Symetri Blog

A study done at Cornell University found that 42% of users clicked the top search hit and 8% of users clicked the second hit. So there is a major advantage to those few who enjoy the top positions in the Organic Rankings of Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It is often not enough to be placed on the first SERP to enjoy plentiful clicks.

I guess there is a trust factor with searchers that they feel the Search Engines know how to pick the best, most relevant hit on top. They are willing to take a chance and try the first couple to see how relevant they are before trying a new keyword phrase.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Search rankings aren't all about PageRank. Even Google will tell you they have many, many "signals" that are measured to rank a page. The same is true for other search engines -- and has been a fact of SEO life for years and years. But what are all these signals and factors? Some are known, some are speculated on, and some change all the time. Search Engine Ranking Factors now up from Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz is a diligent rundown on factors that could influence how well a page does.

Rand stresses that exactly what is used and how important is impossible to know. That's crucial to remember. I skimmed his list, and some of the stuff makes a lot of sense that I'd agree with. Have good title tags, absolutely. Have good use of the terms you want to be found for in the body copy.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Yahoo has begun offering some advanced tools for choosing keywords to its larger advertiser and agency partners. The two new tools - Buzz Index is a tool with attached demographic data, and Search Share of Voice is a metric similar to traditional marketing measurement. The tools are expected to be ready for a broader base of advertisers in the coming months.

The tools in beta testing are designed to help marketers use and measure search in new ways. Buzz Index is a panel-based tool that tracks related keyword searches made by its volunteer members. To use it, marketers enter a desired keyword and see related searches made by panel members. The information can be broken down by demographic information like gender and age, as well as geographically by DMA at the state or major city level.

Search share of voice, like its offline counterpart, measures the share of overall searches on a keyword or topic a particular brand has results for. Marketers can use the metric to determine how their brand ranks among competitors.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Google has decided to drop the long-time count of pages it searches from its home page. It's the latest move in the Yahoo-Google dispute over size. Google says it is now three times bigger than its competitors and is the most comprehensive. Danny Sullivan said, "dropping the home page count is a positive move that I think helps defuse the entire size wars situation. That's because it divorces the notion of page counting as a way to "prove" comprehensiveness, a move long overdue for the industry to make."

He wrote more about this on today's SearchDay article, End Of Size Wars? Google Says Most Comprehensive But Drops Home Page Count


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Jakob Nielsen has some interesting observations regarding a recent study of how users select links listings in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)

42% of users studied selected the topmost search listing from the results. This was far and away the most-clicked single link position in the study. However, it is still interesting to note that the majority (58 percent) of all users studied did not select the top search result.

8% selected the second link in the SERPs, and the percentage went down in the lower positions. That shows that only one fifth as many clicks were taken by the second listing in the SERPs as for the top listing.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

In at article by The Street, CEO Barry Diller said that the newly acquired Ask Jeeves will be rebranded as Ask.com. Diller did not provide a specific date as to when Mr. Jeeves will be unemployed. Evidentially Diller made comments about a possible rebranding in May of this year.

Ask Jeeves has made great strides in the past 4 years as a great product and research tool. However it wasn't always like that. Unfortunately Ask Jeeves still suffers from the perception of being a bad search engine. This may be one of the catalysts that are causing Diller to loose the Butler. A rebranding effort will definitely help revitalize Ask.com and put it in a path to contend with the top 3 - Google, Yahoo! and MSN.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

I thought that worms were mainly for manipulating contents of PC's and their networks. This article on Security Pipeline indicates that there is a worm that modifies the infected PC so attempts to search using Google are directed to a spoofed site that looks like the real thing, but with different sponsored links to drive traffic to sites that hacker's designated.

So now we are looking at elaborate search engine marketing schemes that are motivated purely by financial gain. As if the industry wasn't complicated enough already...


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

How would you like to know which competitor is ranking well on specific keywords? Myriad Search will show search results with relative rankings from the top 4 search engines (Yahoo!, Google, MSN and Ask Jeeves).

Myriad Search is a new meta search engine similar to Dogpile but has some additional features like summing up the importance value of a web page as determined by its position in all four search engines. In addition Myriad Search has the ability to skew results by adding or subtracting bias values that will cause results from a particular engine to become more or less important in the overall mix.

It seems that this new meta search engine is more for marketers than a Dogpile replacement but it is an interesting new tool!


