MSEOKING - Without Conversion Rates You Don’t Know If You’re Mickey Mouse Or Mickey Mantle

Did you know, that without a conversion rate you will not able to know what are your customer want, demand on the world, how to find out what they want and you are not miss to sell it? Read my article below to find out more. 

I couldn’t agree more with the headline of this article and it’s one I’m afraid I can’t take credit for. I found this line in Paco Underhill’s book, Why We Buy – The Science Of Shopping, and found myself comparing many of the things he has measured in the retail world to the tests I’ve done with online, visitor-based activity. The conversion rate on a website is easy to measure. 

Unfortunately, businesses too busy concentrating on their bottom line most often overlook it. The point of this article is to define what a conversion rate is and show you how you can begin to start improving your own website’s conversion rate and therefore your bottom line. At the same time, I will relate my observations to Paco’s on offline retailing.

In Cyberspace No-One Can Hear You Shop

According to Paco, the main problem with websites is that, owing to media attention and the love of technology, retailers went online without knowing why. It’s true that in the late 90’s businesses were going online because their competition had, or because they feared that they would be left behind by not embracing the new technology. Not great reasons to spend time, money and resources on a website. 

he painful thing is that, since going online, most of these websites have not changed much for the better. Yes, they look nicer now, but the number of glorified poster sites I still see never ceases to amaze me. In order to combat this lack of purpose, I propose you look at four goals and adapt them to your own business requirements. One of these goals should be the primary focus of your entire website design.

1) Prospect Acquisition

To deliver qualified leads and prospects through the website.

2) Sales/E-commerce

To sell products and services online directly through an e-store.

3) In-House Cost Saving

To cut costs, usually resources such as printed material or time, by automating in-house processes online such as timekeeping systems and human resource procedures.

4) Customer Service

To improve customer service by providing answers to queries and complaints online automatically where possible.

With the goal clearly defined, it is easier to measure the effectiveness of your site because you know what to look for. Conversion is defined in relation to the goal you’ve chosen.

So measure prospect acquisition as the percentage of visitors who give you their details out of the total number of visitors to your website. Measure conversion on sales as the percentage of people buying a product against the total number of website visitors. 

Conversion on in-house cost saving is simply the number of people using the system as a percentage of the number of people supposed to be using the system. A good internal policy here will mean this is a 100% conversion rate. The number of people using the resources and systems you have put in place as a percentage of total visitors to the support web pages can give you your customer service conversion.

So why measure conversion? Because it allows you to accurately measure the impact of changes you make by measuring the performance of your website before and after the change. With that valuable information in hand, you can make adjustments accordingly.

The Butt Brush Factor

In many instances in his book, Paco refers to ‘The Butt Brush Factor’ — the way people, women in particular, don’t like enclosed spaces where other people constantly bump into them from behind. It usually led to the prospective shopper feeling frustrated or feeling uncomfortable and leaving the store or going somewhere else. You might be thinking, “well how does that relate to an online experience?” 

It is true that no-one usually bumps into you from behind while you’re sitting in front of a computer, but how many times are you made to feel irritated, uncomfortable or just downright frustrated by a website? How often do you leave one and look at another because the first one doesn’t have what you’re looking for? This ‘Butt Brush Factor’ is incredibly relevant to websites, more so I think than even in ordinary retail. Here are some examples of common online ‘Butt Brush Factors’ that you will see in many business websites.

1) Latest News.

The landing page has the latest news about the company links. What exactly is the point of having a bunch of latest news links on your landing page? What good is that to a browser arriving at your landing page knowing and caring little about your company? A browser wants to know what you can do for him right there and then, not how your company stock is doing. An ‘About Us’ section is a much more reasonable place to put these links.

2) Awards.

A landing page with awards screams, look at us, look at what we’ve achieved, aren’t we clever? It also completely wastes space on the most important page of your website. It can be compared to what Paco said when he talked about going into a car showroom and seeing manufacturer awards. That is unlikely to make much of an impression on the average shopper.

3) Poor Headlines.

‘Welcome to Company Name’ is the most common waste of a headline I ever see. Probably the company is unknown to the visitor so you’re wasting his or her time. A headline, which communicates the need of the target audience and how you can solve that need, improves reading and click through by up to 35% in recent tests we made.

4) Submit Buttons.

Why tell the visitor to ‘submit?’ Submit actually means “To yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of another” according to dictionary.com, so why ask innocent web browsers to do that in order to read your monthly newsletter? Subscribe to our newsletter is much more friendly, I would say.

5) Bad Use Of Flash.

This is a common problem with media companies in particular. I understand why they do these all singing all dancing interactive flash websites, which often are works of art and showcase their ability. However ‘skip intro’ is a common link on the majority of these websites. That is because some people find them a waste of time. Why have an intro at all? Why not just have a showcase of what you can do on a normal fast, efficient website which tells me what I need to know quickly? If I decide I have the time to look at flash animations I will.

6) Poor Use Of Imagery.

