Microsoft plus Yahoo vs Google, Microsoft vs Yahoo and other variations of names in the paid search game appear to make all the headlines these days. A week ago, StatCounter Global Stats announced that Microsoft’s fresh search engine, Bing, has went through the market share of Yahoo’s engine. Since Bing’s establish, both companies have sought to procure their positions in the market, but obviously none of them can get the better of Google’s dominance in the search industry, which commands over 70 per cent of the market.
While Microsoft has made an earthshaking effort to vie with Google in the search space, Google is coming up with a fresh running system that might set Microsoft behind in another market. Microsoft’s online search revenue is hole-and-corner when likened to its total revenue ( million in revenue for online search vs billion total for the last quarter). The operating system has been Microsoft’s cash cow. Now Google is intruding on the space and the market looks forward to see how Google’s Chrome OS will change the landscape in 2010.
Yahoo seems to be way behind in all business segments and its stock has drastically worsened, especially since the deal with Microsoft fell apart and the modern acquisition proffer was withdrawn.
After several back and forth dramatic scenes involving Icahn, Microsoft and Yahoo, no deal was made, and Yahoo’s stock kept going down, and now, coupled with the dramatic market crash, it is even more pronounced.
It was apparent that the Microsoft-Yahoo M&A deal could not go through in any case, as it could not acquire government approval unless Google had accomplished near-monopoly leadership in paid search. Therefore, for Yahoo the hope for Microsoft’s acquisition rescue appeared to be naïve.
But!
But the latest travel of Yahoo reminds me of an ad campaign of Mini Cooper that, a few years ago, made the brand’s image – a little guy finds his way and gets ahead of giants.
According to rumors that I plucked up in Yahoo’s office cafeteria while travelling to a friend the other day (truly never eat alone if you desire to get word the latest news first), Yahoo appear to have come up with a strategy that is shockingly uncomplicated but might appear extraordinary in its post-acquisition grandeur.
The content of the rumor is absorbing Yahoo intends to make an entertaining antiaircraft acquisition and purchase the IdeaMama Ad Network, the ad technology division of a Canadian company with its office in Silicon Valley. At first I was perplexed why Yahoo would necessitate this little funky company, but here is my take on it.
This acquisition can set Yahoo in the leadership position by letting it to introduce a radically fresh category of on-line advertizing.
Let’s explore it. The success of search companies hinges not so much on relevance of search and quality of search algorithms (yes, Yahoo will always stay behind there); their success at the end of the day depends on advertizing revenue. The bottom line is all that matters.
Up-to-date search engines use CPC as the main advertising model. Some admit affiliate commercializing with CPS, but not everything is that uncomplicated there. CPC has no chance to acquire an appreciable portion of advertisers’’ budget for a number of reasons; one is that the conversion rate of clicks handed over by content partners along with MROI sometimes is alleged. On the other hand, many publishers won’t advertize with Yahoo or Google for the humble compensation that CPC can proffer. Research webmasters’ forums and you will see how much negativity AdSense receives; publishers detest it as it is a soiled media monetization option, but there are not many alternatives out there.
The Pay Per Sale model is always preferable to search engines. Google seems to render affiliate commercializing options, but only for picked out advertisers. Not everybody can leap on the bandwagon. You have to roll up an earthshaking amount of clicks first and then demo an eminent conversion ratio, that, by the way, Google’s algorithm doesn’t cipher very well – there are plenty of holes that forestall stats from exposing tangible numbers.
But even that is not the main challenge. The problem lies in upright coverage. This model can serve only ecommerce companies, those that trade goods online. The gate is not ample opened for every company – if you sell business services, analyzable technologies or highly ascertained consumer products and your sales is mainly made off-line, you are totally out of options – the actual processes and technologies don’t support affiliate commercializing for much companies, end of the story. But it is a shame.
Even if Internet ad spending grows to over 0 billion worldwide by 2010, it still could be increased significantly if only publishers could tap into the sales commissions that affiliate marketing offers. As an example, if a company’s online commercializing budget is 0,000 a year, no marketer can ever get over the hump to spend 0K for CPC instead – no way, but advertisers can easily take a portion of M+ sales commission and reallocate to publishers’, which now increases publishers’’ revenue many fold.
If the rumor proves to be true, the reason why I think Yahoo decided to bite on IdeaMama’s PPD (Pay Per Deal) model and use their ingenious deal tracking process is that it enables Yahoo to chip sales dollars from the growing B2B segment that is not so keen to pass to Yahoo’s CPC their marketing dollars. In uncomplicated math, if Yahoo can pull in 100,000 little to medium measured service and technology companies that currently expend their dollars on CPC with Google and lead generation programs with other vendors, and if each advertiser pays a 10% commission on sales brought forth by Yahoo ads with content partners’ participation, Yahoo can append annually billion in revenue to their P&L, presuming that moderate sales appended to advertisers’’ balance sheet is as little as M annually.
