How To Use Search Engine Marketing to Increase Brand Awareness

Recent research in consumer behaviour has shown that 76% of consumers use search engines when making decisions about the sites or stores from which to purchase products. Search engine marketing takes advantage of this trend by having your website appear in front of these consumers when they are searching for something online.

Search engine marketing has been used for over a decade to increase sales and build businesses online. What many people don't realise is that brand awareness can also be built using search engine marketing (ie pay-per-click advertising & search engine optimisation) and can provide additional benefits that may not be achieved through other online marketing mediums. With this in mind, there are specific techniques for implementing search engine marketing campaigns that can also help build brand awareness online.

Generally, the aim of pay-per click-advertising (PPC) is to increase sales proportionally to the budget being spent. In addition, PPC is also a great way to have your ad appear in front of a large number of your potential customers while only paying for performance (ie pay-per-click). And while increased sales is still the end goal, here are some points to consider when using PPC to help build your brand online:

• Communicate the brand message within the ads appearing in the search engines
• Focus on maximising the number impressions by expanding your keywords while using negative qualifiers to ensure clicks are only received from potential customers (ie qualified traffic)

The main benefit of PPC is that you can have your ad appear in front of millions of people within 48 hours while only paying for results (ie clicks on your ads).

Some people refer to the SEO industry as the 'wild west' because there are no rules or regulations outlining who can provide SEO advice or services... and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who take advantage of this.

There are many self-proclaimed 'SEO experts' who, armed with a limited knowledge of SEO and some industry jargon, give businesses incorrect advice or (even worse) charge for services.

The main problem with the SEO industry is that it can take 6, 12 or even 18 months to achieve results for competitive keyword phrases which means an incorrect decision of who to listen to or which company to work with can be disastrous.

Your 5 Steps To Success
1 Site Analysis
Site Evaluation and review with regard to layout, structure, site mapping, Google analytics,competitor analysis.

2 Keyphrase Analysis
Arguably the most important step of any SEO work. The optimization of the website for the main and NICHE keyphrases.

3 On Page Optimization
Constructing page content for your keyphrases. Optimizing pages for the search engines especially Google.

4 Link Building
Off page optimizing,create inbound links,one way, article submission work. Increase website visibility and PAGE RANK.

5 Performance
Monitor performance against your competitors and adjust/optimize as necessary to increase inbound TRAFFIC.