As an unregulated industry with no professional standards or uniform certifications, search engine optimization has been accused of being little more than a sham business practice by many people. First practiced in the mid-1990s, search engine optimization (or SEO as its practitioners call themselves) has tried and abandoned many methods of managing search engine traffic for Websites. Some SEO companies have cheated their companies, even to the point where some individuals have been sent to prison for their fraudulent activities. These incidents have of course been disavowed by the majority of search engine optimization specialists.
Nonetheless the industry struggles with a reputation for being unscrupulous, unscientific, and unreliable. Many business owners complain loudly and sharply on complaints Websites that they have wasted their time and money on so-called SEO specialists. There seems to be no accountability in the industry, which one organization estimates generates about US $14,000,000,000 in annual revenues — which is projected to double over the next few years. With so much money flowing to the specialists, one would expect they had some sort of checks and balances in place to ensure the quality of their work. But that is not the case.
One recent example of just how poorly the SEO industry performs is the controversial PageRank sculpting practice. This heinous methodology emerged a few years ago after Google announced it had restricted the flow of its own PageRank on YouTube to newly uploaded video listings that appeared on YouTube’s front page as the Googlebot crawled by. The result seemed beneficial to YouTube search listings, so several people in the SEO industry (notably Leslie Rohde, Rand Fishkin, Dan Thies, and Eric Enge among others) launched a movement to popularize the practice.
These experts claimed their SEO tests proved that PageRank sculpting worked, even though other SEOs such as Vanessa Fox, Shari Thurow, and Adam Audette questioned the findings. Some anti-PageRank sculpting articles literally blistered the arguments put forth by the pro-PageRank sculpting community, but they persevered. And then Google intervened.
In fact, Google intervened twice. The first intervention took place either late in 2007 or early 2008 when Google altered how it assigns PageRank because PageRank Sculpting had led many sites to lose content in the Google index. But no one in the SEO industry noticed the change. Their tests revealed nothing and the pro-PageRank sculptors only saw their own success in the aftermath of Google’s change.
The second intervention came in June 2008, when Google revealed what it had done more than a year earlier. When some SEOs continued to argue that PageRank Sculpting worked, they were called “damned fools”. And yet even now more SEO firms and blogs are preaching the value of new PageRank sculpting methods. These PageRank sculpting initiatives are dangerous, says Michael Martinez; so dangerous, perhaps, that clients may begin suing the PageRank sculpting industry.
Laws Of Similarity ‘tween concrete and virtual traffic
Weather you run a web site or a brick and mortar commercial enterprise, you want visitors to your emplacement and to drive traffic to your business enterprise, you need to be interested and do some solid piece of work. Sometimes the shortest distance from one point to some other, is the difficult way about, so you will need to get involved in one form of traffic optimization to get the job done.
A serious offering for your clients is always a easy means to get traffic, the offering can be date conditional so that you make the offer on slow down traffic days. Dependent on your merchandises you can offer discounts, bropas or any different saving on vacations as well. It is a well known fact that rebates drive dealings to both on-line stores and material stores.
If you run an online store or a website you will want SEO to find the dealings you desire, traffic from Bing is strong and converts well so that you will get more gross sales and more clients.
Just like your shop in the urban center, your shop on the net must have a solid fundament and a solid structure so both your bricklayer and your hosting company must be world-class. Like they say about pizzas, if the bread is good, the full pizza is good.
Don?t go for the most low cost solution unless you are one hundred percent positive that it is as well the better solution, you will have to stay to your first pick for a long period and you will relieve yourself from a good deal of difficulty after on.
How to set up a successful website
To produce a thriving website or web log you want content, hosting and SEO. Today it is possible to launch an online store for free and for a small amount of money you can create your own web shop with good backup from your Internet Service Provider.
At the base of your net writing is a reliable web hosting company with sound hosts and good backup. Counting on your location, it should not be challenging to find such a hosting company. If you plan to operate a blog on Word press, we advocate utilizing a Apache supported webhosting solution while different answers need a IIS host.
Developing serious articles for your web log or website is smooth if you like writing. Be certain to pick a matter that truly occupies you; you will have to keep on writing about that theme for a extended period of time to have the success you set out for. Good sites to pick up ideas and inspiration are blogs and community sites like TwitterMySpace and YouTube.
In the process of making a serious web site or blog, you must hold your website updated with the latest SEO proficiencies and be positive your site is comfortably optimized for search engines. The process of optimizing your site for search engines takes great message, draws of incoming links and a mastered server setup so you can operate all technological factors of your web sites performance including the optimum URL structure.
Building a thriving presence on the Net takes a lot of work and some attainments but with blogging software like Drupal the computer programming requirements will be kept at a minimum, so that you can focus on creating good and serious copy.
It’s difficult to dispute the rational behind the rant since Google continues to outpace its rivals in popularity with an 89% “strongly positive experience” rating from an opinion poll of U.S. Adult Internet Users conducted by eMarketer in early 2005. Google certainly achieves mass exposure and logically it’s fair to attribute a first position ranking to gaining access to the masses.
However, your success in search engine marketing should not be reliant on a single source of visitors. Although the convenience of focusing on Google is comforting in the whirlwind of new search and Internet technology, the outcome from it could be disastrous to the growth of your business.
An effective search engine marketing strategy leverages the advantages of all of the major search engines and their advertising channels including natural and paid.
Why?
Here are three essential reasons why you should expand your search engine marketing strategy beyond just Google, paid search or any other singular search engine marketing strategy to encompass the broader opportunities available for your business.
