It can be hard to get clients to see the benefits of investing in search marketing. Most businesses seem to think that by just having a website they will automatically be an online success story. This could not be further from the truth. Most websites fail. This is an unavoidable fact of life.

The one thing that almost all successful online businesses have in common is that they invest in search marketing. How much they invest will vary greatly depending on the industry they are in.

Search marketing involves marketing on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. It involves both search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC). Getting high visibility in search results can be worth millions to companies, so when you have to justify an investment in search marketing to a business then you know it’s gonna be a tough sale.

There are plenty of businesses not willing to invest in a long term search marketing strategy. This got me thinking – if I had just 1 working day to put together a successful search marketing campaign – what would I do? Is it even possible? Check out what I would do below:

Client Background – brand new client, already has an existing website that is not optimised

Hour 1

• Website Familiarisation – examine content and code. Get a feel for the website. Note down important keywords. Note down key selling points.
• Project Set-up - Set-up new account on our search marketing software. Acquire FTP access details. Set-up on Google webmaster tools and submit an XML sitemap. Set-up Google analytics. Create Google Adwords account. Pass login details back to client.

Hour 2

• Keyword Research – use keyword research tools to find all relevant keywords and organise them in logical groupings.
• Keyword Assignment - assign the most important keywords to the most important pages. Keyword research should spark off ideas for multiple new landing pages.
• Benchmark Report – take a selection of the most important keywords and find out where they rank on the search engines that are important to their business. Run a report and send to client.

Hour 3 & 4

• Onsite Optimisation - concentrate on following ‘quick win’ areas – Meta tags, headings, keyword rich content, inner linking, code optimisation.
• Landing Page Creation – each product that the business sells needs its own landing page. This will benefit both SEO and PPC results. Use the keyword research to spark off landing page creation ideas – build them and then optimise. Link to these new pages so as to pass link juice to them
• Fresh Content – create a source of unique, fresh, quality content on your site. This will help your link building efforts in the future. Insert social bookmarking and social media sharing capabilities.
• Extra Time – If extra time is needed then take it from the link building section that is next.

Hour 5 & 6

• Link Building – This is the most important ranking factor and 2 hours is very little time to build links but it has to be done. Locate relevant websites to obtain links from. Use connections in the industry. Apply for links from quality directories. Social bookmark. Give client our long term link strategy advice document and explain to them how they can help their site to improve through their own future link building attempts. The fresh source of content that was inserted in hours 3 – 4 will act as long term link bait.

Hour 7 & 8

• Google Adwords – We already have the account set-up in hour 1 and we have the keyword research done in hour 2 with the keywords grouped logically. We have noted the key selling points for the website and we have optimised high quality landing pages created in hours 3 – 4; this leaves us with only the campaign build to perform.
• Campaign Build – Create multiple ad groups, making sure to keep each ad group highly relevant to the target search terms. Create at least 2 ad copies per ad group. Determine suitable bid amounts and tweak shortly after campaign goes live if needs be.
• Phrase & Exact Match – Only use these match types. We do not have time to examine broad matches in the future so create a tight, restricted campaign that keeps costs under control.
• Google Vouchers – Use one of the multiple free Google vouchers that are given to search marketing agencies to get the campaign started.
• Campaign Goes Live

Now I am not saying that your website is going to be ready to take on the world after this 1 day of intensive search marketing work, but your site will definitely be better armed to take on the Internet challenge. The chance of success has been greatly improved. However, always bear in mind that search marketing is a long term process and campaigns need to be tweaked and web designs improved in order to achieve best possible results.

Will it be enough to succeed? Maybe it will and maybe it won’t