SEO Turns to SO

Posted on March 15, 2010 by oli celea

SEO and major players

Recently, a number of web market specialists came up with some puzzling assertion: SEO is dead! Let’s take a look behind the curtains and try to find out what lies behind their declarations. In one of my recent previous posts on this blog I said that SEO – the way we knew it – would die soon. Major players like Google, Bing and Yahoo reacted somewhat slow and with no appropriate strategy to the recent configuration of the Web. Yahoo has had for a while some community centered approach, Bing is quite new on the scene and Google had a powerful community but rather for the initiated users than for average web surfer. Yahoo strengthened, step be step, on quite a regular basis, the social side of its service, while Google extended the concept of its own social media, trying to mimic/ follow the social media trends.

http://videos.webpronews.com/2010/03/11/the-death-or-redefinition-of-seo-discussed/

But there is a new factor that we should take into account by now: mobile search and mobile apps. Java ME and similar platforms made it a piece of cake for developers to build their own search apps even to implement new web search algorithms. Some of the relies on Google API but some others are building their onw search engines and web databases.  All 3 SEs giants are doing well on this  round, as they launched their own mobile gadgets (read: mobile devices) and apps in order to stand out the rising competition and enforce positions on the market.

Theoretically, Microsoft had a major advantage, at least from the start, but maybe at this point Apple took the lead with iPhone and iPad, though Google is doing well with Android and Nexus.

Why SEO turns to SO

Till now, it was pretty easy to optimize for SEs a site, even after the meta tags were out of equation: it was all about some standard on page items and inbound links (IBLs). Now, we can clearly see how the search market became fragmented, each player striving to get the best slice of the pie. Big companies understood quite fast the importance of the newcomers and built consistent strategies for all search environments. This is why some folks talk now about Search Optimization instead of Search Engine Optimization. However, those who claims the death of SEO, tend to forget that SEs are smart enough to control (which is index) the content of any major web player. At a certain point, maybe social media leaders  will try to control tighter the access of SEs to their content, or even to deny it and build their own SEs. Would that be a smart move for them?  Hard to say… Same story with mobile search apps.

What we should do

It’ obvious at this point that SEO became rather Search Optimization (SO), in order to keep up with the evolution of Web. IMO, it’s less probable that Social Media will try to get rid of SEs. Even if there are lots of search web apps, the capacity of Google, Bing and Yahoo of gathering and sorting data is huge and cannot be beaten easily by whatever  comer. Therefore, on page optimization and good content will still be the backbone for ranking well on any kind of search, as all search service providers will want to provide relevant results for their clients. Even without internal PageRank, back links are good, as they increase the traffic and visibility of a site. Placing more content on social media sites, media centered portals (video and photo especially) it’s a good choice for SO and will definitely reflect on SEs.

My personal belief is that social media is a bubble which is not going to last too long, at least in it’s actual format, but Search Engines are the strong entities and they are going to rule the web long time from now on.

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SEO as a form of Web Marketing – Tips

Posted on February 28, 2010 by oli celea

Search Engine Optimization is a part of web site marketing, aiming to achieve the best results from search engines. Optimizing for search helps to define the target and focus the web content as well as internal structures that provide maximum exposure for search engines.

Nowadays, most people asking for SEO rush into what they think is the best SEO strategy: getting inbound links (IBLs), getting over the most important aspects of SEO, which is on page optimization. If you are familiar with database queries (SQL) you will easier understand how a SE respond to a query. The issue on stake is data retrieval, given the nature of uncontrolled heterogeneous documents on the web. When a user type a query into a search engine, the database is scanned for pages that may be relevant to that query. You may see it as a multiple join query on tables like ‘doc index’,  a pre-sorted data retrieved from index, PageRank, lexicon, each table being on its turn filled with sorted data. So, even if we are told by Google that internal PageRank is one of approximately 200 factors, the Google SE anatomy shows us a more or less 20% weight of PR.

