Fast Internet Marketing Results: Email, PPC, or paid inclusion?

One of the known facts of SEO is that it is not an "instant gratification" solution. What is now referred to as "organic SEO" is the process of optimizing your website for the search engine spiders, and waiting for them to index the changes and reward you with improved rankings. This process can take weeks or even months to show strong results, no matter how well the optimization is done.

So what does an SEO firm do about a client who wants to be listed on the search engines NOW? In the past, paying to be listed in the Yahoo! Directory and in LookSmart (which supplied search results to MSN) meant that a human editor would review your site within a week, and if the site was approved, then you would have a great search engine listing within just a week or two. Since these two provided your strongest traffic, there was no problem waiting a few weeks for the other search engines to pick the site up. If you still didn't get strong listings for the keywords you most wanted, or if you wanted a seasonal boost during critical sales times, you could add Pay Per Click (PPC) and buy good rankings for the keywords and phrases you wanted the most.

In retrospect, those were the easy times! Today it is much more difficult to get those strong, quick rankings. First LookSmart went from a one-time-only inclusion fee to a flat-fee PPC system. Since it still supplied search results to MSN, many people reluctantly accepted the much higher cost of LookSmart and stayed with them. As soon as MSN dropped that contract, LookSmart saw its customers head for greener pastures. Yahoo! stopped using their Directory results for their primary listings, and defaulted immediately to Google instead. Although you can still pay their annual fee for a Directory listing, many people do not feel it is worth the cost, and many people never click on the "Directory" tab in Yahoo!, so they never see those results at all.

Today's fast response internet marketing options:

1. Paid inclusion. To be listed in Yahoo!'s primary search results rapidly, you need to pay for listing in Overture's Site Match. This is almost identical to LookSmart's flat-fee PPC of a year ago. It requires a submission fee, plus a deposit, plus a flat-fee per-click charge. Your listing will appear within days, not weeks; however, this option is beyond the budget of many (if not most) small businesses.

2. Pay Per Click (PPC). The advantage to Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns is that they are customizable to almost any need. Pick your keywords/phrases, decide how much you're willing to pay, decide where you want to be listed, submit your own description. You can hold the #1 listing on several major search engines for a few days, a few weeks, or longer, depending on your budget, and cut it off anytime you please. However, for some industries, even a short-term PPC campaign can be extremely expensive, as they keywords are so competitive, and recent studies show that many consumers skip the "sponsored sites" and head straight for the regular listings.

3. Email marketing. Email marketing currently suffers from guilt by association. There are two main kinds of email marketing, and they are as different as night and day: Bulk email and permission-based email. Bulk email is what is commonly called "spam", loathed so universally that legislation has been passed to curb it, and ISP's have invested a great deal of time into building spam filters to protect their clients. On the other hand, permission-based email relies on opt-in lists, where the recipient has signed up and agreed to receive promotional emails, and in many cases has even provided relevant information such as age, income, and place of residence, to help make sure that they receive offers they are interested in. Email blasts provide almost instant feedback, and are one of the least expensive ways possible to reach a large audience. It's a great way to get the word out about your new product or new website, as long as it's done properly.

No single marketing technique is right for every client, and most clients will get the strongest response from a combination of tactics and approaches. The best ROI, long-term, is still traditional SEO, but if the client is impatient, using one or more of the options above can help give them some instant business while you wait for the spiders to do their job.