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Verizon Droid: iDon't Understand Microsite Search Engine Optimization
Kris Jordan
Kris Jordan leads web programming & development at New Media Campaigns; Kris previously worked for Microsoft's Developer Division, and studied Computer Science at Brown University and UNC Chapel Hill. You should follow Kris on Twitter.
I've been waiting for Verizon to announce a competitive smart phone for a quite some time. With a barely functional, 3 year old Motorola Q you better believe the first time I saw the much talked about "iDon't" commercial running during a ballgame I to ran to grab my notebook to check out the campaign's microsite: DroidDoes.com.
Big Red is flexing its marketing muscle to hype its self-proclaimed iPhone killer on all major mediums: TV, direct mail, Google ads, you name it. "Everything iDon't Droid does." Like the TV ad, these other pieces drive users to the microsite, too. With this big of an ad spend and a first-class partnership with Google you would think the microsite would be out of this world good.
As far as microsites and marketing landing pages go, DroidDoes.com is out of this world bad. Google should be embarrassed of how their Android Experience phone is being marketed. Not only is DroidDoes.com 100% flash but the flash itself isn't being indexed by Google, the content behind the flash is embarrasingly bad (pictured below), and you can't link to features you've navigated to within the microsite.
"Don't you wish you had a sidekick robot that moved at light speed?" This is what Google (via Google cache) sees when it visits DroidDoes.com and its indexing algorithm tries to figure out what the Droid is about. Google doesn't care about the fancy flash techniques or the robovoice saying "droid". Google cares about content, not flash.
When Google has access to meagingful content it can read, i.e. plain old "semantic" HTML, Google does a lot of work on your behalf. Check out what you get when you search for 'iPhone':
Not only do you get a link to the web site, but Google provides links to the other places on the iPhone website a visitor is likely to want to go and brings them directly there. This is possible because Apple's iPhone content is properly crafted using semantic HTML. Apple also used a meangingful meta description allowing Google to succinctly describe and position the iPhone.
Contrast this with the official result on a search for 'Droid':
Because subpages don't exist, Google can't do a better job linking you to the things a Droid-seeker is looking for: how to buy, features, support, apps, etc. The DroidDoes microsite is one gigantic flash file Google can't link to. The DroidDoes.com website team should be even more embarrassed of their meta description which doesn't describe what Droid is, at all. Upon further inspection there is more to the meta description than meets the eye:
"Get to know Droid a little better. Droid Does the Network. Droid is exclusive to Verizon Wireless, the most reliable network available. Droid Does Android 2.0. Droid contains a new exclusive version of the OS. Droid Does Multitasking. Make a call, answer an email and launch multiple apps simultaneously. Droid Does 10,000+ Apps. Gain power with every app. Droid runs multiple apps simultaneously. Droid Does 5 Megapixels. With a built in flash and 5 megapixels of detail - enhancing resolution, you can capture low light, fleeting moment in detail."
What DroidDoes.com doesn't know is that Google caps meta descriptions at around 160 characters. The DroidDoes microsite's description is 550 characters. No one will ever see the meat of their description because it is too long.
Everything DroidDoes.com uShouldn't on a Microsite
Most of us don't have multi-million dollar budgets to launch and hype advertising campaigns on the scale Verizon has taken its Droid campaign. For all the money they are throwing at consumers they are losing valuable, targetted inbound traffic because of the many poor technical decisions making up DroidDoes.com. With tighter budgets the rest of us can't afford to make these microsite mistakes. Here are a few high-level lessons to take away:
- Do not build 100% flash based microsites
- Especially if the flash file is not created carefully for Google to index
- Especially if you can't link directly to locations within the Flash file
- Always have meaningful HTML content for search engines to index
- Meta description should be less than 160 characters long and descriptive
- Use language and keywords that people search for to find your microsite (i.e. not 'always wanted a pocket robot?' when you're selling a phone)
- Content for all images and flash should also be in HTML
The Droid is going to be Verizon's most compelling smart phone. It's Google's most complete Android phone and first in the Android 2.0 line. Yet the Droid's promotional microsite is underwhelming, clunky, and out-of-touch with the internet of 2009. If your marketing budget isn't that of a Fortune 500 company you can't afford to make the same inbound marketing mistakes with your microsite as the hotshots at Verizon who decided to promote an internet phone that can't play flash videos using only flash video.
