Like most questions in life, determining the importance of SEO is never really black and white. It depends a lot on who you ask. Here at Best Rank, we’d probably rate the importance of SEO right up there with the birth of a child and breathing. Ask a dairy farmer in the Midwest, and you might get a response along the lines of, “I don’t speak Chinese!” So, how do we determine the true value of SEO in the business world? The key is determining which businesses really need SEO (or who can benefit the most from it), and what SEO can bring to those businesses. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many business owners we talk to who think that because they just dropped $10K on a new flash site, they’re going to dominate in Google and see thousands of hits a day.

All sites on the web stand to gain something by implementing SEO strategies. Whether it be rankings, traffic, exposure, sales, or any other benefit of optimization, nearly all sites can improve their web presence using SEO tactics. Putting a dollar amount on these benefits, however, can sometimes be tricky. For an ecommerce site, it might be pretty straight forward as to the worth of SEO- if online sales increase, then SEO is working. For an informational site or free directory, SEO’s worth cannot be determined by dollars earned. Instead, we have to look at things like traffic, search engine rankings, amount of new visitors, time on site, bounce rate, and several other areas to determine the worth of SEO to those sites.

Knowing a client’s ultimate goal is an important aspect of carrying out a successful SEO campaign. Driving tons and tons of traffic may be nice, but if none of those visits convert into sales for an online retailer, than there is no real benefit to the client. A brand new site, on the other hand, may do backflips over the huge influx of visitors and increased rankings because it helps get them established on the web.

In the SEO industry, the value of our work is determined mainly by the clients we serve. Obviously, mybrandnewsite.com stands to gain much more from SEO than, say, Google. The end result that each client is looking for also plays a part in determining what SEO is worth. There isn’t a solid, fool proof way to determine the true value of SEO for every website because every website is different. But, if SEO can bring some sort of significant benefit to your site that you were lacking before, be it sales, visits, or rankings, then SEO is worth every penny…or visitor…or contact…or…

Unless you’re over 90 years old, live in a nudist colony on a remote island, or have been in a coma for the past 10 years, you know that Google is an internet giant. Google processes over 20 petabytes and handles somewhere around 250 million searches daily (there isn’t really a way to get an exact number). With nearly 70% of all searches being conducted using Google, the California-based web company has effectively put a stranglehold on internet search results. Serving up search results, however, is just the tip of the ice berg in examining how far Google’s reach extends throughout the web.

As of March 2008, Google has acquired a total of 51 companies. These acquisitions include high-profile companies like AOL, YouTube, and DoubleCLick, which Google purchased for $3.1 billion. Google also owns well over 500 domain names, with that number growing everyday.

Aside from the numbers, Google’s internet reach is exemplified by the wide array of products and services they offer. From web applications to business solutions to advertising networks, Google has positioned itself into as many profitable niches as possible. Today, the list of products and services offered by Google includes Gmail, Google News, Google Product Search, Google Goups, Google Maps, Google Video, Google Checkout, Google Apps, Google Earth, and Google Labs, just to name a few.

Perhaps the most well-know (and most profitable) Google service is Adwords, which allows advertisers on the web to reach a highly-targeted segment of potential customers at a fraction of traditional media costs.

Because of it’s affordability and ease of use, thousands of business owners and webmasters have chosen to make Adwords their main advertising vehicle. Google has also established an ad-serving network, called Adsense, in which website owners can allow other Adwords ads to be shown on their site. Because of the widespread use of Adwords, it is not uncommon for a website owner to make a living entirely from Adsense revenue.

The widespread use of search engines, and specifically Google, has also given rise to an entire industry dedicated to improving a website’s search rankings. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become less a commodity and more a necessity for businesses looking to establish their presence on the web. A major goal of SEO companies is to increase the rankings of a client’s website for certain keywords. Because Google is the most widely used search engine on the web, increasing organic exposure on Google has become a main focus of the search engine optimization industry.

It isn’t hard to see that Google is a major force on the internet landscape. When your company name becomes a verb (”Google” was added to Webster’s Dictionary in 2006), you must be doing something right. And they show no signs of stopping. Google has recently begun to expand into television and radio advertising. They have also been developing mobile services software called Android, which is an open platform allowing users of any cell phone type to access a range of features including the web, messaging, storage, and media support.

Any way you look at it, Google’s influence on the web is far reaching to say the least. With growth and revenue continuing to increase, that influence is only going to become greater.

Since the start of Google’s Adwords program, the company never provided much hard data when it came to search volume numbers - only providing relative search volume comparisons between keywords - up until now. Go on, see how many searches are being conducted for your favorite search term (on Google)… whatever they may be!

Why did Google release search volume numbers?

