SEM Rivalry Among Retailers

In March this year Zara launched their online store to complement their bricks and mortar offering and implemented Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns to drive awareness among Australian consumers. As an article in Smart Company explains, this caused other retailers to up their game and this began a bidding war. As SEM is the paid search engine tool, it works through the use of key search terms and a bid, with a combination of the most relevant and highest bidder being featured in the first 2-3 search results. This crucial spot at the top of the search results could drive major traffic to that website, however the green ‘Ad’ icon can deter people away too.

As retailers wanted to combat Zara’s entry into the Australian ecommerce landscape, they too began to launch larger SEM campaigns and bid higher than they did before to win over customers. While this is something competitors should consider, it is vital that businesses stick within their means. These big campaigns run by big companies like Zara who increased traffic to their website by 18,900% is unrealistic for smaller businesses.

In the article they also mention that SEM isn’t always the answer, SEO is a cost-effective way of bringing in more traffic to your website by people who are motivated and willing to purchase from you. As organic search results are the ones under the ‘Ad’ results, these can still give you important exposure. You are more likely to attract your target customer this way as these customers are most likely searching for businesses like yours and you don’t need to bid.

This situation really highlights how you should stick to what works for your business and not chase after what new and other competitors are doing because you need to focus on your target customers and optimising your business and what other businesses are doing may not suit you. At the end of the day most companies are out there to make profit so don’t waste money on SEM if SEO or another strategy works a lot better for you.

If you have any opinions or questions about this topic then please leave a comment below.

 

Image sourced: https://www.gobankingrates.com/saving-money/best-annual-sales-to-shop/

Why You Need to be Careful with SEO

SEO can deceptively be seen as an easy way to bring traffic to your website, but there are many mistakes you can make that will hinder your growth from search. SEO, or search engine optimisation, refers to organic search results that show up on search engines. Businesses can utilise certain tools, like using keywords and being featured on prominent sites, to boost their ranking in search results.

The great part about SEO is that its free, but if you were to employ an agency to assist you with this and guide you then it begins to cost money. In an article in Mumbrella, Paul Carroll, a CEO at an SEO company, shared how he made a big mistake that put the business he was working for in an unfavourable position. Carroll employed an agency to assist him with boosting the business’ rankings on search and for the first 3-6 months they witnessed a heavy stream of sales leads coming into the business as they showed up higher in the search results. These fantastic results were short lived until Google updated their algorithm and their search rankings plummeted.

The agency Carroll had employed were using a wide range of links to boost the website’s authority, which Google didn’t like at all and penalised the website by giving them minimal exposure in search results. This is a good example of how you can easily easily do SEO wrong because once you’ve been penalised by Google, its difficult to come back. This also highlights the importance of knowing what exactly the agency is doing so that your business isn’t in danger and doesn’t end up in a similar situation.

Key things that brands can do to increase their presence on search is to ensure you have quality links back to your website on other sites. By having quality links from reputable websites it gives your site the authority it deserves and Google identifies you as a valuable website that will be suited to their customers. You should also use creative ways to implement keywords into your content because if you’re forcefully and annoyingly mentioning the same words excessively Google will see this as keyword stuffing and may penalise you and give you minimum exposure.

The world of SEO is wild to say the least as there are no set principles due to the algorithm being regularly updated. This makes it crucial that your business keeps up to date when the algorithm changes and continue to experiment and research ways to boost your ranking on search engines. This can be quite difficult as Google rarely states what they’ve changed, however you cannot afford to stand dormant and not keep changing with the algorithm because you will be left behind.

If you have any questions or opinions about this topic please leave a comment down below.

 

Image sourced: https://generationdigital.com.au/seo-sem/