——————————————-

I just started noticing this tonight…how long has this been going on? What determines when a result will have 1 or 4 description lines? Thoughts? Please see this screen shot…it’s a big file/image – please click to see the big picture:

In his post, Rand poses the question: Why does paid search earn so many more marketing dollars than search engine optimization when organic results get more traffic than PPC ads?

In this post, we’d like to respond to this issue as well as question the assumption upon which the question is made.

Part of the data for the conclusion that most traffic comes from organic listings comes from a study done by Eyetools Eyetracking Research, which shows that out of a study of 50 people, most of them viewed a Google search results page like this:

As you can see, most people looked at the top left corner, with a smaller % looking at the right side. The SEOMoz blog concludes that SEO drives much more traffic than PPC, and several users then debate the reasons why more money isn’t spent in SEO if this is the case.

The assumption behind this conclusion is twofold. It assumes 1) that the triangle in the heatmap moves down to the organic results when sponsored ads are present above the organic listings, and 2) that traffic from SEO converts well enough to achieve a greater return on investment for SEO spending than PPC spending for traffic does.

Eyetools states in this study that the triangle of the most views “appears to include top sponsored, top organic results, and Google’s alternative results.” This would indicate that when ads are shown at the top of the page they receive more exposure than the top organic listings.

So in the screenshot that we see here, there are only sponsored links on the right side, and organic results go all the way to the top on the left. We overlayed a screen shot of a search results page with 3 sponsored results at the top on the left, and drew a box on the heat map where these ads were. As you can see, the majority of users’ eyes would scan the sponsored ads in the top 3 positions most heavily in this case:

So in the case of ads being shown on the left, PPC will get more traffic. This taints the data and the assumption that the SEO is best argument relies on. A more conclusive test would separate search results pages with ads on the left from those without them, drawing heat maps accordingly. This would help us to make some more educated assumptions about the topic we’re discussing.

Additionally, it can be said that traffic from sponsored ads may convert more easily than organic traffic, since many users click on ads with the intention to buy, where organic clicks may be less transactional and more informational. This will definitely vary depending on a lot of factors, and it’s all subject to verification or debate by data from studies, but what I’m saying is that your ROI may not necessarily be greater for SEO spending based on how targeted your traffic may be. Many of you will say “not likely,” but I say “not impossible.”

So who wins? SEO or PPC?

The answer is not to choose one over the other. As James Zolman pointed out,

I [have seen clients'] net income double and triple because PPC and SEO work together. SEO is slower, therefore the expense is lower for these particular clients. They would put more money towards SEO (beyond the $20k-$40k they already spend per month on it) if the results had a wider, faster reach. When they see the return on investment from one set of targeted keywords, they move to the next with the ROI obtained from the previous while leaving some on the table to manage and continue to strengthen their organic rankings. The same goes for PPC – except it is much faster moving, has a much wider reach, and proves a ‘good enough’ ROI to reinvest in it even more. It’s quite scalable… just like SEO, only a little faster for the most part.

Let me tell you about the conversion lift that PPC brings to SEO and vice versa – One company was making roughly $100k/mo from SEO 1 year ago. That seemed to be steady as they ranked in the top 10 for well over 1000 high quality terms. Enter PPC – within 3 months, their new income was at $400k/mo at an expense of $200k/mo on PPC. PPC contributed to doubling their ‘net’ even though the second $100k/mo net was more expensive than that provided by SEO. Their entire net increase could not all be attributed to PPC. We had return visitors, and we noticed that several who clicked on paid search ads would come back via an organic route and vice versa. I would say the doubling of net came because of the natural lift that each (PPC AND SEO) had on the other. Of course, without that added reach and traffic from PPC the SEO may/may not have increased two-fold within 90 days because PPC let us target 10,000+ new keywords/combinations where the company did not have quite the exposure that SEO was currently bringing to the brand/site – coupled with ‘owning’ more real estate for the 1000 or so terms they rank well for.