As more and more companies get better at tracking and reporting search volume numbers and user behavior (compete.com, keyworddiscovery.com) Google realizes that edging in on those markets’ value will help pull people ever closer to the “Google” brand. I mean, Google has the actual search numbers for the lion’s share of the market and wants to capture more mindshare, so what better way to keep us loyal? What’s interesting is that they have not yet updated their Keyword Traffic Estimator Tool to reflect actual search volume numbers.

But what does this mean?

• Google is slowly eating away at the value created by services like Keyword Discovery and WordTracker - if I had a stake in those types of companies I’d be shaking just a bit. 3rd party services never really had accurate search volume numbers but were the closest thing outside of actual analytics data that we had on search volume numbers. What they did provide, however, were relative numbers based on a sampling of total searches in order for us all to have a way to “project” keyword volumes using our own analytics as a base line. Keep in mind that Keyword Discovery and WordTracker’s data are not derived completely from Google but are a sample of the internet population as a whole. This might be more useful if Google weren’t so dominant…
• Basic keyword research can now be done with a lot more accuracy - Adsense allows you to drill down on broad, phrase and exact match where other services do not. If a keyword has a huge broad, or better, phrase match search volume then it’s a good bet that you’ve found a keyword with a long tail that your site can build into and take advantage of. If you see an exact match with a relatively high search volume then go buy yourself a domain with those keywords in it as you may find a lot of domain/direct traffic and that virtual real estate will start to act like it’s physical counter part in the years to come.

What third party keyword tools still have going for them

• Keyword Discovery, for example, mines long tail searches much better than the Adsense tool, so you can get a better picture of what people are searching for - while the Adsense tool still forces you to look at phrases between 1 and 4 keywords long. Google wants you to sign up so they can sell you on broad keyword advertisements.
• 3rd party keyword research tools have an array of features that Adsense doesn’t offer (keep in mind their data is based on samples). For example, Compete’s referral tool shows you which keywords are driving traffic to competing sites and lets you view a domains growth pattern. Seodigger gives you a quick snap shot of a site’s keyword ranking popularity - this can be good if you want to see if a competitor’s website content actually brings in any long tail traffic by looking at the size of the keyword list provided - or if they are just a bunch of fluff. Spyfu gives you the ability to see ads that competitors bid on - good for knowing what keywords the competition tends to cluster around, which might be a good bet for a profitable ppc campaign.

A few days ago (Thursday, June 26th), Iccan announced they approved a recommendation put forth by it’s stake holders that would allow businesses to purchase or even resell new, custom top level domain names.

What is a top level domain name (tld)?

A top level domain name is the portion of a domain name that appears after the “.”, so for example: if you had “business.com” as your domain then the “com” would be your top level domain name.  Icaan is now making it so that new top level domains can exist on the internet like .coke or .water, etc.  The new tld’s are expected to be available for purchase sometime in 2009. 

Will .com’s become less valuable?

It now seems businesses have many new ways to market their ideas over the internet with an expanded top level space.  If you take into consideration that there are already many other alternatives to the .com top level domain, we already know and can conclude that the demand for “.com” domains hasn’t gone down as some of the largest domain resellers, places like godaddy and register.com, still recommend “.com” as a first choice before doing a domain name availability check.  As famous domainer Frank Schilling put it:

adding more skim milk to the mix will not stop the cream from rising, and that cream is .com

What does this mean for Search Marketing?

• More websites and business ideas will be going up
• More people utilizing and depending upon search to find what they need in the expanding fray of websites
• Potentially less domain traffic to the .com’s

I just had to write this post about the explosive growth in the online advertising space. It seems our market is growing very fast even in these times of uncertainty.

I subscribe to email blasts from a company called Mediapost. I get several emails each day with cool stats about the online industry including search and social media. Sometimes I just delete the emails based on the title, and sometimes I glance through the emails and try to glean some good nuggets of info. A couple of days ago I got an email that was titled: “Web #2 Ad Medium in 5 Years” Hmmm…that piqued my interest, so I opened it.

Recently the IDC (not sure what IDC stands for) released a study that forecasts and analyzes US Internet advertising for 2008-2012. Overall, the Internet advertising revenue is expected to roughly double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012.

There are some very interesting little tidbits in this study, which happens to cost about $4500 to purchase. I’m not crazy enough to purchase the entire study (Click Here if You Are), but the excerpts seem promising…here is the Cliff’s notes version:

Essentially they are stating that the Internet will rise from the number 5 advertising medium up to the number 2 medium by the end of 2012. This will make advertising revenue larger than cable TV, newspapers, and broadcast TV. Direct marketing will remain in the top spot, according to the study.

It seems that video advertising will be responsible for the single biggest revenue percentage gain; it is anticipated that video advertising on the Internet will grow sevenfold from $0.5 billion in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012, which gives it an annual compounded growth rate of 49.4%. As any good rapper would say…”Unhhh…how you like me now?” A sevenfold increase in 5 years…all I can say is WOW…that is an industry that I want to be a part of. Just slice me off a little piece of that revenue and I’ll be happy. The IDC study also anticipates that brand advertisers will shift significants amounts of their budgets into video commercials; mainly taking away from their current efforts on both broadcast and cable TV.

