Step Wise SEO

Every major search engine, as well as plenty of minor search engines and independent websites both large and small, displays paid listings today.

Most of these listings are provided by the two major U.S. pay-per-click services, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM).

MSN is poised to jump into the fray with MSN adCenter.

Here are two elements of paid placement that you may encounter:
• Pay-per-click advertising
• Paid inclusion

Pay-per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) is generally an auction-based system, with advertisers jockeying for their listings’ positions based on bid price.

Until recently, the PPC auction was a fairly straightforward system in which a higher bid resulted in a higher rank.

Now, Google and YSM are both gravitating toward a more complex method for determining PPC ranks.

In Google AdWords, for example, the PPC algorithm is called a Quality Index, and it awards position based on several factors, including click-through rate, cost, and relevance of the ad text.

So if you were looking to PPC as a way to skirt around the Eternally Hidden Algorithm, we’re sorry to say there’s one to puzzle over in PPC as well.

The winds of change are blowing especially hard in the world of PPC, so do your best to stay in the know.

Both Google AdWords and YSM offer an opt-in feature that will display your listings on partner sites in addition to their own search engines.

In this system, called contextual advertising, your listings are algorithmically matched to the content of the page where they are displayed.

You can manage your contextual campaigns separately from your search-based PPC ads.
 

Competition between PPC services has resulted in some significant advances in campaign tracking, click fraud prevention, and geographic targeting, and these improvements are expected to continue.

The bad news is that there are so many products out there-even within the same PPC service-that the potential for confusion is very high.

With more and more site owners adopting PPC, the online help systems are rather robust. But there are lots of people who choose to outsource PPC management because it can be a real headache.

It can be done in-house, though, and it doesn’t have to be that difficult if you start small and focus on the basics.

PPC is really unmatched in the power it gives you over your listing: what it says, who sees it, and when.

Paid inclusion
Robots aren’t perfect, and there are plenty of reasons that a robot may not be able or willing to index every page on your site.

Paid inclusion is a service offered by some search engines that provides a workaround for these imperfections by allowing you to submit a list of URLs that you want them to index and recrawl on a frequent basis.

Usually these services also allow you to submit your own dolled-up description of each page and to view basic statistics of the traffic that flows from the search engine to your paid URLs.

Paid inclusion does not guarantee a boost in ranks, but it often does guarantee more frequent spidering and, in some cases, the very attractive possibility of having your own description used in the listing instead of a text snippet.

Paid inclusion in this form is currently offered only by Yahoo! (MSN and Ask dropped their programs in 2004).

Google, which never offered a paid inclusion service, now offers a free version of paid inclusion, called Google Sitemaps.

Whenever the subject comes up, the general consensus of the SEO community
is that the death of paid inclusion is imminent.

One reason is that the search engines’ ability to index pages has improved steadily over the years.

Combine that improvement with the pressure of Google’s free Sitemaps service and who knows? Maybe paid inclusion will be nothing more than a memory soon.

SEO Trendspotting
SEO trends move fast, so it’s OK to jump in where you are! Use this primer to get clued in to some of the current jargon and trends in SEO.

Personalized Search Coming soon to a search engine near you: personalized search, meaning search results that vary based on the searcher’s profile and past behavior.

Personalized search may be applied to organic or PPC results and could be used to target users who, for example, have made certain previous searches or have made online purchases within the last 48 hours.

In organic SEO, personalized search would throw a wrench in the works by making rank tracking nearly impossible and adding further complication to already mysterious ranking algorithms. But in PPC, it has excellent potential as a targeting tool.

Social Search
Social search is any system that uses community-sourced information to determine search results.

Although social search is still only a small percentage of overall search traffic, it’s a trend to watch.

There have been many attempts in the past to incorporate the wisdom of the masses into search results, but social search really hit the big time when Yahoo! bought up several companies that use this type of system (flickr and delicious are the most well known) in 2005 and 2006.

Mobile Search
Mobile search is like one of those up-and-coming neighborhoods that never quite ups and comes.

Web developers are still working out the kinks of building websites in formats that can be viewed on mobile phones and handheld devices.

Meanwhile, search engines, most notably Google and Yahoo!, are working hard to place themselves in the middle of this growing search sector, especially by combining local and mobile search.

The SEO community remains on the sidelines, watching and waiting to see if mobile search will ever really take off.

Persona/Scenario
Not a new marketing concept, but one that is making its way into mainstream SEO. This is simply a more creative and in-depth way of defining a site’s target user than with simple demographics.