 Internet Marketing Home |
||||||||||||||
| Web
Marketing Solutions |
||||||||||||||
| Website Advice Blog |
||||||||||||||
| Contact Form |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
The good news is that changes made to improve organic ratings generally improve the site as a whole at the same time.
Google's Golden
Triangle.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Did you know that 90% of all web search traffic comes from just three places?
|
SETTLING FOR 15% of
available traffic?
85% of all web traffic comes from Search Engine organic searches and 15% from paid sources. So, why don't people try for the 85%?
Well, here are some reasons I've encountered.
-
It's hard to create interesting content.
-
The Google sandbox effect takes too much patience.
-
People want guarantees for money they spend.
-
Requires changes to their website's look.
-
It's easy to buy traffic from pay-per-click programs (quick buzz.)
The organic searches are constantly tuned to try to find relevant, quality content. These change regularly and therefore trying to identify and "outwit" them is futile in the long-term.
Position and Traffic
So, how important is rank? It's important. Eye tracking studies have proven that each web pages has a critical zone in which people fixate when reviewing search engine results pages (SERPs) on sites such as Google.
This is called the the SERP "golden triangle." Compare the click rates in the table below to see how quickly traffic falls off after the first couple of positions. However, for Pay Per Click, sometimes it's better to be in a position further down the list if your product requires high qualification to buy.
| Search Engine Ranking |
Clicks are for first search Subsequent visits often show more of an even spread |
|
| Organic (% clicks) |
Sponsored PPC (% clicks) |
|
| 1 | The more the better if you're not paying for the traffic! |
Sometimes unqualified, expensive, and poor ROI. Depends on product! |
| 27.4 | 51.0 | |
| 2 | 19.5 | 24.2 |
| 3 | 12.8 | 9.8 |
| 4 | Rapid fall-off... | Is this your sweet spot? Sometimes better ROI and qualified customers down here? |
| 9.5 | 4.6 | |
| 5 | 8.6 | 0.6 |
| 6 | 6.7 | 5.2 |
| 7 | 5.3 | 1.3 |
| 8 | 2.6 | 3.3 |
| 9 | 3.9 | - |
| 10 | 3.7 | - |
SRC: The Role of Search in B2B Buying Decisions, Enquiro, October 2004
Google Page Rank, Neighborhoods and Trusted Links
Google
links "authority" sites. If many relevant, authoritative,
content-rich
sites link to yours, it implies you're important, and
therefore worthy of a higher ranking.
With more important sites ranked near the top of search results, web searchers have a better experience, so they continue to use Google, who continues to make money, which makes shareholders happy.
For this reason, your site needs to be neighbor-friendly. It should be designed so that you can link to other sites easily, and there should be an ongoing effort to find relevant sites that will link to yours, preferably with text links, not link pages.
But not just any site. Sites considered to be "link farms" with dozens or hundreds of others aren't helpful to your ranking. Some experts claim that Google will actually penalize your site if you have links to/from these sites.
Google has increased the influence of what's known as trust in links. Trust comes from more than just link "count." A variety of factors influence Google's trust of a web site. It's not entirely clear what they are, but an example would be linkage from an .edu site and long-term domain name registration. Some of this can help you avoid the Google Sandbox.
This is why I'm big fan of Yahoo directory and the Open Directory Project. These directories are organized by theme, meaning that a link from there can really give your site a shot in the arm on relevance.
Pay Per Click and Organic Searches Influence on Each Other.
Top positions on both organic
and sponsored links re-enforce each other, and if
possible, you should try to do well in both locations. Why? Because the visitor perceives the
"ubiquitous" presence of your listing as a good
indication of relevance and reputation. Sometimes you will get 3-4 times the click rates by having both.
As you can see, in the ideal scenario, you are able to scale back your PPC outlay as Organic SEO begins to take effect. But it has been proven that you should not drop it completely. There is benefit from having "broad" keyword presence (even if it's position 5-10) than not being there at all, and it's pretty cheap to keep that up. That can help with brand awareness, and it also keeps your skills sharp to see new opportunities.
If your are attaining positive cash flow from your PPC campaigns, there is absolutely no reason to stop them after your organic listings pick up. While PPC campaigns do not have any direct connection to organic listings, the human perception of your brand/site definitely gets a lift.
Advanced Topic: Customer Intent
| Putting the heat on web designs. I use eye-tracking research to assist with landing page and web page designs. |
What were they thinking?
When optimizing a site, position is important, but there is more to consider. First, let me introduce you to the concept of a semantic map.
From this, design changes in the way your pages are created, your tags are defined, and your sponsored links are written can be tuned to try to get inside the searcher's mindset.
I use Wordtracker and other tools to predict, as best I can, the semantic maps for your customers
~ Client Comments ~ |
 "Because of Site Creations' knowledge of web site
optimization and web site marketing, I have been able to
attain over 250 first place ranking and over 650 top ten
ranking, which puts us on the first page of all the major
search engines. "
Norman P Robillard -
business author and e-tailer |