Technical Lingo

Search Engine Marketing Terms

Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Organic search engine optimization is combination of on-site and off-site strategies that combine to drive your site to the top of major search engines like Google and Yahoo. What it basically means is that when someone goes to www.google.com and searches for your product or service, your website will appear at the top. The implementing an effective search engine optimization strategy is the smartest and most efficient long-term marketing decisions a company can make.

Site Popularity - Hanekom uses white-hat, seo-friendly strategies to increase the number of sites that link to your site through positive comments, site reviews, viral marketing, general links and more. The more sites that link to your site and the more popular these sites are the higher you will rank on the search engines.

Blog Marketing - Blogger will write about your site using seo friendly link text. Over time this has an exponential impact on your search engine placement.

Local Search - This can be a key component for local small business and professional services. Hanekom will create strategies that can be used to ensure that you do not miss out on this opportunity to advertise your business or service in your local community.

Pay Per Click – Pay Per Click (PPC) presents an opportunity for immediate results. Our long term focus is always on "organic" search engine optimization, but pay per click can be a very effective tool when you need to see immediate results while patiently waiting out the organic SEO process. Sign up for our Online Marketing Campaign Management Program and see instant results.

Organic Search Engine Optimization - Organic search engine optimization is a combination of on-site and off-site strategies that combine to drive your site to the top of major search engines like Google, MSN.com, Ask.com and Yahoo. Implementing an effective search engine optimization strategy is one of the smartest and most efficient long-term marketing decisions a company can make. Organic search engine optimization is the primary focus of Hanekom. There are thousands of web design companies and marketing/advertising firms that claim to be experts in search engine optimization (seo), but most know little or nothing and the results you will see from working with such companies are minimal. We are a specialist SEO firm that will ensure that your company follows the optimal strategies to rank top of the search engines. Hanekom can develop and implement an effective, profitable search engine optimization strategy for your business. For more information see our Services or Contact Usfor a free consultation.

It is of critical importance that a search engine marketing strategy goes through a keyword analysis and development phase. For starters, this process will help you to determine if search engine marketing is a logical solution for your company and how to go about it. It will give you an idea of whether PPC marketing is an option or if it is too expensive and how much traffic and business your site may see as a result of an effective campaign.

The Keyword Analysis and Development Phases will include the following:

- 3rd party research of keyword analysis
- Independent Competitor analysis
- Brainstorming with the marketing/management team
- Online competitor Analysis

Site Popularity

Site popularity is the single most important factor that affects search engine rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN. The more links from popular sites that point to your site, the higher you will rank for every single keyword and key phrase that your site targets. It is actually possible for sites to rank #1 for competitive keywords and key phrases without having a single occurrence of the particular word or phrases on the site.

The more popular and relevant the sites that link to you the more important they are deemed by search engines. Links from sites like the Google Directory or Wikipedia are going to cause search engines to rank higher than a link from an obscure unrelated site. Sites that rank highly for the phrases that you are targeting have a major impact on your rankings for related phrases. Such sites are considered authoritative sites and count for more towards your ranking.

Hanekom will help your company to substantially increase the "popularity" of your site using methods that appear completely natural to search engines. For more information see our Services or Contact Usfor a free consultation.

Search Engine Marketing Services - PPC

Pay Per Click Marketing strategies gives your website the opportunity to get immediate results by strategically placing adverts on search engines and other related sites that will drive traffic to your website. Organic search engine optimization takes time and requires patience and if your business needs to reap immediate rewards a Pay Per Click Campaign can be an excellent solution.

The three primary pay per click providers are Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter. Each is similar in the sense that you pay a fee to be listed in advertising sections of search results on varying search engines. Where they display results and the process of getting listed differs in each. Hanekom will advise your company on the best marketing strategy to follow.

Below is a summary of the strenghs and weaknesses of each Search Engine:

Google Adwords

Strengths
Google AdWords has by far the widest coverage of any of the providers, allowing advertisers to reach a wide market using just one system. This coverage also makes it the most suitable for specialized businesses, who would not receive much search traffic from the smaller PPC providers.

Weaknesses
Google AdWords has now become so popular in some market sectors so that bidding is very competitive, meaning in some cases better value can be found elsewhere. The system provided by Google is very sophisticated - for example, ranking position can be determined by the bid price and the click-through rate of the advert.

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Strengths
Yahoo! Search Marketing provides coverage within the search results of Yahoo! and MSN, which each hold around a 20% of the US market. Larger text adverts are allowed than on Google AdWords, enabling a user to consider your offering in more depth before clicking on your advert, which we have found can result in a higher conversion rate.

Weaknesses
Yahoo! Search Marketing reviews many adverts manually before advertisers can use them, which, combined with an aging management system, means that it can be cumbersome to make small changes and test different versions of an advert on an account.

MSN AdCenter

Strengths
The format of Microsoft's PPC service is similar to Google AdWords, but it also provides an added level of campaign targeting and management. By using the data from MSN's numerous registered users who have signed up to Hotmail, Passport and Messenger services, Microsoft adCenter will use this data, when available, to provide demographic data to their PPC search market management and response data. Advertisers can place higher bids to boost their listings if searchers match their selected market profiles and although this data won't always be available, it could prove useful.

The other main advantage offered by the Microsoft adCenter is the ability for 'day parting', whereby you can stipulate at what time of day your adverts appear, or on which days of the week if these can affect the responsiveness of your campaign. This can potentially give the advertiser much more control over their spending and a greater ability to test the responsiveness of their advertising program.

Weaknesses
Compared to Google, Microsoft only has a small share of the search market, so activity may not be significant for niche advertisers.