Even if my math is half off, the move with this acquisition is absolute genius as Yahoo will be positioned as the only search engine that offers PPD as an advertising option and will finally have a competitive edge and some identity instead of crawling behind Google.
Yahoo could probably develop the technology in house and launch it, bypassing acquisition, but a lawsuit resulting from infringing on IdeaMama’s patents would probably cost them more than the price of the acquisition itself, plus the hassle of explaining to its shareholders about corporate integrity. From what I got word Yahoo will be paying nothing for this deal, something under million. Taking into consideration that the time factor is acute, conveying people educated in the PPD model from IdeaMama’s team to incorporate the technology into Yahoo’s operation sounds like an astute travel.
billion in additional revenue for Yahoo will cost all together less than M (buying price plus system integration)? Hah? Someone might not like it. Yes, in the last few years Yahoo have clearly lost mind share and market share to competitors, but as I see it with this exquisite turnaround move Yahoo by definition can become the most important player in search marketing sphere as now the company can tap in into verticals that neither Google, Microsoft or AOL can reach (unless one of them places a higher acquisition bid I guess).
For Yahoo, more relevancy in search results and social media innovations won’t solve the problem of Google’s dominance in paid search advertising. Yahoo was behind and will remain behind even despite its acquisition by Microsoft if it ever happens. But Yahoo’s strategic acquisition of IdeaMama’s ad system will scale Yahoo’s online advertising platform and branch it into a new online advertising category with untapped and uncapped revenue potential. Now it is not social media innovation that everybody is talking about, but innovation in media monetization.
I find all that to be a very interesting development of the search game. I can’t hold off to get word more about 2009 M&A activities and especially the M&A deal “Yahoo plus IdeaMama” and all the post-acquisition events. What happens next in the battle between search giants can be simply interesting; you never cognize who pulls the next trigger and what it might be
Have you heard about the term web directory? This is a kind of catalogue which maintains all the information and links about different websites. A proper web directory will make a classification of the websites based on the topics they deal with, and then put them under categories. The categories will be further sub-divided into sub categories. Some of the directories will allow the site owners to submit website without paying any money. There will be others which will need the reciprocal link and they will be paid links.
When you submit websites to directories, you need to follow a few guidelines. The websites should be submitted in proper categories. Think of the theme of your website and choose the appropriate category. Take a good look at the directory and find out about the suitable categories. If they do not contain the relevant categories which correspond to the theme of the website, you may think of other options. Check the other essentials like page rank, the option of back links of the directory. All this will help you to decide whether the directory that you have chosen is suitable for you or not.
Before website submission, you can find out whether the directory is new or not. If it is cached, look for the date when it was cached. You can also check the status of the other sites which have been submitted to the directory. The directory should use the search engine optimization techniques which ensure that the websites listed under the directory will get maximum exposure. Before selecting the directory, you should also note the past performance of the directory. When you submit the URL, it will be reviewed by the editor of the directory.
The editor will look at the details and find out if the website is proper in terms of content, category and description. SEO experts should follow the guidelines provided by the editors of the directory and incorporate the details within the site. Directory submission is no mean task, and you will have to note the details before you submit the site. You must understand one thing. Directory submission will lead to increase in web traffic. This helps in promoting your business and sales. With directory submission, you can be ensured of another thing. This will help in increasing the popularity of instances and back links to the site.
If you submit website to a directory, this will also increase the popularity link. This is actually a method to calculate the quality and also the quantity of links which appear on the site. When the search engines think of the rankings of the site, they will also evaluate the importance of links. And the links may be either inward or outward. There are some directories which are edited by humans which mean that they will strive to incorporate credible information. They will be compiled by subject, quality and the websites will be positioned under suitable categories. In case of directory submission, you will have a number of advantages. The website will be indexed properly, they will obtain a higher amount of click through traffic and they will have a good ranking in the search engines.
The writer works for submitinme.com which offers and
Of all the areas of Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization is the most misunderstood, and potentially the most important to your marketing efforts. There are millions upon millions of pages of web content out there — you can work hard, build a great site, and then be totally lost in the shuffle. SEO is important. It’s also a very complex process that requires patience, careful planning and a long-term approach.
If you’re just getting started with:
Selecting an SEO firm
Trying to start a search engine campaign on your own
Reviewing your current SEO efforts
…read on. This article should provide you with a high-level review of the SEO process, dispel a few SEO myths, and help you understand legitimate optimization strategies.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, defies easy definition. But here’s a short version:
Search Engine Optimization Using keyword analysis and other legitimate practices to gain the highest possible search engine and directory rankings, under a given key phrase, for a given URL.
Every SEO professional in the world just cringed, so I’ll break this definition down a bit and hopefully prevent a hail of angry e-mails:
Keyword Analysis is the process of mining keyword search data to find the best balance between the keywords you need and the best potential search niche. More on this later.
