Why organic SEO is great value for ROI $$$ per sale
SEO Today Article: Defending Organic Search
IAB and ComScore released the first major study on the effectiveness of sponsored search advertising. Not surprisingly, considering the study was sponsored by Overture and Google, the report was very favorable towards sponsored search, often at the expense of organic search.
My concern is that if you don’t look beyond the numbers presented in the ComScore/IAB Study, you would assume that organic search is a waste of time and budget. For reasons I’ll go into shortly, this is simply not the case.
We took the travel industry and identified 50 high traffic terms that a site like Expedia would want to be found for. The terms included phrases for hotels in major destinations such as New York and Las Vegas, as well as phrases used to find the best airfares. For these 50 phrases alone, we estimated over 2.8 million searches were launched last month. If you accept ComScore’s click through numbers, that would result in 456,000 visitors for paid search and 153,000 visitors for organic search.
We then found out what the going bid prices were for these terms on Google AdWords and Overture. The total cost for those 456,000 visitors would be well over half a million dollars, at an average cost per click of $1.18. We did some quick research on the leading search optimization services, ours included, to see what a typical rate charged would be to optimize for these 50 words. The rates ranged from $1000 per month to $10,000. Let’s go with the highest one (not ours, by the way) for a monthly cost of $10,000. Again, if we accept ComScore’s numbers, that would result in 153,000 visitors at an average cost per visitor of $0.07.
Let’s now apply ComScore’s conversion numbers. With paid search, you would have 3647 converted visitors at an average cost of $147.08 per converted visitor. With organic search you would have 611 converted visitors at a average cost of $16.37. Let’s run over those comparisons again:
Total Monthly Budget
$500,000 (Paid) vs $10,000 (Organic)
Average Cost per Visitor
$1.18 (Paid) vs $0.07 (Organic)
Average Cost per Converted Visitor
$147.08 (Paid) vs $16.37 (Organic)
Even given all of ComScore’s built in biases with the numbers involved, it still seems to me that organic search optimization is very much worth the time.
Bottom line
It’s not really surprising that the ComScore study came out solidly on the side of Paid search. It was commissioned by Paid Search providers, including Google, Overture and Sprinks. These companies make no money from organic search, but paid search pulls in billions yearly.
Also, I certainly know the value of paid search and recommend its use highly. It offers several advantages over organic search. One of the assumptions I made in this column was that a search optimization company would be able to achieve top rankings for some highly competitive terms. With paid search, if you’re willing to pay enough, you can get the rankings. Also, paid search gives you control over what the searcher sees. This is often not the case with organic search.
My point is that search marketing should not ignore one strategy and focus solely on the other, as is implied by the ComScore study
Search engine user studies have found that over 70 percent of users click on organic results rather than sponsored listings. In our own research, we’ve found that during the research phase of a buying decision, consumers show a strong preference for organic listings. Even when it comes to actually buying online, a significant percentage of searchers purposely avoid sponsored listings. By ignoring search engine optimization, you’re ignoring these customers.
Organic search optimization is a frustrating and tedious process and I can understand the temptation to say the heck with it and bid for the terms you want. But the fact is, by doing so, you’re saying no to a strategy that could literally save you hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, or even, as we saw in the previous example, a month. Remember, $1.18 a visitor vs $0.07. How could you say no to a deal like that?
.pdf file that presents the basic findings at
This month our featured report provides marketers and agencies with a better understanding of the marketing effectiveness and value of "Sponsored Listings" on Search Engines. The research provides marketers and their agencies with quantitative and qualitative data on how to prove:
The effectiveness of interactive marketing (both branding and direct response metrics).
The efficiency of interactive media (vs. other media channels)
The ROI for specific interactive marketing tactics.
In this report, the data will clearly show the value of sponsored listings in the online marketing mix by industry sub-category.
" a fundamental gap still exists between the way most computer systems approach the problem of organizing information and the way in which humans wish to access that information.
