Search Marketing is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Have you ever watched a marathon runner prepare for a very long distance run? Months of preparation precedes a four to five hour foot race as the athlete gets his or her body ready for the physical punishment of personal achievement. In the four to five hours it takes to run 26-miles however, the athlete will experience extreme highs and lows most of us can only esoterically understand. During the race, many report a sense that there is no completion, just an endless effort of putting one foot in front of the other step after step after step. At the eventual end of the race, the athlete gets the reward of achievement and the opportunity to get ready to run another as they start the training process again.

The process of search engine marketing is very much like running a marathon. It is hard work that can reap huge rewards but the actual preparation is often unseen and under-appreciated by observers. Most high-performance athletes have personal trainers. Think of a search marketing professional as a personal (or business) trainer. It’s the job of the trainer to get the athlete ready to compete and then to guide them through the process of competition.

For us, the process starts with exhaustive keyword research. Being extraordinary trainers, we already know our client is ready to compete but we need to ascertain the right goals and opportunities. Our task is to find the right keywords to target in organic and paid search engine placements. Our objective, as search marketers, is to get our clients’ websites performing as well as possible. We want to find the clearest “winning conditions” for our clients, the first two of which are a solid return on investment and increased site-traffic.

It is no good watching them win against inferior competitors or watching them struggle for placements under phrases that are not directly beneficial to them. As with good trainers, we like to see our clients compete in the grandest events possible. We need to select keyword targets that relate to their business and the terms consumers will use to find them. In this way, keyword research is sort of like wind-sprints in that the exercise provides a foundation from which to build a better, stronger body.

Wind-sprints are only a part of the conditioning process athletes endure. Similarly, keyword research, though an ongoing exercise, is only part of our process. Once we know what we want to target, we need to get the client into a physical conditioning routine as quickly as possible. Physical conditioning, in the context of websites, might include actual alteration of web-documents in order to make them more search-friendly, bulking up on keyword sensitive site copy (text and images), and making sure the web-documents are built to provide site-visitors the calls-to-action needed to convert them from visitor to customer.

Thus far, we have developed an exhaustive research and determination regime to best find the venues our clients compete in and have booked regular appointments at the gym for physical conditioning. The next thing we have to do as trainers is make sure our athletes are mentally prepared to compete.

One of the most important roles a good search marketing firm fulfills is in providing an open education to their clients. Search and Internet marketing is an ever-changing world that can be challenging and confusing for even veteran advertisers. The major search engines are constantly tweaking their ranking algorithms and bid-prices in the paid search advertising venues are constantly changing. A good search marketing firm works to mentally prepare their clients by providing clear proposals, explaining their work (in non-geek lingo) as they go along, setting and meeting critical deadlines, and by offering assistance in implementation.

It can take months to prepare for a one day marathon. I’ve been informed that marathon runners don’t think of it that way. The actual race is part of the process, not the end-all-be-all. The point is being fit and prepared to run again and again. The same thing can be said about search marketing. It might take 30 – 60 days to fully plan and execute a search marketing campaign but once that campaign is underway, there is a lot of continuous work to do in order to keep the client and their campaign in the game. Fitness is a long-term commitment to excellence. So is search marketing.