The key to marketing has always been getting one’s product recognized by as large a group of people as possible. Advertising has always been the key to any marketing effort. Companies spend millions on ad placements in trimedia campaigns that encompass print, radio and television.
Print, radio and television have traditionally been the main medium for marketing. However, in the past decades, another form of paid advertising has found itself on the rise, and this utilizes the internet.
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of internet marketing. It uses the web as a medium to spread awareness of its target product. Internet marketing has emerged as a cheap yet dynamic way to distribute information in the global market.
SEM seeks to promote websites - and the products being sold on those websites - by increasing their visibility through search engine results pages.
The development of SEM is an off-shoot of the success of the Internet in the global arena. As more and more people started using the web, more and more sites on a variety of topics started being created. In the mid-to-late 90s, search engines were developed to help people find the information they wanted quickly.
Soon search engines developed business models to finance their services such as pay per click programs.
A pay per click program is a small text ad that appears next to results from an on-line search. A marketer buys the rights for their ads to appear on a web page or a search engine. The ads are tied up to key words. When a searcher types in a particular query to a search engine, the engine not only offers up a listing of relevant websites but also the marketers “ad”.
The first pay per click programs were offered by Open Text in 1996 and Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com changed its name to Overture and was purchased by Yahoo in 2003 and is now Yahoo! Search Marketing.
SEM methods include: Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion.
Search Engine Optimization is a strategy by which you attempt to improve the volume and quality of traffic to a website by “marketing” it to a web site. Using key words and content to ensure your site shows up many times during searches.
Paid placement is the pay per click program. Advertisers pay when a user clicks on to the links to visit their web site. These are also known as sponsored links or sponsored ads. Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN adCenter are the largest network operators of the pay per click program as of 2007. Minimum prices per click start at US$.01 to .50.
Paid inclusion is when a search engine company charges fees for the inclusion of a website in their search index. This fee structure is ment to ask as a filter against superfluous submissions - websites that try to “trick” the engine by using popular key words that are unrelated to actual content of site - and a revenue generator for the search engine company. The fee is typically an annual subscription rate.
SEM is a relatively cheap and inexpensive way to create traffic on you web site and cultivate brand recognition. A pay-per-click program is cheaper then a trimedia campaign and yet can reach a large number of people globally day and night. As a result, many companies are now taking advantage of the internet to let consumers know what they have.
According to a recent report by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, advertisers in North America alone spend $9.4 billion in SEM in 2006. In 2006, the majority of search marketers (62%) said branding was the primary objective of search marketing campaigns. Nearly as many, however (60%) said that selling products was a key objective. This year, direct sales were the top choice, at 58%, followed by brand awareness at 57%. For more companies, SEM spending is increasing and actually earning a bigger budget then other marketing techniques. It is estimated that by 2011, companies will be spending $ 18.6 billion on SEM.
This growth will be driven by strong advertiser demand, rising keyword pricing and more small and midsized business discovering the effectiveness of SEM.
Currently, SEM is an alternative marketing tool with many possibilities. It’s increase in popularity will eventually result in more businesses utilizing SEM techniques and a possible rise in rates for web space. The faith major businesses are placing in SEM - as denoted by the money they are willing to spend on it - makes this fast growing advertising technique that should be utilized by any business seeking to make a name for it’s globally.
[Source: Entireweb]
What is Universal Search?
Universal Search is rapidly becoming the next big step in search engine evolution. Universal Search is the integration of multiple kinds of media into search results. Search engine monster Google was the first to release universal search. Google’s users recently may have noticed images, YouTube videos, and other forms of media showing up in the standard results page. The other major search engines have all either recently rolled out their own versions of Universal Search or have announced plans to do so. Such a significant change in the operation of every major search engine warrants close attention from SEO companies.
This is not the first time Google has introduced multiple kinds of results on the same search page. For instance, Google has long put pay-per-click advertisements, local results, and book search results at the top of the main search page. It is also not the first time the company has offered searches in multiple kinds of media- Google Image Search is an age-old feature of the search engine giant. However, it is the first time a search engine has been able to put multiple content types within the same ranking system. For instance, under the new universal search system the number one result for a query could be a web page, a news article, a video, or even an adobe PDF document.
