Microsoft’s Bing is now providing the engine power for Yahoo! search users in Canada and the United States.

We shouldn’t underestimate the significance of what is going on. When this century is out, the Microsoft/Google business showdown is going to be analyzed and used as a business case study in how to gut a competitor.

Google commands a 65.8% share of the US search market, Yahoo! takes 17.1% and Microsoft’s Bing has a lowly 11% (according to Comscore’s July 2010 data).

Just over a year ago, Microsoft made a $47.5 billion bid for Yahoo! which was rejected by the shareholders but who now wish they had taken the deal – Yahoo!’s capitalization trades at far less than that of today and market share has continued to decline – the numbers have all been pointing down. On the other hand, why is Microsoft so keen – Microsoft has so far lost $4 billion with its online division and efforts to gain traction by organic growth have failed. The only way Google can be challenged in the search engine space is if a rival has a large enough chunk of market share.

Either Microsoft was going to take Yahoo! over or vice versa; but Microsoft is the one with the cash.

Microsoft developed Bing to deliver powerful new search engine results, and Microsoft adCenter to serve up the revenue generating advertisements which forms the profitable prize of the search engine market. Soon after the 2008 takeover deal faltered amidst unseemly price squabbles, it became very clear that if anyone is going to take on Google they need to start capturing market share and all of the Big G’s competitors were back-pedaling.

Six months ago, the regulators approved a “partnership” deal whereby Yahoo! uses Bing to power search results and Microsoft adCenter will serve up the search advertising. The US and Canada is now enjoying the new arrangement though Yahoo! is still using its own ad service as Microsoft tries to get adCenter ready for the Fall/Christmas selling season. Only English searches are covered, though multi-lingual and overseas markets can expect to be receiving search services under the new arrangement as it rolls out through 2011-2012.

Strangely enough, Google beat out Microsoft to provide search services for Yahoo! Japan…someone in Tokyo was not reading the same corporate hymn sheet as the folks in Sunnyvale, California!

So, what do we have?

Google has 65.8% of the US market and Yahoo!/Bing has 28.1%.

So how will Bing reverse that market split?

Reading the corporate press releases it quickly becomes clear that there is the usual corporate grunge – scale of economies, cost reduction, synergies, market innovations, unique service offering and blah, blah, blah.

Who cares unless you are an investor!

Here we are concerned with search engine driven business and SEO implications. What do you, as a website owner need to be aware of and more importantly, what do you need to do?

Google is the main player in town, so it makes sense to continue to prioritize SEO efforts to maximize the returns from Google users but, Bing is a significant chunk of the market too. To a large extent, SEO life has become simpler because search optimization needs to focus on two search engines instead of three.

At the moment, you need to do nothing except monitor the situation between Google and Bing and refocus SEO efforts directed at Yahoo! to one or both of the remaining market leaders in the search engine space.

Takeaway

The Bing/Yahoo! partnership is a clear challenge to Google’s search engine domination.

Whilst the deal is highly significant for investors and analysts, it has restricted impact for website SEO at the moment.

Bing traffic is likely to improve in terms of quality and volume because of the improved position of one search engine with a third of the market instead of two, relatively small players. This is good news for many SEO clients because Bing traffic converts well, even better than Google traffic for certain verticals and niches.

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So who is daft enough to take on Google and Microsoft at their own game?

Meet Mark Markson and Rich Skrenta, who have been putting their Blekko search engine together for the last 2½ years and have gone through 3 rounds of venture capital funding raising $20 million.

Let’s do the numbers – Google owns the search engine space with who cares how many billions of dollars; Microsoft’s online division has lost $4 billion in the last 2 years and was prepared to spend $46.5 billion on buying Yahoo! in 2008 just to attack that Google market.

So how far does $20 million bucks get you?

Not far, and especially not in an area where you cannot offer a reduced price for the service (searches are free) and how convenient is it going to be for users to navigate off their default search engine page to go to another search engine…it isn’t.

So What Gives?

The search engine and online advertising market is maturing and market shares are stabilizing; unless someone comes up with the so-called “Google Killer” and changes the search engine paradigm.

But Blekko denies they are a Google Killer, so what’s happening?

