How is SEO different from other marketing or promotional methods online?

To be able to better look at this I will divide marketing methods into two distinct categories, free marketing and paid marketing and promotion.

Free Marketing

When looking at free marketing some of the methods include

• Forums
• Blogs
• Web 2.0 – social media
• Viral marketing
• Affiliate programs

The above types of marketing tend to take a fair amount of continued work and although bringing increased traffic it can be erratic.

This of course does not mean that you should not include them in your marketing mix. The main thing is to be aware of the work required and what results may or may not be achieved.

Paid Marketing & Promotion

For this category of marketing we are generally looking at ongoing payment for services or promotion therefore the monetary outlay is a constant which must always be factored into the cost of the product or service.

If you stop this type of marketing or promotion, the sales stop, period.

SEO

The biggest advantages of SEO over nearly all marketing methods are the following.

1. Once rankings are achieved on a given keyword, the budget for that keyword can be significantly decreased.

2. To maintain rankings on a given keyword requires very little maintenance in terms of time and monetary outlay.

3. SEO work done on a single keyword/page will help increase rankings across the entire site.

4. Once rankings are achieved, website traffic is ongoing 24 hours a day, 352 days a year thus sales continue at an established rate.

5. Cost of marketing and promotion of a product or service falls markedly after the initial SEO campaign has achieved rankings.

In the diagram below, I have outlined how the initial investment in time and money is at the highest at the start of the SEO campaign when there are no rankings.

Once ranking has been achieved this investment in time and money is much reduced and for many keywords and pages will actually be non existent.

That's it for this email. In our next correspondence we will be looking at "Giving you better information - SEO survey”.

Until our next tutorial.

Regards
Chris Taylor