Local is Huge

Google’s US ad revenue is roughly 15 billion & the size of the US Yellow Pages market /a>. Most of that money is /a>, but that shift is only accelerating with Google’s push into local.

Further, cell phones are location aware, /a> /a>, and on the last quarterly conference call Google’s Jonathan Rosenberg highlighted that mobile ads were already a billion Dollar market for Google.

Google has been working on localization /a>, and /a>. When asked “Anything you’ve focused on more recently than freshness?” Amit Singal stated:

Localization. We were not local enough in multiple countries, especially in countries where there are multiple languages or in countries whose language is the same as the majority country.

So in Austria, where they speak German, they were getting many more German results because the German Web is bigger, the German linkage is bigger. Or in the U.K., they were getting American results, or in India or New Zealand. So we built a team around it and we have made great strides in localization. And we have had a lot of success internationally.

The Big Shift

I have been saving some notes on the push toward local for a while now, and with Google’s launch of the new localized search results it is about time to do an overview. First /a>, and /a> /a> /a> /a> /a> /a> /a>.

Some of the localized results not only appear for things like Chicago pizza but also for single word searches in some cases, like pizza or flowers.

Promoting local businesses via the new formats has many strategic business benefits for Google

• assuming they track user interactions, the eventually the relevancy is better for the end users

• allows local businesses to begin to see more value from search, so they are more likely to invest into a search strategy
• creates a direct relationship with business owners which can later be leveraged (in the past Google has marketed AdWords coupons to Google Analytics users)
• if a nationwide brand can’t dominate everywhere just because they are the brand, it means that they will have to pony up on the AdWords front if they want to keep 100% exposure
• if Google manages to put more diversity into the local results then they can put more weight on domain authority on the global results (for instance, they have: /a>, recommended brands in the search results, shown many results from the lead brand on a branded search query, listed the official site for searches for a brand + a location where that brand has no office, etc.)
• it puts eye candy in the right rail that can make searchers more inclined to look over there
• it makes SEO more complex & expensive
• it allows Google to begin monetizing the organic results (/a>)
• it puts in place an infrastructure which can be used in other markets outside of local

Data Data Data

Off the start it is hard to know what to make of this unless one draws historical parallels. At first one might be inclined to say the yellow page directories are screwed, but /a>. The important thing to remember is that now that the results are in place, Google can test and collect data.

/a>, and Google has highlighted that one of their richest sources of data is through /a>.

Pardon Me, While I Steal Your Lunch

There are 2 strong ways to build a competitive advantage on the data front:

• make your data better

• starve competing business models to make them worse

Off the start yellow page sites might get a fair shake, but ultimately the direction they are headed in is being increasingly squeezed. In a mobile connected world with Google owning 97% search marketshare, while offering localized search auto-complete, ads that map to physical locations, and /a>, the yellow page companies are a man without a country. Or perhaps a country without a plot of land.

They are so desperate that /a>. But that just turns their data into more of a commodity.

Last December I cringed when I read David Swanson, the CEO of R.H. Donnelley, /a>: “People relate to us as a product company — the yellow-pages — but we don’t get paid by people who use the yellow-pages, we get paid by small businesses for helping them create ad messages, build websites, and show up in search engine results. … Most of the time today, you are not even realizing that you are interacting with us.”

After seeing /a> & reading the above comment, at that point I felt someone should have sent him the memo about /a>. Not to worry, truth would come out in time.

Making things worse, not only is /a>, with search suggest being localized, but Google is also offering flat rate map ads (/a>) and is testing fully automated /a> /a> again.

Basic Economics

How does a business maximize yield? Externalize costs & internalize profits. Pretty straightforward. To do this effectively, Google wants to cut out as many middle men out of the game as possible. This means Google might decide to feed off your data while driving no traffic to your business, but rather driving you into bankruptcy.