I’m guilty of this myself. We used to have a picture of a squirrel flying through the air with ‘what’s your objective’ on our landing page. It might have worked had we been selling nuts or seed, but a company improving website conversion? Not really relevant! It was more a result of my ego, pride and photographic luck in capturing said squirrel with my digital camera, and then thinking of a way I could use the picture, than thinking of a good picture which was relevant to what we were trying to say and using that. This kind of thing is repeated on many websites — people with briefcases, bridges, animals and other general graphics, which can be turned with words into anything you want the image to say. But on first glance, they don’t really show any relevance. All communication should be relevant and, ideally, persuade the user to do something.

Again, conversion is an important measurement here. It can be applied to all of the changes you make to your site as you eliminate these ‘Butt Brush Factors’. Later in this article, I’ll explain how.

Attention All Shoppers…

“For the next fifteen minutes, in the frozen food section, free passion fruit sorbet for everyone” is a perfect way to instill urgency in shoppers to go to that section of the store and get the freebie. They know they only have 15 minutes, and they know that after that time they won’t get the lovely sorbet. This was Paco’s way of showing how stores could be more imaginative. The store knows that that section of the store is going to be jammed with people for that 15 minutes and can capitalize on impulse sales. That’s how it works in the retailing world, but what about online? Instilling urgency online is a major factor overlooked by many business websites. Some examples of how you might want to start employing this technique online are listed below.

1) Time Expiry Offer.

Just as in the above example, you could let your readers know they will miss out if they haven’t subscribed or bought your product by a certain time.

2) The First Number.

Your website could offer the first 50 subscribers a free e-book or could advertise that the first 50 items sold will be at a 30% discount. This could be combined with a counter showing the number of places/items left, so that the browser thinks “I have to subscribe before those places are taken up”.

3) The Nth Number Competition.

The website states that if you are subscriber number 1000, you get a free website makeover, again combined with a visible counter of the current number of subscriptions. This could be tied into a referral deal so that if the subscriber is not the lucky number and does not get the deal, at least he could be offered something for making the referral while his friend might still end up being the lucky number and win the prize.

So how does conversion relate to all these changes? The conversion rate should and can be measured in every instance.

The Science Of Online Marketing

There are two incredibly significant lines in Why We Buy:

“Science is by and large the study of very small differences” and “When you change one thing, everything changes”.

The first ‘very small difference ’ and ‘changing one thing’ situation I came across in my online marketing career was a complete mistake. I was working for a large press organization and one day I had to change some HTML code on a sales form. By mistake, I removed a voucher entry field from the form. As a result, people could no longer enter their voucher number to get a cheaper deal. 

Conversion improved by three times. I told our editor who was amazed but instructed me to put the voucher field back on the form while they figured out what to do. There was a good reason for the voucher; in fact, it was the entire reason the page was there. 

However, putting the voucher entry field back resulted in a drop in conversion to almost the identical sales that we had been getting before my mistake. The voucher idea was eventually scrapped on that page and sales sky rocketed again. The reason, we ascertained, was that visitors figured that they could get a cheaper deal with a voucher. 

The voucher could only be gotten by physically buying a newspaper and that limited us to around 10% of the audience. Nine out of ten people visiting the website did so from a place where they couldn’t buy the newspaper at that time, so it was obvious that the voucher idea could only be good for the local readers. 

This experience was a catalyst for me personally, and from then on, I began to understand the importance of measurement online. In particular, the measurement of conversion.

So in order to turn the online changes you make into a science, follow three simple rules.

1) Measure Conversion.

Conversion is a percentage, a calculation of the number of people who take the action you desire as a percentage of the total number of visitors to the page. Using percentages makes the actual number of people arriving at a page irrelevant. It becomes possible to compare a busy week with a quiet week.

2) Change one thing at a time.

An average page has lots of variables: graphics, headlines, paragraphs, sentences, links, testimonials and probably a lot more. By only changing one thing and always measuring for the same period of time (30 days is good), you will get a fair result. So for instance, if you change a headline, look at the page click-through and if possible the length of time an average visitor stayed on the page for 30 days before the change. Make the change and measure the results for the next 30 days. Then if conversion is higher (more people reading or more people clicking through), keep the change. If it’s lower, revert to what you had before.

3) Experiment.

Don’t limit yourself to headlines. Copy, content, graphics, adding competitions, etc. — try them all. But remember the rule: change only one variable at any one time.

Summary

I’ve desperately been trying to keep this article short; I think I could have written an epic on this subject. If I were in the same room as Paco Underhill, we would have an awful lot to talk about. However what I’m trying to say is that businesses should start waking up to the fact that online marketing is as much a science as Paco demonstrates in the retailing world. Measuring conversion rates online is the beginning of making it scientific.

MSEOKING - Got Spider?

Oh no, my article is not about living "spider", but about spider webs, or spider crawler, that every internet marketer dream are, having spider visit their blog/site.

Many internet marketers blow mountains of start-up cash on their websites just trying to break into search engine rankings. I was one of these internet marketers.

