SEO vs. SEM

[greeneagle]

SEO vs SEM

I have had calls from 2 different top event ticket brokers recently.

After talking with them, I found that most of them have multiple domains and sites.

That particular industry and many others are dominated by various controlling games, such as a giant dynamic database that pull in every event in the US, including sports concerts etc..

There are a handful of those types that dominate several markets in several industries. At least that is my understanding. Some of them "provide" (sh_t out) replicated sites for anyone wanting to come along and "play the game". Unfortunately though, later on, a great number of those site owners find out that their chance at generic SERP traffic can't even be helped with a defibrillator.

What do you do then? They buy more Sites to pump out anything they can, caught between no hope for generic SERP and the high cost of PPC.

Many of them, if my understanding is correct, are being squeezed for every drop they have between flat lined SERP and the high cost of PPC in an extremely competitive environment.

When they call us...They come naked... not even bearing stats for us to look under the hood, because they also got sucked into basic hosting provided by some of their market dominators.

One of the questions I would like to address here is:

How do you SEO/SEM a site that has relatively no chance in hell at generic SERP, being replicated hundreds or thousands of times over?

SEO is almost completely out of question due to limited access to dynamic template changes and no stats available.

Unfortunately, the stats issue also limits custom SEM, to some degree. We really need to look under the hood there.

Let’s get real here! This is happening throughout many industries including; ticket brokering, real-estate, travel, lodging, pharmaceuticals etc…

We have taken a client engaged in a highly competitive market (wholesale general merchandise) from 2 million to 6 million page views/month with SEO alone, but these guys are strung out with nothing, dangling without much recourse for SEO.

How do you SEM that mess while sliding in under the cost of current PPC programs?

Show me an SEO/SEM program that evaluates these scenarios with that kind of discernment and I will buy it today! I haven't seen anything but "potted meat" when it comes to SEO/SEM programs.

That’s a huge market, ripening day by day!

I would like to hear your thoughts.

Thanks,
Ken

[ctabuk]

Great post, now this is something that I really do get interested in.
You have 200 Companies all vieing for the same market position, it can be theatre tickets, it can be Mortgages, Cars - SEO Guys! Now there's a thought, Holidays/Vacations a huge market. So they get into a PPC war and Google rubs its hands and so do all the other PPC Guys. Some have deep pockets and others don't, so the dollar bill works over and over again. Unless you do something that I thought of and posted here years ago.
INITIALS
OK, here we go. Your'e in business and you are selling Widgets and so are hundreds of other Companies - So you go to Google and you look for obscure Initials with weird results. Say TGWC - now I have not had time to check that out, so I'm firing from the hip here TGWC would be The Great Widget Corporation or whatever you decide to call yourself (subject to Corporation names etc, but you get the idea) You optimise the site for those initials, mine are CTAB and CTABUK (obviously LOL) - WHY????

Here's why - once you have done all of your Directory submissions using those Initials in your site description and have got all of your product pages named and indexed, you join the forum world and you post with those initials -oh, so that's how you did it! Yup - £120 million pound business (loans) and a half billion funding project in hand, so I do know something about this. Once you've got established and listed ( Now - some bright spark is about to ask - who will search those initials when they want to buy widgets?) Good question, your site is now well and truly listed for those initials.
The first thing you do is you run a loss leader, undercut your competion, even at a loss (most loss leaders have the price increased prior to the 40% off so as to appear to be making a loss)Then the fun starts. Run a series of trade adverts, but without miles of text -text costs money in broadsheet advertising -'Looking for Widgets? Low Cost Widgets? Search TGWC (or whatever) on any Search Engine. You are on page one, let your site do the selling for you. You are also creating a logo image - and more important a short title brand name.

[JuniorOnline]

This is what I call an online marketing strategy. I have been doing SEO for 9 months now, and this is the best post ever!!!

thanks a lot guys... :)

[incrediblehelp]

Green,

To understand the question clearly here are you just wondering:

1. What type of business models do all of us SEOers turn away? For example we wont sign a client in the "Prescription" industry because of spamming, legalities and competition.

2. How do you determine that this specific business is not attainable or suitable for your personal SEO skills?

[mikmik]

generic SERP

What is that?

[greeneagle]

Incrediblehelp,

I was simply speculating by the calls coming in that it may be very difficult if possible at all for some replicated sites to ever gain generic SE traffic.

Most every Site owner I have spoken to that owned one or several Sites generated by these site mills have pretty much conveyed the same story.

After the last couple of updates, the problem is, that most of the site owners in those niche industries have driven up the price of PPC, so that they are being squeezed fairly tightly around the neck.

These Site mills have a particularly tight stranglehold about their patrons necks in that the site isn't really open for change, through the mill, who also host them. Obviously that precludeds SEO to a great extent.

The prior most viable SEM alternative (PPC) seems to be being squeezed out in the ensuing competition and they are looking for alternatives.

There obviously are some SEM alternatives, and I have some ideas, however similar scenarios are being played out in different niche industries and I thought I'd throw this challenge out and see what came out of it.

Ken

[greeneagle]

mikmik:

generic SERP
What is that?

Good question mikmik, I was just setting and contemplating that during dinner earlier today.
Ken

Edited hours later:

mikmik, I don't how to break this to you, or how to take it myself, but GOOGLE may have answered our question today:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=61239

Ken

[freehits]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

1. What type of business models do all of us SEOers turn away? For example we wont sign a client in the "Prescription" industry because of spamming, legalities and competition.

Funny you mention this, I was just eyeballing the searches around "ephedra" and "ephendrine" keywords and must say I have stubled across spam i didnt know was even plausible. I was getting redirected by the caches everytime i tried to see what cloaked wervios they are feeding msn and google.

take a peek at http: // ephedra. galaxy99.net /
Which ranks well on msn, and has about 29 listed pages in google, even thogh the cache will redirect you to one of two search result pages. One of the fake pages tries to look like MSN search. To try to rank in this market may be possible, but its like opening a strip club next door to the "bada-bing", do I really want to get involved and compete with this kind of garbage. If i do get to #1 on MSn for example, some 3rd world cloaker will google bowl my url the next day.

[greeneagle]

"Hard", "Hard" well made points Hoptoo, very well spoken.

Ken

[incrediblehelp]

Sure I wont take on clients like the one hoptoo mentioned, but I sure do have test websites that attract difficult to rank searches like those mentioned above.

[aaron2005]

What did you guys just say?

*Goes off to fire down another cup of coffee*

[DrTandem1]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

mikmik:

Good question mikmik, I was just setting and contemplating that during dinner earlier today.
Ken

Edited hours later:

mikmik, I don't how to break this to you, or how to take it myself, but GOOGLE may have answered our question today:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=61239

Ken

Old "news" that I predicted back in October:

http://www.drtandem.com/gamble.htm

[crazyman168]

good post................






__________________________
hxiaoshuo
xiaoshuoyueduwang
wangyouxiaoshuowang