How To Measure Search Engine Marketing ROI


According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), advertisers spent $4 billion in 2004 on search marketing programs and are expected to spend 39% more than that this year.

Search engine marketing appears to be a great way to advertise but is it right for you and your business? If you are not already employing search engine marketing(SEM) for you business is there a way to forecast the return should you decide to invest in it? Is there a way to measure the results you are getting if you have already invested in SEM?

The answer is mostly yes. By utilizing data discovered in recently released research surveys and with the help of a few free online tools you can put begin to take some of the guesswork out of search engine marketing ROI.By using Overture's free keyword suggestion tool (inventory.overture.com) you can get an idea of how many times a keyword is getting searched each month. Another free tool to use is called Good Keywords and can be downloaded from www.goodkeywords.com.

Let's say for instance that you are a mortgage broker in the Denver Colorado area and you are interested in getting more leads for your business. You have a website and are considering search engine marketing to bring in some new leads. You get a quote from a search engine marketing provider who can guarantee top 10 positions among the major search engines for 6 months for your keywords for $1,500.00.

The question now becomes is it worth it to you to spend the $1,500.00. To figure this out we need to look at some numbers.

Berrier & Associates estimate that 65% of all traffic generated by a search in a search engine will go to the sites listed within the first 10 results (first page) returned for that search. By using Overture's keyword suggestion tool you discover that the term "Denver mortgage broker" gets approximately 540 searches a month.

Using this criteria a first page position for "Denver mortgage broker" would bring you approximately 65% of 540 searches a month = 350 visitors to your site each month. Having a compelling title tag in your website's pages might even boost this visitor number since the title tag is what appears as the clickable link in the search results.

The formula we just used would then be applied to all the other keywords you are targeting such as "mortgage Denver" which gets approximately 2,600 searches a month or "mortgage company Denver" with 466 searches a month. A first page placement for any of those would yield similar results.

So let's say we just use the "Denver mortgage broker" key phrase as our example with its estimated 350 visitors a month for a first page position. You would now need to know what your website conversion rate is. The website conversion rate is the ratio of leads or sales you get per visitor amount. The average website conversion rate is about 1-2% or 1-2 leads or sales for every 100 visitors according to Shop.org.

If your website conversion rate is average then you would expect on average 2-3 good leads from your site each month for that one first page listing. Then depending on your sales conversion rate which is the number of sales per leads you get on average multiplied by your average sale price you can begin to calculate what your return might be.

So let's say as a mortgage broker you make roughly $2k on each deal you broker and your sales conversion rate is 1 sale for every 3 quality leads. In any given month then you could estimate 1 sale at $2k out of the 3 quality leads generated from your website which came as a result of the 350 visitors you got from being on the first page of Google, Yahoo or MSN for the term "Denver mortgage broker".

You paid the search engine marketing company $1,500.00 dollars for 6 months of first page listings. From one of those first page listings you stand to gain $2k x 6 months = $12,000.00. That sounds like a really good return for money invested.

In closing the methodology outlined in this article to calculate search engine marketing ROI is by no means 100% accurate due to several factors but it is a good way to get a "feel" for what you might get back for your marketing dollars. Its also a way to get business owners to start thinking about how to better track their e-business. I have just finsished building a quick and easy seo tool that will enable you to do these calculations automatically available for free at this link SEO Tool

Copyright 2005 Charles Preston. All rights reserved.

Charles Preston is an Austin based SEO with 7 years of industry experience. Charles is the President of Click Response an internet marketing company focused on teaching small businesses how to get the most out of their internet marketing. For a free consultation or more information please visit http://www.clickresponse.net

The SEO Game - Do You Play It?


Most people do not think of SEO as a game. Let me take 5 minutes of your time and explain how SEO is simply a game of Chess.

I remember as a teenager learning how to play Chess for the first time. Man it was complicated. Each piece moved different ways. You couldn't take shortcuts and get the game over with. You had to really think about your moves and watch your opponents moves as well. With each move they made, you had to analyze your next move and even the best plans of attack had to be readjusted constantly. The game was always changing depending on who you played against. But once you understood the game, once you understood all the components of the game, you were hooked.

The same goes for SEO.

The First Step to playing the SEO Game is understanding the game.

Read the rules of the game. Understand what is allowed, what is not allowed, and things you must avoid. Research how people will find you. Know what your keyword/keyword phrases are. Who will be coming into your website? Who will you be marketing to?

Google Rules and Guidelines can be found at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Yahoo Guidelines can be found at http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-05.html

MSN Guidelines can be found at http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=
SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSite.htm

Setting Up Your Chessboard (or website)

Set up your website correctly from the start. Make sure all the pieces of your website are were they belong. For instance, place your Title tags and Meta tags into your headtags. Create clean style web pages from the start. Move your javascripting and css off the page and into their own file so that the search engines can get to what is important right away.

Playing The Game

In Chess, the rook and the bishop do not move the same way on your chessboard. Understand how each piece of the game moves and works and use them to help you win the game.

The same is true for your SEO. For example, many people do not use their head tags correctly. They try to stuff as many keywords as they can think of into the Meta Keywords tag. This will not get you far in the game. Try to be focused in your keywords. Use 3-5 keyword/keyword phrases at most and never use the same word more then 3 times.

Make sure you are using all the pieces of the game. Title tags, Meta Tags, H1 Tags, Content, Links, Relevancy, etc. Some people think when playing chess that the pawns are really of no use. You can lose them, you can keep them, no big deal. The same can be said about Meta Tags. However when playing against Yahoo or MSN, they will take advantage of your pawns. More so then when playing with Google. But why would you not use these pieces in a game? Why would you not take advantage of every single piece and make each one as important as the others. Would you have a better chance of winning if you used each piece of the game instead of only a few?

Know who you are playing against.

The more information your have about your opponent and how they play can greatly increase your chance of beating them. The same can be said about search engines. Understand how they work and how they find sites. Knowing your opponent can help you to win. But also keep in mind that as time moves on, your opponent is getting stronger. They are constantly changing their game to keep up with the new breed of chess players. You may be able to beat them today, but in 6 months, they may have a new strategy. Keep a close eye on them and change your game to adjust to theirs.

Keep in mind that your opponent will never tell you how they are going to play the game. There are secret strategies that only they know. Many will guess as to what those are, but nobody will ever know their strategy 100%.

Do Not Take Shortcuts Just To Get The Game Over With

The same can be said about using spam techniques to get your site listed quickly and to the top. Spam techniques may work for a short time but once you get caught, you are banned from playing the game. Google states this about spam, "Trying to deceive (spam) our web crawler by means of hidden text, deceptive cloaking or doorway pages compromises the quality of our results and degrades the search experience for everyone. We think that's a bad thing."