Search Engine means an automated search engine. ‘Search Engines’ include Google, AlltheWeb.com, Yahoo (powered by Google plus their own directory information), AOL Search, Ask Jeeves and MSN Search. A search engine obtains its results from ‘spiders’ or ‘bots’ — small programs that come to your web site read it in much the same way you would: By reading the content on a page, and then moving from page to page via links. A directory, on the other hand, is built at least in part by human beings reading sites and other information and deciding where each site fits into the directory structure. Yahoo’s directory area and Open Directory are both examples of directories.
Ranking is the numeric rank reflecting your position in the results list when someone performs a search on a particular set of keywords.
Highest Possible means getting as close to number one as you can. Sometimes you just can’t get that number one spot. Maybe someone else has a 400-page web site solely dedicated to the key phrase for which you’re attempting to optimize. Or maybe they’re paying a fortune in advertising. That’s life, sometimes…
Key Phrase is the keyword or set of keywords someone types into the little ‘search’ field in Google or Alta Vista or any other search engine.
A URL is the address of one page on your site. Most search engines display keyword search results and provide a link directly to the page most relevant to those results, rather than your home page. It’s very, very important to keep that in mind when you build and optimize your site.
Legitimate Practices is a pet peeve of mine. A true search engine optimization campaign will not use practices such as page or content cloaking, redirects, or lists of links (so-called ‘link farms’) but relies on good coding practices, well-written content, steady link popularity work and site features that will be every bit as valuable for site visitors as for search engine ranking. Anything less is a short-term fix that will likely reduce your rankings more often than increase them.
So, the long version of the definition would be:
Search Engine Optimization Using keyword analysis, good coding practices, well-written copy, link popularity analysis and careful site organization to move a web page as close to the number one search results position as possible for a given key phrase, in both search engines and directories.
Hey, that’s not so bad after all. But how do you get started? First, you separate reality from myth…
SEO Urban Legends
There are quite a few SEO myths out there. Here are my favorites:
The Keywords META Tag Matters. Mostly wrong. Only Inktomi pays any attention to the keywords meta tag. You should do something basic, but don’t bother putting in keywords that aren’t supported by your page content.
Search Engines can read Flash, images and video. Sorry, and Ford isn’t selling a flying car yet, either. Search engines can read one thing: Text. Anything else, while perfectly legitimate as a design tool, will not help your ranking. And relying too heavily on Flash or images may reduce your site’s visibility. Google is one partial exception — they can read some links in Flash, but still have very limited ability to read Flash content.
Mirroring my site in multiple locations will improve ranking. Actually, just the opposite. Duplication of content will generally have no effect or, worse, reduce your ranking in major search engines. Most search engines now have rules against this form of ‘spam’ and may reduce your ranking or ban your site altogether.
‘Doorway’ pages improve ranking. Pages that have lots of keywords but then quickly redirect to the main site will not help you in major search engines, such as Google. And, if someone catches you and reports you to Google or the other search engine, you may be banned altogether. A ‘landing’ or ‘bridge’ page, though, that’s designed to be as useful for users as for search engines, and does not redirect the user, can help by providing keyword-rich content that’s genuinely worthwhile.
Firms promising to get me #1 rankings in 10,000 search engines for $99.95 can help. I alternate between tooth-grinding and hysterical laughter when I see these ads. First, there aren’t 10,000 search engines. Actually, there are probably 10-20 you should really worry about. Getting listed in the other thousand or so is largely a waste of time. Second, no one can guarantee any ranking in any search engine for a specific keyword. Period. And finally, the price is less than half the cost to get an express submission in a single directory (Yahoo). Chances are anyone trying to get you to spend the $99.95 is operating a ‘link farm’ where they list dozens, or hundreds, of sites. While they won’t hurt your ranking, they won’t help, either. To learn more about how to choose an SEO firm, check out Google’s article: .
Firms charging me more money and guaranteeing a #1 ranking on Google can help. This is the latest SEO scam. I can get you a number one ranking on Google, too, as long as I get to pick the keyword or can get you ranked under a fairly unique company name. But no one, and I mean no one can guarantee a #1 rank under a specific keyword. Even Google says so.
Forget the myths — if an offer seems too good to be true, it is. The truth is that search engines are now almost savvy enough to read your pages like a human being would, so anything that will drive away a typical site visitor will also probably reduce your ranking. Things that will increase your search engine ranking include:
Well-written content
Good, clean HTML code
Useful, relevant TITLE tags
Useful, relevant DESCRIPTION tags
Relevant, appropriate links from other web sites
There are some basic steps that, well executed, will do more to increase your page rank than an ocean of snake oil. The SEO Campaign Process
A typical SEO campaign starts with keyword analysis, and then emphasizes insuring your site doesn’t impede search engine bots and follows up with ongoing link and traffic analysis. If you like pretty pictures, here’s one:
What’s a Bot? A ‘bot’ is a program used by a search engine to read the content of your site into a directory. I mentioned this briefly in ‘What is Search Engine Optimization?’ above. Keep up, now….