At the very least, I would never turn off PPC when a client gets top rankings via SEO – the added lift can be incredible. You just have to learn what combination gives you that ROI lift/brand lift. When I say combination, I mean which ad text compliments the organic listing, what position is positive vs negative, when is there a real ROI, etc. It’s all in the analytics.

Bottom line for me: SEO is not better than PPC. PPC is not better than SEO. PPC is not easy ‘out of the box’ beyond the surface. SEO is definitely technical. They NEED to work together because they MAKE YOUR CLIENTS MORE MONEY, MAKE YOUR COMPANY MORE MONEY.

And I’d add to that that the more real estate your website listing takes up on the page the better. Whichever investment is more profitable, both investments together are the most profitable. Until you get to the point that your marginal cost is higher than your marginal return, a joint SEO and PPC spending strategy is a great idea. As long as you can make money back from each investment, why not pile them up together?

And of course, PPC is a great way to sustain profits while you wait for your SEO to take effect anyway.

Roger Monti (spelling?)

dot edu link hunting

.edu is probably the most white hat link you can get

focus on natural citations

Check what the industry heavyweight backlinks are in your niche

Charitable opportunities

Fact vs Myth

Not a magic bullet, not necessarily better than other links

Would rather buy a well linked authoritative site link than a .edu

What makes them decent is that they are usually free, not in a bad neighborhood

May not be desirable but if you can get it, get it

-pages may not be authoritative

-Not well linked so crawl may not be often

When looking for industry heavyweight backlinks,
linkdomain:example.com site:.edu “bookmarks”
replace ‘bookmarks’ with:
“links”
“favorite sites”
“your product or service”
“sponsors”
“donors”
“sponsors”
“benefactors”
“directory”
“resources”

Find .orgs this way too…

When you contact the author of that page, you can say that ‘this fits here’ or create a page that fits the context of that page

One thing to look out for when doing that is that some of the pages may be outdated – watch for abandoned web pages and don’t waste time contacting them

Email address may not be on that page, shorten url a little bit at a time to find email contact – the sites that say ‘contact us’ with more sites is goooold

You might find 1000 or more link candidates so filter out using additional modifiers that increase the relevancy while decreasing the pool of websites to

1000 that might be in a position to give you a link

Jay Young

The thing you need the most is some brass balls and big bucks

Don’t be afraid in link building, there isn’t any place for it

Places to get links -

-Directories (seriously)
–BOTW
–Yahoo!
–DMOZ
–Joe Ant
–Blog Catalogue

More places-

-Non-profit Sponsorships
–arguably editorial
–tax deductible
–Normally very good neighborhoods
–Helps a cause you believe in

Even More-
-Join the SEOcialists
–Digg, Reddit, Stumble

Brokers
-Big Name Text Link Brokers
-Blog Advertisers
-Smaller Brokers 2,000-10,000 sites
-Specialty Brokers..don’t be afraid to do this stuff
-Amateur Brokers…20 or 30 sites that they command at a time…work with them on a much more personal level…demand a lot more change on a page

Link Bait
-Call Rand

Favorite quote: “At the end of the day, we aren’t in this for morality we’re in this for marketing. We’re not moralists – you gave that up when you got into

the business. Own the fact that you have to do what it takes to get links.”

Buy THEM!

Vital for success of competitive campaign
Be as relevant as possible
Be as natural as possible
Vary your anchor text
Use co-citation…efficient part of link building – go link out to wikipedia, .edus, .govs, and other good relevant stuff that relates back to what you’re

doing

Darker Methods

Comment Spam
Trackback Spam
Reciprocal Links…avoid advertised reciprocal links…find relevant sites and talk them into linking back to you and you link to them…
Three Ways…avoid same recip problem
Link Farms…find not obviously discovered link farms that still have decent TBPR – be careful

Outside the Box
Widget
Templates
Template Sponsorship…Find the most popular wordpress templates out there and pay the guy to put a link at the bottom of the theme and give it away for

free…
Contests FREE iPhone!!!
Content Trades…hire college kid that writes well and have them write articles like crazy and start trading them…

Tips
Hire Bartenders…reason why they’re great…good social skills…good multitaskers
Avoid buying links from forums
Avoid any site with hidden links
Use moderation and common sense
If the competitions is too clean, mess it up a little.
Don’t over play any aspect of one specific thing – spread it out and be holistic – be natural – don’t overplay blog links, etc.

