New to SEO?

"I just need to get my company to the top of the search engines."

"Can you let me have Google's phone number? I'd like to ring them to ask if they can list my website on the first page.!!!"

New to search engine marketing? Here we cut through the fog and explain why the search engines represent such a business opportunity, what Vertical Leap can do to help you best exploit that and the crucial difference in approach that can put your company ahead of its competition. Lastly, find out how Vertical Leap can help your company and your career prospects...

Search is a marketing phenomenon. In just a few short years it has transformed the way the way we locate goods and services through search engines. It has been estimated that over 85% of websites are found for the first time through a search engine. And search is now the second most popular activity online after email.

When implemented properly, Search can generate incredible results:

• a small eCommerce company has completely abandoned their PPC activities (with obvious savings) and we now help generate over £100K per year in revenue from their organic listings alone.

• an Email Marketing client – one of the most competitive keywords online - has moved with our help from being virtually invisible on the search engines (pages 7+) to a number one position for “email marketing” in Google

• a company with a technology-based product that allows targeted information to be displayed in various locations on large screens. We helped define the direction that they are now taking as a communication tool rather than as technology that was of interest and useful, but without any tangible benefits. We have improved the traffic that the website receives by removing traffic for poorly converting terms and replacing it with similar traffic levels for far improved results.

Most importantly, Search has put us, the buyers, in total control. For the first time companies no longer dictate choice and availability of their products and services. We do.

Rather than adopting a scatter-gun approach to marketing in a "one size fits all" solution, companies are realising that they need to rethink everything if they are to successfully compete online. Think of it as reverse direct marketing.

Almost overnight, it seems, a whole new sales arena has opened up in cyberspace. Just look at the figures.

FACT:
48% of users find a website via the search engines (SOURCE: Target Marketing Magazine)

FACT:
For companies who have a website and spend money on online advertising between 70%-83% of them report that their top sales channel is their website.  (SOURCE: SemPro SEM Survey, 2004) 

FACT:
Between 52-62% of online companies are using online promotion to sell products or services directly through their websites. (SOURCE: SemPro SEM Survey, 2004) 

FACT:
36% of search engine users believe that the companies whose websites are returned at the top of the search results are the top companies in that field. (SOURCE: iProspect and Jupiter Research, April 2006)

All of which adds up to perhaps the biggest opportunity ever presented to the corporate world.

Here is the chance to reach a whole swathe of new customers who are at various stages of the buying cycle, from the casual enquirer who might be interested in your line of business and what you offer, to the excited browser having completed his or her research clutching a credit card and typing in the exact model number of the product you sell.

The point is, all these people are motivated buyers. And that's what makes Search in its guise of search engine optimisation - or optimization, search engine marketing and Pay Per Click so crucial to your business and why you need a a reliable, robust and proven agency to implement it.

After all, if your company cannot be found by these motivated buyers, then there is only one consequence: you will lose that new business to a competitor.

What we do

Consider search engine optimisation (SEO). Contrary to what you might have read, search engine optimisation is not a ‘black art' requiring some magical tweaks that once implemented will "guarantee you top ten results or your money back"

Vertical Leap manages a website's positioning in the search engine results by continually assessing, organising and engineering of your website's presence in the search engines and most importantly, how its pages are perceived for relevance, credibility and reliability by the search engines. And at Vertical Leap we like Making opportunites

We'll position your site as an ‘A' list celebrity, not as an also ran

Quite rightly, you are 100% focussed on your customers in what your website says about your company and your offering. The first rule of successful online marketing is always to pitch to yourself at real people and not search engines.

However, our role is to do the same with your site with the search engines. Vertical Leap works to make your website pages as popular and friendly with the search engines as possible. It's the online equivalent of being talked about favourably in the gossip columns!

FACT:
36% of search engine users believe that the companies whose websites are returned at the top of the search results are the top companies in that field. (SOURCE: iProspect and Jupiter Research, April 2006)

In the same way as celebrities and their agents crave publicity, we'll campaign your site so that its always in the right place and at the right time.

It's our job to be the Max Clifford to your website presence and its visbility in the search engines. We'll ensure its core value is effectively marketed; we'll make sure its characteristics gain maximum exposure. We're passionate about making sure each page is given votes of confidence through relevant "off-page" links from relevant websites to make sure it moves and is seen in the right circles.

We aim to make your website a Brad Pitt or an Angelina Jolie and not an extra from Emmerdale

Get all this right, and your website will achieve top rankings. After all, think of it from the search engines' perspective: their own popularity depends on them returning the most relevant results to a search. And so if your company best fulfills the criteria of that search, then your site should come up first. It's as simple as that.

