The What and Why of Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing has sprung up as it's own little cottage industry...except it's not so little and it's a great way to get ROI on your website. You can build a great website, but if nobody finds it, it was a waste of money"--what matters is how effectively you drive traffic to your site in the short- and long-term.

Today, through careful Search Engine Marketing, Monarch Productions can help you ensure traffic to your site, not just today (and we don't really mean today, as it takes a few days for accounts to activiate), but for years to come. At Monarch, our Search Engine Marketing efforts include Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Submission, and Pay-per-click opportunities. We arrange for immediate traffic opportunities, and help you build long-lasting solutions so your customers can find you online--instead of your competitors.

The Proof is in the Pudding

Knowing what to do in order to get the best search engine listings is only half of what makes a good SEM firm. The other half is proven results of attaining consistently high listings in various engines and directories. Here are some of Monarch's current listings as of March 3, 2003:

What We Do with Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization at Monarch Productions includes:

• Understanding how each Search Engine and Directory ranks a page or site.
• Analyzing a page or site's current listings in targeted Search Engines and Directories
• Analyzing key competitors' listings in targeted Search Engines and Directories
• Implementing the techniques that Search Engines and Directories use to rank a page or site, including:
  • Frequency of keywords in Title tags
  • Frequency of keywords in the alt and title attributes of images and links, respectively
  • Frequency of keywords in Header tags
  • Frequency of keywords in the Content on any given page
  • Relevancy of submitted keywords to site content
  • Number of other websites linking to a page or site
• Rewriting site content to optimize use of keywords and phrases
• Regularly re-submitting to Search Engines and Directories where this is expected
• Developing a Reciprocal Linking Program to increase page or site popularity
• Tracking which Search Engines and which keywords are actually contributing to website traffic

Search Engine and Directory Submission

We have carefully created a suite of search engines and directories for submitting our clients, based on a balance of how much traffic the listing can be exposed to and how much it costs to submit. In other words, we recommend submission to, and do submit to the following search engines and directories:

• Google (It's free, extremely popular, and it provides search results to many other engines.)
• Open Directory Project (Also free, extremely popular, and it provides search results to many other engines.)
• Looksmart (A pay-for-placement directory that fuels popular search engines such as MSN and AltaVista.)
• Inktomi (A search engine that supplies MSN, Overture, and Looksmart--too name a few)
• Teoma (A fairly inexpensive up-and-comer with a lot of potential.)
• Lycos (An old standby with a large, loyal following--also fairly inexpensive.)
• Yahoo! (Some people are now questioning the necessity of submitting to Yahoo! as it is expensive and draws it's results almost entirely from Google, however there is some evidence that it is helpful to formally submit--and pay a lot of money for the privilege of--directly to Yahoo!'s own directory.)
• Overture (While this can be expensive, you pay-per-click for the top spots in a great deal of popular search engines, and you can garner nearly immediate results, too.)
• Alltheweb/FASTsearch (this one is free and it claims to be able to "spider" Flash™ websites, too.)

Additionally, we seek other relevant online advertising opportunities for you which don't make use of banner advertising. We believe that content links are a better (and cheaper) way to drive pre-qualified traffic to your website. For example, if you were a dentist, we would want to submit you to the ADA (American Dentist's Association) Online directory and similar find-a-dentist websites.

Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Solutions from Monarch Productions start at $1500 (including your submission fees).