- Do not build 100% flash based microsites
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Our Favorite Internet Marketing Tools and Resources
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
On our web development blog, Joel recently compiled a great list of our favorite development tools and resources that we've created over the past year. I wanted to take this opportunity on our Internet Marketing Blog to do the same.
Search Engine Optimization
Organically ranking high in search engines is a key component to driving quality traffic to your site. These resources cover a variety of tools to better optimize your site and some basic strategy behind why SEO is important.
New Google Tool Suggests Competitive Keywords Based on Site ContentGoogle now allows Adwords users to run a report on their site that suggests keywords to target. This new tool is very valuable to many different marketers, ranging from people running their first Adwords campaign looking for good terms to experienced advertisers trying to devise new keywords to target.
Three Basics of Search Engine Optimization
SEO vs. PPC: Analyzing the Value of Each with Heat Charts
The Importance of Geotargeting Your SEO Campaign
Blogging
One of the most effective and efficient ways to market your business online is by having a company blog. The following articles explain the concept of Inbound Marketing and feature our series on blogging for business.
Preparing to Start a Business BlogThis is the start of a three part series that covers the basics of Blogging for Business, from the initial build to making sure you're getting the most out of your blog through social media promotion.
Strategy for Writing Business Blog Posts
How to Promote Your Blog Posts
Gathering Data
One of the most important goals of a site is gathering data and leveraging it in the future. From landing pages to registration splash pages to iterative data collection, the posts below provide good strategies to successfully build out your own list.
Example of a Great Landing Page Design: Netflix.comA landing page is an important component of your online marketing campaign strategy. The number one goal of a landing page is to convert a prospect by having them register information with your site. That information could be for a free whitepaper, an online newsletter, free demo, or another call to action.
Make It Easy for Visitors to Register Their Data: A Close Look at USAirways.Com
Political Splash Pages: Are They a Good Idea?
Social Media
As the web has become more and more social, we've wrote several articles exploring what exactly are social media and how to best leverage them.
4 Innovative Uses of Twitter for Social GoodOne of Twitter's strengths is content sharing both in the form of links and retweets (RTs). As the popularity of retweeting has grown and Twitter has improved its search capabilities, many people have come up with some creative and powerful ways to take advantage of the Twitmosphere to help fight for a cause.
Selling a Date: A Case Study in Facebook Advertising (very funny)
Online Advertising
A good, and sometimes essential, compliment to your online presence and marketing effort are paid ads, especially Google Adwords.
Google Adwords Tips: Improve your results in 3 stepsGoogle does a great job of providing a venue for you to reach millions of people from your computer at home. Running an effective Adwords campaign takes dedication and attention to the many details that Google provides you. I like to think of it in 3 connected but distinct phases: Create, Track, Adjust.
Optimizing Adwords Campaigns: Different Strategies for Search vs. Content Ads
Selling a Date: A Case Study in Facebook Advertising (very funny)
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The 8 Minimum Requirements for SEO Features in a CMS
Joel Sutherland
Joel Sutherland leads operations at NMC where he has launched over 250 sites and served as lead developer on the company's CMS which serves millions of unique visits each year. Joel has an Honors Degree in Computer Science from UNC Chapel Hill where he was a Morehead Scholar. Follow Joel on Twitter.
The most important thing you can be doing to improve your search engine results is generating great content. Even an old, poorly engineered web site can show up in the results if it contains quality, relavent content.
