Sensible Marketing Services

Sensible Marketing Services is asked quite often if we can get a web site to rank high on the organic search listings of the search engines. The answer is yes, but that is not always a better decision. Below, we have conducted a comparison and contrast between pay-per-click and organic listings.

Pay-Per-Click

• We believe the most advantageous quality to Pay-Per-Click ads is budget control. For example, Google’s pay-per-click program allows their clients to set a cap on the amount of money spent per month.
• Another positive aspect of pay-per-click online advertising is guaranteed exposure. Don’t confuse guaranteed exposure with guaranteed traffic however. Still, depending on the amount you want to spend, you can count on getting the exposure you pay for.
• Pay-per-click is easy. Investing in pay-per-click advertising can save you a lot of time if you are the type to micro manage your marketing company.  Typically, it is a matter of your budget, and the rest is simple and a marketing company should not need as much of your time to conduct a successful pay-per-click campaign.
• Pay-per-click is immediate. Enough said.

Organic Listings

• Often, pay-per-click and organic listings can be more expensive than another, but that is a case sensitive factor that can go either way. For the sake of comparison however, consider the idea that your overall investment is going to be close to the same regarding pay-per-click vs. organic listings. While search engines spider the web much more often than originally, your web site still stands a chance of remaining within the top 3 pages for a longer time than your budget will probably keep you competing in the pay-per-click listings if you are investing in a keyword that is worth going after in the first place.
• Organic listings require a building process that often yields success initially. Regardless, you will most always be investing at least the same price per click in a keyword with pay-per-click and you will always you will always be relying on your investment to yield results via one avenue of exposure. If done properly, a campaign to improve your rank in the search engines’ organic listings will include a number of efforts beyond content development, design and code optimization. One such example is link building where a company will place your link strategically on web sites, so that it increases the number of back links to your web site. As long as that web site is there, you will continue to have that link to your own web site most likely. Therefore in time, the number of web sites linking to your own web site will increase and the money you spent throughout the entire process will continue to work for you. With pay-per-click, the money you spend per month only works for that period of time.

The first topic is the direction Google is going. Personally, we have not seen the Google algorithm, but recently read that following the K.I.S.S. philosophy (Keep It Simple Stupid) is the way to go if you want to impress Google.

That’s right, keep it short and concise. Some resources are saying Google only reads the first several hundred characters of each page. We find that hard to believe, however, it has been said for some time that there is something to keeping the attention of the spiders. Why? They are meant to mimic the reader. Readers scan. If they don’t get the material they are looking for quickly, they move on. And so will the spiders.

We are finding quite a few highly ranked web sites out there that are not even using ALT or TITLE tags (not the title tags in the head part of the HTML document. In fact, the meta and description tags are completely gone. They really don’t have high page ranks either. But boy, are they to the point and very clear as to what they do.

What we have noticed is there is minimal, yet keyword rich, content. The title tags are extremely keyword dense, and the pages contain minimal code. I’m sure this is the direction Google is headed. But, does that mean Hx tags and ALT/TITLE tags are irrelevant or you will be penalized by the additional code to make your sites more user friendly?

We will strive to answer these questions soon and hope you will help us.