The Rank Magic Blog

Search Engine Marketing Garnering More Marketing Dollars

April 28, 2006 ::: According to Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer, leading researchers are projecting a range of 22% to 37% growth in online ad spending in 2006. Geoff also mentioned that according to the December 2005 BtoB magazine, "72% of senior marketing execs worldwide plan to increase their spending online in 2006."

This upward trend makes many ask, "Why are more marketing dollars moving online?" A 2004 Advertising.com study showed 61% of marketers considered the Internet an effective media for providing measurable ROI. Geoff went on to read a quote from former Jupiter Research Analyst Gary Stein who said, "68% of advertisers using the Internet report confidence in their return on investment."

Geoff identified two fundamental reasons why search works. First, search delivers the specific, relevant information consumers are looking for—just when they need it Second, search delivers quantifiable results and a positive ROI. <full article from Search Engine Watch>

What's missing in most marketing plans involving TV commercials?

April 25, 2006 ::: Despite the fact that search engine research is now a daily, routine part of consumers' shopping behavior, many marketers have failed to adjust their TV advertising strategies to address it, according to RISMEDIA.

After a consumer's curiosity is piqued by watching a broadcast branding ad, they head to the Internet to find more information. If the advertiser didn't optimize for the necessary keywords or invest in those keywords keywords for pay per click ads, they end up where AT&T did after spending millions to introduce m-life (its mobile initiative) in Super Bowl ads four years ago. Consumers flocked online to find out what m-life was. But since AT&T hadn't invested in search engine optimization for related keywords, consumers remained clueless about the concept. AT&T was nowhere. <full article here>

New Research Highlights the Importance of SEO

April 20, 2006 ::: New research has highlighted the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) and PPC for firms looking to boost their online presence.

Recent research found that nearly half of all Internet users spend a third of their time spent online searching, and 43% of users are likely to click on links because they are on the first page of results.

The survey also found that most people search using three or four keywords, underscoring the need for SEO efforts to look beyond two-word or single-word search terms.

Read the entire story from IT Week here.

Real Estate Web Sites From Templates: Can They Get Good Rankings?

April 15, 2006 ::: Noted SEO Expert Jill Whalen recently answered a really good question about real estate template web sites. There are many industries where companies create cookie-cutter web sites for their clients: lawyers, real estate, mortgage companies, and many others. I've come across this issue often, and found Jill's response (as usual) right on.

I recommend the full article, which you can find on Jill's web site here.

You've Gotta Be In the First Three Pages

April 9, 2006 ::: iProspect, the largest SEO firm in the US has just released their Search Engine User Behavior Study. Key among the findings relating to the current search engine user community is that 62% of search engine users click on a search result within the first page of results, and a full 90% of search engine users click on a result within the first three page of search results.

Looked at it in reverse, only 10% of users ever look beyond the third page of search results. What page is your web site on?

Duplicate Content: How Does it Affect Your Rankings?

April 6, 2006 ::: Richard Drawhorn has written a good article for the MarketPosition Newsletter that sheds light on the problem of duplicate content and how search engines deal with it.

If search engines detect duplicate content on your web site, it can hurt your rankings because they consider it a form of spam. In his article, Drawhorn reviews some of the ways duplicate content may appear on your site and a few strategies to avoid being penalized by search engines.

In general, the rule of thumb to follow when creating content for your web site is this: The same content should never be available from more than one URL. Very simple.

If your web site violates that rule, then your rankings in the search engines will suffer. You should get rid of any blatant or obvious violations of this rule ASAP.

There are, however, a few scenarios that can result in duplicate content violations that aren't intentional or even obvious. DRawhorn describes them, and alsw answers the question  What if my web site content appears on other sites?

You can read the entire article here.

Ask.com Gets a Good Review

April 4, 2006 ::: The search engine Ask Jeeves has been reinvented, and has lost poor old Jeeves in the process. Recently, Walt Mossberg, technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote:

You can read the entire article here.

The World is Bigger Than Search Engines

April 3, 2006 ::: One of those "I know that" things that bears reading again from time to time, thanks to Jill Whalen:

Google's latest update "Big Daddy" continues to cause headaches for some webmasters

April 1, 2006 ::: On the popular WebmasterWorld forum, many webmasters have reported that all of their web pages except for their index page have been moved to Google's supplemental index.

What are supplemental results?

Supplemental results in Google are from an alternate index. Google usually only uses this index if they can't find sufficiently relevant results in their normal index, so the supplemental index is only used for very obscure queries.

Google augments results for difficult queries by searching a supplemental collection of web pages. Results from this index are marked in green as "Supplemental."

Being in the supplemental index generally means that your web pages won't be included in the result pages for normal queries anymore. Uh oh!

How can you check if your web pages have gone supplemental?

Perform a Google search for site:mysite.com (replace mysite.com with your own domain name). If you see "supplemental result" next to the snippet then your web pages are supplemental. If soeone searches on your keywords then, they may not find your listing unless they check the supplemental results. For a breakdown of where they would see that (as well as what allt he other stuff in Google resulrts means, see this explanatory page.

What can you do if your web site is affected?

In the WebmasterWorld forums, a Google employee who posts under the name Googleguy asked webmasters to send their feedback to Google:

"I'm happy to ask someone to check this out. Please send an email to sesnyc06@gmail.com with specific domains and the keyword 'gonesupplemental'.

I have a theory about this, which I'm asking the crawl/index guys to check out, but I'll need 5-10 specific examples to check if my theory holds. If my guess is right, I'll try to get the crawl/index folks to get things back to the previous behavior."

You shouldn't worry too much if your web site has been moved to Google's supplemental index. As soon as Google has rebuilt the new index, your web pages should be back in Google's main results.

If your web pages are still in the supplemental results in a week or two, contact Google at the email address mentioned above.