What’s the reasoning behind this massive growth in the online video advertising space?? I think it’s because advertisers are starting to realize that people are sick of being told what to watch and when to watch it. The Internet allows people the freedom to choose what they want to watch and when…so why not cater to that desire?

Some other conclusions that the IDC study came to are:

- Search will still remain the king. Search ads hit $10.4 billion in 2007 and is expected to grow to almost $18 billion in 2012. However, search advertising as a percentage of Internet advertising is expected to go down from 41% of the market share last year to about 34% in 2012.
- As stated previously, online video will explode over the next 4 years and it will expand its Internet advertising share from 2% to 7.4%.
- Another big mover in this space will be referral and lead-generation services. These services will see the second largest market share gain and will grow from $2.3 billion in 2007 to $5.9 billion in 2012.
- Surprisingly, the IDC forecasts mobile advertising to only grow to “just shy” of 1 percent of the overall market share. Although this is a fast growing market, I expected mobile advertising to be a little stronger.

As you can see, lots of good news in our industry. I’m excited about the prospects and the growth rate. This study just helps solidify my decision to operate a business in this industry…let’s just hope that the study is accurate.

Last week I went to the Refresh San Diego meeting over at Platt College (here in San Diego), a gathering of web developers and search marketers. Bill Bonnefil from Digital Telepathy gave a good presentation of how their company works in terms of their creative process, how they “get stuff done”.

I had the chance to ask Bill a few questions about the future of the web and what the term web 3.0 meant to him. A lot of people laughed when I asked, one guy in the audience even commented:

I think I’ll wait till they fix all the bugs and then go for version 4.0

(thought that was funny). Anyhow, Bill seemed to take the question seriously and started off by giving his idea of what 1.0, 2.0 and then what 3.0 means.

• Web 1.0 was the “one-way” interaction the user had with a web page. You view a web page… and that’s really it, moving onto the next page.
• Web 2.0 is now the “two-way” intereaction a user has with a web site. You view a web page but now you can place content onto the site and see what others are doing, i.e. YouTube, myspace, facebook, ebay, etc. It’s the people that build the site and the communities.
• Web 3.0 is the “two-way” interaction PLUS the site generating or comming up with new information based on past user information it already has already collected. Another way to look at it would be any extra logic or intelligence a web page can “mash up” in terms of, for example, offering suggestions on products other people bought from this site or what to do with your specific current stock portfolio now that you have X amount of dollars saved up… sort of a way for the web site to become “smart” and act more like a human would.

lets just hope web pages don’t start getting too intelligent… I like my artifical intelligence non thretening

I want to illustrate some pretty good results we’ve had with a recent client using pictures from our analytics. Obviously I blurred out the specific data to keep our client’s information safe but you’ll get the general idea from the upward sloping graph.

You’re looking at non-paid keyword searches from October 13th through November 12th, in other words, how many people found the site through keyword searches on the search engines.

Our client site in this example was getting around 5 organic keyword search hits per day before contracting with Best Rank. After about 2 months from our SEO services, traffic began to dramatically increase to around the low 40s in terms of organic keyword hits per day. That’s an 800% increase in site traffic and the campaign is still relatively young.  At this point in the campaign cycle, the site ranks in the top 10 for a lot of it’s terms but only ranks #1 for a few of it’s keywords - just image what kind of traffic it could pull if it ranked #1, 2 or 3  across the board!

If you’re interested in learning more about how we work or to see our specific client examples/results we’re happy to talk over the phone 858 427-0825. Happy SEOing!

Today we’ve created a new simple tool you can use to see the number of links that point at your website (back links). All data is taken from Yahoo! site explorer. This tool is useful in determining the amount of work necessary to catch up to your competitors’ web sites, in terms of link popularity.  More work will be done in the future to improve the tool’s function, more to come later…

It would seem Google places quite a bit of ranking power behind “trusted” domains. For example, Matt Cutts, who works for Google, runs an internet marketing blog and decided to place a few keywords into the body text of a blog post having to do with buying cheap viagra. He then linked to the page with some identical anchor text and just a few days later was ranking in the top 5 for “Buy cheap viagra online”.

This is interesting. I’ve had a similar effect with just one link pointing to a brand new web site, limufood.com, and I was number one for a particular search phrase: “limu food“. Not that this is a competitive search phrase but it shows that Google puts high value behind the anchor text of a given link and will raise the bar for even a brand new domain. I purchased limufood.com recently and obviously is not a trusted domain (yet) but the combination of link anchor text and a domain’s age would seem to really have a major effect on rankings.

Hello everyone, today we’d like to introduce our United Kingdom Best Rank address, BestRank.co.uk. There isn’t much here but will serve as our UK internet address. More to come soon on this domain.