If your company is aiming to make a lasting impression to its target market, then you ought to focus on your marketing efforts. Given the prevalence of the digital playing field, it’s natural you may want to start your focus there and, given the popularity of search engines, focus on search marketing. However, just because you know you have to “get to the top of search engines,” doesn’t mean you can just proceed with search marketing campaigns willy-nilly. Here’s a brief backgrounder on search marketing and the mistakes that people still do.

Search Marketing: Not Just A Numbers Game

Search Marketing, in its essence, is creating a strategy that allows you to grow your company on the backend side of the internet. This means working to raise audience awareness to your brand by working your way from the ground up on the internet and eventually ranking (or ending up higher) in search results.

When it comes to “ranking” in a search engine, it’s not always about the numbers. Smart Insights statistics said 46.8-percent of the world’s population have accessed information via the internet in 2017, and this is expected to grow to 53.7-percent as soon as 2021. Google daily searches alone amount to 3.5 billion a day, amounting to 1.2 trillion searches every year around the world.

If any part of these big numbers were allocated to your website, then you’re in for a big treat in search engines. However, this isn’t how search marketing works, and this is a mentality you have to remove.

Common Mistakes Surrounding Search Marketing

Two primary components of search marketing are search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC), both of which work towards increasing your “legitimacy” on search engines. The most common misconception is, of course, the more views you have, the better the results, right? Not necessarily. Here’s other mistakes you don’t know you’re doing because of this misconception:

  • Don’t be excessive with your keywords. This is tricky, as there’s no such thing as “mastering” the art of keywords when it comes to search engines. Google releases updates to its algorithm every few months, which means “best practices” with keywords will tend to change. However, a good rule of thumb is to not use keywords too much just because you “think” they will rank. Try to optimize your keywords for your particular goals. Try finding commercial and informational keywords that are fit for your content, and make sure your keywords target the demographic you need and not solely for a global audience.
  • Don’t expect results for your websites immediately. Like plants you wait for to grow, your website’s growth with search marketing comes after weeks, months, or even years of careful planning. This means you shouldn’t expect too much on the get go, and this also means you have to be careful when you plan for your campaign strategy. Always observe the data you gather when you check for updates, and always be on the lookout for things you have to change should you decide to switch up your strategy.
  • Don’t rely on “cheap” strategies that will “boost” you short-term, as these don’t normally work out for the better. Getting links to your site is fairly easy, but getting quality sites to link to you takes time and effort. Use things such as guest posts, infographics, blogs, sponsorships, contests, and videos to get the word of your company out there. Ranking will take time and a bit of creativity to accomplish, but it is possible.

Conclusion

Remember that when it comes to search marketing, a lot of numbers matter, but they aren’t everything. Ranking in search engines and staying relevant to your audiences is not a matter of getting the most numbers, but rather staying on top of your game when it comes to being useful to your market, and being relevant to your audience. Keeping these things in mind and avoiding the above can help increase the profitability of your overall strategy.