SEO Marketing In An Uncertain Economy

With the economy in limbo what should search marketer’s focus on? WebProNews spoke to Milind Mody, CEO of eBrandz Inc, an SEO and SEM firm, about online marketing and advertising.

Milind Mody

Mody said because of the economy "a search engine marketer might have to scale down branding campaigns in favor of tactics which yield great ‘short as well as long term Return on Investment’."

Specifically Mody said that local search is an important part of the overall mix. "Client reviews and customer ratings form an important aspect of local search SEO. These reviews also helps in branding and reputation management. So I would also highly recommend working with clients on getting their customer ratings and reviews on local search engines."

He said he believes that online advertising is more recession proof than other forms of advertising and that research indicates that any decline in online advertising is because clients are slashing their overall budgets.

"In many cases, clients are reducing print and other offline marketing budgets and spending more online," said Mody.

"One thing working in favor of online advertising is that it gives quick stats. ‘X’ number of impressions or ‘Y’ clicks, ‘Z’ sales and ‘AB’ % Return on investment. Marketers love numbers. Its very difficult to get such numbers for offline advertising. However certain industries like Real estate and financial institutions have really scaled down their online advertising."

Mody says trends in SEO marketing in 2009 will focus more on local search and that companies will spend more on reputation management. He sees less spending on banner ads and less spending on social media marketing unless it is tied with some specific goals.

One of the biggest mistakes SEO marketers make according to Mody is in keyword selection. "Many times looking at client websites, SEO marketers have a gut feeling that a client’s websites will not rank for generic key phrases. However, under pressure from client (and many times from internal sales team – to close a deal) SEO marketers agree to client’s version of generic key phrases to rank on. This changes their SEO strategy and the end result many times is that client’s website does not rank for generic as well as specific key phrases."

Mody says that link building is one of the most important aspects of SEO marketing. "Submitting a client’s website to a few important directories clearly is not enough to rank a website. Many of them preferred buying links, but Google has been very vocal against link buying. Hence getting links for a client’s website is very challenging. And it is perhaps for this reason that link building is one of the most important aspects of SEO marketing."

There are 40 Comments. Add Yours.

SEO INDIA
February 24, 2009 at 9:14 am

Hi!
Fotballsko
February 26, 2009 at 4:23 am

Very true indeed. Since link building is probably the hardest part of SEO, it makes sense that it is the most important one. And when google values links the most, this should of course be everyone’s main focus. On the other hand, the links wont do much good unless you have some content to send those links too. I work with the rule of 90% link building and 10% content creating, and I think it is correct to spend this much time on getting those links.
SEO Minneapolis
March 2, 2009 at 2:18 pm

Search engine optimization is much more cost effective than print media and broadcast media. Yellow pages is on its way out for good. From what we have seen, more and more business owners have seen the drop of their sales or leads from Yellow Pages ads. In constrast, those who have tried SEO or pay-per-click have seen the cost benefits of online marketing.

This recession has put huge pressure on business owners to spend their limited advertising dollars wisely. More and more are turning to search engines. We have seen a spike in the overall interest in SEO. Having said that, we have seen most business owners are very cautious about their moves. SEO is so new to the majority of businesses. So, they don’t want to get into something without a proven record. This sometimes make it hard SEO companies.

The SEO overall trend is healthy. Plenty of websites out there that need to be optimized.
Ikroh
April 13, 2009 at 3:23 pm

ROI is discussed a lot in business, especially when it comes to marketing your services or products as everyone wants to spend their money wisely to achieve a high Return On Investment. We like many other Pay Per Click companies have seem an influx in new clients looking to maximize there presence on the web. However I do think that the PPC and SEO industry have a “little” tuff times ahead as there will be clients cutting there marketing spend. Only time will tell as they say.
Trace Media
June 2, 2009 at 2:54 pm

I’ve got to agree with Milind on this. We, at Trace Media, are having a fairly difficult time getting our clients listed first on the Local Search. We have been explaining to our clients just how important it is for their clients to give positive testimonials on many popular social sites. We’ve realized that Local Search rankings are becoming less about links and content and more about the validity of a good company and how they treat their clients. Now if we can just make our clients understand this.

Thanks for the great interview…much appreciated.
SEO Nutter
January 21, 2010 at 4:49 am

I agree that to a certain extent what we’re finding is those businesses turning to SEO in general is a smarter and cheaper way to generate sales. Many clients are increasingly apathetic about print and other media advertising and are much more excited about the propsect of 1st page on Google though I think this has been going on for ages and isnt just because of recent events.
Anthony
August 26, 2011 at 1:49 pm

Two years later, and all of this information is still very, very relevant. SEO definitely can have a much better ROI than traditional avenues of marketing, but keyword selection is often best left to the pros. Consultants need to be less afraid to educate their clients and tell them exactly how it is.