Excerpt
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Definition of Online Marketing
2.1 Definition of Search Engine Optimisation - SEO
2.2 Definition of Pay per Click - PPC
3 Medium Internet within the European Union
3.1 Internet Accessibility and Use within the EU
3.2 Future Trends of the Internet
4 How to Optimise a Website
4.1 Keywords
4.2 Onsite-Optimisation
4.3 Offsite-Optimisation
4.4 Pay per Click
5 Avoiding Elimination off the GoogleTM Index
6 SEO vs. PPC
7 International Sales Increase with SEM
8 Conclusions and Critical Appraisal
8.1 Conclusions
8.2 Critical Appraisal
Glossary
Bibliography
List of Abbreviations
Appendices
1 Introduction
In the last ten years the internet has become a very important medium. Nowadays most people cannot imagine living without internet access. It is part of daily routine; it is used for communicating with friends per e-mail or in social networks, finding information about anything, carrying out payment transactions via online banking, buying new shoes or booking holiday accommodations. Especially the two last points make the internet to an important distribution channel. However, before somebody can order goods online, the difficulty is to get potential buyer to visit one’s own website.
That is where search engines come into play. If somebody intends to buy a certain good online, in most instances he types in the desired good into a search engine and looks through two and maybe three result pages before giving up and refining the search. For a company that sells that good it is crucial to appear on those three pages (better on the first), otherwise there is only a slight chance that people buy that product from its online shop and hence revenues are lost.
This report serves as a guide for companies that intend to increase online sales. And furthermore shows the high potential of international sales increase. As a company theoretically can reach potential customers over the whole world, appealing to an international target group suggests itself. This report focuses on increasing sales within Europe.
The first chapter defines the main term online marketing and distinguishes the different sub terms like search engine marketing and its subareas search engine optimisation and pay per click.
Following statistics concerning the use of the internet within the European Union are being presented and show the potential of increasing international online sales.
The fourth chapter explains how a website can be optimised to be ranked at the first page of a search engine result page. This chapter is split up into onsite-optimisation that describes methods which can be carried out directly on one’s own homepage, offsite-optimisation that can only be executed on a third website and pay per click which in contrast is rather similar to conventional advertising and does cost money at the moment a person clicks on this advert.
In order that the effort of optimising a website is not in vain, the following chapter clarifies all methods that could lead to elimination off the search engines’ index. The sixth chapter assists to decide whether to apply search engine optimisation, pay per click or both methods. The final chapter clarifies by means of an example, based on the statistics shown in the third chapter, the high potential of international sales increase. It shows that especially countries with a low population can profit by optimising their homepages internationally.
People are not searching for a specific product they are not interested in. That means that mostly people who search for a product also have a high purchase intention. That is way search engine marketing is an efficient way to attract potential customer with a very low waste circulation. The multitude of related websites handicaps the chance to guide potential customers to one’s own homepage. An optimal position in search engine machines is adjuvant.
2 Definition of Online Marketing
This chapter is to explain the main terms used in this report. For a better understanding first the generic term online marketing will be explained and also its subtopic search engine marketing, which is divided into search engine optimisation and pay per click.
The ascending spread and use of the media Internet creates the requirements of online marketing. By now 65 % of the European population have internet access and are hence also potentially accessible via online marketing (cp. www.europa.eu, 2009).
Online marketing is a package of measures which are targeted on guiding visitors to one’s own or to a particular webpage where than can be dealt (cp. Lammenett 2006, p. 239).
Online marketing embraces all marketing based actions which can be executed by means of the internet. Online marketing is made up of different subareas like search engine marketing (SEM), e-mail marketing and affiliate marketing (cp. Runia et al. 2007, p. 272).
This report deals primarily with search engine marketing in short SEM. (Cp. Chaffey et al. 2006, p. 373 ff.) search engines are vital for generating quality visitors to a web site. The main objective of SEM is a listing on the first page of a search engine result page. There are two main search marketing techniques to achieve this target and for making a company and its products visible through search engines: search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC). The next two subchapters will define these terms, the use and the instruments will be explained in detail in the following chapters.
2.1 Definition of Search Engine Optimisation - SEO
The term search engine optimisation, brief SEO, stands for a measure which is used to achieve a better position within the editorial result-pages of search engines, as these generate a better traffic (stream of visitors to a webpage). Those measures are usually subdivided into so called onsite- and offsite-optimisations. There are synonyms for search engine optimisation which are frequently used like web-promotion, web-optimisation or web-ranking (cp. Lammenett 2006, p. 145 f.).
SEO deals with the manner of positioning a certain website for a certain keyword, with the aim to be at least under the top ten or even at a higher position of a search engine result-page, without paying a fee to the search engine operator. To be on the top rung of the search engine results it is important to optimise the sites of a website optimally of the search engines ranking algorithms (a search engine method which determines the relevance of appropriate pages for a query after evaluating all web pages). These algorithms know and use more than hundreds of factors to evaluate a website. There are two factors which partly can be influenced directly by the webmaster, the onsite- and offsite-factors which include the internal and external links. For search engines the external links play a decisive role (cp. Schwarz 2008, p. 351).
