Top Ranking on Google Organic and Paid Search?

The Internet has basically taken over every other marketing venue in terms of spending. The importance of being visible online is crucial to the success of a company, whether brick and mortar or with an exclusively online market.

In the UK last year Internet advertising grew 41.2%. Sixty percent of companies that are spending online right now plan to increase online budgets. Companies are directing more of their budgets online attempting to build their brand and engage end-users.

Being at the top of Google organic search is the top priority for just about every online marketing company that knows what that top placement would mean to a company. The difference between being at position#1 and #11, in many cases, means the difference between a profitable company and a company scraping by.

Of the many ways to spend your advertising dollars/pounds, Google Adwords offers the opportunity for advertisers to be visible to thousands of targeted consumers and be seen in the top of a search for the keyword or keyword phrase the company targets. This works in the same way as if they were buying a half page advertisement in a specific area of the local newspaper (i.e. a perfume ad in the women's section).

Google Adwords is a paid tool that advertisers can use to bid on terms related to their business, and potentially show up on the first page of results for those keywords. This can be very expensive depending on your market and your competition.

The question is, do you need to pay to be seen if you are already showing in the top ten? The answer is yes you do.

Each search engine uses different sources for things such as paid results, natural results or directory results...and in some cases they even use different sources for their secondary listings.

"So if I'm #1 on Google, why do I need to pay for an additional placement in paid search? Won't I be paying for traffic that I will probably already get?"

Not necessarily, and we are going to show you and prove why beyond a shadow of a doubt.

What Google says about top ranking in both organic and paid results

According to Google, 1000 impressions on average will net 10 clicks on a top spot in their Adwords scheme. A top position in organic results will net you 20 clicks per 1000 impressions. Being at the top of both will net an astounding 60 clicks.

Now I don't know about you folks, but I know the difference between 1-2% and 6% when it comes time to deliver reports to clients. This is an absolutely huge piece of information.
So what Google is saying is that you can double your traffic by being at the top of paid and organic results. And they didn't just say it, they sent me a graph in case I didn't believe their sales rep.

More reasons to use Pay Per Click when you are #1 on Google

Okay, that's the main reason for being on top of paid and organic search. Now let's consider other important reasons.

Over the past few years there has been a lot of shuffling around in the world of search and in who actually supplies the results that the different search engines show when you use their search function.

America Online used to provide their own results until the end of December 2005 when Google invested $1 billion for a 5% stake. Google now provides both paid and natural (organic) search results to AOL Search users. It's a pretty good deal for Google considering AOL is #4 after their own search, MSN and Yahoo. It's even better when you consider that AOL users typically convert into buyers at a rate of 6% versus the average 2-3% across the web.

There are approximately 17 search engines exchanging results, some paid and some natural, depending on which one you use.

Below are two graphs that outline Google and Yahoo, two of the top three search engines. (MSN is the third; they has recently launched MSN Live which furnishes their own results)

For the sake of this article, let's take a look at Google.

First off, Google furnishes two different results with their Search Network - Primary Search Results and Paid Search results. If you have an Adwords account and are in the top three positions, plus chose the Search Network in "Campaign Settings," your ad is syndicated across seven other search engines and their top results:

That's pretty substantial.

Let's take a look at Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture, formerly Goto):

Yahoo Search Marketing provides results from their Pay Per Click advertising to these second tier search engines. But again, it's under the same pretense -- you have paid to be in the top positions.

How this applies to Directory and Organic Search listings

Understanding search engines and how they work is an integral part of doing search engine marketing. Different engines have different site structures. Some search engines display these paid ads along with their organic search in such a way that the end user has no idea that he/she is clicking on a paid listing.

There are three other ways that listings from sources other than internal databases are used:

1. Primary Organic Search Results
2. Secondary Organic Search Results
3. Directory Search Results

A good example is Google. Google supplies Ask.com with their paid listings. Ask.com supplies Lycos, HotBot and Dogpile with their primary search results, and Ask supplies Snap.com with their secondary search results.

Lets take a look at the rest.

Google

• Gets directory results from DMOZ.


• Furnishes primary search results to Alexa, Netscape, Dogpile, AOL and Go.com.

