Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs. Pay per Click (PPC)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines using "natural" or un-paid search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, higher a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

While pay per click is a guaranteed way to bring your listing to a good spot in the search engines, sometimes this is not necessarily the best way to market your content. Obviously if money is not a problem you will benefit greatly by using PPC but you should not exclude SEO from your marketing strategy.

When a prospect does a search it is natural that we look to the left first, then look to the right and scroll down forming a triangular pattern. Generally SEO results which are highest in the ranking will get the most looks.

This is how prospects search for sites that have been organically placed using SEO techniques to get them there. If you use fresh content that is keyword rich and placed all over the internet instead of just one place you will bring your site here. Marketers that use pay-per-click, however, are placed in the front pages of Google because they purchased the space for advertising. People are exposed to advertising everywhere they look, all day so they are less likely to look at another paid ad on Google. People want genuine, fresh, quality content and advice from experienced marketers who are interested in benefiting others by placing their experienced advice on the internet rather than simply paying for an ad to drive traffic to their site.
In summary, regardless of whether you choose to use PPC or not, to be a successful marketer you also need to be adding fresh content targeting keywords to bring your search engine ranking up naturally. Online marketing should be primarily about helping people to find what they are searching for and your input of content is a sure way to do that. Secondly, all marketers endeavour to make a profit and by regularly adding content you have a good chance of being on the first page of the search engine listings for your targeted keywords at no cost to your business. For new marketers this is a great way to generate revenue to put toward some paid advertising or PPC whilst keeping up with your SEO efforts as well.

Wishing you Success

Landing pages Make A First Impression

Whether a website is about cars or guitars, common errors with landing pages can cause users to bounce away quickly, according to Steve Baldwin, writing a column at Media Post.

Custom landing pages, Baldwin writes, are among the most important pieces of content that search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search professionals will create. While the most serious error - a landing page that fails to load - is among the least common, according to Baldwin, he nevertheless emphasizes that a broken link can cost marketers dearly.

What Baldwin refers to as "the dreaded Demon of Disambiguity" is a more common pitfall experienced by landing pages. "The mere fact that I'm searching for Taylor Guitars doesn't make me a prospect for the James Taylor Guitar Songbook, and there's a world of difference between a Fender Jaguar guitar and a 4-wheeled Jaguar that happens to have fenders," Baldwin writes.

Experts say that search engine optimization (SEO) efforts can easily focus too heavily on search engine results pages

25 Things I’d like to See Google Fix

While I’m well known for being critical of many of the things Google does, I’m also a power user of site and many of their tools. Being a power user gives me a unique insight to see some areas these tools could be improved. This post is written in the spirit of constructive criticism, since I know my posts sometimes “get around” inside of the plex …

Google Apps for Domains

• A lot of the cool and interesting things that happen in Gmail and Google Docs don’t get released for Google Apps for domains. They have definitely gotten better about this in the past few months but it’s still happening. For example, want the Google Chrome Gmail Checker extension to work on your domain? Be prepared to do some hacking to make it happen.

GMail

• Filters lets expand the number of filters you can have. Right now it maxes out somewhere between 20 to 30 (I’ve hit the limit and had to delete and start from scratch creating multiple ones). Also let me forward a copy to more than one person. For example I want to forward my travel receipts/itinerary to evernote and tripit.
• If I’ve selected/highlighted the subject or body copy and click “filter,” don’t start with the from field filled in; instead, start with the field I have selected filled in.
• Let me send scheduled emails. Right now I use lettermelater. If I forget to BCC a copy to myself, I forget it got sent.

Google Docs

• A lot of people became worried about the announcement of Google Docs becoming publicly indexable because of the possibility of a link from an external website pointing to them. Allow users to see which documents are linked to or, even better, give them a universal “off” switch to block indexing of all of their documents. Allow Google Apps for domains customers the ability to block all documents on the domain.
• Let me create and edit spreadsheets offline. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve wanted to work on a spreadsheet flying from NY to Vegas or California and been unable to.
• How about the ability to export clean HTML? Right now any exports are as bad as a Microsoft word HTML document with tons of unnecessary tags adding to the “weight” of a document.
• Let me specify a default font/size for my account. Maybe I’m just a snob but anything other than arial or verdana irritates me. The fact that you force me to start with new times roman or some other serif font every time is like an annoying roommate who leaves the toilet seat up.

Google Reader

• Allow Google reader to work with the Google apps for domains address book not just the Google contacts address book
• Allow me to temporarily suspend updating of all the feeds in a folder for a specified time. Maybe I’m working on a big project or going away on vacation. Some feeds I need to keep up with; others not so much.
• Allow me to connect more than one twitter account for sharing. I run multiple accounts and want to forward it to different places depending on subject matter.

Google Contacts

• Allow Google contacts to work with Google Apps for domains. Right now they are separate which means sometimes you have access to them in Google offerings and sometimes you don’t.
• If I have pictures tied to a contact and I’m using Google Sync, pull in the picture and match it to the account.
• Allow people to opt into a profile/contact sharing program. If someone changes emails, phone numbers, or whatever and changes it in the centralized shared profile, everyone who is a contact has the information automatically updated

Google Chrome

• Multi browser password sync – we need it. I know I’m not the only one who has a laptop and netbook, and I need my passwords to travel with me. Lastpass kinda works and Roboform wants to make it work–let’s help move that forward.
• Multi browser extension sync. Allow me to move extensions, settings, and customizations between browsers.
• Copy and paste as plain text. So many things like wordpress and google docs will let the font, color, size, and style persist. I’d like to be able paste with no formatting. CTRL+SHIFT+V thanks @mattcutts
• Give me the ability to set the cache size to zero. I know you don’t like to speed things up, but my ISP gets a little wonky and I’ve found that clearing the cache solves the problem 99% of the time.