With market maturity comes a need to start differentiating your service offering and catering to the niche markets which emerge.  You can be everything to everyone (Google and Bing), or you can aim to carve out a niche and take market share that way, which is exactly what Blekko is aiming at.

But that is only part of the story – remember those Venture Capitalists and their $20 million – they are looking for a payday and that means selling out, or more diplomatically, having an “exit strategy”.

So who will buy Blekko if it works – Google and Bing are obvious potential suitors with the cash mountain to buy whoever or whatever they want.

It all depends on whether Blekko really has “something” they want.

What is Different About Blekko

There are two distinct differences with Blekko:

1. Slashtags – slashtags are a way of directing the search query to look at only a certain type of website; and
2. Ranking – perform any search on Google or Bing and you get a search results page, but how do you know what was going on to get that search result?  No-one knows for sure, but Blekko is transparent – ask it why you got a particular rank and it tells you!

Slashtags

This is the USP from the user perspective; if you are voting for McCain in the Arizona Senate elections then you may only be interested in what the conservative sites have to say on the election, but you can’t readily do that with Google.

With Blekko you can:

John McCain election/conservative

John McCain election/Arizona

John McCain election/liberal

The three search queries above are examples of slashtag use – the first search term with the slashtag /conservative will search only those websites deemed to be “conservative”; /Arizona will only search on websites deemed to be connected to Arizona e.g. Arizona bloggers or newspapers; and /liberal will search sites which are going to give you the opposition view to how McCain is getting on with his re-election efforts.

You can create your own slashtags or use preset ones already created for you by Blekko and other users.  There are drawbacks, such as who is maintaining the website lists supporting slashtags, but the search engine is not on general release yet and is still in testing beta, though you can gain access by following Blekko on Twitter – just follow Blekko and send a message to @Blekko.  There are also some presets, known as “built-in” slashtags which include

• /noporn;
• /date; and
• /rank.

/noporn search is obvious enough, while /date ranks results in date order (which is useful – Google & Co still have not resolved dating and historical searches yet).

It is the /rank slashtag which is a very welcome change, but more of that in a moment.

Blekko is letting you specify what part of the web you want to look at for information, and you can create your own customized lists of sites to make it even more specific.  I can see a lot of application in this and not least, a greatly improved level of relevancy to users and that is the Holy Grail for search engines of any color.

Ranking Transparency

Using the /rank slashtag uncovers a lot of information which is very granular and tells you exactly why Blekko is ranking you where you are at.

Getting ranked on page 1 of Google is fantastic, but it’s like winning a prize without being told which competition you entered.

Getting ranked anywhere on Blekko comes with an explanation of why – total transparency.

Using the /rank slashtag provides the information on how Blekko has applied its search algorithm, so now if you are deficient in one SEO area you know where you need to improve.  At the same time it is telling you what you are good at, which lets you gain some idea of how important certain SEO activities are compared to others and what value for your SEO dollars is being gained.

While Blekko does not tell you what is happening with the Bing or Google algorithm, it is a refreshing change from all the secrecy and smoke which is blown around how search engines do what they do.  More than this, using Blekko’s transparency should, to an extent, help to gauge how effective specific components of your SEO strategy are in gaining high rankings with Bing and Google.

Takeaway

The search engine market is maturing and differentiation in service provision is going to become the norm.  Google and Bing will slug it out for market dominance, but there is an opportunity for niche market’s to be carved out of the turf.

Blekko is doing just that with a search engine service which allows you to “spin” the web – effectively you tell it what areas of the web to search or not, and this will make for a greater degree of relevancy for individual users.

Blekko is also transparent in that it tells you why a site gets the ranking awarded to it.  Now why don’t Google and Bing follow that example?

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Getting to the top of the search engine rankings is mission critical for almost every business out there – business 101 is simple, get yourself seen, get yourself heard and get yourself customers.
Any business which has eschewed the web is either (a) subsidized by taxpayers, (b) enjoying a state-sanctioned monopoly, (c) failing or (d) bust.
Real-world business has embraced the web in a way many could not envision 20 years ago, and still suspected would never happen 10 years ago, and only started opening their eyes to the very real potential of the web five years ago.

