Search Engine Metrics… Organic Search vs. Paid Placement

Let me preface this report by citing advertisers in 2004 have spent 4 Billion dollars on search engine marketing according to (SEMPO) the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.

Website marketers cited Search engine positioning was the top method to drive traffic to their sites (66%), followed by email marketing (54%). Source: Direct Marketing Association. Accordingly, the most cost effective way to market your web site online is to obtain several top 10-search engine rankings in the major search engines for your keywords.

According to a recent Jupiter Research Survey, searching on the search engines is one of the main uses of the Internet among 79% of users. Source: September 2002 Jupiter Research Survey. So that being the case, whatever your promoting you’ll want to make sure it can be found on the first page of the search engines results page.

The reason is numerically simple. An Iprospect Survey in 2002 reported that 78% of web users abandon their search if the first 3 pages don't provide an answer to their question, and 28% don’t scroll past the 2nd page of results. Source: Media Post article reporting results of Spring 2002 IProspect survey.

Combine those facts with the Internets explosive growth rate of 1.8 Million people worldwide going online every week for the very first time, Source: Official Guide To Internet Promotion and you can soon appreciate what a top 10 ranking can mean to you.
Google receives approximately 39.4% of all search engine traffic. Yahoo receives approximately 30.4%. They’re simply the largest search engines being utilized online today.

Bringing up the rear is MSN at 29.6%, and AOL 15.5% then Ask Jeeves with 8.5%. Source: Nielsen//NetRatings January 2004

On-Site SEO and Link Building

A discussion between 2 SEO´s, Mr. Ethical and Mr. Links, about link building.

Mr. Ethical: There is no need for link building if you know how to optimize a website properly. It’s all on-site work and some basic submissions to some directories.

Mr. Links: Yeah that’s what it starts with, but you have to admit that once you’re done with on-site optimization and the results are not there yet, you need to do link building in order to increase the rankings.

Mr. Ethical: Nothing of the sort, Mr. Links. Links will come by them selves if you have enough content that will attract links naturally.

Mr. Links: So how are these people going to find your website if links are what you need to be found in the first place? Those couple of basic submissions won’t give you high enough rankings, if at all, to be found by people that want to link to your content. It’s a chicken and the egg problem.

Mr. Ethical: Most websites already have a bunch of back links so that’s not really an issue. All you have to do is optimize the site and eventually enough people will find the site to get even higher rankings.

Mr. Links: But what about a site that is in a very competitive market and most top sites have many back links already? Wouldn’t you want to get some more links?

Mr. Ethical: Link schemes are unethical.

Mr. Links: Unethical link schemes are unethical.

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Search Engine Copywriting Explained

Copywriting in the world of marketing has always been an expensive process and the main aim of the copy is to attract the reader attention and lure him into buying a product or using a particular service. Copywriting in the online world has pretty much the same meaning, but I believe it is slightly difficult, as here the main aim is to not only grab the readers attention but in order to make it more effective, it is also important to make the copy rank well in the search engines, so that the targeted audience actually get to read it.

Search engine copywriting refers to the process, where a copy is written in a way, where it not only reads well to the reader, but also repeats specific target “keywords?within the text, in order for that copy (webpage) to rank well in search engines for those keywords.

Copywriting experts believe it is ideal to have around 300 words on a page with one or two targeted search terms cleverly placed within the text a few times. Along with the text, it is also important to optimize other elements on the page such as the title text, headings, description and keyword tags, and alt text.

Advantages and Disadvantages of SEO Copywriting

Advantages
Long term Rankings: It is believed that this method helps in maintaining SEO rankings for much longer as compared to other optimization techniques, even when search engines change their algorithms. Although many search engine optimization experts believe that this is a myth.


Quality Content: It not only helps in the optimization process, but also helps to have quality and well written content on your website, which is likely to get you returned visitors or referrals.

12 Things You Really Should Know About SEO

From the very beginning of the Internet, the number one challenge which all of us have faced is how to attract qualified visitors to our websites. Throughout the boom years, one of the most popular solutions was to get massive funding, relatively easy to get in those days, and "buy" traffic, by various means.