What are the aims of Universal Search?
Universal Search is a step towards comprehensive search. Google and the other engines realize that there is information available in more than text on the web. Pictures, videos, and virtually any kind of media can be of use to a searcher. Google has had the tools to search many of these kinds of media, but these search tools have been separated into different tabs and sections of their website. Universal Search is an attempt to bring the most relevant information- from any source or medium- to the search engine user. While currently Google’s Universal Search has not added search capabilities for mediums that previously did not exist, it has started to expand its video search past its own properties (Metacafe and other video services are now being indexed in addition to Google Video and YouTube), and it does indicate the industry’s interest in fully comprehensive searches. Universal Search, along with Google’s new personalized search features, is the company’s newest way of bringing the most relevant and effective information to their users.
Drawbacks of Universal Search
There are a few legitimate concerns with Universal Search. For one, Google may be putting itself at legal risk. Google has faced numerous lawsuits from many content distributors- especially newspapers- due to the fact that Google often caches copyrighted material. However, one of the main arguments against Sam Zell (the owner of the Washington Post) and his case against Google was that Google News, the section of Google’s site that serves as a news feed, did not have advertising and therefore made no money. Because of this, the headlines and story excerpts used on the page constituted fair use. However, now that news articles are being introduced to the main search page, where Google makes the majority of its money, Google may be in danger of more lawsuits.
Additionally, some critics of Universal Search have voiced concerns that the new system may be unappealing to users. Some feel that the system makes it harder to sift through results. Universal Search breaks up the uniformity of the page and could conceivably make it more difficult to sift through the information. At this point there is no way to turn off Google’s Universal Search- a point bemoaned by many industry bloggers. Universal Search is still in its early stages, and Google, as well as the other search engines, may eventually decide to pull the system. However, at this point, it would be extremely unwise for SEO companies to bank on a reversion as the industry as a whole seems to be moving towards universal search.
How does this affect SEO?
Many in the SEO field are worried about Universal Search, and the changes it will bring. While it is still uncertain just how expansive Universal Search will be as Google continues to implement its multitude of features, it is certain that SEO companies will need to react to remain current with effective practices. Until now, on-site SEO has dealt almost entirely with text content. Keyword optimization, meta data, linking and page structure are all text. However, with the advent of Universal Search, new viable options are opening up for the acquisition of traffic. As search expands to cover more and more kinds of content, SEO will as a result expand to cover those same areas. Much the same as SEO has had the goal of making all of the textual content of a website easily accessible to a search engine, so will it become necessary to optimize images, videos, and documents associated with the website.
SEO for different industries may start to take different approaches and have different focuses of optimization. For instance, an SEO campaign for an artist’s website may want to focus on promoting images of the artist’s work, whereas an electronics provider could want to get a demonstration video of their product to the top of the results page. Search engine marketers that have been paying attention to vertical search (also known as “specialty” search) will benefit the most from the changes brought by Universal Search.
Vertical searches are specialized search features of broader engines or specialty search engines. These index specific kinds of sites and documents on the internet including books, blogs, and other informational documents. Universal Search incorporates results from Google’s vertical searches, and content optimized for these searches will be more likely to show up in Universal Search. This should also increase the average user’s awareness of other search options in the engines that adopt universal search. Universal Search allows search engine marketers to direct users to the most relevant and enticing information available on their product or service in whatever media it exists.
Overview: Optimizing for Yahoo!
Algorithmically Yahoo is Google’s much younger sibling. I say this because many of the requirements for a successful ranking mirror Google’s requirement about 4 years ago and they sum up to one distinct fact; optimize your content boldly on Yahoo and you will be rewarded. When I say “boldly” I do not mean use sp@m; by nature sp@m and optimization do not mix… they are two entirely separate concepts (black and white in fact).
The following are the current generalized specifications for achieving solid rankings in Yahoo.
