|
Page1
 Making a web site succeed is indeed a tricky business. The Internet is flooded with an overwhelming amount of promotional offers aimed at making you get rich quickly. Selecting an approach that will work for your web site can be a very difficult decision.
Over my years involved in Internet promotion, I have dealt with thousands of businesses all focused on achieving maximum exposure for their web sites. Standing clearly from the crowd of promotional options is one winner - search engine marketing, or SEM. With Christmas fast approaching, SEM will be playing a vital role for the promotion of many retail web sites. There are 2 options available when using SEM - Paid and Organic. Paid SEM requires direct payment to a search engine for results. Organic SEM involves paying a specialist to accelerate your web site’s climb in the natural search results. While Organic SEM takes longer to achieve, the rewards are well worth waiting for. The difference between 'paid' & 'organic' results The difference between paid and organic results can be illustrated by visiting Google.com.au and entering a search for ‘christmas shopping’ (see Figure 1). Paid results are visible to the right hand side of the screen. Organic results appear to the left. Figure 1 – Google.com.au search results for ‘christmas shopping’ (06/07/05). Click image to enlarge Organic results twice as Effective as PaidAn interesting study by Eyetools Inc. recently revealed that Google users are 2 times more likely to view natural results over paid results (Adwords). Appearing in the top positions naturally will therefore ensure that you are achieving the maximum exposure possible for your web site. Key Preliminary Findings of the Study included  The key location on Google for visibility as determined by the eye activity in the study is a triangle that extends from the top of the results over to the top of the first result, then down to a point on the left side at the bottom of the "above the fold" visible results. This key area was looked at by 100 percent of the participants. In the study, this was referred to as the "Golden Triangle". Generally, this area appears to include top sponsored, top organic results and Google's alternative results, including shopping, news or local suggestions.
Organic Ranking Visibility (shown in a percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location) Rank 1 – 100% Rank 2 – 100% Rank 3 – 100% Rank 4 – 85% Rank 5 – 60% Rank 6 – 50% Rank 7 – 50% Rank 8 – 30% Rank 9 – 30% Rank 10 – 20%
Side sponsored ad visibility (shown in percentage of participants looking at an ad in this location) 1 – 50% 2 – 40% 3 – 30% 4 – 20% 5 – 10% 6 – 10% 7 – 10% 8 – 10% Credit: Research conducted by EyeTools, Enquiro & Did-it Available online here.
|
Report a bug