But this leads us to the importance of relevancy of a term within a web document and underscores the magnitude of  on page SEO. So, let’s have a recapitulation of basic SEO principles:

1. The best timing for SEO is at the same time with the web site design;
2. On page factors are residing in head and body of the web page;
3. Each page should focus on 1 -3 keyword phrases. This allow the web site to achieve a high relevance, very important factor, as I mentioned  previously – each page on site should be about a distinct topic;
4. All on page factors are equally important;
5. Usability and accessibility are always important SEO guidelines; optimize for users, not for SEs;
6. HTML elements have no negative impact on SEO, except special elements, like anchors, alt tags or whatever element  containing major errors;
7. Don’t try to game search engines, it won’t work. Black hat seo is just a term invented for short time frauds, as they cannot last long;
8. It is important to repeat certain expression, but not abuse them, as may lead to keyword stuffing suspicion, which is penalized on SEs;
9. Link effectively, not abundantly – avoid JavaScript links and HTML links with special attributes;
10.  Use on page factors wisely, as title, meta tags, headings, body and footer area, bold keywords, alt attributes and remember that page structure is also important. Use a sitemap, robots txt, avoid “bad neighborhood”, don’t place too many links on one page and use a different name for “home” anchor text (usually your domain name).

OK, be sure that if you use wisely all these factors, it would be one of the most effective marketing strategies with the highest ROI of all methods. Questions?  Don’t hesitate to ask!

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Who will dominate the internet?

Posted on February 8, 2010 by oli celea

Introduction

Site owners or Internet professionals have noticed lately rapid and deep transformations in all aspects related to web marketing, especially during last year. The social media boom, profound algorithm changes in Search Engines face the industry with a few important challenges for the near future: what role will play the social media in the future? Will Google see its market share shrinking? These are maybe the most general questions we can pose about the ongoing process.

Social Media? What?

Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).  Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking.  Social media includes YouTube, Photobucket, Flickr, and other sites aimed at photo and video sharing.  Social media will become an increasingly important medium for global brands to market toward oversea consumers.  social media is a long term relationship, based on trust, and trust is the key to long relation between for example, a customer and a brand.  Social media begins to look less social’ might be true to provide simple, faster, and respect to the exclusivity.

Social Media and Marketing

Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites.  SMO is a subset of social media marketing, which is promoting and publicizing products and services in general through social media.  Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.  Social Media marketing is rapidly earning a role in the integrated marketing mix of small and enterprise businesses and as such, it’s transforming every division from the inside out. For many marketers, social networks and applications were their biggest priority for their 2010 marketing plans, followed closely by digital infrastructure.

Twitter and Facebook

In reality Twitter is only used by a very small percentage of people, the rest of the registered users are dormant.  Now that Google and other search engines are displaying real time feeds from Twitter and Facebook in the search results, brands need to understand the implications.  Big brands and publishers are trying to have it all: they love the immensity of the Facebook and Twitter populations, but they also are beginning to understand the power of leveraging the passion of their native audiences on their own properties.  Niche social platforms will need to work on mobile, Facebook and Twitter to gain major traction.  Many agencies are already using Twitter and Facebook for crisis communications.  Most companies use Twitter as a PR machine, covered in a thin veil of down-home personalization.  Most marketers are using Twitter to simply drive more traffic to their web site.  With Twitter and Facebook updates appearing in Google search results, many businesses are trying to figure if this is good or bad—and what to do next.

Social Media and Business

Increasingly smart businesses are integrating social media participation as part of their knowledge management strategy. Social Media marketing is rapidly earning a role in the integrated marketing mix of small and enterprise businesses and as such, it’s transforming every division from the inside out.  Trying to mix business in a social environment has its implications depending on how companies use it or should we say abuse it.  What corporations are seeking are ways to enable faster, cheaper collaboration among employees for business benefit.  Social media is forcing an integration of work and play, in business.

Search Market

Social Media optimization is considered an integral part of an online reputation management (ORM) or Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who care about their online presence.  SMO is one of two online methods of optimizing (attracting visitors to) website content; the other method is search engine optimization (SEO).  Similar to Search Engine Optimization, SMO employs social media tactics to drive more users to your website, provides mor.  Here’s a summary of three recent research findings covering the benefits of social media marketing, how forums help brands and how businesses are employing social media marketing.  With Social Media Systems’ Internet Marketing, Website Design and Viral Video Publishing System, we can get your message on top of the world (including Google organic search) within hours; on a tiny budget.  When comparing social media traffic to other forms of traffic, such as search engine, the numbers typically are going to look rather bleak.  Because social media websites can be leveraged for links and better search rankings, they can greatly increase your site’s income potential.

