, such as Geo-Targeting or selection of exact hours during the day, when your ads should be displayed.
After completing my previous lesson you know what the biggest advantages of Search Engine Marketing are. There are bad sides also and you have to be aware of it. You have to remember that not every user who goes to your website through the ad is interested in using your service. Sometimes user might look for other information and he might not be interested in setting up an appointment. From the other side, some users, who are looking for dentist in Chicago, might not be interested in using your services because your office is located in different part of the city. Tracking the visits and analyzing what each user did when he was on the website is very time-taking task.
Setting up and maintaining your campaign take a lot of time. You have to monitor it very carefully and work on constant improvements. There are always better results to get, so you have to experiment to find the best solution for you.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is a very broad subject. In general, SEO helps your website to appear on higher positions for specific keywords in organic search results. Top positions guarantee huge traffic, which can be easily monetized. Unfortunately SEO is a very complicated task, which requires a lot of technical skills. Also you have to be very patient, as usually it takes a lot of time before you can notice any improvements in search results.
This is a list of factors, which are important for search engines, when they decide on which position your website should appear:
1. Content on the website.
Search engines love content. It means that they prefer to show websites, which have a lot of content relevant to the search query. You can be very creative on that front and try to figure out what content will work the best. Definitely one-stop resource guides about dentistry (i.e. most common diseases), Frequent Asked Questions (where you answer most common questions about your practice) or news from day-to-day life of your practice will be a good idea. Good solution is having a blog, which can be updated couple of times during the month
2. Link building.
The most common factor of your website’s popularity is number of links which are published on other websites and redirects to you. For Google this is one of the most important factors to evaluate page. How can you improve it? You might start exchanging links with other dentists throughout the country and submit your website to the Internet directories (www.dmoz.org, directory.yahoo.com). You may also want to publish some of your articles on other websites and ask owners to publish your link.
If your website will have content and it will be interesting for users, sooner or later they will start linking to your website on their own.
3. Community building.
You may publish additional features on the website, which will make your users to visit the website more often. What can it be? There is no guarantee for any action you take, but maybe you can start at the beginning with message board about dentistry in which patients will be able to talk about general issues, but also they will have opportunity to exchange views about your service?
Search Engine Optimization is a very good way to gain customers, but if your profession is very competitive it will be difficult to appear on top positions. To get help on that front you may hire SEO consultant, who will take care of your optimization, but it always take a lot of time, before you can see any results.
If you would like to take care of SEO on your own, you would have to improve your knowledge about the Internet and also learn HTML basics.
Summary
I know that this lesson does not answer to a lot of questions, but I hope it is a good introduction to possibilities offered by search engines. If you have any questions or if you need assistance with setting up your advertiser account, do not hesitate to reach our consultants:
Phone: 1 877 Bringo 1
E-Mail: help@bringo.com
In next lesson I am going to introduce you alternative methods of advertising, such as Pay Per Call or Yellow Pages advertisement.
Dental Marketing Blog 
I find that Search Engine Marketing is fast becoming THE way to getting tons of traffic. I mean, think about it: Search Engine Marketing is free (if done right) and it can bring you litterly thousands upon thousands of free quality traffic every week. I’ve decided that the safest bet for me is to work hard and get a #1 spot on all major search engines for a certain keyword – and once that is done… I’ll be set as far as traffic goes. Any comments?