Basically spamming is a way of cheating the game to win faster. Remember chess is not a quick game. It takes time and patience. No one wants to play with a cheater....NO ONE.

Capturing the King - CHECKMATE

Content is King. Content is the way to win the game. Without capturing the content, you will lose the game. Each of the search engines look for relevancy within your page. If you state that your page is about red dogs with hats, and you have a page written about blue cats with shoes, it does not work. Keep your pages focused. If you are writing about red dogs with hats, write about those red dogs with hats only. If you also have red dogs with boots, then give them their own page and write about them boots separately.

Keep the pages focused and on track. The title tag would be about the red dogs with hats. The meta tag keyword would be about the red dogs with hats. The meta tag description is a nice 250 character description about the red dogs with hats. Use a H1 tag high on the page that has red dogs with hats. You can use css tags to make the h1 tag match your site. Then write clear, focused, original content about the red dogs with hats. Start out with 3 paragraphs and mention the red dog with hats once in each paragraph. Watch your rankings. Add additional content if necessary but do it slowly. Make notes of all the changes that you make. If something does not work, go back and undo it. Keep adding fresh and unique content to your site.

Do not let your site go into stalemate.

Once you look at SEO as simply a game, it makes it that much more exciting to play. And it's even more fun TO WIN!

Shawna Fennell is the owner of 1 Choice 4 YStore. A company dedicated to helping Online Stores. Please visit http://store.1choice4ystore.com for free advice and tips on SEO, Marketing, Design, and much more. You can also sign up for daily tips athttp://blog.1choice4ystore.com

Blogging, Spamming, and Blog Spam


Email marketing once proved to be immensely effective, but the greedy and idiotic polluted the well by spamming the planet with everything from weight-loss products to sexual enhancement drugs and beyond. Because of the stench, filters and laws have been created to attempt to fix the problem, but still the Internet is polluted with more and more junk each day. So obviously, filters and legislation are not the solution, for consumers, publishers, or marketers.

Everyone has been left scratching their heads and asking... What do I do to avoid this crap and make the Internet mine again? How do I build my business and promote it without having to deal with email? After all, what's the point in spending money on email advertising campaigns when there is no guarantee that the emails will even reach their destination?

Enter... RSS.RSS is the perfect communication tool. It's applications far outreach those of email for marketing, publishing and personal communications. RSS is the answer to our communication woes.

Using RSS to create blogs for communicating with customers, affiliates, partners and family is far and away more effective and reliable than email ever was. As a marketing tool, it really packs a punch that email never could. The reason being is that blogs are targets for search engine spiders. They are themselves, a web presence, whereas email never was and never will be.

Just like a web page, search engine spiders hit blog pages and rank them. The difference between the static web page and the RSS feed is that web pages seldom update their content, RSS feeds, by design, are created to be dynamic and provide regularly updated content, in theory, depending on the blog owner of course. This prompts the search engine spiders to revisit and rerank them more often.

For writers, publishers and and anyone else with something to say, RSS has been a godsend. It has provided the answer to the question of what to do now. Blogging has replaced email for those who have become frustrated with dealing with the problems of email publishing and marketing. Publishers can now get their message out to their subscribers without the headaches associated with sending email, or posting static pages to the web. Even publishing an ezine to the Internet as a web page required the sending of email to make readers aware of the newest issue.

As with anything, there is a right way and a wrong way to do things, and blog publishing is no exception. Now that RSS has become the rage for marketing purposes, several people have taken it upon themselves, in the name of the almighty dollar, to pollute this well too. The newest rash of 'RSS tools' have created some issues of ethics and and credibility. With perhaps the honest intention of being search engine optimization tools, or an automated system for fetching content, this batch of stuff has too much potential for misuse. The result of misuse of these types of programs can be devastating. Already some of these programs have been banned from places like Google and Blogharbour because of this potential.

Programs such as these in the hands of the inexperienced, will cause future problems for bloggers down the road. More and more pages generated using these programs will be banned, and getting banned, right out of the gate, for a newbie, would be a sad thing indeed.

The right way to use blogging to increase your search engine presence is to publish good content. Period. Provide useful information to those who are looking for it. Become someone's trusted information provider, and you have a customer for life. Publish keyword rich articles that give the searcher what they are looking for... solutions for problems.

Publish your information regularly. Weekly is good, daily is better. Sending pings and things too often will get you blacklisted too.

And here is where networking comes in... Find content for your blog from article banks, where authors submit their work for reprint. List yourself in databases as one who accepts article submissions. Get to know other authors and publishers and share content with them. Syndicate your blogs in exchange with other bloggers. Watch your world explode with new opportunities.

Automation in business is a good thing, but it has its place. Nothing beats human communication when dealing with people and creating partnerships. Do you want to talk to an autoresponder? No, and I doubt anyone else does either.

Some of the new programs designed for the automation of article collection have legal issues to consider. The biggest being copyright infringement. Not every author wants their work reprinted, or they require control over where their work is displayed. (Which is as it should be.) Without manually seeking your content, you could very well find yourself being served papers for publishing someone else's work without permission.

Plagiarism is another issue. If you don't follow certain rules for reprinting contributory work, you stand to be hounded for plagiarism. Yet another sticky issue.

Some of the new programs mock safelists, or resemble FFA sites. Before long, those types of blog pages will become banned as well. Search engines will figure out a way to block non-informational blog pages, those that carry nothing but links or classifieds. (Is your head sore from hitting that brick wall yet?)

Still, there are other programs designed to post spam to blogs using the comments feature. This is referred to as comment spam. The only solution thus far, to battle comment spam, is to disallow your readers the option of leaving comments. This is a bad thing, because allowing your readers to interact with you is supposed to be one of the benefits of using this form of communication.

The makers of these programs may have had good intentions to start with, but have ultimately created Frankenstein's Monster. Many are stating that their programs are not spam, because they do not involve email. That is a cop out if I ever heard one. Spam is the transmission of unwanted stuff, whether it is sent to your inbox, or your blog, or even the search engines themselves. Search engines want relevant content, not pages of of keywords, or links. So feeding them page after page of nonsense is spam.

Everyone hates spam, except the spammers, so why be a part of something loathed by so many and embraced by a few? Bad business if you ask me.

The only real way to combat these issues is to simply not use the programs themselves. Do your due diligence and create a reputation as a trusted information provider, not a blog bomber, and your business will prosper. Using these programs will ultimately diminish your reputation and your livelihood.