Ultimately, what is being commoditized? Labor. More specifically:

• the affiliate who took the risk to connect keywords and products

• the labor that went into collecting & verifying local data
• the labor that went into creating the editorial content on the web graph and the links which search engines rely on as their backbone.
• the labor that went into manually creating local AdWords accounts, tracking their results, & optimizing them (which Google tracks & uses as the basis for their automated campaigns)
• the labor that went into structuring content with the likes of micro-formats
• the labor that went into policing and formatting user reviews
• many other pieces of labor that the above labor ties into

Of course Google squirms out of any complaints by /a> and/or by highlighting how they only use such data “in aggregate” … but if you are the one losing your job & having your labor used against you, “the aggregate” still blows as an excuse.

But if Google drives a business they are relying on into bankruptcy, won’t that make their own search results worse?

Nope.

For 2 big reasons:

• you are only judged on your *relative* performance against existing competitors

• after Google drives some other players out of the marketplace and/or makes their data sets less complete, the end result is Google having the direct relationships with the advertisers and the most complete data set

The reason many Google changes come with limited monetization off the start is so that people won’t question their motives.

Basically I think they look at it this way: “We don’t care if we kill off a signal of relevancy because we will always be able to create more. If we poison the well for everyone else while giving ourselves a unique competitive advantage it is a double win. It is just like the murky gray area book deal which makes start up innovation prohibitively expensive while locking in a lasting competitive advantage for Google.”

You would never hear Google state that sort of stuff publicly, but when you look at /a> you see those sorts of thoughts are part of their strategy.

What is Spam?

The real Google guidelines should read something like this:

• Accessibility is important. /a>.

• Don’t complain when Google replaces you with your data linked to a Google-hosted page

Fundamentally, the way to think about Google’s perception of spam is that if Google can offer a similar quality service without much cost & without much effort then your site is spam.

Google doesn’t come right out and say that (for anti-trust reasons), but they have mentioned /a>. And their remote rater documents did state this:

After typing a query, the search engine user sees a result page. You can think of the results on the result page as a list. Sometimes, the best results for “queries that ask for a list” are the best individual examples from that list. The page of search results itself is a nice list for the user.

…But This is Only Local…

After reading the above some SEOs might have a sigh of relief thinking “well at least this is only local.”

To me that mindset is folly though.

Think back to /a>. At first it was a limited beta test with some news sites, then Google bought Youtube, and then the search landscape changed…everyone wanted videos and all the other stuff all the time.

Anyone who thinks this rich content SERP which promotes Google is only about local is going to be sorely disappointed as it moves to:

• travel search (Google doesn’t need to sell airline tickets so long as they can show you who is cheapest & then book you on a high margin hotel)

• any form of paid media (ebooks, music, magazines, newspapers, videos, anything taking micro-payments)
• real estate
• large lead generation markets (like insurance, mortgage, credit cards, .edu)
• ecommerce search
• perhaps eventually even markets like live ticketing for events

Google does query classification and /a> in ways that most people do not understand. If enough publishers provide the same sorts of data and use the same types of tags, they are creating new sets of navigation for Google to offer end users.

No need to navigate through a publisher’s website until *after* you have passed the click toll booth.

Long Term Implications

While /a> may be within the legal concept of fair use, but it falls short in spirit. At some point publishers who recognize what is going on will align with better partners. We are already seeing an angry reaction to Google from /a> and from /a>.

Ultimately it is webmasters, web designers & web developers who market and promote search engines. If at some point it becomes consensus that Google is /a>, or that perhaps Google search results have too much miscellaneous junk in them, they could push a lot more searchers over to search services which are more minimalistic + publisher friendly. /a> launches Monday, and their approach to search is much like /a>.

Read the original here:
/a>

Being the good content marketers that we are, you may have noticed that TopRank Marketing has recently been publishing a monthly /a> called “Tips from the Top”. While we haven’t done a lot to promote, thousands of subscribers have joined in a pretty short period of time.

I’ve started newsletters several times in the 10 or so years we’ve had this agency but it’s the most recent effort that has really resonated with readers. We’re learning as we go and fine tuning to make it better as we go.