This gap stems from the fact that systems tend to view information (and in particular, documents) as sequences of words or numbers with no deep interrelationships, while humans approach information in terms of the meaning conveyed by words or phrases. Humans are searching for ideas, while automated systems are limited to searching for words. Applied Semantics is working towards bringing this “human approach” into the realm of an automated system, allowing individuals to use information more effectively.
Applied Semantics’ goal is to
capture the knowledge that humans bring to the problem of text comprehension and apply it to enable a computer system to achieve a similar understanding...
to build a dynamic system that
draws on some of the fundamental structuring relationships of knowledge to facilitate organization of textual information.
AdSense, our online advertising product, uses this functionality, to deliver a contextually targeted advertising solution to online publishers and web portals... targeting ads based on the content of web pages and the interests of users.
Contextual targeting ad technologies extract the key theme(s) from a web page in order to target an ad about the same topic. Unlike demographic profiling, which requires prior knowledge about users, contextual targeting works by implicitly identifying an individual user’s interest based on the key theme(s) of the web page content he is reading in real time...
Top Five Search Engine Optimization Myths: "Top Five Search Engine Optimization Myths"
SEO sales reps may tell you exactly what you want to hear. Listen for the flutter of these red flags.
New Developments in Local Search, Part 4: "the local search market is enormous, and growing. Between 20 and 35 percent of all Web search seeks geographically relevant results. Panelists said they expect local queries to increase with user sophistication, better search technology, and deeper local content."
New Search Engine Vivante Provides Localized Results: "New Search Engine Vivante Provides Localized Results"
GROKLAW: "There has to be something wrong when you can't find Google in a search for 'search engines'. They want to buy it, but they don't want you to find it?
I then went to Google, and I ran the same searches. You can find MSN on Google just fine, on page 2. It doesn't list itself first, either. They are number 4, with Yahoo and Alta Vista ahead of it when you do a search for 'search.' When you search for 'search engines' you get helpful things like Search Engine Watch, number one on the list. "
High Rankings Advisor - Issue No. 079
Intro: " I'd better comment on the recent algorithm changes at Google. I've had numerous frantic emails from
subscribers wondering why their previously highly-ranked homepages had suddenly dropped off the face of Google. The short answer is that I really don't know!
Apparently in an attempt to stop the spammers, Google made some big changes in how they decide what's relevant. Unfortunately, it appears that in some cases they goofed big-time!
So what should you do if your page or pages have dropped off the map? Right now, I'd have to say do nothing at all. At any rate,
try not to panic, and give things another month to work things out".
Paid-inclusion
...pages are still being included for free and that paying for inclusion does not equal paying for rankings. It
does give you the ability to test and then hopefully improve your rankings through those tests, but it doesn't put you in a special pile of sites that will automatically shoot to the top.
On the other hand, if you have a really large site (over 500 pages),
trusted feed can apparently give you a boost in the rankings because
you have more control over what the search engines see and index. The
feeds can be highly focused on your keywords, and don't have to match
exactly what's on your pages.
Regardless of any of that, you can't pay to be included in Google
anyway. Many sites get so much traffic from Google that they don't
even worry about the other engines anymore. Not saying you should
ignore them, but if you can get in for free, well, why pay? Always
check to see if your pages are already included in any engine before
you send them your money.
Creating an Industry News Section By Serge Thibodeau
( From same Highrankings newsletter)
when I design a website I like to include an industry news
section. On top of creating added visibility in the search engines, it
also helps my users stay better informed. If they like to stay
informed, some will bookmark it and others will return to it daily. A
well-designed industry news section can account for 30 to 40% of the
daily Web traffic to a site.
If your website has a news section that is frequently updated and that
is very relevant to your industry, there's a good chance it will show
up in the search engine results pages (SERPs) when people search for
your industry-specific keywords...
In conclusion, an industry news section that is updated many times a
day can do wonders for the visibility and popularity of any website.
