If you're a do-it-yourselfer (DIYer) when it comes to building your website, there are a number of strategies you can use to help yourself in getting your webpages ranked in the seach engines. for example, carefully written titles, description meta tags, keyword-rich body text and incoming links.

An important, but often neglected, element is the use of keywords in your Headings. The single most important heading on a page is the headline, name of the article or page name. Call it what you want, just be aware that this isn't the same as the Title Tag which shows up on search engines.

Headings are the large font headlines that tell what's on a webpage -- the main headline as well as subheadings. There's an art to writing a headline, but that's a blog for another day. What we're concerned with here is the structure of your heading/headline.

Headings in HTML,  H1, H2, H3... offer important clues to the search engines . Since headlines often contain important clues to the content of the webpage, search engines take note of any keywords found in headings. 

In HTML, there are six header tags:

• H1
• H2
• H3
• H4
• H5
• H6

 <H# ...> indicates a header or a title of a section or subsection of the document. For example, to start the section of your page that discusses your product, you might put--

<H1>Buy My Product<H1/>

Which gives you this on the page

Buy My Product

 Each header tag indicates the relative importance of each section it is heading: <H1 ...> is for the major sections of your document, or as the one header to the entire document. <H2 ...> is for the secondary sections of your document, etc.

Using keyword-rich heading and subheads not only helps your search engine rankings, it can also make it easier for visitors to read the content on the page. Since many people start out skimming a webpage when they land on it, headers and subheads can both help gain their attention and guide them to what they are searching for.

So use keyword-rich headers and subheads frequently on your page. The search engines will take notice and so will visitors to your page.

One of the best ways to guarantee success on the Web is to keep visitors interested in visiting your site often.

One of the best ways to do this is by offering new or refreshed content. Frequent updates to your site will keep customers engaged and assured that they have good reason to return. Frankly, nothing turns off customers more than seeing outdated or irrelevant information.

So how do you keep content fresh? There are a number of  ways to create interesting content, including:

• Blogs: Blogs are a great viral marketing tool because they can incorporate the elements of interactivity, community and collaboration.  One caveat, don’t bore them to death.
• Polls and surveys: People love to share their opinions and polls and surveys work well as they provide visitors with both instant gratification and underscore interactivity.
• Articles and White Papers: People love to get free information. By updating and offering free articles and white papers on your site, you not only give them a reason to return, you can also score inbound links by allowing them to republish the work (with attribution, of course).
• Customer-driven content: One great way to get new content without having to write it yourself or hire freelancers is to ask your customers for contributions. Many visitors will jump at the chance to provide you with content, simply for the chance to see their name in print.

 Content is still king on the Web. It should be the starting point for your Website and never treated as an afterthought. There’s simply no reason not to have an updated and interesting website. Set up a regular schedule for updating content on your site. For example, blog three times a week.

 Keep content fresh and relevant, and you’ll keep them coming back for more.

An interesting Forbes article discusses what its like to find your site in Google Hell. It also addresses what may be a growing issue, Google's ability to continuously index the billions of Web pages floating around the Internet.

In the case of Skyfacet.com, it appears they were penalized for having a mirror site or mirror pages, i.e., pages that have the same or similar content on them, which Google interprets as someone's attempt to game the system.

Skyfacet shouldn't throw in the towel. By retaining a search engine optimization company with SEO specialists who know what they are doing, a specialist could petition Google on behalf of Skyfacet and possibly resurrect their site to Google's regualr SERPS.

Was that too much of a Biblical analogy?  

I've been using Google Desktop since it first came out in a beta version a while back. It's great for finding files that you've long forgotten the names of but suddenly have a need to locate.

It's not perfect. I've gone in search of an item on more than one occasion only to come up empty. But it seems to be better than any of the alternatives.

I didn’t realize it, but Google Desktop has not been available to Mac users, a few of whom are friends of mine.

Well, Google has finally released a version for my Mac buddies.

You can learn more about it, as well as see what Mac-devotees have to say about, by visiting this article at Search Engine Land.

I think this is yet another example of Google staying ahead of the game, and offering products and services to as many Internet users as possible, thereby creating and maintaining a loyal customer base.