The web has been embraced by real-world business but this has brought real-world business sense into the mix, particularly after the dot com bubble burst after geeks with bad skin could pry $10 million out of a venture capitalist for lunch.
The old names have come to dominate the web – Amazon, Google, AOL (in whatever guise), Yahoo!, and eBay, but they are not alone. Big blue chips and household names with marketing budgets born from deep pockets have also moved in, such as Wal-Mart, Costco, CVS, Barnes & Noble and almost every Fortune 500 you can name, and with them come management philosophies emanating from gilt-edged MBA’s across the country and beyond, espousing the latest from Tom Peters or Michael Porter.

“Competitive Advantage” was what it is all about, and today it still is, though “CA” hides behind other labels such as “BI” (Business Intelligence), strategic planning and whatever other buzzword management thinkers have come up (acronyms are particularly loved by management “specialists”).

What is a competitive advantage?

Simply put it is a talent or feature or process which you are leveraging to create business success. Typically, it means doing or offering something your competitors are not; perhaps a unique product or service, or simply dropping the cost of a generic offering to undercut the competition.
Big retailers like to throw buying power around to get a lower cost per unit which they pass on in reduced prices for customers – this undercuts the local stores and puts them out of business. That buying power is a competitive advantage.
Is that unfair?

In business there are only two sets of rules: those you have to comply with (paying taxes, the law) and ones which are generally encouraged (being socially responsible, environmentally friendly, being nice).
As long as you comply with the first set of rules you are OK, but transgressing the second set can backfire in your face – Wal-Mart has a lengthy history of customer and employee issues because of its corporate behavior for instance, and this has certainly lost sales and value for the company.
But squeezing out your competition and giving a better deal to consumers is not unfair – it is the American way!

Can SEO Give You a Competitive Advantage?

Of course it can!
The proof is two-fold.
First, ask yourself how much Amazon and Barnes & Noble are paying to ensure top page rankings – put “book” into a search engine and see who comes up. Do you believe Amazon ranks third in Google for “Angels & Demons Book” as a search because they have a good website, a good offering and they have “naturally” risen to the top page of the Google rankings?
Of course they are spending money faster than most small to medium companies can make it in order to ensure they get top billing. They are doing this only because they perceive a competitive advantage in ranking so highly. Businesses are rational creatures (so management theorists tell us) and they don’t spend money unless they are going to make more back.
Second, sticking with the “book” example, type in this search “book Richmond Virginia” and sure enough you see Amazon ranking highly (results may vary depending on where you are because of local search issues if you are using Google). You also see a lot of local book stores ranking highly too – Fountain Bookstore, Inc. outranks Amazon in our localized search, despite the millions spent by the big fish on SEO and marketing. In any event, there are a dozen or so, local book stores ranking with Amazon on Google and getting that front page ranking is worth sales. Gain a front page ranking and you will experience an increase in sales by factors of ten and more compared to a ranking on page 2; the factor increases to 100’s if you compare to a page 3 ranking and 10,000’s thereafter.
The only question you need to answer for yourself in this regard is whether gaining high search engine ranking delivers more sales revenue from which profit can be derived. If the answer is “yes”, then you need SEO to provide you with the virtual competitive advantage which high search engine rankings provides because there is no other effective way of doing it.

Takeaway

A competitive advantage is anything your business can use to generate more sales and increase profitability. Whether it is unfair or not is irrelevant – a competitive advantage almost always means a benefit for the customer to in terms of increased consumer choice, reduced pricing, better services and products.
A high search engine ranking is essential for generating e-business success and gaining a first page or even better, a top ranking for your search terms represents a significant competitive advantage. Gaining high rankings is firmly within the province of SEO and a high rank is a competitive advantage.
Having gained a competitive advantage does not mean you will enjoy business success; once you have achieved a competitive advantage it is up to you to press home that advantage to the fullest extent possible and maximize the sales and profitability.

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Web coding is not really computer programming: what is happening is web code is it being used to arrange the representation of a web page. Think of a shop window full of products, the window dresser does not make the actual products on display but they do arrange the display itself and the elements which are used to enhance the product placement. In a nutshell, this is what web coders and programmers are doing – arranging your web display for use in an internet browser, such as Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox.