Google

Google has its own social network long before the other guys popped up, and includes email, personalized page, youtube, blog network, google groups etc.  Many specialists suspected at a certain point that Google would try to impede somewhat the growing of the social media giants but actually, on the contrary, Google ranked them very well and has integrated the in the new search algorithm. It is pretty obvious that the new entrants keep at least an eye on Google pie: it’s a kind of normal, they have grown and their appetite is growing fast. Personally I think that biting from that pie could cause them indigestion or make them broke their teeth before even swallowing a bite, but maybe they want to build their onw bakery :)

Instead of Conclusion

So, give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, I mean to Google, and use Social Media for good causes. Even if people like me cannot see how long will last in its actual form a medium that aggregate heterogeneous mass of people, who barely know each other, they may find in – spite of me – their own ways.

Are you a web marketer? Come to me and I can buy for you 100.000 followers on Facebook or Twitter. Sure, am kidding you, but you can easily find people doing that on the web. It’s Social Media good or bad?  I don’t know, I let you find yourself the answer :)

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The Truth about Internal PageRank. Really?

Posted on January 21, 2010 by oli celea

As a Web developer I contributed to the construction of many Web sites. There are quite a few I worked on as my individual projects. This was my initial job, developing sites based on a multitude of technologies. The inside vision acquired from that perspective was a good start for SEO. Many site owners have difficulties in understanding that the basic part of SEO relies on the technical part, actually is mostly technical. Search Engines work with algorithms (which in fact are a set of standardized finite set of instructions) and there is nothing mystical within them. Sure, they don’t fully disclose all criteria on which is founded the algorithm, but analyzing the effects can be deducted.

Generally, since I am doing SEO, clients seem to pertain to one of two categories:
1. they don’t understand much; this is a result driven category and it’s easy to deal with them;
2. people that think they know everything about SEO., sometimes difficult to cope with.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there are several factors influencing rankings. I also underscored that SEO mustn’t be the main marketing strategy. This is a major mistake in SEO, confusing SEO with SEM (Search Engine Marketing). We are told: we want “x” number of back links (IBLs) on pages with an internal PageRank higher than “y”. Ouch!  Lately, the new trend is to ask IBLs from blog comments with internal PageRank +x of the comments page itself,  not site’s PR!  More than that, the page should not have more than 20 OBLs (outbound links). Gush, SEO has nothing to do with this habits, though it is clear that sites need incoming links (as much as possible one way). Remember: Search Engines can easily detect clustering sites, when there is an attempt to cross-link them, which lead to no link juice, so don’t try to build “link wheels” or similar strategies based on urban myths.  It is important to understand that links should be built as if search engines either don’t exist or don’t evaluate links.

Linking relationships between sites help Search Engines to find new content and determine how reputable the content might be. That provide value beyond Search Engine Optimization. A SEO campaign have to be one part of a broader online marketing strategy. Search Engines look at links and might pass or might not pass value. A non-indexed Web site cannot pass value or the page itself may be conceived so as to pass as little value as possible.

A few terms that describe the value links can pass would be:
1. Visibility – pathway to content;
2. Anchor text – links enhance relevance;
3. Traffic – links on high traffic pages tend to send traffic to their destinatioss;
4. Trust – shows that desitnation should be trusted;
5. Link Weight – called internal PageRank by Google.

Many people wrongly beliee that Link Weight (PR) is crucial to SEO but PR has considerably less impact on Search Engines visibility than people tend to think.

The IBLs are definitely overrated. Most backlinks don’t help with SEs result rankings because of a variety of reasons. They may not pass anchor text, or they not be trusted, or their anchor text might be irrelevant to specific queries. The PR a page can get from a large number of links (IBLs) may help with some search result rankings but most of PR makes little difference on search results (SERPs).