An added bonus is that some will want to link directly to your site
without your even asking, further increasing your link popularity in
the search engines. When all of this is done correctly, it is possible
that your site will become an "industry news hub" or an important
industry resource that will benefit your visitors and clients.
Worth a look if only at the examples of before & after copy aiming to :
"1. Make the copy more inviting.
2. Draw visitors into the fireplace experience.
3. Don't just give features... give benefits, too.
4. Make the sale before sending them to the dealer.
The Pay or Not-to-Pay Conundrum... SEO whether paying a pro or in house all costs.... research, knowledge, time, site design, monitoring & worrying- all have a cost & ROI should be calculated...
The Pay or Not-to-Pay Conundrum: "The Pay or Not-to-Pay Conundrum
Kevin Ryan answers the most taboo question in search marketing today: Can a search marketing program be successful in skipping search engine optimization to just buy paid listings and vice versa?
By Kevin Ryan, iMedia Search Columnist
I’d like to
end the debate on which form of search is best, paid or unpaid, with some common sense: Nothing in life is free and all search is paid."
Though marketers primarily view search as either paid or unpaid, search can be placed into three distinct categories with bid-for-placement listings and organic optimization on each end of the spectrum and paid inclusion blurring the lines in the middle.
1)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Google
Also called, natural, editorial, or organic search
Effected by site architecture, interpreted relevance
“Pray for Positioning”
Pros: static fee structure, perceived as an unbiased information source by users
Cons: no guarantee of positioning, long delay to impact, messaging is static
Each time I refer to SEO as
“Pray for Positioning” I get a laugh. Search Engine Optimization got a bad name with many advertisers due to its lack of measurement and long time frame to see any impact of optimizing efforts. Additionally, many specialized firms purported to have technology that could fool search engines which often led to “penalty box” third page listing positions for advertisers. Of course, measurement has improved over the years and with click costs skyrocketing in a crowded pay-for-placement arena, site optimization is looking better all the time.
Still, only one thing is certain with SEO, there are no certainties in SEO.
2)
Paid Inclusion
LookSmart, Inktomi
Effected by interpreted relevance, refresh factor
“Pay to be there”
Pros: no keyword bidding, appears near “editorial listings”
Cons: no guarantee of positioning, URL-based fee structure adds up quickly for big sites
The paid inclusion model has baffled many advertisers. It is not pay for placement, and is not of the same ilk as SEO. Think of paid inclusion as listings in the middle. Whether paying for inclusion in directories on a URL basis or cost-per-click structure, this model offers the “best balance of a listing appearing natural” according to eMarketer’s July 2003 online advertising tactics report.
No good deed (or search marketing opportunity) goes unpunished and the natural appearance may be its downfall. Big providers have begun to move in the direction of changing these listings to “sponsored” after attacks from consumer organizations suggested these listings should be clearly labeled as advertisements like pay-for-placement listings.
– Pay For Placement
Google Ad WordsTM, Overture, FindWhat, Kanoodle, Looksmart
URL listing bid environment
“Yellow Pages of the Web”
Pros: real time results, guaranteed positioning
Cons: keyword cost volatility, possible negative connotation
Concludes: In the utopian search marketing society, the needs of your constituents are met simultaneously with the needs of a search engine. This is a world where happy agencies work together within their respective disciplines in unison for the ultimate benefit of the advertisers they represent. Part of the problem with search lies within the many firms an advertiser may need to execute such programs. Where does this search responsibility ultimately rest?
Tool To Find The Country A Website Is Physically Located In: "Maybe you want to know where your servers are physically located
with your hosting company. Also, some search engines (such as Google) have the ability to
filter search results based on their physical location. This could be used to determine why
your site is showing in a certain country.
Calculate Physical Location For...
Website Address:"
ResourceShelf: "Three Additions to Your Web Search Reading List
Although these 'must read' articles are a year old I still think they're all most worthy of your time and attention.
