SEO – The Icing on the E-Marketing Cake?

First in a series of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) articles, this piece by SEO consulting firm, Net Minds introduces to the general crowd SEO. Moving forward, they will examine the particularities of Singapore SEO campaigns.

SEO in Context

Being a subset of the online marketing category (which encompasses SEM, Banner Ads, Newsletter Campaigns and viral media amongst others), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) emerged as the key strategy in generating traffic for websites over the mid- and long term. When you start out with your website or blog and have defined your market, the first question is obviously how to attract the right audience in the right numbers to your site.

Getting Traction

To get some instant traction, one can engage in Pay Per Click campaigns (also known as Search Engine Marketing – SEM) on the various ad networks such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Ads or Facebook Ads (which happen to be quite attractive for the Singaporean market due to low CPC rates vs AdWords).

Depending on your targeted geography and keyword combination, CPC prices can range anywhere from less than 5 cents to beyond 30 USD per click (try running a campaign for “Asbestos” on AdWords). Depending on your conversion rate (which in turn depends on multitude of factors itself) you might still achieve substantial ROI’s, even with a high CPC.

SEO Generates Traffic in the Mid- and Long-Term

For the medium and long-term traffic generation of your site, SEO has proven to be one of the most (cost-) effective ways, while at the same time being the most complex strategies out of the whole category (excluding effective viral strategies here).

The image below highlights this point immediately. It’s part of a study which tracked the eye movement of your typical guy searching for a term on the web, which coincides with the clicking pattern. While the ads on the right side remain in the “cold” area, the music plays for the top three results (of which the first is a neatly integrated ad, making it hard for the less experienced searcher to figure out this is not an organic ranked site). How do we get there? The answer is SEO.

Google Heatmap

Out of our experience, as a general rule of thumb, the traffic generation distributes itself for an average keyword (-combination) as follows. The last spot on the first results page on Google (#10) leads to n number of clicks. Climbing to position 5 should double that figure. Once you reach spot 3 you will probably have n x 3. Position 1 should roughly double that amount again.

SEO is the solution for businesses to create long-term traffic to their websites, thereby increasing their conversions (be it for a product, service or ads that are offered on the site). Ultimately, this leads to superior ROIs as compared to most ad (SEM) campaigns.

SEO is frequently described as the ultimate art of online marketing. The successful execution of SEO campaigns requires a whole set of experience values and tools which go far beyond the notion of getting a few backlinks and making sure your keyword density and title tags are correct.

We will return next week with a detailed look on the strategies and tools you can use to kick-start a successful SEO campaign.

This introductory article is part of a more detailed SEO article series to be published on SGE over the next few weeks. In this context we will also have a look at what’s special in your Singapore SEO Campaign vs. the international (.com) market.

About the Author

René Linden graduated with a business degree from Nuertingen University in Germany. He has had a passion for all things web-related since his early youth. At the age of 19, he started his first e-commerce store in 2003 which got acquired 2 years later. He has since been involved in several web start-ups and as an independent SEO consultant in Germany. Rene is heading the SEO practice of Singapore-based Web Development and SEO Consulting firm Net Minds.

Image courtesy of Jessica N. Diamond.

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