Onsite-optimisation covers all optimisation methods which can be carried out directly on one’s own homepage and which cannot be influenced by external factors. Examples for onsite-optimisations are the adoption of the website title, the right formatting of the website with titles, alternative texts for graphics and photos and better formulations of the contents to cover as many as possible terms which are being searched for frequently (cp. Schwarz 2008, p.351 ff.).
Offsite-optimisations are measures which cannot be executed on one’s own homepage but on third web sites. This kind of optimisation is important because search engines evaluate web sites higher if they have high link popularity (a measure of the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site). If the text of these links is always pretty similar the chances are even higher to achieve a good positioning on the ranking results (cp. Lammenett 2006, p. 167).
For a search engine a link is the most considerable quality characteristic of a webpage. The reason for this is that those links are deemed to be a vote. The link is divided into two categories, the internal and external link. For an enduring optimal position in the search engine ranking it is important to develop an effective internal link. These links are referred to as links which are positioned within a domain. A link is considered as optimal when every page is linked by four other topic relevant subpages and also when every page is accessible by a maximum of three clicks. Another important factor is the link text, thus it is fundamental to choose suitable and popular terms. For instance it is not sensible to link the homepage with “home”, “homepage” or “start”. Here it is far better to find the right keywords like “company product”, “company branch” or “company main-keyword” (cp. Schwarz 2008, p. 360).
The external link, also known as offpage-optimisation is the most important instrument for a successful search engine optimisation. These links are referred to as links that are positioned by other domains. Here it is of vital importance to get as many as possible links from other domains which are of high quality. The quantity of those links has a direct influence on the ranking. But it is important to distinguish lots of links of one and the same domain, which have not the same effect of the ranking as many links of various domains which are much more effective. To be successful in the long term it is crucial to have as much as possible link partners (cp. Schwarz 2008, p. 360 f.).
2.2 Definition of Pay per Click - PPC
Pay per click is a term for paying as a website operator a predefined fee for every visitor of the website (cp. Tamm 2003, p. 498). Hence the advertiser does not pay when the advert is displayed, but only when the advert is clicked on which then leads to a visit to the advertiser’s web site. PPC search marketing or AdWordsTM (advertising system of Google) are similar to conventional advertising and hence a part of search engine marketing (SEM). A relevant text ad with a link to a company page is displayed when the user of a search engine types in a specific phrase also referred as to keywords. A series of text adverts usually labelled as “sponsored links” are displayed on the right side of a ranking page (cp. Schwarz 2008, p. 381). The left graphic shows these sponsored links, the AdWords TM in the red frame (non sponsored links are called organic results).
On the whole the main difference between SEO and PPC is that SEO covers lots of measures which can be influenced directly by a company to improve the ranking result of its homepage without spending money. PPC in contrast is rather similar to conventional advertising and does cost money at the moment a person clicks on this advert.
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Figure 1: Positioning of PPC Adverts in Google
3 Medium Internet within the European Union
The third chapter deals with statistics concerning the medium internet within the European Union. It clarifies the relevance of internet as a distribution channel and shows the accessibility of potential customers, the use of the internet within the EU and future trends.
3.1 Internet Accessibility and Use within the EU
(Cp. www.europa.eu) a survey of the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) proves that in 2009 65 % of all households in the European Union do have internet access. With 90 % Iceland and the Netherlands rank first, followed by Luxembourg with 87 % (see appendix 1). To have internet access does not coevally mean to use it regularly. So the results of the use of the internet reveal that 73 % of the European population between the ages of 16 to 24 years uses the internet on average daily or almost daily. Whereas only 48 % of the age-group of 16 to 76 years old persons uses the internet in average daily or almost daily. Especially in the Scandinavian countries the use of the internet is in a high gear, so 94 % of the population in Iceland between the ages of 16 – 24 uses the internet almost daily. The Netherlands rank second with 90 % and Norway ranks third with 89 % (see appendix 2).
The internet is also used for gaining information about certain goods. There are also differences between the European countries regarding this attitude. The next figure shows that especially the Dutch (nearly 80 %) use the internet for finding information about goods and services. Sweden comes second with more than 75 %. But also Luxembourg, Denmark, Austria, Germany and the UK use the internet frequently for finding information about goods and services for private purposes. The average of the EU 27 amounts to more than 50 % (cp. www.epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu, p. 3).
Figure 2: Individuals who used the internet for finding information about goods or services for illustration not visible in this excerpt private purposes 2009 (%)
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Source: Eurostat
The next figure shows that there is no coherence between finding information about goods and services and ordering them. When it comes to ordering goods for private use, here Denmark ranks first compared to the previous figure (59 %), following the UK with 57 %, the Netherlands with 56 %, Germany and Sweden with 53 % and Finland with 51 %. On average 32 % of the Europeans ordered goods or services over the Internet for private use (cp. www.ec.europa.eu, p. 23).
Figure 3: Percentage of individuals who ordered goods or services over the Internet for private use in 2008
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Source: Eurostat, Information society statistics (2009). Data extracted on 3rd February 2009.
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