Your customers are looking for information, a solution to a problem. Give that to them, not just endless pages of links. You will achieve your rightful spot in the ranks, and you stand a far better chance for longevity. There are good RSS tools available, you just need to look beneath the sales copy to find them. And if you are new to RSS and blogging, do some research. Find someone who knows, really knows what RSS is and how to use it, and ask some questions. Don't go out and spend buckets of money on something you're not sure how to use, because you could be doing yourself more harm than good.

A few good books to read some solid information on RSS and blogs...

RSS, Blogs and Syndication

RSS Advertising Secrets

Taming The eBeastie

Copyright © 2005

The Trii-Zine Ezinehttp://www.ezines1.com

Trina L.C. Schiller - http://www.trinaschiller.ws

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step Seven ? Website Submissions


Welcome to part seven in this ten-part search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of human testing. In part seven we will cover the best practices of website submissions, where to submit your website to, and how to do so.

With services offering to help you get more traffic and higher search engine positioning by submitting your website to "18 Bazillion Search Engines For Just $19.95 Per Month!" and other such claims, there has grown much confusion around website submissions. In this article we will clear up many of the misconceptions around submitting your website and may even save you "Just $19.95 Per Month!" in the process.

Over this series we will cover the ten key aspects to a solid search engine positioning campaign.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

1. Keyword Selection
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/keywords.htm)

2. Content Creation
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/content.htm)

3. Site Structure
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/structure.htm)

4. Optimization
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/optimization.htm)

5. Internal Linking
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/internal-linking.htm)

6. Human Testing
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/human-testing.htm)

7. Submissions

8. Link Building

9. Monitoring

10. The Extras

Step Seven ? Website Submissions

While there are definitely more critical areas of the website optimization process there is perhaps no area subject to as much misinformation and to such a vast audience. Here are some common misconceptions that are often believed about search engine submissions:

1. You need to submit your website often to keep it indexed by the search engines

2. You need to submit your website to thousands and thousands of search engines to get decent traffic

3. Submitting your website often will keep you at the top of the search engine rankings

These beliefs are all incorrect and those who can make a quick buck selling this disservice perpetrate them. If you have not recently received an email offering to "Submit Your Website To More Search Engines Than There Are Websites On The Internet For Just $19.95 Per Month!" then I can pretty much guarantee that you will in the not-too-distant future if your email can be found somewhere on your website.

An irony of this can be found in Google's webmaster area where they note:

Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

"Dear google.com,
I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

Good advice as I'm sure Google has their website submissions taken care of. Just because you receive such an email, doesn't mean that you're missing out on anything. Let's first look at a breakdown of which engines are responsible for which traffic.

According to research the major search engines are responsible for the following percentages of traffic as of June 2004:

Google ? 41.6%
Yahoo ? 31.5%
MSN ? 27.4% (MSN draws their results from Yahoo!/Overture)
AOL ? 13.6% (AOL draws their results from Google)
Ask Jeeves ? 7.0%
Lycos ? 3.7%
Netscape ? 3.0% (Netscape draws their results from Google)
AltaVista ? 2.7% (AltaVista draws the Yahoo!/Overture)

Source: Neilson/Netratings (http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/)
Note: These numbers total over 100% as people may use multiple search engines if they don't find the information they are looking for at the first one they try.

So what does this tell us? This tells us that the very vast majority of search engine traffic does not come from many thousands of search engines but rather, relatively few. This would lead to the obvious questions, "Is it worth paying to be submitted to thousands of search engines?" The real answer, "No."

Then How Do I Submit My Own Website?

Automated search engine submission systems simply access the existing and readily accessible "Add URL" pages of the search engines and automatically submit your site. You can do this yourself simply by visiting the search engines and submitting through these same pages.

To simplify this process you can visit the "search engines" page on the Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning website (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/info/search-engines-major.htm) where we link directly to the submissions pages of the major engines.

But What About The Other Engines? Surely They Provide Some Traffic?

Quite honestly, they may. You may get a visitor or two. Is it worth $19.95/mth or some such amount? No. You can get a better dollar/visitor ratio on any of the many PPC engines out there.

An additional point to note is that you may want to actually visit some of the lists of engines on the sites offering these services to you. You will discover a couple of important facts:

- Many of these so-called "search engines" are not engines at all but rather FFA (Free-For-All) pages and classified ads sites. They will not help your rankings, you will not see traffic from them and your listing will probably last about as long as spam in your Inbox.

- Many of the actual search engines and directories are topical. What this means is that they are focused on a single area and unless your site coincidentally is about space exploration, topographical mapping, etc. you won't get listed. Submitting should not be confused with "guaranteed listing". Submitting your site to thousands of engines is not the same as getting your website indexed on thousands of engines.

The Submission Myth

The truth of that matter is, submitting your website at all can realistically be considered a waste of time. Aside from a few key general directories (DMOZ, Yahoo, etc.) and a number of SEO directories, we did not submit the website www.beanstalk-inc.com to any of the major search engines. It's true, not a single submission.

Are we indexed? Yes we are.

How did we get indexed without submitting our site? If you take the time that you would be spending submitting your site and spend it instead finding quality inbound links (which we will write about next week) your site will be indexed and much quicker than you think.

You've probably heard the term "search engine spider". Search engines crawl websites. This means that they visit a page, follow all the links on that page and so on. If you have a link on a website that is already known to the search engines it is only a matter of time before your website will be found by default. If fact, when the Beanstalk site went live and the first link was established to it, it did not take the weeks that are estimated through the use of the submissions pages for our site to be found. The homepage of beanstalk-inc.com was index by Google three days after the site went live and the other major engines followed within a week or so.

Final Notes

If there are any points that I hope you take away from this article they are the following:

1. Automated search engine submissions services are not worth the money they charge.

2. You do not need to be submitted to thousands of "search engines". The vast majority of traffic comes from the top few.

3. You will want to consider whether it is even worth the time to submit to search engines or whether that time could be better spent building quality, relevant links to your site and submitting your site to the major and topical directories.

An additional failing to the automated submissions systems not covered above is their inability to take into consideration the exact characteristics of your website for their directory submissions. When you're submitting your website to directories you will have to choose the exact category your site falls into. Most directories have slightly different category hierarchies and the more exact you are in your submission, the higher the chance you will be listed. Automated systems can never be as exact across multiple directories as a human can.

Submitting your website, even correctly, will not guarantee you top rankings however it will leave you with money in your pocket to spend on other promotional endeavors that may actually produce a solid ROI. And THAT'S what it's all about.

The rankings? You'll have to read the other nine steps of the series to find out how to attain those.