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Google Pumps up Caffeine

Posted on January 17, 2010 by oli celea

It looks like once Google Caffeine kicks in, spammy SEO companies get kicked out of the field. This was the logical consequence of already visible in caffeine avatars, e.g., real time or vertical SERPs.
Does it mean links are less important by now?  Remember, this was and will be true for present or future SEO:

Links pass value through:
- traffic;
- visibility;
- crawling;
- trust;
- anchor text;
- PageRank.

We should also recall what influence SERPs:
- what you do with your site;
- what other people do with their sites;
- what Search Engines do with their data, and
- what users are searching.

Google Caffeine will be more than Google’s an update. Google Caffeine is a great tool for advertising and it has lots of potential, it will open new marketing strategies for drawing.  If you?ve been monitoring your sites rankings in Google Caffeine you might expect your site to appear at same position in Google… Wrong, Caffeine puzzled the world most searched terms.

In a broader sense, Google Caffeine is due to the power kept by Social Media, power on what we call now news. Now news is news with high search traffic that is likely to be held on that day or at most a week. Google Caffeine is definitely about current fresh content.  Any overhaul of a Google Algorithm must not be taken lightly by SEO companies: it will have a great effect on SEO and current rankings.

Google Caffeine is  a demonstration that Google is striving to be the best in search while still watching users feedback. Check out this: if you have broken links on your website, get ready to kiss your Google rank goodbye!!! Start checking all your links now to be ready for the change over.

Google Caffeine is a new indexing structure of Google which aims to improve the user’s searching experience. It will be focused on serving up new and more relevant search results. New emphasis will be placed upon certain key website elements.

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SEO and Personalized Search

Posted on January 14, 2010 by oli celea

What is Personalized Search
Web search engines are the second most frequently used online computer application. Not long ago, most software applications did not contain a search module. Personalized search has been around for years. Expanding the people who get personalized results changes things some, but it’s not revolutionary. Personalized search has so far hidden the benefits. I wonder if the best way to proceed would be for search engines to explicitly note certain results that come from personalization. Personalization in search is designed to make organic and algorithmic search results more relevant.

Personalization in search has become a much bigger emphasis over the last couple of years. And of course being logged in isn’t the only way they could identify a computer.  However, natural search does not exist in isolation.

Information directly gathered from the user is very powerful for tailoring a search session to the specific user. Information about the quality and quantity of links to a page can be used by search engines to get a sense of implied importance of the page being linked.

Personalized search adapts itself, showing different results to different people based on their past behavior . Personalized search tries to disambiguate intent by using information not only about what you are doing now, but also what you did in the past. Personalized search is intended to improve the quality and utility of search results. If I search for “boot” I am probably looking for footwear. Personalized search has been around for awhile anyway, with favorite’s lists and browser histories. So if you’ve come across a doomsday article or two predicting that “the Internet sky is falling,” don’t worry.

Google has become a default behavior. It can save you time when typing your query if you happen to be searching for something that a lot of others have searched for before you. Google has extended its personalized search functionality To users that are not even signed in. This goes for Google users around the world, in more than 40 languages.

However, users who do not want their searches being used by Google to create personalized search results have the option to opt out of the program by visiting the opt out page. This will prevent personalized search results for logged out users in Google Search. Users don?t know what they don?t know, and the false sense of confidence can get some people in hot water. I recall reading about a person following a Google Map into a pond. Users can visit a fairly innocuous page to customize what Google considers interest categories.

SEO and Personalized Search
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to optimization of your website for certain key words, thereby improving the website’s visibility and the incoming traffic, conversion rates and profits.
Social-driven engines can be gamed, which is bad if you’re trying to do research. Obviously, relevance means different things to different people, so I think we’ll start to see a lot of fragmentation of search traffic as more search options appear. Social marketing is related to link bait, because it allows it to spread. But it is more than just link baiting.

Personalized search, in the longer term, will likely afford them that. Personalized search might even give your website a boost thanks to some of the criteria that will manipulate the SERPS. Your operation might be closer from a geographical aspect, or the searcher might be clicking back from the larger websites and sticking on the smaller more niche sites. Personalized search has the potential to represent a vicious cycle – users will click on the top results because they’re at the top, and these results will continue to be at the top because users clicked on them.