That said, by doing a few technical things right, it is a lot easier to achieve results. The easiest way to get these things right is to use a Content Management System (CMS) that takes care of the technical things for you. When shopping for a CMS, here are the minimum features you should be looking for:
Things you should be able to edit on each page:
1. Title Tag
The title tag is perhaps the most important thing you can do to improve the results of a page. It should be unique, have the keyword towards the beginning, and be no longer than 70 characters. This is the text that shows up as a link in Google results.
2. Meta-Description
The meta-description is designed as a summary of the page for search engines. It should be no longer than 150 characters. This is the text that shows up as the description in search engine results.
3. URL
Many Content Management Systems auto-generate urls for each page that are not human-readable. For example:
http://www.website.com/index.php?category_id=142&page_id=15
When a search engine crawls this page, it cannot learn anything about the contents of the page from the url. A good CMS will let you build a more readable, pretty URL like this:
http://www.website.com/pets/golden-retriever-puppies
4. Semantic Headlines
Headlines are usually printed larger and bolder than body text to indicate their importance. This works great for humans, but doesn't help search engines much. Instead, the ability to use heading tags is important. There are six levels of headings, from the most important, <h1>, to the least important, <h6>. Using these appropriately with just a single <h1> on each page will strongly indicate what your page is about to search engines.
5. Alt-Text on Images
The content of an image is largely lost to search engines. To improve the accessibility of your site to both the disabled and search engines, it is important to use alternate text with your images.
Sitewide SEO Features
6. Robots.txt Control
Robots.txt is a file that allows you to control what areas of the site search engines are allowed to look at. If you have staging areas of your site, or places that shouldn't be indexed by search engines, that needs to be controlled in the robots.txt file.
7. 301 Redirects
There are two (major) types of redirects. A 302 Temporary and a 301 Permanent redirect. When using a 301 redirect, the SEO credit of one page can be passed to another. As an example, lets say you have a page that ranks well for "Golden Retriever Puppies" but want to change its URL. To do this, you would create the new page with a new URL and direct the old URL to the new one using a 301 redirect. Since this is a "permanent" redirect, Google will pass the SEO credit along.
8. Ability to add Analytics
A good CMS will make it easy to add analytics that let you track your site visitors. Much can be learned from user behavior -- epecially what is popular and what is being searched for.
Final Words
All of the above features are the basics for a CMS in 2009. There are many other more advanced features that should be considered as well. Additionally, a good CMS will allow for arbitrary markup so that any design can be made SEO friendly.
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Small Steps: Integrating SEO into your Press Releases
Megan Winterhalter
Megan Winterhalter is the Public Relations and Advertising Intern for New Media Campaigns. Her focus is in copywriting and building client websites. A junior in The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill, she is double majoring in Advertising and History with a minor in Mathematical Decision Sciences. Find out what she is up to by following her on Twitter.
Ten years ago, companies would send press releases to various media outlets in the hopes of a simple mention in order to gain publicity for their company. Now, with the onslaught of the Internet, social media, and company websites, companies can create their own publicity by developing and posting well-written press releases to their website.
The key to driving traffic to your site is making sure your press-releases are, in fact, well-written. Not only should your press release follow a general format that ensures specific details are included, but it should also be well-written from a search engine's point-of-view. A few well-chosen keywords partnered with coherent and intelligent writing will increase your search engine rankings and keep your visitors engaged.
In order to help you determine what keywords would be best in your press release, you have to ask yourself a few questions.
If you're writing about your company
- What key words define your company?
- What quality are you specifically writing about?
- Did you change your customer service philosophy?
- Did you add another member to your team?
If you're writing about your work
- What specifically did you do for the client?
- Did you utilize your technology with their website?
- Did you work with an agency partner?
If you are writing about your work for a specifc client
- What type of client are they?
- Are they a new start-up e-commerce?
- Are they a political candidate?
- Are they a University client?
When in doubt - establish who & what you are writing about and visit similar parts of your website to see what keywords were used.
