Search Engines and Social Media Pt2

The recent growth of SEO companies has been quite spectacular and there are now 1,000´s of companies offering their services to improve Website rankings. With literally billions of websites in existence and competition incredibly fierce in a lot of niches, Website owners are beginning to realise that although it’s possible to get a website built for a few hundred dollars, actually getting it to earn money is a whole different ball game.

Apart from the fact that many web designers don’t implement even the basics of  Search Engine Optimization the whole area surrounding SEO is very dynamic and almost in constant flux.

Google, MSN/Bing and Yahoo, the Big 3, control the majority of the webs traffic and competition between them is, and always has been, a constant battle and in order to keep themselves at the top of the leader board they have to be many steps ahead of the current trends.

In my recent article  “Search Engines and Social Media Pt1″ you can see how the recent acquisitions by Google are setting a framework for how future searches will be presented to it’s customers – Social Media is now a huge part of many peoples lives and the way that they use it to interact with each other is beginning to affect the way that people, use, exchange and offer information to each other.

Google depends upon it’s advertisers for it’s revenues but ultimately it’s success stems from the fact that they produce relevant results for the people who search it’s index and it is the latter element that drives Google forward to make sure it is meeting their needs.

Due to the many factors, which often change, that Google uses to rank any given website, SEO has, without doubt, become an almost “mystical art” and is a whole science in and of itself, hence the growth of  Search Engine Optimization companies.

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For many competitive markets getting a  website onto the first page of the Search Engines takes not only a lot of planning but needs a whole strategy, short term and long term, to achieve it’s potential and that’s where SEO companies come into their own. The process of “Off Page Optimization” is labour intensive although not necessarily complicated and because of the large amount of factors that have to be not only analysed but also implemented it has a tendency to overwhelm the average Website owner.

As the Search Engines change their algorithms that they use to evaluate the ranking of sites it is critical that site owners be aware of changes that could, in fact, not only harm their status but also improve their ranking yet it is almost a full time job in trying to keep abreast of current Search Engine do´s and don’ts.

If you have a website that isn’t performing as you would expect or would like to improve your current ranking then an SEO company is a good place to start. Many offer a set of various packages to suit most sites needs and shopping around and some careful research will find you a respected company with a service to match your budget.

An improvement in ranking should bring more visitors and hence sales so it should always be thought of as an investment in your business as opposed to a cost that will have no return

Many SEO companies offer a  “Free SEO Analysis Report” and it is always worth taking advantage of to see how they evaluate the current strengths and weaknesses of your site and to see what recommendations they make to improve it. 

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What is PPC

PPC is an acronym for Pay Per Click marketing and the simplest explanation to start with is that you provide advertising banners or text ads for your business or product which are then displayed on Googles´ Search Results Pages at NO charge to you – if someone clicks on your ad then you pay Google a predetermined sum per click – hence Pay per Click marketing. Each time your ad is displayed is called an impression and the ad positioning on the page ie, top position or 2nd or 3rd is determined by how much you are prepared to bid on the keyword that displays your Ad.

In order to display your ad you you initially have what is called a campaign, this can have a single keyword or keyword phrases relevant to your product but you can also have one or many thousands which can be grouped into themed adgroups and then have different ads within the same campaign.
PPC and Adwords can be a very effective way of advertising and/or testing whether or not your product will sell as you are effectively buying traffic which you can instantaneously send to your site, you can then monitor sales/conversions and immediately add/delete keywords from the campaign and make changes to adverts to improve it´s effectiveness.
PPC can initially be a little daunting and there are many traps that the uninitiated can fall into, the main one being that people generally underestimate the amount of traffic that can be produced and even a multi thousand dollar budget can quickly be swallowed, however, the converse is also true and a small hundred dollar budget can produce spectacular results.
Prior to Xmas 2009 I was promoting a product on one of my campaigns with a commission of $13.50 – I was making a sale every 11.7 clicks (very unusual!!) and my average cpc (Cost per Click) was just 0.16c – a very profitable campaign.
I also tried to compete in a very lucrative and competitive niche and tried various keywords/bids/ads and Landing Pages (the page the customer lands on) and at the end I had had and paid for 1347 clicks and did not make one sale.
Due to the enormous amount of metrics that are available to the person who places the ad, demographics, geo-targeting, date/time placement etc etc  but to mention a few, test test test is the way to maximise any campaign and keyword tracking is absolutely vital – if you or anyone is trying to convince you that you can blindly run a PPC campaign without any form of tracking then you are throwing money away – take my word for it – even if you are only using five keywords!!!

