[thelist] Not selling anything/no ads: any reason for search engine submission?

Keith cache at dowebscentral.com
Sat Apr 13 02:28:00 CDT 2002


At 06:30 AM Friday 4/12/02, you wrote:
>I have a client who has a site with no e-commerce on it, and no
>advertisement.  To my mind, that would imply that he shouldn't really need
>to be on many search engines, particularly the pay-for ones.  I'm trying to
>save the guy some money, but he's of the way of thinking that if he isn't on
>the search engines, his site is screwed.
>
>I reckon that if your real-world advertising is good enough to keep you in
>business and you add your web address to all existing advertisement, that
>should be enough to garner some interest for your site.

A main concern with your approach is "how well does his current (real
world) advertising work"? Good placement on search engines is essential for
some web sites, if not most. But I have two e-commerce sites that sell
nation-wide that asked us to quit wasting our time and their money, their
advertising in traditional avenues produced 90+% of their sales. Why,
because real world advertising tends to be proactive, whereas waiting for
the search-engines to deliver customers is passive, at best. Good
advertising *creates* sales. You've seen the cartoon of two buzzards, one
turns to the other and says, "If something doesn't die soon I'm going to
have to kill something". Search engine placement can be the buzzard
approach and traditional advertising can be the eagle approach, for some
web sites.

And there are web sites where search engine placement is really irrelevant.
The car dealer in Fargo. His clientele will not go to google to find a
dealership in in their hometown, they'll look in the newspaper, the yellow
pages, or catch it on the TV or radio. And tying his web site to those ads
can be very effective. But it wont make a bit of difference to him, or the
surfer in Phoenix, that his dealership gets onto the first page at google.

Ask him how many TV ads it's worth to him, and charge accordingly. He
doesn't get those TV ads for nothing, if he thinks search engine placement
is so important, have him put a value on it. And remind him that keeping
placement is an ongoing job, ask for a monthly fee. If he buys advertising
elsewhere he knows how that re-occurring expense works....

Don't try to save him money, he's your client, you're supposed to be taking
his money. Just make sure he's spending it wisely, and help him make that
choice by "doing the math". Once he does the math, you may find out he's
right. But until then you're both shooting in the dark.

You asked for a different way to say it. It may or may not apply.

keith

cache at dowebscentral.com




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