For example, did you just launch a website for a new political candidate? Do you have a portfolio with other political candidates and their case studies? Do you have any past blog posts that discuss political websites?
A good idea is to have your company develop a list of keywords they deem important to search engine optimization and to the company. Google's AdWords Keyword tool allows you to search for similar keywords and see how many people are actually searching for that term. From there, your company can narrow the list of words to those that relate to your company and have a decent search volume.
What's important to remember is that search engines are getting smarter every day and are evaluating the content around keywords more meticulously than ever. So while filling your press releases with keywords may seem like the best way to help your SEO, it would be better to focus on developing the quality of your writing and inserting keywords where they fit coherently. Taking small steps like reassessing the way in which you write press releases can create big benefits down the road.
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Make or Break your SEO: URLs & Title Tags
Megan Winterhalter
Megan Winterhalter is the Public Relations and Advertising Intern for New Media Campaigns. Her focus is in copywriting and building client websites. A junior in The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill, she is double majoring in Advertising and History with a minor in Mathematical Decision Sciences. Find out what she is up to by following her on Twitter.
With a growing number of companies and organizations utilizing search engine optimization to increase their online visibility it is surprising to see a majority of them still using convoluted URLs and generic title tags on their websites.
URLs and Title tags provide information that helps describe your page and website to search engines and visitors so keeping this information relevant and accurate is one of the first major steps to making your website search engine friendly. So as a quick reminder or even a mini-lesson in SEO, here are a few examples for URLs and Title tags that serve to clarify what is good and bad in the world of search engine optimization.
URLs
URLs should be descriptive, yet brief. Visitors should be able to get an idea of what kind of information will be on the page just by looking at its URL. If the page is at the end of several levels of sections of your website the URL should also reflect this. For larger companies it may seem easier to have a series of numbers and letters define each page but that does nothing for visitors or search engines, the two most important entities your company is serving.
URL Comparison for Sony 32" LCD HDTV
The Good: http://www.nextag.com/sony-32-lcd-hdtv/shop-html
While nextag.com is a comparison shopping website, they do a great job of formatting their URLs to accurately describe the information on each page.
The Bad: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Bravia-XBR-KDL-32XBR4-HDTV/dp/B000RUNZVO
Amazon is a large company and often labels products with letter and numbers instead of using their actual name. However, at least a visitor or search engine could determine that this webpage has something to do with the Sony Bravia HDTV from looking at the URL. If only I could decipher the meaning of B000RUNZVO
The Ugly: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=9252002
Walmart, like Amazon, is infamous for labeling products with numbers. While that may be conducive to their system of inventory, I, nor any search engine crawler, has any clue what Walmart is selling on this page.
Title Tags
Title tags are most recognizable as the bold blue ink text that appears for each search result. They not only aid in defining keyword terms but also help drive click-through-rates from search results pages. Some title tags are generic; others attempt to name every detail on the page.
The Good: Milton S. Hershey - HERSHEY'S
The Hershey's Company does a great job of creating great title tags for all of their pages, even the ones that share the history of Hershey. This page operates as the starting point to learning anything and everything about the man who built the Hershey Chocolate empire. Subsequent pages are well-titled and direct such as the page on Catherine S. Hershey titled "Milton Hershey's Wife".
The Bad: Animal Guide - Kids Corner - Georgia Aquarium
The Georgia Aquarium does a good job of keeping their institution's name present in almost all of their title tags, but this page is actually about the American Alligator. The aquarium should consider removing Kids Corner from the title and add the name of each animal instead.
Nice, Circuit City. I had to read through a listing of almost every possible electronic device before I even realized you were the company selling it. Instead of trying to run the gamut on everything your site offers, use your company name for the Title of your main website and keep your description for the meta tags.
Diving into search engine optimization can seem daunting and leave you feeling overwhelmed, but by taking small steps and changing a few key words here and there can make this task a much more manageable one.
