April 2004

10 steps for a successful SEM campaign

When starting out on a search engine marketing campaign, there are various things that must be considered to ensure you gain the best return on your investment. We have put together a brief, (but not fully comprehensive) guide as to what you need to consider for a successful campaign:

1. What do you want out of it?
2. How do you want to reach your audience?
3. What's your budget?
4. Is your website up to the job?
5. In-house or outsource?
6. Choosing key phrases
7. Measuring results and deep linking
8. Incoming links and directories
9. Complement your campaigns
10. Keep at it

1. What do you want out of it?
One of the first things you need to consider when setting up a search engine marketing campaign, is what you want out of it. Are you looking for actual sales of your product or service? New enquiries, newsletter sign ups, or just awareness/branding? In order for it to be successful, this must be decided from the outset, since your message must reflect the desired outcome.

2. How do you want to reach your audience?
With search engine marketing, you can really extend or limit the exposure you want for your products or services. The obvious place to start is with a website optimisation, to ensure your website has consistent high ranking on the main search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, MSN & Ask Jeeves.

Alongside the optimisation, you have a choice of extending your search engine marketing campaign. This may be with a selection of pay per click activities (the main engines being Overture, Espotting & Google AdWords). If you are more concerned with branding, you could also buy keyword banners on some search engines such as Yahoo! or Lycos.

3. What's your budget?
A couple of years ago, you could certainly gain high rankings in the search engines with even a very small budget. It is not so easy now, however, particularly if you are after quick results. Your budget should therefore include the cost of paid submissions to the search engines, pay per click campaigns whilst the search engines are indexing the website, and even paid submissions for directories.

This is the best way of kick-starting a campaign and seeing results in a relatively short period of time. Of course, if budgets are tight, you can play the waiting game - up to six months at least before significant results are seen.

4. Is your website up to the job?
Depending on the results required, you must ensure your website will do the job you want it to do - convert. This is important, especially if you are putting a budget aside for paid advertising. It could be a waste of money if the website is not usable to visitors.

Make sure that whatever it is you want your visitors to do (eg sign up to a newsletter, make an enquiry) they can do it easily, and with the smallest number of clicks. Lead your visitors through the website, taking them where you want them to go, and test any processes beforehand ensuring they are simple and straightforward. Avoid using any jargon or in-house terminology that may confuse prospects.

5. In-house or outsource?
Do you have the resources to handle a search engine marketing campaign in-house or will you need to outsource the service? Search engine marketing can be a full time job for a member of staff, depending on the size of the website and what you want to achieve in the way of exposure/results.

If choosing an outside specialist, it is vital you ask them how they intend to promote the website, what methods and processes they will use and ensure they make changes to your website. If they are not willing to disclose, or if they guarantee number one results or say they use 'special' methods, do not trust them. Ask for testimonials from other customers and even ask if you can contact them directly.

6. Choosing key phrases
The most important part of any search engine marketing campaign is making sure you are targeting the right key phrases. We gave a comprehensive list of keyword research resources in last month's edition of Marketing Karma - you can see the list here.

When selecting key phrases, the best place to start is by brainstorming as many related to your products and services as possible. Then you can start to whittle it down by eliminating any one-word key phrases (you need to be specific), and key phrases which, although relevant, may not be less important than others. You will then need to analyse which ones will give the best number of visitors by using the resources on the list provided.

When optimising your website, make sure you only use about three key phrases per page, and that your web page content matches the selected phrases. With a pay per click campaign, your key phrases must also match the services or products provided on your website. You will also need to research how much each phrase will cost to bid on.

7. Measuring results & deep linking
When starting a search engine marketing campaign, particularly via pay per click, ensure you have the tracking in place before the campaign starts. This will tell you whether or not your spend is giving you a good return, and which campaigns are proving the most fruitful.

You could also set up specific landing pages for your pay per click campaigns, particularly if you are selling a particular product - don't let your prospects land on the home page of your website, then have to navigate to that product - present it to them.

The same can be done for newsletter sign ups - have the visitors land on the sign up page, possibly with a link to past issues. Doing this should give you a much higher conversion that bringing all your visitors to the home page of your website.

8. Incoming links & directories
Alongside your search engine marketing, make sure you are actively gaining incoming links to your website - from reputable directories and relevant websites. Incoming links contribute to the link popularity of your website, and are used in the algorithm of most search engines - they will rank websites according to the number of incoming links as well as your website's relevancy to the search terms a searcher is using. See our March issue for more on link popularity.

9. Complement your campaigns
If you want more than a simple optimisation will bring, then think about complementing your campaign with other online marketing activities such as marketing by email to your opt-in list, building a new opt-in list or advertising on carefully chosen portals and websites (particularly those targeting the specific audience you want to reach). Long term advertising partnerships with other websites can help to increase reach.

10. Keep at it
Search results can fluctuate quite a lot in the first few months of a search engine marketing campaign, so don't expect to see first page results after a few weeks through the natural results.

Change your campaigns too. You can change descriptions on pay per click terms, you can change which key words to bid on until you find the right combination giving the best return.

A successful search engine marketing campaign takes time and patience, but with the right targeting and care when setting up your campaign, you will be reaping the rewards in the months ahead.