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Ok, I was reviewing the Search Engine Watch blog today and I came across a blog entry talking about confirmation of the Google sandbox. The article is here. They talk about a discussion member DougS had with a Google Engineer where the engineer said:

"internally they do not refer to the probationary period as the sandbox. They've been amused by the term, and have affectionately turned to calling the sand covered volley ball court in their quadrangle "the sandbox". He did, however, openly acknowledge that they place new sites, regardless of their merit, or lack thereof, in a sort of probationary category...."

Well Dan Nielsen and I were at the 2005 Google Dance in San Jose in August where they let us visit with the engineers and the engineer that we spoke to said the exact same thing -- maybe we were listening to the same conversation referred to above. Regardless, it's definately a small world!

I can confirm the existence of a volleyball court called "The Sandbox". Dan and I had the privilege of being "in" the Google Sandbox and then getting "out" of the sandbox. Luckily, it didn't take us 6 months to get out! ;)


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Search engines work wonders. But with the help of additional software and Web tools, tracking down information becomes easier. Search toolbars let you access leading search engines from add-on toolbars in your browser. Metasearch applications query several search engines at once. And visual search applications provide intuitive ways to identify concepts by displaying results as maps rather than lists.

Several search sites, including Yahoo!, Google, and Teoma offer search toolbars. Each adds a strip of tools to your browser, including a text-entry box that lets you query the associated search site.

Yahoo! Companion (free) gives quick access to Yahoo! E-mail, a Yahoo! Shopping account, the Yahoo! News site, and more. You can transform the app into a toolbar for navigating Yahoo! Finance or configure it solely for Web searches.

Google Toolbar (free) lets you run two types of searches. The Search Web button gives you matching pages from the Web, while the Search Site button limits your query to the current domain. You can translate foreign-language sites, and a pull-down menu lets you jump to Google subsites, like Google News, where you can search for the latest news stories.

Teoma Search Bar (free) offers a few tools unavailable in Google's offering. When you come across a site you like, a button lets you e-mail the URL. With another button, you can search Merriam-Webster's online dictionary. But Teoma Search Bar can't limit queries by domain or translate pages.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

You are trying to have a highly optimized site, you try different things they may or may not be ethical. How do you know if you have gone too far? If your page rank has slipped or you have lost visibility with keywords that used to rank high, you may have been banned. What can you do?

One good tip is to read an article that Marcella De Vivo wrote up on the Search Engine Watch site called Coping with Search Engine Penalties. It is a good read.

There is a nifty tool that checks to see if you have been banned from Google. I am not sure how accurate it is but it is worth a peek. More info here.

There is some news on www.threadwatch.org that talks about a Google Pilot program that will send notifications to webmasters if they feel that they are breaking Googles guidelines.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Did you every wonder what the share of searches are for the major search engines. It is ever changing but I came across this chart on the Search Engine Watch Web site.

Here are the findings: Google has 36.5%, Yahoo! has 30.5%, MSN has 15.5%, Ask Jeeves has 6.1%, AOL has 9.9% and InfoSpace and others have 1.5%.

This report was dated July 2005 by comScore Media Metrix qSearch who measures search-specific traffic on the internet.

Check it out!


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

We all go through it, a redesign of our Web site. Maybe it's just the homepage to present a new "look and feel". Maybe you want to make it more "search engine friendly". Regardless you need to consider a couple of factors.

First, put yourself in place of a potential visitor to your site. Are they able to identify, from the home page, exactly where they need to click to find what they are looking for. Or is it cluttered with too much stuff that they get confused. Planning a strategy for the different type of users and where you want them to go is a good idea. For instance, homepage-->product info/catalog --> order product/store locator. Design the information so that a user naturally follows your strategy.

Second is internal links. Because the search engine place a high importance on links (or "votes") to your Website, home pages naturally have a higher page rank. Your homepage can transfer some of this page rank to pages it links to within your Web site. So having good links to relevant pages within your site will help their pages rank higher. The more clicks away from the homepage the less value they carry over. So a page that takes 4 links from the homepage will have much less value than a page that is one click away.

There needs to be a balance. Having links to every page on your site on your homepage is not the answer. It will look too cluttered and visitors will not know where to start. A sitemap that is one click away from your homepage is a good idea since it does have links to all pages of your site.

So a good linking strategy will help increase page rank and a good usability strategy will help convert those visitors into customers. They go hand in hand.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Ask Jeeves is preparing to go after more market share by stealing it from the big three - Google, MSN and Yahoo!