Is this the solution?
Some folks say personalized search is the solution to the flaws in pagerank and link popularity that we have all been manipulating for so long. If you are an SEO, for sure you see it coming. Personalized search isn’t going anywhere and we need to understand the seo implications of personalization . As long as Google doesn’t rerank things too much I’m fine with the idea of personalization and see how it can deliver better results. Personalized search isolates the user in his/her own little Googly world.

Personalized search basically means showing search results that are more relevant, and these search results are shown on the basis of users’ past search / browsing behavior observed by Google. Now, even if you’re not logged in to your Google Account and/or even if you don’t have a free Google Account, Google will show you personalized search results when you search any term at Google Search. Personalized search occurs when the search engines deliver results based on your personal search or web site visit history. With Google’s recent enabling of a “web history” feature, giving them permission to store your web site visit and search engine history, they are introducing results that are based on your own experience, presumably providing you with a set of results that is more in line with your interests. Personalized search is here and it’s here to stay. With the recent move by Google to make personalized search a default setting, and the multitude of patents from all the major search engines, the complexity of SEO has increased significantly.

Personalized search is forcing SEO’s to do what they should have done along all along. Personalized search adds more uncertainty to the issue. PPC might actually work better in terms of stability. Personalized search is back and with a bang promising a unique future online with its specially tailored search for each and every individual

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Strategy and theory on SEO

Posted on January 8, 2010 by oli celea

Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is a long-term process that requires you to tune up your site and get the best way into the prime locations. We may say that search engine optimization is a huge process, but not every component of SEO might be necessary for every campaign. The most fruitful campaigns utilize every type of marketing available, but doing everything doesn’t necessarily lead to success, actually, if done wrong, may hurt SEO.  It is said that search engine optimization brings customers to your door step however it’s rather the paid listing that does that. The customers that SEO brings you looks for your products/services as they have entered your websites keywords/phrases into the search engines and that depends on several factors.

You should know that SEO is very volatile and SEs can change their algorithm or drop your website on a dime. You should never consider the visitors you receive from organic search to always be there. SEO is all about making sure your site gets found by people that will find it useful. SEO is all about ups and downs – you are on the wave and the sun shines, but with SEO, the sun might shine all day long, and you still feel like there is no wave.

SEO theory
OK, there is a theory that claims itself being able to reverse engineering the SEs algorithms in such manner that may produce Web pages that will rank well in search results, this is SEO theory. This is based somewhat on algorithm chasing and might be associated with black hat SEO. But the theory doesn’t end here and includes the study and analysis of linking practices, patterns and placement.

SEO theory moved its gravity from on-page elements toward off-page optimization, which lead to some SEs characteristics to be unveiled. Today, the theory is aimed to best practices community, who generally rely upon Website marketing and Webmaster guidelines for a better structure of sites and marketing campaigns.

Much SEO theory is based on third parties studies and a empiric study of SEs behavior and may claim to be founded on authoritative documents or persons. But few public SEO tests ar developed according to scientific principles and it looks like their results provide minimal value. But there might be some SEO serious testing lead by big corporations seeking competitive advantage.

Website optimization try to improve the sites structure and layout and include the design of internal navigation, styles, url formatting and some other key features. It is certain that an optimized site is more likely to be listed on a better position on SEs than non-optimized sites. Lately, certain SEs added some other factors that are going to influence PR of a site.

Choosing the right strategy
SEO strategy is something that is difficult to define as the SEs tends to change quite frequently with new innovations and technologies. Many specialists have tried to outline the ultimate SEO strategy, the fact is that a sound SEO strategy may be different for each and every business or web property. SEO Strategy should be well documented with an individual approach and requires planning patience and long term work. SEO Strategy is the most important factor for success on search engines. Each web site it’s unique and has a different potential.

Well, many web site owners don’t like to accept the fact that their sites aren’t as great as they think, and they fall prey to the black-hat SEO entities. Tracking the success of your search engine optimization plan – and adjusting it accordingly — is crucial form the long-term success prospective.

As a general rule, trying to provide quality information and content it’s a guaranteed SEO strategy. Providing lots of low-quality content is more likely to do your ranking damage than keeping your content amount smaller.

