It's no secret that Search Engine marketing can drive significant
amounts of very qualified traffic to a web site – as 85% of Internet
users utilize search engines to find/research for goods and services.
The problem for many companies is the difficulty they face sifting
through conflicting information and hyperbole! Here is my top five
list of myths that need to be run to ground.

Big Picture Myth One – Search engine ranking leads are not as good as
those which originate from other forms of traditional marketing
(print, direct mail, PR, etc.) – this is absolute hogwash, the truth
is many agencies don't have a clue about s/e ranking, so they push
their clients to ignore this form of advertising. They simply don't
want to recommend anything they don't understand and/or utilize an
interactive marketing vehicle that requires a blend of very
specialized technology and processes.

We've in fact found just the opposite when we've analyzed s/e traffic
versus other types of leads for our clients; i.e. search engine
traffic can be much better, as it is comprised of individuals who are
actively seeking info, not just people whose curiosity has been
piqued by an eye-catching publication ad or press release. And, when
we've analyzed the data by tracking leads via a landing page (on a
web site) we've discovered that CPL (cost per lead) numbers can be
much lower for s/e ranking than other more traditional marketing
methods.

Big Picture Myth Two – Effective s/e marketing can be done in house –
this is rarely the case, the sheer complexity and online competition
(digital warfare!) for rankings makes this extremely difficult for
most companies. Based upon our analysis over 73% of corporate
accounts don't understand the basic fundamentals; i.e. how to
properly use keywords, meta tags and titles and worse, don't submit
their web sites to top tier Directories (Yahoo, LookSmart, OPD) and
the hundreds of second tier directories.

Most companies delegate the s/e submissions to the webmaster or web
site development staff and they just don't have the time to
understand the daunting complexities required to generate page 1-3
rankings - or to stay abreast of the shifting submissions and ranking
criteria standards, as modified monthly by top tier search engines.
And, in many companies the s/e ranking is added to the over worked
webmaster's tasks purely as an afterthought – as opposed to being
addressed formally by the marketing department, with dedicated
personnel and a budget.

Big Picture Myth Three – off the shelf software that submits a site
to thousands of web sites and presents snazzy reports can do it all.
This is so inaccurate and nothing can be further from the truth – it
takes a tremendous amount of labor and time to identify keyword sets
(not just words), optimize the content for these keywords, submit the
pages while obeying the rules of the road and then continually
analyzing rankings and tweaking to maintain and drive rankings (web
site visibility).

Software can certainly help to automate some facets of the process
and be used for back end analysis – but you can't expect any
application to make the job easy, there is too much inherent
complexity in the processes. And, competition for keyword sets is
fierce – as there are an estimated 5-10M registered domains (the
numbers vary widely) with 60K new domains being registered every day.

Big Picture Myths Four and Five – Any page listing will help to
drive traffic to a web site – this is another misconception. If you
are aren't achieving page 1-3 rankings then your wasting a great deal
of time and resources – most people never drill down below these
pages. Another common mistake is trying to achieve s/e rankings for a
specific URL or product – if people know the name of a company or
product they will find your web site easily, it's a waste of
resources to optimize for these specialized terms in 80% of most
cases.

About the Author
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of marketing experience He is the co-
founder of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium based,
privately held, Marketing Services and Software Company, Intelective
Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com Intelective focuses
exclusively on providing services to small to medium sized companies
that need strategic and tactical marketing services. He can be
reached at Lee@intelective.com