Script:

- Nick -

Welcome to this weeks SEO video blog, you often see articles and companies asking this simple question, what returns the better investment, organic search engine optimisation or pay per click advertisements?

- James -

It can be a difficult question to answer and we think that it is individual to each company trying to market on the internet, however we also think that a correctly organized organic campaign can be more effective in the long run in terms of cost.

- Nick -

When we first thought about answering this question, user behavior came to mind, so we found this eye tracking report from enquiro. This shows a very nice visual representation of where an average Google user looks once they have performed a search query.

- James -

You can see from the image that the user naturally looks towards the top left hand side of the results and in particular the first Pay Per Click result and top 2 organic listings. This suggests that if you want to gain the full benefit from your campaign then you need to be in the top 3 positions.

What this means is if you are going pay for your listings with Google Adwords then you really have to be the highest bidder in order to be the first listing.

- Nick -

With this in mind we thought we would use the information that the external keyword tool provides to estimate the cost of optimising for a couple of phrases, organic vs PPC.

You can see we have taken the average search volume for the phrases ‘air conditioning’ and ‘web design’, then the click through rate or CTR based on 3%. 3 -5 % is pretty average for CTR (Click through rate), but it can vary with each campaign. We have then multiplied the CTR with the CPC or cost per click to get a monthly cost.

So as you can see for ‘air conditioning’ it would cost on average £1200 per month to be in position 1-3 on Google Adwords, to be position one constantly it would it would undoubtedly cost most. Organically Creare would charge somewhere in the region of £500 per month for this phrase.

The other phrase we analyzed ‘web design’ would cost Creare over £5000 per month to be in position 1-3 on Google’s sponsored listings, so our organic listing provides us a much more profitable return on investment.

- James -

Of course you do have to remember that with Pay Per Click the results are instant, but with organic SEO there are a large amount of factors which contribute to a site performing in a search engine organically. What this means is that an organic campaign has a time scale attached to it. Going back to what we said at the start, organic will provide a better ROI, but you have to patient and expect to see a fluctuation in results until the domain reaches the required authority to list in the top 3 positions.

- Nick -

There is no reason of course that you cannot run Pay Per Click campaigns along side your organic strategy in order to reap the benefits of both. Thanks for watching if you have any question or comments please leave them on You tube or the supporting blog post.

Enquiro eye tracking report on Google

How The Psychology Of Shopping Can Help Your Website Succeed.

It may not necessarily be the most obvious theory but if your business could do with a boost, you need to think about your last shopping trip. How many items did you really need that were thrown into your trolley? Half? A quarter?

And why did you buy them? Not because you needed them but because of where the items were placed, the packaging and the colours, so you may want to think about these things when you want to make an impact on your target audience.

Supermarkets have proven the same theory for years. The way they position ‘not to be missed’ bargains, the colour scheme, lighting and even the temperature help to make more sales than if these features weren’t in place.

With your website you need to think in the same way as a Supermarket; colours, layout, content and exposure to make your visitors think they’ve just grabbed the best bargain of the century.

SEO comprises of different components that all work together to get traffic, conversions and aid your business. With this in mind, you need to think about how all these components work together to create the perfect web design and SEO campaign.

Colours:

This plays a large part in any web design or SEO campaign. Depending on the type of cliental you are trying to attract, you need to think carefully about what colours you have within your logo, throughout your site and within images.

There are many theories behind the use of colours and any supermarket knows this. Looking at major chains like Asda, Tesco and Sainsburys, they all attract different people, but there are those in particular that will favour one over the rest. Admittedly this may not be in relation to their colour scheme, but how they present themselves and the connotations with brand within their store.

Layout:

Ever noticed how you have to go through many different aisles just to pick up a loaf of bread?
The layout of your website should entice people to dig a little deeper for information without confusing them. Obvious page titles, tags and categories, should be apparent to ensure people delve deeper but come across things as they search for what they want.

Content:

We are enticed by what smell, hear and feel. But more so by what we see. Great bargains, attractive text and promotions in all the right places are what entice us to popping something in our basket rather than leaving it on a shelf.

When writing for SEO, keep the three A’s in mind; achievement, aim and audience.

You need to ensure that your content grabs your consumers not bores them and reassure people they need your product not just want it.
Content doesn’t just end with what’s on your website, get promoting in other ways to gain maximum exposure reminding your customer of your great product and service that they must have.

The psychology of supermarket shopping lies deeper than you can imagine, and it works every minute of every day, worldwide. Ensure you make the most your SEO and help people put more in their basket than they need before they check out.

Yesterday, Matt Cutts blogged about an official Google post on synonyms by Google engineer, Steven Baker, and how they affect search results. I find this a very interesting subject, and one that is clearly very relevant for SEO.