Is it any wonder Google stays ahead of all the other search engines when it comes to innovation and keeping customoers?

I was recently reminded about test conclusions, posted last May by those wonderful people at Marketing Experiments, on the subject of Website headlines.

Their conclusions pretty much sum up what most copywriters will tell you about your Website--

1. Your Landing Page absolutely must have a headline.
2. The more specific your headline, the better your results.
3. Properly optimizing your headline will produce the best results.

The report is a quick read, so you've got no excuse for not reading it. Especially when you read how their findings showed that optimizing the headline on a Web page could produce an increase in the Website's conversion  rate in excess of 73%.

I'm frequently amazed at how many Website's don't even bother to have a headline on the page, much less one that is written to attract attention and keep the visitor on the site. 

Let's face it, when you're seeking prospects on the Web, don't you want to do everyting you possibly can to not only attract them to your site, but turn them into customers? Of course you do.

So, read the report, and then do one of two things--

• work on creating a compelling, optimized headline for your site, or
• give us a call here at Zunch, and put us to work on creating a prospect-grabbing headline for you.

And if you think you've got a particularly challenging headline to create, just tell them you want me to work on it for you. I love a good challenge.  

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), has released it's annual industry survey, The State of Search Engine Marketing 2006, whose findings conclude that spending paid placement, paid inclusion, organic search engine optimization (SEO) and other forms of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) hit a record $9.6 Billion in 2006.

SEO remains the most popular form of SEM, although paid placement still gets the lion's share of online marketing budgets, with total spending of $8 billion.

Expect SEO spending to grow as a percentage of marketing budgets, as a growing number of advertisers continue to see the benefits of organic SEO as an important element, maybe the most important element, of their marketing.

Just a few days ago, February 7, 2007 to be exact, Yahoo! launched Pipes, a service designed to allow users to combine, or as more tech-savvy types might put it, "mashup", data from various Web sites.

What is Pipes?

Here's how it describes itself on it's Home Page: "Pipes is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator. Using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant."

A further explanation on the same page says:

Pipes is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which let programmers do astonishingly clever things by making it easy to chain simple utilities together on the command line.

What's that mean?

Well, for example, using Pipes, you can combine news feeds from both Google and Yahoo News on one site.

But maybe the best way to get an idea of what this mashup produces, is to visit their site.

And it seems Pipes is part of a broader initiative at Yahoo! that's been dubbed "Brickhouse." You can learn more about Brickhouse in this BusinessWeek article.

What it boils down to is Yahoo! is hoping Brickhouse will give it a way to develop new products, rather than finding itself buying up other companies who've already beaten it to the punch on developing next generation Web features, tools and platforms. Remember, Yahoo! and others had developed photo sharing sites, but Yahoo! found itself spending millions to buy Flickr because Flickr was seen a s both an innovation leader and, perhaps more importantly, cool.

There's a desperation among large companies to appear "cool," on the Internet, and thereby attract the millions of 18-to-34 year olds who advertisers and businesses alike crave as customers.

Of course, as we've seen time and again, even if you can somehow manufacture or buy cool, it eventually fades away. In fact, not to long ago, Yahoo! was cool, only to see itself supplanted by Google (we should note, even Google's cool cache is way down these days).

Whether Yahoo!'s Brickhouse proves to be a good idea remains to be seen. The brief history of the Internet is waist deep in similar ideas and operations that failed.

It's no big secret that Google and other search engines see local search as one of the next big steps in search engine results. Toward this end, Google has been working to include local businesses at the top of specific geographic search queries.

How's this work?

Well, let's say you decide that Japanese sounds good for dinner tonight. And let's say you are in Dallas, which, as you probably know, Zunch is. So you do a search in Google for "Japanese Restaurants Dallas." This is the image that appears above (yes, ABOVE) the search results:

  The cool thing for the restaurants appearing here?

The map and the listings appear at the top left of the search engine results page (SERP), prime real estate and generally the first area of the screen that a viewers eyes land on.

The cooler thing for the restaurants appearing here?

