Get More from Search - Trends in Search & Social Media

Long gone are the days of, “If you build it (a website), they will come.” I don’t know if that was ever really true but today, getting users to your website is a fairly complex issue. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most heavily researched, contested and coveted marketing disciplines because search is still where it’s at for attracting engaged users to your website.

Yet, search engines don’t offer us marketers a how-to guide on how to rank well in their engines. That’s why it is essential to glean your knowledge of SEO best practices from plenty of trusted blogs, forums and articles online as well as from consultants and employees who have experience and success in page one search rankings.

A recent SEOmoz post by Rand Fishkin disclosed an interesting forum thread between himself and eight other SEO sages on the subject of whether great content equals great rankings. Herein, I’ll attempt to sum up the expert’s thoughts on what relevance great content has in organic search rankings.

So, does great content equate into great search rankings? Great content is important because people generally want to read well-written, engaging content. But just having great content on your site doesn’t mean that you will rank well. Other factors like site architecture and inbound links are major contributors to rankings. Now, if all things are equal (site architecture, inbound link quality/number) and your competitors are content with stale or inaccurate content, your great content will motivate people to link to your site and share your information with others which will in effect, produce better rankings.

As Matt Cutts of Google has a habit of repeating, Google strives to provide the most relevant search experience and he encourages marketers to produce great content. But for the time, great content isn’t a ranking factor!  So while it’s only logical to provide the best content you can for your users, it won’t automatically earn you a top spot.

Google and Bing are always aiming at improving relevancy,  so it is possible that over time, the better your content, the more useful your site will be for their searchers and thus, the better quality score you’ll  get from those engines as part of the total ranking equation.  Social media is one such trend that will likely affect ranking factors in the near-term: real-time tweets and updates may affect a site’s relevancy.

However, as it stands now, it gets down to a less noble conclusion: the content that is marketed the best is the content that ranks the best. Those who have the best quality and sometimes highest number of inbound links generally rank the best.

Tweet This  Post by Jennifer Gosse.

Vortaloptics custom search engines include revenue components that empower its clients to maximize the return on investment from their engines. Since the engine is completely controllable by the client, they can improve the relevancy of the search results and also place key partners and affiliates into their engines.

Vortaloptics never recommends listing irrelevant content just to profit from clicks, but rather consults our clients to focus on the most relevant content that users are seeking and match advertising, affiliates and partners to the search results pages to those search phrases to build a better user experience.

Because the content on our client results pages is hyper-relevant to the search terms and those results pages provide contextual ad and partner content, the ROI from clickthroughs is typically much higher for our clients than from traditional ads placed on blogs, for instance.  Search results page ads typically outperform regular page advertisements anyway, but because our clients can control the content of their results pages the ROI is on average, 10 times greater.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers’ marketing strategies.

With clients being able to hone in top performing ads, they can now focus on the search phrases and clickthroughs that pay the most. Optimizing your website revenue is particularly important in a tough economy. One way to do this is to seek out the top affiliate programs and add as organic search content and banner listings.

As an example, Speedy Cash is launching a new affiliate program with one of the highest commissions per lead in the financial payday loans industry. Vortaloptics’ local search clients could signup for the Speedy Cash affiliate program and insert banners, text links and search results into their search engine for this payday loans affiliate program. When users search for or click on the financial services subcategory, the Speedy Cash program can receive prominent placement.

Being able to maximize revenue efforts by focusing on the top paying affiliate, partner and advertising initiatives makes good business sense. A well placed $85/lead link is worth the effort over a $1/lead program. Vortaloptics provides the technology to help administrators quickly focus their efforts on the top ROI programs and provide better value to their users.

Tweet This  Post by David Gosse.