| Internet
Advertisement Explained : Part 3
Search Engine Marketing
for Your Web-Site
So, your web-site is on-line and you are satisfied
with its professional look and functioning. But, are
you satisfied with its contribution towards your business
? How many new customers has it turned in ? What is
the return on this investment ? is the web-site successful
?
Success of a web-site depends on three factors
- No of Relevant Visitors it can attract
- No of visitors who actually pay and become customer
(conversion ratio)
- Average spend per customer
Content and negotiation skill play a crucial role in
achieving higher conversion ratio and average spend.
Fortunately, these factors, to a great extent, are within
your control. However, attracting quality traffic is
an entirely different ball game that requires special
skill and expertise. Web-sites are unlikely to attract
quality traffic on their own unless someone consciously
work for it.
Search Engine marketing is a great tool for attracting
quality customers. However, extent of success here depends
a great deal on how well one executes a search engine
marketing plan.
Which Search Engine ?
Traffic to a web-site from a search engine depends on
two factors :
- The engine's raw traffic
- Interests of visitors for using a certain kind of engine
Though there are thousands of search engines, only
about half-a-dozen account for over 90% of search engine
traffic. So, from quantity point of view, one should
focus on these search engines only.
However, there are some special kind of vertical engines
or portals that have the capacity to send very high
quality potential customers. Traffic from such engines
and portals could be much less in number compared to
Google or Yahoo! - but the conversion ratio could be
much higher. Ignoring such quality traffic sources could
prove to be fatal error in a search engine marketing
program.
Your search engine marketing program should consider
both the approaches and draw a balanced view
Top Search Engines Based on Raw Traffic
Search Engine Watch the highly respected name in search
engine marketing recently published latest A C Nielsen
Netrating survey.
The Nielsen/NetRatings MegaView Search reporting service
measures the search behavior of more than a million
people worldwide. These web surfers have real-time meters
on their computers which monitor the sites they visit.
This metered information is compiled to produce NetRatings
results. Below are statistics about searching from NetRatings
provided to Search Engine Watch:
The chart below shows the percentage of online searches
done by US home and work web surfers in November 2005
that were performed at a particular search engine. Internal
site searches, such as those to find material within
a particular web site, are not counted in these totals.
The activity at more than 60 search sites makes up the
total search volume upon which percentages are based
- 5.1 billion searches in this month.
| Search Engine
|
Percentage of On-line Search
|
| Google |
46.3% |
| Yahoo! |
23.4% |
| MSN |
11.4% |
| AOL |
6.9% |
| My Way |
2.5% |
| Ask |
2.3% |
| Earthlink |
0.6% |
| Dogpile |
0.6% |
| Netscape |
0.6% |
| iwon |
0.5% |
| Others |
4.7% |
Source: Search
Engine Watch
Top Search Engines and Portals - based on quality of
Traffic
There are some directories and portals that have the
ability to send potential visitors to your web-site.
Some of these are general purpose while others are subject
specific.
Unlike spider-based search engines, Directories list
only a few hand-picked web-sites under every category.
They employ human editors and every web-site is included
purely on merit. There is no scope for keyword distribution
or content manipulation or some such trick to fool the
spider.
There are many visitors who prefer such highly selected
list of web-sites rather than a huge list. Such visitors,
typically, are very specific about what they want and
tend to act rather fast.
Examples of general purpose directories are Yahoo!,
DMOZ etc.
There are many vertical directories that focus on a
specific product or topic. Serious visitors find out
about these subject specific directories from general
search engines and then use it to contact suppliers,
buyers, agents, distributors etc. Examples of such vertical
directories are Vanik , The Great Indian Bazaar etc.
Imagine the effort a web-surfer has spent for finding
a directory of his/her choice and then surf to your
web-site from that directory - and you will begin to
see the seriousness involved.
Your search engine marketing program should consider
high volume horizontal search engines such as Yahoo!
and Google as well as popular vertical directories in
your product areas.
Conclusion
At the end of above processes - you should be able to
draw a list of few selected search engines and portals
that are capable of sending quality traffic to your
web-site. In next articles, we shall examine how to
actually use these search engines.
Happy and Productive Surfing
Dr. Amit K Chatterjee
Related Links:
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Author
: Dr.
Amit K. Chatterjee
(Amit worked in blue-chip Indian and MNCs for 15
years in various capacities like Research and Information
Analysis, Market Development, MIS, R&D Information
Systems etc. before starting his e-commerce venture
in 1997. The views expressed in this columns are
of his own. |
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