The Vertical Leap difference

The main difference between Vertical and Leap and other Search Engine Marketing agencies can be summed up by TotalPropulsion™, the proactive, ongoing campaigning of your website to improve its position within the search engines. The crucial difference is that we take responsibility of your website's rankings; we do all the running, not you.

In addition, as with all marketing activity, if there is no kind of measurement to quantify results then it is a pointless exercise. Because search engines are constantly trying to keep their results as relevant as possible, they are always changing the ‘rules of engagement' or algarithms that determine which websites reach those hallowed first page positions, and which don't.

The team appointed to campaign your website are fully experienced and have enormous resources to hand allowing them to instantly evaluate and react to these changes instantly, the minute they affect a client's rankings position in the search engine results.

Effective search engine optimisation depends on campaigning the right keywords and phrases your customers and prospects use in the search engines. High rankings mean nothing unless they convert for your business - Cosmetics just look nice, but it's results that count

The cost of not doing it

With the Internet changing so many perceptions on how consumers find a company's goods and/or services; the decline of Yellow Pages, the increasing potential of Local Search and the spiraling cost of Pay Per Click advertising, quite apart from missing out on potential new business, increasingly there is a real cost to your business if you are not easily found in the search engines. Search isn't an overhead, it's an investment. Time to find out more? 

Most websites still have not captured the wealth that proper optimization can bring to their websites.

FACT: 
Only 12% of retail sites are properly optimized, while less than 10% of major corporation sites were optimized.   (SOURCE: OneUpWeb) 

FACT: 
Of 44 of the largest software business firms in the US, 28% of them were not properly positioned in the search engines.  This is an eye-opening statistic, because it clearly demonstrates that no matter how famous your brand, better rankings are still achieved with proper search engine optimization.
(SOURCE: MarketingSherpa)

FACT:
Today's internet users are more savvy and look to search engine results to find the information they need. Website owners are just starting to recognize that proper optimization leads to more quality traffic and more online visibility. (SOURCE: Reports from MarketingSherpa-August 2006, Merril Hynch- June 2005, Piper Jaffray-January 2006)

FACT:
In 2003, PPC had an annual growth of 173%.  But, as of March, 2006 the growth rate for 2005 was only 33%.  It is anticipated that the growth rate for PPC will drop to 12% by 2010!  (SOURCE: eMarketer)  However, organic optimization is on the rise and growing at a more consistent rate. 
(SOURCE: MarketingSherpa)

Search puts you in control and is good for your career

Nobody likes a smart-alec, but appointing the right Search Agency with TotalPropulsion™ will improve your company's sales performance (and your own profile at the same time).  To coin a phrase: nobody got fired for hiring Vertical Leap.

Here we've put together a few scenarios to illustrate how your new campaign from Vertical Leap could be working for your company, but also for you....Please contact us to find out more.

Scenario 1 Getting more out of your PPC budget

Your PPC campaign had been taking up more and more of your valuable time. And it was getting harder. With the cost of performing keywords and phrases seemingly rising every week, it looked as if your ads would have to settle for page 2 positions unless significantly more budget was injected into the campaign. But now you've appointed Vertical Leap, things are beginning to change. Your Campaign Delivery Manager has explained how TotalPropulsion™ means your account is constantly reviewed and refined. Handled in tandem with your search engine optimisation campaign in the natural listings, your CDM has re-allocated budget from the performing rankings into the PPC campaign to support those listing that weren't doing so well. She's rationalised the number of campaigns and even dropped some of the existing ads completely. And already click through rates are up! Te other good news is that the savings made already have been added to the campaign to make it stretch even further without going over budget and that includes Vertical Leap's fees. But the best bit is that although you can look at results anytime you want and you regularly speak with your Campaign Delivery Manager, you are freed up to get on with doing other things. Why didn't you do this earlier?!

Scenario 2 Something up your sleeve for the marketing meeting...

It's Monday morning and you're in a marketing meeting to brainstorm new initiatives for generating new sales leads. Your colleagues have a few notes involving vague ideas about discounts and giveaways. But you have better ideas. Your ideas don't involve chipping away at the bottom line or lamely emulating what the competition is doing because you're in the know. You've been speaking with your Campaign Delivery Manager at Vertical Leap and now that you're search engine optimisation campaign has been running for a few months, quite apart from watching sales leads rack up from your company's website, a marketing profile is beginning to develop from the Apollo Search Analytics. Because every search term that is used to find your website is logged 24/7, you're sitting in the marketing meeting in the knowledge that you know what potential customers are asking for on line: never mind how your company thinks they should be selling their products, you know the words and phrases potential new customers are using.

Wouldn't it make sense to integrate and use those words and phrases in other marketing material, like the advertising and pr messages? Indeed, are there potentially new pages to build on the website to rachet up some of the more popular requests and improve your website's rankings in the search engines even further? It's going to be a good meeting...