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Three Basics of Search Engine Optimization
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Almost all of our clients come to us with questions about Search Engine Optimization and how to run a campaign for their site. Most people view SEO as a deep mystery that requires years of HTML experience and an education from Hogwarts. However, while there are many intricacies to the craft that re reserved for the masters, basic SEO doesn't have to be that complicated and can be accomplished with steady committment and the help of a good Content Management System.
Here are three of the basics of SEO, ranked in order of importance, and how you can help your site rank organically high for targeted terms.
The 4 C's: Consistently Create Compelling Content. The most important element of ranking high in search engines is having great content. If you have good content that relates specifically to your organization, you'll get ranked higher for the targeted terms within your content. However, it doesn't stop with just having a baseline of good content, it's essential that you are consistently churning out interesting and informative stuff. It's important for a few reasons.
First, Google looks at how often your site is updated when judging how frequently it should spider (inspect) your site for organic rankings. So, if you are frequently creating content, you increase the likelihood that Google comes back to your site a lot to judge your content and accordingly update your rankings.
Second, every page you create is indexable by Google, helping your long tail of search terms. So, whether you're creating content in a blog, newsfeed, or somewhere else, you're increasing the amount of total pages and search terms that you'll be indexed for.
Third, good content serves as excellent "link bait," meaning that other people will link to your site. When other people link to you, it passes along their Page Rank juice, which will in turn help your site rank overall better in search engines.
Get Linked To. This doesn't mean buying 50 links for $50 from a Nigerian Prince, but it does mean trying to get valuable links to your site from others. Remember, the more legitimate and popular the site doing the linking, the more value Google will credit to that link and thus to your site.
One easy way to accomplish this task is through having multiple presences for your business online (i.e., Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, a Microsite, etc). By having these other presences and building links from them to your main site, you'll pass along valuable Page Rank points to your site.
Also, by following the first rule of the four C's, you increase the likelihood of other blogs and social media presences linking to you. Finally, don't be shy to ask for links from folks that write about you. If your featured in a local newspaper or blog, be sure to ask for a link back to your site.
The anchor text (meaning the words that form the actual link) of the links is also very important, as Google uses that to determine what keywords best describe your site. So, when possible, be sure to use your targeted terms (i.e, political web design, for us) as the text for the link.
Descriptive URLs and Title Tags. If you're using a good CMS, you should have the ability to control the URL and Title Tags (the description at the top of a browser window for a site) for each page. After content, these are the two most important "on page" elements of SEO. Your URLs and Title Tags should be optimized with targeted terms, but also should be consistent with the actual copy on the page.
One of the cardinal sins of good Search Engine Optimization are sloppy or unreadable URLs, such as newmediacampaigns.com/a98y3498.asp. It's important that you have clean URL extensions separated by dashes, like newmediacampaigns.com/clean-url-description/. By having the URL match up well with your Title Tags, Google will get a good idea of what the page is about (or what terms you want it to think the page is about).
While there are many other elements of SEO, these are the three that are easiest to control and of the most importance. Have you optimized these elements and experienced success? I know we have. Also, what are some other SEO elements that you focus on with your site?
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New Google Tool Suggests Competitive Keywords Based on Site Content
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Ever wonder what Google thinks the most competitive keywords for your website are based on your content and other SEO elements? There are helpful third-party tools, such as SEO Moz's, that spider your content and make recommendations for what a page is about and what terms should be targeted. However, these are still limited in scope and still don't give you insight into what Google actually thinks.
Google Adwords has now ended much of the guesswork by allowing Adwords users to run a report on your site that tells you possible terms to target with a Pay Per Click campaign. This new tool is very valuable to many different marketers, ranging from people running their first Adwords campaign looking for good terms to experienced advertisers trying to devise new keywords to target.
In order to use the tool, login or create a new Google Account, if you don't currently have one. Once logged in, visit the Google Search Based Keyword Tool at www.google.com/sktool/, there will be an option to run a test on one of the sites associated with your account or to enter a new domain. Google will then give you a list of the most valuable terms it associates with your site, based on the terms' density in your content and their total number of monthly global searches.