Step 1: Keyword Analysis. Ah, keywords. If you say the right word enough times on your site, you’ll get that coveted #1 spot, right? Wrong. Choosing the right keywords starts with you making a list of the keywords or phrases under which you’d like to be found, and typically ends up somewhere completely different. Typically, selecting the best keywords is a four-step process:
List the keywords and phrases under which you’d like to be found.
Find out whether anyone searches on those keywords, and whether they’re searching for relevant items.
Find out how many other sites are struggling for rankings under those keywords.
Pick keywords with the same meaning but a better search-to-competition ratio.
Maybe I want to rank #1 under ‘Search Engine Optimization’. Guess what? There are 686,000 other URLs in Google trying for that spot. Hmmm. But wait! Under ‘Seattle Search Engine Optimization’ there are only 19,000. So, I targeted that key phrase, instead. And guess what? We got a #3 ranking.
Don’t forget about relevance, either. If you want a high ranking under ‘tires’, you’re going to have your work cut out for you. And in the end you’ll likely end up getting found for ‘bicycle tires’, ‘automobile tires’, ‘spare tires’ and who knows what else. Is it worth it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But you have to do your homework to find out.
Data Mining and Keywords If you’re doing a campaign for a large site, you may end up testing and comparing thousands of keywords and phrases. Having a good data-mining tool (even Excel will do) on hand is important when you’re doing keyword analysis. We use S-Plus, by Insightful Software. It’s saved our lives, and clicker fingers, several times.
There are several tools that help you research the number of searches and competitors for keywords. Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) is a good one — don’t depend on their results from Overture, though, unless you’re specifically preparing an Overture campaign. Metacrawler’s MetaSpy tool is worth a look, too. Ideally, look at results from a few different sources.
Keyword analysis is the hardest part of a campaign, in number-crunching terms. It requires a lot of work and may not tell you what you want to hear. But in my experience it’s critical to a successful campaign.
Step 2: Search Engine Readiness. Almost every web site we review has one or more problems that will prevent search engine bots from properly reading all content. Typical showstoppers include:
An all-Flash or all-images home page
A home page that automatically redirects to another page
Pop-up ads (does anyone really read these things?)
A site full of pages with fewer than 400 words on a page
Broken links
Navigation that is generated by JavaScript
No TITLE or DESCRIPTION tags
A major step in any SEO campaign is making sure that the site will present the friendliest profile to search engines. Happily, the investment in optimizing will also pay off in a faster, more universally compatible site.
Step 3. Content and Site Preparation. You’ve done your research: You know which keywords match your message, and your site’s HTML code is one big search engine welcome mat. Now it’s time to make sure that your site contains those keywords. This is where I most often see folks get confused — should you rewrite your web content to emphasize keywords? Yes, but with extreme caution. Should you make small, appropriate changes? Yes. Here are my guidelines for content preparation.
Don’t write for keywords (much). This almost always leads to stilted, hard-to-read prose. Writing keyword-rich content that really works for users is an art form. Be careful.
Do a little careful editing. If you use the word ‘car’ but ‘auto’ is the keyword you need, chances are you can do a few replacements without marring your carefully crafted copy.
Spend time on the titles and description tags. Make sure every page in your site has a unique, relevant TITLE and DESCRIPTION tag.
Never use an automatic page generator. Tools like WebPosition Gold offer to generate optimized pages for you. Don’t. They tend to hurt your ranking as much as help, and they generate ugly, ugly pages.
Write more stuff. More content is almost always better. If your site is just missing a specific keyword or phrase, but you think it’s important, then your potential customers probably do too. By adding a few more pages, or a white paper, or some other content focusing on those absent keywords, you’ll likely help visitors and improve your keyword ranking at the same time. And, the more text-rich your site is, the better the odds that you’ll catch longer, stranger but really important key phrases that you can’t anticipate.
Step 4. Link Analysis. Quite a few major search engines (Google, most importantly) weigh your ‘link popularity’ when ranking your site. A more accurate term, though, is ‘link analysis’, because these engines don’t just count up the number of links to your site. They look for links near and containing relevant text. So a page full of links, one of which happens to be yours, won’t help very much. But a link from a related site, near a short paragraph that contains relevant keywords, will probably give you a boost. Having keywords in the link itself is even better. A quick example:
doesn’t help much.
For search engine optimization, visit http://www.portentinteractive.com is much better.
For search engine optimization, visit Portent Interactive where ‘search engine optimization’ is the link to Portent, is the absolute best case.
There are a few ways to build your link popularity:
Contact sites that relate to yours and request a link exchange. This works really well, but obviously takes a long time.
