Benefits and Drawbacks of Search Marketing

Search Marketing is the process of acquiring traffic or customers via search engines. Search Marketing involves two disciplines

1.       SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – the process of acquiring customers via natural/organic search

2.       SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – the process of acquiring customers by placing paid ads on Search Engine Results Page (SERP). SEM usually involves the marketer to Pay Per Click (PPC) when the customer lands on its website by clicking on the ad on SERP.

Benefits of using Search Marketing

Benefits of SEO

1.       Once your website is developed, it will have the long term benefit of featuring in the organic search

2.       There is a limited direct cost other than paying someone to develop and maintain it

3.       The opportunity to beat the competition by outsmarting and not necessarily outspending them

4.       The higher the website ranks for the keywords, the more traffic it will attract

5.       Increased brand recognition and credibility

6.       An SEO optimized site with higher Quality Score may rank higher even though its bid price may be lower than competition

7.       An SEO optimized site could also be a user friendly site

8.       It allows the marketer to remain competitive its web space

Benefits of SEM

1.       Campaigns can be launched quickly

2.       The results of the campaigns can be viewed instantaneously and in real time. It can be optimized continuously to achieve better results

3.       The campaign can be turned off instantaneously in case of bandwidth or other technical issues

4.       Multi level targeting – Location, Age, Gender, Day Parts, Behavioural patterns and many more

5.       The opportunity to test the market before launching a big campaign

6.       The ability to keep adding or removing keywords

7.       Budget can be set and managed easily. Hence Businesses of all sizes can use Search Marketing to drive traffic to their website

Drawbacks of using Search Marketing

Drawbacks of SEO

1.       Implementation is time consuming

2.       Results may not be immediate after implementing improvements on the site

3.       Changing algorithms can affect the Quality Score

4.       As the websites are increasing, the competition to rank high increases as others are also aiming to achieve better ranking

5.       Since the algorithms used by search engines are closely guarded, there’s some trial and error required to have a good ranking

6.       If there is no in-house expertise in SEO, then the cost to hire an expert may be quite high

Drawbacks of SEM

1.       The cost of advertising can be very high especially in highly competitive industries

2.       In order to attract high traffic, a large bank of keywords may be required to be used. Here again the cost can drive up with more keywords and especially commonly used keywords

3.       Certain industries (such as drugs, ammunition etc) are not allowed to advertise on sponsored links and because of this related websites (pharmacies, for example) are also disallowed from advertising using sponsored links