How Does Web Code Impact SEO Rankings?

There are different types of web code available to develop a website, and different versions and types of web code may be used on the same site, so the potential for diversity is high.
Search engines need to navigate your website when they send a webcrawler to index the content for use in returning results to users.

Now what happens when a search engine’s webcrawler is unable to “read” the web code used on a website?

The answer is simple – nothing happens. The webcrawler does not fully “crawl” your website and this means portions of your website are missed by the search engines. This is disaster for the website because when you have portions of the website being missed out by the search engines this reduces your relevance rating for any search by a user and depending on how badly crawled the website is, this can result in no ranking at all!

So What Does Optimizing Code Mean?

The issue is not simply “optimizing code”; it is really about optimizing all of the display elements used to present the website through an internet browser. JavaScript and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are two major ways of creating a representation of the html/xhtml code (which is the “real” web code) within an internet browser.

For example, you may have a website coded in xhtml, which uses JavaScript to form the internet browser representation of the website which may also include animated Flash elements.

The problem is that some forms of code are better at being searched and indexed by search engines and some are almost indecipherable. This means that how well your website is indexed and how high it will rank is directly dependent on whether search engines can crawl your web code or not.

What Do the Search Engines Like?

The ideal from an SEO perspective is to use CSS to represent your html/xhtml code and utilize plain text links, because webcrawlers find these easy to follow and understand. The problem is that while this SEO “dream team” combo is great for getting your site crawled, they are not optimal for your users viewing pleasure.

Search engines like a simple layout with a simple to navigate website and code they can read easily which usually means code for static elements.
Human users like changing and dynamic elements, audio and video content but how does a search engine index the song lyrics as they are sung?
It cannot.

Designers love using fancy presentation elements such as animations and vide using Flash, but the problem here is that Google is barely able to index these files (most are ignored and at best indexing will be very patchy). The issue is that there is a very clear conflict between using web design elements to enhance user experience but also use web coding which will allow the site to be effectively indexed by the search engines.
Realistically, the question is wrong – it is not how do you optimize code for search engines but what is more important between pleasing users and pleasing search engines.
The answer is not simple and there is a delicate trade-off between the two conflicting, but vitally important requirements, but that is a tale for another post.

Takeaway

“Web code” means a variety of things depending on what you are referring to – the actual code to construct a website or the means by which website elements are displayed in an internet browser.
CSS, JavaScript, html, XHTML and Flash are all examples of what is being referred to when we speak of “optimizing web code”, but only html/xhtml are really web code in fact.

Search engines cannot crawl or understand all the different types of web code used on most websites today. Some code cannot be read at all, some only a little and some very well – which is used in your website will determine how much of the website is indexed and used in search results.

This means your web code directly impacts on how well you will rank in search engine results but using search engine friendly code does not mean it will deliver a positive user experience for human visitors.

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Focus on Great Content

Your website content is the primary reason anyone will want to create a link to you, whether it be another website, a user sending a link in an email or something posted in an article or social media posting.
The ultimate reason a stranger will create a link to your site is because of your content.
If you create really excellent content, that is going to be so much more attractive to users and the web community at large than creating content which is OK, maybe even good, but is simply not exceptional enough to warrant the effort.
Really great content will dominate attention because it stands out so much more; it is likely to be selected for inclusion in mainstream sites such as news boards, perhaps mainstream media sites and generally more likely to be referred around the online community – all of which creates inbound links.
Great content does more than create more inbound links; great content creates better quality inbound links, and you must not forget that it is not just the number of inbound links which affects search engine rankings but the quality of the originating website too.

Develop Content for Your Own Site First

Resist the temptation to dive into directories, article submissions, social media posting, blogging and issuing PR releases to create backlinks to your main site or landing pages. Instead, concentrate on developing the content which will reside on your website first; this follows from our earlier point about creating great content, but in any event, you will be getting backlinks from people using your site content in any event.

Do NOT Spam!