Syndicate your content. If you can provide an easy way for interested webmasters to link directly to relevant stories on your site, you provide an instant link popularity boost, and get your message out to boot.
Start an affiliate program. If you sell a product, consider setting up an affiliate sales program.
Google’s ‘One Site, One Vote’ Rule Google awards a lot less weight to a link to your site if that link is on a page with lots of other links. That’s why so-called ‘link farming’ doesn’t work. Ideally, you want a link to your site from a page that includes relevant content and not that many other outgoing links.
Step 5. Submit your site. Many search engines, Google included, allow you to submit your site for free. Generally you can submit your home page and let the search engine crawl the rest of your site. Some directories and engines offer paid ‘express’ services, and some, like Teoma, require that you pay for URL submission. Which engines you choose depends on your budget and campaign.
Step 6. Review, Revise, and Keep Going. Think you’re done? Wrong — search engine optimization is an ongoing project. At least once per month, review your rankings, site traffic reports and link popularity and tweak your site as necessary. The tools you need to measure results are:
Site traffic reports. Any web hosting company should provide you with a web site traffic report, and almost all of the reporting tools in use today provide a ‘referrals from search engines’ section. Take a look at this section for a good measure of campaign results.
Link counts. Use the link: command on Google (see above) to determine your link popularity.
Your keyword list. Search on the relevant search engines to see if your ranking has improved.
Your brain. You have to interpret what you see, and decide whether changes are warranted. There’s no hard and fast rule for this, and no magic formula. Sorry about that…
So now you’ll get instant results, right? Well, not quite…
A Word About Expectations
Search engine optimization can take time. Even Google only refreshes its entire index once a month, so don’t expect instant results.
If your first registration run doesn’t generate increased rankings within a month or two, don’t panic. Look at your site traffic and search on the keywords you chose. Make sure that the search engine you’re checking actually includes your site, too — most likely the bots just haven’t gotten around to ‘crawling’ your site.
Still stumped? Find a professional. Sure, we cost money. But you may have missed something about your site that’s preventing a good keyword rank, and a second set of eyes can help.
A Solid Marketing Strategy
Obviously, Search Engine Optimization is a big job. But nothing can send more traffic to your site, for lower per-click cost. If you follow the basic steps, and keep at it, you will definitely get results. What’s really, really important is to make sure you don’t award too much weight to one step (such as link popularity) at the expense of the others. A well-rounded campaign will provide solid, long-term results.
What about pay per click? Pay-per-click services, such as Overture and Google Adwords, are very different animals. If you’ve done your keyword analysis you’re halfway there, but there are other tasks. I’ve not talked about them in this article because, well, they need an article of their own. Check back soon…
as the name suggests is an Indian located in Hyderabad that provides professional services in web design, website development, web hosting, website maintenance, website redesigning, web promotion, search engine optimization, multimedia presentations, e-catalogs, e-commerce web development, intranet application development, software development, extranet applications, portals and vortals development from Hyderabad, India.
One of the biggest reasons why many organizations are not doing even simple things to help people find their websites in search engines is they simply don’t understand how search engines work. This article is intended to explain the basics of how search engines work and in the course of doing so shatter some search engine myths and help you understand what you can do to help people find your website in search engines. What is a search engine? The first to step to understanding how search engines work is to understand what a search engine is. The simplest explanation is that search engine is a tool for finding things online. There are many different types of search engines but they can be put into two major categories…
Human-Powered Directories The first “search engines” were not actually search engines as we think of them today, but searchable directories of websites organized by hierarchical categories. A site is added to a directory when the website owner fills out a submission form on the directory’s website requesting their site be included in the directory and include their website’s title, description, URL (web address), and category. A moderator later reviews the site and if it meets the directory’s criteria a listing for that site is added or activated. The original Yahoo was originally a human-powered directory, and directories like Open Directory Project continue on today.
The downside of the human-powered search engine is that it only includes websites that have been submitted to it, which means you may not find what you’re looking for especially if it’s a new web page. The other downside from the directories’ point of view is that reviewing every site submitted is very labor-intensive and costly. I know because my company’s “search engine”, , like almost all church/Christian “search engines”, is a human-powered directory.
Crawler/Spider-Powered Search Engines The next generation of search engines has programs which actively seek out new sites and read them into their indexes. These programs are called crawlers, spiders, robots, or bots. All of largest and most popular search engines today are of this type, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.
The rest of this article is focused on how these crawler/spider-powered search engines work because more than 99% of searches are done on this type of search engine.
The Crawler As mentioned above, the first part of a search engine is the crawler (AKA spider, robot, and bot). The crawler reads pages into the search engine raw database of every page the search engine crawler has read. Some important things to know about crawlers…
1) Search bots periodically reread every web page in their database. Why does this matter?