I spent cash on get-rich-quick submission services that claimed they would submit my page to thousands of search engines. . .for a small fee. I spent money to get registered with big name search engines. I even spent money on search engine optimization services.

And then I waited. . .

I waited to see SOME response--any response--from all of this work I had done. I waited for the spiders to reach my pages and rank my page for everyone to see. I waited for my blown marketing funds to come back to me in profits. . .

But they never did. The spiders took weeks. The page rankings were dismal. I was ready to give up.

And then I received this vital piece of information from a fellow marketer: the more links you have on bigger websites, the faster your page is spidered. . .

That's right: Since search engines rank higher-PR sites more often, they will find your page a lot faster if you get your link on a highly-trafficked website!

Not only will they find your site faster, but they will also return to it faster and rank it for FREE. This is all in addition to receiving a huge PR boost for having a link on a high-PR site.

So. . .

If you haven't done it already, slap some metatags on your site that are optimized for your content. Make sure you use keywords that are repeated multiple times in the text of your website, so that your pages will rank higher for relevency.

Now begin your hunt for high-PR websites to post your link on. You can start by going to Google and earching for your specific service or product in quotes to find high-PR sites in your category.

You'll find out quickly that there are a number of ways to get your link on these websites. Some of them will agree to do a main-page link exchange for free. 

Others will allow you to submit articles along with a resourcebox that will give you a link on their website. And others wont allow you to work with them at all unless you have special qualifications or a high page-ranking.

If you have a free product, like an eBook or some software, you can give away free downloads on a high-R site. Just place an ad on the site with a link back to your website, where they can receive the free download. You can find these sites by googling phrases like "free content directory."

There are plenty of ways to bring in traffic with search engines without paying hefty registration fees. Start searching today. Find the big sites and get your link out there!

MSEOKING - Beyond Search Engines

Did you really want your site beyond search engine when people are search the niche they wanted to? I do recommended to you read my article until the last to find out more how to getting your site beyond search engines.

Some webmasters report that search engines account for 75% or more of their total website traffic. However, it's important not to become too dependent on search engines for new business. Achieving a top listing from a major search engine is becoming more and more difficult over time. The competition for top spots is intense and it's getting harder every day to get listed at all. Also more and more search engines are moving to a pay-per-click model, and paying for top listings may not be in your budget.

The major search engine companies tend to be secretive about the details of their ranking process, so you have to rely on trial and error when optimizing your site to get a higher ranking. Also, search engines change their algorithms every now and then, and when they do you might find your Web pages bumped down to a lower position. To keep up with the latest search engine ranking procedures you'll either need to spend considerable time on it yourself or pay for the services of an SEO specialist.

While search engines can be a great source of targeted traffic, the visitors they send are not always your best prospects. True, the traffic is targeted in the sense that the visitor has actively searched for keywords which your site is relevant to, but that searcher is also viewing (and presumably visiting) the links of some of your closest competitors who also appear in the search results. In other words, they're "shopping around", and your site is a contender but not the only choice. In contrast, someone who visits your website after reading your article, seeing your ad in a respected ezine, or being referred by a friend is interested in your site in particular.

For all of these reasons, your marketing plan should not rely too heavily on search engine placement. You should never become too dependent on any one source of website traffic, and search engine rankings are particularly vulnerable to sudden changes. Being bumped from the first page of results to the second, or going from the second page to the third, can mean a significant drop in traffic. You should diversify your marketing efforts and use a variety of promotional techniques to bring visitors to your site rather than putting all your time and effort into getting a search engine listing.

Here are ten other ways you can promote your online business:

1) Get your articles published in ezines and on websites. Find high quality ezines and websites that offer plenty of useful and relevant content that would appeal to your target market (but which are not your direct competitors). Contact the publisher or webmaster and offer free reprint rights to an article you've written which would be a good fit for their readers or site visitors. They get extra content and you get new leads - it's a win-win situation.

2) Exchange links with other webmasters. Go to your favorite search engine and search for other quality websites with content related to the theme of your site. Then contact the webmaster and offer swap links - you link to their site from a resource page on your website and in exchange they link to yours. You'll both benefit from the extra traffic, plus you'll be adding useful content to your site.

3) Participate in banner ad and link exchanges. Swap banner or text link ads with other webmasters who share your market. You could join a banner exchange network or just arrange swaps on your own, but either way make sure your banner will be displayed to a targeted audience (those most likely to be interested in your product or service).

4) Practice viral marketing. Encourage your site visitors and existing customers to tell their friends and colleagues about your business. Make it easy for them to email a recommendation by providing a link on your site and in your ezine that will fill in the URL and other information in a form which they can personalize and send.

5) Run ezine ads. Place your ad in an ezine that appeals to your potential customers. If your budget allows consider sponsoring a whole issue; you get several ads throughout a single issue, which increases the impact of your sales message.