It didn't cost them a dime to appear there!

Really.

And it won't cost you anything to list your business.

You can read Google's own blog on the subject for more info.

The blog doesn't explain how to get listed, so here's what you do:

1. Visit https://www.google.com/local/add/login and set up a Google Maps account. Not only can you add address, telephone and other information, but you can include a link to your Website.
2. You'll next have to verify your address. To prevent anyone from posting fraudulent listings, Google will verify via snail mail (yes, snail mail), by sending you a postcard.
3. You will receive a PIN on the postcard. You'll need to log back into Google Local/Maps and enter the PIN.
4. The next time Google updates the listings, you'll be included. Be aware that it may take 3-4 weeks before you appear in the Map listings.

This is an unbelievably simple way to get listed at the top of the search engines for local listings. If many of your prospects are local, doing this will give you a leg up on the competiton, unless, of course, they've figured out how to do this also.

So get the jump on the competition and do it, now.

Outsell, Inc. has released its second annual report on U.S. ad spending and, based on their survey of 1,010 advertisers and media companies, spending on advertising on search engines is expected to grow 39 percent.

The press release, issued by Outsell,  indicates that overall online spending will grow 20 percent.

Interestingly, 49% of those surveyed indicated they plan to reduce their Pay Per Click (PPC) spending because of click fraud concerns.

The report demonstrates the growing confidence advertisers are gaining in marketing on the Internet, as online spendings share of ad budgets rises while more traditional media will see continuing declines in ad spending.

Also noteworthy in the report is the fact that advertisers rate online advertising as a very effective means of branding, wihch runs counter to the conventional wisdom that online is effective for generate leads, but poor for branding.

Expect to see an increased focus on search engine optimization (SEO), as these same advertisers continue to see the value of SEO in both attracting prospects and bolstering their branding efforts.

If you'd like to know more about how you can leverage SEO to both develop your brand and attract prospects, why not give us a shout today? One of our Zunch account executives will be happy to discuss what SEO can do for you. 

And if PPC is part of your online marketing efforts, don't forget that we also specialize in click fraud detection, and can help you both identify and recover ad dollars lost to fraud.

Some of you may recall receiving a promotion we ran earlier in 2006 in which we predicted a rise in click fraud for the latter part of 2006.

Seems we were right.

In an article appearing on Bizreport.com, Kristina Knight writes that the latest research indicates that click fraud reached 14.2% in the fourth quarter of 2006. In the promo we sent out, we had predicted that click fraud would rise during the busy Christmas buying season, hand-in-hand with increased Christmas purchases, and searches, online.

Not that the 14.2% figure isn't undisputed. As the article notes, Google engineers believe there are fundamental flaws in reports of increases in click fraud.

Regardless of the actual percentage of clicks that are fraudulent, click fraud at any level should be unacceptable, but it continues to be an issue that Google doesn't want to address head-on.

Unfortunately, there are no real defenses against click fraud. the only real protection is to use click fraud detection software to first-- detect it, second-- document it, and third-- file a claim with whichever search engine the fraud took place on.

And if you are looking for an excellent click fraud detection and reporting system, might I recommend Zunch's own, Click Fraud Detective? It's a proven system that can be used to detect, document and report click fraud. In addition to its reliability, it's also very affordable, especially when you consider it will help you recover ad dollars that have otherwise, gone to waste. 

Following on the heals of the earlier release of  search share numbers by Compete  and comScore, comes word, courtesy of SearchEngineWatch.com, that Hitwise and Nielsen/NetRatings rankings are out.

Nielsen’s numbers were similar to those reported by comScore, with Google remaining on top of the search pile with 50.8% of all searches in December 2006. Yahoo was second with 23.6% followed by Windows Live Search (MSN) with 8.4%.

Hitwise gives Google an even larger share, while also providing early figures for January 2006, pinning Google’s share at 63.1% and Yahoo at 21.6% for December 2006, with Google having the same figure for January, while Yahoo slipped to 21.4%.

