It has been brought to my attention that Google released earnings last month (well, it was April so it’s normal, I don’t know why I didn’t check myself). And, as expected, they’re doing pretty well, in fact $3.4 billion in just the first quarter of this year… Can you imagine that kind of money? Simple to do the math and come to around $37 million a day. And most of that is from online advertising, AdWords and AdSense.

So basically people throw money at Google to be listed there on the first page with their products and services which by a logical deduction means you should too right? Well, no, that would be following the crowd and that’s stupid. Sure, if you’re a multi-national with a million-dollar advertising budget, you probably should do it, but if you’re a small to medium business maybe that’s not the first step. I mean, 80 percent of searches are research (aka no money for you in it). However, the rule with Pay Per Click ads is that if you get a Return On Investment of over 1% you should do it anyway. I have friends who manage campaigns of around 1000euros a month but in some times of the year (easter, christmas, etc) spend in excess of 10000euros in one day because in that one day returns are through the roof. And ads give you a bit of exposure as well. But my point here is that you should first get organic results so that you don’t pay for EVERY SINGLE CLICK. Also, it’s a proven fact that people researching are less prone to click on ads than the same result in the normal search, which is why you need to be in normal search as well. And to back that up, let’s set up a poll:

An iProspect survey showed that 60.5% of Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL users selected a natural search result over a paid search result as the most relevant on a sample query. 60.8% of Yahoo! and 72.3% of Google users chose a natural search result as the most relevant. Also, studies by Enquiro and iProspect revealed that 60.5% to 70.0% of users trust organic results while only 30% to 39.5% of users trust paid results.

Also, apparently there was a tool last year that Google uses to determine the actual value of a click. And, low and behold, it seems top rankings in Google are worth a lot more that a PPC ad… it’s called GG score and apparently Matt Cutts said it is an internal Google tool to prioritize the importance of a customer. Here’s a screenshot of the tool, and no, you can’t have it.

And well, the purpose of this is to convince yourselves that organic search is very important and pretty much worth it. I mean think about it, would you want the $1 PPC ad, or the $30 of value the organic search brings? I think we both know the answer. As always, comments are welcome and do fill out the survey

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It’s very nice to see that search engines are now thinking of incorporating ways of detecting spam by smart things such as usability criteria, thus forcing webmasters to rethink the way their site works.

And, since I’ve always been a preacher of optimizing your website for usability as well, I enjoy the fact that search engines are now pretty much forcing you to. More particularly, search engines are preparing to analyze website clutter and see whether a page is for example <strong> full of ads </strong> like a web portal, or basically optimized against ease of use.This is based on a patent application which you can find at this website and which discusses the “QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF WEB PAGE CLUTTER THAT ACCOUNTS FOR SUBJECTIVE PREFERENCES”.

Well, onwards. I personally feel that this is not only targeted for search engines but advertisers all around, since it addresses usability from an advertising maximization point of view:

It can be important to make web pages easy and pleasing to use, which can be particularly important for web pages it is desired to monetize. [...].

If such web pages are not easy and pleasing to use, the money-making potential of those web pages can be jeopardized. One conventional indication of whether a web page is easy and pleasing to use is called ‘clutter.’

What this means is increase the usability and you will get better conversions, and also become more valuable to the search engines themselves by serving up good content. In the patent we get an example of factors which influence this clutter and they are (in no particular order):

• Total number of links
• Total number of words
• Total number of images (non-ad images)
• Image area above the fold (non-ad images)
• Dimensions of page
• Page area (total)
• Page length
• Total number of tables
• Maximum table columns (per table)
• Maximum table rows (per table)
• Total rows
• Total columns
• Total cells
• Average cell padding (per table)
• Average cell spacing (per table)
• Dimensions of fold
• Fold area
• Location of center of fold relative to center of page
• Total number of font sizes used for links
• Total number of font sizes used for headings
• Total number of font sizes used for body text
• Total number of font sizes
• Presence of “tiny” text
• Total number of colors (excluding ads)
• Alignment of page elements
• Average page luminosity
• Fixed vs. relative page width
• Page weight (proxy for load time)
• Total number of ads
• Total ad area
• Area of individual ads
• Area of largest ad above the fold
• Largest ad area
• Total area of ads above the fold
• Page space allocated to ads
• Total number of external ads above the fold
• Total number of external ads below the fold
• Total number of external ads
• Total number of internal ads above the fold
• Total number of internal ads below the fold
• Total number of internal ads
• Number of sponsored link ads above the fold
• Number of sponsored link ads below the fold
• Total number of sponsored link ads
• Number of image ads above the fold
• Number of image ads below the fold
• Total number of image ads
• Number of text ads above the fold
• Number of text ads below the fold
• Total number of text ads
• Position of ads on page

We also find that the purpose of this algorithm is to screen websites that would require a lot of time for people to review manually and the results would be subjective anyway. There were also a few accompanying diagrams but i was unable to make them show up in my browser so here’s the link to try for yourselves. I hope you have enjoyed this, it’s a really important checklist to consider when designing (or redesigning) a web page.

