The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: October 2004, Volume 3, Issue 6
SEM is Iterative & Ongoing: 4 Key Reasons to Never Stop
by Sarah McCracken, Algorithmic Team Leader, iProspect
All search marketers understand the importance of implementing search engine marketing (SEM) tactics to boost website visibility and traffic, but a surprising number fail to recognize the importance of continually monitoring these tactics and re-optimizing their sites.
SEM done correctly is an iterative process, not a one-time project. There are many reasons why it is critical not to stop optimizing after making the initial round of optimization changes to your site. Once you’ve made these initial changes, you need to continually monitor their impact on your visibility and refine them. Across a sampling we’ve taken over the last couple years, we’ve found that companies who fail to perform ongoing optimization of their site lose 81% of their visibility within the first six months.
Below are several of the most important reasons why you must have a continuous and ongoing search engine marketing effort to maintain the visibility and traffic gains you make:
Search engines are continually making adjustments to their algorithms.
What works today to keep your site visible may not work the next time adjustments are made to the algorithms search engines use to rank the relevance of your page to a query for a given keyword. For example, current algorithms reply heavily on link popularity and the quality and quantity of links pointing to your site. What happens to your visibility and traffic when other factors gain importance within a given search engine’s algorithm? Unless you are continuing with your SEM efforts and can optimize your site for those other factors you could see a major decrease in your visibility and resulting traffic.
Relationships between the major search properties are continually changing.
As search properties acquire other search properties, and search property partnerships change, one search property may be providing the natural or paid search results for another search property one day – and then not the next. As a result, the search referral market share among the major search properties shifts on a regular basis. With ongoing search engine optimization you can adjust your tactics accordingly as the importance of having visibility in specific properties changes. Not reacting to changes could lead you to focus your efforts in the wrong areas, receiving minimal gains for maximum effort.
Your competitors are practicing SEM.
Odds are that these days one or more of your online competitors are practicing some sort of SEM – be it in-house or through a search engine marketing vendor. That being the case, their efforts raise the bar for what must be done on your part to rank high in the search results on the keywords on which you compete. Failing to continually monitor the results of changes to make to your campaign, and then performing further optimization based on what you learn, enables your competitors to take what they have learned and apply it for their benefit while you do nothing.
Changes to your site are made and must be accommodated.
Maybe you have products or services that are seasonal and need more emphasis during different parts of the year. Or maybe you have new product offerings or services to add to your site on which you’d like to gain visibility. Perhaps you want to change pricing, or a description, or just generally update, improve and expand the content of your site. Without concurrently optimizing that new or updated content – without doing everything you can to gain it visibility in the major search engines – it may do no more than sit on your site like a billboard in the woods – looking just great, but with no one seeing it.
Whether you choose to use a vendor to manage your SEM efforts, or choose to do it on your own, failing to make continuous adjustments leaves you vulnerable in the search marketplace. When someone does a search for a product or service which you offer there can be only one of two outcomes – they will find and click on your site – or that of your competitor. Today, who is working harder to ensure they earn that click?
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