No matter how you add it up, Google remains the dominant search engine.  And if Hitwise's numbers are correct, Google is garnering nearly two-thirds of all searches. Even with numbers hovering around the fifty percent margin, as reported by comScore and Nielsen, Google's numbers are envious.

Charles E. Wilson, former CEO of General Motors and the Secretary of Defense from 1953-1957, once was famously misquoted as saying, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." At that time GM had over 50% of the auto market.

Is the day coming when we'll say, "What's good for Google, is good for the country?"

Okay, not the best of analogies, but Google's continued dominance of the search market remains incredibly impressive, and you have to wonder how much of the economy and commerce is tied to seraches completed on Google.

 Brandt Dainow, CEO of ThinkMetrics, has conducted research which supports a position I’ve long held—the top position in Google Ad listings doesn’t necessarily have an advantage over the other positions.

 In an article appearing in iMedia Connections’ January 18, 2007 newsletter, Dainow details how he conducted research spanning 2003 to 2006 examining clickthrough rates for ads his company ran for its clients during that period.

 The results? In 2003, top position did have a slight advantage on clickthrough rates, although the fifth and sixth position (generally the bottom positions on the screen), also had higher clickthrough rates than the other positions.

 But by 2006, his research shows that the clickthrough rate for all positions was relatively equal.

 What does this mean?

 For one thing, it means the text in your ad may be more important than positioning.

 Admittedly, as a copywriter I have a bias toward text being the dominant factor in getting someone to click on an ad, but Dainow’s research bears this point out. It also further demonstrates how individuals conducting searches on the Internet are becoming more knowledgeable about finding what they want on the Web.

 It’s still a good idea to get the best positioning possible on Pay Per Click ads, but Dainow’s research shows that you may not have to blow your budget trying to be the top dog in positioning. In the quest for clickthroughs, your message is probably more important than your position.

According to Forrester Research's 2006 Internet Marketing Report, website visitors want three things from your website when they visit:

1.  High quality information.  Good, relevant information is the single biggest influence on a website visitor both staying at and returning to your site.

2.  Ease of use. The site must be simple and easy to navigate or they'll become discontented and leave.

3. Quick Download.  Visitors hate to wait. Most become frustrated if they have to wait more than a few seconds for a page to download, and will abandon it within five seconds.

How should you use this information? Review your site to make certain you are offering quality content on your site. Make certain your site architecture is easy for visitors to navigate.

And avoid using images or graphics that slow the downloading of a page. Remember, there are still a large number of people using dial up for their Internet access. Don't assume that everyone visiting your site has a fast connection and can download your web page in a matter of one or two seconds.

 In my opinion, the single most significant factor is having good, relevant content on your site. This accomplishes two things:

1. If a visitor sees content that he or she believes will give them the information they are searching for, they'll stick around.

2.  Good, relevant content also is great "spider food," meaning the search engines love content and having good content helps your rankings in the Seach Engine Page Rankings.

So, check that site out now. And if you need help, you know who to call.

Ever heard of a botnet? Neither had I until recently.

They are, unfortunately, the latest device in the burgeoning criminal click fraud industry. Although they are being used in other types of fraud, they are becoming an increasing threat to users of Pay Per Click (PPC).

Ryan Sherstobitoff, of Panda Software refers to them as a “silent epidemic.”  His company recently dismantled a botnet that had infected over 50,000 computers with a virus known as Clickbot.A Trojan. In describing what the botnet did, Sherstobitoff  said, “Imagine if each of those 50,000 computers made the botnet controller one dollar each day the system operated. If it takes us a few weeks to shut him down, the operator makes millions.”

That’s part of what is so sinister about botnets. Some of the programs are designed to be virtually undetectable by only entering one fraudulent click a day. A single click a day doesn’t amount to much, until you multiple that click over a network that is clicking on over 50,000 ads a day.

The botnets being used in click fraud register themselves as browser help objects and activate whenever Internet Explorer is run on the computer. The botnets then register fraudulent clicks at pay per click ads.

For more on the specifics of the Clickbot.A Trojan botnet, you can read Panda Software’s press release.

To help prevent your computer from being infected and used by a botnet, it’s recommended you keep your anti-virus products updated. And if you suspect that you might be a click fraud victim, it’s recommended that you use a click fraud detection program, like Zunch Worldwide’s Click Fraud Detective, which identifies fraudulent clicks so that users can recover funds lost as a result of fraudulent clicks.

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization's (SEMPO) annual search market survey is in full swing and you can participate.

Simply visit SEMPO's survey page and click to complete the survey.

Early findings indicate that organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains the most popular form of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), although paid placement is a close second.

Click on the survey now and share your opinion before it closes.

So you're fighting to get a high ranking in the search engines and convert visitors into customers. No easy task, particularly as your competitors probably have the same goals in mind.

Want to know what will make or break you, particularly as to converting visitors to customers?

Your content.

Great content builds your brand. It makes the sale. And it closes the deal. 

Yet way too many sites give little thought to content. I'm still amazed at how many companies simply upload their brochure onto their site and think that's sufficient. Or worse, fill up their pages with Flash or static images, doing nothing to sell a visitor on doing business with them.

Why is the Web Full of "Filler?"

At best, I'd guess that maybe (and this is a big "maybe") 20% of the sites on the web selling products or services have content designed to make sales and create customers. I'm probably being generous at the 20% figure. Gerry McGovern, a UK-based consultant widely regarded as a leading expert on the subject of web content, believes that less than 10% of content on the web is effective.

That means that somewhere between 80-90% of commercial websites are failing to do their job.

All because someone doesn't want to spend the time necessary to create enticing content. All because far too many businesses forget that their website is, in fact, a "Sales Person."

So they load it up with whatever "filler" they deem appropriate and then wonder why they aren't getting more sales from their website.

The Difference That Your Choice of Words Can Make

There's an old story of how investment bankers were looking for investors in what were then referred to as "third world economies." Most investors had little interest. But then someone got the bright idea to start calling them "emerging economies" and suddenly the money came flowing in.

Similarly, Fortune used to offer a supplement called "Better Plans for Retirement," but found little demand for it. Someone got the bright idea to change the title to "Retire Rich," and, BLAM!, suddenly the supplement became an in-demand, best seller.

All that happened because someone took the time to choose the right words. 

Finding the right words for your page title, your headlines, for all your content, is the essence of website success.  Do a search for keywords in your industry and look at the results on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). I'll guarantee you that the top choices have well-written, content rich pages that both provide information and sell the visitor on doing business with them.

Those sites will also be properly structured to be search engine friendly. That means that they use headlines and sub-headlines, short paragraphs and bullet points, among other things, to create a site that is informative, easy to read and entices the visitor to keep reading.

Think about this. Early in it's development, the Internet was often called the "Information Superhighway."

Why?

Because most people were (and still are) going there for information. Information that's delivered in the form of content.

If the information, the content, you provide is insufficient, your site has failed.

If the information you provide is sufficient, if it answers your prospects questions and meets their needs, your site is a success and you're on your way to earning new customers.

Take a look at your website today and try to judge it as objectively as possible. Ask yourself, "Is it doing the job it is supposed to?"

If the answer is no, then rethink your content. It might be a good idea to hire a copywriter who is knowledgeable regarding creating SEO and customer friendly content.

Here at Zunch Worldwide we offer copywriting as one of our services. If you'd like to learn what we can do for you, call or e-mail us today.

But whether you do it yourself, hire us or hire a copywriter, don't accept anything less than effective, persuasive copy-- the essence of website success.

If you've recently gone in search of a .com or .net suffix for your website, chances are your first choice is taken. This is becoming an increasingly frequent problem given the proliferation of "domain squatters" that buy up domain names and then wait for someone to come looking for one of them, at which point they insist on an exorbitant fee for the use of the name.

I’ve run into this problem a few times with some of my past clients setting up websites. In the past, the client always opted for a different name, sometimes throwing off marketing plans built around a particular name.

But with the proliferation of more domain suffixes like .ws or .tv or .cc, it appears the options for getting the name you want are broadening.