The editorial mix is currently a collection of:

• Industry News to Know – This usually follows a theme and for October, it’s “/a>“.
• Digital Marketing Tips – A collection of timely “how to” articles from across the web.
• Stats to Know – People love stats, especially marketers, so we’re delivering at least one “things that make you go hmmm” stat with each issue.
• Best of Posts from TopRankBlog – I’ve heard we write some useful stuff here at Online Marketing Blog, so Adam Singer and Mike Yanke pick what they think are the best posts of the month and share them.
• What the Online Marketing Blog Community Has to Say – This is my favorite part of the newsletter. I love hearing what our readers have to say about the content and ideas we share. Some of the best content on blogs are not the posts but the discussion in the comments.
• TopRank® Online Marketing Around the Web – As an active participant in the online marketing industry, we contribute articles and have discussions with journalists covering topics important to digital marketers from companies of all sizes. This section highlights some of that media coverage involving TopRank on industry publications and blogs.

I’m sure as you read this, you’re thinking about all the email newsletters that you currently get. Well, now you can unsubscribe from them all and subscribe to the TopRank Newsletter   Check out back issues and subscribe to TopRank’s Online Marketing Newsletter “/a>“. I think you’ll find it useful and we’d definitely like suggestions on information formats and topics you’d like to hear more about.

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Some of you may have been hit by Google’s 20 October algorithm change.

And some of you wouldn’t have noticed any difference.

On 20 October, a number of sites got trashed. Rankings, and traffic, plummeted through the floor. The webmaster forums lit up. Aaron /a>. I noticed it. Yet, other webmasters wondered what all the fuss was about.

As many of you know, there is not just one ranking algothimn. There are many algorithms. What affects one site may not affect another. Rather interestingly, Google’s /a> /a> on Google’s support forum, offering these words of wisdom (HatTip: /a>)

It looks like the changes you’re seeing here may be from an algorithmic change. As part of our recent algorithmic changes (which the outside world sometimes refers to as the “May Day update” because it happened primarily in May), our algorithms are assessing the site differently. This is a ranking change, not any sort of manual spam penalty, and not due to any technical issues with regards to crawling or indexing your content. You can hear more about this change in Matt’s video: ”

img src=”http://www.seobook.com/images/mattcuttsmayday.jpg” />

…and….

Various parts of our algorithms can apply to sites at different times, depending on what our algorithms find. While we initially rolled out this change earlier this year, the web changes, sites change, and with that, our algorithms will continually adapt to the current state on the web, on those sites. While it might be confusing to see these changes at the same time as this issue, they really aren’t related, nor is this a general algorithm change (so if other sites have seen changes recently, it probably doesn’t apply to them as well).

Matt’s video, made four months ago, was talking about the algorithmic MayDay change. John Mu adds: “Various parts of our algorithms can apply to sites at different times” In other words, whatever happened in May may not affect your site in May, or June, or July, but might hit you many months later. This implies that your site may trip a threshold, and be judged quite differently than it was the day before.

This still doesn’t completely explain why so many sites were hit on the same day, but then Google don’t typically explain things in detail.

To complicate matters, there was an acknowledged /a>, affecting new content, particularly on blogs. Again, John appears to suggest this was a separate issue.

Forget About Search Engines, Just Publish

Now, all SEOs are used to algorithm changes. Nothing new. But this one has me genuinely perplexed, mainly because of the type of sites that got hit.

Time for some self-searching Q&A about one of my own sites:

Q: So, how many links did you buy?
A: None.
Q: Are you selling links?
A: Nope.
Q: Linking to “bad neighborhoods”?
A: Not that’ I’m aware of…..
Q: Did you link-build in an aggressive manner?
A: No. I did no link building, whatsoever.
Q: Huh?
A: That’s not a question.
Q: So you just published content?
A: Right.
Q: And people linked to your site, of their own accord?
A: Yep. I guess they liked it.
Q: Was your content heavily SEO’d?
A: No. In fact, I gave writers specific instructions not to do anything resembling “SEO copywriting”. It ruins the flow for readers.
Q: All original content?
A: All original. Hand written. No machines involved anywhere.
Q: So this site conforms to /a>?
A: I’d say it lies well within them. “Be useful to end users”, was the guiding principle.

Yet it got hit hard.