By this we mean do not employ spam nor any of the techniques which are broadly associated with spam sites. Linking to a known source of spam is very damaging (see our earlier post on the Top 3 Negative Ranking Factors), but the reason why this can be so harmful to your efforts comes from simply considering what search engines are doing in practice.
Google spends most of its time developing methods to generate highly relevant rankings for users and then to identify spammers and avoid them!

External Link Building: Quality Counts

When you come to start developing external, inbound links for your landing pages and website you will have two broad categories of links. There will be links from sources that simply link to you, and you have little or no control over who does this but generally, the more the better (so refer back to our first point on creating really great content).
The second broad category will be inbound links which you solicit or create yourself, for instance, by writing articles, blogging, engaging in social media activity or simply asking a complementary website for a link. In this instance, you have a great deal of control over the quality of the link which is created and a link from a quality source is worth many times more than a gaggle of poor quality links in the eyes of the search engine.

Apply Differentiation to Your Business and Content

Identify and develop unique selling points (USPs) for your business, but do the same with your content – if you have figured out how to run Flash on a smart phone, keep this content on your website but use social media to create a buzz about what you’ve done and what you’ve got with links back to where you have placed your content.
Your content is a highly valuable asset which needs to be leveraged to gain the most return, but your content must offer not only relevant information but something users can’t get somewhere else.

Takeaway

The first and last issue with link building is quality: quality content attracts users and admirers (i.e. links) and avoiding spam or spam-like activity means you avoid the ire of the search engines.
Equally, the quality of an external link source plays a large part in the value to your own rankings efforts so remember that not all links are equal. Ideally, the external link should be from a relevant site, itself ranking highly (the higher the better) and linking to you using anchor text which is congruent with your target keywords and phrases.
Differentiating your business from the competition is a well-known technique, but you can do the same with your content too. People are looking for the unique and that which gives them value they cannot gain elsewhere – using your content to sell your USPs makes it easier to generate external links and create greater interest in your main site and landing pages.

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We’re going to look at what we consider to be the top 3 negative ranking factors:

• Malicious Cloaking
• Linking to Spam Sites
• Frequent downtime or inaccessibility

Malicious Cloaking

Cloaking is where the search engines are seeing one website but the human user is taken to another website or page rather than the one which the search engines have crawled.
The original reason for cloaking was benign – if you had a high ranking website, you didn’t want your competition being able to simply copy what you’d done, and so hiding the high ranking page code was a good idea. You got high ranking with your optimized web page and the human users got to see the content you wanted them to see but without them snaffling your precious code.
This was fine until search engine results started sending people looking for “movie” to “Reg’s Porn for Free” site. Search engines look to send human searchers to the most relevant result they can find, so it is crucial that what the search engine has seen and assessed is also what the human user will see and not something else.
Where Google finds cloaking has taken place, you can expect a penalty and especially if there is malicious intent, e.g. your optimized page is markedly different from the page your human users will see.

Linking to Spam Sites

Note we are talking about you linking to a spam site and not the other way around. If you are linking to a spam site, there is a pretty good chance that you are either part of the spam operation itself, are looking to use spam tactics on your own website visitors or are simply not providing relevant content for your users.
Nobody likes spam and Google customers will not thank them if search results start sending them to spam sites, so search engines do the natural thing – they penalize you.
Link building is an essential component of any SEO campaign; however it takes time to build a portfolio of good quality links but you must be careful to ensure that the outgoing links you create are to external sites which themselves provide good value and content for your users.

Frequent Downtime and Inaccessibility

Remember, search engines want to send users to websites which contain the most relevant content in relation to the keywords they employ when they use a search engine. There is nothing relevant about clicking on a high ranking url only to find an error message greeting the user advising the site is down and “please try again later”.
Sites which are experiencing poor server availability, are frequently exceeding their bandwidth allowance or excessive maintenance issues requiring off lining of the website, are going to find themselves increasingly penalized by Google and other search engines.

Takeaway

Negative ranking factors can and will severely harm your ranking efforts with search engines. Some techniques have developed with good intentions, such as cloaking; however they have become tarnished because of misuse. Other techniques are nothing more than an effort to hoodwink the search engines and users, and once uncovered you can expect severe penalties or even a suspension or ban from being ranked at all.
Fortunately, you control the impact of negative ranking factors on your website ranking but you must be prepared to consider the wider implications of onsite activities, for instance who you link to and who you have your website hosted with.