But is it necessarily a good idea to buy a .ws when the .com you coveted isn't available? Maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe

The primary advantage of the newer, and lesser known, suffixes is that you are more likely to get the domain name you want since there isn't much demand for .ws and its brethren. Major corporations are buying up .ws, .tv and other names, but that's strictly to protect their brands. Most don't bother to do anything more than post a redirect, and rarely use them for advertising or marketing purposes.

Maybe Not

At this time, it's pretty well established that the average person has little or no awareness of the range of domain suffixes that have only come into being in recent years. So if someone is uncertain of your domain name, they're more likely to guess at ".com" or ".net" and possibly never look beyond those options.

For some reason, we've tended to attach a certain cache to .com and .net, while viewing .ws, .tv and others with a degree of dubiousness.

And, as noted, the big boys don't see much value in these suffixes. They're only picking them up to keep someone else from grabbing them and using them as a tool to take business away.

Based on pure recognition value, a .com is the best choice, followed by .net, .org and .biz. These suffixes tend to have higher recall and definitely have higher resale value, as reflected by the values found at www.Afternic.com and other such sites.

So, do you or don't you go with .ws?

If at all possible, find a name that is available with a .com or .net. Failing in that, check into .biz; .org is also an option, but people tend to associate .org with non-profit and governmental entities.

But if you just can't find a name that works using those suffixes, .ws and others may be your only choice.

Look at it this way, if you go with one of the lesser known domain suffixes, you may be a trendsetter, .ws may be all the rage a year from now.

  "Click Fraud," gets cover story treatment in the October 2, 2006 issue of BusinessWeek.

It's an insidious problem, one exacerbated by the fact that it often is not readily detectable. The BusinessWeek focuses largely on the experiences of Martin Fleishman and his site www.MostChoice.com.

Martin is a firm believer in online advertising, but he's had that faith rattled by the discovery that of the $2 million he's paid Google and Yahoo!, at least $100,000 was the result of click fraud. And the only reason he ever picked up on it was because he took the time to check where the clicks were coming from and discovered a number coming from such places as Botswana, Mongolia and Syria.

Had he not poured through his data, he would have remained oblivious of the problem.

Basically, as near as he can determine, at least 5% of the clicks he paid for were fraudulent. He may actually have missed a few that were better hidden in the data; it's current estimated that fraudulent clicks can amount to as much as 20% of an ad's clicks.

So what's an advertiser to do?

Well, you can pour through the data, as Martin did, and try to discern which clicks might be fraudulent, but that can be time-consuming, costly and, if you don't know what you're looking for, fruitless.

You can also turn to companies that have developed fraud detection technologies, such as that offered by Zunch Communications' popular Click Fraud Detective.

As Google, Yahoo! and other search engines continue to seem reluctant to deal with the issue head-on (in the BusinessWeek story, Martin recounts how Google refused to do anything for some time, despite compelling evidence he provided regarding fraudulent clicks), using an established professional service like Click Fraud Detective is a good bet for both detecting click fraud and recovering from the search engines for its costs.

Maybe you've heard about the The Long Tail. Maybe not. Whether you have or not, it may well be a factor in your future marketing efforts.

The phrase The Long Tail was first coined by Chris Anderson in his article of the same name which appeared in Wired magazine in 2004.

Anderson readily admits that the actual theory is not his. However, he's the guy who has taken a relatively obscure theory and made it easily identifiable, both in terms of what to call it and as to what its effect on marketing is.

The theory behind The Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits," e.g., hit movies and hit CDs, at the head of the demand curve, and moving toward an increasingly large number of niches in the tail.

Here is a graphical presentation of The Long Tail --

 Maybe you're saying to yourself, "Yeah, so...?"

Here's the "so." With the advent of the Internet, the "Long Tail" portion of the graphic is proving to be near infinite, i.e., there is a near unlimited universe of niche markets that have previously gone largely untouched..

I'm going to ask you to follow me through a little Economics 101 to explain the graph and its importance.

The dark orange section, the "head" of the graph is representative of the "hits" in marketing. The big sellers. For example, this summer's movie hit is "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." If this were a graph of box office results, "Pirates" would be found squarely in the dark orange portion of the graph-- the head.