For our site, the tool does a fairly good job. It lists Online Content Management, Raleigh North Carolina Web Design, Web landing page, Web Design Carolina, and Great Web Design as five of the top keywords that it would be worth us running an Adwords campaign to target. Next to each term, the tool also displays number of monthly searches, suggested CPC bid, and the main page on your site that the phrase was chosen from.
All of terms chosen by the Keyword Tool are consistent with our business, and while we aren't curretly running a Pay Per Click campaign for ourselves, we do target many of these terms through Inbound Marketing, SEO, and other techniques.
While certainly, the best longterm approach to Google is to focusing achieving high organic rankings vs. paid ads, there are definitely situations where it makes sense to buy ads online and Google has now removed some of the guesswork to building a successful campaign. If you're currently running an online ad campaign or exploring the possibility of launching one, I recommend checking out this helpful new tool. -
Analyzing the Traffic Sources of a Successful Blog
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Collis Ta'eed recently took a tour through a large blog's traffic on his blog and the data is very interesting. When I say "successful blog," I mean it. The site, psdtuts, that Collis walks through gets over a million visitors per month.
The data is a great way to see the principles of web traffic and blogging in action on a very large scale. The data he compiled strongly supports the frequently discussed tenets of inbound marketing and the long tail of successful blog posts by demonstrating that:
- Organic search traffic consistently outweighs social media traffic, even outweighing the initial surges from a successful Digg or Reddit submission.
- Search traffic steadily increases month by month in almost a linear fashion, with each month bringing in more organic visitors.
- In the past year, the monthly visits from organic searches has nearly doubled.
- The traffic begins to take on a life of its own as the links get passed around the web; several foreign sites that Collis has never even heard of send thousands of visitors each month.
The traffic analysis also presents some interesting data relating to which sites are the best at driving traffic to the blog:
- Twitter referrals are consistently growing. The traffic from Twitter is aided by the fact that the @psdtuts Twitter account tweets about every post to its more than 3,000 followers.
- Facebook traffic referrals are close on the heels of twitter; the most interesting part of this fact is that there is currently no Facebook strategy in place. He doesn't post links in his status or anything; so this is all driven by other people.
- StumbleUpon is the social site that sends the most traffic and it does so more consistently than sites like Reddit or Digg. Stumbleupon consistently sends 100,00 visitors/month; Digg only reaches that amount when there's a surge from a popular post.
- A post on Reddit's homepage sends almost an identical amount of traffic as a Digg homepage score, and it is much more accessible. Also, Reddit is better at sending smaller amounts of traffic to somewhat popular posts; whereas with Digg it's almost all or nothing.
Thanks to Collis for opening up PSDTuts' numbers and allowing people to see the long tail benefits of blogging and the general trends of web traffic on such a large scale. Are these referral proportions in line with what your website or blog is experiencing? What is your biggest traffic source? I encourage you to check out Collis' new blog after only three posts, it's already one of my favorites.
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New Page Rank for a New Year
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Page Rank is the cornerstone of Google's search engine algorithm. Every website that Google indexes is assigned a Page Rank, which is what Google believes the "importance" of that site is on a 0-10 scale. The way that Google discerns the importance of a page is based on the legitimacy of other websites linking to your site.
The more legitimate the sites and the more in number that link to you, the higher your page rank will be. The algorithm believes that if you're worthy of earning links from other trustworthy sites, then you too are a reliable site worthy of a good page rank.
Google does not divulge the specific details of the algorithm or how frequently it is updated. From searching the blogosphere it looks like the last Page Rank update was September 2008...until today. From what I can tell, it looks like Page Rank was updated today as our site and personal blogs pretty much all had a new rank. New Media Campaigns is now a Page Rank 6, which we're very excited about.
