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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... |
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- 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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Why should I bother with SEO? |
There are five things key reasons … - Higher visibility - It stands to reason that if you are setting up a shop that you are better off on the high street than some back alley. And just like happy shoppers, web users love to browse. So why not make it easy for them? Help them find you. Over half of all web traffic is generated by search engines, so getting on the first few pages of Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask could not be more crucial. Google is the top dog. Make it so.
- It can help you achieve your business goals - Want more customers? More leads? More sales? The internet is a global marketplace and consumers appear to have lost their fear of buying things online. E-commerce is booming! Remember that search is demand-driven so you can target your messages to specific search queries. It is surely one of the least intrusive ways of advertising your presence to interested consumers.
- Competitor activity means that you have to - In 2007, UK businesses spent more than £2 billion on search engine marketing, so if you are spending nothing then you’re behind. Companies spend to try to stay one step ahead of their rivals in the rankings. If you are serious about online marketing, you cannot afford to be left behind. Try searching in Google for keyphrases relevant to your business and take a look around – is your website listed? What about the competition? Don’t let them steal a march…
- To help people find your site - What better way to reach your audience than when they are looking for information about a specific product or supplier?
- Because it’s very easy to gauge its success - The beauty of the internet is that every click is monitored and recorded. If you want to know if your SEM strategy is working, it is very easy to find out. Are you top of the listings? How many customers came to you through via a search engine etc.
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What kind of results can I expect from SEO? |
Basically, an investment in SEO should see your website featured more prominently in the search results. Increased search engine visibility means more traffic and, hopefully, higher sales. Some useful SEO stats: - An eye-tracking study by Dutch market research firm De Vos & Jansen found that people who search with a view to buying looked at more results than those who merely searched for information.
- Organic results were viewed most often – 98% viewed these results, while 95% looked at the sponsored results at the top, and only 31% the sponsored results on the right of the page.
- In July 2007 UK web users clicked on over 1.3bn search results, which equates to 29,000 every minute.
- According to a recent comScore/ SEMPO study, search marketing is crucial in building brand awareness and driving offline sales for Consumer Packaged Goods Companies. The study also found that customers arriving at the site via search engines spent an average of 20% more than non-searchers.
- Search engines have more than twice the e-commerce conversion rate of other traffic acquisition sources. During the last three months of 2005, the search engine conversion rate at business-to-consumer e-commerce web sites was 2.30%, more than twice the conversion rate of other acquisition sources (0.96%), which include banner ads, affiliate marketing links, shopping search engines and other referring links.
- Conversion rate for direct navigation (typing in URL, bookmarked) was 4.23%
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