Amazon has just announced its latest sales results for the last quarter showing  sales of $6.57 billion and with that it also provided some figures that revealed in excess of  $1 billion of product sales from mobile devices for the last 12 months. That puts the percentage of sales from mobiles compared to desktops at nearly 5% of all its online sales activity.

I have just added a plugin to my Wordpress blog that allows readers to go to my blog and read it easily from a mobile,  so on seeing those numbers I decided to look at my blogs Google analytics and guess what they were very similar at 4.29%. (here is the screen shot from my Google Analytics)

These numbers maybe don’t seem very significant but getting an extra 4-5% of traffic or revenue (in Amazons case) can add up over time.  (the other numbers that I found of interest was that the average time on site is 41% less than normal desktop viewing..so writing snack size articles becomes even more important and that the Apple iPad was by far the most used mobile device.. only 3 months after launch!!).

Some recent research by Morgan Stanley titled “Internet Tends 2010” backs up Amazons numbers showing that the growth of mobile internet  far exceeding what the speed of growth of desktop internet in its first 7 quarters with Apple leading the charge.

I have only had my Apple iPhone for about 12 months and I am certainly noticing that my use for all sorts of web activity is rapidly increasing when I am out and about (whether that be for email, browsing or searching) and I don’t think it will be long until my mobile internet viewing will pass 10%  of  my blog traffic.

In fact Morgan Stanley are predicting that mobile internet use will exceed desktop within 5 years. The mobile internet is here and growing rapidly and cannot be ignored.

So is your blog or website optimized for mobile?

There is a saying in the offline world of real estate that there are three things that are critical when considering buying property and they are position, position, position!!

In the online digital universe there are also three things that are vital to your web presence or online store and that is ranking, ranking, ranking!!

In fact the online world is in essence no different to real estate in that the position of your website on a search ranking page (SERP) can be the difference in 2010 between your business being a success or a failure.

Getting found online when people type in a phrase or keyword is now so important that companies can rise or fall due to their results in a Google search when customers are looking online for your products and services that you sell.

Search engine optimization (also known as SEO) is the art and science of moving a website or blog up in search ranking results and needs to be factored into the building and ongoing optimizing of websites and blogs for your business.

How important is it to be on the first page or ideally ranking number one on the first page?
How important is ranking to get people to click through to your site when there are thousands of other companies competing to be on page one?
It is now known to be absolutely critical as research shows that 93% of all buying decisions start with an online search.

To put this into some perspective here are some statistics regarding click through traffic based upon the position that a page receives when entered into a search engine (this is from a study leaked from AOL’s search engine logs):

1. The first ranking position in the search results receives 42.25% of all click-through traffic
2. The second position receives 11.94%
3. Third position on the first page obtains 8.47%
4. The fourth placed position on page one receives 6.05%
5. The others on the first page are under 5% of click through traffic
6. The first ten results (page one ) received 89.71% of all click-through traffic
7. The next 10 results (normally listed on the second page of results) received 4.37%
8. Third page receives a total of 2.42 %
9. The fifth page receives a total of only 1.07%
10. All other pages of results received less than 1% of total search traffic clicks.

These figures were obtained are from an article titled “Beginners Guide to to SEO” that is certainly worth a read and which you can download from one of the top blogs on search engine optimisation, “SEO moz.com“.

Investing in “Search Engine Optimisation” consultancy services can greatly improve your chances of appearing on the first page of Google and should be considered as a high priority when building and maintaining your website or blog.

What I also found from this source was that being listed at the top of the results not only provides the greatest amount of traffic, but instills trust in consumers as to the worthiness and relative importance of the company/website.

To summarize you give your website a nearly 43% chance of being clicked on if you rank number one on Google. If you are on the second page you only giving your website a 4% chance of being found via a Google search. 

So do you think that investing in SEO might be worthwhile seeing that 93% of all buying decisions start with an online search?

Do you optimize your website or blog for search?

Your online store can be a bit of an impersonal place and the challenge with an ecommerce store is trying to make the experience online as close to the bricks and mortar in store experience as possible.

There are a few ways to provide a more social and humanized experience online that makes the online store and the brand more real and authentic rather than plastic and remote.

1. Online Video Reviews
A lot of web sites still use stock photos of people who look like models that have just stepped out of a Vogue shoot. It is actually better to use real people from your company that can demonstrate the products with the knowledge and passion that no one outside of your brand can bring. Zappos is a very successful online store that has utilised this approach very successfully and as consequence have improved their stores conversion rate from 6-30% through the use of two minute online video reviews of their products which are primarily shoes as well as clothing. Some other examples of this can be found at OnlineShoes.com and Tiger Direct where both incorporate video reviews from staff on product pages. All you need is a Flip video camera and a good tripod, it does not need to be an expensive production.

2. Live Chat

Another strategy to humanize the digital store is using a ‘Live Chat’ feature. Again the objective is to make it ‘real’ rather than  fake. A good example of this is  Backcoutry’s live chat where they use actual photo of employees. This humanizes the brand

3. Include a Blog

If you have a look at some of the best online stores and how they implement social media to humanize the brand and make it authentic then Zappos again is a great example with a multiple number of blogs. These blogs include videos that are both serious and humourous. Humour is a large part of the human experience so including some fun where appropriate can really make a difference. The other benefit with a blog is that allows people to make comments and so enables two way conversations with customers and provides a transparent feedback loop that provides the company with another channel to listen and modify its store and service to meet the needs of customers.

4. Setup a Facebook Page

 Facebook was originally conceived as a personal socializing site for university and college students to connect and has developed into a  global social network where companies, groups and individuals can search, conect, share and promote in a media rich environment. Companies are using it in creative ways  and are running competitions, providing resources and allowing open updates and feeback from the brands fans. It allows the online store owner to have a platform where they can show the companies human face where its customers are hanging out. Paid promotions can be tightly targetted to the  right vertical  markets and demographic groups. Dell provides an example of enhancing it’s online store by providing a Facebook presence including tutorials on how to setup social media for SME’s.

5. Create Multiple Twitter Accounts 

There are quite a few companies that have multiple Twitter accounts such as one for  service another for sales and promotions that are managed by different employees. What this does is that allows the employees personality to shine through even if it is only in 140 characters. Also by having multiple Twitter accounts you can improve your search engine ranking by the sheer volume of your brand being out there because search engines search Twitter in real time especially since the recent evolution of Google’s search engine with Google Caffeine.  Companies that are using multiple Twitter accounts include companies such as Starbucks, Dell and Zappos. In fact Zappos encourages the whole gang to tweet.

So how can you humanize and socialize your online store to turn your customers into a raving tribe of fans?

On the 8th of June 2010 Google announced the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine.

What Is Caffeine?

Caffeine is a new web indexing system that provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches compared to Google’s previous index and it’s the largest collection of web content they’ve offered.  Caffeine was built with the future in mind.  It is built on a robust foundation that allows for an even faster and more comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results.

You can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published.  Caffeine allows for indexing of web pages on an enormous scale.  Every second, Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel.   Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day

Why the change?
Due to growing content on the web in both size and numbers as well as the introduction of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average web page is richer and more complex.  Also, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish. To keep up with the evolution of the web and to meet rising user expectations, Google built Caffeine.

How does it work?
The image below illustrates how Google’s old indexing system worked compared to Caffeine.

 The old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks.  To refresh a layer of the old index, Google would analyse the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when they found a page and when they made it available.

With Caffeine, they analyse the web in small portions and update the search index on a continuous basis, globally. As they find new pages, or new information on existing pages, they can add these straight to the index, resulting in fresher information than ever before – no matter when or where it was published. 

The implications for SEO now, both online and offline
Caffeine is more accurate at presenting high quality websites relating to a specific keyword phrase.   Google no longer uses the keywords found in the “meta keyword” HTML tag but searches for the keywords that have the most density in the first 50 words of the page. More emphasis is now placed on original, unique content and bounce rate. High quality inbound links with keywords in the link anchor text are even more important now than ever before.   Caffeine also evaluates the popularity of the sites the links come from as well as the number of different sites that the links come from.  A high number of links from a single Blog site will not lead to high keyword density. This makes the use of many different Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Linked-IN, Digg, etc., even more important now with unique content coming from each site.  Posting the same content on different sites will not increase your keyword density like it did in the past.

Google Caffeine places increased importance to Page Speed. How fast a website loads will have a determining effect on its ranking in the search results. Page Speed further depends on a variety of factors such as your HTML content, CSS, JavaScript, use of images and graphics, domain hosting and so on.

Caffeine aims to give users a richer serving of blended search results for their queries. In addition to multimedia content i.e. images and videos, Caffeine brings to you updates from Twitter feeds, Facebook entries and MySpace updates. Caffeine will search for rich and relevant content and inbound links.

Brand new domains would have to struggle to make their way up in Google Caffeine results. This is because Caffeine places more importance on the age of your domain name i.e. the amount of time since it was first registered. It also seems to give more weightage to domain names that contain the exact search phrase.

Google has increased the index for a number of search phrases. Because of the increased speed of crawling pages, Google is now able to index more pages than it did earlier. One can expect to see your newer pages show up in the index (but not necessarily well-ranked) sooner. Speed of indexation is good, but a bigger index means that you have even more work to do to keep yourself visible. You will likely have to do less work to become seen by Google, but more work to be visible to searchers.

Resources

1. The Official Google Blog
2. Google Blog Site
3. WMTIPS.com
4. The Sydney Morning Herald
5. PCWorld.com
6. EzineArticles.com
7. Burceclay.com.au Global Internet Marketing Solutions 

 Here are some numbers

• Comscore announced that 45.4 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in an average month during the December to February period, 2010
• This is up 21 percent from the three months ending November 2009.
• Android phone app downloads to hit 800 Million in 2010
• The iPhone will continue to be the leading app platform, with a database of over 200,000 applications offering niche and localized content
• Apple iPhone downloads have exceeded 3 Billion at the start of 2010
• ABI Research reported that just under six billion mobile applications will be downloaded in 2010
• Smartphone OS-based phones will grow at more than a 30% compound annual growth rate for the next five years globally

I was attending CeBit this week and  there was a presentation by a “Mobile App” specialist Jeremy Samuel from AppsWiz.com and he opened my eyes to the increasingly omnipresent mobile market and how bloggers and corporate website owners cannot continue to ignore the smartphone app markets compelling growth.

One of the case studies mentioned was about the pizza  chain “Dominos” which after lanching its mobile app (read review here) drove over $2 million in sales to its stores in just 3 months.With the Domino’s Mobile App you can:

• View the full Domino’s menu
• Place an order
• See your current order
• Track your order
• View other information such as surcharges and the company’s privacy policy

So what is a “Mobile App”?

A mobile app is a small program that sits on your mobile phone and does something for you. With the power of today’s phones, apps can do some really great things - from letting you know what’s going on in your area, to calculating exchange rates, movie times, social media interactions, alerting you to traffic information, providing entertainment and letting you know about special offers. There are over 200,000 mobile applications out there today performing a huge range of tasks.

So what should you keep in mind before ignoring the constant knocking on your door of an opportunity whose time has come.

1. If you do develop an App for mobile let everyone know about it through email, website, SMS  and Twitter
2. Add mobile value by including content and functionality that are location based or time sensitive
3. Just like social media don’t sell but provide content that adds value to people’s lives such as weather reports for bike riders that are location driven
4. Develop a Mobile App that becomes a part of a persons daily lives and hopefully becomes indispensable
5. Remember that with iPhone or mobile app your webiste or blog presence is just one or two slides or touches away on that persons phone anywhere anytime,
6. It’s about convenience
7. Mobile apps have broad reach  so develop apps that can viewed on as many mobile platforms as possible including, iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia and Android
8. You can use the App to drive traffic to your bricks and mortar store
9. Announce “Specials” to your readers (online shoppers love a bargain)
10. You can announce an “Event”
11. The mobile internet market is growing at a much faster rate than fixed internet
12. The developing world’s connection to the internet is much more mobile centric than the Western world’s fixed line communications infrastructure
13. 75% of our planet is still not connected to the Internet so the potential over the coming decades is substantial
14. It will differentiate you from your competition
15. You create deeper engagement
16. Drive more loyalty
17. You get to put your branding on your customers phones
18. Your business is provided with great feedback
19. It is going to drive more revenue and ultimately more profits
20. It enables easy sharing of your content between mobile users
21. Reduce costs to your business through automation
22. It could even stop you getting a speeding fine and keep your licence… Trapster.com app tells you when there is a speed camera nearby.

So what sort of “Mobile App” could you develop for your website or blog  that adds value to your readers, customers  or prospects?

The original post at Jeffbullas.com

 The challenge for each business whether it a start up or an existing enterprise is the challenge of continuing to grow. This ongoing challenge is repeated every day. It doesn’t matter if it is an online store or a bricks and mortar enterprise the principles remain the same.

Here are “Seven Ways To Grow Your Business” and some tips and examples on how a well designed and featured online presence can help you in all seven areas.

1. Attract new potential customers (lead generation)

Website solution example: Provide online enquiry forms on your website and blog that allow people to easily enquire about your services by sending an email to your business in just 60 seconds by filling in a simple form on your website

2. Turn more of those potential customers into customers (sales conversion).

Website solution example: Provide informative compelling and valuable content on your website that keeps people and prospects coming back time and time again until they are so compelled by your expertise and passion for your industry, products and services that they want to buy from you because they see you as the best in your industry

3.Keep more of those customers from defecting to your competition (retention rate)

Website solution example: Continue to add value to your clients through forums, user groups and online resources via a secure area of your website that they don’t even think about leaving 

4.Get those customers to do business with you more often (transaction frequency)

Website solution example: Design and implement an informative email newsletter (not high pressure sell, sell sell emails) that is integrated with your blog posts that continue to remind clients (by keeping you top of mind) so that they will buy from you more frequently.

5.Encourage them to spend more money with you each time they buy (‘average sale’ or ‘transaction value’)

Website solution example: An example of how online technology can assist with this is the new eCommerce platforms such as Magento that provides the latest technology that automates reminders while the online buyer is filling in the shopping cart or browsing to buy another item.

6.Reduce the Cost of Goods Sold (profit improvement)

Website solution example:  Automating processes using your website while improving your customer service can be achieved using online forums where other customers provide crowd sourced answers to other clients questions that can reduce the load on your service staff and can significantly reduce staff costs.

7.Reduce the Expenses (profit improvement)

 Website solution example: The ability for brochures to made available online can significantly reduce expenses by minmizing expensive printed marketing collateral that can be distributed electronically even while you sleep with no postage costs.

Which of these areas do you focus on the most in your business and could some of these do with some improvement?

If you’re like most people, you spend most of your time focusing on point number 1 – attracting new potential customers or generating leads.

And while you focus all your attention on this area, you can end up neglecting other areas which are potentially even more profitable for their business.

Moreover, while you focus all your time on attracting new leads, you’re actually missing ‘big picture’ sales and profit opportunities that often take far less effort but can have a much bigger impact.

That’s because small, incremental increases across several of the seven ways listed above actually leads to a disproportionately large increase in total revenue and/or profit.

The business growth formula looks something like this:

·     Leads generated X Conversion rate X Retention rate = Total customers

·     Total customers X Transaction frequency X Transaction value = Total sales

·     Total sales minus Cost of goods minus Expenses = Profit

So, do you need to integrate and implement online elements such as email marketing, a website or a blog with a call to action and valuable content that continues to bring visitors back again and again or is your business making so much money that it doesn’t matter. Would love to read your comments below.

The other not insignificant statistic that businesses should keep in mind is that 93% of buying decisions start with an online search and if you don’t have a web presence it makes it a little difficult (to say the least) to turn up in the search results and people to make an enquiry and consequently buy, if you don’t have a website.

A recent Nielsen Online survey also showed that 43% of  Australia’s online spending last year went to international retailers. This compares to just 14% in 2005. This reflects that Australian retailers are not providing a good enough online eCommerce opportunity, experience and value for money for consumers to buy from them rather than take their business overseas. There are new eCommerce technology platforms and solutions such as “Magento” that can fill that need by providing the solution and technology to  make it easy for consumers to buy online.

There is another fact that provides some food for thought and that is that the percentage of Australia’s online retail spend compared to the total retail spend is only 3% whereas the figures for the USA shows their share to be 8% of total retail dollars. So there is a major opportunity for Australian retailers to grow sales by going online as the trend for people to buy online continues to increase strongly.

So here are 10 questions that you as a business owner and bricks and mortar retailer need to be asking yourself before continuing to stay on the web sidelines.

1. Do you even have a web presence (website or even a blog)?
2. Are you still spending money on advertising in the Yellow Pages and still getting the same number of leads?
3. Are you still spending a majority of your marketing dollars on direct mail marketing with reduced effectiveness?
4. Are you marketing by fax broadcasts, or have you moved into the 21st century?
5. Are you still “thinking” about having a website for your company, rather than taking action “NOW”?
6. Have you heard of social media for business, that spreads your business content and message by referral and digital word of mouth online?
7. Do most of our reps still cold call as the main way of driving enquiries or is your website taking enquiries while you sleep, ready to follow the next morning?
8. Do you use print media for most of your advertising dollars, or is  your media now predominantly online on your website ?
9. Could we enhance our bricks and mortar stores with an online retail store?
10. How do I get started?

So if you are still thinking that not having a web presence is not damaging your business you need to think again.

If you want people to find your business online as 93% of people are now doing and you want them to then buy from you, then you should start taking action now, or be prepared for a slow extinction.

I thought it would be worth having a look at the growth rate of the top online retailers to see what is happening in the market.

In this article we will look at the top 5 and in the next post we will then see who are the other 5 online retailers who make up the top 10.

In the US Web retail sales make up 8% of total retail sales at $155 Billion whereas in Australia the figure is only 3%. This highlights the opportunity for retailers in Australia to take their offline business online as Australia will certainly close the gap over time as people become more comfortable with shopping online.

So who are the top 5 Australian online retailers?

In order of  rank

1. DealsDirect.com.au

2. CatchoftheDay.com.au

3. BigpondMusic.com.au

4. oo.com.au

5. OzSale.com.au

In the graphic below it shows the growth of these retailers over the last 12 months with growth ranging from just over 80% to over 2,800% with an average growth of 977%.

DealsDirect

DealsDirect is the biggest online department store in Australia. Founders Paul Greenberg and Michael Rosenbaum regularly boast about their huge 40,000 square metre storage area, housing everything from bedspreads to kitchenware. The company has 120 employees. The site is immensely popular, recording the highest brand recall out of any Australian shopping site at 14%, according to Hitwise. Its biggest drawing card is its bargains, with the site constantly updating new products with low prices.

