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webRED Issue 18 - May 2006 |
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webRED Issue 18 - May 2006 |
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In this issue:
Hi readers, and welcome to our May issue of WebRed. We hope you have all had an enjoyable past month and are braced for the arrival of the cold season and even the fall of the white stuff in the next few months! Internet marketing is more of a business imperative because the Internet is an irrevocable and unstoppable trend. Even if you have a traditional "brick-and-mortar" business, you'll lose valuable customers without an online presence. People routinely search for goods and services with their computers instead of picking up the yellow pages. If your business isn't on the Web, customers will likely choose another company to do business with. So, this month we are focusing on the growth of the search market and how it has come about, where it is going and what its opportunities and benefits are. Also, our search world highlights this month discusses the new search engine Lexxe, which is based upon natural language search (very interesting!) and Yahoo’s new Pay Per Click management changes. Our Frequently Asked Question relates to keywords in URLs and whether hyphens are needed to separate them in order for search engines to find them – a good question to consider if you are looking into buying a new URL! Happy reading Until next month Back to top >> As a marketing manager, you would like to understand how your campaigns are maximizing
results. One of the best ways to improve results is to create a marketing dashboard and then
measure, test and tweak for continuous improvement. Effective Marketing Strategy Search Engine Optimization is one of today's most effective marketing strategies. Web use seems to revolve around search with 80 percent of users finding their destinations from a search engine query. Over half (55 percent) of all e-commerce transactions originate from a search listing. SEO is poised to drive substantial profits for your business. As a multi-purpose marketing tool, search marketing can be used for direct response to generate sales leads, collect newsletter subscriptions, gather site registrations and convert online and offline sales. It is even an excellent branding tool. Search marketing works because people pre-qualify themselves by typing search terms in a search box. What makes search so powerful is that you can get the right message to the right person at the right time as search engines attract people with a high level of interest in their search topic. Search can provide a huge reach, as 90 percent of U.S. consumers use search engines (Pew Internet ALP). Search actually has the lowest cost-per-lead of any marketing strategy (U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray) and while formerly second to email in popularity, search recently surpassed email and has become the most popular online activity (MarketingSherpa).
Advantages of SEO The original search marketing strategy is cost-effective both in terms of conversions and Return On Investment (ROI). While it takes time to generate prominent organic links, once achieved they last indefinitely, and this long-term quality is what makes SEO cost effective. The average company SEO project averages about $3 per-day, per-keyword, and you can generate ten times that much per day in additional business by being found more often in the search engines. Recent research by comCast and Marketing Sherpa shows that search engines really drive offline sales. Organic links are important because they yield more conversions. Earlier research shows that 70 percent of your prospects will click on an organic link (a search engine’s natural listings) over a sponsored link and that organic clicks outnumber PPC clicks by 5:1. Jupiter Research found that natural listings in search indexes generate an estimated six of seven commercially natured search referrals. Therefore, it's important to put SEO in your marketing radar! SEO services require modification of your site content and structure to improve relevancy and rankings in algorithmic search engines. This is sometimes referred to as making your website "search engine friendly." A properly optimized website is more easily indexed by the search robots for indexing in search engine databases. Well- optimized sites naturally achieve higher rankings. SEO goes a long way toward making your website successful because it energizes your site content and structure for maximum effectiveness. Source: Imedia Connection
Yahoo predicts rapid growth in search agencies Speaking in New York earlier this month Tim Cadogan, the British Vice-President of Yahoo, spoke many times on the importance of search marketing agencies in the future growth of the industry. A significant comment? Very. To-date the relationship between search marketers and the search engines has not been an easy one. Search marketers want to discover how the search engines are selecting sites – search engines have felt their carefully crafted search engine results pages have been manipulated, making their carefully crafted sorting mathematics virtually pointless. But, as search moves towards handling larger sums of money and to being a more advertising driven industry, the agency channel has continued to develop and to offer relatively advanced support for clients even when the search engines have not been co- operating. Things are moving in the right direction and fast. Both MSN and Yahoo have significant knowledge about their user base thanks to registrations for email services such as hotmail. There are few now who aren’t aware of the impact of the search engines and search marketing agencies. The line up of search engines looks like media or TV organisations lining up to win the best share of the audience they can to generate value for advertisers and thereby attract greater revenues. Search is without doubt an exciting market to be in. It’s not a mature industry by any means but it’s growing up extremely fast. The big engines are important players and partners and search is much more complex than it appears on the surface. To the huge numbers of potential clients watching to see what happens next, take my advice and learn how it works now – because that will give you the advantage of experience later when it will make a massive difference to you and your business. Source: Planet Ocean Back to top >> Lexxe natural language search reviewed We have found a new search engine on our journeys through the net, Lexxe (http://www.lexxe.com). It is a natural language search engine of the answer search kind - this means that you enter questions, not search terms. And in addition to a list of search results that point you to webpages that might or might not provide an answer, Lexxe suggest a short answer to your question. Lexxe also clusters the search results. The technology that powers Lexxe is based on the fact that search is a language-oriented, meaning-driven activity. When you do a search, Lexxe provides short, exact answers directly from webpages. The process is automatic and no human editors are involved. The answers come from unstructured texts and webpages on the Internet. Check it out! Source: Pandia Back to top >> Yahoo unveils new PPC management platform Yahoo will be unveiling a completely new PPC managment system over the coming months and have made an announcement revealing some of the new features and functions. The approach is being phased in over time to let people get used to the interface and then they’ll move to add some enhanced bidding and management functions. Here’s a summary of things they’ll be adding:
These are all welcome changes, and should make Yahoo a much better and easier platform to manage, so that you can spend your efforts on helping your company with their internet marketing as opposed to just managing a tool. Source: Lowdown.com
Back to top >> Question: Do keywords in URLs need to be separated with hyphens in order for search engines to see them? Answer: The ability of search engines to parse keywords that haven't been separated by hyphens is always a popular topic. However, research suggests that what's really most important is that your URLs are easy for search engines to crawl. The ability of search engines to parse keywords that haven't been separated by hyphens is always a popular topic. However, research suggests that what's really most important is that your URLs are easy for search engines to crawl. Beyond that, it's always going to be a good idea to have your keywords in your domain name, since people will usually link to you with the keywords found in your domain name. Keywords in the rest of your URL are primarily important because they can make your page appear more relevant to searchers, enticing more people to click on your listing. And, of course, they can also provide a small ranking advantage. However, to answer your question—Yes, you need to use hyphens, because currently most search engines are not parsing keywords out of URLs if those keywords are run-together and not separated with hyphens. Source: Search Engine News We hope you enjoyed webRED this month. If there are any topics or questions you'd particularly like us to cover or answer, why not CONTACT US and tell us. All views expressed are those of Optymise Ltd and articles/ features are written by Optymise staff unless otherwise stated.
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