Next Week

In part eight of this search engine positioning series we will cover the importance of link building, how to attain high quality, relevant links to your website, and the tools to reduce the time it take to do so significantly. With the importance of inbound links to your overall rankings you won't want to miss this very important step in the website optimization process.

Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning. He has been optimizing and ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may have about your website and how to get it into the top positions on the major search engines. To keep informed about what going on in the SEO world you may also want to visit the newly created SEO blog on the Beanstalk website.

Search Engine Optimization, Positioning: Is Chasing Google Algorithms Worth It?


Google is the undisputed heavyweight champion of search engines. Most SEO (search engine optimization) companies pitch their tent around Google. Apart from being the king of search engines, unlike Yahoo and MSN, Google does not serve sponsored results on top of its search results, drawing away considerable attention/traffic away from the search results. Hence ranking high with Google is worth all the trouble it takes to get there. Little wonder then, that most SEO revolves round Google. When Google sneezes, the SEO world catches cold. When Google tweaks its search algorithms, SEO experts scamper back to the trenches to gaze at their crystal ball, to figure out what Google is up to.

What makes Google tick is simply because they serve the most relevant results for most search engine queries. They do this through their secret formula (algorithms), propounded by eggheads from academia and the industry, to rank sites according to its relevance to the search phrase. To continue to do that, they constantly tweak their magic portion, knowing fully well that SEO gurus are at their tail, trying to crack their secret code and beat the system. Before Yahoo and MSN went solo, they sourced for search engine results from Google.

It then makes simple common sense that to come tops in Google, you have to deliver unique valuable content, since that is what they are looking for. It is a simple win-win scenario. Google needs links to excellent content sites, so that they serve it to searchers, pull in traffic and drive up advert revenues. Searchers come to Google, and Google sends them to you. You end up with free highly targeted traffic to your site. Every one smiles to the bank.

This seems too simple for most webmasters to comprehend. There must be a shorter more convoluted way. Crack the secret code, and you are in business. So they try to figure out how Google ranks sites, and then go ahead to tweak their pages to suit. Much effort is put into trying to optimize the few pages they have, instead of adding more unique content. They play around with keyword density at the title, meta and alt tags, body, columns etc. They take their focus completely away from growing their site/business, and become fixated on tweaking the few pages they have to death.

There is nothing wrong with getting your keywords in the right places. The simple fact is, the Google Algorithm is very complex, and takes into account so many factors, that optimizing your pages alone will not do. Google is no fool.

Google's ultimate aim is to judge pages through the human eye. Since that is not feasible, having to contend with close to nine billion odd pages or so, they have to develop their own artificial intelligence to judge sites based on users response. To remain on top, they have to constantly improve on their algorithms. For Google algorithm chasers, that means constantly chasing after the wind. Google can afford to pay for the best brains in the world to develop its algorithms. Most SEO experts are managing to make a living. They are out numbered, out-classed, out-maneuvered and out-brained (if there is term like that). There is close to zero chance of catching up with Google. If you manage to, it is only for a season. At the next algorithm upgrade, you are left behind, yet again. It is a waste of time, energy and resources.

Commonsense makes the most sense, ultimately. Google is looking for unique content. Give it to them. You give them content and they send you traffic. Looks like a fair deal. This means you build your site for human visitors, not search engine spiders. Ultimately, human visitors determine the success of your site. If your content is not of much use to humans, there is nothing much search engine spiders can do for you. If you manage to get high rankings for a season, you will simply end up with window shoppers: they land in your home page, and off they go. To make it worse, by the next database update, your site will simply disappear from the radar. Your fifteen minutes fame is over. You are back to the trenches.

You have to decide upfront who you want to focus on, your customers/visitors or the engines. Decide who pays your bills, visitors or spiders. After you have decided, remain focused and stick with it. The search engines are looking for content. If you have a valuable content site, they are looking for you. Keep providing valuable content. Someday soon, they will recognize your efforts, and put you where you belong, at the very top. It is only a matter of time.

Usiere Uko is the webmaster of the Financial Freedom Inspiration website and editor of the monthly Financial Freedom Inspiration Newsletter, a free ezine to inspire you to exit the rat race and fulfill your God given dreams. To subscribe or visit the site, please visit http://www.financial-freedom-inspiration.com. He is also webmaster of http://www.newdawninspiration.com

Search Engine Traffic: Winning With Content


Targeted traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. The best source of free-targeted traffic to your site is the search engines. To be visible at the search engines, you have to appear in the first three or so pages of the search engine result pages (SERPS). The quest for attaining high rankings at the search engines has spawned a whole industry, the search engine optimization (SEO) world.

The long-term strategy to succeed at the search engines is to focus on adding unique content to your site, consistently. Visitors to search engines are looking for content, and if you provide it, you drive considerable traffic to your site.

There are a lot of factors that come into play in attaining high rankings at the search engines. Your domain name, title, meta and alt tags play a role as well as incoming links etc. The weight of Page Rank (PR) in Google algorithms has been a matter of ongoing debate and speculation in the SEO world. Studies have reported low PR sites getting high rankings in SERPS while high PR sites pant at the bottom.

While the weight of other factors in overall site rankings are debatable, there is no controversy as to the role of content. It wins the marathon. Google rode to the top on the wings of content, serving relevant content to searchers. To remain at the top, Google is constantly tweaking its ultra secret algorithms that ensure that relevant content sites rank high in its SERPS.

Some webmasters fall into the trap of focusing on a few major keywords, and going to war with them, instead of diversifying their keyword base by constantly adding new unique content. As thousand of sites go up everyday around the world, it becomes increasingly difficult to win the search engine war for your favorite but highly competitive keywords. Instead of dissipating energy over winning in highly competitive keywords, as you add more content, your keyword base increases and you begin to show up tops for non-competitive keywords.

As you continue to add more content, the trickle of visitors becomes a flood and before you know it, your inner pages begin to draw in considerable traffic. Instead of becoming fixated by the front door (home page), you begin to get hundreds and eventually thousands of visitors that land at your site through your content pages, and eventually get to visit your home page. If you look at your content pages a fish net, the more unique content you add, the more you spread the net, and the more fish you catch.

Developing excellent content for your site does not only bring in visitors, but webmasters too, looking for valuable content to complement their site themes. Quite a number of them will link to you without asking for a link back. This boosts your link popularity and PR, for what it is worth, and enhances your search engine rankings.

By creating an excellent content site, you are creating a valuable resource for surfers and search engines, and they will reward you appropriately. Surfers will reward you by delivering your most wanted response (MWR), be it to place an order, click through to your affiliate merchant sites etc. Search engines reward you with high rankings, which mean more traffic. On the whole, you end up building an online brand and become recognized as an expert in your field. This opens other doors: speaking engagements, partnerships, adverts and endless possibilities.

