Online retailers are still not taking full advantage of search
engine optimisation (SEO) opportunities with their Web sites, according
to a new study by search and interactive marketing agency Oneupweb.

In the study, “Once Again… There’s Still Money on the Table: Internet Retailer Study 2007,” Oneupweb looks at the SEO efforts of the top 100 retailers as rated by Internet Retailer magazine.

Oneupweb found:

• 20 percent of retailers’ sites were well-optimized
• 20 percent of retailers’ sites were moderately optimized
• 34 percent of retailers’ sites were nominally optimized
• 26 percent of retailers’ sites were not optimized at all

Sites were considered well optimised if they had unique and relevant
meta tags, optimised alt tags, and a large amount of indexable content.
Moderately optimised sites had unique meta tags, low to moderate
content, and minor site architecture problems. Sites were rated as
nominally optimised if they had only homepage titles and meta tags
optimised, little indexable content, keywords on homepage copied
throughout the site, site architecture or content management system
problems. Non-Optimised sites had no evidence of SEO at all.

While on-site SEO is not the only factor involved in search
engine rankings, Oneupweb found that 90 percent of the well-optimised
sites were positioned on the first page of Google results for at least
two keywords. In comparison, this study found that only 22 percent of
non-optimised sites appeared in the first Google search results page
for two or more keywords.

In these days of increasing online competition, most web site owners recognise the importance of marketing their sites, and not just assuming that they will be found. However, many are unsure whether they should promote their site with SEO (search engine optimisation) or PPC (pay per click advertising).

The answer is probably not that black and white, and in fact most websites work best if you incorporate a combination of SEO and PPC. The best mix will depend on your specific business goals and needs.

To help with the decision on when PPC or SEO is most relevant, outlined below are some of the advantages and disadvantages of each :

Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Advantages:

• Immediate Results : PPC generates traffic almost immediately - not in several months time. This makes it ideal for New sites which will take a while to be listed organically.
• Time based promotions : PPC ads are ideal for time dependent activities such as special offers, competitions, or seasonal sales .
• Control : PPC can be stopped or started whenever you wish - so you’ve got some control over traffic volume. If you are swamped with orders or enquiries you can turn PPC off until the backlog clears. PPC also provides a great deal of control over other aspects - such as budget, and even the geographical location or time of day your ds aree displayed.
• Testing : PPC ads allow you to relatively easily (and cheaply) test the effectiveness of different keyword phrases and landing pages.
• Search Engine Unfriendly : PPC ads can be used to promote sites that may not otherwise be found via search engines e.g. new sites, single page sites, or sites that for other reasons may be difficult to rank organically for.
• Keyword Range : PPC ads allow you to bid on a large range of keywords, including misspellings and other keyword variations that you don’t necessarily want on your web pages.

Disadvantages:

• Expense : PPC advertising can become expensive (with little or no return) if the wrong keywords are used, the bid price is not appropriate, or if the campaign is not managed.
• Fraud : Click fraud can be an issue - particularly for very competitive areas.

Major PPC provides such as Google Adwords, Yahoo and adCenter are offering much better tools for setting up and managing Adwords campaign,s however they can still be complex to manage effectively - if you advertise your website with PPC ads then you should seriously consider professional campaign management.

Search engine optimization (SEO):

Advantages:

• Cheap : Once established, traffic through organic search engine results is almost free.
• Long Term : Once optimised, your website should continue to deliver traffic for the long term.
• Cost Management : the number of visitors isn’t based on your budget - your budget doesn’t need to increase to increase traffic.

Disadvantages:

• Up Front overheads : SEO can be relatively time-consuming up-front.
• Long Term results : SEO is not usually a quick fix, results can take weeks or months to be achieved.
• Black Hat : be aware of some SEO techniques which are not approved of by Search Engines, these can sometimes have reasonable short term results, but may ultimately have a negative impact on your rankings.
• Site redesign : SEO can require a redesign of your web pages to make your website search engine friendly. However, this usually also results in a better user experience.

Search engine optimization delivers lasting results and it can cost considerably less in the long term. However, correct use of optimisation techniques is important (sometimes they can backfire).

Pay per click advertising and search engine optimisation both provide opportunities to promote your site and build traffic. Both can contribute significantly to the success of your online business. If you use both wisely, you should be able to get many new site visitors and customers without spending a fortune.

One of the worst kept secrets in Web Marketing is how effective a well planend Search Engine Optimisation campaign can be in promoting businesses on the web. More and more business are incorporating SEO into their marketing plan and looking for someone they can trust to optimise their Web sites in order to achieve top rankings. The SEO industry is very well established in the US, is well under way in the UK and Europe, but is still in its relative infancy in Australia (although we are quickly catching up)

With well over 100 million Web sites on the Internet, it is more important than ever for businesses to improve their online visibility. While most reputable SEO companies use ethical SEO practices, there are others who will try to trick the engines into high rankings by using questionable techniques. Some of these techniques can actually be reasonably effective in the short term - however ultimately, most of them fail, and more often then not, result in the site being worse off sometimes much worse off) than they started.

To avoid falling into this trap, site owners should be aware of unethical SEO techniques and be sceptical of consultants who suggest using them.

SEO Techniques to Avoid

Search engine optimisers (SEOs) are often divided into two camps: the so-called Black Hats, who use questionable techniques to trick the search engines into ranking them highly, and White Hats, who prefer to work with the search engines guidelines in order to achieve lasting success.