As an iconoclastic young developer, with ambitions of beating the "big boys" at their own game, more time than money or the connections to get it, I sought a less capital intensive methodology to achieve the same results. Years of study and rapt attention to the pertinent forums, trying everything that even seemed to make sense (making many mistakes along the way, and learning much from each one), then carefully monitoring the results, has lead to many highly workable tools in our SEO bag of tricks. The outcome of these trial and error methods, (lots of both) lays the foundation of our SEO services and the basis for the ongoing growth of traffic to your website and ours.

The simple fact of the matter is this: Expertise in any other form of writing in no way qualifies one for the type of writing required to optimize a website for the Internet. There are many sites which have less than correct punctuation, grammar, and even spelling which rank #1 in their optimized search phrases. This is not to say that I don't think these things are important, only that to be found in the search engines, they are not the most important consideration.

The flip side of this argument is equally true. Just because someone knows all the ins and outs of all of the search engines, can write algorithms in their sleep, has lunches with Dr. Eric Schmidt and is on a first name basis with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, does not, in any way, make them a writer. All of the writing on this site was done as a collaborative venture between Susan K. Thompson, a professional writer with strong academic credentials and real world experience, in both business and marketing, and myself. Was there a lot of editing and re-write? Yes. Were there disagreements? You bet! Was it worth it? Look at the record.

Emerald Coast Entrepreneur was launched on May 1, 2005 with most site optimization in place and submission to the directories just beginning. With a total monetary investment of less than $100.00, and a time investment, I'd rather not think about, but which approached 300 hours, the site was given a PR5 ranking by Google on it's first update, less than 2 months after our launch.

Studies show that over 90% of all online users use search engines to find what they are looking for, whether products/services, or just plain old information.

The following twelve points will, I hope, summarize a philosophy, approach and methodology to the SEO question which is both sound and effective, along with giving some helpful insight into the industry itself.

The Basics of SEO - Some FAQs

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get asked a few questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will help people understand the basics, and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain.

Q: Why are search engines important to me?

A: 85% of all website traffic is driven by search engines. The only online activity more popular than search is email. 79.2% of US users don't go to page 2 of search results. 42% of users click on the no.1 result. For the under-40 age-group, the Internet will become the most used media in the next 2-3 years.

Q: How do search engines decide on their rankings?

A: IMPORTANT: You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the search engines.
Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out ¡¥spiders¡¦ or ¡¥robots¡¦ which ¡¥crawl¡¦ (analyze) your site and ¡¥index¡¦ (record) its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your site is useful and should be included in the search engine¡¦s search results.

Q: Can't I just pay for a high ranking?

A: No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic (and thus more advertising revenue). In other words, their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a good search engine; irrelevant results makes for a short-lived search engine.

Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever you click Search:

„X Natural/Organic ¡V The ¡¥real¡¦ search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.
„X Paid ¡V Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled ¡§Sponsored Links¡¨, and normally take up a smaller portion of the window.

5 Steps to Get Top 10 Website Search Engine Rank

1. Step One: Select right keyword for web SEO Optimization.
You must choose your keywords carefully. This is the most important step of the SEO. Wrong or ineffective keywords mean invalid keyword optimization. You should find popular keywords and phrases related to your business, then know search popularity and competition number of every keywords. The keywords with more popularity and less competition will be your targeted keyword phrases.

Resources:

Best Promotion Keywords - http://www.websitepromotionsoft.com/bestpromotionkeyword.html
Overture - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Google - https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox


2. Step Two: Optimize your website ranking factors.

Once you have finished keyword analysis and selected specified keywords, you should optimize your web site to improve search engine position. The important ranking factors including website title tags, description tags, meta keyword tags, heading text, link url, link text, image alt, comment and web page body text.

Every keyword frequency, weight, size, prominence
and proximity all affect the ranking. You should optimize all these factors carefully. The top 10 ranking website content and ranking factors will give your more help.

Resources:
Web Optimization Angel - http://www.websitepromotionsoft.com/weboptimizationangel.html
WebPositionGold - http://www.webposition.com/d2.pl?r=TBI-55EC&FN=download.htm



3. Step Three: Submit url to search engines directories.

After search engine optimization page design, Submiting all your web sites to Google, Yahoo, MSN, DMOZ and the other major engines. Manual free submit url is recommend. At
http://www.websitepromotionsoft.com/submit-url-free.html you can find top 588 search engine list with homepage, submit url address, alexa rank, google page rank, google inbound links and google including site pages.