It all started with focusing on your visitors, and consistently adding valuable content until your site becomes a one-stop resource center for your area of interest.

To win with content, you have to be very patient. It does not happen overnight. Low content well-optimized sites will initially overtake you. It may take anything from three months to one year or more, before you begin to see results, especially if you factor in Google's sandbox effect. If you keep at it and never give up or lose focus, you will begin to see visitors from search engines begin to show up in your traffic logs. It starts as a trickle and builds up gradually. If you check out the search engine for your rankings for that keyword, you will be pleasantly surprised to see that you begin to show up in the SERPS, maybe attain page one.

Your days of obscurity are over. This is not the time to go to sleep. Keep doing justice to your subject matter. Continue adding unique valuable content. Become the preferred destination for surfers looking for content on that subject matter. The world will make a beaten path to your door.

Stay focused.

Usiere Uko is the webmaster of the Financial Freedom Inspiration website and editor of the monthly Financial Freedom Inspiration Newsletter, a free ezine to inspire you to exit the rat race and fulfill your God given dreams. To subscribe or visit the site, please visit http://www.financial-freedom-inspiration.com. He is also webmaster of http://www.newdawninspiration.com

Why Is SEO So Important To Your Site?


You have heard the phrase LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. But wait, this is online! You don't have to worry about location... or do you??!! Location is everything! Let's take a moment to really think about this. You need to find something. What do you do? Most people will go to their favorite search engine and input what they are searching for. They will type in a few words that describe what they are looking for. The Search Engines come back with the most relevant websites for your search. However, your search for a keyword can result in thousands of links (if not millions).

So now you begin the task of clicking one by one on these links to find the information or service you need. You may go through page one to find what you are searching for, you may go through all of page two, but did you get to the website on page 10? If you are shaking your head No (who has that kind of time?) then you have realized how important LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION is to your website. We need to get your site located on the first page.

The quick and easy answer to this problem is of course PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising such as Google Adwords or Overture). But this is not the smartest way to solve your problem and the cost can put my small business owners of out business. We have found that most website owners state their largest expense is advertising. Imagine if you could cut your advertising in half! Imaging if you could eliminate your advertising cost all together and still achieve the same sales (if not more)!

Search Engine Optimization for your site is the answer.

Everyone wants to be listed in the number 1 spot. But most companies do not get listed under any of their keywords because they do not know how to implement search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is really not as hard as it sounds and most will find that once they understand how it works, it is actually quite simple.

A few things to keep in mind when starting your SEO Journey:

1. Make sure you use HTML Links. Some designers want to use beautiful image map links from their home page. Although this looks great, it does not help you with the search engines. Place links on your pages to the various pages to help not only the search engines find your pages but your visitors as well.

2. Frames...Well this is a hard one. Not only can some people not see frames, the search engines have a hard time with them as well. Also, what if your customer stumbles into one of the pages and does not see the frames? Just stay away from them all together.

3. DO NOT SPAM. Let me repeat this again. DO NOT SPAM. Spamming in any form is wrong. Most people consider spam as only used with emails. Wrong again unfortunately. Spamming will backfire on you. If search engines pick up on the fact that you are spamming, they have and will penalize your site.

Here are two examples of spam. a. Content Spam Data within a part of a Web resource designed for humans where that data is designed only for search engines to see b. Meta Spam Data within a Web resource that describes that resource or another Web resource inaccurately or (when the data should be readable by humans) incoherently

Take your time when it comes to your websites SEO. Make small changes and watch your rankings. If you move up, great! Make more changes. If you move down, undo undo undo. Always keep records of the changes you make so you can easily track what worked and what did not work for your site. Remember, we are in this for the long haul. Do it right the first time and make it last.

Shawna Fennell is the owner of 1 Choice 4 YStore. A company dedicated to helping Online Stores. Please visit http://store.1choice4ystore.com - for free advice and tips on SEO, Marketing, Design, and much more. You can also sign up for daily tips athttp://blog.1choice4ystore.com

13 Tips For Good Search Engine Placements


When used properly in combination with other basic search engine tactics, these tips can help to dramatically improve your placement with the search engines and increase the traffic to your web site.

1. USE KEYWORD FILE NAMES: By naming your html file relevant to your keywords, you can gain a slight advantage. This is a relatively minor aid so don't go overboard with it.

2. AVOID USING ROBOTIC SUBMISSIONS TO THE TOP SEARCH ENGINES: When submitting your web page to one of the top 8 search engines, try to post your page manually rather than using any automated software or sites that post for you to get into the prime search engines. Many people believe that over 70% of your hits will come from Google and Yahoo! It's probably worth spending a considerable amount of time trying to get a good ranking from theses search engines. (Actually Yahoo is more like a directory than a search engine and requires that you read their help pages about their listing method)

3. BE SURE TO USE YOUR KEYWORDS IN YOUR PAGE TITLE: Many search engines will look to see what words you have used in your page title tag. It is VERY important that you include the keywords you want to be found under in this title tag.

4. GET YOUR PAGE LINKED FROM OTHER SITES: Some search engines will increase your relevancy if your site is linked to from other sites. Try to establish as many links as possible from other locations before you submit your web page for placement.

5. AVOID USING JAVA AND FRAMES IN YOUR PAGES: Search engine robots have a difficult time with pages containing Java and frames (not the Java Script tip below which is ignored by search engines). In order to establish a high relevancy and therefore a high rank do not use these methods in the pages you submit to the search engines.

6. THE FIRST 250 WORDS OF TEXT: Search engine robots scrutinize the first 250 word of text in your page for relevancy and keyword count. You must use your keywords in the appropriate proportions in this part of your page. Some say a 10% - 40% keyword count in this section of text is ideal. ALWAYS start this text with the page title you used in the title tag. Avoid keyword repetition (i.e. repeating keywords one after the other).

7. DO NOT USE THE META REFRESH COMMAND: This command is used to automatically transfer a page to another without requiring reader input.

8. DO NOT USE TEXT THAT IS THE SAME COLOR AS THE BACKGROUND: Search engines look for text that is the same color as the background which is being used to increase the keyword count without the reader seeing the text. This has become a definite no no and you may be penalized for such tactics.

9. USE LINKS CONTAINING KEYWORDS: One way to increase a keyword count is to use a series of working or non-working links containing a description and link that incorporate your keywords. This also has the advantage of providing links to other web sites from your page which the search engines also look for.

10. USE THE IMAGE ALT TAG TO INCREASE YOUR KEYWORD COUNT: Every image allows you to include a text description of that image in the alt tag. Use these tags to incorporate keywords or phrases to increase your keyword count. Search engines do consider alt tags in their relevancy rankings.

