Much like their human designers, the major search engines
all sort of look alike. There might be variations in size;
colour schemes, names and cultures but when one gets right
down to it the various tools share a number of commonalities.
The three largest, Google, Yahoo, and MSN are starting
to treat their users like clients. Each employs user-loyalty
as a marketing strategy with big-box e-mail, personalized
user-account features and an increasing variety of digital
entertainment products. Nothing comes for free online
anymore. Anything offered for free comes at a hidden cost,
often paid by allowing the engines to accumulate user-specific
and general data by tracking users in one way or another.
We already know Yahoo is targeting TV like entertainment
options as a revenue generator and that Microsoft is targeting
music. Google seems to be aiming at collecting data from
its educated, middlebrow audience by offering access to
literature, home movies and research materials. Every
once in a while search marketers should take a leisurely
exploration of the various search engine offerings to
gauge opportunities based on the user-base each search
engine is building.
There is a great deal more general information search
markers like to know about. For instance, English continues
to be the predominant language spoken on the web but that
is slowly changing. Just less than two-thirds of web users
speak language other than English. Users who speak English
as their primary language accounted for 35.8% of the online
population in March 2004. The second most used language
is Chinese at 14.1%. Japanese is the third most used language
online at 9.6% with Spanish (9.1%) and German (7.3%) in
fourth and fifth. While it is impractical to expect search
marketers to learn several different languages and cultural
nuances, it is reasonable to assume that many Internet
users in non-English speaking cultures can read and communicate
in English. It is also reasonable to assume that more
search-marketing firms are being established to serve
non-English speaking markets.
Here is a good list of stats compiled by the Google directory.
http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Statistics_and_Demographics/
Another component of the overall environment is user
behaviours. There are similarities and differences between
user behaviours based on the search engine they primarily
use. Each search engine has a distinct base of users but
users of all search engines do share common habits. The
way they look at search results is fairly common across
all engines for instance. The results pages of Google,
MSN and Yahoo all look vaguely similar. While they each
might use different colour schemes, the positioning of
paid and organic results is almost exactly alike from
one engine to another. Since search is primarily a text
based medium, search engine users read results as one
might read a commercial magazine or newspaper. They tend
to skip the obvious advertising and focus on the content,
in this case the organic listings. We know this because
of the exhaustive Eye Tracking Study conducted by Gord
Hotchkiss of Enquiro.
The Eye Tracking study shows how search users work through
information on a search engine results page and is the
original source of the " Golden Triangle " theory
held by many search marketers. The golden triangle is
a reference to the area of the search results page seen
most frequently by search engine users. Understanding
Gord's findings is key to having a good grasp on how search
users will perceive a clients' site when they see it appear
on the results page.
The next level of external information of interest in
relation to a specific campaign is easier to manage as
it only covers the business or service sector the client
comes from. When planning a search marketing campaign
for the hypothetical Blue Widget Software Company from
Walla Walla Washington , we need to know what the competitive
environment is like. Knowing that Blue Widgets are one
of the most popular hypothetical products to market, we
expect the competition to be rather challenging. For SEOs
and SEMs, competitive research is extremely important.
The goal is to get first page listings at the major search
engines for your clients and to prepare a paid-advertising
campaign that provides a good return for their marketing
money.
The first thing we do is go to Google, Yahoo, MSN and
Ask Jeeves to find out how many other websites relating
to the keyword phrase Blue Widgets appear in the four
major indexes. Happily, we find that Google only lists
about 336,000 sites associated with the phrase "Blue
Widgets". Yahoo returns 427,000 results; Ask Jeeves
shows 123,900 and MSN shows only 54,280. It shouldn't
be too difficult to get a top ten with so few competitors.
But is a Top10 ranking under the keyword phrase "Blue
Widgets" really the best target for our client's
money? Once we start optimizing for specific keyword phrase
targets, we have committed company time and client money
towards a goal. We had best be sure that goal is the most
effective for the client. To do this, we check a couple
of simple sources. The first is the Overture Keyword Suggestion
tool (OKS), now conveniently housed at Yahoo. The OKS
offers a glimpse at how many searches were conducted for
a specific keyword phrase on their network in the previous
month by providing a list of related keyword searches.