Stephan Spencer

High value link targets
Pareto Princple 80/20 rule
PR more reliable metric the higher the score
PR10s: usa.gov, nsf.gov, w3.org, ERCIM.org, real.com, energy.gov
Adobe has nine PR10 pages

Build a Link Building Spider
Look for sites one-click away from Google
Look for sites with super high PR
Preference for sites that already give link love to patron/sponsor
Populate database with site data
Link build your existing links
-Mine your existing backlinks for opportunities to revise the anchor text
-Great tools for this: SEOmoz Pro account, Internet Marketing Ninjas backlink analysis

Networking in the Blogosphere
-Comment on blogs that ‘dofollow’ comment links eg Blogmaverick.com, rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog

Submit to blog carnivals…Host one – great resource, host one and participate by submitting relevant blog posts to blog carnivals to consider your link
Contribute to group blogs – make spreadsheet of group blogs
Be a guest blogger

Get involved via comments and build repoire, then ask for a link

Install WordPress plugin that injects links

Paid links
-Manufacturing “link authority” vs. focusing your existing link authority
-Don’t try artificially creating link athority thorugh paid links
-Focus link authority

Redistribute Home Page Link Authority
-Improves quality of SERPS for “long tail” non-brand search terms
-Sculpt your backlinks to focus your link authority
-two levels of improvement…

Conditionally 301 Inboudnd Affiliate Links

Be Like Amazon
-Only works if you manage your own affiliate program
-Also demand that each affiliate put a link on their legal notices page

Networking in meatspace (real world)
-Build relationships with bloggers at conferences
-Register and attend conferences that link to their attendees (WordCamp – $25, Lockergnome)
-Contribute to Conference Wikis
-Give free talks to libraries and campuses
-Get involved with local meetups
-Invite the W3C to speak and get a link to your event

Donate

Write your spider to start scanning for good indicators that they are prone to thank their sponsors

Wikis
-Contribute to Wikipedia (need to be upstanding member of community)
-Contribute to other wikis
-User profile pages
-Take definitions and create glossary wiki

Link Baiting – Viral Content
-Videos
-”Hat Swap” spoof of “wife Swap” reality show w/ SEOs
-Quizzes, Personality Tests
-Widgets
-Swiki
-Microsites
-Write a wordpress plugin
-Firefox Extension

Stroke Egos

Q&A

How do you manage 1000 link opportunities from .edu pages?

Link builders paid on a per email basis or pay per successful result – pay $60-$75 per .edu they achieve and that incentivises them to make smart decisions

on what pages to contact and make effective searches…filter those searches that you do by looking at first couple pages of results and negative out

words…like -news so you get more of the pages you don’t want showing up and you will have a better pool of .edu link targets as a result and positive

results rate will go up as a consequence.

Link building for reputation management – Employ same tactics because you want links to stick. Do mostly what you would do for your own site. Create some

damage control inventory with links…use 301 redirects if you have large properties. Redirect bad stuff pages by redirecting bad content to good content so

it pushes the good content back up. Have some link juice laying around…

-side note, answer to Q to Jay – he says buy the 5000 links for $50 and point them to competitors…if you don’t want to stand out, make it look like all

your competitors are doing the same thing.

-side note: Manage how links look in case you go under a hand check…if you really care about your business and don’t want to see it burned…it’s prudent

to prepare by making your ‘garbage’ smell good if you have any

How do you tell how much a specific link is worth?