6) Place print ads. Run a series of classified ads in your local newspaper or business publications. Also, seek out special interest publications and trade journals of interest to your potential customers - the cost is usually reasonable and you'll reach a highly targeted market.

7) Give away logoware. Print your URL and logo on t-shirts, baseball caps, coffee mugs, mouse pads, keychains, pens, or other promotional giveaways. Include them with catalogs, slip them into order shipments, and give them away at public events.

8) Try mobile marketing. Have you ever thought about how much time you spend on the road? Putting your URL on a car window decal or on an ad panel in a bus or taxi reaches a broad audience for very little money. Put a decal or magnetic sign on your own car and ask your friends and family members to put your Web decal on their cars, too.

9) Distribute flyers and handouts. A flyer can usually be printed up and distributed for pennies. Just have a simple one page sheet printed up with a description of your business and your website URL and other contact information. Hand them out at a shopping center or supermarket or during a fair or special events, or pay a flyer distribution company to deliver them door-to-door for you.

10) Do a postcard mailing. Get some postcards printed up with a screenshot of your website's home page or photograph of your place of business on the front and a description of your business and website URL on the back. Bulk mail them yourself or pay to have them included in a "card pack" mailer that goes out in your community.

Search engines are clearly too important to ignore, but don't overlook the many other possibilities for driving traffic to your site. Even if you succeed in getting your website listed and ranking well, don't depend on search engines alone to bring you new customers. And if you've tried repeatedly to get indexed by major search engines only to find your site rejected or ignored, don't despair - you do have other options. Don't be afraid to try something new and different. Experiment with new marketing methods and track your results to find out which methods work best for you.

MSEOKING - A SEO Checklist

Did you do a SEO checklist for your site everyday? Surely it's important to make sure your site are on the right trail of SEo for search engine optimize ranking.

Search engine optimization is on every webmaster's mind these days. Achieving a favorable ranking for the right keywords can mean a steady stream of targeted traffic to your site, and all for free - that's hard to beat. The key to high search engine rankings is structuring your website correctly, including plenty of content that is relevant to your keywords, and making sure your website is spider-friendly. You can use this checklist to make sure all of your Web pages can be found, indexed and ranked correctly:

Your website is themed. Your site deals with an identifiable theme which is obvious from the text on the home page and reinforced by all the other pages on your site. In other words, all the individual Web pages relate to each other and deal with various aspects of some central theme. The text on your home page should state clearly what that theme is and what your website is about, and the other pages should reinforce that.

Your Web pages have enough high quality, relevant content. Spiders come to your website looking for content. If a page doesn't have much content, or the content doesn't appear closely related to the page's title and your website's theme, the page probably won't be indexed or if it is indexed it won't rank well. Search engines love quality content and lots of it - content is what Web searchers are looking for and search engines try to provide.

Your website's navigational structure is relatively flat. You don't want important pages to be too "deep" within your website, meaning it takes several clicks to get there from the home page. Search engines typically index the home page first, then gradually index other pages on a site over time. Many spiders are programmed to only go three layers deep - if some of your important content is buried deeper than that, it may never be found and indexed at all.

You've created a unique "Title" tag for each page. The title is one of the most important aspects of any Web page from an SEO standpoint, especially for Google (which is the most important search engine to optimize for). Don't use a generic title for all your pages, use the keywords your targeting for that page and keep it brief but descriptive.

You use the "Description" meta tag. Contains a highly descriptive sentence about the content and purpose of your page, and contains your most important keyword phrase early in the sentence. Not all of the search engines will display this "canned" description when they list the page in search results, but many of them will, so it's worth getting it right.

You use the "Keywords" meta tag. As with the meta tag description, not every search engine will use the keywords meta tag. But some will use it and none will penalize you for having it. Also, having a short list of the keywords you're targeting will help you write appropriate content for each page. The keyword tage should contain your targeted keyword phrase and common variations, common misspellings and related terms. Make sure your keywords relate closely to the page content and tie into the overall theme of your site.

Your keywords are included in the visible page content, preferably high up on the page. You have to achieve a balance here - you want to include keyword phrases (and variations) a number of times within your text, but not so many times that you appear to be guilty of "keyword stuffing". The trick is to work the keywords into the text so that it reads as naturally as possible for your site visitors. Remember, you can incorporate keywords into any Web page element that is potentially viewable by site visitors - header text, link text and titles, table captions, the "Alt" attribute of the image tag, the "title" attribute of the link tag, etc.

Every page of your website can be reached by search engine spiders. This is critical - if your pages can't be found, they can't be indexed and included in search results, let alone rank well. Search engines use spiders to explore your website and index the pages, so every page must be accessible by following text links. If pages require a password to view, are generated by a script in response to a query, or have a long and complicated URL, spiders may not be able to read them. You need to have simple text links to the pages you want indexed.

You've included a site map. Unless your site is very small, it's a good idea to create a site map with text links that you link to the site map from your home page. In addition to a link, include descriptive text for containing the relevant keywords for each page.

