Is it a recession or a depression? It’s getting hard to tell. Each day brings more stories about companies laying off thousands, budgets getting slashed and even Forrester Research saying that IT spending for 2009 will be anemic. That’s why it may be surprising to hear that amongst all of this bad news that SEO spending is keeping pace and in some cases increasing despite the downtrodden economy. What makes SEO immune from the downturn? Could it be that SEO has a proven track record of getting return on investment, or is it just a safe haven to invest in during troubled times? Let’s look at some of the top reasons SEO continues to be funded in this rough economy:
SEO is no longer voo-doo witchcraft.
How many times over the years have we heard people say that search engine optimization is nothing but smoke and mirrors and does nothing to help rank? Well someone must have forgot to tell Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that because they are all releasing SEO guidelines to help websites better structure their pages for indexing. If the big guys are endorsing it, well, that pretty much says it all.
Retooling is taking place in many companies
When times get tough, many companies look to retool and search for ways to maximize their ROI, reduce expenses and drive more business through their online presence. SEO is one of the areas that has a proven track record of ROI.
The numbers make the case for you.
All one has to do is look at the analytical reports of visitors and traffic to see that search engines are driving a lot of business nowadays. Again, it’s hard to cut funding when the amount of “free” traffic beating a path to your virtual door is more than making up for the expense of SEO.
Paid search is losing its luster – and it costs!
Why pay for something you can get for free? Just think about it – when is the last time you clicked on an ad when doing search? I know that it has been a long time since I clicked on an ad of any sort. People are so saturated with ads that research shows most of them ignore them and focus strictly on the organic search results.
Marketing is looking for a magic bullet.
When the marketing folks sit around with their thinking caps on trying to figure out how to drive more traffic to the online sites SEO naturally tops their list of ideas. SEO is even on the minds of marketers nowadays, once again verifying its true legitimacy.
Search continues along, no matter what the stock market does.
The fact of the matter is that the stock market could tank tomorrow and Google would go on delivering the same amount of search results as it did the day before. People need information and they turn to their favorite search engine to find it – SEO helps you make sure that your information is at the top of the list!
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Showing posts with label SEO benifits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO benifits. Show all posts
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Benefits of Search Engine Optimization
Today, many website owners dream of to have website with top search engine ranking. To get your website on the top of the search engine requires the perfect search engine optimization solution. Therefore search engine optimization solution plays a crucial role to your online marketing strategy; let your business be small or large.
Search engine optimization is the process of developing or modifying the on and off-page elements of a website. Search engines are the highly effective marketing tools to make the website on top. The art of search engine optimization process requires different skills to give customers what they want and search engines what they want. Search engine optimization process involves a series of steps including-
• Mapping out keyword strategy
• Optimizing the website structure
• Develop and optimize web pages with keyword rich content
• Code optimization
• Valuable link building and promotion
• Measure results and resources
• Refine strategy and tactics
Search engine optimization gives your website a real competitive advantage. Quality search engine optimization solution offers web site promotion, which helps the website to attract both search engines and potential site visitors. Thus improving relevant traffic to the websites is likely to offer you with an excellent return rate on investment. Thereby helps the online business to increase sales and lead generation. So traffic is considered to be the most obvious benefit of search engine optimization.
Read More...
Search engine optimization is the process of developing or modifying the on and off-page elements of a website. Search engines are the highly effective marketing tools to make the website on top. The art of search engine optimization process requires different skills to give customers what they want and search engines what they want. Search engine optimization process involves a series of steps including-
• Mapping out keyword strategy
• Optimizing the website structure
• Develop and optimize web pages with keyword rich content
• Code optimization
• Valuable link building and promotion
• Measure results and resources
• Refine strategy and tactics
Search engine optimization gives your website a real competitive advantage. Quality search engine optimization solution offers web site promotion, which helps the website to attract both search engines and potential site visitors. Thus improving relevant traffic to the websites is likely to offer you with an excellent return rate on investment. Thereby helps the online business to increase sales and lead generation. So traffic is considered to be the most obvious benefit of search engine optimization.
Read More...
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Measuring the Success of an SEO Campaign: Conversions
This is part 3 of my occasional series on “Measuring the Success of an SEO Campaign”. The first part was about the long tail and the second was using search engine traffic levels. This third instalment uses one of the many other metrics available to website owners: conversion.