11. USE KEYWORDS IN PLURAL: Try to use your keywords in the plural form. Such as, CLOCKS instead of CLOCK. A user search on the keyword CLOCK will find both CLOCK and CLOCKS but a user search for CLOCKS will usually not turn up pages using the keyword CLOCK in singular form.

12. KEEP META TAG DESCRIPTION TO 25 WORDS OR LESS: Most search engines will truncate your description if it is too long deleting possible key points you are trying to convey. Keep your meta description to 25 words or less to avoid having posted an incomplete message to readers.

13. KEEP META TAG KEYWORD LISTS UNDER 1000 CHARACTERS: Keep your meta tag keyword list to under 1000 characters. Anything more and you may have your relevancy rank penalized by search engines. Additionally, do not repeat any one keyword in the keyword meta tag more than three times.

I truly hope you use these strategies soon and realize far more success than you have! Get started right away and watch the difference in your rankings.

More free tips at http://www.GoogleWebsite.com/

Boost Your Search Engine Ranking And Generate Free Traffic With Reciprocal Links


Reciprocal links are an important step in your overall plan to get site visitors.

What are they? Reciprocal links are mutual links you and some other web site owner agree to post on your respective sites.

Why are they so important? It goes back to the basic nature of the Internet. The Internet exists as an information medium. When you go to a search engine, you are looking for links to the information you need. The better information sources have already been found by others, many of whom thought so much of those sources that they placed links to them on their web site. So the number of other web sites linking to a particular source of information, the better the chance it is a good source of information. All the major search engines take link popularity into account when they determine how to rank the results of any search. The end result is that to get a good ranking in the major search engines, an important step is to make sure there are lots of other sites that link back to yours. And, since the links are reciprocal, you will need to put a link to each site that links to you. You can't expect someone to link to you unless you link to them.

All right, you say, I will get all my friends to put links to my site on their sites. Not so fast! The number of links isn't all that matters! In addition to looking at the number of links that point to your site, the search engines also examine the quality of those links. Links from sites that are relevant to yours rank highest. If you sell dog food, for example, some good sites to link to yours would be pet toys, dog training, dog grooming, etc. Acquiring a lot of links that don't relate to your site not only doesn't help your search engine ranking, it will hurt it, because the search engines will assume you are trying to fool them into thinking your site is popular with a lot of "junk" links. Don't worry, there are lots and lots of relevant sites to do reciprocal linking with.

The number one ranking for any search term isn't entirely determined by the number of links to a site, but it is an important factor. And, as you know, having a ranking in the top ten for a search term will guarantee more visitors to your site. But in addition to improving your chances of being found through search engines, having links to your site on lots of other sites means you will get exposure to many site visitors who look at the links page or links section of a site for other related sites to visit. And, the more places your name and site name pop up, the more you are likely to be recognized as an authority on the topic of your site.

So how do you go about building reciprocal links on your site?

First of all you need to realize that reciprocal link building is an ongoing process, not a one shot deal. It needs to be something you continue to work on, although some of it can be automated. You will want to build a links page on your site, where you will place links to other sites which are also linking to you. Since you expect your links page to grow, you should establish separate link categories, all relating to the theme of your site. You can get an inexpensive script for creating and managing a link directory at Linking101.com, not to mention a lot of good, general information about linking.

On your links page, be sure to include simple instructions for anyone who wants to link with you. Many sites include a short piece of HTML code including all your link information, ready to be placed on the reciprocal sites links page. Be sure to place an easily-found link to your links page on the main page of your site as well.

Now you are ready to go looking for relevant link partners, sites that are complementary to yours, but not competitors. You can do it the manual way, by doing searches on your site's favorite keywords. When you find a site, evaluate it for content relevant to your own, evaluate its quality and note its search engine rank. If you have to choose between a site that is ranked #2 and one that is #20, always choose the higher ranked site. Look for the links page, where you should find instructions on initiating links between your sites. If you don't find one, it usually isn't worth your time to contact the webmaster to inquire about links; go to the next one.

One method to speed up the process is to use a free service from http://linkpopularity.com/. From this site you can check the link popularity of your site. But, you can also check which sites are linked to your competitors ? particularly your competitors with the high search engine ranking. With that information, you can go to each of these sites and most likely get a reciprocal link. A similar product, Link Survey, is available at http://www.antssoft.com/linksurvey/index.htm.

Another system for speeding up the process is http://links4trade.com/. Although not free, it also helps to manage the headache of link page maintenance.

Link exchange services which claim to completely automate the link exchange process can be found at http://www.powerlinks.com/ and http://www.softbizscripts.com/link-exchange-script-features.php.

A quite amazing tool you might look at is called Zeus, at http://www.cyber-robotics.com/index.htm. Zeus is an intelligent robot that builds a link directory and creates reciprocal links for your web site. A free version is available. You can also find a group of Zeus users ready to swap links at http://www.zeuscollective.com/.

Regardless of how you do it, continue to pursue reciprocal links and make it a part of your overall marketing strategy; you are sure to find it rewarding!

About The Author

Darryl DeLong is a successful Internet Marketer and Ezine Publisher.Learn how to build up your opt-in list, site visitors and sales with my brand new ebook entitled "Viral Internet Marketing Strategies" get a free copy here: http://www.viral-internet-marketing.com

New Free Online Tool for Keyword Research


I came across a new website the other day and was quite pleasantly surprised.

Basically this is another really great way to get targeted keywords for your website. And the best part is it is free to use. You can check it out by going to http://www.nichebot.com

You simply enter in your keyword (I noticed you can't use more than 2 words) and it will give you a list similar to what you would see in Wordtracker. You can choose to have your keywords shown through a Wordtracker database, Overture database, thesauras, lateral or with a keyword analysis.

It is pretty extensive and I highly recommend that you check it out.It gives you five statistics for the keyword you type in.

1.) Phrase - Exact keyword phrase people are using to search the search engines.

2.) Count - Number of times search phrase was used in the past 60-days.

3.) Pages - Number of pages listed in Google with any or all of the keyword phrase.

4.) Competition - Number of pages listed in Google with the exact keyword phrase.

5.) Ratio - Number of sites for every 1 search; the closer to zero, the less competition.

Wanna know your Google ranking without having to buy expensive software? Nichebot also has a way that you can check you ranking.

At the bottom of their homepage you will see a link that says 'Google Ranking' click on the link and you will be able to enter your keywords and website url to check your ranking.

I think this website is going to get big really quick. Hopefully it will continue to stay free to use.

