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You’ve heard of Google, presumably. What about Yahoo? MSN? Ask? There are hundreds of search engines that people use to find websites (like yours). As such, they are tremendously powerful allies in your battle to attract relevant visitors.
Search engines help users find web pages on any given subject. They index web pages in databases and list them in the search results in order of ‘relevancy’ (to the search query).
How do they work?
Given the scale of the web it should be no surprise to learn that it is highly automated. Imagine having to sift through millions of web pages yourself! Search engines use software programs known as ‘robots’ (or ‘spiders’, or ‘crawlers’) to surf the internet. They follow links and try to make sense of web pages. As such, quality links from quality sites are highly important to your search rankings.
The spider starts with a list of web addresses or URLs to visit and then follows any links found on the page. When a robot discovers a new site or new web page, it sends information back to its main site to be indexed.
The Black Box of Search Offers No Guarantees
All search engines are ferociously private and guard their rules for ranking web pages with great care. Why? To avoid spam, that’s why.
Spam is the killer of relevancy, which is the mantra of search. If people search for something they expect to see relevant results, otherwise they’d use another search engine with more reliable listings.
We do have lots of evidence that gives us some understanding of the most important ranking factors, but search engines can change the rules (the ‘algorithm’) overnight. This can have an astonishing / terrifying effect on your search results. You could be the number one result for a popular search query today, but tomorrow you may fall 30 places or more, if you have been unethical in your pursuit of high rankings.
As such, results on search engines are far from guaranteed. That said, the upside is massive, and figuring out how to get the best out of the search engines is one of the smartest business decisions you will ever make. |
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Why do people use search engines? |
One thing is for certain: people simply love to search. The likes of Google are the first port of call if you are looking for information. Gone are the days of stumbling around dusty, old libraries. People want information at their fingertips – and they want it fast. Now they have it. Google will deliver relevant results in a fraction of a second. That’s why people use Google. Searchers are looking for all kinds of information. They come in all shapes and sizes, but search activity can be split into three broad categories: - Content (you want to find news articles, videos, forums, blogs etc)
- Research (you want reviews, product and price comparison sites)
- Commerce (you want to buy something)
The search query a user types into Google tells you a lot about what they are trying to find, and, specifically, about their mindset. Users refine their searches, typically by adding more words to the search query to hone in on something highly relevant. It is also worth noting that people use search engines (and the browser toolbars they provide) as a quick way of navigating to their favourite sites. In the past this was largely done via bookmarking sites (by clicking ‘add to favourites’ in Internet Explorer), but many of the top searches last year were for brand names (eg Myspace, Bebo, Yahoo). An example or search activity during the buying cycleIf the searcher is a consumer in the process of buying something then they may be in a research phase (what kind of product do I want?), the price / product comparison phase (where can I buy the product?), or the buy phase (I know what I want, now give it to me!). - Research phase – the search query might be ‘digital cameras’ and then ‘digital camera reviews’, to identify a product or create a shortlist.
- Price / product comparison phase – query might be ‘sony cybershot offers’, if the consumer likes the look of Sony’s product.
- Buy phase – the search might now be very specific as the consumer knows exactly what he / she wants, eg ‘sony cybershot t10 black’.
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What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)? |
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is about making your product, services or brand visible on search engines, and using relevant content to lure searchers towards your site. Most sites need some love and attention in order for them to be especially Google-friendly. In a nut, your website and web pages need to be optimised so that they are prominent in the ‘organic’ listings, which are free. Please click here for a Complimentary SEO report of your website... |
- SEO has nothing to do with paid search – these are not ‘sponsored links’ but links to pages that the search engine deems to be the most relevant to the search query. As such, ‘SEO’ is only concerned with achieving the highest position possible in the ‘organic’ listings. SEO can be seen as the science of influencing Google / Yahoo etc…
- There is no charge for organic listings or when a link to your site is clicked on. Unless you are very lucky (or very clever) there may be costs in securing high visibility on search engines like Google, but subsequent clicks are free.
- SEO is far more complicated than paid search, and, for my money, far more lucrative. How search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN select the best websites for a specific term is not known, so SEO is a combination of reverse-engineering, experiments and educated guesswork. Through years of observation we have a good idea about the most important factors that govern your search listings.
- More than 200 ‘ranking factors’ determine placement. Google is a black box but we know that it uses more than 200 rules to determine the relevancy of any given web page. As such results cannot be guaranteed (and do not believe anybody who tells you otherwise).
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Why indeed? Maybe the best way of demonstrating how important SEO is in today’s business environment is to show you some market intelligence to see what other people are doing in this area. Here are three key things to takeaway… - 68% growth in SEO investment in 2007 - And that’s just in the UK. Overall, marketers spent around £2.22bn on search engine marketing, with the vast majority of budgets being pumped into paid search. But more than £250m was spent in 2007 on SEO, despite the fact that it takes longer to see the results.
- Spending to increase in 2008 - According to our Search Marketing Report, 60% of marketers plan to increase search budgets ‘in the next 12 months’, which is a higher percentage than any other digital marketing channel.
- SEO can deliver a seriously high return on investment - For natural search, we have found that more than two thirds of marketers generate returns of more than 300% on the amount they invested in boosting their organic listings. Google is seen as the best search engine, in terms of ROI, followed by MSN and Yahoo.
The trend is up!Investment into search marketing has soared over the past four years, as can be seen on the chart below. The area shaded in light blue represents SEO budgets, which have quadrupled since the start of research.  |
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