The Oil Spill...Bar and Grille?

Bill “B.P.” Pickens owns a bar and grill called the “Oil Spill”.

He wants to start a search marketing campaign and his nephew  - who B.P. thinks is a genius when it comes to computer things – suggested he use the keyword “BP Oil Spill” to get hits from The Google.

B.P’s hired your firm to help him. You’ll want to start is by answering a few of his questions and clarifying the concept of search marketing.

“I want to do search marketing and use the word BP Oil Spill. So what will I have to pay for each click on Google to rank number one for SEO?”
The amount you will pay to rank highly on Google really depends on your sites traffic, and profit and how much you are willing to spend to drive more traffic to your site.  Some keywords run as high as $50.00 per click! I would say that perhaps the best option for you as a business is to choose keywords associated with the BP oil spill and bid on those keywords within a reasonable budget.

“BP Oil Spill is the only word that makes any sense to me for my restaurant. How or where could I get other ideas for keywords?”  

One of the best tools for Entrepreneurs and online businessmen alike is Google’s Adwords.  Not only is it a great tool for Search Engine Optimization, but there is a Keyword Tool – which allows you to enter a word, sentence, or other groups of words and it gives you a list of popular key words associated with your search terms, including their ranking, and other statistics such as Global and Local monthly searches.

“Actually, I was thinking that I might not even need search engines at all. I could just use social media; why worry about people looking for me when I can just let them tell each other? What do you think?” 

It is my opinion that while social media can be an incredibly useful tool for SEO that in the end Search Engine Marketing can really make a big difference.  I think the kicker is that we cannot rely on word-of-mouth to do the job for us, and I think this is one major misconception about Internet marketing – mostly because we can not do the same amount of connecting, and key wording that the internet can do for us – allowing us to reach a much broader audience by being associated with keywords, phrases, and links which we may not have thought of originally.

“I hear that this SEO thing has a high Return on Investment. Why is that? What are the benefits of paid keywords” 

SEO does have a high ROI, and if you really think about it the reason why is evident: it really does allow you to narrow down your search-ability to a scope that is highly efficient.  Compared to other marketing costs, SEO is far less expensive, and yields a higher return.  As far as paid keywords I think one of the biggest benefits is that the words do not expire. -- Katey Selix