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SEO Corner: Keywords and Customers

Posted on January 6, 2010 by oli celea

What customers expect from you
Customers are time sensitive. When they search for something on the internet, they want to be directed to the web page that is most relevant to their request, as quickly as possible. Online shoppers are more sophisticated today. You should assume that your prospects will evaluate three to four competitors before deciding to purchase.

Customer segments and marketing tools
Customer segments can then be scored based on the likely revenue they will generate from a given campaign. Online marketing sometimes can drive you nuts if you do not establish clear-cut marketing methods and prices marketing strategies. A search on Google will throw roughly dozens of e-commerce marketing tips, and funnily, most of them talk about how to increase the traffic to your website.

Conversion rate
The conversion is not lost until they leave your site. Sites I have worked on where just the call to action was changed have reported anything from a 1% to 30% increase in sales as a result. Sites that market a single product or service should be quick and to the point with their marketing offer. Your title text should be straightforward and descriptive, followed up with reasons to act or buy now.

Keep your business goals clear and simple
Business without goal is like ship with hole ! So I know you should not want your . Businesses want to cheerfully sell stuff and customers want to gladly buy stuff. What a perfect setting! Business owners are realizing that traffic to their home page is clearly, not leading to sufficient customer conversion. If you are spending money through online advertising to bring in traffic, it is worth that extra effort to make sure it translates into conversions and revenue.

Keywords
Choosing the right keywords to target traffic will significantly increase conversion rates this is why the process of choosing the keywords is the most important part in SEO.

Testing ads
Test your ads and tweak them from time to time to improve the results. Dump the ads that simply aren’t working and for the ads that are working, keep doing it. Test it and find out. Test all of these ideas now using live visitors and find out which are most effective. Keywords can be tracked by the PPC engine software. Google has particularly good tools for doing this. Keywords and bidding on them should always be monitored. A strong performing keyword in a low position needs to be moved up to maximize sales.

Content allows you to increase your conversions by attracting better quality traffic to your website online. You are able to not only increase squeeze page conversions but also click-per-sale conversions as well.

Choose keywords that reflect the content of your site.
Search engines are not only looking for relevance in key words and phrases. They are also looking for the popularity of the keywords. Search engine optimization is a matter of keyword placement in meta tags and, particularly, inside the web page (off-page considerations not considered here). So identify the right keywords and put these keywords in the body of your page as well as the Title tag, and Meta Description and Keywords tag. Search for that word on SEs and see what comes up- any of your competitors?

Adding keywords to your site just because they are commonly searched for words is not recommended. Not only will it frustrate visitors who are looking for other information, but it may well get your site black-listed from search engine rankings. Add new keywords that suit your website theme into your list.

You are aiming for keywords that are frequently used by your target audience, but do not have many competing pages. Enter at least one word or phrase. Put each word or phrase on a separate line. Enter any terms you have come up with into the noted area and let Google give you some good ideas. This tool will also show you how often your terms are searched for and how competitive the market is for each keyword.

Perhaps, not as many people enter that into a search engine, but you won’t have as much competition for your keywords. Besides, most people who enter “business opportunity” into a search engine aren’t likely to be interested in a skincare business. Perhaps more often overlooked than any step in search engine optimization, choosing the right keywords and phrases for which to optimize is crucial. If you choose keywords that few people are searching for, then you can achieve a dozen top rankings and yet nobody will show up at your site. Personally, I consult this list regularly, as it can help add bite to your articles. Basically what we have is a short list of the most popular keywords on the internet.

Instead of Conclusion
Targeting ten niche keywords is easier and more fruitful that targeting a highly competitive keyword. Traffic from niche keywords when directed to a relevant page increases your CTR and conversion ratio. Targeting exact keywords is not the only thing you need to do to get the most out of your articles. Most people that blog have smaller websites and they will never rank for the high paying short keywords like sharks, make money and so on.

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Effects of Listings in Paid versus Organic Search

Posted on January 3, 2010 by oli celea

As you may noticed in my previous post, the organic search dominates the landscape :) – 85% of searchers click on natural results. The benefits of natural search are obvious and we will learn more about it during our next researches, this is why we will try to focus rather on paid search this time. It is clear also that we are talking about PPC campaigns oriented on direct user response, as somewhat opposed to CPM branding campaigns.

