Search Engine Optimization

Warning: If You Get Most Of Your Web Traffic Through Pay-Per-Click, You're Paying Way Too Much!

Traffic costs. Pay-Per-Click traffic costs for every single visitor to your Web site. "Natural" search is different.

When someone searching for your product or service searches Google, Yahoo, MSN, or other search engines, they see many matches. Some of them are paid search. You typically find paid search results at the top of the page with a different background color or off to the right side of the screen.

After paid searches come "natural" or non-paid search. Those sites didn't pay to have a link to their page displayed. Unlike Pay-Per-Click traffic, they never pay a penny for traffic from those links.

Don't fool yourself into thinking it costs nothing to get high ranking in the search engines. The difference is getting high ranking in natural search requires investment in search engine optimization. The good news is you pay for it once and get a stream of Web traffic from it for months or years.

Limited Pay-Per-Search Traffic

Let's say I have unlimited resources. My site converts well. I know it costs me $5 to get a $30 sale online. Great! You think, "Let's pay for all the traffic there is." Therein lies the problem.

No matter your product or service, there's just so much traffic to go around. Using a tool like Overture's Pay-Per-Click manager (Yahoo paid search), you can research which keywords generate the most traffic for the least cost. It will show you how many searches happen each day for your keyword. So what happens when you bid enough to get the #1 position on each of your keywords (a costly proposition I wouldn't encourage)?

Let's say you get all of the traffic for your keywords. What happens when you want to increase your Web traffic from there? You can also bid for keywords on Google and MSN, but you'll reach a limit where there just isn't any more Pay-Per-Click traffic to buy at any price.

Besides, on many keywords, it can cost you dearly to even be in the top 3 paid search positions, much less the number one spot. I've seen some keywords cost up to $30 to bring a visitor to your site. If your product or service has a high enough profit margin, maybe you can afford the number one placement. But there is an alternative I'll describe below.

Some People Never Click On Paid Ads

When Google and other search engines first began putting paid ads above their natural search results, many users didn't know the difference. Web users are wiser now. For many, their impression is if they click on one of the paid search results, they're likely to see an advertisement. Many simply don't click on these paid ads unless they're searching for something to purchase.

But most of the time, Web users don't go online to buy. They want information. Online, users are pretty good at detecting and avoiding ads. Paid search is a dead giveaway. You've got to fly under their ad-seeking radar so your message gets heard.

How Do I Get Natural Search Traffic?

Natural traffic is no accident. A few years ago you when you searched for a keyword on Google, most of the results you got had made no effort to get favorable placement for that keyword. Not so today.

The first step is to determine where your site is now. Online Marketing Advisor conducts a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Audit to determine how well your Web site performs in natural search. Unlike many SEO companies, we go far beyond simply determining your search rankings on various keywords. You could do that yourself.

What Makes Good Google Rankings?

Google, Yahoo, and MSN base their rankings on two factors:

• On Page Factors
• Off Page Factors

On Page Search Engine Optimization Factors

On Page Factors include keyword density, good use of title and header tags, and so on. It isn't enough to make sure to include the keywords you target in meta tags or to mention it several times on a Web page. Describing the formula Google and other search engines use to determine which sites rank best for various keywords would take volumes of text. What's worse, the formula changes all the time. Keeping up with the latest changes can prove a full-time job in itself.

Online Marketing Advisor keeps up with the search engine formulas through exhaustive research and active association with other search engine optimization experts worldwide. You'll know we base the recommendations we give on the latest updates to Google, Yahoo, and MSN, the "big dogs" in search.

We seek out any technical problems your site may have. Dead links, incorrect HTML, and a host of other technical factors influence your search engine ranking. Google and others see dead links, for example, as a sign of an out-of-date site or one of poor quality. They penalize your rank accordingly. If your site isn't performing as well as you would expect, you likely have some expired links or other problems. As a site evolves and Web pages change, dead links easily happen. That's why I run a technical quality analysis on my own sites from time to time to keep my rankings at their peak.

Off Page Search Engine Optimization Factors

Most SEO companies stop at On Page Factors. These factors you can directly influence. However, if you stop there, you only have half the picture.

As an example, Google bases less than 50% of its formula of Page Rank on On Page Factors. Page Rank determines the placement you get in natural search in the rankings. So what's the other 50%+ based on?

"Off Page Factors" account for the rest. Google and other search engines base Off Page Factors mostly on who links to you. The number, relevance, and quality of those links all determine your Off Page Factors scores.

You can only indirectly effect this portion of search engine rankings. Unlike On Page Factors, all of which you can change yourself, Off Page Factors are controlled by other site owners. Only if you own additional Web sites can you effect Off Page Factors directly.

If you don't have more than one Web site, you must understand how to get other sites to link to you in very specific ways. It's not enough to get sites to link to you. An entire industry sprung up for no other purpose than to create many pages on other sites which link to yours.

This "link farm" method doesn't work anymore. Early on, Google and other search engines got wise to the strategy. Now getting listed on these link farms actually hurts your search engine rankings. And it's not enough to just get many sites to link to you. The Page Rank of those pages, how many links on the page, and many other attributes of the links themselves all play a large role in how much they contribute to your Page Rank.

An Action Plan For Improving Search Engine Performance

So where do you start? Like with online marketing and site conversion audits, it all begins by determining how well your site performs now. It begins with a site search engine optimization (SEO) audit.

Online Marketing Advisor's SEO Audit nails down what is working for your site and pinpoints improvement areas to focus on. You'll get a multi-page detailed description of the changes you can make to improve your site's SEO performance. You get a summary of the suggested changes, distilled into a lean action plan.

Take this action plan to your technical department or Web developer if you have one. If you don't, Online Marketing Advisor takes on limited numbers of clients for which we can do the work. The choice is yours. We arm you with the tools and knowledge to take your audit results to the Web developer of your choice. You're in control.

It All Starts With a Call

I do a lot with email, from marketing to more basic communication. However, the best contact is person-to-person to really get to know someone. I won't force you to fill out a Web form. Let's talk. If you feel strongly about my message, maybe you'll want me to help promote your company. Either way, give me a call and I'll be happy to see how I can help. Kathy my office manager would be happy to set up an appointment at (801) 859-5126.