Online Marketing is all About Focus

Many small businesses will spend thousands of dollars on websites, yet won't market them properly, says David Cree, an Internet marketing consultant.

This is where search marketing is effective, he says.

Search marketing involves carefully determining how people will be searching on the web for the product you are selling.

It includes search engine optimization -- putting the right content on businesses' websites to increase the lik-elihood it will come up near the top of search results.

It also includes working with the advertising arms of search engines and purchasing common phrases that people would use to find a product.

"Search marketing is really the biggest and quickest avenue into e-business and spreading your market," Cree says.

But search marketing isn't just about having people find your product on the web -- it's also about having robots finding your product on the web.

"We market to robots that scan the web to determine what the rankings are going to be on search engines," says Cree, president of Clearpath, an Alberta-based web marketing consulting firm.

A large component of search marketing involves search engine optimization.

"Making sure that your site is optimized will tell Google what to rank you for -- what phrases is this site about," he says.

"What it won't tell it is how well it should rank you and the million other sites that are about the same thing as you."

And it's more than just the content on your website. Search engine optimization is also about what's not on your website. That's where marketing comes into play.

"Essentially, that's a political popularity contest," says Cree. "(Search engines) go out to the web and see how many people are linking to you. How much buzz is there out there about you and your company?"

A web marketing campaign can create a buzz in several ways. One of the best methods is through blogs and social networking sites, says Cree. "People don't realize that about 35 per cent of Canada is on Facebook."

Another way to build up a website's popularity is through search engine advertising. Many search engine companies sell keyword phrases to businesses that potential customers will use to search for a product.

If they use that phrase in a search, the companies that purchased that phrase will have a small ad, linking to its website, appear on the search results page.

Finding the right phrase is essential to this strategy's success, Cree says.

Search engine advertising is about finding the right description that will differentiate a business from others -- much like with traditional marketing.

It differs from more traditional methods in that it lets a business focus on consumers or businesses that would need its product, says Cree.

"You only pay for the people who click on your ad. You're only paying for highly targeted marketing."

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