PPC can be very effective on Local Search as although the volume of traffic may be low, you can laser target your potential customers and their Intention to Purchase and hence CTR (Click thru Rate) is often very high

If you are thinking of running a PPC campaign and are not sure where to start or how to manage it then we can offer some advice or even manage the campaign for you using our years of experience with Google/Yahoo/MSN  – I generally have over 100 hundred PPC camnpaigns running at any time so why shouldn´t you take advantage of my experience!.

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Search Engines and Social Media

The Internet, as we well know, is a diverse and dynamic sphere and change is a constant that we all accept and for people involved in Search Engine Marketing and website seo it is imperative that they keep abreast of changes that will have a deep impact on their Clients and their businesses.

With millions of competing pages to get onto the first page of the Search Engines, a huge industry has been built around Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing and now, for those involved in this market, there are massive changes underway that will impact everybody  who sells, uses or has a related business in the “Search Engine” field.

In its relentless pursuit of excellence for the searcher Google has been leading the way in which it presents results to the searcher. With the recent addition of “Local Search Results” included in most searches it is apparent that this drive to show local and relevant results to the person who actually types in a key phrase is gaining popularity.

The way that people use the Internet now will also start to reflect in the way results are displayed.

The incredible growth of Social Media with sites like Facebook and Twitter means that people now have many connected followers, in one form or another, spread across a number of diverse platforms. This means that they now communicate in different ways and many are becoming savvier of Internet Marketing methods and the often spurious methods that they use.

In the days before the Internet “word of mouth” recommendations were solid gold – and, of course, still are.

Who hasn’t bought a product from Amazon without checking the reviews of actual purchasers first – especially since you know you’re going to get the good and the bad. This trend continues with the plethora of “ask” type sites where people post their questions for individuals to answer.

As people continue to grow their Social neighbourhood online then it’s fairly logical to follow the natural progression that people will look to their online community to look for solutions to their problems rather than to use the Search Engines and that search may not necessarily be on a PC but equally as likely to be on a  mobile phone or PDA as the use of them to access web information goes ballistic.

Now that may take a big leap of faith to believe but already the Big Search Engines are changing their algorithms to better reflect these changes in the search patterns of it’s users.

Consider Google’s recent acquisitions – Admob, Gizmo5 (Skype rival) and Teracent, all mobile applications and then the more recent purchase of Picnik, an online photo editing site that allows users to get their images onto social sites easier. Then there’s Aardvark, a service that simplifies the communication between contacts online – oops – then there’s reMail – a  simplified email client for mobiles – notice how all these tie into doing things in your online community and your mobile simpler – so all these recent acquisitions and yet more planned are all part of a strategic effort to keep them at the forefront of search patterns.

Google are keen to acquire Yelp.com too and it’s not difficult to see how it fits into the pattern – with over 26 million users, 9 million posted reviews and special platforms for mobile users.

Andy Abramson, author of the VoIP Watch blog states, “Google has a very deep investment in voice search, features that enable people to say, ‘find this, find that,’ and then make a phone call,”

Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering for Google said recently,” locations will be a key element of future versions of Google search”, and went on to talk about the “Near Me Now” feature, due to be released shortly.

Now add to the mix the recent launch of Google Buzz, a social platform integrated with many “friends” type of features but allying itself to search by adding “buzz near your location”, “Buzz post tagged with a location”, “Buzz on a place”, and a “Buzz layer on Google Maps”

So it’s easy to see where this is all leading, if you have a web presence and you’re not represented in “Local Search” then you’re going to be out of the picture in a real big way.

The emphasis is moving swiftly and it’s moving now – Website SEO specializes in getting companies Local Listings and should be a vital element of your Search Engine Marketing future!

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