Go check it out and see for yourself: www.nichebot.com

Leah West
http://www.westmarketing-design.com

Get a search engine friendly website...
Sign up for my free monthly ezine and get lots of greatinfo on how your small business can make BIG money on the internet.http://www.westmarketing-design.com/ezinesubscribe.htm

Whats Link Popularity?


Link popularity is just one of the ways you can try to promote your website with the intention of getting to the top of the search engines.

Obviously in this day and age it's just about impossible to get to the top of the search engines if you have a new website from a standing start.

In fact large companies will now use the services of a professional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company to help them get to the top.

And still have no guarantees that it will get there!

It takes time, dedication and patience to achieve this and it certainly won't happen overnight. Sometimes you'll be doing things that just don't seem to show results but if you are doing work now that will bear fruit in the future then success is more of a reality.

What you need to ask yourself is...

What am I prepared to do to make my online presence successful for the long term?

And how much am I willing to invest in time and money to achieve this outcome?

See, quite often we want everything to happen for us immediately. In fact most of our societies now expect instant results or instant gratification. The reality on the other hand is very different.

To build a strong, sturdy house that is designed to last a lifetime, more planning and work goes into laying down the foundations of the building than what is seen above ground.

The foundations are what the house sits on but the work done and the financial cost are mostly unseen.Creating a long term business may require you to outlay more effort and investment in time and money to see the results down the track.

That unfortunately is an unknown but persistence and taking regular positive action will ultimately lead to success.

The moral of is to remind ourselves that Rome wasn't built in a day but great things can happen when you plan for the long term and lay down a great foundation.

How much time and effort are you putting into your business to get it where you want it to be, and if its not enough time, you need to ask yourself why you aren't committing yourself wholly.

Look at the big picture and take the essential steps to reach your goals today!

Tamra Forde
Marketing Director
Freedom Business Opportunity
http://www.freedombusinessopportunity.com

DIY SEO


Part 1. Wordtracker for keywords.

A problem for all new webmasters has always been SEO or search engine optimisation.

The problem starts with the age-old question of how do I design my website so people can find it?

Lets assume that you have an idea for a website that will enable you to make a bit of extra cash, you have a product of your own or you have an affiliation you believe in and you want to make sure that the people searching for your product will find your site over your competitors.How do you start?

Step 1
KEYWORDS
Finding the right keywords for your product is vital, the right keywords on your site will mean the difference between being found and not being found. How do we find these keywords and how do we use them?

First stop is a visit to wordtracker.comUsing the trial version should be enough.

Let's say that you sell widgets, type widget into the box and you will get this;1. widget
2. apple
3. Apple
4. widgets
5. synastry
6. Macintosh
7. security

Clicking on the word widget on the top of this list will bring up another list that contains the word widget.

Lets take a look at the top 5 on that list.

Keyword Count Predict Dig
widget 154 132
widgets 120 103
widget the world watcher 26 22
desktop widgets 22 19
definition for a widget 19 16

The table contains the following information:

Count - This shows the number of times a particular keyword has appeared in our database. E.g. Our database currently holds 373 million words. A count of 147 tells us that this particular word has appeared 147 times out of 373 million (this is over a two-month period).

Predicted - This is the maximum total predicted traffic for all of the major search engines/pay per bids and directories. It is based on the current 24-hour period.

Dig - When you perform any kind of search in the keyword universe, you can now dig down to the next level. E.g. search for 'gambling'. Then, when you click on 'online gambling', just the results for 'online gambling' come up, click on 'online gambling in states' and so on. Great for focusing on niches.

Clicking on each word again adds it to your basket.The next step is to compare these keywords in order to find the best keyword for you,

You are looking for a keyword with a high KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Index, what's this?

In a nutshell: Look for the keywords near the top. The higher the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition they have. Which means you have a better chance of getting to the top.

Now you have found your high KEI ranking keywords you have to sprinkle them about your home page and insert them into you meta-tags. The next article in this series will discuss meta-tags, using the title tag, and basic page design that will give your visitors a pleasing site to look at.

Mark white has been involved in IT for 16 years. More information on website optimisation and for free advice visit small-website-advice.com

For affordable SEO services visit get-listed-quickly.com

Screwed: Is this an inevitability in the SEO World?


By about 2pm everyday, each of my team members has spoken to a good handful of clients and potential clients who have been speaking with other SEO firms. This an absolutely wonderful thing to see, as in the past in our industry, not enough of our consumers were questioning what they were purchasing. It is a sign that accountability will come and the bad guys will be weeded out.

While this is a good sign, it's the cause of my having to answer the same questions over and over. The consumers in the SEO world are being fed out and out lies by some of the people who call themselves experts in the area of Search Engine Optimization. They hear these lies and while comparing prices, contact us at Abalone Designs. They then proceed to tell me everything that all of these other companies promised them and I am utterly astonished. Here some of the most asinine claims I hear through the grapevine.

"We can guarantee your rankings"

Don't be fooled! Ask the company what you will be ranking for, immediately! 9 times out of 10, a company that guarantees you rankings, is guaranteeing that you will rank for your own company name, which means people on Google or MSN or Yahoo! would have to know your company name before searching. How does this produce new customers and visitors to your site? Chances are, as soon as these search engines index your site, you will rank within the top ten for your company name, if not first, because it is unique. Why bother paying someone for something that is already going to happen, anyway?

Guaranteeing rankings is highly unethical. It is impossible to guarantee rankings unless you have access to Google's database itself, and even then I'm not sure it's possible. Keep in mind, we are working with a 3rd party, here. A highly guarded 3rd party that doesn't, under any circumstances, reveal it's secrets. No one outside of the companies that run these search engines knows what it is exactly that makes search engines rank sites high. Especially due to the fact that these search engines and the rigorous ranking filters they use to spit out search results change almost monthly. Even a former Google employee doesn't know how to guarantee rankings! If someone is telling you they'll guarantee top rankings, run fast! Those are some shady, shady claims. Google themselves have said:

"No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a "special relationship" with Google, or that claim to have a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is by using the page at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. You can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever."- http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.html

An ethical SEO company will not guarantee rankings. They will guarantee that their methods follow search engine guidelines, and they will guarantee customer satisfaction, but at no point in time will any SEO company with a conscience guarantee your rankings.