Below is an outline of some simple black hat techniques that you should probably avoid. This list isn’t exhaustive, but it will give you a taste of the types of things that the search engines find to be unacceptable.

Keyword Stuffing:

This practice involves the repetitive use of the same keyword phrase over and over in your Meta tags, Comment tags, ALT tags or in the copy on your pages. That certainly doesn’t mean that you should avoid using your keywords altogether - by all means repeat and use combinations of your primary keywords on your pages - but use them to appeal to you users - not just the search engines.

Hidden Text or Links:

This technique involves inserting hidden text or links that are readable by search engine spiders but cannot be seen by your site’s human visitors. This can be accomplished several way, such as using a white link or white text containing relevant keywords on a Web page with a white background. Your site visitors won’t be able to see this text and will not know it is there, but the search engines will. All search engines consider hidden links or hidden text to be spam and may penalise the page, if not the entire site, for it.

Cloaking:

This involves using a software program to direct search spiders to a group of pages specifically created to trick the spider and re-direct the user to a different set of pages. The user does not see the group of spam pages and is simultaneously re-directed to the real site. Cloaking can have valid uses–some sites use it to redirect based on location. However, cloaking that is used to deceive the search engines is considered a spam technique and may result in site penalties.

Doorway Pages:

Also known as Gateway pages, these are low-quality Web pages that exist only to pass visitors to the main Web site without providing any particular value of their own.

Mirror Sites and Duplicate Content:

This involves the creation of several sites with identical content and placing them on multiple servers with different domain names. These sites link to one another and are constructed for the purpose of achieving multiple rankings for identical keywords using the same content. Search engines suppress duplicate content because it holds no value for their users.

Link Farms:

Google’s quality guidelines suggest that pages contain no more than 99 links. Link farms typically consist of one page with hundreds of links to sites within different categories that are unrelated to your site content. Such pages contain poor quality content that is useless to visitors. Reciprocal links from these pages hold no value for you at all and could potentially associate you with “poor neighborhoods”. Avoid these inbound links because they will result in serious penalties and banning.

In selecting an SEO consultant, ask them about their best practices and be sure you know what they’re doing to your pages. Realise that no company can guarantee results and if a company claims a special relationship with Google or any other search engine, run the other way.

There is a common misconception that the terms “Search Engine Friendly” and Search Engine Optimised” are somewhat interchangeable. This myth usually seems to be bandied about by Web Design Agencies who are “dabbling” into web marketing and Search Engine Optimisation. But the sites that most good developers create are search engine friendly sites, not necessarily optimised sites.

Many (but definitely not all) design firms appear to believe that as long as a site can be navigated and crawled by spiders, and page titles accurately describe the contents of each page, that it has been Optimised for Search.

Most SEOs believe that it’s a good thing that knowledge about search engine friendly webdesign is becoming more and more widespread, and it’s great that webdesign companies are finally understanding that there’s some things they’ve been doing wrong for ages. As a rule SEOs tend to spend way too much time making sites search engine friendly - that’s the work a proper webdesigner could and should have probably done as a part of the site design/development process.

Once a site is “Search Engine Friendly” an SEO can start optimising for the search engines… Optimisation involves looking at the target market, the primary keywords, and the competition, it includes link building and site promotion and means tweaking, adapting, and monitoring the results of changes. Very often Optimisation includes seemingly minor or trivial changes…

Search Engine Friendliness is certainly critical for a site to rank well on search engines, and a Search Engine Friendly site is a prerequisite for Search Engine Optimisation. However, most professional SEOs would probably acknowledge that Search Engine Friendliness  is simply the starting point.

Google has just updated their Google Webmaster Guidelines page with clearer and more detailed information. According to Google, following these guidelines will help them find, index, and rank your site.

In particular, the Quality Guidelines section outlines some of the dodgy practices that may lead to a site being penalised or removed entirely from the Google index. The “Quality Guidelines section now also has hyperlinks to more pages with more details.

Heres an overview :

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site does participates in affiliate programs, make sure that your site also adds value in itself. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

In his article - 100,000,000 ways to invest in SEO - Stoney deGeyter outlines some steps that Small Business owners could take to carry out their own Search Engine Optimisation.

Stoney suggest taking small steps through the process, and setting aside a specific amount of time each day dedicated to the education and implementation of SEO strategies.

Start off with On Page optimisation :

As you learn, don’t take a single source as gospel. Find multiple sources that can confirm each other and also take in contrary opinions. These can only serve to confirm what you believe is the right approach. But most importantly, learn by doing, testing, and analyzing what you have done. Don’t expect big immediate payoffs, but be patient as you work through the SEO process and its implementation of your site.

Move onto Off page SEO techniques :

Depending on the size of your site and the amount of time you can dedicate to it each day, it may take several months to a year to “perfect” the on-page optimization. At that point, its time to start learning more about the off-page factors. Again, baby steps are required here lest you become overwhelmed. SEO is literally a sea and if you try to take it all in you’ll likely drown in it. Instead, just take a small area to learn and master as best you can before moving on.

Running your own effective SEO campaign is undoubtedly a significant investment in time and effort - but can definitely pay dividends in terms of traffic and online sales/enquiries.

There are still many executives at large companies that think Search Engine Optimisation is black magic. The key to convincing them otherwise is to start small, prove the value of search marketing, and build up allies in your organisation.

In his recent article - “Convincing the Executive Team to Invest in SEO“, Aaron Shear (on SearchEngineWatch) offers some advice on how to get the executive management team to buy into the idea of search marketing.