What’s also interesting is the nature of the sites that replaced it. I checked keyword after keyword, and found script driven, aggressive black-hat, content-free sites in top positions. Not in all cases – there are certainly useful sites that deserve to be there, and deserve to appear above mine. Fair play. However, there were plenty of sites of – shall we say – dubious merit- occupying high positions.

Curious.

Be Useful. Perhaps

Now, I believe in publishing useful, unique content, and not paying too much attention to SEO, other than covering the basics. SEO is one strategy amongst many, and sites should, first and foremost, prove useful to people.

Clearly, no site is immune. You can stay within Google’s Webmaster guidelines, and get taken out. I knew that anyway, but when the sites that don’t follow the guidelines replace you…

….I’ll admit – it grates.

Presumably, Google rewards the sites it likes with high rankings, and if we see a lot of aggressive sites filling the top page, should we therefore assume that aggressive sites are what Google actually wants?

I’d like to think not.

Perhaps they are just trying to mess with our heads?

Or they messed up?

Or the changes are still bedding in?

Or they really do want it this way?

I’m still watching, and considering. Perhaps the site will just pop back up in due course. Or perhaps I need to go back to the drawing board. I’ll let you know how I get on.

If you’ve noticed something similar on your sites, chime in on the comments.

Continue reading here:
/a>

I’ve been attending WebmasterWorld’s /a> conference in Las Vegas for at least 6 years although I didn’t liveblog that first one for some reason. In fact I first interviewed Pubcon founder, /a>, in 2005.  By no means am I an “old timer” since the show has been running for a lot longer than I’ve been attending but I do have some history with it.

When people ask me about great conference options to learn practical SEO and PPC, Pubcon is always included in my recommendations.  Being held in Las Vegas lends a certain flavor to the event, as in there are plenty of after-event networking opportunities.  Sessions are great, but its the in person connections you make and develop that yield tips, tactics that aren’t always forthcoming during the day.

The lineup at this year’s Pubcon is seriously impressive with tracks for:

• Social Media Optimization
• Search Marketing
• SEO
• Affiliate
• Webmasters
• Expert Spotlight
• Interactive Site Reviews

Keynotes include David Pogue of New York Times as well as a Keynote Panel on Social Media with Chris Brogan, Sarah Evans, Scott Stratten & Brian Clark.

Some of the sessions I’m looking forward to include:

• In-House SEO: Ash Nallawalla, Josh Gampel, Garrett Rent, Jessica L Bowman
• Advanced Twitter – Apps, Services, and API Trends: Tracy Falke, Brian Breslin, Dan Zarrella
• Interactive Site Reviews – Focus on Organic: Eric Enge, Bill Hunt, Stephan Spencer
• SEO for Multimedia and Rich Media: Brian MacDonald, Morgan Brown, Wesley Cox, Marty Weintraub
• Real World Winning Tactics for Content Creation and Marketing: Alison Driscoll, Heather Lloyd-Martin, Arnie Kuenn, Nick Stamoulis
• Keynote Panel on Social Media: Chris Brogan, Sarah Evans, Scott Stratten, Brian Clark
• SEO For E-Commerce Sites: Adam Audette, Rob Snell, William Atchison
• Design, Content, and Marketing For A Mobile Website: Kurt Noer, Nathan Mellor, Michael Marti
• Conversion Ninja Toolbox: Tim Ash
• Mega Site SEO: Anita Bidari, Dan Perry, Derrick Wheeler, Melanie Mitchell
• Convergence of Online Marketing and Analytics: Alan K’necht, Tom Critchlow, Maura Ginty, Chris Zaharias
• Real World Low-Risk High-Reward Link Building: Greg Hartnett, Dixon Jones, Rae Hoffman, Aaron Shear
• Competitors from the Darkside – Rogue SEO Tactics: Steve Plunkett, Carolyn Shelby, giovanni gallucci, Brett Tabke

On Thursday 11/11 at 3:15pm I’ll be speaking about Content Marketing: Intersection of SEO & Social Media with an all new version of the presentation I’ve given at SES.  This one is only 25 min or so and includes new examples.

