Google is making some big changes. Using smarter natural language engines, they are preventing "over SEO'd" sites from making it to the top. That is great for my company and clients, not so much for the big guys.
SEM or Seach Engine Marketing is the paid ad part. When I go head to head with a national player very few people understand the game. They just send money and hope those little numbers under the phone means real customers, not sales people looking to sell you something. You can't ever know for sure.
What you can know is who Google is crediting for your ads. You might have a landing page in your domain like http://replicaspeedster.truspeed.com, or you could have a landing page on your vendors domain like http://replicaspeedster.bourquingroup.com. If you are paying for the ad, with 25% to 50% markup, which domain should it go too? As your marketing consultant my answer is yours of course.
Our policy is that all landing pages are created on the customers domain for SEM. For SEO, we create separate pages based on the city the company is based in. With the exception of Real Estate Agents and Brokers, we only accept one of each type of business per city. If you are a bigger business that covers two or three cities, we'll let you "buy" all of those cities.
Since we specialize in Real Estate Office Marketing Online, we can accept two or three per city, each with a different "niche". Huntington Beach, CA for instance has three distinct markets, so we represent one agent for each. Reno Nevada, has two parts of town and then there is Sparks. The agents that try to cover it all won't make it, so we don't want to work with them. Specialists make the money.
SEO and SEM are separate programs which should be intertwined to get the most value. Mobile and Local programs should also be in the mix. Doing them all gets you the most reach and the lowest overall price per contact. Getting reach to local and mobile customers is a big part of the small business game online these days.
When your SEM company places ads that link to their domain, it is easier to set up and easier to manage. They don't need access to your website to do it. If they are doing your SEO work though, they should have access to your website to make minor tweaks to comply with Google policies and changes from time to time.
The problem with the easy route is that every time your ad is clicked the SEM company gets the hit, not your website. I have had clients say they don't want to be tied to an adwords campaign, and this is exactly how you end up tied to paid ads forever. Your ads and the the SEM companies website will be out pacing your own website if they get more clicks on your search terms. If you stop paying, they get the clicks for another client. You are now tied to them. It can take 3 months to a year to fix.
As an SEM of course, my little company will probably never make page one on Google for search marketing agencies because the big 10 companies all have their clients campaigns linked to their domains. This process is giving them better ranking on Google automatically, which leads to more customers because they are easier to find than the little companies like mine. Word of mouth is 95% of our new business each year.
This arrangement is fine with me. I am glad to have the scraps and do a better job for my clients without the hassles of large offices, thousands of employees and in a couple of cases, large investors trying to run the company. At the end of the day, I know my clients are getting the best marketing they can buy online at any price. What are you paying for?