• You don’t have to do anything when you change your site. If your site is already listed in a search engine and you make changes to your website, search engines will eventually update their information. • You do have to be patient. The frequency of re-crawling varies depending on the search engine, the importance of your site (as determined by the search engines), and how often you update it. It could take a day or it could take more than a week.
2) Search bots follow links on the pages that have already been crawled in order to find new pages. Why does this matter?
• If you add a new page to your website or create a new website, it’s important to add a link to it on a web page that is already in the search engines. • If a web page that is already in the search engines has a link to your new page or new website, you do not need to submit a request to the search engines to crawl the new page or website, though it may still be worth doing just to be sure your website will be found quickly.
3) Some search engines have forms you can submit to request a website be crawled. Why does this matter?
• If you have a new website and no sites link to it, search bots will not be able to find it. In this case, submitting a form to the search engine requesting your site be listed or indexed can get it into search engines. • Because human-powered directories do not have search bots/crawlers, to be listed in them you must submit a request form.
The Ranking Algorithm Some time after a web page has been crawled by the search bot or crawler, the search engine then processes or indexes the page to determine what search words and phrases the page is relevant to as well as how relevant that page is compared with other web pages for those phrases. During this processing the search engine looks at many different factors including how many times each word and phrase occurs on the page, which words are in headings or bold, the domain name of the site, filename of the page, the pages that link to the page, and many more.
Exactly which factors a search engine looks at and how they’re weighted is called the search engine’s search ranking algorithm. It’s like the search engine’s “secret sauce.” Each search engine’s algorithm is different and each is a heavily guarded secret.
Why does this matter?
• There is time between when your site is crawled (or recrawled) and when it is processed or indexed. So, it can take as little as a few hours to many days or weeks before changes to your website may produce changes in its search rankings. • Because each search engine’s ranking algorithm is different, a web page can be #1 in Google but #20 in Yahoo for a particular phrase. • Because each search algorithm is a heavily guarded secret nobody outside of a few select engineers at each search engine knows exactly how much each particular factor weighs into the rankings of each search engine. But, people who spend their professional lives helping sites rank better in search engines have gained very good idea as to what factors matter most. • Because the search ranking algorithms look at text, headings, and other elements on a web page, changing things on the web page can change where that web page appears in the search results. • Search ranking algorithms look at factors outside of a web page, such as the age of a website and links to the web page. So, there are other factors which you may have less influence over.
The goal of every search engine is to display to the user the information or websites the user is looking for. In other words every search engine wants to provide the best, most relevant results. As a result, search engines are constantly improving their algorithms and including new factors which they think will produce better search results. Why does this matter? As search algorithms change, so will your website’s search engine rankings.
The Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) The crawling of websites and indexing of web pages are constantly going on even when no one is searching. The last part in the search process is part that you’re probably most familiar with – the actual search. You type in a word, short phrase, or question, and the search engine displays a list of websites.
That list of websites is called the search engine results page and sometimes referred to as the SERPs.
If you do a search and look at the SERP, you’ll notice two columns. Above the right column it says “Sponsored Links.” These are paid advertisements. The companies and organizations listed here pay a fee to Google for each person who clicks their ad, so they’re often referred to as Pay-Per-Click or PPC ads.
In the left column are the unpaid search results also sometimes called the organic results or natural results. These are the websites the search engine believes are most relevant to the search phrase that was queried. Sometimes search engines also display sponsored links in the left column above the natural results or will even place a block of pay-per-click ads in the middle of the natural results. Sponsored links are always labeled, though not always very clearly.
Why does this matter?
From the searcher’s perspective, there is nothing wrong with clicking on a paid link. You may find what you’re looking for there. But it’s important to be aware of which websites paid to be in the results and which are there naturally.
From the web administrator’s perspective, it’s important to understand there are two opportunities to get to the top of the search engine rankings, through natural results and by purchasing pay-per-click advertising.
Help the Search Engines With a better understanding how search engines work, you can make better decisions about the marketing of your website though search engines. Search engines need your help to find your website and to know what words and phrases it’s relevant for. Give them the help they need. That’s where search engine optimization comes in, but I’ll get to that on another day.
Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the blog. He has been Director of Marketing Services with Ourchurch.Com for over 5 years providing including services specific for and private school marketing. Kurt is also a Deacon at his church.
Search engine optimization is the activity of improving the volume and quality of real time traffic to web pages or whole sites from search engines through natural search results for targeted keywords. Most often a website that gets a higher position or ranking in the search results is the one which the searchers will visit more frequently. Therefore, it is important that a site is optimized to get real time traffic the right way to make it more search-engine friendly and get a higher rank in the search results.
Though SEO helps in boosting real time traffic to a website, it should not be considered as the marketing of the site. It may be easy for one to pay and appear in the paid search results for a set of keywords, however, the concept behind the SEO technique is to get the topmost ranking without paying since your site is relevant to the search query entered by the user.