I will also be moderating two sessions: one on “Real World Low-Risk High-Reward Link Building” with Greg Hartnett, Dixon Jones, Rae Hoffman and Aaron Shear. I will also be moderating another session on “Protecting Your Brand” with James Gold, Brett Tabke, Amanda Watlington.  I’m looking forward to the whole thing.

If you’ve been to Pubcon, what were your favorite sessions? Any stories you can tell that are actually “OK” to leave Las  Vegas?

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img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1450″ title=”red-open-19-loop_oh” src=”http://seo2.0.onreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/red-open-19-loop_oh.jpg” alt=”" width=”500″ height=”334″ />

Image: Open 19 by /a>.

As a modern day SEO I deal half of the day with strong>decreasing bounce rates. It means:

I try to make people visiting websites stay longer on them or stay at all and click.

The bounce rate is a weird metric though. It doesn’t even have the same definition everywhere.

1. Some people define a bounce rate as the percentage of visitors who leave a landing page immediately (that is often stay below 5 seconds on it) without performing any other action onsite.
2. Others define the bounce rate metric as the percentage of /a> on a given site and haven’t done anything else there.

I prefer the first definition, where the person comes, pukes and leaves immediately. The other definition would mean that even in some cases perfectly content users would be considered worthless bounces. This way a one page microsite where all the information is condensed right there would have a bounce rate of 100%.

Asides of that it depends on the site and other circumstances what a bounce rate means and what a actually a high bounce rate is. For instance

the ecommerce sites (aka online shops) I have optimized for had bounce rates around 20% – 25%.

Why? The search traffic they mainly received was very highly targeted. In short the people got exactly what they wanted and expected, why bounce then? On the other hand

the blogs I write for have seemingly abysmal bounce rates of 60 to 80%. Why?

Are the blogs so bad? No, people reading blogs are casual readers, especially when visiting from social media. They check a post out quickly and decide whether they want to read it or not.

So depending on the context your bounce rate of 50% can be awful, OK or great.

img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1451″ title=”blue-market-place-velerie-everett” src=”http://seo2.0.onreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/blue-market-place-velerie-everett.jpg” alt=”" width=”402″ height=”500″ />

Image: Market Place by /a>.

On the other hand the bounce rate is far from random and can give you crucial insights into your visitors expectations. A lower bounce rate can improve both the conversion rate and the return on investment. So you really have to deal with bounce rates half of your day. What sense does it make to get thousands of visitors when 90% of them just create load on the server without even viewing your site?

So there we are in the process of interpreting bounce rates. The right question is “what does my bounce rate really mean?

You can pose this question for each site and even on page level. A bounce on the homepgae is not the same as on a deep link etc.

Understanding the meaning of your bounce rate is the key to improve it. It shows you how you can improve it. To start even earlier it helps to find out whether you really need to improve it in the particular case. Instead you could even block some traffic sources or remove a page that just creates unnecessary load.

img title=”green-elevator” src=”http://seo2.0.onreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/green-elevator.jpg” alt=”" width=”500″ height=”303″ />

Image: Green Elevator by /a>.

1) First determine your page or site type and its purpose:

• Is your site a one-page-wonder like the microsite above or like Seth Godin’s blog where you end up happy after reading one of his posts?
• Is you site an ecommerce site aka online shop where you actually sell stuff on the same domain (not redirecting to a third party shopping cart)?
• Is your site a news site or blog or other type of site where people seek information from it instead of regarding it as the end of their current quest?

2) Then find out what kind of queries lead to your site? Search engines are used mostly for thre kinds of queries:

• navigational ones (people type ebay, facebook etc. in the browser address bar or search input)
• informational ones (people seek general or specific information on a given subject
• commercial ones (people wanting to buy a product or us a service and who are informed already about it)
  

Depending on the query type most of the search users who find you use your bounce rate will differ significantly.

Navigational queries have often the lowest bounce rates as long as the people find what they seek.

In case you search for Facebook you want to end up on it when you type it. So Facebook has probably a very low bounce rate from these queries. One of my blogs ranks very high for Facebook and I get lots of people who search for Facebook on it. Most of them bonce of course.