1) 'Challenges in Web Search Engines'
This twelve page paper was written by Dr. Monika Henzinger (Research Director, Google), Dr. Rajeev Motwani (Professor at Stanford) and Dr. Craig Silverstein (Director of Technology, Google). From the abstract, '...article presents a high-level discussion of some of the problems with information retrieval that are unique to web search engines. The goal is to raise awareness and stimulate research in these areas.' Content quality, spam, cloaking, duplicate hosts, and vaguely-structured data are some of the topics discussed.
-
2) 'A taxonomy of web search'
An eight page article by Andrei Broder. Dr. Broder was one of the original developers of AltaVista. From the abstract, Classic IR (information retrieval) is inherently predicated on users searching for information, the so-called 'information need'. But the need behind a web search is often not informational -- it might be navigational (give me the url of the site I want to reach) or transactional (show me sites where I can perform a certain transaction, e.g. shop, download a file, or find a map). We explore this taxonomy of web searches and discuss how global search engines evolved to deal with web-specific needs.
-
3) 'U.S. Versus European Web Searching Trends'
By Amanda Spink and Bernard Jansen (Penn St. Univ) and Seda Ozmutlu & Huseyin C. Ozmutlu (Uludag University). Seven pages. From the article, As the Web is becoming a worldwide phenomenon we need to understand what searching trends are emerging across different global regions. Are there regional differences"
Quick run through & good example of optimising copy...2 to 3 keywords/ phrases max!
"...many people ask me what goes through my mind when I write search engine optimized copy, I took this opportunity to make notes as I wrote. . . the sales orientation of the index (home) page and the keyword saturation were causing less-than-stellar results for the client. My job was to rewrite the index page (from scratch) in order to boost SE rankings."
Internet News: "'The panel agreed that the local search market is enormous and getting larger. Somewhere between 20-35% of all web search is seeking geographically relevant results, and every panelist said they expect that percentage of local queries to increase with user sophistication, better search technology and deeper local content. '"
The SEM Shakeout: Are You Ready?: "In search marketing, when your competition wins, you lose. That search customer your competition acquired is gone, possibly for good, as your competition builds a relationship with that customer, extracting a lifetime value revenue stream.
Are you on top of your SEM game? Assess whether you're one of the top five competitors in your industry segment in the following areas:
Online marketing efficiency, improving methods and tactics
Knowledge of best campaign-planning practices
Mastery of the various marketplaces -- rules and nuances of each
Execution of conversion marketing principles on your site
Application of appropriate analytics for search campaign measurement
Use of in-house or outsourced technology to facilitate paid search management for complex campaigns
To understand the importance of these areas to success in search marketing, let's follow the marketer's profit from search to sale:
Searcher has a need and enters a search.
Searcher sees several paid listings, perhaps several organic listings.
Searcher selects a listing based on some combination of position, domain, title, description, and offer.
Searcher clicks on a link.
Searcher lands on a site.
The page is either a good fit or a poor one.
The offer on the page is either compelling and appropriate to the search or not.
Searcher takes a desired step (adds to cart, clicks on contact form, views store location, registers, etc.).
Searcher checks out or possibly becomes a lagged (delayed) conversion in e-commerce or business-to-business (B2B).
Searcher becomes a customer.
Searcher remains a customer over time, contributing to the bottom line.
Every search listing delivers to your site searchers who have some likelihood of taking this path. Knowing how searchers interact with your site will help you to improve conversion.
The search shakeout is beginning. You have an opportunity to educate yourself and implement best practices to be in the game long term. Your firm needs to decide how important SEM is to the company's future. If you don't have the budget or resources to do search right, things may get quite challenging. Your competition is eliminating waste and capitalizing on opportunities in paid search while it improves its site conversion and business profit. "
SEO Confusion: Keywords by Page or Site?: "The easy answer is that as far as the search engines are concerned, every page of your site has its own unique keyword phrases based upon the information it provides. This means that when a search engine is determining which page in its database is relevant to the search query at hand, it's looking for the best, most relevant *page* -- not *site*. "
PPC Tips: Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine News, Blog Search: "If you search for 'gambling' or 'online casino' and nobody else has bid yet, then most likely there is no reason for you to. If the most aggressive, profit driven companies, with the largest profit margins have not yet bid, it is not worth your time. If the search engine had legitimate distribution you can bank on the fact that there would be bids on those type of terms.
Some pay per click search engines are powered through back feed listings from other pay per click search engines (SearchFeed powers many of them). Usually a good way to find these type of pay per click search engines is to look at the bid amount. If the top bid is less than the bids below it, they are being back feed by another search
"
Make sure paid listings are clearly identified as such:
FTC wants paid search to shape up | CNET News.com: "the FTC said some disclosures from search engines still fall short. The agency singled out a long list of terms that it considers inadequate, including 'Recommended Sites,' 'Featured Listings,' 'Premier Listings,' 'Search Partners,' or 'Start Here.'
'Other sites use much more ambiguous terms such as 'Products and Services,' 'News,' 'Resources,' 'Featured Listings,' 'Partner Search Results,' or 'Spotlight,' or no labels at all,' the FTC found"
MediaDailyNews 11-12-03: "Keyword Search Emerges As Dominant Online Ad Format, Internet Ad Budgets Continue Recovery"
Microsoft's Internet Search Push Worries Google, Yahoo: "With one half of search results not useful to Web users, Microsoft has an 'opportunity to get into the game in a big way,'...
With 3.3 billion searches conducted every month in the U.S., and a lucrative advertising market swelling to $1.6 billion this year, and expected to rise to $2.1 billion next year, search is one of the most attractive businesses on the Net. But a Microsoft expansion is likely to come out of the hides of market leaders Google Inc and Yahoo! Inc...
If Microsoft can develop a search engine to rival Google "it's going to shake everything up," if Microsoft, as expected, builds search into the planned Longhorn version of its Windows operating system and the Office programs delivered with most personal computers.
...Since April, it has had a bot, or software robot, roaming the Internet cataloging Web pages...
Longhorn. WinFS was unveiled as a method for storing and keeping track of data so that material on a hard drive, such as e-mail or instant messages, can be searched as easily as a page from the Internet.
The idea of unifying the ability to search a computer, a corporate network and the Internet from a single spot is a "big evolutionary step,"
Search, PPc & legislation:
Search engines face drug test | CNET News.com: "The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which regulates advertising in the United States, last year issued its first guidelines targeting advertising in search results, laying out best practices for disclosure of paid links but falling short of demanding formal changes. The agency recently indicated that it is continuing to examine Web search industry practices."
"
Future & local search:
Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine News, Blog Search: "Small Business Usage of Yellow Pages vs. Search Engine
* 82% of respondents do NOT currently advertise in the yellow pages
* Of those who do, if they track their ad performance at all, nearly 100% track by asking the caller how s/he found them.
* 57% do NOT advertise with paid search engine listings
* 59% said they WOULD if they could geographically target the ads
* Of the small businesses who advertise in both yellow pages and search engines, 37% say that search engines out-perform yellow pages, but...59% are not sure.
* Only 69% said they know the difference between paid search engine listings and unpaid search engine results."
Note: caca = shit in Spanish...
Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine News, Blog Search: "
Soft Caca and Free Hit Generatorare a couple fine examples of fraud driven software. Both programs are available for around $100. These programs will allow a webmaster to control which ads get clicked on and how often. Another wonderful feature is that these programs generate random IP numbers so it seems like real people are visiting your web site. Even the frequency between clicks is controlled by the script."
The Art of Advanced Link Building: "you must know your audience in order to find the types of sites that they come from. Your website traffic reports are an invaluable source of this information.
Avoid the common pitfalls of obtaining PageRank or link popularity, warns Mastaler. This means staying away from link schemes or free-for-all linkfarms. And don't use hidden links. Create an outbound links page on your website only if it makes sense for your company or your audience. "
"Distribute press releases and articles for syndication. When done well, these get archived in the heart of the web's structure...indexed in an archive within your own site. Similarly, you should always ask reporters for a link to your site within articles that are going to be published on the Internet...example of this is Atomz Search, theorizing that their PageRank score of 9 comes in part from the free search box tool they provide via download and that features a link back to their home page"
Paul Gardi, Senior Vice Present of Search at Teoma, says they are approaching link structures with a different method, looking for actual communities on the web with user interest and look for natural linking occurrences where good information is shared and linked to. Those sites indicate a measure of quality and association within the Teoma index,
Danny Sullivan's golden rules of link building:
1) Get links from pages that are read by the audience you want.
2) Buy links if visitors that come solely from the link will justify the cost.
3) Link to sites because you want your visitors to know about them.
Code for grabbing keywords
Cre8asite forums. Google - Important news about Google!. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]: "a two part tutorial for grabbing the keywords entered into a search engine to find your site (using PHP and MySQL) "
Dipsie: "Our goal is to deliver more relevant results from a more complete index of the Web and enable our users to find what they're looking for within 2 clicks."
Espotting -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "Probably because Espotting affiliates are swamping results in Google for certain popular terms.
I've stopped using Espotting really, but still get hundreds of referrals via Espotting affiliates who autogenerate pages for search terms and list the Espotting results with Inktomi backfill.
Apart from that, they are on Ask Jeeves, somewhere in Lycos UK (the directory, I think) and sites like Abrexa, UK Plus and other second tier engines. But most comes from hundreds of affiliate sites.
Sooner or later Google will zap them, I expect. "
- Lycos dropped Overture's sponsored links from its US website and
sued it for breach of contract following its merger with Yahoo
Date Alta Vista Google basic Google Inktomi FAST Teoma
2nd Nov 487 31,000 40,900 2 34,100
4th Nov 487 37,500 41,100 2 967 34,100
10th 487 48,300 33,100 95 22,247 52,700
Pages in engines:
Date Alta Vista Google basic Google Inktomi Teoma
2nd Nov 487 31,000 40,900 2 syntax changed? 34,100
4th Nov 487 37,500 41,100 2 967 34,100
10th 487 48,300 33,100 95 22,247 52,700
StatMarket: Featured Statistic: "AOL Posts Best Order Conversion Ratio Among Major Search Engines, According To WebSideStory's StatMarket "
AOL's search service topped the list with a conversion ratio of 3.03 percent... Yahoo and Google, the two largest search engines in terms of referring traffic volume, ranked 9th and 10th in the conversion study respectively...
The visit-to-order conversion rankings are quite different than WebSideStory's global referring search engine rankings, which show Google as the top referring search engine on the Web, followed by Yahoo, MSN and AOL.
Could this be the one? Blogged it a while ago, but too lazy at the mo to look back & find out when...
when out of beta?? ha ha, depends what time of day (or night) you talk to us! I think I remeber reading that google kept it up for nearly a year, wisenut was a few months. we are listening hard and tring to iron out the clumsy kinks before we take the beta off"
Site:
Mooter - Web Search: "Please be gentle with us - who'd have thought a brand new search engine that did what it said would be so popular? "
Mooter: "THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND THE TECHNOLOGY
Most search engines tackle the non-trivial task of organizing massive amounts of information from the same angle: 'lets decide on behalf of the searcher what is most relevant, based on what the bulk of the general public thinks is relevant.' We decided to rather expend our efforts watching how individual PEOPLE actually search, see where it hurts, and fix that.
Think of the way you search on a ‘traditional’ engine: you type in search phrase, get back a long list of 3 million results, read, read, read, read some more, scroll, click, back to results, read, read, read, click. THEN go back and type in a different phrase to educate the engine more about your needs. So already there are about 10 things you have to do, and that’s assuming the sort of search where you have a pretty clear idea what you after to begin with."