Catch of the Day

Australia has been hit with a wave of sites based on the successful US site Woot.com, with business selling only one product per day until sold out. Catch of the Day differs slightly by offering products from other sections of the site at once, but it is undoubtedly the most successful site of its kind operating in the country. Co-founded by Gabby Leibovich, the site is the fifth most popular shopping and classifieds site in the country. The company has also moved across into New Zealand, and is planning to launch spin off sites shortly. Catch of the Day is set to record $60 million in revenue for the current financial year

BigPond Music

Apple has dominated the digital music market with iTunes for years, and globally is the most significant player. But BigPond Music has managed to overtake it as the most popular digital music site in Australia, according to the most recent Hitwise data. BigPond is certainly attractive. It offers a similar pricing structure to Apple, without the digital rights management issues. There are discounts for BigPond members and it is a fairly simple site to navigate. While Apple is surely getting the majority of sales, the amount of traffic going BigPond’s way indicates this is a growing business.

Oo.com.au

Oo, another department store, opened in 2005 and offers thousands of products in dozens of different categories. Once again, its message is simple – to offer the cheapest price possible. During 2008-09, the company recorded $30 million in revenue. While the company would not reveal too many details for recent figures, it said the last four months have seen average year-on-year growth of 38%, and that traffic has doubled in the same period.

OzSale

This private online shopping club sells a range of items, but specifically focuses on fashion. It works by announcing a sale every morning which runs for a limited amount of time, usually a few days. Members are able to shop for the merchandise, which is usually heavily discounted, and even earn gift vouchers for every friend they have register who makes a purchase. Extremely popular among fashion fans, OzSale record revenue during 2008-09 of about $20 million.

The marketing to drive traffic to the online store is certainly key to driving sales. The success of Facebook and Twitter has seen hundreds of companies gain sales and customers through the use of fan pages, word of mouth, content marketing via blogs and customer service.

Computer manufacturer Dell now sells products through its Facebook store, with countless companies using Twitter as a customer service channel. Others use Facebook as a basis to connect with younger demographics, and offer exclusive deals and coupons.

Offline retailing still has its place but the clear trend is for businesses to start moving online – and fast.

Emerging and fast growing eCommerce technology platforms like Magento are also making it easier for companies to set up an online store in a matter of weeks and provide all the features of  the web retailers mentioned in this article.

It is actually great to see that the traditional bricks and mortar brands have only one in the Top 5 with Telstra’s online music store “Big Pond Music”. The other major offline brands are starting to make their presence felt but there is certainly an opportunity for fresh start ups to make their mark on the Australian online retail scene.

Are you thinking about starting an online retail store?

The 5 SEO Secrets to Rank High in Search and Google

A Google search has become the most important way to find information whether that be for work, play and even finding shopping bargains online. Optimizing your website for search engines is popularly known as SEO or Search Engine Optimization and has become absolutely vital as an integral part of your marketing in the never ending quest to be found online and high in a Google search.

This was highlighted in a rather quirky and fun way recently when I caught up with some friends and in the course of the conversations that were happening across and around the table, I asked a question that no one was able to answer, so one of  the group said “Hang on, let me ask Lord Internet” so she subsequently pulled out her iPhone and “Googled” the answer.

I remember years ago before search engines came to light before the mid 1990’s that if you wanted to find information and do research it was off to the local or university library to find what you were looking for. Scanning the key card indexes and then walking up and down the bookshelves was integral to study and consumed so much time and energy.

Generation “I” (those that have grown up knowing nothing but the “Internet”) take the Web for granted just like eating and breathing and know nothing about how difficult and time consuming it was to track down important and relevant articles and books that you needed to write those essays.

Early search engines like Altavista in 1995 provided search results that opened up the world to finding information with speed and quantity that was frankly amazing. The issue was that the results that were served up in the early days of search were not often relevant and sorting out the information you wanted from the enormous amount of data was very time  consuming with the relevant websites and information not often at the start of the search but buried at page twenty.

So what are 5 Key factors that modern search engines use that you need to know so you can rank high in a Google search.

5 Key Ranking Factors

1.  Key Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links (Anchor Text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. In modern browsers, it is usually blue and underlined)

2. External Link Popularity (External Links are hyperlinks that point at (target) any domain other than the domain the link exists on ..eg the source).

Today, the major search engines use many metrics to determine the value of external links. Some of these metrics include:

• The trustworthiness of the linking domain.
• The popularity of the linking page.
• The relevancy of the content between the source page and the target page.
• The anchor text used in the link.
• The amount of links to the same page on the source page.
• The amount of domains that link to the target page.
• The amount of variations that are used as anchor text to links to the target page.
• The ownership relationship between the source and target domains.

Note: In addition to these metrics, external links are important for two main reasons:

• Popularity
• Relevancy

3. Diversity of Link Sources (links from many unique root domains)

Explanation: Domain names are the human readable Internet addresses of websites. Root domains, which are identified by their domain names, have extensions such as .com, .org, .net, etc. (Ex. http://www.example.com) Subdomains are a lower level component a root domain and precede the domain name. (Example. http://subdomain.domain.com)

A “Root” domain is the top level hierarchy of a domain. Root domains are purchased from registrars. The following are examples of root domains:

• *.example.com
• *.seomoz.org
• *.blogspot.com

A “Subdomain” is a “third level” domain name that is part of a larger, top level domain. For example, “blog.example.com” and “english.example.com” are both subdomains of the “.example.com” root domain. Subdomains are free to create under any root domain that a webmaster controls.

The two most common subdomain choices are: http://www.example.com (www is the subdomain) and http://example.com (has no subdomain)

4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag

(A title tag is the main text that describes an online document. It is the single most important on-page SEO element (behind overall content) and appears in three key places: Browser, Search Results Page and External Websites.

5. Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains (e.g. TrustRank, Domain mozTrust, etc.)

Explanation: mozTrust quantifies the trustworthiness of a web page relative to all of the other web pages on the web. It is based off of an algorithm developed by Yahoo! search engineers that is likely similar to the trust algorithms used by Google and Bing search engineers. Just as links express global link popularity, they also express information about the trustworthiness of URLs. Receiving links from sources which have inherent trust, such as the homepages of major university websites or certain governmental web pages, is a strong trust endorsement. By measuring the occurrence and frequency of these endorsements, mozTrust can quantify trust on the web.

Note: These 5 Key Ranking Factors are Courtesy of  Seomoz.org click on the hyperlinks in each of the 5 points to get a more in depth explanation

Google and other search engine’s are constantly fine tuning the importance of different key factors that make search relevant so when you are wanting to to rank high on a search you need to keep up to date onb the trends in online search.

So how is your website optimised for these 5 key ranking factors?

“When people refer to “organic SEO” (search engine optimization), they almost always use it as a blanket term to describe the unpaid, algorithm-driven results of any particular engine. However, a sophisticated search engine optimization company will often take the meaning of “organic” one step further.

To such companies, the “Organic SEO” is essentially 2 Things (but not only). These are

1. What shows up in the “natural” search engine results

2. Methodologies used to achieve such rankings, such as great content and utilizing social media like Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Technorati, Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon and other types of social media

A search engine optimization company usually falls into one of two camps.

1. A “White Hat” search engine optimization company will use a largely content-based approach and will not violate the terms of service of the major search engines.
2. A “Black Hat” search engine optimization company will use a largely technology driven approach and often ignore the terms of service.

Neither approach is invalid (by the way there is nothing illegal about violating a search engine’s terms of service), and both can achieve high rankings. But a search engine optimization company that takes the word “organic” literally believes that the “Black Hat” approach is anything but “organic SEO.”

Merriam Webster defines organic, in part, as “having the characteristics of an organism: developing in the manner of a living plant or animal.” To a search engine optimization company, this definition accurately describes the approach taken to achieve long-lasting results in the “natural” section of search engines

Below are just a few comparisons of the different approaches taken by the two types of SEO firms. For the sake of clarity, I refer to the two approaches as “Organic SEO” and “Artificial SEO.”

Content vs. Technical Loopholes

Content (Organic  SEO)

There’s an “old” saying in the SEO industry that “content is king.” This is not necessarily true. In my experience, good content is king. Study after study has shown that when people use search engines, they are primarily seeking one thing: information. They are not seeking to be impressed by fancy flash sites. They are not looking for a virtual piece of art.

Technical Loopholes  (Artificial SEO)

This embraces a technical-loophole philosophy, will allow a company to leave its Web site exactly as it is, because the work that such firms do is largely technical and is designed to trick the engine into showing content that it would not otherwise.Certainly, there are acceptable (from the engine’s standpoint) technical aspects that any good search engine optimization company will use, such as relevant page titles and meta tags. But there are many more unacceptable technical methodologies than acceptable ones, including cloaking, redirects, multiple sites, keyphrase stuffing, hidden links, and numerous others. A company practicing “organic SEO” will avoid these.

Attracting Links vs. Linking Schemes

Attracting Links (Organic SEO)

As any search engine optimization company knows, inbound links are critical to the success of an “organic SEO” campaign. But there are different ways to go about it. Firms that practice true “organic SEO” will look at the Web site itself and say, “How can we make this site something that other sites would want to link to?”

