When Natural Search Isn’t Enough

As leaders in natural search marketing, you may be surprised that Netconcepts also believes in establishing a strong paid search program to compliment your natural search strategy. While a solid natural search optimization strategy remains the foundation of any website, there is also a place for paid search in your overall online marketing strategy to:

• Build visibility for newer sites
• Target the most specific keywords
• Provide flexibility for short term campaigns
• Test new keywords, with a view to optimizing the site

The combined efforts of natural and paid search can also result in higher brand awareness. Studies have shown there is a 16% increase in brand recognition when a user is exposed to both the top organic result and top paid search result for the same company. (Source: Enquiro Search Solutions – July 2007). Additionally, tests have shown a higher click-through rate on organic listings when a company achieves the top spots in both natural and paid search. Incorporating a paid search strategy with your natural search efforts is one of the most cost-effective ways to attract new visitors to your website. Some key differentiators and benefits of a paid search strategy include:

• Set-up time: paid search can be set-up to work effectively within a few days, with the potential to see immediate results. This is perfect for new sites that may be stuck in the Google sandbox.
• Flexibility and control: At any given time, your campaign can be edited and revised for content and budget settings to see updates within minutes. This allows for immediate changes to ads and keywords to ensure a positive ROI and competitive edge.
• Geographical targeting: Your ads can be targeted to display only to users located in cities, states or countries specified in the campaign.
• Risk: The effectiveness of a paid search campaign can be assessed as money is invested, meaning that, if monitored closely, there is very little risk involved.

• Determining your Budget
  Most companies don’t know how much they should be spending on paid search and since budget plays a role every campaign, you should plan your media spend with the goals and objectives of a business need in mind, i.e. increase sales, brand awareness, and/or traffic. Before jumping into a paid search campaign, a detailed analysis of your website should be completed to understand where your strong points and weaknesses exist. In addition, keyword research and competitive research should be conducted to gain an understanding of your industry’s paid search competitive landscape and average cost-per-click for your key terms. These factors combined will help to establish an initial paid search budget in line with your goals and objectives.

  Planning
  While paid search can give you instant traffic, researching the best options is critical to reduce the risk of losing your marketing budget quickly on unproductive terms. Paid search is a science and requires a solid strategy for ads, keyword selection, target segmentation and landing page conversion. To fully optimize a campaign you should consistently monitor and tweak keyword lists, ad copy, landing pages, and bid strategies. To maximize ROI, you can’t rely on set-and-forget software programs.

  Tracking is Critical
  Paid search not only provides an unmatched flexibility and control over campaign management , it also affords real-time tracking of successes enabling you to immediately expand on winning strategies while constantly testing new ones to ensure your budget is only spent on the most profitable keywords attracting the most valuable traffic.

  Based on trends and data gathered from your campaign, you can measure the effectiveness of the campaign and make changes as needed to maximize ROI and work towards meeting pre-set performance and revenue goals. In order for you to take advantages of these features, proper tracking and monitoring needs to be in place or you risk losing a lot of money quickly.

  Getting Started
  Paid search programs require daily monitoring, expertise and experience. Let us do the work for you; from the initial analysis, research and campaign creation through ongoing management and monthly reporting. Why Netconcepts?

• Our Experience: We have focused on natural search and search engine marketing since the beginnings of the commercial Internet. We will apply this combined expertise to maximize your return on investment.
• Values and Work Ethic: Netconcepts is driven by corporate values that include continuous improvement and a focus on ethics in everything we do.
• Finally, this is all we do! You will receive the best minds applying industry best practices to achieve success.