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Since I’ve been busy talking about branding this week I though I’d change tracks a bit and post a few tips. Most are reedited from a less up to date (and less precise list), while some are my additions. So, here we go:

• tip one is that if you want to use drop-down menus, now you can Google just announced progress in crawling those, and Yahoo seems to have too, so use them with no fear
• the most important part of any site is content, so make sure you have lots of it, update it often, and use keywords and alternation of keyword phrases in it so you get most search traffic
• get links with decent titles, preferably from related sites (or sites that have at least a bit of relevance to you)
• PR is not the most important factor, but it is really important in comparing to the competition (if you’re PR3 and there’s a PR7 you’re competing with, you should just buy ads, you’ll never beat him in the short run)
• use different titles for every page, optimize them for keywords and use your name to end them (look at my site) - that helps you rank for your own brand/company name
• use linking within your site, using the keywords you want (this gives you an SEO boost and makes random visitors hang around more)
• target long-tailed keywords rather than words or short phrases (the longer the less competition and the more specific the search)
• design your site with SEO in mind if you can (forget about flash, and use images less and alt tag them all)
• use keywords in your domain name, your URL (even folders matter), and alt tags
• make sure which domain you want (www or non-www) and set a 301 redirect for the other version. For example, I use eydryan.com and I tell Google I prefer it as well
• link to absolute pages rather than relative ones; for example if posting a picture on the website write http://eydryan.com/images/1.png rather than ./images/1.png - this is also useful if others steal your content, to have links pointing back to you.
• frames and ajax make for poor SEO since they don’t update the page when new content arrives - use them less, and if possible not at all (at least frames)
• your URL extension doesn’t normally matter (unless someone is looking for it in Google) so don’t bother thinking if php or asp or whatever should be html instead
• quickest way to get indexed is via links, don’t bother submitting to a gazillion websites
• fresh content is always welcome and if the website can’t have that, make a blog and get that to work for you in this matter. Write at least twice a week for bots and people alike
• try to get good links rather than many links (although, as Lenin said, “quantity has a quality of its own”)
• try to keep keyword density within 3-4% if possible in the page and make the text sound natural (as opposed to spammy)
• try to keep links in context (not only link text is important, neighboring sentences are also important)
• make sure your hosting server is not banned from Google, and make sure there aren’t any spammy or porn sites on the same server (if it’s a smaller one)
• try to be as legit in your domain registration info since blocking info may mean you’re a spammer to Google
• four SEO core values are content, links, popularity and reputation
• try to think usability when designing the site since not only it helps people, it also helps Google crawl better
• link to others and others shall link to you. Also, if you have links in an article, Google will take you more seriously about it
• don’t use a splash page. i mean why? give it functionality at least, because neither Google nor users like to have to go one extra step to get to what they want
• paid links aren’t really that important, why not use that money advertising, one link cannot bring you the glory it once did
• get links from .edu and .gov domains, they are heavy in Google - some may want sponsorships for links
• make linkbaiting but do it as conspicuous as possible. it has a name because it works - just don’t overdo it
• for a blog, try to make each post around one keyword phrase, thus you’ll have a killing in the search engines for that. For example, I’m numero uno for Google crawl rate
• use a call to action. this is a marketing term that basically means use a line of text that makes people do what you want them (the most known is “click here“)
• SEO is not a quick process you do once and then ignore it forever. While you may be done in 6 months with the most of the basics, you should really work on it daily
• try to find influential bloggers or websites, or authorities in the field who will link to you. one link on a big website will bring massive traffic
• gain credibility if you can, try to add your address and contact info in plain sight on every page, and give your website a human face
• use a service like feedburner to manage your rss feed
• caption your images, so people know what they are
• think of context when you optimize images too
• submit a sitemap to Google. then make sure your navigation is as close to the top of the page as possible and it’s simple yet comprehensive
• use SMO and try to get good at it. experiment with posts meant to tease your visitors
• if you use videos, add a video sitemap too
• submit web videos not only to youtube, but also to Google Video, Metacafe, Viddler, and Myspace videos (they’re pretty much the top players)
• do with videos what you do with images: captions and context
• use words like “image”, “photo” and “picture” in your alts since so many people add them in searches
• enable enhanced image searching in webmaster tools (it’s under tools)
• try to make viral materials, they’re fun to create and in time you understand how to make really good ones
• when you get a link, see if the page who’s linking is in the Google cache, so you know whether you’ll get some SEO boost from it
• make sure server headers are good, i had this problem once and the site sent 404’s to Google but otherwise the site seemed fine. I lost all search traffic for two weeks.

