Bootstrap Search Engine Optimization

There has long been a debate over which internet marketing tactic provides better results- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay-per-Click (PPC). Although SEO delivers quality traffic at a lower cost per customer than PPC in the long term, sometimes it is beneficial to go against what seems instinctual, that is, choosing SEO for its low cost. In the recent recession, it has become increasingly important to ensure that sales continue to flow through the pipeline. Any honest practitioner of SEO knows that it is not possible to do that given the lack of control that makes search engine results wax and wane. Fortunately, delivering consistent results is possible by combining SEO with a well planned PPC campaign.

While SEO is known for delivering traffic at a lower cost, the use of PPC gives a campaign more control over what visitors see. With PPC you can create targeted ads paired with a specific page custom designed based on keywords, so visitors are more likely to be interested in your offer. Because of this, PPC usually has a higher conversion rate. The higher rate may not always offset the cost of traffic, but when the flow of leads becomes the primary concern, consistent lead flow can be worth the cost.

To see actual data regarding and more details about functional strategies for PPC, please visit Polar Design’s case study.

The case study will start you on the path to implementing a comprehensive campaign that uses both SEO and PPC to help your company optimize long term costs and ROI.

Getting the internet marketing formula right – producing a web site that actively generates sales leads or builds relationships with customers – involves a lot of variables and skillsets.  Many SEO professionals or firms focus so much on traffic generation that they can overlook the importance of copy, design, and layout in ensuring that visitors attracted to a site stay there and check out the offerings. 

While the latter are not strictly “SEO” functions, the fact is that like the proverbial weak link in a chain, SEO is only as good as its results — if targeter traffic is wasted on landing pages or sites with poor calls to action, then any investment on SEO was for naught.

A few general rules of thumb follow, in order of importance:

1. Make sure that the message on your site matches what people would expect when searching for the SEO terms you are optimizing a site for.  For example, if you sell digital cameras but optimize your site for “digital camera reviews” because your KEI analysis shows it drives solid traffic and is attainable, be sure that the page does provide users with access to some reviews – don’t make the mistake of exclusively advertising cameras for sale on that page.

2. Make sure that you have clear calls to action.  Large buttons and text that guide users to the “next step” are crucial.

3. Don’t overload your landing page or home page with text and copy, however advantageous that may seem for SEO.  Publish resources and articles in 3rd and 4th level page.

If you’d like to try a fun experiment to see whether your site design communicates the message you intend and matches the SEO keywords you are contemplating, try Five Second Test – this web site allows you to upload a screen shot of your web site and have anonymous viewers “review” how effectively it communicates by asking viewers to specify memorable aspects of a site after a limited five second viewing sessions.

As the prevalance of more and more web pages strewn about the Internet as well as increasingly larger web sites becomes commonplace, the level of investment you make in web site hardware can actually have implications on your search engine optimization. 

Operators of very large sites have often assumed that powerful servers or multi-server solutions, along with excessive bandwidth, are necessary to ensure performance during spikes in visitor traffic and activity.  E-commerce web site operators have long known that each additional second that a customer waits for a shopping cart page to load can lead to a 5% – 10% loss in conversion at that step.

The above are well known facts that impact web site hardware and bandwidth selection.   

But SEO?

As it turns out, Googlebot, the Google search engine spider, is a prime culprit of server and bandwidth resource theft.  The more external links to your web site, or internal links between pages, the more likely you are to receive a visit from Googlebot or a host of other search engine spiders.  As the number of pages on your site increases, and assuming that you have interlinked your pages using SEO best practices, the number of potential paths that a spider can take through your site increases exponentially.  The larger the site and the more complex the linking between pages, the more hits that spiders will make on your site and the more bandwidth, memory and CPU resources will be consumed.  We have witnessed sites with over 10,000 pages exceed bandwidth limitation due solely to a combination of good SEO and limited hardware resoures.

There are ways to reduce Googlebot and other spiders’ visits in order to accommodate hardware and bandwidth limitations, but from an SEO perspective, living with IT constraints is not a good option since webmasters should desire that spiders to visit their websites as often as possible.

