Search Engine Esoterica: Context, Mispellings & Other Unnatural Oddities

It's no secret that search engines are playing an increasing role in Internet advertising. But what's news is that it's going to usurp all other online ad formats. How can we say this? Because it's the logic of the medium. Media technologies conquer, even as they divide into more varied categories. For example, the telephone swallowed up a good deal of wire communications, but wire communications is growing more than ever. Its because of the ease and speed of online data transfer that the booming communications industry migrated in the direction of Internet technologies. Likewise, telephone lines are still around, still carrying voices and now data, but satellites now carry even more of what we formerly considered "telephony." The truth is, as media formats divide, they conquer, but they also tend to stay divided. No one ever thought that vinyl would survive in the era of the compact disc, but in droves, young music connoisseurs began snatching up existing vinyl and demanding more. Savvy record labels began pumping it out, often buying nearly defunct machinery to reconstruct vinyl plants, sometimes in the basement. Before long, vinyl became somewhat of an ordinary commodity again. "Vinyl will still die out," you may say. Sure, people may lose that nostalgic feeling of playing a record on a turntable. After all, scrolls are not much of anything but a decoration these days. Yes, but posters are nothing but a mass-produced version of the scroll. And posters don't seem to be going anywhere, now do they? Ha!

Now, take this logic and apply it to online advertising. Banners, the bane of many, the prize of others, will eventually be swallowed up by search (paid search). It's happened already, though in a very unprestigious and already dated format. "Stacks" of banner ads are what Google.com and other search engines now despise and avoid, in whatever way they can devise. But what if you had to pay to place the ad, and then pay to have it be found, as well? Well, you can! Just try to place an online ad and link it to a banner stack. Your submission will not likely be rejected, and you'll probably get a good bit of traffic. But if your content (in this case, ads) is disparate and inconsistent, your traffic is likely to be as targeted as a sprung deck of cards. This is why content is so important to Google and why Google is the smug king of the molehill. Content is simply nothing other than the logical direction of the search engine ordering of URLs. So if you want free results, get them while they last via content that is informative and relevant. But even for paid ads, if your content isn't targeted, it is going to be more difficult to organize.

Short of spam or a future incarnation of it, not really. That's not to say that many people know about them, but rather to say that...ah heck!... the secrets are all in your head. Literally. I mean, if your site is confused on surf boards, and that's what all the searchers are searching ("surf board" or "surf boards"), but you're still tip-toeing around with just one term like "water sports," you're probably not getting the focused traffic you want. Also, if you offer "ghostwriting services," but it never enters your head to mention "editorial services," as well, then your probably missing an association that would help you in the engines. Often, people can't make up their minds whether what they are looking for is really "ghostwriting" or "editorial." This could be said for other terms like motorcycle and motor bike. In some countries, perhaps a squash is a type of dance. You're up against a world of linguistic esoterica when you venture to be found in connection with any one term. Testing is how an experienced SEM pro finds the right keyword. And not even the best programs are going to find these any differently (or better) than two nimble hands and the right mental checklist will. The right keywords, coupled with the right paid search and linking program is the only realy method for internet marketing. ALl the software and doo-dads don't do much a strong-minded pro can't.

Do automatic submission programs work?

NO. No. No. I don't know how else to say it. I'd be remiss to say that without having tested them. But we've tested these "auto-submitters" (a LOT of them), and from our results, we wouldn't recommend our worst enemies to use them, much less a client. Why? Keep reading...

Have an experienced SEO/SEM Tech do it for you. There are layers upon layers of considerations to take in when preparing a site for submission to search engines and directories. If you want to learn the hard way, play dumb and go around asking them one by one why your site doesn't get picked up when you submit it. The answers you get will be everything but what you need to hear, which is that they need to be done by a pro. If there were one answer, you'd get that answer all the time. The reason you don't get one answer is that there are legion answers and that's too many to leave up to any auto-submitter. Content, best/most pragmatic keyword selection, refinement of objectives, specificness of the category you couch your text within, as well as more mindnumbingly dumb things like, the auto-submitter doesn't send all the required submitter info (address, home phone) to the search engine, causing your quickly-executed "auto-submission" to fly right into the virtual trash bin.

Pay a pro. Ask for examples if you're not sure about the qualifications of the company you're approaching. Chances are, the website may look swell, but the results may not be. Check around, talk to their clients, and then make a decision. No worthwhile SEM outfit is going to balk at you talking to their clients for references. They should be listed on the site. If they're not, just ask! Whatever you do, don't trust a machine to do what a human does best: context.