Commercial queries have a low bounce rate in case the people really find the product or service they are after. In case it’s not 20% you may want to check whether the products you are selling are the ones people want to pay for in the first place.

Informational queries lead the most fickle users to your site. They often do not even know exactly if they really search for what you write about. There are often misunderstandings when queries do not reflect the users intent at all. For instance people searching for SEM do not necessarily seek search engine marketing advice but instead they may be interested in scanning electron microscopy.

3) After that think about the ways you want your people act on your site, do you really want them to stay long and read lots of pages or do you prefer a quick conversion?

Michael Gray of /a> recently noted how for affiliate sites a click on the affiliate link is of a bounce. That’s true, a visitor who finds the product you recommend as an affiliate and clicks on the affiliate link has been converted.

In contrast a news site that earns money by ad impressions wants you to stay onsite as possible and to reload or click as often as you can. That’s why image galleries on such sites tend to show only one image per page. They want you to see 10 ads instead of one.

img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1448″ title=”yellow-open-for-passengers-lrargerich” src=”http://seo2.0.onreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/yellow-open-for-passengers-lrargerich.jpg” alt=”" width=”500″ height=”333″ />

Image: Open for passengers by /a>.

Now that you know all these things you can start improving your bounce rate or you can focus on other parts of advanced onsite SEO.

• You can try to rank for more specific terms instead of the broad industry terms. Ranking for “seo” may bring loads of traffic but “local seo for travel” might be more effective at retaining visitors.
  
• You can add commercial keyword modifiers to make the purpose of your site clear so that people who just seek information don’t visit at all. seo might bring lots of people who want to find out for the first time about it but seo services new york might bring you both clients and people from your area who are more willing to deal with a local service provider.
• Branding efforts beyond old school SEO might make people more aware of your brand thus making them search for it next time (aka using a navigational query) and not bounce again in contrast to generic terms like seo services new york.

So don’t forget to ask yourself: What does my bounce rate really mean before trying to improve it.

Related posts:

1. /a>
2. /a>
3. /a>

img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1450″ title=”red-open-19-loop_oh” src=”http://seo2.0.onreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/red-open-19-loop_oh.jpg” alt=”" width=”500″ height=”334″ />

Image: Open 19 by /a>.

As a modern day SEO I deal half of the day with strong>decreasing bounce rates. It means:

I try to make people visiting websites stay longer on them or stay at all and click.

The bounce rate is a weird metric though. It doesn’t even have the same definition everywhere.

1. Some people define a bounce rate as the percentage of visitors who leave a landing page immediately (that is often stay below 5 seconds on it) without performing any other action onsite.
2. Others define the bounce rate metric as the percentage of /a> on a given site and haven’t done anything else there.

I prefer the first definition, where the person comes, pukes and leaves immediately. The other definition would mean that even in some cases perfectly content users would be considered worthless bounces. This way a one page microsite where all the information is condensed right there would have a bounce rate of 100%.

Asides of that it depends on the site and other circumstances what a bounce rate means and what a actually a high bounce rate is. For instance

the ecommerce sites (aka online shops) I have optimized for had bounce rates around 20% – 25%.

Why? The search traffic they mainly received was very highly targeted. In short the people got exactly what they wanted and expected, why bounce then? On the other hand

the blogs I write for have seemingly abysmal bounce rates of 60 to 80%. Why?

Are the blogs so bad? No, people reading blogs are casual readers, especially when visiting from social media. They check a post out quickly and decide whether they want to read it or not.

So depending on the context your bounce rate of 50% can be awful, OK or great.

img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1451″ title=”blue-market-place-velerie-everett” src=”http://seo2.0.onreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/blue-market-place-velerie-everett.jpg” alt=”" width=”402″ height=”500″ />

Image: Market Place by /a>.

On the other hand the bounce rate is far from random and can give you crucial insights into your visitors expectations. A lower bounce rate can improve both the conversion rate and the return on investment. So you really have to deal with bounce rates half of your day. What sense does it make to get thousands of visitors when 90% of them just create load on the server without even viewing your site?

So there we are in the process of interpreting bounce rates. The right question is “what does my bounce rate really mean?