You link to your most important pages from other pages on your site. Internal links help determine page rank since they show which pages of your site are most important. The more links you have to have to a page, relative to other pages on your site, the more importance search engines will assign to it.

You use keywords in your link text. When you create a text link to another page on your site, use that page's targeted keywords as the text for the link (inside the anchor tags that create the link). Make it as descriptive as possible. For example, a link that says "Premium Customized Widgets" is much better than one that says simply "Product Page", and indicates to search engine spiders what that linked page is about.

Your site doesn't use frames. If possible, don't use frames on any page you want to get indexed by search engines. If you feel you simply must use frames for a page, then also make use of the "noframes" HTML tags to provide alternative text that spiders can read (and make that text descriptive rather than just a notice that "This site uses frames etc. etc.").

You don't use automatic page redirects. Don't make any pages automatically redirect the visitor to another page (the exception is a page you've deleted for good - in which case you should use a "301 redirect", a permanent redirect which is acceptable to search engines).

Your important content is in plain text and not contained in images. Search engine spiders can't "read" content in JPEG, GIF, or PNG files. If you really feel that using an image rather than text is crucial to your design, at least put the same text in the image's "Alt" tag (or in the "title" tag if you're using the image as a hyperlink).

Your important content is not contained in Flash files. Flash is a wonderful technology, but unfortunately spiders don't have the required "plugin" to view Flash files. As a result, Flash content is mostly inaccessible to search engine spiders. Some can find and follow hyperlinks within the Flash file, but unless those links lead to pages with readable HTML content this won't help you much. Don't create all-Flash pages for any content you want to get indexed - instead, put that content in the HTML portion of the page.

Links and keywords are not hidden inside JavaScript code. If your links use JavaScript to direct the user to the appropriate page (for instance, a drop-down list) or important content is contained within JavaScript code (when it's displayed dynamically using DHTML, for instance) search engine spiders won't be able to "see" it. You can, however, use the "noscript" HTML tags to provide an alternative that can be read by spiders.

You've optimized every important page of your website individually. Don't stop at your home page. Take the trouble to optimize any page which has a reasonable chance of being indexed by the major search engines, targeting appropriate keywords for each. If you face a lot of competition it may be nearly impossible to get a top ranking for your home page, but you can still get a lot of search engine traffic to your site from other pages which are focused on very specific keyword phrases.

You didn't duplicate content. Each page of your site should have unique content that distinguishes it from every other page on your site. Duplicating content or having pages that are only slightly different might be seen as "search engine spamming" (trying to manipulate search engine results).

You provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your site. Somewhere on your site state your policies about other people linking to your site and provide the wording you'd like them to use in their link. You want to encourage other people to link to your site, preferably using link text and a description that reflect the keywords for that page. For their convenience provide the ready-made HTML code for the link - not everyone will use it, but most often they will use your preferred text as a courtesy as long as it is truly descriptive of your site and doesn't contain "marketing hype".

You provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your site. Somewhere on your site state your policies about other people linking to your site and provide the wording you'd like them to use in their link. You want to encourage other people to link to your site, preferably using link text and a description that reflect the keywords for that page. For their convenience provide the ready-made HTML code for the link - not everyone will use it, but many will use your preferred text as a courtesy as long as it doesn't contain "marketing hype".

Important hyperlinks are plain text links and not image links or image maps. Text links are better from an SEO standpoint than image links, as spiders can't read text from an image file. If you feel you really must use a graphic as a link, at least include a text description which (including the relevant keywords) by using the "title" attribute of the link tag.

Your website is free of coding errors and broken links. HTML coding errors and non-working links can keep search engine spiders from correctly reading and indexing your pages. For that reason, it's a good idea to use a Web page validation utility to check your HTML code to make sure it's error-free.

MSEOKING - MYTHS & MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT SEARCH ENGINE

Over the past several years, a number of misconceptions have emerged about how the search engines operate. For the beginner SEO, this causes confusion about what's required to perform effectively. In this section, we'll explain the real story behind the myths.

Search Engine Submission

In classical SEO times (the late 1990's), search engines had "submission" forms that were part of the optimization process. Webmasters & site owners would tag their sites & pages with keyword information, and "submit" them to the engines. Soon after submission, a bot would crawl and include those resources in their index. Simple SEO!

Unfortunately, this process didn't scale very well, the submissions were often spam, and the practice eventually gave way to purely crawl-based engines. Since 2001, not only has search engine submission not been required, but it is actually virtually useless. The engines all publicly note that they rarely use "submission" URLs , and that the best practice is to earn links from other sites. This will expose your content to the engines naturally.

You can still sometimes find submission pages (here's one for Bing), but these are remnants of time long past, and are essentially useless to the practice of modern SEO. If you hear a pitch from an SEO offering "search engine submission" services, run, don't walk, to a real SEO. Even if the engines used the submission service to crawl your site, you'd be unlikely to earn enough "link juice" to be included in their indices or rank competitively for search queries.