Linking Schemes ((Artificial SEO)

A search engine optimization company using “artificial SEO” will ask, “How can I get links pointing to this site without adding anything of value to it?” The latter approach usually leads to reciprocal linking schemes, link farms, the purchase of text links, and more—anything except making changes to the Web site that entice others to link to the site without the link being reciprocated, without paying the Web site owner, or without asking “pretty please.”

There is a stark contrast between “organic SEO” and “artificial SEO.” Of course, any decent search engine optimization company will make certain that a site is listed in all the popular directories, such as the Yahoo Directory, the Open Directory Project, and Business.com. A good search engine optimization company will also continually seek any industry specific directories where your site should be listed. But truly using “organic SEO” means evolving your site into something that holds actual value to your prospects. In my opinion, this is much more beneficial in the long run than the artificial methodology of trying to garner incoming links that the site does not truly deserve.

Creating a Valuable Resource (Organic SEO) vs. Algorithm Chasing (Artificial SEO)

Search engines change algorithms frequently, and for two reasons. One is, of course, to improve their results based on their most recent user studies. The other, which is obviously related, is to remove sites that are ranked artificially high.

Such updates raise panic in the SEO community, particularly among “artificial SEO” practitioners who have just discovered that their most recent and cherished trick no longer works (and may have gotten their clients’ sites removed from the engines altogether). It is not uncommon on the search engine forums to see the owner of such a search engine optimization company threatening to “sue Google” over a recent update. Not uncommon, but always amusing.

There is, with only a few exceptions, a common denominator in the Web sites that remain highly ranked throughout these algorithm shifts. They offer something of value to their visitors and are considered a resource for their industry. “Organic SEO” practitioners generally do not have to worry about going back and redoing work because of an algorithm shift. While an “artificial” search engine optimization company desperately tries to re-attain the rankings it lost for its clients (or to get the sites re-included in the search engine at all) because it was dependent on technical loopholes that have now been closed, “organic SEO” firms continue adding valuable content to a site, strengthening its value, and bolstering its rankings.

A common argument from companies when advised by “organic SEO” practitioners to take this approach is this: “We aren’t trying to provide a resource for our industry, we are trying to sell products or services.” That, in my opinion, is shortsighted. Remember, you are trying to reach prospects in all stages of the buying cycle, not just the low hanging fruit ready to buy now. Let your Web site, rather than your overpaid salesperson, be their resource to learn about your industry. Prospects are very likely to call you when they are ready to buy; after all, you’ve done so much for them already!

In addition, taking advantage of “organic SEO” to make your Web site an industry resource provides a tremendous natural boost to your rankings for your individual product or service pages. This means that with “organic SEO” you’ll get the best of both worlds: You’ll reach people early in the buying cycle, educate them, and steer them toward your solution by using your Web site instead of your sales personnel; you will also reach the low-hanging fruit because your individual product or service pages, which are intended for people who are ready to buy now, will get a significant rankings boost.

Learning From Engines (Organic SEO) vs. Learning How to Exploit Them (Artificial SEO)

As I have said many times before, search engines conduct very expensive and frequent studies on what their users want to see when they enter search queries. Obviously, no company has a more vested interest in serving up the type of results that their users want than the engines themselves.

“Organic SEO” firms will therefore take the “piggyback” approach. A search engine optimization company that uses “organic SEO” will try to learn what the results of these studies were by examining the sites that figure prominently in search engine results over long periods of time. In this way, the search engine optimization company is using “organic SEO” to make the Web site not only better for search engines but also for the user (presumably, the engine’s internal research has shown that these sites have what their users have consistently desired, study after study). “Artificial SEO” practitioners have no real interest in these studies; they are instead expending a great deal of energy finding the next technical loophole to exploit after their most recent one has failed.

The latter approach can make results erratic, but it also raises a larger issue—the goal of the campaign. If an “artificial” search engine optimization company finds a temporary loophole in an algorithm that brings your site to the top, but does not take the time to delve into the user experience once a user gets to the site, it will defeat the original purpose. You may get plenty of visitors, but a large percentage of them will be short-term visitors who do not find what they want on your site and back out without a second thought. The search engine optimization company did not “piggyback” on the engines’ research to learn what type of content users wanted to see when they entered their queries.

‘Organic’ Revisited (AKA ‘One Step Too Far’)

A search engine optimization company that takes a true “organic SEO” approach will actually take the Merriam Webster definition literally. A good Web site does have the characteristics of an organism and does develop in the manner of a living plant or animal. It builds upon itself. It learns how it should behave for its own benefit. Most importantly, it establishes its territory at the top of the search engine results. And as the organism thrives, artificial machine after machine fades into obsolescence.”