Yahoo

• Gets paid results from Yahoo Search Marketing.


• Furnishes primary search results to Alta Vista, Alltheweb and Dogpile.

MSN Live and MSN

• Provides paid listings via MSN AdCenter to Microsoft sites.


• Furnishes Dogpile with primary results.

LookSmart

• Furnishes Dogpile with primary results.

Snap.com

• Gets secondary search results from Ask.com.

Lycos

• Gets directory listings from DMOZ.
• Gets paid results from Google.
• Gets primary results from Ask.com.

AOL

• Gets paid and primary results from Google.
• Gets directory listings from DMOZ.

Go

• Gets paid and primary listings from Google.

Alta Vista

• Gets directory listings from DMOZ.
• Gets paid results from Yahoo Search Marketing.
• Gets primary results from Yahoo.

Netscape

• Gets directory listings from DMOZ.
• Gets paid and primary results from Google.

Ask

• Gets paid results from Google.
• Furnishes primary results to Lycos, Dogpile and Hotbot.
• Furnishes secondary search results to Snap.com.

HotBot

• Gets directory listings from DMOZ.
• Gets paid results from Google.
• Gets primary search results from Ask.com.

Dogpile

• Gets paid results from Yahoo.
• Gets primary search results from LookSmart, MSN, Yahoo, Google, and Ask.

Alexa

• Gets directory results from DMOZ.
• Gets paid and primary results from Google.

AllTheWeb

• Gets paid results from Yahoo Search Marketing.
• Gets primary search results from Yahoo.

So at the end of the day, to maximize your website potential, you need to be on the top of organic listings as well as paid listings.

Personally I have tested this theory several times, and with very large companies, and each time the result is the same: a major difference in traffic running a paid campaign alongside top rankings on the organic side.

Gary R. Beal (a.k.a. GaryTheScubaGuy) is the Head of Search and Head of SEO and PPC Training at Stickyeyes.

SEO Tips for Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO Services is a very specialised field which takes time, experience and persistence to excel at. Search Engine optimization is tough and has a cost attached. It requires analysis of various parameters and logical thinking by seo experts. You design your website and submit it to search engines but no one will visit your website until it is well optimized by search engine experts.

There are a lot of companies providing seo services but quite a few of them provide this service in a non-ethical way which can lead to spamming and blackout or banning of your website into the search engines.

If your website is on a banned list for spamming in a search engine, chances are that you will never get listed on the search engines. New Delhi Digital Works provides an ethical Search Engine Positioning service which drives genuine targetted traffic to your website.

To keep a competitive edge in today’s business world optimization of your website is first and most important step. The aim of our Search Engine Optimization proposal is to present you with a competitive solution to increase the targetted traffic to your website through high ranking in Search Engines and thereby attract new clients. New Delhi Digital Works uses its own unique Search Engine Submission and Positioning Techniques. We can help you get better search engine ranking, optimization and placement at reasonably low pricing.

The SEO tips below should assist the reader in understanding a basic knowledge of how to create human friendly web pages. These are easily understood by the most popular search engines today.

1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags. Inserting a keyword or key phrase will greatly improve your chances of bringing targeted traffic to your site.
   
2. Make sure that the title tag contains text which a human can relate to. The text within the title tag is what shows up in a search result. Treat it like a headline.
   
3. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.
   
4. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page. Adding the exact same text for your h1 tag will tell the reader who clicks on your page from a search engine result that they have clicked on the correct link and have arrived at the page where they intended to visit. Robots like this too because now there is a relation between the title of your page and the headline. Also, sprinkle your keywords throughout your article. The most important keywords can be bolded or colored in red. A good place to do this is once or twice in the body at the top of your article and in the sub-headings.
   
5. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed. Always use the headline of the pages as the title tag to help the robots know exactly what the page is about. A good place to insert the headline is within the h1 tag. So the headline is the same as the title tag text.
   
6. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag. SEO pros all agree that these tags are not as important today as they once were. Just place the headline once within the keywords and description tags.
   
7. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.
   
8. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans. Search engines like to index human friendly pages which contain content which is relevant to the search.
   
9. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.
   
10. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.
    
11. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use a submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.