The amount of time that can be spent on optimizing a website to get real time traffic can range from a few minutes to a long term activity. If your product or service is such that the keywords used are uncommon, then some general SEO would be sufficient to get a top rating. However, if your product or service industry is competitive or is in a saturated market, then it is important to dedicate considerable amount of time and effort for SEO. Even if one decides on simple SEO solutions, it is necessary to understand how search engine algorithms work and which items are crucial in SEO to get real time traffic.
The marketing approach that SEO adopts for increasing a site’s relevance is consideration of how search engines work and what searches are performed by users. The SEO process attempts to concentrate its efforts on a site’s coding, presentation, structuring, and also resolving issues that prevent search engine indexing program from spidering a website entirely.
Additionally, SEO efforts also include inserting unique content to web pages to make it more attractive to users and also to ensure that the search engine robots can easily index the content. Optimizing a site to get real time traffic can either be done by in house personnel or outsourced to professional optimizers who carry out SEO projects as a stand-alone service, like us – SEO Traffic Spider.
SEO tactics can be varied to achieve top ranking in search results. These fall into three categories (White-Hat SEO, Grey-Hat SEO, and Black-Hat SEO) depending on legitimacy and ethics.
White Hat SEO uses strategies which are considered ethically correct and legitimate by SEO’s as well as search engines while spidering a site. It would be best to use this tactic as a means of achieving top ranking in the search results for real time traffic. These tactics will not lead to penalties which are generally imposed when Black Hat SEO is used and even though it may take some amount of time to reap the rewards of this process, it will surely bring in promising results in terms of high rakings.
Grey Hat SEO uses tactics which may be considered legitimate if they are used correctly. However, these have been subjected to misuse by unethical SEO’s and webmasters. It is possible that your website will not get penalized or banned for using this strategy and it may be necessary to use this process at times, however, webmasters are careful in the use of these tactics. This is because search engines may penalize tactics that are subjected to abuse even though they are used in legitimate forms.
Black Hat SEO employs techniques that are considered illegitimate and ethically incorrect and which have been or will surely be penalized and cause your website to be banned by search engines. Since Black Hat SEO is subject to abuse widely because it tends to harm search engine user experience, it is highly recommended to avoid using it as a means of attaining high ranking.
, is a global provider offering its customers a full suite of ranging from Indexing, Optimization – On Page/Off Page, Linking, SEO Copywriting, Site Overhauling, Traffic Analytics, etc.
SEO stands for search engine optimization and if you have a website that is selling services, then this is what you want for your website. You want your website to appear at the top of engine results pages whenever someone types in a specific keyword, SEO web site promotions can help you get there. Studies prove that being at the top of search engine pages get a much better return on their investment compared to traditional forms of advertising. It is said by others that SEO web site promotion is the only “fool proof method’ to guaranteed the top 10 placement on the page. Search engines use two types of listings, those that are paid for, usually by sponsored links, the other is organic. Organic search engines listings are those that appear down the middle of the page. Spider-driven search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN use “robots or crawlers” to score websites across the Internet. Robots will spider or crawl over each site and keep a tally of pages based on how pertinent they are. Your website placement within any spider driven search engine comes from many variables such as link popularity, density and frequency of keywords in page content, HTML code, site themeing along with more things that are too many to count here. You want your website positioned well among the major search engines and a SEO web site promotion can do this for you.
The two most influential SEO web site promotion factors you can use to help your website are Link Popularity and Page Content. Link Popularity: Google’s database currently has about 4 million pages making it the most popular spider-driven search engine on the Internet today. When Google spiders the Web, it finds sites by traveling through links and the more sites that link to you, the more important these search engines believe your content to be. So your focus should be on getting as many important sites that you can to link to your site, and the more hits your site get, the more sales you can make, if that is what your website is about. There are many ways to do this: exchange links with business partners and industry related sites, submit to online directories, or participate in Link Building . Page Content: The search engine spiders only spider through text and will use the content on your site to determine what your site is all about and this will help decide how popular your site will be ranked for specific keyword phrases when someone types them into a search engine. This is why keyword research is so important to obtaining top search engine placement. In order to get the top spot in search results, your going to need to know how many people are looking for your keyword phrases and also to see what kind of competition you are facing while trying to get a top spot in the search results. A SEO web site promotion may be the best thing that can happen to your website, so why wouldn’t you want it?
Companies often approach Mediarun with a problem. How we go about solving that problem is what got us to where we are today. If you have read through our site, you will notice there are no references to packages or off the shelf solutions whatsoever. This is because we approach each campaign or project in a bespoke fashion.
Our clients often ask us the question “what is the best way to divide a budget between paid search, organic and social media/online PR?” The answer will always be related to the end objective, the nature of the site in question, the budget available and the competitive environment.
Let’s consider a few examples –
Scenario 1 – A brand new site/domain, with little search engine credibility or ranking history. The key objective is to drive sales in the short term while building a sustainable source of organic traffic moving forward.