Google Voice

• OK I know you want this too, but lets figure out a way to get this thing on the iPhone. This buerocracy quagmire helps no one.

Feedburner

• Let me specify an order for posts in the email if I’m using it. Last out First in (lifo) isn’t always optimal. Give me the option for first in first out (fifo) in the email.

YouTube & Universal Search

• I understand that you only show videos from sites that have a high reliability in universal search. However, having the YouTube page rank doesn’t do much for conversions. Why not have something like rel=canonical to allow us to point to the page we really want to rank with the YouTube video?

Google Search

• Allow me to turn off any and all new things you introduce into search. The &PWS=0 flag works to turn off personalized search but everything else is hit or miss. I know that you think all of these things are your POD, but sometimes I’d like to not have to see them. In fact, like Matt, I’d really just like clean URL’s all the time.

Google Tasks

• Let me have recurring tasks. I have some things that need to get done every week or month, and this saves me the trouble of having to reschedule them.

Google Alerts

• For any notification that’s not “as it happens,” let me specify the time of day I’d like to to come. Right now if I choose once a day it comes 24 hours from the time I created or last modified/updated the filter.

Picasa Web

• You offer the right settings to share and protect pictures as needed, but the language/terminology used to explain it doesn’t make it at all easy to understand. The only reason I figured it out was by trial and error. Pretend you are explaining it to your grandma who isn’t at all computer savvy. You’ll do everyone a favor.

Comments are open. Feel free to drop your suggestions in as well. Meander off topic and I will purge your comments without mercy.

Keyword Targeting: How to Employ Multiple Keywords for SEO & Conversions

At some point during your University's SEO 201: Advanced Keyword Research & Targeting class, they probably gave a few lectures and case studies on how to effectively split up your keyword research list across multiple pages and use those terms/phrases to maximum benefit. But, for those who might have missed that lesson (which would be, umm, all of us, since no formal education in SEO exists), a handy refresher might be in order.

Many SEOs struggle to answer questions like:

• How many keywords can I target on a page?
• Should I try to target all of my most important terms on my homepage (since it gets the most link juice)?
• When I should try to target similar phrases together vs. splitting them up?

This post is meant to help with precisely those issues.

At the end of the keyword research phase you've established which terms and phrases are worthwhile. Now you'll need to determine which keywords to target where, and how. This four-step process should make that easy (and apparently, checklists are awesome).

I'm using comic books both because they're fun, and because a recently retired-from-Google friend opened his own comic shop in West Seattle, so I've got superheroes in tights on the brain. In the example above, I've sorted several high demand keywords into groupings that relate to their core subject - in this case, by superhero. You can do this with products, articles, blog post categories or any type of content.

Next, I need to segment the keywords in each group by the intent of a potential visitor. This is absolutely critical, because even if two keyword terms/phrases are very similar, putting them together can be disatrous if the goals of the searcher are different. It's technically worse to rank 1st and convert visits at 0.1% than to rank 10th and get a conversion rate of 2%. By segmenting on intent, you can make sure to uniquely target searchers seeking a specific goal without cannibalizing or misdirecting traffic to the detriment of your site's usability/conversion rate.

If possible, you'll want to use the insight you gain from the keyword research and targeting process to help determine the site's hierarchy and information architecture. Even if you're deep down in the weeds on an already existing site, you can employ intelligent cross-linking to make sure visitors can find what they're seeking from potential landing pages. The concept should be to make the primary content of the page the most likely target of the searcher's intent, then provide navigation to secondary, tertiary or more specific needs.

You now have the keyword groups segmented to individual pages and a hierarchy for your site, so the final step is assigning the keyword targets to individual pages and providing recommendations on Titles, URLs, Meta Descriptions and page functionality. In the example above, I've employed multiple keywords in the page elements (plural and singular versions of "comic" as well as "dc comics" and "batman comics") to help attract that traffic. I'm also listing "detective comics" here, though technically, I might even have a separate subcategory for that individual series that's linked-to on this page.

This planning process is key to getting the best results possible. Over time, your analytics data can help show you where assumptions have been incorrect and you can course correct. What's important is understanding the basic rules for keyword targeting:

1. No page should target keywords just because it "can rank for them;" you need to also consider the visitor experience and whether the page's content can serve as many "keyword masters" as you're targeting.
2. Pages can target multiple keywords and phrases at once so long as the intent is the same. Don't arbitrarily split up pages or make a new page for every permutation of a keyphrase simply so you can have "optimum" optimization. Remember it's much easier to earn links to one page than to many (and much easier to build one good funnel than two).
3. Keyword targeted pages need to provide the content a visitor is seeking and the links to the detailed pages they might want. Search engines are pretty smart - if visitors aren't getting value from your pages, they're not going to link to them, not going to click them in the SERPs and not going to recommend them to others. Even if you manipulate your way to the top today, in the long run, the engines will identify methods to get relevant, quality content ranking.

I'd also suggest checking out previous posts on:

• Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization
• Optimizing for Multiple Word Order Search Phrases

Hopefully this has been valuable and I'd certainly appreciate examples and suggestions from the community on how you employ keyword targeting for maximum benefit.

p.s. I may have overstated when I said there's "no" formal education. Market Motive offers some great online classes and certification as does Search Engine College. And yes, SEOmoz has a video training series, too - the metaphor was meant tongue in cheek :-)

Posted by randfish on January 19th, 2010 at 12:16 am Keyword Research