You can pose this question for each site and even on page level. A bounce on the homepgae is not the same as on a deep link etc.

Understanding the meaning of your bounce rate is the key to improve it. It shows you how you can improve it. To start even earlier it helps to find out whether you really need to improve it in the particular case. Instead you could even block some traffic sources or remove a page that just creates unnecessary load.

img title=”green-elevator” src=”../wp-content/uploads/2010/10/green-elevator.jpg” alt=”" width=”500″ height=”303″ />

Image: Green Elevator by /a>.

1) First determine your page or site type and its purpose:

• Is your site a one-page-wonder like the microsite above or like Seth Godin’s blog where you end up happy after reading one of his posts?
• Is you site an ecommerce site aka online shop where you actually sell stuff on the same domain (not redirecting to a third party shopping cart)?
• Is your site a news site or blog or other type of site where people seek information from it instead of regarding it as the end of their current quest?

2) Then find out what kind of queries lead to your site? Search engines are used mostly for thre kinds of queries:

• navigational ones (people type ebay, facebook etc. in the browser address bar or search input)
• informational ones (people seek general or specific information on a given subject
• commercial ones (people wanting to buy a product or us a service and who are informed already about it)
  

Depending on the query type most of the search users who find you use your bounce rate will differ significantly.

Navigational queries have often the lowest bounce rates as long as the people find what they seek.

In case you search for Facebook you want to end up on it when you type it. So Facebook has probably a very low bounce rate from these queries. One of my blogs ranks very high for Facebook and I get lots of people who search for Facebook on it. Most of them bonce of course.

Commercial queries have a low bounce rate in case the people really find the product or service they are after. In case it’s not 20% you may want to check whether the products you are selling are the ones people want to pay for in the first place.

Informational queries lead the most fickle users to your site. They often do not even know exactly if they really search for what you write about. There are often misunderstandings when queries do not reflect the users intent at all. For instance people searching for SEM do not necessarily seek search engine marketing advice but instead they may be interested in scanning electron microscopy.

3) After that think about the ways you want your people act on your site, do you really want them to stay long and read lots of pages or do you prefer a quick conversion?

Michael Gray of /a> recently noted how for affiliate sites a click on the affiliate link is of a bounce. That’s true, a visitor who finds the product you recommend as an affiliate and clicks on the affiliate link has been converted.

In contrast a news site that earns money by ad impressions wants you to stay onsite as possible and to reload or click as often as you can. That’s why image galleries on such sites tend to show only one image per page. They want you to see 10 ads instead of one.

img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1448″ title=”yellow-open-for-passengers-lrargerich” src=”http://seo2.0.onreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/yellow-open-for-passengers-lrargerich.jpg” alt=”" width=”500″ height=”333″ />

Image: Open for passengers by /a>.

Now that you know all these things you can start improving your bounce rate or you can focus on other parts of advanced onsite SEO.

• You can try to rank for more specific terms instead of the broad industry terms. Ranking for “seo” may bring loads of traffic but “local seo for travel” might be more effective at retaining visitors.
  
• You can add commercial keyword modifiers to make the purpose of your site clear so that people who just seek information don’t visit at all. seo might bring lots of people who want to find out for the first time about it but seo services new york might bring you both clients and people from your area who are more willing to deal with a local service provider.
• Branding efforts beyond old school SEO might make people more aware of your brand thus making them search for it next time (aka using a navigational query) and not bounce again in contrast to generic terms like seo services new york.

So don’t forget to ask yourself: What does my bounce rate really mean before trying to improve it.

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If you’re considering getting some SEO work done, but working to a tight budget, here’s a look at the key issues, and trouble-spots to look out for.

Buying Professional SEO Services

If you’re short on time, or SEO skills, or inclination, then you may be looking at getting an eternal supplier to undertake SEO work. Like anything in life, you get what you pay for, and SEO is no exception. There is also a danger you could get a whole lot less, of course.

Like any profession, there are many great operators, and many poor ones.

Set Clear Business Goals

Start by writing down the goals you want to achieve. What business problem are you trying to solve? Do you need more conversions? More traffic? Higher rankings? Only one of those requirements is likely to make you any money.