Web Site Optimization
SEO tactics have not changed a great deal over the past 10 years I have been an SEO. In general terms the only effect time has had on SEO is to vary the intensity of the optimization for particular page elements. That is the rub of course; some search engines appreciate the optimization of particular page elements over others. In the case of Yahoo, this old property with a relatively young algorithm tends to favour the following elements:
Title Tag: Keep your title tag as short as 5 small-medium sized words and include one complete incidence of your keyphrase. Yahoo! blatantly favours sites that include the keyphrase in the title tag. For an example search “car sales” or for that matter any phrase. Within the top 10 results you will notice that the majority of sites listed will include at least one incidence of the keyphrase or a crucial portion of it (i.e. “cars”). The ones that do not include the keyphrase tend to be sites that are extremely popular so even basic title tag optimization is not required to attain a top ranking.
Meta Description Tag: Start this tag with an incidence of your keyphrase and then produce a short 15 – 18 small-medium sized word sentence clearly describing your site. Include one more incidence of your keyphrase in the sentence. Keep in mind that the description tag is often utilized as the description for any rankings you achieve so it is best to make it alluring.
Meta Keyword Tag: Keyword tags have long been considered ineffective and no longer have any importance on Google; however Yahoo does still consider the keyword tag so it cannot hurt to include it. The keyword tag should start with the keyphrase and then all following words or phrases should be ordered according to their relevance to your website; place the most important ones up front. The max size of a keyword tag should be 250 characters – comma-delimited. Do not over repeat words; no more than 3 repetitions of a single word within the tag.
Keywords in URL: Create keyword-based filenames that closely represent the content within the file. Yahoo rewards keyword-based filenames a small amount – perhaps enough to push past your competition.
Headings: Heading 1 and 2 tags should be applied on every page where appropriate to embolden the relevance of the page. In other words, use the page’s keyphrase within a Heading 1 tag to further enhance the visibility of the keyphrase on the page.
Alt text for images: Don’t forget to provide appropriate ALT text for each image on your website. The ALT text must not provide information that is already written on the website. ALT text is supposed to provide a clear and concise description of what the image is. Fortunately this means that adding an incidence of the keyphrase or a portion of the keyphrase is totally appropriate which can add slightly more credibility to your page score when Yahoo’s crawler (Slurp) indexes the page.
Inline Links: In the midst of your page it is beneficial to include links to related pages from related content. These links will apply relevance to the linked page; which is optimized for the same keyphrase you linked from.
Site Structure: Site structure is a vital component to ranking success on Yahoo; especially in competitive marketplaces where every advantage is required to reach the top. One method that would be successful at Yahoo (and happens to work as well on the other major search engines) is a tried and true technique that revolves around the linear progression of related content throughout the website; it is commonly known as Themeing. The following example should shed some light on this subject:
Your site is a car sales site focused on Audi. In order to create a linear site structure you would focus each section of the site on an individual relevancy. Say you pick “Audi A5″ as the relevant topic (see Figure 1.0). As you move deeper into the Audi A5 section you only see A5 relevant content. The search engine spider and your users will not be distracted by links to other vehicles – only information on the A5. This progresses as you proceed deeper into this arm of the website and because this section of the site is utterly focused on the subject “Audi A5″ the odds of achieving a ranking for that term improve considerably.
Links
When building links for Yahoo concentrate on quality not quantity. Quality links would be one way links from sites that specialize in content directly relevant to the content on your own website. Building these links can be done by creating content and syndicating it to your own industry for link love and to build credibility. In addition, if your website is a worthwhile resource it is entirely reasonable to tell the world about your site in order to build links; hopefully they will link to you because they like your site so much.
Finally, there is another tactic that has mixed results; send out press releases once a month using PRWeb or an associated press release agency. A good press release can easily build the links you need in no time at all. Unfortunately the mixed results I noted occur when press releases inevitably become archived, at which point the link relevance will fade. As a result, link building with press releases is only useful as an ongoing practice and should be considered a small facet of a robust link building campaign.
Site Explorer Settings
Yahoo’s Site Explorer is a fantastic tool for monitoring your website(s) and running basic link reports. If you have not already done so you should create an account at Site Explorer and then validate your website (prove you own it) so that you can manage the information Yahoo has for your website. Once you have validated your website I have noted some Site Explorer functionality that may help your website perform on Yahoo:
- Make certain to create a sitemap and submit it to Yahoo: If you haven’t already done so use a XML sitemap generator to create a sitemap for your website and then submit it to Yahoo using the “Add Feed” form within your website’s Site Explorer profile.
- Removing unnecessary dynamic content from your URLs with new add-on within Site Explorer: Do your URLs contain session ID’s or other dynamic content that is unnecessary within the URL? If so, this information can be indexed by the search engines and ultimately can cause havoc with your rankings. Thankfully Yahoo has implemented a new tool within the Site Explorer domain management section called “Dynamic URLs Beta”.
- Other Considerations
After reviewing our notes from current and previous Yahoo promotions and taking a look at a variety of top 10 results the following points appeared noteworthy:
- Ensure open indexing by using Robots.txt wisely
- A lot of our client’s older content appears to be sticking to top rankings with little or no monthly tweaking. As a result, I think it is fair to assume that fresh content is not currently gaining much weíght in the Yahoo algorithm.
- In many cases top ranking sites have pushed the envelope and their sites border on sp@m. Considering the top ranking these sites have it appears Yahoo’s sp@m filters are far less sensitive than Google’s. I expect Yahoo will change this in the near future, but then again I have been surprised how long this has been the status quo.
- One common claim throughout forums is that achieving a placement in the Yahoo Directory provides an immediate boost to Yahoo rankings. Unfortunately we have not seen conclusive evidence that the annual $299 fee will improve rankings dramatically in the short term. That said, I strongly believe that a Yahoo Directory placement is a very reputable incoming link that does pay dividends in the long run at any search engine that weighs incoming links (the ones that count).
- Yahoo Search Submit was re-introduced back in February 2007 to significant criticism due to the potential favouritism to those who pay to get into the Yahoo index. Despite the negative feedback there appears to be some potential benefits to paying for submission. For one, in July I noted an interesting story where a website was banned from Yahoo and the webmaster got the site back into Yahoo’s index by paying for inclusion (”Banned from Yahoo?” ). A second reason Search Submit may be worthwhile is the guarantëe that your site will be indexed. Furthermore, the Yahoo’s Search Submit Pro service allows you to recommend your own title and description tags for each page submitted and to submit pages that may not normally be indexed by Slurp.
[Source: Site Pro News]
So which is more important, to please the visitors or the search engine spiders? The unequivocal answer is to please the visitors. What good is a site that attracts spiders but not actual people? And what good is a site that only attracts some visitors but not search engine spiders?
In this article, we will go over writing content that interests and pleases both your readers and the spiders.
So how do you write content that pleases a visitor?
First, stick to writing content that is relevant to your site. That means that if your site is about Rock music, you should not have any content about dogs, as that only makes your site look bad and repels visitors.
Second, write content in an easy to understand, conversational format. Do not use big, fancy words just for the sake of looking smart or pleasing search engine bots. I can’t count the number of times I’ve visited a site with content that is so hard to comprehend that I do not wish to ever come back to that site again. You want to make a good first impression on anyone who takes the time to look at your site, so make sure your content is easy to understand.
Third, never ever write content that is long, dull, and boring. If the point you are trying to get across can be said more concisely in 500 words, than why waste another 300 words droning on and on about the topic? This is a huge turnoff to potential visitors.
Fourth, make sure that all of your content is grammatically correct. I know, this is hard because we live in the instant messenger world, where sentences like “how r u?”, are thought to be acceptable. However, anyone who is well-educated will appreciate good grammar. Make your site shine in this department.
Fifth, don’t overuse keywords and keyword phrases. In other words, don’t make it blatantly obvious to the reader that you are trying to attract search engine spiders to your site. Make an effort to make sure that your keywords and keyword phrases flow into the content of the article. This is easier said than done, but can be accomplished with a little fine tuning.
But what about search engine spiders? How do I please them?
Search engine spiders are actually very easy to please, much easier than actual human beings. This is because search engine spiders aren’t subjective–they don’t care what the subject is about; they just care about the number keywords and keyword phrases.
The only way you can possibly displease a search engine spider is by overusing a keyword/keyword phrase and making your site smell like spam. Search engine spiders are now more advanced than ever, and so they are better able to ignore sites that are full of spam. Too many keywords or keyword phrases that are blatantly there will hinder your site from being crawled by spiders.
Keyword density of 1-3% is generally considered to be good. Any less than 1% is bad and will make it harder for your site to get listed on search engines; any more than 4% makes your site look like spam. Keyword density is basically the number of keywords or keyword phrases in a piece of content divided by the total number of words.
Before you write your article, take some time to make up a short list of keywords that are relevant to the topic at hand. Then try to naturally sprinkle them into your content, so that your content will please both the search engine bots and your readers. If you are able to do that, you will have a successful site in no time. Not only will the search bots love you, but actual people will, too!
Writing content that is good for both people and search engines is an absolute essential to making your site a powerhouse. So follow the rules above and you will be able to write excellent, pleasing content!
[source: Entireweb]
There are many aspects in regards to search engine optimisation. There are on-page procedures such as optimising meta tags, titles, page copy, urls, alt tags and the like. We also know that another important aspect is off-page seo whereby a lot of time and effort is put in in order to obtain quality inbound links to your site. This normally takes the shape of directory submission, article writing and submission, competition analysis, social media marketing and blogging to name a few.
These are all crucial elements of search engine optimisation and are a major part of any seo specialists daily chors.
One element of SEO that can be easily overlooked is the building of a web site that is not only “user friendly” but also “search friendly”. By “search friendly” we mean that the search engines can crawl and spider your site unimpeded which will enable it to extract all of your content and in turn index it within the search engines database. After all, what use is getting thousands of inbound one way links to your site, if your site is not user or search friendly?
There are a number of things worth considering when building a user and search engine friendly web site. They are:
1. Use as much text as possible in the form of HTML - Search engines love plain text. They are not able to read images, video files, audio files or flash, so try to not use too much of these in your site design.
Another thing to consider is that some sites make users log in in order to view certain content or use a form to find content. Both of these are bad. Spiders/crawlers do not know how to log in to your site or fill out a form in order to find your content. So if you want your content to be indexed by the search engines, stay away from this. If you MUST do this, try to produce a snippet of the content to entice users to log in. That way the spider at least has something to chew on.
2. Make your urls understandable - This means creating urls such as www.mysite.com/how-to-bring-up-your-children.html and NOT www.mysite.com/children/article-09876R-YTUR-4tr.html. As you can see the first url is not only “user friendly” but is also “search engine friendly” meaning that the search engines read more meaning and relevance into this url than the second one. Dont forget also that if you were to copy the second url into an email, your signature or post on a blog etc it wouldn’t be totally clear where the link was going. This cannot be said for the first url.
3. Structure your site well - This means making your site as flat as possible. Instead of structuring your site in way that means a user has to click 10 times before reaching their target make the content a maximum of 4 clicks away or less.
4. Design your site for users NOT search engines - As much as possible treat the search engines as if they were human beings manually scouring your site for content to index. If it is easy for humans to find what they are looking for on your site, logic says that the spiders will also find what they are looking for and index it. The more “speedbumps” you put in the way of spiders, the slower your site will be crawled and indexed (if at all).
5. Content is king - One of my favorite expressions which is so true. Great content has many benefits, after all, its what we are all after, even the search engines. The search engines job is to find “relevant” search data. When the search engine starts dishing out “irrelevant” results, thats the time when it is going to become out of favour with web users who will move onto another engine.
Having great site content has many benefits such as if your content is good and original, people will want to link to it and your site, so its a good way of building natural links which is something that google likes. If you write good genuine creative content on your topic you will start to become an authority in your chosen field meaning more links and brand/site awareness.
The more content you have the more opportunity you will have of inserting your keywords making it look as natural as possible to the search engines. Although keyword density is no longer a major factor with search engines, it is something that needs to be done.
Well, thats the end of this article with some tips on making your site not only “user friendly” but just as importantly “search friendly”. It is something that can be easily overlooked especially as gaining backlinks is viewed as THE most important SEO practice at the moment.
[Source: Entireweb]
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