You may or may not be aware that traditional marketing methods (flagship articles, broadcast ads, print ads, etc.) can be an integral part of successful search engine marketing. I will be very broad in covering the subject because there are many options available to you, and some of them will be better suited to your particular goals than others. Up front, the best advice I can give is to discuss your specific goals with a qualified website solution provider who practices SEM and is familiar with integration in website design.

Ways to market your business (specifically your website) through search engines make up a long list. Pay per placement methods are somewhat less and can be divided into three general categories as follows:

• You can pay for the number one position (in the margins of the page) of the search engines for individual keywords. While this type of placement may seem appealing, it’s only as reliable as your advertising dollars allow. You may be outclassed by someone who is willing to pay more for that position.
• You can pay per click (PPC) for certain keywords, and depending on your budget and the popularity of the words you select, your ranking will vary. Again, this is effective for getting traffic, but there’s a difference between someone clicking through to your site and someone making a purchase once they’re there. (You’re not paying per click for customers who buy something. You’re paying just to get the visit.)
• You can pay to advertise on other people’s websites by making the search engine companies the link between you and the other site owners. This is a comparatively newer way of advertising, paying to post an ad while other website owners get some search engine indexing benefits and kickbacks for allowing your ad to be on their sites. In theory (and usually in practice), this is a win-win option.

Of these three general methods, keyword ad campaigns can generally be limited to a predetermined number of dollars per month (or until your account is replenished). So you’re not really writing a “blank check” to advertise with keywords this way, but you do need to manage your budget and account carefully. Buy Beware!

I’ve had several clients come to me because of keyword ad accounts that their previous service provider handled poorly. In the worst cases, some of them were victims of outright fraud. One case in particular stands out in my mind.

An accountant approached me with complaints that he had been spending $400 to $600 per month for the previous 6 months for a guaranteed 200 clicks to his website per month. “Wow…that’s a pretty good guarantee,” you might be thinking. And he received a report from his vendor every month that he was, in fact, getting that kind of traffic (200+ visits per month) from his keyword ad campaigns. His complaint, however, was that he had no new customers coming from his website (also called “conversions” from ad response to customer). The ratios of visits (impressions) to sales (conversions) seemed unreasonably low. I was suspicious

I did some research on your website performance and what I found was disturbing (but all too common). Your account has been set up to automatically replenish (rebill your credit card) on the fifteenth of each month, up to your specified maximum monthly budget of approximately $500. That means if your account balance was $250 on the fourteenth of the month, you would be charged another $250 to restore your account balance to $500. Each click cost him money, and over the next 30 days, his balance would be progressively debited until it was time to replenish it on the 15th of the following month. If it ever hit zero, your ad would “fall off the map,” but that billing plan ensured you never went over your budget. Sounds like a foolproof way to advertise, right? Guaranteed hits without extra costs! It gave him a false sense of security, and he was being scammed!

When I did an analysis of their website traffic, I saw a consistent trend of visitors coming from a variety of sources, some of them from their paid ad campaign. I counted between 20 and 30 results related to their pay per click offer. However, suspiciously, he had around 150 to 180 visits on the fourteenth of every month, the day before his account was replenished. He never got it to zero, so he didn’t think anything strange was going on. But it seemed clear that whoever was managing his account was taking advantage of his trusting nature and paying for artificial visits. His reports showed over 200 visits, as promised, but he was inadvertently lining his account manager’s pockets!

Don’t let that happen to you! I didn’t broadcast that story to scare you or dissuade you from using paid advertising. Actually, paid ads are extremely effective in the right situations. I just want you to realize that, like everything else about doing business online, there is often more to it than meets the eye. Prevented is worth two. Get in the game of marketing your website, but do so with a wise eye and a cautious wallet. The best approach is likely to be one that combines all three of the above ad types, so you can gauge which one works best for your particular campaign. You can also try a text message marketing (TMM) portal to supplement your variable advertising budget with a flat rate option! Text message marketing (TMM) is a relatively new marketing trend that is attracting millions of consumers for various reasons.

Most solution providers and SEM companies that have been around for a while have a good reputation or they wouldn’t stay in business. But you must take an active interest in managing your advertising budget. Make sure your SEM provider provides you with more than just a report of total visits per month and an invoice for replenishing your account. You should ask them to provide you with website analytics showing all your traffic, trends, hits per page, hits per day, sources of hits (so you can make sure they’re coming from different directions), keywords used for find it, and so on. Even if you never look at the details of those reports, the fact that they are provided to you will be an impediment to keeping your SEM provider honest. They’re probably honest anyway, but in the end you have to CYA (hedge your assets).