Avoid Scams: Understand Search Engine Anatomy

Search Engine Advertising is buying ads for your website in the highlighted areas pictured above.  The "Natural" or "Organic" results are highlighted in pink.  These results are influenced with Search Engine Optimization.

Business owners beware!  You need to understand the anatomy of a search results page to avoid scammers that want to sell you overpriced and misguided search engine advertising.

When you perform a search on Google or your favorite search engine, you'll generally be presented with a few common components:

  • Sponsored Advertising (aka, Pay-per click, PPC, Adwords)
  • Local results (plots results on a map that's geographically relevant)
  • Organic Results (aka Natural results)
Search Engine Advertising is buying ads for your website in the highlighted areas pictured above. The "Natural" or "Organic" results are highlighted in pink. These results are influenced with Search Engine Optimization. Local results are displayed along side of the map.

When optimizing your website for search results, you want your business to appear in all three areas.  Why?  Because different people are clicking in all three areas, and where there are clicks, there are leads to be had!

How do you get listed in Search Engines?

Each component of search engine results has a slightly different way for you to get listed.  It's important that you understand how to get listed here because it doesn't always happen on its own.

Sponosored Advertising

Google's sponsored advertising requires that you setup an account on their Adwords platform.  Here you can create a simple text advertisement and select the keywords that you want to appear for.  Now, this isn't free – you pay when someone clicks on your ad, but you can control the amount you spend and set a daily budget.  Google makes this easy to setup and provides how-to guides for the beginner.  This can be inexpensive to try out without having to commit to big bucks – you can close your account at any time.  Think of this like paying for yellow page advertising, but more measurable and you're not locked into a printed book for a year.

Local Results

A lot of brick-and-mortar businesses have been included in the local results already, but if you don't see yourself there adding your business to this section is easy.  Even if you already appear in the local results, you want to claim your profile so you can add additional information like pictures, coupons/offers, hours of operation, descriptions, etc.  Head over to the local business center to get started, follow the instructions.  Need help?  Let us know.

Organic Results

This is the one area that Google does not have an easy ‘sign-up' process to be included here.  You can submit your website to Google, but it's more than likely they already know about your website.  If you're not appearing  in the search engines for the keywords that relate to your business, there are probably some simple things that can be done to rank better.  Learn more about SEO from our friends at SEMoz they have a great beginners guide to SEO.  We also offer a free evaluation of your site that will make you aware of the issues that might be hurting your ability to rank in search engines or convert the visitors who actually make it to your website.  Let us know if you would like this report – it's free, and there will be no sales pressure.

So, what's the Scam?

Okay, now that you understand the three areas of search engines it's time to understand how some companies try to take advantage of small business owners.

When someone says they'll guarantee top ranking for your business in search engines they may actually be referring to Sponsored Advertising, not Organic results (which statistically is where most of the clicks happen in a search engine.)  If they say that they do guarantee that they'll get you top ranking in the organic results – get it in writing and be sure to define what happens if they are unable to fulfill their guarantee.

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