In fact, "Pirates" has actually taken in about one-third of box office receipts for the entire year, and that's in a universe of hundreds of movie releases.

As the tail extends out, sales volume decreases, meaning movies falling within the Long Tail section had fewer and fewer sales. Which usually translates into fewer and fewer profits. In fact, it frequently translates into losses.

Two points though. At one time, it was assumed that as the tail extended out, demand ended, or at least reached a point where there was insufficent demand to justify supply. That meant that if Widget "A" was a best seller, and Widget "X" was rarely sought after in stores, Widget "X" was not available. Sales were simply not enough to justify stocking Widget "X" for the occasional person who wanted it.

Pretty much classic supply and demand inventory and sales theory.

Stay with me now, we're getting to the good part.

But now, move forward into the Internet era.  With the Internet, there is no need for a "bricks-and-mortar" store to sell products. An example would be a comparison of Blockbuster and Netflix. The average Blockbuster store carries about 3000 titles. And they've carefully determined which movies to carry, those being the ones that they can count on being rented and sold on a relatively regular basis.

If a DVD only rents a few times a quarter, it's not worth having it on the shelf, taking up space. So they don't carry it.

Contrast that with Netflix, which carries an inventory in excess of 15,000 titles. Netflix can set up a few warehouses scattered across the country, rather than having to have a store in thousands of neighborhoods. A huge cost savings right there.

Because its storage and distribution costs are so much lower than Blockbuster's, Netflix can afford to store that film that rents only a few times a quarter. It doesn't need a copy in a thousand different stores like Blockbuster does. It just needs a few copies to meet a relatively small demand.

And Netflix makes a profit off of that movie that Blockbuster doesn't carry, even though it rents only a few times per quarter.

The point?

Niche markets. The Long Tail graphically represents what Netflix, Amazon, E-Bay and thousands of other online marketers have shown-- there is a near infinite marketplace of niches out there. Find a niche and it can be profitable for a business on the Web where it might not even exist in the Bricks-and-Mortar world.

Because of these niche markets, online music services, line Rhapsody, have subcategories within subcategories of music downloads available. It costs Rhapsody next to nothing to store and offer obscure music. But a Bricks-and-Mortar retailer can't do it. The cost is just too great.

Rhapsody can afford to store a music download that may only be downloaded once a quarter, and still make money off of it. Admittedly, that single download isn't worth much, but multiply one download of thousands of obscure recordings per quarter, and you're talking serious money.

What The Long Tail shows us is that there are hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of niche markets waiting to be found and exploited. Before the Internet, these niches were non-existent or nearly non-existent.

And cumulatively, these niches represent a huge marketplace.

Which beings us to what all this has to do with Search Engine Marketing.

If you have a product or service you are selling on the Internet, examine it closely and determine if there is a niche market you may be missing. Is there some application of your product you haven't considered for which a niche market exists?

Are there prospects out there that you are missing because you haven't targeted them with your marketing?

Find a niche (or niches). Market to it. And profit.

Target those niches. Create additional websites for your product or service that aim squarely at those niches. Create a site and then focus your SEO and SEM efforts on attracting those niche prospects. There's no telling how many sales you might be missing out on because you are failing to reach niche prospects.

And if you need help doing this, you know who to call. 

According to MarketingSherpa's annual Benchmark Guide, the average company marketing on the Web spent 88% of their budget on paid search ads. Conversely, the average company marketing on the Web spent only 12% of their budget on search engine optimization (SEO).

Wow. That's a huge disparity.

It also may be a monumental waste of money.

Why?

Call it the Southpaw Eye Ball Effect

We naturally read left-to-right. And that is exactly how most people read on their Internet searches.

Eyetracking studies have conclusively found that most people surfing the Internet pay little attention to, much less click on, the paid ads appearing in the right column. They tend to focus on the top left corner of the page and move down from there.

So, at least with Google, the average searcher sees the two ads at the top of the page, assuming someone has purchased those spots, and the 10 organic listings that follow.