The next is the WordTracker tool, which shows us the relative
popularity of general keywords and suggests more specific
ones based on the number of times search engine users
entered the words or phrases.
A search for Blue Widgets on the OKS shows that nobody
used that phrase last month though 3330 searches did look
for information on widgets. Similar results were found
with a list generated by WordTracker. This steers us back
to the client site to look for other keyword targets.
Being the wise optimizers we are, we know that Widgets
are mini-applications for the Mac OS so our search hypothetically
moved to Mac related keywords and phrases and, of course,
struck a virtual mother lode of keyword choices.
After identifying the strongest keyword targets, we become
curious who the Top5 competitors are, and what they are
doing to be there. This range of inquiry will move us
from sector-specific to client site-specific research.
There are several factors influencing the organic placement
of sites but they can be placed in four basic categories,
Titles, tags, text and links. In order to perform a good
competitive analysis, as well as to get a handle on what
we'll need to do on our client's site, we look at several
elements in these four basic categories. Each search engine
takes information from these categories though each treats
that information slightly differently.
When examining a number of competing sites against a
client's site, we look for similarities among the top
ranking competitor sites, often to see if we've missed
anything critical in our assumptions but also to see if
those similarities contributed to their joint success
on the search engines.
Onsite factors tend to be somewhat similar with keywords
used in the titles and meta tags and sprinkled through
the text of documents on the site. Frequently all top
sites use keyword phrases as the anchor text of internal
links. We are always curious to find the average number
of times competitors use keywords on their documents or
phrase links with keyword laced anchor text. This helps
us decide how to write competitive copy for our clients.
Our greatest interest for both client and competitors
is the number of incoming links and the quality of those
links. To check links, we use a number of tools but the
most realistic view can be gained from the search engines
themselves. To find out how many links (and which links)
Google sees pointed to a website, go to Google and type
link: www.domainname.com into the search box. The number
that appears near the top right hand corner of the monitor
tells you the number of links Google recognizes. A quick
and often random scan of those links can tell you how
relevant they are.
One stat we are NOT particularly interested in is the
PageRank score as shown by the Google Toolbar. While we
have conditioned ourselves to read most algorithm related
announcements from Google with extreme skepticism, we
do believe them when they say that the PageRank score
on the Google Toolbar is for entertainment rather than
informative purposes only. It is amazing that some SEOs
are still interested in PageRank and even more amazing
that some have established continuing businesses based
on selling links from high PR sites. (For those of you
involved with an SEO selling links from High PR sites,
take a few minutes to ask your current SEO to explain
the relevance of PageRank and then phone a few others
at random to see what they say. You might be unpleasantly
surprised.)
Stats and provable facts are cool. Compiling them is
hard work but once they are recorded, they provide an
invaluable information resource that can grow as the campaign
matures. Once an SEO starts keeping hard stats on the
overall search environment and client sectors within the
search environment, their own professional resource libraries
expand quickly. At this stage of the search-marketing
sector's growth, SEOs and SEMs are consultative advisors
as much as they are hands-on technicians. Having the stats
literally at your fingertips saves time in the long run
and forms a foundation for a strong campaign.
Sources:
Stats from Search Engine Watch
Hitwise Search Engine Ratings
http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/3099931
Nielsen NetRatings Search Engine Ratings
http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156451
comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Rankings
http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156431
Stats from ClickZ
http://www.clickz.com/stats/
Search Engine Relationship Chart from IhelpYouServices.com/forums
http://www.ihelpyou.com/search-engine-chart.html
The Atlas of Cyberspace
http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/atlas.html
Global Internet Languages (Global Reach, March 2004)
http://www.glreach.com/globstats/index.php3
Site-specific stats generated by server logs are highly
informative, complimenting user and search engine and
general specific stats generated by firms like Nielson
NetRatings, ComScore and Hitwise. The numbers generated
by stats help SEOs and SEMs craft marketing strategies
for individual clients, all of whom require unique approaches.
About the Author:
Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine
Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth
is the result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website
Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix Creative Works,
and has provided professional search engine placement
and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/
Tel - 250-385-1190 Toll Free - 877-385-5526 Fax - 250-385-1198