A 6 is a pretty powerful PR and will give us more authority when linking to pages within our own site with targeted keyword phrases and will also let us pass along more PR juice to other sites that we link to. Page Rank takes awhile to build up, and I attribute our recent jump to our increased blogging frequency, press related to votethesite.com (now a 4), and subscription to some new directories such as Yahoo!.
Kudos to Katy Barrilleaux for tweeting that she noticed a Page Rank change this morning, which led me to investigate it on my own.
Happy New Year to everyone!
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SEO vs. PPC - Which Provides You the Better Value?
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Organizations of all sizes are realizing the importance of online marketing, especially through search engines. Nowadays, people are more likely to end up on your website via a search engine than going directly to it. In fact, according to Jupiter Research, a Forrester Research company, 81% of users find their desired destination thr
ough a search engine.This research makes it clear that it's very important for your brand to have a strong presence in the search engines, ensuring that you're in front of your target audience. However, there's still a big decision to make - whether to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization, or naturally ranking high in the organic results) or PPC (Pay-Per-Click ads, the Sponsored Links and purchased ads on a Google search) to get in front of your target?
Done correctly, both can get you on the front page of the search engines for targeted terms and in front of your desired audience. However, each has its respective benefits and costs. SEOmoz, a great SEO resource, recently published an article by the team at Enquisite quantifying the effectiveness of SEO vs. PPC.
The article details that organic results are 8.5x more likely to be clicked on than paid search results! That's a large disparity and is likely attributed to searchers gradually learning the difference between organic and sponsored results, and recognizing that organic results are typically the more respected resource. Also, researchers have used heat maps to show that searchers' eyes focus on the top organic results, with people barely noticing the ads to the right.
However, PPC holds a slight edge in conversion rates, as paid search results are 1.5x more likely to convert click thrus from the search engine. The SEOmoz article attributes, to the fact that the paid search result's "text and landing page is custom optimized by the advertiser."
So, looking at both of these numbers, it can be concluded that "the opportunity from organic search is 5.66x that of paid search."
So, given the flat out choice of ranking high organically or having great PPC ads - the overwhelmingly logical choice is organic. However, we all know it's not that easy or else those "Rank #1 in Google TOMORROW" robo calls would be much more effective. True SEO takes time, not get rich quick schemes.
PPC's true strengths are its speed and expansiveness. With a PPC campaign, you can be on the first page for a multitude of targeted terms within a day. However, the terms can cost anywhere from pennies to many dollars per click; also, for a PPC campaign to be done correctly, it's usually best to hire a firm that can manage it full time. This can mean that PPC campaigns can get very expensive, very quickly - especially when done correctly.
SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, estimates that 87% of search engine dollars are spent on PPC vs. 11% spent on SEO efforts. That's more than $10 billion spent on PPC vs. just $1 billion spent on SEO. That means the strategy that's over 5x more effective, SEO, is only receiving 1/8 the media spend in the market! It's hard to justify the expense of a PPC campaign, knowing that SEO is more successful and the overall better longterm value.
Don't get me wrong, there are certainly times to use PPC - when you're first launching your company, it's a great way to get your name out there and build brand awareness. For a limited time offer or special event, PPC is an effective way to get exposure that SEO wouldn't have time to contribute to.
Also, PPC is more effective for products than it is for service companies; for example, we focus SEO efforts on terms such as Raleigh web design and Content Management Software; however, we do not engage in PPC advertising for these terms, because they're usually a waste of money for a services firm like ours. Yet we have an electronic payments client that runs a PPC campaign focused around its specific product offerings, and this strategy makes sense for their market.
However, when it comes to the long term lifeline of your internet marketing, the result is clear - SEO offers the better value in search marketing. You won't rank #1 overnight, but SEO is more affordable and the longterm benefits have been proven. All of these facts demonstrate that your company should spend more of its time and resources focusing on SEO vs. PPC.
What are other people's experiences in this realm? Anyone think that PPC is the more value-driven choice than SEO? Let us know your thoughts!
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