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“Keyword Density is the number of times a keyword (or key phrase) appears on a webpage expressed as a percentage ratio to the total number of words on the webpage.”
The idea that to rank for a specific keyword you will have to include that keyword on your webpage to gain a mention by the search engines is obvious. It is plain common sense that to get a ranking in the search engines for a specific search term you should include it in your webpage, The more times the keyword is mentioned on your webpage then the more likely it is that you will be considered “relevant”, i.e. get a higher ranking.
But wait!
There must be a cut-off point beyond which you will get penalized by the search engine because you are spamming, rather than delivering what search engines are looking for – relevant information to return to the searching user.
If you want to rank for “Widget”, there must be an optimal number of times or % density for using that keyword in your webpage. Simply creating a page with the word “widget” endlessly repeated serves no purpose, but where is the upper limit and what is the lower limit for using “widget”?

So, what is an Optimal Keyword Density?

STOP!
We are now heading down the road of common sense – the same road which led to people being burned at the stake for saying the earth was not flat!
The first question we ought to be asking is, “Do the search engines think Keyword Density is important?”
The answer is telling:
There is no patent filed anywhere, by any search engine dealing with Keyword Density!
There are some patents filed by the likes of Microsoft, but they only peripherally deal with the specific application of broad concepts as they impact on other issues. Search engines don’t seem to be concerned about how Keyword Density is worked out or how it can be manipulated in their algorithms.
Clearly, Keyword Density has no importance in the eyes of Google and friends!
So, deciding what is optimal keyword density is simply asking how long a piece of string is – pointless.

Practical Use of Keyword Density

Practically, it makes sense to mention the keyword or phrase in your webpage, and to ensure that it is used in your relevant headings (H1 tags and other Meta data) and within your anchor text when linking to and from the webpage, but beyond that there is unlikely to be any advantage gained.
This does not mean that you shouldn’t monitor Keyword Density because you may be inadvertently doing something which will actually tip you over the edge into being classified as a “spam site”. In this respect, Keyword Density monitoring is something to be done to ensure you avoid penalties rather than to gain competitive advantage.

Takeaway

There is no such thing as optimal Keyword Density, because the use of the ratio is irrelevant for gaining higher search engine rankings.
Search engines have not patented the use of Keyword Density which means they don’t think it is important in how they are calculating rankings.
Monitoring Keyword Density is important to ensure you are not overusing keywords, which is a behavior associated with spam sites and will result in a ranking penalty.

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Do these issues affect search engine rankings?

The answers may not be what you expect.

Does Google’s Personal Search Affect Rankings?

The answer is yes and no, it really depends on what type of search is being conducted.

Where there are generic searches being made, then we tend to see no difference in search engine rankings when personalized search is on or off.  You can check this yourself by turning Google’s personal search preference off and then seeing what the difference in the returned results is.

Where personal search does have an impact on rankings is in the more detailed, specific searches and on topics for which there is already a substantial volume of search queries being made.

An example might be when initially looking at buying a guitar – the initial “guitar” search is likely to be largely unaffected by personal search, but “guitar beginner acoustic” is much more likely to deliver different results depending upon whether you turn personal search off or on.

Is there really such a thing as Keyword Density?

The strict, technical answer is “No!”

“Keyword density” is a simplified name given to a complex calculation developed by information retrieval specialists seeking to establish how important particular words or phrases are within a document which is part of a collection of documents (known as a “corpus”).

The formula is generically referred to as TF-IDF which stands for “Term Frequency – Inverse Document Frequency”.

The bottom line is TF-IDF was adapted by the search engines for use in delivering results based on the search term string input by the user.

While the technical answer is that there is no such thing as keyword density, in practice for non-technical people, yes there certainly is.

It stands to reason that if you are seeking rankings for a specific keyword, then you are at least going to have to mention that keyword in your website at some point!  More than this, if you overuse a keyword, so called “keyword stuffing”, then you are going to be penalized.

Ignore the techno babble and be clear, keyword density is a simplified term for something much more complicated, but it is very relevant to search engine rankings.

