Search engine marketing, risks and opportunities.

Imagine a shopping mall without any signs, displays or advertising. From outside this mall would look like a big warehouse, there will be no indications to the products and services offered inside. A place like this might be full of great products with potential to produce high revenues, but without the right marketing and advertising, consumers will not know what the place has to offer. Targeted marketing is aimed to develop effective promotions displayed in strategic locations within the store and its main purpose is to push customers to buy their product.

 A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is analogous to strategic marketing in the mall. As we all know, when developing a good marketing campaign it is necessary to understand consumers’ psychology as well as systematically analyze the way customers perceive products and how they make a selection between different alternatives. Marketing strategies must be developed based on the previous analysis of the market needs to portray this desired-end status and present the products as the best solution to satisfy consumer’s need. Traditional marketing have many proven ways to convey this need-satisfaction link, however, Internet has changed the way people consume and modified the marketing strategy in the age of ubiquitous connectivity. Nowadays, many customers carry mobile devices and like to compare prices by going online even if their intention is to purchase directly in stores. Customers are becoming more demanding and are looking for extra information before making a decision , therefore, search engines are becoming more and more relevant as they are the main tool that connects products and services with potential customers.

The mobile connectivity is now reaching a milestone where new mobile applications like Snaptell .
This application allows customers to scan a product using their mobile device camera and compare prices throughout the web. Universal connectivity has given new meaning to SEO optimization as if a product or a store is not catalogued or somehow does not appear on search results, consumers will walk away and buy from the next best available deal. The influence of Internet on consumer habits is critical, as today’s businesses is required to have an effective presence online and on search engines. This effectiveness will ensure a higher number of hits to their websites that eventually may increase the number of potential customers. The number of times a website appears on search engines and their ranking will generate more qualified visitors and consequently a higher return on investment (ROI).

The competition on the web is fierce and business need to develop aggressive strategies to sustain their position and maintain the desired level of customer traffic. Many number of websites websites selling similar products means the end of exclusivity and businesses must rely on visibility.

White Hat SEO consultants develop strategies to sustain this position in this competitive environment. Strategies might be divided in three big scenarios: On page, off-page and content optimization strategies.

 • On Page Strategies - Among On page strategies one can mention tags (descriptive tags, meta tags and Alt tags) CSS and Javascripts, navigation coding and crawlable pages.
 • Off Page Strategies-we can find link audits, spam free approach and monthly reports.
 • Content Optimization Strategies -we can find brand association , key word building, and visual content optimization.

Nonetheless, as in any competitive environment we can find certain practices which may be seen as solutions, but in a long term may destroy the reputation of a web site and lead to penalties levied by search engines. These are called Black Hat SEO practices, also known as spammy techniques. Among these practices are keyword stuffing, using invisible text to attract crawlers and doorway pages- fake pages not seen by user but built into the system to attract search engine spiders. In conclusion, using these SEO strategies may help to enhance the performance of a website, but choosing the wrong strategy may bring serious consequences in terms of search engines penalizations and most important, consumer distrust . The wrong strategy will make that a business disappear in the huge amount of websites which offer similar products.

Source: Search Engine Journal. Bad Seo Techniques that will hurt your google rankings. Retrieved October 1st, 2010.http://www.searchenginejournal.com/bad-seo-techniques-that-will-hurt-your-google-rankings/7065/


Shannon, Gary-Adam.White Hats: This is Why You're Getting Beaten. Search Engine Watch.com September 29,2010. Retrieved October 1st, 2010. http://searchenginewatch.com/3641389