(1) Paid versus Natural Search: Relevancy and Conversion
A common strategy of search engine marketing companies and Internet marketers is to bid for the top paid search listing in Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) or Google Adwords as a way to acquire the perceived “bread and butter” position in the search results page. The concept is that a search result appearing at the top of the list is the most relevant to the search users’ keyword query and therefore will receive the most click-throughs and conversions.
However, research from Enquiro as well as many other research firms, found a “significant amount of confusion over sponsored links.” In the research conducted, over 77% of participants when performing a product research search choose a natural listing over a paid listing. Even during an actual purchase scenario, 67% of participants still choose a natural listing over a paid one.
And what about Google specifically? The Enquiro study showed that 85% of Google users choose a natural listing while 14% clicked on a paid “sponsored” link. The study stated that, “Google users also had the lowest level of confusion about what was a sponsored link on the search results page.” Compare these numbers to 42% of search users on non-Google search engines like Yahoo and MSN choose a sponsored link over a natural listing.
Also, the conversion rate whether sales or leads may be affected by the source of a website visitor’s click-through. A study conducted by MarketingSherpa called “Search Marketing Metrics Survey” in July 2004, showed that “conversions from (natural) search engine results are 25%+ higher than paid search ad conversions.” Relevancy from search result listing to website is critical however you also need to consider the relevancy associated with the ad type - paid versus natural.
So you know the insight - what’s the solution?
Easy - don’t get caught up in an “either/or” decision, as a search engine marketer you must focus on both natural search through search engine optimization and paid search.
As the Enquiro study stated, “Unless a company is willing to forfeit either 70% (in the case of natural) or 30% (in the case of paid) of their potential market to the competition they have to seriously consider both search channels.”
(2) Cross-Search Engine Builds Brand Credibility
Tempting as it may be to put all of your eggs in one basket for convenience sake, Google is not the only major source of quality website visitors. In the most recent search engine rankings issued by Nielsen/NetRatings in March 2005, Google was first with 47% of searches (among work and home users in U.S.); Yahoo second with 20.9% and MSN third with 13.6%. If you only focus on Google, you are missing access to over 53% of the marketplace.
In addition, another separate study conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings determined that “the majority of Internet searchers use mutliple search engines.” As a ClickZ article written by Rob McGann on February 28, 2005 stated, “The (Nielsen/NetRatings) study found that 58% of Google searchers also visited at least one of the other top two search engines, Yahoo and MSN Search.”
So what happens when a potential customer finds your search listing on Google yet you are no where to be found on MSN or Yahoo? What if they only see a sponsor listing on Google which they immediately view as less than relevant? How about a major slam against your credibility?
Yes - that’s right. Because of the wide-spread utility of the internet for research and consideration during a buying cycle, if you are not found across search engines for a particular keyword search, you don’t exist in the eye of the searcher as a potential option to fulfill their needs. On the other hand, if you are found across multiple search engines, you instantly receive a relevancy and credibility boost.
So you know the insight - what’s the solution?
Focus on generating search result listings for at least the top three search engines - Google, Yahoo and MSN. Because these three feed a number of other search engines like AOL and AskJeeves (for paid listings) you will gain cross-search engine exposure.
In the worse case, work on generating natural search listings in Google and perform paid search in Yahoo and MSN using Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) to achieve the broad search exposure.
If search users are adopting multiple search engines to conduct their keyword searches then build your credibility with them by appearing across the major search engines especially for your top brand-oriented keywords.
(3) Search Engine User Demographics
Depending on the type of product or service you are selling, focusing on just Google or any other single search engine marketing strategy may be placing you in the entirely wrong marketplace. Although absolute demographic figures are difficult to gather, a 2004 Enquiro study titled, “Search Engine Usage in North America” provided some interesting demographic characteristics for the top three search engines:
• Males are more likely to remain loyal with one search engines (primarily Google) while females are more likely to use more than one search engine (Google, MSN and Yahoo).
• Males prefer Google while females had a strong preference for MSN.
• For both males and females, a trusted site that offers unbiased information with the natural search results was the strongest preference.
• As educational levels increased, an affinity towards Google increased as well. This may imply that Google uses are more sophisticated.
• Google users were more Internet savvy than non Google users therefore, for technology-related products Google may be a better source of qualified visitors while MSN and Yahoo may be better for non technology-related products.
So you know the insight - what’s the solution?
Visitor behaviors are dynamic - they have a tendency to change as frequently as the weather. Therefore, do not assume that your potential customers are sophisticated and therefore reside in the Google pool. Instead, use paid search engines to test all three major search engines to generate a sense of where your potential customers hang-out. Once you find a populated pool of qualified visitors work on building your natural search listings to support and ultimately replace your paid search engine strategy.
Although it is easy to want to simplify search engine marketing by focusing all of your efforts on the biggest and most popular search engine, Google - it is business smart to avoid the temptation. Yahoo and MSN are prominent players in the search engine market and may possess hidden gems that could explode your business growth. Even more so, moving beyond the top three search engines is also important to extend your brand exposure on an international level.
By focusing your efforts across the top three search engines whether using natural or paid listings, you are placing yourself in the best position to build credibility, relevance and conversion - the main variables that lead to significant search engine marketing success for your business.
Kevin Gold is a writer, speaker and co-founder of Enhanced Concepts, Inc. Enhanced Concepts specializes in turning website visitors into leads or sales through web conversion strategies and ROI-driven search engine marketing. If you want to increase your leads or sales and get a free copy of “Understanding Your Conversion Rate” and “12 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion” visit http://www.enhancedconcepts.com