Does Linking to Other Sites Help your Ranking?

Yes and no.

The impact of your website linking out to external sites is probably negligible, but that said if you have no external, outbound links then this is going to look weird to Google and other search engines.   It probably does not help to link to a few, high profile websites either.

There is some empirical evidence that linking to very specifically relevant external sites from within your own website helps user experience.  Your website becomes viewed as a more relevant resource in the eyes of human users and by ensuring you are linking to very specifically relevant external websites, you are more likely to reduce traffic from navigating beyond that external link and completely away from your website.

Best practice is to include some relevant external links, however do not expect this to increase your search engine rankings by much if at all, it really acts to stop you earning any penalty by hoarding your link juice.

Is Content Really Worthwhile?

The most important is last.

YES!!!!

There are some high ranking, static content websites which have not had a refresh since the Dark Ages, but they are very few and very far between.  On the other hand, some websites engage in actively refreshing the home page content on a daily basis to attract a Google lift in the rankings, and for some it works.

The caveat at work here is that content must be relevant or both search engines and human traffic will find it isn’t worth the vicarious virtual ink it is printed with.

Good quality, engaging and relevant content is worth gold, because your content acts as the ultimate payoff for your traffic no matter how they have gotten to your website.  All of your investment in search engine ranking and SEO, viral campaigns, PPC, offline marketing – all of the money, time and effort is utterly worthless unless you have content which converts traffic to paying customers.

Takeaway

Some aspects of SEO are more important than others, e.g. content versus external links, but some aspects of SEO work must be conducted because it may avoid search engine penalties, e.g. external outbound link building.  SEO work is also likely to butt up against the needs of human traffic and not just the search engines, e.g. relevant content, and then your SEO strategy must serve two-masters which is never an easy task to accomplish.

Clients should also be aware that while some jargon may be employed, and indeed some terms such as “keyword density” or “personalized search”, they should remember that these are simplified terms encompassing some very complex concepts.

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Keyword Search Term Categories

The top 10 keywords will be used millions of times each day, for instance “iPod”, “travel”, “headaches”, “Slimming” and so on. These are highly generic terms (even iPod, which has become synonymous with MP3 players and the like), with extremely high competition for them they are expensive to gain rankings for, not least as much larger companies monopolize them. The next top 100 keywords will collectively attract hundreds of thousands of searches, the next top 500, tens of thousands and the next top 1000 keywords, thousands of daily searches.

Collectively, the top 1000 keywords account for approximately 19% of total search terms employed and they command a premium in terms of cost to gain rankings for them. They are known as “The Fat Head”.

There is “Chunky Middle” category which accounts for around 12% of search terms used, and typically they will be employed by users between 100 and a thousand times a day.

This leaves the Long Tail of around 70% of search terms employed each day which are used less than 100 times a day, and in some instances may only be used once. Gaining a high ranking for a Long Tail keyword is frequently cheap to achieve, but they do require research

Even a few hundred searches a day on one key term is significant for many websites, however what matters most is not the quantity but the quality of the traffic which is brought to your website.

Traffic Conversion and Long Tail Keywords

Imagine this scenario: a user searches for “guitar acoustic” and this tells us something other than the user is interested in information on acoustic guitars. This information tells us that they are still some way from making a purchase of an acoustic guitar, because they are researching using a generic search term. Here, they are at the initial point in their research because they are looking at a very wide, broad area.

Now imagine this scenario: a user searches as follows, “guitar acoustic Fender 12 string San Diego”. This search term is asking for very specific information; the product (acoustic guitar), the manufacturer (Fender), the type (12 string), and the location (San Diego). This is a user who knows what they want AND is looking for where they can source the product. This tells us that this user is close to the end of the purchasing cycle.

If you are operating a website selling guitars, which user do you want to visit your website? Obviously both of them! But in terms of converting them, clearly you will perceive greater value in the user in the second example than the first, and yet to gain ranking for the second user’s search term is not going to cost you very much.

This is the beauty of targeting long tail keywords – the second example is of course, an example of a long tail keyword – they are cheap to get high rankings for and they attract traffic which is closer to the end of the purchasing cycle, and this means you gain higher conversion rates and higher ROI.