How to Solve / Anticipate Spiders’ Impact on your Servers

1. Host a site with a lot of pages (+10,000) and complex interlinking of pages (average of 20 internal links per page or more with a non-heirarchical linking strategy) on a dedicated server to ensure the best performance and handle many spider visits.
2. Install Google Webmaster Tools on your websites; you can control the rate at which the Googlebot visits your site.

Like web sites, blogs also can benefit from submission.  Certainly one can submit a blog, like any website, to major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN submission forms.  In that case, the blog will be treated like a web site with content indexed every month or so.

Blogs, however, are animals that demand immediate attention.  Fortunately, there are hundreds of specialty blog search engines, lists, and RSS feed redistributors in existence a well. 

Our favorite, Technorati, requires creation of an account and proceeding with a verfication procecure.  Another site, Buzzfeed, features an engaging interface that actively tracks the hotest blogs.  For a list of many other sites that accept blog submissions and syndicate the content through the Internet, give RSS Submissions a try.

Many practitioners of SEO as well as more and more marketers are aware of the importance of linked content in increasing web site’s search ranking and thus a company’s visibility or sales.  Fewer people are aware of the subtleties of link building and content creation that make SEO effective, such as matching meta titles with site content or the importance of carefully choose anchor text.  There will alway be experts and amateurs in any field, however as more and more marketers become aware of SEO, that greater awareness of SEO is changing the dynamics of SEO itself by reducing its effectiveness (as measured by results like ranking or traffic). 

More and more sites are adopting mini site strategies, blogging, and more and more webmasters or marketers are twittering and creating Facebook fan pages.  When the social media and search marketing space was virgin territory, even a quickly devised effort could have major impact.  Today, however, more effort must be made, which translates into more content, more links, more PR, more, more, more!

I’m not suggesting that SEO is saturated now, but I’m postulating that it will be within 12 months.  This doesn’t mean that it will be return the same or less investment per dollar than other advertising, either, but it will definitely return less than it has.  The results one obtains through a certan amount of effort today will be less in a year and even less in 3 years.  Preparing for that day should be on everyone’s mind.  A few key principals are worth mentioning:

1. Efficiency - One component of successful SEO, link building, involves identifying relevant sites with high pagerank.  Years ago, this was done manually by scanning each page.  Today’s technology includes tools like SEO for Firefox that can automate that process to some extent.  Google’s Webmaster Tools are a quick and easy way to analyze inbound links to every page on even the largest sites.  Marketers should continue to look for ways to make their link building more efficient by cutting down time needed to identify potential link partners.
2. Content is still king, but for different reasons in different eras – in the pre-Google era, content mattered for search positioning based on the keywords used.  Google increased the importance of the quality of content – webmasters are more likely to link to your content if they like it.  Additionally, some SEO consultants report positive effects on search engine’s spidering activity. In the increasingly frenetic world of online marketing accelerated by social networking, content that is merely good does not win – it must also be relevant, timely and entertaining.  Welcome to the age of ”ADD”vertising!
3. Golden Rule – the classic “golden rule” - “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” - applies in the search marketing space as well.  Highly annoying behavior like massive e-mail blasts to webmasters or massive spamming of the Internet with duplicative content are not only annoying but counter productive.  Individual targeting of particular web sites or bloggers by humans seeking out relevant content are generally considered acceptable.  
4. Research.  Search engines are evolving systems whose formulas are being updated and refined from time to time.  Despite the Google founders publicly available thesis that formed the basis of their search engine, the search engine continues to evolve over time with new rules being instituted to ensure the integrity of results.  Understanding these rules as they are released is a key part of ensuring successful placement — even better is understanding the fundamental reason that search engines exist : helping searchers find relevant content. To the extent that an SEO campaign has this at the root of its strategy, it will produce campaigns that result in quality content which in turn will cushion it from changes in search engine algorithms over time since all such changes ultimately are meant to improve the location of relevant content.

In short, SEO practicioners must become more than experts in their field, but must continuously ask the underlying question – why do search engines exist in the first place and how can produce content that helps, not hinders, their activity, while also benefitting my client.  This approach will protect any SEO practicioner in the coming age of saturation.