"Your site needs to be continually resubmitted to get on and stay on the search engines"

When will I see the end of this one? How old is this method now? 5 years? 10 years? We're talking about the days when Webcrawler was the biggest search engine and all computers were beige! This claim is so fully untrue, had Pinocchio uttered it, his nose would have stretched from Rome to Poughkeepsie. And the good folks at Google will once again back me up on this one:

"Submission is not necessary and does not guarantee inclusion in our index. Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it's likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form. We DO NOT add all submitted URLs to our index, and cannot predict when or if they will appear."- http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/1.html#A2

"Meta tags are not important anymore"

Sure they aren't. If you don't want a decent ranking on MSN. The new MSN search places a lot of value on the keywords and description meta tags. Without these tags in your site's code, your ranking on MSN will suffer. Just as importantly, if your keywords and description meta tags don't use proper language, your rankings will suffer. The description tag is also what MSN uses as the visible description for a site in the search results. And of course, to prove I'm not the one blowing hot air, here is what MSN themselves say about it:

"Site descriptions are extracted from the content of your page each time MSNBot crawls your site and indexes its pages...

...the best way to affect your site description is to ensure that your web pages effectively deliver the information you want to see in search results." - Click here to see the page this is found on.

"Your Web Site Has Been Sabotaged"

This one is truly unreal. I can't believe it's even been used as an excuse for why an SEO company hasn't achieved decent rankings for you. But alas, more than one SEO company has told potential clients of ours that the reason they are not ranking well, or why their search engine optimization campaign is not effective, is because someone else has been sabotaging the site. Some of the clients who have been told this are small businesses, like bed and breakfasts or pet sitters. We always explain to these potential clients that the likelihood of someone even having the initial idea to sabotage a web site, the site in question would have to be a fairly large one, and the target of a lot of hatred. Why? Because sabotaging a web site's rankings takes a massive amount of time and energy. We're talking months, maybe even years of hard, hard work. Why would anyone devote months or years of their life to taking down a pet sitting site? Or a bed and breakfast?

Once again, these are some hefty claims and it is a clear sign that the company who is running your SEO campaign is unwilling to be held accountable for their actions or lack thereof.

Don't Put Up With It.

The bottom line is, your search engine optimization company works for you. You are paying them. Hold them accountable as you would any other vendor. Keep reading these articles, read info at the search engines, educate yourself and if something your SEO says smells a little rotten, don't be afraid to call them on it.

Is being screwed an inevitability in the SEO world? Damn near. But thanks to the increasing interest of our consumers in self-education and their increased questioning, our industry will slowly climb out of the gutter and someday down the line, send this article into antiquity. In spite of my pride, I'd be overjoyed to see that day come.

Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs, a search engine optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney's articles are available at http://www.abalone.ca/resources/

The Business Case for SEO


It's interesting how potential clients have preconceived notions about which aspects of search engine marketing have the most value. In fact, they tend to fall into two camps that are 180° apart. The first camp believes completely in the value of pay-per-click marketing (PPC). It's easy to understand why. PPC provides immediate and measurable benefits. The ROI of PPC marketing is obvious. This group doesn't understand why it's necessary "to bother" doing SEO. The second camp believes the only way to go is SEO. Clicks are free and the branding benefits of high rankings have been well documented.

The right answer is that they are both valuable. Each has its benefits and when you can afford to, you should implement both.

Pay-per-Click

PPC makes sense if you want immediate benefits and like the idea of paying for performance. SEO provides branding benefits and longer-term will provide an ROI that is compelling. But unlike PPC, SEO revenue results aren't as directly measurable and manageable.

Pay per click (PPC) gives you the ability to have complete control over your search traffic. With PPC programs you select the keywords and write the listings. You control where you're listed and what the listing says. You decide what your budget is and can adjust your spend rate based on results or events (e.g. announcements, promotions).

By tracking results from a PPC campaign, you can build up a knowledge base with respect to your business, including which messages perform the best, which search terms have the best conversion rates, and what destination URL is best for specific users to land on. Over time, this knowledge can help you to improve and define your business.

One of the greatest attractions of PPC is the ability to easily track clicks and costs allowing you to understand your ROI from a specific marketing initiative. This gives you confidence to spend money and drive volume. You may have thought that spending $5,000 a month on a PPC campaign is way outside your budget, but once you measure the ROI, you may realize that it's well worth the investment.

Search Engine Optimization

So, if PPC is so great why bother with SEO? Basically, because you will be missing out on a large number of potential clicks. How large? A number of recent studies have demonstrated that there are still a lot of users that do not click on the "paid" listings but rather will search through the regular editorial search results. The accompanying chart shows that 60% of the search users prefer (some exclusively) organic over paid listings. The only way to get optimized (high) rankings in these regular editorial results is through an effective SEO program. In most cases, once you have good positioning in the regular search results, you will continue to receive "free" traffic. Again, based on data from a number of marketers the increase in traffic due to SEO averaged 73%. Consider search engine optimization the same as you would word of mouth advertising or public relations. It's exposure that comes with a very high degree of credibility and trust. Traffic coming from traditional search listings tends to have high conversion rates.

There's another advantage to traditional search listings. They are considered unbiased and non-commercial. Traditional search performs very well at certain points in the buying process. When consumers are gathering information about a purchase, they show a marked preference for traditional search listings. When they are ready to buy online, they seem to have less bias against paid placement listings and their likelihood to click on one of these listings increases.

The Dollars and Cents of SEO

Perhaps the most compelling reason not to exclude SEO from your online marketing strategy comes down to dollars and cents. In an attempt to quantify the business case for SEO I have gone back and done some analysis on three recent SEO engagements and the results they achieved. I chose ecommerce clients that we had optimized and reviewed their average sales before and after SEO was implemented. In two of the situations the only change made was the optimization of the site. In another the optimization occurred at the same time we implemented a PPC campaign. In the first two cases the store sales rose 64% and 75% after the SEO was implemented. In the third case the store revenue actually went up a staggering 169%, but if you back out the sales that were a result of the PPC campaign, the store revenue that could be attributed to SEO improved by 49%. In other words, the average improvement in store revenue that was apparently due to SEO was 62%.

Can we be sure that all of this was a result of SEO? No. There could have been product, seasonal and other effects that contributed. But I think it's safe to say that there was a significant increase that resulted directly from the SEO. The bottom line: search optimization has a real and measurable impact on traffic, conversions and revenue (or lead generation) improvement. Given that these clicks begin to approach "free" after amortizing the cost of SEO over time, the ROI for SEO is compelling. Added to the branding benefits no marketer or business owner should doubt the value of search engine optimization.

About the Author

Scott Smigler has been an evangelist for a serious, ROI-based focus on the online channel since he founded Exclusive Concepts (http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com) in 1997. Exclusive Concepts provides integrated online marketing strategies, Internet brand consulting, search engine marketing campaigns and results-oriented web sites for hundreds of clients that range in size from small ecommerce firms to public companies.