The Three Faces of Search Marketing (Part 1): How Paid, Organic, and Local Search Boosts Revenue Exponentially

As many businesses and marketing agencies have learned over the past few years, nothing is constant or certain in the field of search marketing but change itself. The game players are always faced with a constantly shifting landscape, since search marketing was introduced as a factor in search engine results rankings in the mid-90s.

At that time, meta tags, keyword stuffing, and manual submissions were considered as the conventional tactics that are needed and utilized to increase rankings in search engine results. By the time 2004 came, links have started to show its potential in terms of leveraging traffic to sites. In 2011, social media and vertical search have been added to the list of mainstream search engine optimization (SEO) methods.

Nowadays, web marketing firms are busier than ever, trying to stay on top of all the latest marketing developments that would help them drive traffic to their clients’ websites as well as improve search engine rankings.

No matter what other methods and techniques are introduced in the future, the underlying principle is pretty clear—websites will always compete for that no.1 spot on Google and other search engines. The companies with the most up-to-date and accurate knowledge about ranking factors are likely to find themselves getting the most benefit, from increased web traffic and enhanced visibility to higher return-on-investment.

The Three Faces of Search Marketing

At this point in time, there seems to be three obvious marketing strategies that has somewhat become “the faces” of search marketing and these are:

Face #1:Organic Search

According to SEO Workers, organic search is a type of SEO marketing that involves improving harnessing the power of search engine results to increase the amount of traffic that goes into a website. This is made possible by using specific, industry-related target keywords that help make a website more visible in search engine results. This type of marketing is called organic, because businesses do not pay to be seen in search engines.

Prominence and top rankings are achieved through diligence and hard work in terms of utilizing various internet marketing tools and methods, such as keyword research and analysis, blog posting, article writing, link building, directory submission, and more.

According to Techopedia, organic search relies on “unpaid, algorithm-driven results” to get high ranking for websites. Although white hat methods (those SEO tactics that are recommended by search engines) are commonly used, some companies continue using black hat SEO techniques such as link farming and keyword stuffing because, despite Google’s insistence that its days are long gone, some still work. Just like what E2M Solutions are trying to say, there still remains a few shady tactics that quite surprisingly work, which includes link farms and yes, hacked websites. Just read the article and you will see why.

Basically, organic search centers on the following safety measures:

1. Producing fresh, quality content on a regular basis
2. Spreading links all over the web that go back to the website content
3. Making good use of meta tags and other attributes

The reason why organic remains the most preferred way of boosting a website’s popularity in search engines is because of the following reasons:

• The effects last longer due to the relevance of the content
• Trust is built among users due to the site’s authenticity
• Sites that are optimized organically have more relevant content, attracting more clicks
• Sufficient (not ridiculously spammy) keyword optimization makes it easier for search engines to give the website a high ranking.

Read the next part of this multi-part to learn about the second face of search marketing, which is paid search. Learn what makes paid search as vital, if not more important, as organic search.