Why SEO Matters

Created at 2008-05-20 05:27:09 | 0  Comments ↓ |     Digg   Stumble It!    Del.icio.us   

What it is and why it matters

Before Google, search engines like AltaVista were buggy and unreliable. Metadata spammers loaded their pages with junky keywords to obfuscate their true content, and search engine ranking systems were too dumb to tell the difference between legitimate information and falsified junk. Today, search engines are more sophisticated. They base their rankings on site popularity, taking into account factors such as the number of incoming links, the source of those links, and the context surrounding them.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is actually a combination of crafts related to procuring a favorable position in a search engine results page (SERP). Part of the work comes from search engine optimization (SEO), which defines the steps taken to organically grow a site's relevancy by building links, writing strong content, submitting to search sites, and so forth. The complement is search marketing, which involves actually laying out cash for paid positions, mostly pay-per-click (PPC) ads. (See Figure 13-1 for the difference in these two disciplines.) This chapter will cover the basics of SEO.

There are many myths about search engines, especially Google. The most egregious claims that attaining a top position in the organic results requires actually paying the search sites. This is categorically false. If it were that easy, the biggest businesses would own the best keywords, regardless of whether they were relevant to their products or services. Obtaining a top spot in a SERP requires worthy content coupled with time, effort, and skill-not a bucket of payola.

People trust search engines because of the objectivity of the results. When someone types in "external hard drives," they get a list of recommended destinations, formed by the Internet community at large, and then filtered through Google's algorithms. Even the top ten results have a mix of content, from analysis to editorial to commercial.

Studies continually demonstrate that users are likely to click an organic result over a paid result.¹ To compound that, other studies show that appearing in the top ten results is a dramatic competitive advantage, and appearing in anything after the third page is nearly worthless.² In fact, a study from iProspect revealed some more interesting statistics:³

1. 62 percent of people click on one of the top ten results.
2. 90 percent of people click a link within the first three pages.
3. 41 percent of people will change their query if they do not find a satisfactory result in the first page of results. 88 percent will do the same after the first three pages.
4. 82 percent will start a new search using additional keywords because they trust the search engine to deliver the correct results if given more detail, rather than trust their original choice of keywords.

1. iProspect, "iProspect Search Engine User Attitudes," April-May 2004 ( www.iprospect.co m/ premiumPDFs/iProspectSurveyComplete.pdf ).
2. Oneupweb, "Target Google's Top Ten to Sell Online" ( www.bb2e.net/google_topten.pdf).
3. iProspect, "iProspect Search Engine User Behavior Study," April 2006 ( www.iprospect.co m/ premiumPDFs/WhitePaper_2006_SearchEngineUserBehavior.pdf ).

Clearly, appearing in the top ten results matters. This is where SEO comes into play, and where an investment of effort and patience can have huge dividends.

Why the emphasis on Google?

In a nutshell, Google is the one to beat. Any broad search study will show Google dominating market share, although different tests disagree on how much. In April 2007, comScore showed Google leading the pack with 49.7 percent; Hitwise, from the same period, attributed them a 64.13 percent share. None of the competition, at least at the time of this book, is even close.⁴ To add insult to injury, Google also powers the search results of other major websites and software vendors: browsers such as Firefox and Opera, plus other search engines such as Excite, AOL, Netscape, and more.

Google basically reinvented the way search engines work. Just about every other provider has modeled their techniques after the giant, which is why the effort of optimizing a site for Google often cascades to competing search engines. Their innovative approach boils down to ranking results by link popularity. (This does not preclude link quality; in fact, the quality of the link, which we'll explore in this chapter, has just as much influence.)

Because Google continues to adjust its algorithms to produce better results, the world keeps coming back to find reliable answers. This constant tweaking places Google firmly in the crosshairs of SEO experts. It is harder than ever to crack the top ten, but despite this, their system continually proves to reward sincere and honest effort on the part of website developers. This objectivity in ranking is what makes SEO such an interesting game. Everyone has exactly the same chance of ranking number one-it's just how the many optimization tools are used that determines who gets there.

Laying out an SEO strategy

When a company decides to embrace SEO in an effort to complement its marketing effort, it has embarked on an "SEO campaign." Like any advertising or broader marketing crusade, it is a two-pronged effort: strategy and tactics. Common SEO methodology is well known among search professionals. What separates successful campaigns from failing campaigns is the strategy behind the effort. While anyone can drive a car in the dark, having a map, headlights, and street signs sure helps get there faster without disaster.

Effective SEO strategy demands iterative testing in order to refine it. Like advertising, SEO requires long-term commitment in order to see remarkable results; while spikes in revenue can happen periodically, they are the exception to the rule. However, unlike ad campaigns that are grounded with insertion orders and print schedules that run several

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