Take a look at back links, screw the TB, if the site is heavily linked and has been around for a long time…age and backlinks are very important along with

frequency of updates. If you find adsense or tip jars then you know the site is kinda struggling so you can low ball them. You can sometimes just name your

price and some sites will be happy to take it.

WordPress plugin out there now that transfers link back to home page for blog post so all blog posts are ‘sticky’…

Watch out for ‘slapped’ sites with thousands of inlinks and only a pr3.

Aaron Wall, the guru behind SEO Book.com’s SEO Training Course and SEO Tools, posted a blog post a few weeks ago about guest posting for a number of his readers. We were one of the lucky ones that he responded to with an in depth PPC interview. He was very complimentary and we’re excited to share his answers to our questions. Enjoy!

On what percentage of your websites do you use PPC? How do you decide whether or not to use PPC on those websites?

At one point or another I like to think I use it on all of them. Most my sites are ad driven or affiliate driven though, so I don’t compete on the core most competitive commercial keywords via PPC for all of them, but I try using PPC for link building in some cases, and use it in others just to get mindshare in the marketplace…you don’t know what single piece of marketing will stick, but if you are doing 10 things in parallel I think they start to feed off each other. Lots of push marketing (and/or viral marketing/public relations) is crucial for a new website or brand.

Do you believe PPC can be both a short term and long term strategy? More one than the other? Why or Why not?

I think for it to be longterm you need to have an efficient sales cycle and a decent brand. If you do not have a well known brand then the branded competitor will likely have fatter profit margins, and can basically take market share from you at will. And if you are working without a brand, quality scores  are helping the competitor and crushing you…tomorrow if not today.

Do you use any secondary ppc platforms like adbrite, miva, business.com, others? Any favorites? Why/why not?

I tried many of them a few years back, but typically have seen ~ 0 volume or lots of volume (driven entirely by click fraud). Based on that experience I never really went back to the 2nd tier engines much…I figured there was more value in refining Google / Yahoo! / Microsoft campaigns, and in brand building or business model improvements rather than hunting out cheaper clicks. Having said that, on some rare occasions I have seen a Searchfeed ad listing or AdBrite ad unit on a page that ranks well in Google’s organic search results and found that to be a cheap way to arbitrage Google traffic, but that is a rare lucky good deal.

Some of the 2nd tier engines have seen that I own BlackHatSEO.com and have made me custom ad offers to spam Google in exchange for a nice cut of their revenues (going so far as sending me spreadsheets of their top paying keywords), but since many of their ad buyers were affiliates it did not make sense to go from Google to me to _____ to affiliate to merchant…it would be just as easy for me to sign up for the affiliate program directly. If I was using click fraud then it might make sense to sell them clicks, but how hard is it for me to clone what the affiliate was doing and cut those two out of the transaction?

A friend of mine who was in the forex space swears by some of the second tier engines, but in most markets I think time is best spent optimizing your campaigns on the big 3.

Can you summarize where you think PPC advertising tactics, strategies and ROI are going to be 5 to 10 years from now?

I think many companies are already willingly lose money to buy market share. And I think that trend will only grow as time passes. The days of direct response short term 300% ROI search ads will be over (other than for a short period of time for stuff like the new ring tone reverse billing fraud of the day).

As marketing gets more sophisticated PPC will get too competitive for many small companies to compete. I see search becoming a brand buy more and more as time passes, rather than having such a focus as a direct response medium. Plus some people will be willing to pay to give away what looks like free information, but is essentially a sales message wrapped in fancy value add formatting that does not feel like an ad…much more content of the Teaching Sells variety.

What is one secret to PPC success that you haven’t ever shared before?

My affiliate code for signing up with Google is… oh that is the wrong answer. I don’t test PPC stuff anywhere near as well as guys like you do. I don’t really have any PPC secrets beyond using PPC as a link building technique…I think that is overlooked far too often.

Finally, what kind of a time and capital commitment do you recommend a brand new website invest in PPC compared to SEO? What about a 2 year old website? 5+ years?

