By Suzan Gray on 2008/11/26
Before the word 'holistic' was applied to delicious smelling therapies and feel-good oriental treatments, it had noble roots in a concept originally expounded by South African statesman, Jan Smuts.
He defined Holism as "The tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution."
As search engines evolve, we Search Engine Marketers (SEMs) are noticing a curious thing - a holistic pattern is starting to emerge in many of our Search Engine Marketing (SEM) activities.
We're seeing that a holistic SEM approach not only produces healthier results, it also has the 'double rainbow' magic of presenting our clients with better return on investment (ROI) for their online spend.
Without getting into the specifics of a client campaign, it can be difficult to explain this. Instead, I will outline
5 holistic SEM principles
, which you can weigh your own SEM activities against.
Holistic SEM Principle 1
"There's no such thing as a free lunch" - Milton Friedman.
People often forget online traffic is like lunch. It is never free. Never. You will always pay some price (time, effort, resources, PPC spend, brand capital etc.) to get traffic to your site.
Most companies and SEM agencies cannot quantify what the traffic coming to a site actually costs them. The 2007 SEM Executives survey by Jupiter Research suggests that SEM activities are increasingly difficult to measure ROI on and to quantify.
However, unless you start to understand the cost of traffic, you can't begin to figure out which tactics and SEM generated traffic produce the best results or which traffic reinforces your other offline or online marketing activities or investments.
Consider the following:
- What is your traffic costing you?
- Where is it coming from?
- How are you measuring it?
- How are you converting it?
- How are you optimising based on what you are measuring?
Holistic SEM Principle 2
Traffic: Get it, convert it, measure it.
Without traffic, a beautiful website is... well, almost pointless (except, if you want to win a Loerie award or something).
Any digital presence that doesn't generate interest and attention (in Web terms: traffic) is about as handy as tanning salon in the middle of a desert.
What people forget in their awe of pretty websites and Search Marketing mumbo jumbo is that it is not enough to just get lots of traffic to your site. You need to measure it and convert it. Or frankly, what's the point?
Use some sort of analytical and optimisation tools to understand how the traffic coming to your site is behaving. Figure out why. Know it backwards, frontwards and inside out. Understand where it comes from and appreciate its nature.
Fact: Well optimised PPC and SEO campaigns working in synergy can produce increased ROI of between 7 to 10%.
Holistic SEM Principle 3:
Healthy traffic converts better and usually gives better ROI.
I've noticed something about really good SEMs: they usually wear solid, comfortable footwear. They're also paranoid about measuring things. And getting payback for their outlays.
I know these may seem like strange things to mention, but it points to a level of feet-on-the-ground pragmatism and measurability which is a necessary mindset to get good returns on your SEM activities.
As the Search Engine Marketing industry matures, we have more sophisticated tools and tactics at our disposal to generate traffic and online buzz - SEO, PPC, Social Media, Viral campaigns etc.
It's easy to get pulled into creative and inventive schemes to generate traffic to your site or campaigns. But, the questions to ask your self are:
- To what end - what outcome will that traffic produce?
- Is the traffic healthy - will it create the right image for your site in the minds of the search engines?
For example: if you create content which gets bookmarked on sites like Digg and it is of interest to many people - you could generate huge amounts of traffic in a fairly short period of time.
Is that a good thing? Maybe. Maybe not. If all the traffic does is arrive on your site and visitors simply bounce off - you are sending a message to the search engines that your site might either be spamming the Social Media environments or that your site is not relevant to visitors.
Healthy traffic is simply traffic that engages appropriately with your site, regardless of the SEM source generating it. It sends the right signals to the search engines and achieves the conversion goals you have set for your site.
Search engines are increasingly assessing sites on their usage statistics. If a site sends off signals to the search engines that the users coming to the site find it both useful and relevant (since they stay and move through the site), the more likely the site will build and maintain natural organic SERPs. And, if a site receiving healthy traffic is also running paid search campaigns, they will get higher quality scores from PPC suppliers like AdWords, which will in turn help to reduce the average bid they require for a good placement. In effect, healthy, relevant traffic will help to reduce adspend.
Not only is the ROI on healthy traffic better, but its behaviour on your site helps build long-term credibility with the search engines, which translates into good natural SERPs and better paid search adspend utilisation.
Holistic SEM Principle 4
Walk the talk: Authentic content and links.
Increasingly, as the search engines get smarter and track more usage data, it will become harder to pull off black or grey hat linkbuilding or content tactics in order to try convince the spiders that your site has many inbound links and good quality content.
When adopting a holistic approach to SEM, you will need to walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk.
Delivering good content, which your site visitors like or find truly useful, will become non-negotiable - because otherwise your site visitor behaviour will send signals to the search engines that you are faking it.
The same will go for links. Black hat SEO concepts like link farms will go the way of the dinosaurs and dodos - because other data the search engines gather will contradict the messages these techniques have been falsely sending.
Holistic SEM Principle 5
Leverage digital synergy to make your digital efforts work together
The most important principle of holistic SEM is that of digital synergy - where the sum of your SEM activities starts to produce results which are better than the individual SEM parts.
This is the seemingly enhanced ROI on digital spend you see when you run a well-honed PPC campaign, together with a well-implemented SEO strategy. Suddenly you are getting ROI of 7 to 10% more on your spend.
Or it's the exponential benefits you achieve from SEO activities when a well-orchestrated Social Media campaign is conducted.
The key thing to understand is that a cohesive approach across your SEM tactics can lead to the success of all SEM tactics feeding into each other, which sends reinforcing signals to the search engines.
Unfortunately, there is no formula for this SEM synergy and it will differ for each client or site. Getting the synergy right requires an understanding of your customer, their online/digital behaviour and a willingness to test what works on the Web and what doesn't.
The way to determine whether this synergy is happening is by measuring all your SEM activities and tracking any patterns of ROI. It's not the easiest thing to do, but we think it will be the direction in which most SEMs will have to move in the long run.
To Sum it All Up
Search engines and their indexing algorithms have evolved drastically from when you could game them fairly easily 10 years ago. As giants like Google gather more usage data (via their free metrics and optimisation tools) they are increasingly able to determine which sites are genuinely offering visitors a valuable and relevant search experience.
Adopting a holistic approach to SEM demands that you become more web savvy. However, in return, it offers better ROI and synergies, both short and long-term, and ultimately aligns you with where the search engines are inevitably headed. I believe the question is not whether you will adopt a more holistic approach to SEM... but when.