Traffic and higher rankings can make you money, but can just as likely make no difference to your business, whatsoever, unless they are tied into your website strategy. For example, you may receive more traffic after engaging an SEO, but if this traffic isn’t interested in what you offer, they will click back. Likewise, you could gain high rankings for keywords that no one searches on. This will result in no traffic increase, and no new business.

Devise your own metrics for success. Some SEOs will devise metrics for success that are easy for them to achieve, but make no real difference to your business.

Watch Out For Hidden Costs

If you have an existing site, you may need to make changes to your design and layout. Depending on how your site has been built, these changes may be minor or significant in terms of cost to rectify.

The Problem With Cheap

Whilst high cost alone will not guarantee you good results, there’s a high probability that low cost will almost guarantee poor results.

SEO is labour intensive and requires skill and knowledge. As a rough ballpark, a small site, that doesn’t have design issues, that has had no previous SEO work, could take, at very least, five days of full-time SEO work. This work involves link building, adding keywords and content to the site, and other external promotional activities. Get the SEO to breakdown the work into hours and tasks, and see if the amount charged equates to the work required.

If the SEO is pricing significantly under their competitors, there may be a legitimate reason. They may use cheaper labour, often located in emerging economies. This is fine, however make sure any firm you do use has a good knowledge of the country and culture in which you operate. Marketing, SEO or otherwise, requires an intimate knowledge of language use, culture and location, so ask to see previous work, and check references.

On the other hand, there are agencies that will charge like a wounded bull for essentially the same tasks as everyone else. Obtain a few quotes and compare, as pricing can be all over the place. The industry is not standardized.

Do It Yourself

Anyone can do SEO. However, that doesn’t mean that everyone should.

What does SEO involve? It can involve restructuring a site, coding, content creation, marking up content, market research, strategy, link building, and public relations. Do you have the time, or the inclination to do this? The learning curve, for the beginner, is steep. It’s also time consuming. How much is your time worth?

However, there are many aspects you can do yourself. Start with a /a> Join forums where other SEOs hang out. Look for content management software that is reasonably SEO friendly, out of the box, such as /a> (free). Using SEO friendly software means you’ll avoid a lot of technical problems that can be expensive to rectify if you use software the search engines find difficult to crawl.

Search engines like content. Generally speaking, the more pages you publish, the more chances you’ll have to be seen. If appropriate, adopt a strategy similar to that of magazine publishing. Publish often.

Once your business case and site content are established, you need to build links. A site without links is pretty much invisible. Here are a few /a>. In summary, submit your site to directories, get your partners to link to you, issue press releases featuring links back to your site, put links in your online signature. You can never have too many links, so long as they accurately represent the content is on your site, and they appear in places your audience hangs out.

Hybrid Approach

You can go a long way by buying in some help, and doing the rest yourself.

Pay for a few hours of consulting where an SEO evaluates your site and your market niche. It’s well worth paying top dollar, for someone good, for this part – as it most likely only takes a few hours. Setting off on the right course can pay high dividends, whilst heading down the wrong path can be difficult, and costly, to recover from. Engage them in an advisory-only role, and ask them to provide you with a strategy. Some SEOs will do this, some won’t.

The most important thing is to ensure they establish your site has no technical issues that will prevent it being crawled, and that your content is structured correctly. Once these problems are ironed out, SEO becomes a lot less troublesome.

Only you know your skills, but the following areas are reasonably straightforward for those with a little web knowledge. Keyword research is easy enough to do yourself, using readily available /a>, as is content generation.

Simply write on topic and sprinkle keywords through your content and headings, or have your copywriter do so.

You may also wish to undertake link building yourself. This involves /a>. It can be a good idea to get consultancy as to where you should focus your link building energies. Some links are worth a lot more than others, and there is a strategy to it.

Like any complex professional service, you’ll still need to monitor and measure, even if you do opt for expensive, comprehensive outsourced options. There’s no sitting back with marketing, and that includes SEO.

Whatever path you choose, make sure the SEO work is aligned with your business goals.

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