I would like to thank Scott Buresh who is is the founder and CEO of Medium Blue (http://www.mediumblue.com/), an award-winning search engine optimization company, for the best explanation I have come across about Organic SEO vs Artificial SEO.

In order to help show how effective social media really is with respect to rankings I’m going to use a sample article promoted by Best Rank, Inc.  The article in question was promoted only on Reddit.com and succesfully hit the front page.  If you’re forunate enough to achieve the front page of Reddit.com, you’ll know that your story gets pulled to Wired.com, Popurls.com, and many other mash-up sites across the web.  Below I’ve provided an overview of the keyword rankings, back links, and traffic generated by our social media marketing efforts:

URL: http://www.resourcenation.com/blog/top-iphone-applications-for-business-professionals

Page Title: Top iPhone Applications for Business Professionals
Reddit.com Title: Top iPhone Applications for Business Professionals
Original Promo Date: December 17th, 2008
Reddit Points : 19 Total, 87 up votes, 67 down votes
Yahoo Backlinks: 62

Search Engine Rankings Updated: February 4th, 2009

Google Analytics Data

Time Frame: 12/16/2008 - 2/4/2009

Total Page Views: 7,117
Google Organic Views: 3,191
Google Unique Keywords: 1,514

Note: If you have a look at the table above you will notice that three of the Key word phrases achieved a number one ranking on Google, and nine of the ten were all on page one, all from social media!!!

The above case study is a great example of how social media marketing helps organic SEO efforts, as also illustrated in the below picture:

What have we learned?

After analyzing the keyword ranking data and Google analytics metrics here are my thoughts:

• Social media links are effective when targeting mid to long tail keywords.  If your goal is to rank for highly competitive keywords then a more precise, anchor text controlled link building strategy is recommended to compliment your social media marketing efforts.
• Google appears to trust social media networks as a source for quality back links and appears to transfer link equity, even if most social sites nofollow their links.  It’s also important to note that the residual back links created by other, interested webmasters, will also help rankings.
• In most cases, social media marketing can help create a steady stream of organic traffic and fixed, longer tailed rankings (search engine rankings and organic traffic have been consistent since the 1st week of promotion).

Note: Refer to the Google analytics screenshot below for evidence on the consistency of organic traffic from Google.

Case Study 2: How Organic SEO Can Boost Traffic by Randy at helpdocuments.com

This what he had to say.

“While I can’t reveal the client’s name, I’d like to share the following case study to show you how organic SEO can boost your site’s traffic.

Background

Client academic institution came to me to initiate an Organic SEO campaign in order to increase site traffic. After reviewing the client’s needs, we agreed that I would conduct keyword research and carry out on-page optimization of the main pages within the client’s site. No link building or off-site promotion was carried out.

After the keyword research was completed, I implemented all SEO changes and uploaded the optimized changes to the client’s server on December 12, 2008.

Traffic Baseline

I set up the client’s site in Google Analytics to keep tabs on its progress before I began the keyword research. In order to establish monthly baseline traffic levels, Google Analytics was activated for the site more than 30 days before the SEO changes went live. This allowed me to establish (pre-SEO campaign) baseline statistics for the month immediately before taking the optimized version live. The following baseline site analytics were noted:

• The site received 1,808 visitors during the baseline month.
• The number of visitors arriving from all search engines was 442, or 24.45% of all traffic. (This is much lower than average, indicating in and of itself potential problems with search engines.)
• The number of visitors arriving from Google search was 401 for the baseline month.

SEO Results

After the SEO changes went live, the client began seeing results in the search engine ranking pages almost immediately. More importantly, traffic began building.

Takeaways

• In the first month, all traffic increased by 5.12% but the number of visitors arriving from the search engines increased by 40.46%. The traffic increase from Google alone was 74.58%.
• Over a two month period, all traffic increased by 24.49% but the number of visitors arriving from the search engines increased by 154.07%. The traffic increase from Google alone was 150.36%. While Google showed almost immediate results, other search engines took longer to respond to the SEO changes.
• Over the 60-day period, the volume of direct traffic (visitors typed in the URL) DROPPED by 36.26%; the volume of traffic coming from referrals (links) DROPPED by 8.72%.

The Value of SEO

Is there any question then, that organic SEO works? Keep in mind, there was NO link campaign, there were no PPC ads in place, and no other promotional activities took place during the period studied.

Clearly, SEO boosted the site’s traffic. In fact, when you consider that the traffic from non search engine sources DROPPED during that two-month period, I think you can easily say that if the client hadn’t implemented their SEO campaign, their site traffic would have declined over that 60-day period.

In my mind, the other thing this points out that you don’t need to go overboard if you want SEO to boost your site traffic. Here, the client just took advantage of keyword research services and on-page organic SEO to keep the project within their budget.”