These have been the tips, I know that if you count them they may add up to less than fifty-something, but I adapted my list from a 55 quick tips list and I found some were either not true or irrelevant (or repetitive) so I scraped them. However, rest assured, all the content here is written by myself, I do not do dodgy copy-pastes.

Hope you enjoyed it, and HAPPY EASTER to those celebrating this coming weekend

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A new study in the field of search behaviour has unearthed a few interesting facts about clicking habits of online users, and about what gets clicked how many times. It’s an interesting bit of information for anyone caring, and should offer the people who know what to do a bit of insight into the minds of their visitors.

The main result of the test is that people tend to click on specialized searches when searching for general terms (like they search for golf balls and you give them golf balls images or videos in the results) than when searching for specialized terms.

The first new concept here is blended search results. These are results which, besides normal search results, contain specialized items such as images, youtube videos and so on. Also, these include searches for news items, or shopping items (the top bar from the Google search results).

The results from this step of the study reveal:

• 36% of searchers click news results within blended search results, while only 17% click a news result after conducting a news-specific search.
• 31% of search engine users click image results within blended search results, while 26% click an image result after conducting an image-specific search.
• 17% of search engine users click video results within blended search results, while only 10% click a video result after conducting a video-specific search.
• Images are the most clicked result type after a specialized search.
• News items are the most clicked result type within blended search results.

The second part of the study refers to search behaviour on the first page of results. It seems it is becoming more and more important. It used to be said that first page results are each tenfold separated (first is ten times as effective as second, second ten times as third etc), but it seems this has expanded to 100-fold.

The actual results:

• 68% of search engine users click results on the first page of search results, compared to 62% in 2006, and 60% in 2004.
• Only 8% of search engine users review more than the first three pages prior to clicking on a result.
• 49% of search engine users who continue their search when not finding what they are looking for, change and/or re-launch their search after reviewing just the first page of search results, up from 40% in 2006, and 42% in 2004.
• 37% of online users associate appearance at the top of search results with a company’s leadership within its industry or category, up slightly from 35% in 2006 and 33% in 2002.

So as you can see top page results means you get associated with an authority in the field. For example, I’m considered to be an authority on Google crawling due to some recent articles (for some specific searches). Although this is not far from the truth, the rather short life of the blog (mid-February) makes it rather unexpected.

What we can see from this study which clearly shows page one results as essential is that if you’re not on the first page, you must optimize your website. Also, make sure you hire someone who can write copy, because no matter how good you are at writing copy you may not be specialized to write seo’d titles. This is highly important because no matter how high you are in the results, it’s likely people will click a title that resembles what they thought of when searching, even if it’s lower on the bottom. I’ve even had page five clicks because I write quality titles. Use scarcity, mystery and include a call to action if you can.

For those wanting the study you can get it as a results pdf. We have to thank these guys, this is really important stuff…

In another study, rather unrelated, we find out that out of all web searches 80% are for research, whereas only 10% are transactional (actual purchases), which means you really need to rethink AdWords spending. Are you sure your keywords convert properly? Are they too general or too specific? I’ve talked to a potential client today who had 4 keywords, all very general, and they did not want to give them up because they had a lot of visits, even though they felt leads were rather uncorrelated to the ads. I can’t wait to see conversion ratios and bounce rates because I really feel (in a backed up by research way) that general terms convert like crap… Let’s hope I’ll get a chance to fix their conversion rate, it’s a shame to spend a lot of money on keywords which don’t bring you the amount of business you need at a price you want. I mean it’s a good idea to spend the same amount on many keywords with high conversion rates, proper landing pages and awesome ad copy rather than go general and get less than perfect hits on general terms. I mean, only based on that study and you’re wasting 80% of your money…

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