We post about conversion quite often on this blog, because it is an important element of your website. We’ve given lots of tips on how to improve your site conversions. However, it can have some drawbacks to using it as an SEO metric.
There can be issues with using different measurement of conversion e.g. Adwords and Analytics track conversions differently - this means that in Analytics a sale or lead could be marked as an SEO conversion but in Adwords, the PPC ad would get the credit.
Conversions are much more subject to on-page issues – no two websites ever convert the same. Additionally, making changes on a site can make big differences which are not related to SEO. Changing onsite forms can be a great way of increasing the number of signups. I recently had a customer who implemented a page redesign to make his form more prominent, and literally doubled his number of conversions overnight.
Likewise, there are some on-site issues that are outside the control of the SEO company, which is why you find very few SEO companies that will agree to a profit related payment scheme. Some basic examples of this are sites where the products are too expensive, so although people might find your site in their research process, they will choose to buy elsewhere. Another one is having a ranking for a very broad keyword, and although visitors come to your site, they don’t find the product they are looking for.
There are also the other elements of post-click marketing, which are particularly pertinent to ecommerce websites, such as availability/stock levels, delivery times, return policies and delivery costs, many of which are checked by a potential purchaser in their selection of which vendor to use. Trust elements also come into play, whether it is the use of HackerSafe logos, customer testimonials or previous vendor experience. The customer journey through a purchase decision has a myriad of different on-site elements.
On the other hand, real hard sales or leads is a firm number to attribute to a marketing outlay in order to generate an ROI figure, and can’t be ignored as a success metric.
If you don’t already track conversions, then you should figure out a way to do so. It could be as simple as adding a form to your site, or a custom email address or telephone number to track offline conversions. Trial print out and bring in vouchers if you have bricks and mortar stores. Always ask your customers where they heard about you from – the answers are a vital feedback into all your marketing processes.
Read More..
We post about conversion quite often on this blog, because it is an important element of your website. We’ve given lots of tips on how to improve your site conversions. However, it can have some drawbacks to using it as an SEO metric.
There can be issues with using different measurement of conversion e.g. Adwords and Analytics track conversions differently - this means that in Analytics a sale or lead could be marked as an SEO conversion but in Adwords, the PPC ad would get the credit.
Conversions are much more subject to on-page issues – no two websites ever convert the same. Additionally, making changes on a site can make big differences which are not related to SEO. Changing onsite forms can be a great way of increasing the number of signups. I recently had a customer who implemented a page redesign to make his form more prominent, and literally doubled his number of conversions overnight.
Likewise, there are some on-site issues that are outside the control of the SEO company, which is why you find very few SEO companies that will agree to a profit related payment scheme. Some basic examples of this are sites where the products are too expensive, so although people might find your site in their research process, they will choose to buy elsewhere. Another one is having a ranking for a very broad keyword, and although visitors come to your site, they don’t find the product they are looking for.
There are also the other elements of post-click marketing, which are particularly pertinent to ecommerce websites, such as availability/stock levels, delivery times, return policies and delivery costs, many of which are checked by a potential purchaser in their selection of which vendor to use. Trust elements also come into play, whether it is the use of HackerSafe logos, customer testimonials or previous vendor experience. The customer journey through a purchase decision has a myriad of different on-site elements.
On the other hand, real hard sales or leads is a firm number to attribute to a marketing outlay in order to generate an ROI figure, and can’t be ignored as a success metric.
If you don’t already track conversions, then you should figure out a way to do so. It could be as simple as adding a form to your site, or a custom email address or telephone number to track offline conversions. Trial print out and bring in vouchers if you have bricks and mortar stores. Always ask your customers where they heard about you from – the answers are a vital feedback into all your marketing processes.
Read More..
Friday, November 28, 2008
3 Organic Search Engine Optimization Benefits For Your Business and Marketing Efforts
Organic search engine optimization is a form of optimization for search engines which involves optimizing your site to the preference of search engines. This includes adhering to search engines' quality guidelines, providing value to visitors and understanding the few techniques that will push a site up on the results page for certain keywords.
