Search Engine Marketing FAQs

Our search engine marketing FAQs below should help answer most questions on search engine marketing that you may have.

1. Why should I promote my website?
Promoting your website can bring many benefits to your business. Search engines will deliver targeted prospects to websites, since they have already made the decision to search for your products or services before they find your website. These people are therefore more likely to make an enquiry or buy from you when they do find your website, as long as your site is interesting to your visitors and easy to navigate. Web promotion not only gets your business known by people on a national or international scale, but it raises the profile of your business, delivers more sales and enquiries which increases your profits.

2. Do you need access to my website / web pages?
We need access to your website in order to put the optimisation onto your live website. Either you can give us FTP access to do this, or alternatively you can do this yourself (if you know how), or we can pass the optimisation to your web developer to do this.

3. How long does it take to see results?
In view of the number of web pages that are now on the internet, and the competitiveness of some industries, the time it takes to see results will vary. You will notice results relatively quickly on Yahoo! & MSN (perhaps within 3 months), however, Google takes longer. The time it takes also depends on how many quality links you have pointing to your website and how much effort you are prepared to put into link building and promoting the website through other online marketing channels such as online PR, publishing articles on other websites.

4. How long does it take to optimise my website?
The optimisation process can be done in a few days depending on the size of the project, but this also depends on how long you take to approve each stage of the process.

5. How do the search engines find my website / how do I get listed in the search engines?
The best way to get your website listed in the search engines is to initially gain a few links from websites which are already listed in the search engines. This way the search engines spiders can follow the link from those sites to your website and index it.

6. How much does it cost?
The cost of search engine marketing depends on the scope of the project, how quickly you want to see results and how much budget you have to spend. We have developed packages designed for most sites and most budgets available on request.

7. How do I get other websites to link to mine?
You can start by getting your website listed in some general web directories, and in directories for your local area. If there are specific industry websites where you would like a link to your website, you can approach the websites by email. For more ideas on link building, we have written an article in a previous issue of Marketing Karma, which you can find here.

8. How do I update my web pages?
Updating your web pages can be done by you if you know how to do this or if your web designer has given you a tool to do this, e.g Macromedia Contribute. If you do not know how to do this, you will need to speak to your web designer and make arrangements either for them to do this for you or to show you how to do this, so that you can manage the updates yourself.

9. Why isn’t my website in the top 10 for my keywords in Google – after all, you’ve just optimised it?
The search engine optimisation process is a long term strategy for long term results. The days of gaining top 10 rankings overnight are long gone, and if you really want your site to rank well, you will need to put a lot of effort into it, not just into the optimisation of the website, but gaining quality links and ensuring your website is kept updated, interesting and informative to your prospects so that they will return and enquire about your services and products. An interesting, well managed website will also encourage people to naturally link to it, thus helping your rankings!

10. Why can’t I find my website in the search engines?
This could be because your website is brand new and has just been launched and the search engines have not yet found it. See no. 5 above for what to do about this. Another reason that your website may not be in the search engines is if the site has been previously optimised using unethical techniques, which have led to your site getting banned by the search engines – most of them now take spamming very seriously and are ready to penalise websites that practise such techniques.

11. Why aren’t I getting any enquiries from my website?
This could be either because people are unable to find your website, but also your website may not be interesting to prospects, or they find it difficult to find the information they are looking for. If this is the case, you must make every effort to proactively work on your website to make it interesting to visitors and ensure it is easy to navigate. Is your website up to date? Is the content fresh and interesting? Are there strong calls to action on your website?

12. Why can’t I see my Adwords ad on Google?
If you have set a daily budget for your Google Adwords campaign, then your ads will stop once your budget has been used up until the next day. Google will serve your ads at the most popular times of day, which means that your budget could be used up by the middle of the day.

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