In it's most recent ranking, research firm ComScore put Ask Jeeves in fourth place with a 6.1 per cent market share among US users. In addition to launching new products and services in North America and the UK, Ask is planning to make up ground by expanding across Europe, including France, Spain and Germany.

Part of Ask Jeeves uniqueness is that it owns its own Teoma search technology, allowing it to process search queries that present web users with results that they cannot get anywhere else. So if you can't find it on the big 3, go to Ask Jeeves (ask.com) and give it a try.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Google has finally introduced its blog search service, which has been anticipated for some time now. Another first for Google to offer full blog and search capabilities.

Ever since the purchase of Pyra Labs over 2 years ago Google has been promising blog search. Pyra Labs is the company that built the hugely popular Blogger publishing service.

Up to this point the search engines have been dabbling with blog searching but none have built a specialized tool just to search blog postings. Google web search has produced limited results to blog file types like RSS and XML. Google's new service, which is in beta, scans content posted to blogs and feeds in virtually real-time. It is available both at google.com/blogsearch and search.blogger.com.

Check it out!


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

In a study done by iProspect and Jupiter Research, findings show that more than one in three search marketers that tap agencies for both ppc and SEO say that SEO efforts pay off more.

The study also found that respondents either didn't measure ROI (21%), couldn't measure it (10%), or were undable to distinguish between ROI for paid links and optimization (14%).

This is interesting since there is so much hype about pay-per-click advertising out there.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Microsoft has launched its first paid-search advertising application MSN keywords. The program is currently being rolled out in Singapore as a test and will then be offered in France next. It offers advertisers information on searchers and their search activity, and the frequency at which keywords have been accessed.

In Singapore advertisers pay a one-time subscription fee of $10 (US$5.97) for MSN Keywords. It is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses which may not have budgets for "flashy campaigns".

Read more


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

"Google users were 53.6% male, while Ask Jeeves users were 58.7% female. Yahoo! and MSN searchers were predominantly women, who accounted for 50.2% of Yahoo! Search users and 53.7% of MSN Search users.

MSN Search had the highest proportion of users older than 55, while Ask Jeeves appealed to those between the ages of 18-24 and to those between 35-54 years old."


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Symetri is announcing their new Search Engine Optimization Seminar Series. Our first seminar is in Greensboro, NC. It is being hosted by Piedmont Triad Entrepreunal Network (PTEN) and Yahoo! Yahoo! will have 2 representatives there to share presentations on Search Engine Marketing Strategy and to answer questions about their Search Programs.

Sign up today to attend this exciting event in the Triad!


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

I just submitted the Symetri Blog to the new (beta) Technorati Blog Finder. This is a service much like DMOZ or the Yahoo! Directory, but for categorizing blogs instead of web sites. You can specify up to 20 keywords that describe what your blog is about, and Technorati uses those to determine how to categorize your blog.

There are more features, too -- such as being able to see blog postings that have linked to your blog, etc. It's worth taking the time to do if you've got a blog you would like people to discover.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Are you getting beaten by your own brand name? Beaten at Your Own Name: Buying Your Brand from Kevin Lee at ClickZ looks at why brand holders might decide it makes sense to purchase their own names for PPC, ranging from blocking your competitors and affiliates to overcome "negativity problems."


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Fellow SEMPO member Gregory Markel established SEMCares.com to assist with relief for victoms of Hurricane Katrina. In this editorial, Gregory talks about how SEM can be used for something other than commerce.

Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

MarketLeap has a few really good free SEO/SEM tools:

Link Popularity Check: Checks inbound links across several major search engines. Notes: The Google numbers are currently not accurate because the Google 'link:' search command is not working. The tool is also just a measure of the quantity of links and does not consider incoming link quality.

Search Engine Saturation: Measures how well your site is indexed (how many pages) on the major search engines. This gives you an idea of how well the different search engine spiders are crawling your site.

Keyword Verification: Allows you to quickly check the major search engines for the rank/position of a given site/domain for a given keyword.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Ron Jones, President of Symetri was interviewed yesterday by WFMY News 2 while riding his bike to work. Check out the article/TV spot here. Yesterday morning Heidi from the news station met Ron at 6:30am to interview him during his bike ride to work. Dan Nielsen and Ron regularly ride their bikes in to work because they love riding bikes and it saves on gas.


Category: Symetri in the News

If you want to stay on top of the latest search engine news and happenings, one of the most valuable places on the 'net is the Search Engine Watch site and blog.

Check 'em out -- often.

Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization