Digital marketing when boiled down to its most simple forms of growth can grow in two ways. The first of these methods of growth is Organic Growth. “Organic growth involves expansion from within a business, for example by expanding the product range, or number of business units and locations.
Organic growth builds on the business’ own capabilities and resources. For most businesses, this is the only expansion method used.
Organic growth involves strategies such as:
– Developing new product ranges
– Launching existing products directly into new international markets (e.g. exporting)
-Opening new business locations – either in the domestic market or overseas
-Investing in additional production capacity or new technology to allow increased output and sales volumes.
-Having a website with strong merit to increase search hits.” (Riley, J. 2015)
Organic search results are determined by search engine algorithms and are based on the merits of each site. So, a company with consistent good reviews online would be featured higher up the search engine results than one that has frequently seen complaints or just simply does not have any website visits what so ever. An example of this would be an organisation that features in the technology sector. If Curry’s PC World had many products on their website which were rated highly and had positive feedback, then the site would move up the search engines as a suggestion for shoppers looking for a new laptop or computer for example. A company can improve their hit rate and their ability to feature on a search engine, growing organically by creating high quality, popular products that members of public want to purchase, this can then be followed up by encouraging users to leave positive reviews on the site of both the products and the services provided, offering a reward such as a discount on next purchase for doing this will increase the chances of the company getting the result that helps the organisation move past its competitors.
So, evolving your website and business to allow for strong, positive organic growth is definitely one way to increase website traffic, but what is paid growth in relation to online searches? “To understand paid search advertising, you must first understand a search engine results page (SERP). When you type something into a search engine (like Google), the search engine responds with a list of web pages (their title, links, and description) that are relevant to your query. This is your SERP. The bulk of that list is comprised of organic results: web pages that the search engine algorithm determined were the best match for your search.
PPC ads are the results (web page names) that appear at the top and bottom of your SERP. While we often think of ads as visually distinct elements, SEM/PPC ads look similar to the organic listings between them, but are labelled in some way to distinguish them as an ad.” (McCormick, K. 2017)
This is how paid searches work, but how can a company use this channel and how can it benefit them? Paying a company such as Google to be a featured on the first page of a customer’s search results can allow a smaller or new company to be placed in front of a well-established competitor instantly and allow you to build quick web traffic and gain high levels of business.
Another strong argument for a company to utilise the paid searching method is to maintain your reputation. Just like organic rankings, search engines such as Yahoo! and Bing have a set level of requirements and factors for paid positions on their sites. To maintain their own reputation as a search engine, the companies it displays, both paid and organic need to be relevant and trustworthy. Google and other engines also base your positioning on how relevant your keywords are to what the customer is searching for, researching into what these words are for your industry and products can really drive a large amount of web traffic to your site.
Finally, the other main positive from paying for a higher search engine position is the paid search analytics that Google and others alike it provides. “Search engines provide marketers using their advertising platform with free real-time data and analytics. With this information, you can learn quite a bit about those who click on your ad, including:
- Where that person is located
- How much time they spent on your site
- What pages they visited on your site
- What type of device they were using (mobile, tablet, laptop)
This detailed data allows you to see exactly what you’re getting from every penny the company spends. Use it to be more efficient with advertising and continuously improve campaigns.” (McCormick, K. 2017)
As demonstrated, search engines as a channel of marketing can be highly useful and very easily attainable. It can allow for businesses both large and small to gain huge traffic and to increase the positive feedback and growth of their companies online.
A site with more useful information about how search engines, both paid and organic can be found here at this link: https://thrivehive.com/
References:
McCormick, K. (2017). What is Paid Search Advertising and Why Use It? | ThriveHive. [online] ThriveHive. Available at: https://thrivehive.com/paid-search-advertising-use/ [Accessed 6 Jan. 2018].
Riley, J. (2015). The Exam Performance Specialists | tutor2u Business. [online] tutor2u. Available at: https://www.tutor2u.net/business/reference/organic-internal-growth [Accessed 6 Jan. 2018].
Vallance, D. (2017). Digital Marketing Channels — What to Look For and How to Choose. [online] Digital Impact. Available at: https://www.digitalimpact.co.uk/digital-marketing-channels-what-to-look-for-and-how-to-choose/ [Accessed 6 Jan. 2018].