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.

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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.

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Vortaloptics Inc. has obtained a patent for its vertical search engine software. premise of the search invention is a Net-native administrative interface that gives users instant control over search results, enabling specific keywords to be associated with specific URLs within a search database.

David Gosse, CEO of Vortaloptics and co-author of the patent, assigned the patent rights over to Vortaloptics shortly after it being officially awarded on October 21, 2008 by the U.S. Patent Office. He explains how a genuine need for controllable search software prompted him to invent the software: “I wanted to create search engine software that could be controlled. The search engine that I wanted to embed into my websites and client websites needed a way to administer the results and change them so that they were more relevant for the site. So I co-invented a controllable search algorithm.”

The unique control mechanism provides flexibility to customize each URL in a search database and thus, every keyword assigned to that website.

Search results returned to users are prioritized based on relevancy (keyword match) and the total relative score of the search terms used to conduct the query. Additional relevancy and priority controls are provided via the administrative interface.

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SEOptimise’s blog, “Five online marketing New Year’s resolutions,” provides five healthy reminders for your 2009 goals, especially if you’re still not optimizing your online marketing potential via search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) quite like you should.

Resolutions include: set a budget, start a blog, focus on your auidence, seek experts (especially when you don’t exactly know what to do), and be personable (build relationships, don’t base your online voice on tooting your brand’s horn).

Don’t let fear or failure or the unknown daunt your marketing resolutions. Sure, there are signficant changes in the economy, consumer behavior and online marketing techniques. While our realities are undergoing constnat evolution, there are certain SEO truisms that still reign supreme, such as: lots of relevant, keyword-rich content; great inbound links and proper site architecture and fomratting.

Focus on the basics, put forth a plan for this year and just take the first steps. A little action, even if imperfectly executed, is better than procrastinating for a better quarter, a bigger budget or a more stable economy. Go forth and resolve to better position your site and establish better relationships with your audience in 2009!

Tweet This  Post by David Gosse.

SearchIgnite reports a 33% increase in retailer’s ad spending over last year illustrates that retailers are likely pouring more dollars into search campaigns which can be monitored and tweaked in real-time.

Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite notes: “Advertisers are shifting more dollars to paid search and digital media. Retailers want media they can buy on a performance bases to track and measure.”

Despite a decline in overall consumer spending, people are steadily purchasing goods over the Internet. Observationally, retailers are offering more incentives earlier in the season than is typical,  likely incentivizing consumers to go ahead and make necessary and discretionary purchases.

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Online advertising data offers some light in the current economic do. Third quarter figures reveal an 11 percent increase over 2007, coming in at $5.9 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The first nine months of revenues set a new record, climbing 14% over the same period last year. This data not only shows that Internet advertising has continuing to grow as predicted, it reveals that its becoming a haven for ad dollars in the downturn. Continually hailed as the most cost-effective and measurable method of reach customers, online shines while other ad outlets fade.

Tweet This  Post by David Gosse.