In mid-January, Google shook up the search engine marketing geography once again with a quiet little policy change announcement. The search giant said it was going to start limiting the number of pay-per-click advertisements by competing affiliates that all pointed to the same supplier’s product page. Since the change is going to be phased in and didn’t cause an immediate upheaval in rankings, the reaction from the search engine marketing community and the companies they serve has been slow to come.

Some search marketing companies shrugged and said, “Unless you operate this sort of site, it doesn’t apply to you, Mr. Client.” Others took to the phones and started telling customers and prospects alike that it was a golden opportunity for them to break into a pay-per-click program at a reduced cost.

"...the average website gets 73% more total traffic within six months of beginning a search engine optimization program."

Internet Consultants and SEO providers Steve Wilson and Kelly Roden shrugged too. But they did so because they say the change merely proves their point and improves the value of what they do for their clients. The point, they both said, is that all companies can benefit from carrying out a more balanced search engine marketing program. Pay-per-click advertising may provide immediate returns, but organic search engine optimization programs will help companies reap long term rewards as well.

In 2004, US marketers spent an estimated $3.3 billion dollars on search ads written to attract searchers. The companies that place these ads only pay when a searcher actually clicks on the links in their ad and arrives at their landing page. At the same time, these companies spent only $238.5 million on building page content around these keyword phrases to optimize their free, or organic, search rankings.

Anne Holland, publisher of these figures and the Search Metrics Guide that surveyed more than 3,000 marketers and 30 research sources calls that figure “ tiny.” Especially when you consider that the average website gets 73% more total traffic within six months of beginning a search engine optimization program .

The search engines themselves have always encouraged optimization programs, telling marketers that the key to a top ranking lay in their content. Marketers have been testing and tweaking every variable in that content in an effort to find “the one right combination” that will guarantee their clients those coveted top spots. Every time it has seemed they’ve come close to finding it, the search engines have changed the mathematical formulas behind their ranking schemes. But even as they’ve changed the weighting scale, their bottom line has remained the same.

“Relevancy, relevancy, relevancy is the key,” says Kelly Roden. “And organic search engine optimization is the way to achieve good traffic.”

When Roden was starting out as a Internet Consultant she tried to work search engine optimizations into her site plans as an extra service for her clients. She soon realized that to do search engine optimization properly she needed to commit all her time to learning as much as she could about each of the elements each search engine uses and how they are affected by each algorithm change. Now she is one of our many SEO specialists.

Roden’s consulting practice and others like it, frequently price their services based on the number of pages on a site that they optimize to appear at the top of the free listings portion of the search results page. They also work to keep their clients on top through monthly or quarterly maintenance plans, rather than through pricing based on placement guarantees or amount of traffic delivered.

“To be really successful now,” Wilson says, “You have to follow a more comprehensive program that includes both on-page and off-page programs.”

Another of our certified SEO specialists Steve Wilson follows much of the same path when working with his clients. Both Wilson and Roden are quick to point out that not every effort, or every step of their organic search optimization campaigns is going to work in all cases.

“To be really successful now,” Wilson says, “You have to follow a more comprehensive program that includes both on-page and off-page programs.”

On-page is a term search marketers use to describe their efforts of working with a client’s actual web page copy, including page title, keyword meta tags, and so on. Those efforts are most successful when they begin with a discussion about the potential client’s typical customer.

“You need to uncover the exact search terms your prospects are using at different points in that decision timeline,” Roden explained. “Then you build those keywords into the content of separate pages on your website so that each page remains tightly focused and relevant.”

Once you’ve built a solid base of one to five pages of your site that are each well optimized, you may be tempted to think your job is done. It’s not.

The next step is to move to the off-page strategies that can dramatically improve rankings, like building one-way or reciprocal links to your site.

“Beyond building your search engine page ranking, links are the second most common way people find your site,” Wilson says.

Both Consultants like to use off-page strategies that do the same sort of double duty as link building. Roden includes optimizing your press releases for keywords related to your theme on her list of favorites. Wilson is also a fan of listing your site in local, national or product specific directories and believes the local search feature Google and Yahoo have introduced are going to play a huge role in building business for all Internet Consultants and their clients.

“And yes, you should use some pay-per-click advertising, at some times, like when you have a special sale, or seasonal notices to get out,” Roden said.

“And we always use pay-per-click in the very beginning,” Wilson adds. It may take 30 to 60 days before you begin to see any free rankings from your organic search engine optimization efforts.

Wilson half jokingly suggests his clients build a site, begin their pay-per-click campaigns, and then go to Hawaii for four months. That’s when a full search optimization and marketing campaign should begin to yield the 73% higher traffic Holland’s survey respondents enjoy.