No matter how strange might sound but in spite of the 85% share PPC campaigns may often prove to be more efficient when it comes to well defined marketing objectives. What Google states for adwords may be easily extrapolated to paid search in general:

Paid search offers precise targeting and measurability, as well as pinpointed reach, making possible to achieve a high ROI (Returning of Investment) on a large scale. There are 3 main characteristics that synthesizes these advantages:

1. Relevance

One of the biggest benefits paid search offers is the ability to precisely target ads to users based on their interest, as well as a number of other factors like location, language, and demographic.

2. Return on Investment (ROI)

Online advertising is thoroughly measurable, making it easy to tell whether or not you’re meeting your advertising goals. Every user’s click is tied to a particular ad, keyword, and search query, all of which you can track and decide to improve whenever you like.

3. Reach

Every day, Internet users conduct millions of searches on SEs. By using paid search, you have the opportunity to capture any segment of that broad worldwide audience that’s actively looking for products, services, information, and websites.

The ROI and PPC can be tracked and proved more reliably than SEO, therefore it has been considered a more accountable marketing channel. It also seems like when the budgets are tightening and the focus is shifting to the highest ROI search investments, the SEO strategies take over.  But results are better when the natural search ins incorporate into a existing paid search campaign. The CTR goes up and conversion rate also.

The idea is that a search page provides you with more than one opportunity to put your name in front of the user. For an experimented marketer it is an easy task to take advantage of this. Though some users don’t make the distinction between natural and paid search results, it is generally thought that the majority of users are able to recognize paid search listings. Plus, this doesn’t influence dramatically the results of SEO or paid campaigns.

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SEO and paid listings

Posted on January 3, 2010 by oli celea

The limits of SEO
Site owners often regard SEO as a kind of magic method for promoting their sites. The main purpose of this  blog is to provide a step by step understanding of what SEO can do and what it can’t or under certain circumstances the damages bad SEO methods can produce. It is only lately that the great part of site owners seems to have understood how deep PR can be hurt when buying 1.000 IBLs for $20.

We have quite a number of clients coming to us in complain with the damage so called seo specialists produced to their sites using unwise methods. The same story with Search Engine Marketing, when people end up banned on Google Adwords.

Search Engines Result Pages (SERPs) or listings can be a great source of healthy traffic, if its’ well done. However, you should understand that the marketing strategy of your site must not rely on organic search. SEs algorithm change often in order to prevent black hat seo specialist from manipulating the results. A wise SEO, however, will build a steady position of a website regardless algorithm changes.

It looks like only Google gets about 2.900 queries per second, and Google owns about 70% of search market share (IMO about 80% but this is a different story), which make everybody starving a piece of that pie.

Officially, the search market share looks something like this on 2009:

-          Google: 63.5 %
-          Yahoo: 20.5%
-          Microsof: 8.3
-          Ask 3.9 %
-          AOL 3.8%

From technical perspective, it would be interesting to go deeper into a SE query structure of a real user. You may find on internet the analysis of such a query and draw some conclusions from the SEO point of view. It’s easy to imagine what role may play this chapter into SEs algorithms.

The advantages of SEO
Try also to search on “Eye Tracking, how users scan result pages”. You will learn important facts about the structure and placement of content. Just mention that top left area of the viewport seems to be the most attractive for users’ eyes. The results show that it is a good thing to be #1 on organic search but it might not be the same story with the paid listings.

Statistically, 62% of users click on the search results of the fist page of results and 90% within the first 3 pages. Seeing a company listed among the top results of on SEs make users consider that company on the top one within its field.

Companies are willing to spend more on paid listings than on SEO. However look at the following comparison between the efficiency of the 2 listing types:

Rank Visibility from Organic Visibility from paid listings
1 100% 50%
2 100% 40%
3 100% 30%
4 85% 20%
5 60% 10%
6 50% 10%
7 50% 10%
8 30% 10%
9 30% -
10 20% -

Conclusions:
The basic ideas of the above links are:
-          don’t build all your marketing strategy on SEO;
-          it is good to rank well on SEO;
-          don’t use black hat techniques;
-          use wisely paid listings.

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