An Additional Advantage of Long Tail Keywords

If you rely on a Fat Head keyword ranking for your traffic and sales, what happens if you lose high ranking for that prized keyword? It doesn’t make any sense to rely on a single, or restricted number of search terms for your traffic because of the risk of losing that high ranking position and the adverse impact on your business.

It makes good business sense to diversify your portfolio of keyword search terms which you are seeking high ranking for, but for most small to medium-sized businesses, this will be prohibitively expensive to do across Fat Head or Chunky Middle keywords. It is a very different matter for Long Tail search terms because they are so specific in nature, and yet so cheap to gain rankings for that you can establish a stable of such keywords to generate your site traffic. If you lose high ranking for one term, you have a number of others which will still continue to generate high-quality traffic.

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Your visitor arrives to the landing page or sales page of your site – you make them an offer – they either, convert and do the deal or they go elsewhere.

Offer Model Two – Go for the Rebound

As in one above, the visitor arrives, but doesn’t like your offer and moves to leave, so instead you come up with a secondary offer, they then run through the decision again and if they buy from you great, but are they really a satisfied customer? . If they still don’t buy from you, they go to leave again and you hit them with a “final offer” – if they buy from you at this point, how satisfied as a customer can they really be when you took three bites at their cherry?
Conversion rates will be better than in one, however, the conversion rates for the second offer will drop and diminish to negligible for the final offer – going for the rebound sale is not effective and smacks of desperation. As an aside here – should you count a happy, satisfied customer as a different conversion statistic than an unhappy customer who buys from you?

Know Your Customer

The visitors to the sites above are not being qualified any further than the fact that they have landed on your site. This is laziness on the part of the website management – better sales conversion rates are made when you get to know and understand your potential customer and their needs, which means you can position your offerings in a more personalized way. By hitting the customer’s hot buttons which are motivating purchase, you get greater sales.
A better sales model will look something like this:
The visitor arrives and you assess the customer – a questionnaire perhaps, or you track how they have arrived at your site. You may actually handle all the sales information collection offline by email or you may provide multiple options and allow the visitor to “self-identify” and choose which option or offer is most likely to be relevant to them.
Offering multiple conversion options enhances your potential for first hit conversion instead of a diminishing offer of last ditch efforts as the visitor seeks to walk out of the door.
So, we now have an online sales model which will look something like this:
Visitor arrives and either you conduct some form of online or offline assessment of the potential customer, before you provide any offers.
After assessment, a range of potential offers are provided which are tailored to the customer based on the information you collect – note, you may simply be providing a series of offers at the same time, such as “Basic”, “Standard” and “DeLuxe” without any qualifying assessment – here the visitor is telling you what kind of customer they are by from the selections they make. An alternative is to look at the source of the traffic – if it is referred by Google you may provide generic offer templates, however if the traffic comes from website upon which you have been advertizing or have been featured on, e.g. an online newspaper, then you can tailor the offers so you make use of that piece of information, for instance. “For XYZ Times readers we offer a series of discounts on our Basic, Standard and Deluxe ranges”.

No Sale = No Conversion?

What is a conversion is defined by you, however even where you cannot get a sales conversion this should not detract from trying to convert the visitor in some other way. Referrals are a big deal in sales, and the same applies online as in the real world, so before you visitor leaves your site, offer them a referral opportunity to refer you to their contacts. This is still a conversion, and a very valuable one, but simply not a sales conversion.
Be careful how you define your online sales and marketing goals so you are tracking visitor conversions across a range of behavior which results from their interaction with your website.

The Takeaway

You control conversion rates and if you are experiencing poor or zero conversion rates with some traffic segments, you need to revisit the offers you are making to them.
One hit offers and last ditch efforts to salvage a conversion from your traffic are inefficient. Take some time to either get to know your clients better or give them a range of options so they can “self-identify” what type of potential client they are.
Take extra care with what you define as a conversion. Ultimately, you want sales conversions, however there will be intermediate steps to getting sales conversions which may require you to increase your level of referrals. A referral is a conversion, just not a sales conversion but a valuable step on the road to making a sale even so.

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