Meta Tags

Once upon a time, much like search engine submission, meta tags (in particular, the meta keywords tag) were an important part of the SEO process. You would include the keywords you wanted your site to rank for and when users typed in those terms, your page could come up in a query. This process was quickly spammed to death, and eventually dropped by all the major engines as an important ranking signal.

It is true that other tags, namely the title tag (not stictly a meta tag, but often grouped with them) and meta description tag (covered previously in this guide), are of critical importance to SEO best practices. Additionally, the meta robots tag is an important tool for controlling spider access. However, SEO is not "all about meta tags", at least, not anymore.
Keyword Stuffing

Ever see a page that just looks spammy? Perhaps something like:

"Bob's cheap Seattle plumber is the best cheap Seattle plumber for all your plumbing needs. Contact a cheap Seattle plumber before it's too late"

Not surprisingly, a persistent myth in SEO revolves around the concept that keyword density - a mathematical formula that divides the number of words on a page by the number of instances of a given keyword - is used by the search engines for relevancy & ranking calculations.

Despite being proven untrue time and again, this myth has legs. Many SEO tools still feed on the concept that keyword density is an important metric. It's not. Ignore it and use keywords intelligently and with usability in mind. The value from an extra 10 instances of your keyword on the page is far less than earning one good editorial link from a source that doesn't think you're a search spammer.


Paid Search Helps Bolster Organic Results

Put on your tin foil hats, it's time for the most common SEO conspiracy theory: spending on search engine advertising (PPC) improves your organic SEO rankings.

In all of the experiences we've ever witnessed or heard about, this has never been proven nor has it ever been a probable explanation for effects in the organic results. Google, Yahoo! & Bing all have very effective walls in their organizations to prevent precisely this type of crossover.

At Google in particular, advertisers spending tens of millions of dollars each month have noted that even they cannot get special access or consideration from the search quality or web spam teams. So long as the existing barriers are in place and the search engines cultures maintain their separation, we believe that this will remain a myth. That said, we have seen anecdotal evidence that bidding on keywords you already organically rank for can help increase your organic click through rate.


Search Engine Spam

As long as there is search, there will always be spam. The practice of spamming the search engines - creating pages and schemes designed to artificially inflate rankings or abuse the ranking algorithms employed to sort content - has been rising since the mid-1990's.

With payouts so high (at one point, a fellow SEO noted to us that a single day ranking atop Google's search results for the query "buy viagra" could bring upwards of $20,000 in affiliate revenue), it's little wonder that manipulating the engines is such a popular activity on the web. However, it's become increasingly difficult and, in our opinion, less and less worthwhile for two reasons.

1. Not Worth the Effort

Users hate spam, and the search engines have a financial incentive to fight it. Many believe that Google's greatest product advantage over the last 10 years has been their ability to control and remove spam better than their competitors. It's undoubtedly something all the engines spend a great deal of time, effort and resources on. While spam still works on occasion, it generally takes more effort to succeed than producing "good" content, and the long term payoff is virtually non-existent.

Instead of putting all that time and effort into something that the engines will throw away, why not invest in a value added, long term strategy instead?

2. Smarter Engines

Search engines have done a remarkable job identifying scalable, intelligent methodologies for fighting spam manipulation, making it dramatically more difficult to adversely impact their intended algorithms. Complex concepts like TrustRank (which SEOmoz's Linkscape index leverages), HITS, statistical analysis, historical data and more have all driven down the value of search spam and made so-called "white hat" tactics (those that don't violate the search engines' guidelines) far more attractive.

More recently, Google's Panda update introduced sophisticated machine learning algorithms to combat spam and low value pages at a scale never before witnessed online. If the search engines' job is to deliver quality results, they have raised the bar year after year.

This guide is not intended to show off specific spam tactics, but, due to the large number of sites that get penalized, banned or flagged and seek help, we will cover the various factors the engines use to identify spam so as to help SEO practitioners avoid problems. For additional details about spam from the engines, see Google's Webmaster Guidelines and Bing's Webmaster FAQs (pdf).

The important thing to remember is this: Not only do manipulative techniques not help you in most cases, but often times they cause search engines to impose penalties on your site.


Page-Level Spam Analysis

Search engines perform spam analysis across individual pages and entire websites (domains). We'll look first at how they evaluate manipulative practices on the URL level.


One of the most obvious and unfortunate spamming techniques, keyword stuffing, involves littering repetitions of keyword terms or phrases into a page in order to make it appear more relevant to the search engines. The thought behind this - that increasing the number of times a term is mentioned can considerably boost a page's ranking - is generally false. Studies looking at thousands of the top search results across different queries have found that keyword repetitions play an extremely limited role in boosting rankings, and have a low overall correlation with top placement.

The engines have very obvious and effective ways of fighting this. Scanning a page for stuffed keywords is not massively challenging, and the engines' algorithms are all up to the task. You can read more about this practice, and Google's views on the subject, in a blog post from the head of their web spam team - SEO Tip: Avoid Keyword Stuffing.


