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The Holistic Approach to Search Engine Marketing
By Scott Buresh
 
Holistic: [adj] Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the 
interdependence of its parts.  

Holistic Theory: [noun] The theory that the parts of any whole 
should be considered in relation to the whole, and that the 
whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Although the word "holistic" is often used to describe a 
particular approach to medicine (in which the emphasis is on 
treatment of the "whole" individual), it is also appropriate to 
apply it to other disciplines, including Search Engine Marketing 
(SEM). There are three major components of SEM (and many minor 
ones, but we won't touch on them here). These three primary 
parts are often used individually to great effect- but it is 
only when they are effectively used in unison that the "whole" 
can become "greater than the sum of its parts". These major 
components are as follows:

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click (also referred to as Pay for Performance) is 
very close to a pure form of advertising. Companies bid to have 
their ad copy show up for specific search terms related to their 
business. This ad copy usually shows up in a special section of 
the search engine results page, typically labeled as "Sponsored". 
Companies that use PPC are rewarded with targeted visitors to 
their websites and have to pay the bid amount for each visitor 
they receive.

Natural Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Natural search engine results are often considered to be more 
trustworthy than PPC advertising by searchers who understand the 
difference. These purportedly non-biased results can be likened 
to the articles in a trade magazine, while "Sponsored" results 
can be likened to the advertisements. A company that is 
mentioned in an article will usually garner a more favorable 
impression than a company that is simply advertising in the same 
magazine. 

Website Conversion

The most often overlooked of the three components, website 
conversion is equal in importance to the other two. Conversion 
is the art and science of determining predominant user behavior 
on your website and trying to improve it - in other words, 
attempting to influence visitors to take a specific action on 
your site that eventually leads to a sale.  

How They Work Together

While each of the above components by themselves can return 
excellent results, the power of each is multiplied when they 
are used effectively together. The results returned by any 
combination of the three pieces applied simultaneously will 
almost always outperform the collective results of the same 
pieces applied separately.  

PPC with SEO: 

Recent studies have indicated that search engine marketing 
is an effective brand builder, and this branding effect is 
amplified through placement in both the natural search results 
and in the paid results. This makes perfect sense - on most 
search engines, you have two unique opportunities to present 
your company and products/services for every search query. By 
taking advantage of both opportunities, you greatly increase 
your chances of being first-in-mind from the searcher's
perspective, at the time of the search and beyond. 

There is a very popular approach from some search engine 
marketers to only use PPC for keyphrases where the site does not 
achieve high natural rankings. While this approach can certainly 
save money, it runs counter to the branding benefit espoused 
above (since it ensures that a site listing will either be in 
the paid results or the natural results, but never both). If 
your company has a high average dollar sale, and you have a 
chance to favorably impress a visitor with dual exposure before 
they visit your site, it usually makes sense to take that 
opportunity. 

SEO and/or PPC with Website Conversion:

Often, firms are willing to spend many thousands of dollars 
to increase traffic to their site, but not a penny on website 
conversion. In a medium that makes it so easy for a searcher to 
look elsewhere, conversion is critical - and the net effect of 
raising your conversion rate from one to two percent is the same 
as doubling your traffic (and in one sense it is actually better, 
since it means that far fewer people have left your site 
unsatisfied). Conversion naturally works independently of any 
SEM initiative (provided that your website gets any traffic at 
all). But the combined effect of increasing your conversion rate 
and your traffic naturally yields more impressive results. Say, 
for example, that your website currently provides you with only 
two solid sales leads per week. By doubling your conversion 
rate, you will get four leads, and doubling your traffic on top 
of that will yield eight.

However, the above example does not take into account the 
quality of search engine traffic from targeted keyphrases. It 
is often the case that current site traffic is not particularly 
targeted (a look into a site's web logs will often reveal a 
large number of search engine-referred visitors that found the 
site using non-targeted phrases). It is not uncommon to see 
conversion rates skyrocket as the quality of traffic improves 
due to targeted keyphrase advertising or organic search engine
optimization. With PPC campaigns, you can further boost 
conversion rates by sending visitors to highly targeted landing 
pages- another example of how seemingly separate disciplines 
can complement each other so well.  

The Bottom Line

The fact that these components are most effective when used 
in concert does not mean that each should not be tracked 
individually- of course they should. But do not be surprised 
when your returns on two or more of these disciplines used 
together are greater than the combined returns from the 
individual components used separately. And this presents a 
dilemma- a highly successful holistic SEM approach can make 
extracting exact ROI figures for each individual component 
difficult, since "the whole" has become "greater than the sum 
of its parts". But as many savvy companies are discovering, 
this is a nice problem to have.

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Scott Buresh is managing partner of Medium Blue Search Engine 
Marketing (http://www.mediumblue.com). His articles have 
appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, 
MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, SEO Today, and Search 
Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to the recently released 
Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 1994). 
Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company 
(http://www.mediumblue.com/profile.html )with local and national 
clients, including Georgia Pacific, DuPont,and Boston Scientific.
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