How To Use Search Engine Advertising (SEA) & Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It's a dilemma facing a lot of small business owners who are looking to start up and grow their own online business. Starting up any business means investing resources, and for most small business owners and entrepreneurs, the two biggest resources are time and money.

Is online marketing and online advertising worth the time and cost involved?

For small businesses, the answer is generally no. This is because most small businesses fail to manage their online marketing and online advertising budgets without realising that online advertising can be more expensive than advertising in the local magazine or newspaper.

Online advertising or search engine marketing can be a useful tool to help grow your business is managed properly.

There are a number of websites which allow you to advertise your products on a pay-per-click basis. These sites include Getprice, Myshopping and Shopping.com. These sites will help you attract and monitor your customers, as well as recording their visits and conversions. It's a great tool to help place your products into categories where potential customers would already be looking for products in your industry.

For more information on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine advertising (SEA), there is an abundance of resources and these can be found by doing a simple Google search or consulting companies which specialise in these services.

A critical element of any online business is to ensure you regularly perform Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Although this can generally be outsourced, it's also important to first understand what SEO involves and requires. SEO involves ensuring that you have relevant content and keywords to attract those using search engines.

According to Brick Marketing, "search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and volume of web traffic to a website by employing a series of proven SEO techniques that help a website achieve a higher ranking with the major search engines when certain keywords and phrases are put in the search field".

By updating your web content regularly, you will further enhance your google rankings and stand out among the competition. You'll also notice that by implementing SEO strategies and techniques, your customer base will grow more quickly that you'll realise.

When advertising, remember there is always a cost associated with it. Having a facebook, a twitter account, or video clips with your products on youtube are all free but also require time and energy. Don't spend too much time getting caught up on developing your facebook business account by including lots of random information which is unrelated to your target market. Instead, regularly invest a small amount of time posting relevant comments, linking articles and updates to your website, and including promotions and sales through your account. Don't get caught up in contstantly trying to perfect your profile page. You're generally better off using this time to think of new marketing ideas and strategies to target potential customers.

Online advertising through Yahoo and Google Adwords can cost hundreds to thousands to dollars per month if not managed properly and if you're looking to target as many customers as possible.

Don't target everyone! Identify your client base and target them!

If using Google Adwords, only stick to keywords and search terms that would be directly relevant to your business. You wouldn't want to be spending thousands of dollars on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for irrelevant search words. This will drag down your bottom line with no conversions. To generate as many leads and conversions as possible, you want to target customers who would be directly searching for your products, brands or services. You want the customer to spend as much time exploring your website as possible instead of clicking your ad, finding your web page to be irrelevant, and running a new search through google.

If you're going to advertise through Google and other search engines make it worth your while:

- Manage your cost -per-click bids.

- Don't use irrelevant keywords.

- Manage your monthly budget spend.