Search Engine Optimization Articles:
Let's start at the beginning: The
science behind the search engines article
will give you the basic information about how search
engines work.
This next article is a must read for anyone who is considering
building their own inhouse search engine optimization
team.
This article deals with visitor abandonment of your website. The
title is You
have 3 seconds to capture and hold your visitors
attention.
This article deals with the process to find and
exchange links with other web masters.
The 6 steps for exchanging links (Click Here)This
article deals with your
websites link popularity and what you
need to know for yahoo and other search engines,
BUT NOT Google.
The following articles have to do with other off website tasks that contribute to overall search engine ranking.
Posting
in Forums, (SEO) Search Engine Optimization
RRS
feeds, And how (SEO) Search
Engine Optimization helps
Content is
King And how it helps (SEO) Search
Engine Optimization
Article
Writing & Publishing for
(SEO) Search Engine Optimization
Branding
(SEO)
Search Engine Optimization
Affordable
SEO Search
Engine Optimization for small to mid-size
companies
Guest books (SEO) Search Engine Optimization (Soon!)
Social Bookmarking (SEO) Search Engine Optimization(Soon!)
Fight back against ever smaller advertising budgets
Living with and overcoming search marketing's flaws
It's no secret that for years savvy marketers have known that the best links are always organic links.
They're normally referred to as natural or organic listings. These links are not placed based on payment, but rather, according to the criteria they meet. They're non-sponsored, which means they're free listings that appear in major search engine.
In my opinion organic listings are superior to paid placement listings for the following reasons.
For Organic listings, In my view, there are three primary parts to a search engine: the spider, the index and the search leg. Which is generally based on relevant context, proper HTML coding, and quality inbound links. These results are based on the merit of the content of the pages and also on external recommendations, which are determined by external links that point to the website. In order to obtain a good organic search engine position, your website has to be extremely relevant for the search term (keyword) which is typed by the information seeker into the search engine. The "relevance" of your web page is, of course, decided by each search engines' own criteria. These results are not listed based on anyform of payment to the search engines and are hence referred to as "free search listings".
Almost all of the major search engines now use a PPC (pay per click) model. And why not? It's very very profitable. And that's all I'm going to say because I'd like to continue to be found on those search engines.
Have you heard one of these "tips" before?
- Most of the time it is worthwhile to pay for high positions on search engines and directories.
- PPC is faster than optimizing
- The organic competition is so stiff, that it is actually more cost-effective to pay for a good spot.
- Or my favorite, I usually recommend optimizing for organic search and until it's ready I suggest utilizing PPC. When PPC becomes to expensive you can consider phasing it out as your site's organic positions improve.
This line was given to a new car dealer in Orlando Florida. His first pay per click was running about 25¢ per click and less than a year later it was up to $3.00. Do you have any idea how much his monthly pay per click bill was? $35,000+ a month and the company handling his pay per click was getting a percentage for handling his account. Was it any wonder that his organic search results weren't improving very fast?
Which brings me to my next question:
How do you justify what your companies spend when it comes to Pay Per Click (PPC)? As you probably already know, I live in Orlando Florida and Orlando host's many trade shows. While attending a trade show recently, I overheard two gentlemen speaking about a fairly large PPC budget When, out of curiosity, I asked how they tracked their spend efficiency and what sort of Cost per Conversion they achieved. They just stared back at me, blankly. I could actually see the question marks light up on their foreheads.
I just shook my head. I should've been shocked because their budget wasn't all that small. They were just bidding up the price until they reached the position they wanted, and they did this all the time.
They wanted the number one position and that's how they justified the cost. As I was reaching in my pocket for my card, I asked them if they had ever heard of web analytics. About 15 minutes later we were having drinks and an in-depth conversation about how web analytics and proper PPC management would really benefit their company. We discussed how through careful monitoring of their PPC campaign performance we could maintain and, infact, increase their traffic whist decreasing their monthly spend.
Are you currently using Pay Per Click for marketing your website? Are you actively monitoring your monthly spend? If you answer no to that last question how do you justify your spend?
WARNING: a disadvantage of this approach is that many surfers perceive a sponsored link as a paid advertisement (which it is, even though the search engines try not to call attention to this fact), as opposed to a good organic position in the search engine results, which is perceived to be objective.
Research is showing that people who use search engines prefer the organic results over paid placement pages. ComScore and other survey companies have reported that 70 to 80 percent of users click organic rather than sponsored listings.
Here's something really telling: Earlier this year, Jupiter research found that six out of seven sales resulting from search engines originated in the organic search listings.
Case Study: A SEMPO case study reported dramatic results with SEO (serach engine optimization) for a connector manufacturer. Starting with a baseline of 15 top-30 rankings, it went up to 79 in six months, then 102 in four more months. The site is in the top nine on Google for specific phrases and has increased targeted visitors three fold over baseline in only one year.
Research: Research has demonstrated the benefits of SEO for both corporate and retail sites. Two recent surveys confirmed huge gains in conversions and unique visitors for properly optimized sites. In one case, a whopping 142 percent increase in conversion rates in the first month the site appeared on the top category page on Google. The following month, conversion rates jumped once more to 194 percent over the previous month. Unique visitors went white hot with an amazing 337 percent increase the first month and nearly doubled again 627 percent increase the second month.
So you would assume, with those kind of results, that most corporate websites are already optimized for organic results. But in reality, all the research shows that only about 12% of in corporate websites are optimized for organic listing. I've also found that B2B and big retail stores are really no better, even with the extraordinary increases reported in unique visitors and conversions on properly optimized sites.
So you're asking yourself, why hasn't all the major corporate websites stepped up to SEO? Well, my experience is that there's a lot of confusion and a huge lack of education. I have also found that it's often too hard to get funding.
Corporate America is most definitely missing the boat when it comes to organic search engine optimization. I personally can testify to how effective this marketing strategy is. It's incredibly accountable and verifiable and it provides long-term benefits.
Let me say this before we get started. Although Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is generally accepted as offering the lowest cost-per-conversion when compared to other online and offline demand generation options, SEO takes time. Once an optimized website is launched, it can take anywhere from six weeks to six months to reap the full benefits of your work.
Your first step to get listed is to build a great content-rich site. On the web content is king and without great original content you're going nowhere. One of the last steps is the proper submission of your content rich site to the search engines and/or directory's. In the middle of this process is a vital step that most companies try to skip past because they have forgotten or they may feel it's too complex. But without competent Search Engine Optimization you are destined to stay at the bottom of the search engines.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is part of a science which is applied to web marketing. It is mostly technical in nature, which combines programming with business, persuasion, sales, and a love for competitive puzzle solving. Then turn all that into a written form capable of maintaining desired revenue goals while achieving high rankings in the organic sections of search engine results pages.
It's more than just technical, its more than copywriting, even more than links, and it's definitely more than just search engine submission. But rather, it is an intricate blend of over a hundred variables into the fabric of a website. This is difficult to accomplish without a formal proven methodology and strong proprietary tools.
Basically, Search Engine Optimization is the process of altering a website so that it does well in the organic listings in search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and more. In other words, SEO is an online marketing initiative that attempts to increase the chances that a website will rank at or near the top of the search engines when someone types in desired keywords. It is a process that may take more time and effort than the paid placement listings, but one that is capable of acheiving an effective long term result.