The fact that Google can understand many synonyms, I find amazing, because as Steven Baker states:

“An irony of computer science is that tasks humans struggle with can be performed easily by computer programs, but tasks humans can perform effortlessly remain difficult for computers.”

The tasks that computers find difficult are the understanding of the nuances of language. The English language, like all languages, has many subtleties that as humans we can understand effortlessly. Many of our words have more than one meaning, where the context in which they are placed makes all the difference to our understanding of them.

Steven Baker used the example of ‘pictures’ and ‘photos’ meaning the same thing within certain contexts. Google has the ability to understand that these two very different words can mean the same thing, and I think Google are right to be proud of such an achievement.

How does this affect SEO?

Well, the advice from Google has always been to use synonyms where possible. You should think about other terms, such as slang, for the same word and use those within your text as much as you can to ensure your copy is relevant for as many searches as possible. Where one person may call a USB drive a ‘flash drive’ and another may call it a ‘thumb drive’ you will need to make sure that both these terms are present on your page in order to be successful.

You shouldn’t just cram these words into your content, but make it read as naturally as possible, because there is nothing worse than clumsy, keyword stuffed text. You should always have your end users at the forefront of your mind when composing text for online consumption. So, make your text readable but include synonyms where possible, to ensure you get the best from your content.

Finding Invaluable Information In Half The Time With Social Media

I recently wrote a blog post ‘Social Media Marketing For SEO.’ It observed the ways that businesses used social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook successfully as part of their online marketing campaign.

I briefly mentioned how taking inspiration from the techniques that others were using could significantly improve your social media activity. One thing that I did not mention was that using these popular sites could also help towards other aspects of your online marketing.

Put simply, Twitter and Facebook are excellent platforms for asking for advice and taking a look at the latest topics of interest. I found an example of this in a blog post written by Brad Shorr on his website, Word Sell, Inc.

Brad mentioned that he was suffering from a case of writers block and sent out a tweet asking for help with a topic for his latest blog post. Within minutes other users had replied with some excellent ideas. This is a prime example of a social media website being used by a brand/business as a community platform wherein others in the industry can exchange ideas and improve their individual brands.

If users are following the right people, for example industry leaders, social media websites offer businesses the opportunity to quickly and easily access invaluable resources, advice and scan through up to the minute industry news and information.

Article marketing is a technique used by SEO consultants to increase the number of back links and traffic to a website. Social media websites could be used by online marketing companies to ask for advice for articles.

The SEO/web design industry is developing at an extremely fast pace with new products and software developing all the time. Social media websites are a great place for discussion about these new products, by sending out a simple question, ‘what do you think about …..’ businesses are presented with independent reviews, without having to search through numerous review websites.

These points are just a selection that Brad mentioned as things he has accomplished using social media websites:

• Getting feedback
• Finding ideas for blog posts/copy
• Finding new clients
• Discussing certain products/innovations in the industry
• Finding out more about other businesses and their activity

What this shows, is that social media websites are extremely important for any online marketing campaign, if the business knows how to use it. There are various resources on the internet and even the social media websites themselves, showing how this can be achieved.

Script:

Hi and welcome to this weeks SEO video blog, The news this week is that Google are threatening to stop censoring its search results in the Chinese Google and possibly stop trading all together. This is partly due to a recent attack on Google mail users, a colleague of mine has recently written an article discussing this further so check that out on the Creare blog.

We thought this week we would take look at the SEO friendly plug-ins currently available for Firefox.

SEO For Firefox - This tool provided by the SEOBook.com is one of the most popular tools available, providing the user with a wide range of information from identifying that a link is follow or no-follow to analysis within search result itself. You can see the in the example, information is shown in the search result. Some popular statistics are Alexa rank, Dmoz listing, Cached date, Twitter, Yahoo Position and various social bookmarks.

Joost de valk - We have mentioned this tool in a previous video blog, the tool essentially details information about backward links and works as an ‘add on’ for Yahoo Site Explorer and Google’s Webmaster Tools. As you can see in the example the anchored text appears along with the Page Rank. The text is colour coded to represent if the link if ‘follow’, ‘nofollow’ or is displayed red if the link isn’t found on the web page shown.

Google Toolbar - This provides you with various tools, the ones that we use on a regular basis are Google page rank and the Highlight feature, the highlight feature highlights the search terms found with in the current web page, from the last Google query. We can see both of these features being used in the example video.

SEopen - An excellent tool that allows an user to quickly find information out about a specific web page. The main features include Yahoo! backlinks, Indexed pages, Google backlinks, cached dates, Pagerank check, Alexa overview and many more.

We have linked to all the Firefox plug-ins on the supporting blog post.

• SEO for Firefox
• SEOpen
• Google Toolbar
• Joost De Valk

Thanks for watching, if you have any questions of comments please leave them on the Youtube channel or blog.