Manipulative Linking

One of the most popular forms of web spam, manipulative link acquisition relies on the search engines' use of link popularity in their ranking algorithms to attempt to artificially inflate these metrics and improve visibility. This is one of the most difficult forms of spamming for the search engines to overcome because it can come in so many forms. A few of the many ways manipulative links can appear include:

Reciprocal link exchange programs, wherein sites create link pages that point back and forth to one another in an attempt to inflate link popularity. The engines are very good at spotting and devaluing these as they fit a very particular pattern.
Link schemes, including "link farms" and "link networks" where fake or low value websites are built or maintained purely as link sources to artificially inflate popularity. The engines combat these through numerous methods of detecting connections between site registrations, link overlap or other common factors.
Paid links, where those seeking to earn higher rankings buy links from sites and pages willing to place a link in exchange for funds. These sometimes evolve into larger networks of link buyers and sellers, and although the engines work hard to stop them (and Google in particular has taken dramatic actions), they persist in providing value to many buyers & sellers (see this post on paid links for more on that perspective).
Low quality directory links are a frequent source of manipulation for many in the SEO field. A large number of pay-for-placement web directories exist to serve this market and pass themselves off as legitimate with varying degrees of success. Google often takes action against these sites by removing the PageRank score from the toolbar (or reducing it dramatically), but won't do this in all cases.
There are many more manipulative link building tactics that the search engines have identified and, in most cases, found algorithmic methods for reducing their impact. As new spam systems emerge, engineers will continue to fight them with targeted algorithms, human reviews and the collection of spam reports from webmasters & SEOs.

Cloaking

A basic tenet of all the search engine guidelines is to show the same content to the engine's crawlers that you'd show to an ordinary visitor. This means, among other things, not to hide text in the html code of your website that a normal visitor can't see.

When this guideline is broken, the engines call it "cloaking" and take action to prevent these pages from ranking in their results. Cloaking can be accomplished in any number of ways and for a variety of reasons, both positive and negative. In some cases, the engines may let practices that are technically "cloaking" pass, as they're done for positive user experience reasons. For more on the subject of cloaking and the levels of risk associated with various tactics and intents, see this post, White Hat Cloaking, from Rand Fishkin.

"Low Value" Pages

Although it may not technically be considered "web spam," the engines all have methods to determine if a page provides unique content and "value" to its searchers before including it in their web indices and search results. The most commonly filtered types of pages are "thin" affiliate content, duplicate content, and dynamically generated content pages that provide very little unique text or value. The engines are against including these pages and use a variety of content and link analysis algorithms to filter out "low value" pages from appearing in the results.

Google's 2011 Panda update took the most aggressive steps ever seen in reducing low quality content across the web, and Google continues to update this process.


Domain Level Spam Analysis

In addition to watching individual pages for spam, engines can also identify traits and properties across entire root domains or subdomains that could flag them as spam. Obviously, excluding entire domains is tricky business, but it's also much more practical in cases where greater scalability is required.

Linking Practices

Just as with individual pages, the engines can monitor the kinds of links and quality of referrals sent to a website. Sites that are clearly engaging in the manipulative activities described above on a consistent or seriously impacting way may see their search traffic suffer, or even have their sites banned from the index. You can read about some examples of this from past posts - Widgetbait Gone Wild or the more recent coverage of the JC Penney Google penalty.


rustworthiness

Websites that earn trusted status are often treated differently from those who have not. In fact, many SEOs have commented on the "double standards" that exist for judging "big brand" and high importance sites vs. newer, independent sites. For the search engines, trust most likely has a lot to do with the links your domain has earned. Thus, if you publish low quality, duplicate content on your personal blog, then buy several links from spammy directories, you're likely to encounter considerable ranking problems. However, if you were to post that same content to a page on Wikipedia and get those same spammy links to point to that URL, it would likely still rank tremendously well - such is the power of domain trust & authority.

Trust built through links is also a great method for the engines to employ. A little duplicate content and a few suspicious links are far more likely to be overlooked if your site has earned hundreds of links from high quality, editorial sources like CNN.com or Cornell.edu. On the flip side, if you have yet to earn high quality links, judgments may be far stricter from an algorithmic view.
Content Value

Similar to how a page's value is judged against criteria such as uniqueness and the experience it provides to search visitors, so too does this principle apply to entire domains. Sites that primarily serve non-unique, non-valuable content may find themselves unable to rank, even if classic on and off page factors are performed acceptably. The engines simply don't want thousands of copies of Wikipedia or Amazon affiliate websites filling up their index, and thus use algorithmic and manual review methods to prevent this.

Search engines constantly evaluate the effectiveness of their own results. They measure when users click on a result, quickly hit the "back" button on their browser, and try another result. This indicates that the result they served didn't meet the user's query.

It's not enough just to rank for a query. Once you've earned your ranking, you have to prove it over and over again.


So How Do You Know If You’ve Been Bad?