I think off the start you have to do a base level of link building to get the site going…so that takes about a day and maybe $1,000. From there it is critical that you really find out what keywords convert well such that you can create content around them to optimize your site for them.

One site at the 5 year point might be more screwed up than the next site is at a 5 day point. But no matter where your site is you should keep using PPC to buy mind share and market share, and to test how well your site converts and refine your sales cycle.

If PPC ads seem like they are too expensive then there are likely some issues with your sales cycle or value proposition.

Any additional thoughts about pay per click advertising?

I think you guys know a lot more than I do about PPC. Not sure what I can say to you as a tip! :)

Thanks for sharing Aaron!

I noticed this post on Sphinn and thought I would post all of Chuck’s(?) YouTube vids here that have to do with basic paid search and optimization…these are awesome. Chuck works at Pop Labs by day and it looks like he is partners in a music production company by night.

Here is the video that I noticed via Sphinn:

Paid Search 101 Rap

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lyrics:

you want to start SEM well heres what to do
focus on a product and find a niche too
you want to get the listing
I’ll give you some assisting
SEo & SEM, they are coexisting
to cover all the bases
you must have patience
research all your keywords and your phrases
they all sound good but they may not be a factor
several ways to check and I prefer word tracker
very vague phrases should get denied
longtail keyphrases are more qualified
check the cpc, that’s the cost per click
make a judgement call, is is worth that hit
if it is then keep it
if its not then delete it
stay within your budget, that’s not a big secret
track your results, reporting is critical
and set your goals right be Google analytical
Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing
if your business local make sure you geo targeting
the user only clicks on what sounds best
make sure you use very descriptive ad text
its a must that you use correct landing pages
if they see what they want, they easily persuaded
when they convert that’s a win win
when your site is bookmarked they’ll come back again
cpc will go, ctr will skyrocket
roi will get better, that’s more money in your pocket
and if you smart, you’ll invest in more phrases
but that’s up to you, I’m just giving you the basics
you got it then fine, if you don’t hit rewind
listen closely and play it back 1 more time
that’s just the start anymore might cost
I have to deal with my boss
if I tell you the secret sauce
like using paid search to enhance seo
and revolving ad text is the way to
uh oh, I gotta go, that’s too much for you to know
but if you want more, wait for the next video

And others I found directly from Chuck’s(?) YouTube profile page:

Social Media Addiction Rap

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lyrics:

I surf the web, I used to watch TV
now I’m logged into Joost, it’s commercial free
lets see where I want to go
and who I want to know
connecting people with people with web 2.0
I don’t use email unless I’m at my job
want the next post, I subscribe to the blog
I’m easy to find
I’m always online
social networking sites, I think I have nine
I use myspace to promote my music
I get friends and album sales that’s how I do it
but tell me have you heard
about the new word
something like myspace but they call it virb
always something new, I’m a start creatin
I’ll make a brand new facebook application
uploading pictures and mp3′s
update my profile and hit ctrl D
can’t stop what I started, it’s getting ridiculous
social book mark it, add it del.icio.us
some can’t take it but I just can’t quit
go to Imeem and listen to my playlist
watching videos on my You Tube channel
clickin so much, my mouse smoking like a candle
I’m online for hours, addicted to the power
10 tabs open on a firefox browser
I must be going crazy cause I can’t get enough
I guess I’m addicted to social media

Link Building 101 Rap

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lyrics:

You create a new site and its content heavy,
With the right amount of pictures you believe it’s ready,
So you launch it trying to put money in da bank,
But when you search and try to find yourself, you can’t,
So you thank until your mind goes blank,
Got titles and headers but no page rank,
Sooner or later it will show if I wait,
In the meantime make sure my code validate,
And it do,
Hmm, now what I’m supposed to do,
Add meta information and alt tags too,
Still don’t get listing,
Something must be missing,
Brad and Chuck recommended doing link building,
So you start hunting down sites like a predator,
Doing back links on all your competitors,
Whoever linking to them need to link to me,
Is it free, do we swap, or do I pay a fee,
Well take it from us, before you take that step,
Some things about the site that you might want to check,
Did they use a link farm or some dirty tactics,
Could have a bad effect on your site that’s drastic,
Could’ve link baited, look at what they created,
Compare it to yours, is it even related,
Take the time, go inspect and see,
Take advantage of paid directories,
If you follow all the steps with a little bit of patience,
Get links from relevant sites that are favorites,
Update your content on the regular basis,
I’m confident you’ll make it to first page placement

(You will need to install/enable the most recent version of the SEO Quake Firefox Add-on, then follow these instructions.)