Scenario 2 – A long established site, with good credibility, search engine ranking history driving high volumes of organic traffic, but poor usability is resulting in low conversion ratios. The key objective moving forward is to increase revenues.
Scenario 3 – A new site launching a new product/proposition that few target consumers will be aware of. The objective is to get people interested in the proposition, drive registrations on the site while also generating ad revenue.
Obviously it would not make sense to approach the above problems in the same way. We are passionate about what we do and try to squeeze the most out of every budget through a blend of robust technical capability and marketing creativity. At Mediarun companies who approach in dull formulaic ways amuse us.
Mediarun is a full service specialising in performance based (SEO) solutions, , Social Media Optimisation (SMO) and pay per click management (PPC). We have also pioneered Universal Search and achieved excellent results for our clients on Google Products, Maps and Images.
CameraDollars.com – Discover How To Get Paid With Your Digital Camera! Converts Better Than Survey Sites And Data Entry Sites. Check It Out! Also Check Out EasyWritingBiz.com And ToiletTrainMyCat.com – Affiliates Goto www.cameradollars.com/affiliates. Get Paid To Submit Photos To The Internet!
Understanding the world of , or SEO, can be hard if you are new to the field.
However, Katie Gatto, writing for SEO Chat, has a number of strategies which can help to increase web rankings and avoid the pitfalls of dropping down the list of results.
First off, be discerning about what links are included on your site, says Ms Gatto.
While creating outbound links from your site to another is generally a good thing in the world of SEO, the quality of the sites that you link to can make a big difference in the effect that it has.
Sites that have been penalised for over-linking or which contain adult content are bad news in terms of SEO, as search engines will often recognise them as a dodgy area.
Using a paid link or link trade service to get links for your site can create a similar situation, as most owners of decent and reputable sites prefer to get their links in other ways.
Secondly, Ms Gatto recommends using a few highly relevant keywords naturally in your site, rather than inserting all the slightly-related keywords you can think of as many times possible.
As a rule of thumb, it is best to choose two to three keywords to use in a 300-word piece or five in a longer, 700-word or above piece, she says, adding that keeping keywords extremely relevant increases the likelihood of using words that probably would appear naturally in the piece anyway. Finally, creating original content for your site will pay for itself in terms of SEO, Ms Gatto advises.
Search engines place a high premium on sites having unique content, and using duplicate content, or letting yours be reprinted, reduces the value of your site.
“Letting a site reprint a section with your permission (and a link back) is one thing,” reiterates Ms Gatto, “but reprinting whole pieces is not OK for any reason.”
Ron Jones, board member at Professional Organisation (SEMPO), has also warned against the risks of using duplicate content.
Writing for the blog Search Engine Watch, he notes that search engines tend to filter out any duplicate content and choose one based on certain criteria. And the one that gets picked might not be yours.
To deal with the situation, Mr Jones recommends using a canonical tag, otherwise known as an authoritative page, among a group of pages that have similar content.
Mediarun is a full service specialising in performance based (SEO) solutions, , Social Media Optimisation (SMO) and pay per click management (PPC). We have also pioneered Universal Search and achieved excellent results for our clients on Google Products, Maps and Images.
In today’s dynamic and competitive business environment every company requires significant presence on the web. Every business wants mass publicity that too, fast and at minimal budget. Internet marketing tools are proving very helpful in fulfilling such demands. Amongst the various internet marketing activities, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a well appreciated and successful advertising model.
Search Engine Marketing is a set of advertising methods that boost prominence of your website on major search engines and drives quality traffic with greater conversions, thereby increasing Return on Investments. It creates brand awareness online and provides your website a leading position among the competitors. SEM techniques comprise Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), E-mail Marketing, and Paid Inclusion.
1. SEO: A method of refining a website through keyword selection as per business requirement, meta tag formation and implementation, content optimisation, link building and directory submission. It is a time taking process but shows continuous growth in business, if done ethically.
2. PPC: An advertising model that lists your website on search engines and earns you business through clicks. Its main idea is pay more, rank high. It is a fast marketing tactic with flexible campaign pricing options.
3. E-mail marketing: Also termed as permission marketing, promotes your service or product via e-mails. It is a quick, effective and relatively low budgeted way of internet marketing. Target your audience and promote your business through e-mails.
4. Paid inclusion: Also termed as Pay Per Inclusion (PPI) or Pay for Inclusion (PFR), guarantees immediate listing in search engines in return for some fee. It is favoured by both search engines and website owners.
All these Search engine marketing techniques make the business popular amongst the searchers and help to convert them to valuable customers.
Mediarun is a full service s company specialising in ,Website Promotion, Social Media Optimisation (SMO) and pay per click management (PPC). We have also pioneered Universal Search and achieved excellent results for our clients on Google Products, Maps and Images.