In this article, you are going to learn about 3 benefits that organic search engine optimization will bring to your business and marketing efforts. Trust me, you will want to learn the benefits now and quickly move on to the techniques as the time when your competitors master the knowledge, you will be left out in the cold.
Targeted Visitors for Leads and Sales
Why search engines? When you have a question about a certain topic, which part of the Internet will you go to? When you have doubts whether to make a purchase, what will you use to seek for a product review and experience of others? The likely answer for both the questions will be the search engines, primarily Google, Yahoo and MSN.
If you are able to rank for a set of keywords that your potential customers are searching for daily, you stand out among your competitors to collect their information as leads and to present your product in front of them before your competitors.
Also, this is not rubbish traffic from traffic exchange sites or paid robot traffic. Traffic from search engines comprises of real people in dire needs for solutions and they will pull out their credit cards to make a purchase if your website copy that they landed on is persuasive enough to show them that your business can be their best solution provider.
Prolific Online Presence Building
Let's say that you are in the taxation advice business. If you are able to rank for most taxation keywords on the search engines, you are indirectly branding your company in front of your customers. If most of the major search engines recommend your site for most of the keywords that your business is related to, users will naturally think that you are the expert in your industry.
With thousands of sites popping up on the Internet everyday, you need to brand your business well in order to keep existing customers and attract new customers.
No Perpetual Payments for Enduring Benefits
I know what you are thinking about now. You saw some yellowish sponsored results by the side of the search results and you quickly thought of paying the major search engines for a listing. It's a nice idea but organic search engine optimization has way more to offer than the paid advertising model.
Ranking for keywords organically does not require any recurring payments to the search engines. Even if you plan to outsource the optimization process, the projects often involve one off payments rather than a recurring billing system like the pay per click model. Also, once you rank top for a certain keyword, it will be really hard for someone to beat you so competing for keywords organically definitely brings enduring benefits at a lower price.
Want to master all the techniques for organic search engine optimization (SEO) way before your competitors and bring in more sales to your business from today onwards? Click here to get The SEO Mindset, the one and only organic search engine tutorial that will show your all the nitty gritty bits of SEO.
Read More..
In this article, you are going to learn about 3 benefits that organic search engine optimization will bring to your business and marketing efforts. Trust me, you will want to learn the benefits now and quickly move on to the techniques as the time when your competitors master the knowledge, you will be left out in the cold.
Targeted Visitors for Leads and Sales
Why search engines? When you have a question about a certain topic, which part of the Internet will you go to? When you have doubts whether to make a purchase, what will you use to seek for a product review and experience of others? The likely answer for both the questions will be the search engines, primarily Google, Yahoo and MSN.
If you are able to rank for a set of keywords that your potential customers are searching for daily, you stand out among your competitors to collect their information as leads and to present your product in front of them before your competitors.
Also, this is not rubbish traffic from traffic exchange sites or paid robot traffic. Traffic from search engines comprises of real people in dire needs for solutions and they will pull out their credit cards to make a purchase if your website copy that they landed on is persuasive enough to show them that your business can be their best solution provider.
Prolific Online Presence Building
Let's say that you are in the taxation advice business. If you are able to rank for most taxation keywords on the search engines, you are indirectly branding your company in front of your customers. If most of the major search engines recommend your site for most of the keywords that your business is related to, users will naturally think that you are the expert in your industry.
With thousands of sites popping up on the Internet everyday, you need to brand your business well in order to keep existing customers and attract new customers.
No Perpetual Payments for Enduring Benefits
I know what you are thinking about now. You saw some yellowish sponsored results by the side of the search results and you quickly thought of paying the major search engines for a listing. It's a nice idea but organic search engine optimization has way more to offer than the paid advertising model.
Ranking for keywords organically does not require any recurring payments to the search engines. Even if you plan to outsource the optimization process, the projects often involve one off payments rather than a recurring billing system like the pay per click model. Also, once you rank top for a certain keyword, it will be really hard for someone to beat you so competing for keywords organically definitely brings enduring benefits at a lower price.
Want to master all the techniques for organic search engine optimization (SEO) way before your competitors and bring in more sales to your business from today onwards? Click here to get The SEO Mindset, the one and only organic search engine tutorial that will show your all the nitty gritty bits of SEO.
Read More..
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