1. Visit siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com. (DO NOT SIGN IN – Signing in, oddly enough, doesn’t let the SEO Quake tool operate like we want it to for this activity…)

2. Type in a competitor’s url and click Explore URL.

3. Click on your competitors Inlinks to view them. Yahoo! will return 100 Inlinks on the first “inlinks results page”.

4. Use the drop down menu’s directly underneath the Inlinks to Show Inlinks Except from this domain to: Entire site…and it will take a moment for your SEO Quake tool to load.

5. Click Request Parameters.

6. Sort the 100 inlinks using any parameter that portrays the most authority for your industry.

Use the arrows underneath the Request Parameters button to sort the links:

You can sort by PageRank, Google Index, Yahoo! Links, Yahoo! Link Domain, MSN Index, Alexa Rank, Age (YES!), and Del.icio.us.

Examples:

Site Explorer Natural Results for my research on PepperJamSearch.com -

Judging by these inlinks, I could safely bet that PepperJamSearch.com is engaged in some link buying and regular blog comments.

Site Explorer Results After Sorting by Alexa Rank -

They are also using press releases (something I need to start doing) and consistently posting blog comments.

Site Explorer Results After Sorting By Site Age -

After sorting by age we notice the consistent use of press coverage, we see some sponsorship back links here too, and more blog participation/comments.

Note how the SEO Quake add-on sorted the results by the parameter I chose and the ranking changed. You can actually do this on a regular search engine with SEO Quake too! I use it on Google results all the time.

7. Start analyzing your competitor’s back links to determine their linking strategies – it is easy to find the % of their back links that are blog comments, PAID LINKS, naturally requested links, link bait links, etc!

8. Export Yahoo!’s back links report into a TSV file (using the export function in the upper right) and start color coding your spreadsheet when you get the links/request the links/pay for the links/review the links/etc!

That’s how you can quickly steal your competitor’s link building strategies.

“Experience gives you perspective

Many webmasters only work on one site, which gives them few points to triangulate against to understand how search engines change. I have old sites, new sites, small sites, large sites, clean sites and a few spammy sites. Tracking how they perform gives me a better idea of what works than the perspective I could get from just one site.

With new verticals mixing into organic search results there is still a lot of opportunity if you are willing to be creative and take risks. You don’t have to win on every front. Just try a few techniques and stick with the ones that work for you. And, going forward, your experience is going to be more valid than what you read elsewhere because you know the data intimately well.”

This is a very strong argument FOR outsourcing a lot of business functions, including SEO/PPC. Whenever you outsource something to a specialized agency, you are buying into an economy of scale PLUS tapping into a wealth of experience for a fraction of the costs in the short and long term.
Here is how I would restate the first paragraph so it relates to pay per click advertising:

“Many pay per click marketers only work on one site, which gives them few points to triangulate against to understand how search engine advertising changes. I have old sites, new sites, small sites, large sites, clean sites and a few spammy sites that I advertise through pay per click ads. Tracking how they perform gives me a better idea of what could work for my clients than the perspective I could get from just one site.”

Here they are: 97th Floor out of Provo, Utah.

They are awesome contributors to the SEO and social media communities. Check out one of their famous tools – the social media for Firefox extension.

This is a relatively new relationship that we think will give us, and 97tn Floor, a very big advantage because we both specialize in a single aspect of Search Engine Marketing. It is an honor to be working with them!