Discussion:
Cre8asite forums. Other Search Engine discussion - Australian Mooter takes on Google. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]: "to get a more usual SERP page go 'moot quicker' (cookie for repeat visitors only). Also, the 'all results' page give a more usual SERP.
Article: "A glimpse into the future of mapping the Web"
A search war is looming that will see search engines emerge sporting fancy new algorithms that customize search results for each and every individual searcher. That is, they will if mathematicians can overcome the personalization dilemma and develop search engines that deliver more relevant, customized search results based on our individual needs, interests and search patterns, rather than the group consensus approach taken by Google.
Fake Hits - Best Practices Search Engine Forums: "Be Alert of Fake Hits "
Best Practices Forums
"...some sleazeball was offering software like this to kill your competition on PPC [pay per click] campaigns by generating hits on PPC engine referral codes which can be scraped from sponsored listings. It was bad enough when this was an 'underground' product. Now it is out for anyone to use, watch those PPC referrals very closely!"
Local search: Because of the structure of totaltravel site & the nature of the travel business the site should get immense benfits from the development of local search...this article has some great hints as to marketing TT to small businesses...
Local Search Not for Mom and Pop: "It seems like everyone's rolling out local search."
"Local merchants have just started to think about online advertising in the past six months, according to Dean Polnerow, president and CEO of Switchboard -- and, according to him, they're not ready for keywords. "Small shops don't have the time or inclination to sit down at a PC and go through some complicated interface and bid for keywords," he said...
the local search offerings from Overture and Google really up to speed, according to Peter Hershberg, managing partner in search engine marketing agency Reprise Media of New York City. "For any organization or search engine targeting by location, there are definite challenges that need to be addressed," he said. "For example, we know that Google can't differentiate between an AOL user in Florida and California. They all appear to be in Virginia."
Herscberg said that until consumers are educated about the existence of local search, and begin to use it, it won't deliver good results to advertisers. He said while that a localized ad among search results might attract consumers to whom it's relevant, "I don't know if they're going to just start searching locally." He pointed out that online Yellow Pages already offer exhaustive lists of nearby stores...
the company has changed its sales message to appeal to mom and pop businesses. A new pay-for-performance model makes sense to them, he said, because leads are something they understand a lot better than impressions. Instead of buying keywords, advertisers can decide how many leads they want and how much they want to spend for them, and Citysearch technology makes it happen...
understanding what small businesses' needs are," Ferguson said. While they're no longer skeptical about whether the Web is worth their investment, he said, "They want to focus on how to make the business better. A restaurant is more concerned about the freshness of ingredients than the ROI calculation on the marketing spend."
The only other thing to mention about the Title tag is its length. Most people think that around 7 words is the ideal length, but it would be difficult to fit a searchterm and a killer sentence into 7 words so up to 10 or 11 words is fine.
Inktomi SEO Basics - Search Engine Optimization for Inktomi: "Inktomi SEO Basics"
Inktomi does rank pages solely on the basis of words found in the
meta description tag.
Body copy keyword density the sky's the limit. In other words, the higher the density, the better.
Page Titles "Your page was dropped for keyword abusive page titles."
Keep this in mind, and keep your page titles short.
Hyperlink to Persuasion: "Hyperlink to Persuasion"
A site's credibility is affected by link integrity. It impacts visitors' confidence in both the site itself and its offerings.
Many sites use very short links, about three words, max. Our client experience (results measured in dollars) and solid research (scientifically gathered in a lab) indicate the best links (most likely to deliver what the reader expects) are usually 4 to 10 words long.
Be specific, include an imperative, and include an implied benefit in all links. You'll create relevance, credibility, desire, and sales momentum. Most important, you'll convert more visitors into customers.
Do your links do all that?