It can be tough to know if your site/page actually has a penalty or if things have changed, either in the search engines' algorithms or on your site that negatively impacted rankings or inclusion. Before you assume a penalty, check for the following:


Once you’ve ruled out the list below, follow the flowchart beneath for more specific advice.

Errors

Errors on your site that may have inhibited or prevented crawling. Google's Webmaster Tools is a good, free place to start.

Changes

Changes to your site or pages that may have changed the way search engines view your content. (on-page changes, internal link structure changes, content moves, etc.)

Similarity

Sites that share similar backlink profiles, and whether they’ve also lost rankings - when the engines update ranking algorithms, link valuation and importance can shift, causing ranking movements.

Duplicate Content

Modern websites are rife with duplicate content problems, especially when they scale to large size. Check out this post on duplicate content to identify common problems.

While this chart’s process won’t work for every situation, the logic has been uncanny in helping us identify spam penalties or mistaken flagging for spam by the engines and separating those from basic ranking drops. This page from Google (and the embedded Youtube video) may also provide value on this topic.

Getting Penalties Lifted

The task of requesting re-consideration or re-inclusion in the engines is painful and often unsuccessful. It's also rarely accompanied by any feedback to let you know what happened or why. However, it is important to know what to do in the event of a penalty or banning.


Hence, the following recommendations:

1If you haven't already, register your site with the engine's Webmaster Tools service (Google's and Bing's). This registration creates an additional layer of trust and connection between your site and the webmaster teams.

2Make sure to thoroughly review the data in your Webmaster Tools accounts, from broken pages to server or crawl errors to warnings or spam alert messages. Very often, what's initially perceived as a mistaken spam penalty is, in fact, related to accessibility issues.

3Send your re-consideration/re-inclusion request through the engine's Webmaster Tools service rather than the public form - again, creating a greater trust layer and a better chance of hearing back.

4Full disclosure is critical to getting consideration. If you've been spamming, own up to everything you've done - links you've acquired, how you got them, who sold them to you, etc. The engines, particularly Google, want the details, as they'll apply this information to their algorithms for the future. Hold back, and they're likely to view you as dishonest, corrupt or simply incorrigible (and fail to ever respond).

5Remove/fix everything you can. If you've acquired bad links, try to get them taken down. If you've done any manipulation on your own site (over-optimized internal linking, keyword stuffing, etc.), get it off before you submit your request.

6Get ready to wait - responses can take weeks, even months, and re-inclusion itself, if it happens, is a lengthy process. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of sites are penalized every week, so you can imagine the backlog the webmaster teams encounter.

7If you run a large, powerful brand on the web, re-inclusion can be faster by going directly to an individual source at a conference or event. Engineers from all of the engines regularly participate in search industry conferences (SMX, SES, Pubcon, etc.), and the cost of a ticket can easily outweigh the value of being re-included more quickly than a standard request might take.

Be aware that with the search engines, lifting a penalty is not their obligation or responsibility. Legally, they have the right to include or reject any site/page for any reason. Inclusion is a privilege, not a right, so be cautious and don't apply techniques you're unsure or skeptical of - or you could find yourself in a very rough spot.

MSEOKING - WHY SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING IS NECESSARY

Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) can be extremely crucial for the success of any kind of online business, since more than 90% of all online visitors will get access to the websites via different search engines. So, the only way to virtually establish your business on the enormously expanding internet is by knowing the right optimization techniques.

Actually the search engines are just like our phone books, but they work on the much larger scale as compare to our phone books. You can find thousands, in fact millions of businesses and companies that are offering various services you need.

Hence, this is quite clear that it's very difficult to find the website of your company when there are thousands of local, national or international companies are doing business in the same niche as yours. Following are some other benefits of the various optimization techniques that will certainly help you in knowing "Why SEO is Necessary for Business."

- The key tool for every online business owner is search engine optimization which helps them to get more customers to their business's website. It is extremely crucial to get the potential traffic to the website and also maintain a good level at the search engines. Basically the main and primary aim of the various SEO techniques is to get the repetitive and potential customers to the website.

- There are so many convenient ways that work under the banner of search engine optimization like RSS Feeds and link building that has the ability to create a great positive impact on an online business.

- The search engine optimization which is based on the specific keywords which are used in the website's content can generate some potential traffic that will ultimately help in the revenue generation and success of an E-commerce site or online business.

- When it comes to the customer finding your website, then the ranking of your site matters a lot. When a customer or visitor search a keyword which is related to your online business through a search engine then it will pass through the SERP's. Your website will get the specific ranking which depends on the quality and relevancy of the content which is published on your website. Therefore, this ranking can be easily increased with the help of different SEO techniques.

- Remember, it is extremely important to practice the optimization of the website with ethics. There are many webmasters who are using the negative part of SEO in order to get better results in a short time period. But the fact is that all these techniques will eventually trap them under the crawler and they would not get any kind of benefit from these techniques.

- SEO is the best way to promote the business on the World Wide Web. All the competent and experienced SEO marketing companies will always make sure that the business of their client gets an all-round promotion and maximum exposure.