This doesn't mean that the ads in the right column are useless. Only that a smaller portion of potential prospects are paying attention to them and clicking on them. And if you've just started marketing on the Web, those Pay-Per-Click (PPC) spots may be your best bet for attracting prospects, since your site may not even be listed in the organic searches for as long as 8-12 months.

Paid ads are also helpful when you're not finding yourself in the top ten listings in the first few search pages.

This also doesn't necessarily mean that the paid spots appearing above the organic search results are great investments. The ROI on these spots is dropping all the time as your competitors bid against you for those prime spots, boosting the cost of advertising there. In fact, it's estimated that the cost of those coveted spots are going up by at least 25% a year, probably quite a bit more in some cases.

Still, those two spots above the organic searches do garner more attention than the PPCs in the right hand column.

But while paid ad costs are rising, the cost of a click on the organic listings remains--

Zero. Nada. Nothing. 

A prospect can click on your organic result ten times and it costs you nothing. But let them do the same thing on a PPC result, and it's costing you money every time they click it.  

And searchers tend to pay attention to all ten organic search results. While the top three results get nearly a 100% viewing, there is very little drop-off in viewing for the remaining seven organic results. Which is why having a top ten spot in organic searches is so coveted among marketers.

Yet many of those very same marketers fail to focus their budgets where the most prospects are to be found.

Organic Search Can Increase Site Traffic by 38% or More

According to MarketingSherpa, if you are paid ad number five in the right hand column, just .6% (less than one out of 100!) of viewers who click on paid ads will choose you.

But if you're number five in the organic searches on the same page, 8.6% (nearly nine out of every 100) of viewers who click on organic listings will choose you.

And that difference translates into increased traffic for your site.

Marketers who conduct search engine optimization campaigns were asked how their overall site traffic had changed in the six months since they began their campaign. Marketers using in-house resources said overall site traffic rose 38%.

Even better, marketers who outsourced their search engine optimization efforts to an outside expert saw average site traffic grow 110%.

Just multiple your current site traffic by 110% and see what kind of results you could be getting. What would an increase like that do for your bottom line?

Spend Your Money Where the Prospects Are

What portion of your budget is devoted to SEO? Are you like so many others spending 88% of your money on paid advertising, when SEO has a much better ROI? Maybe it's time you reconfigured your marketing budget and devoted a greater portion to SEO.

However, don't necessarily pull all of your paid ads. Eliminate the least successful ones, but keep those that are getting results and returning a decent ROI. A good marketing mix should include both paid ads and SEO.

Just don't shortchange the SEO portion of your budget. You're probably costing yourself money. 

Ted had asked me to review his site and give him some suggestions. The Vice-President of marketing for a large commercial real estate developer, his site for a new downtown multi-use center was "lost in space" as far as search engines were concerned.

The site had been up for over six months and still wasn't registering on Google or other search engines. He was paying a fortune in Pay-Per-Click  (PPC) to some company I'd never heard of, and nothing was happening there either. His plan, which made sense, was to use PPC for six-to-nine months while his ranking in Google and other search engines rose.

But that hadn't happened. In fact, you could "google" the name of the project and it didn't come up.

One look at his site had told me most of what i needed to know. I confirmed it by doing a spider search simulation to verify my facts.

Ted's site was one big Flash-construct. The only words on the landing page were the name of the project. I started explaining how spiders don't read Flash, and therefore the landing page, together with ten other pages his designer had built around Flash and Javascript (which spiders also don't read), weren't being indexed as a result. No indexing by spiders = no rankings.

For an hour I went back-and-forth. Ted wanted a "cool" site that would rank in the search engines. He wanted a site dominated by Flash and images. He didn't want a lot of "words." I gave him my recommendations and left.

Last time I checked, Ted's site still was unlisted on Google.

Google has indexed 8 Billion web pages and is hard at work on the next 8 Billion as you read this. They do this with a small army of search engine spiders.

If you're interested in getting high rankings on Goolge and other search engines, the spiders are your best friend. And you've got to know what to do to make them feel invited. Your website must be "spider-friendly" to make them feel welcome.

Spiders don't read websites the way you and I do. Spiders read the HTML, the web page source code. So if your site has bad code, or little or no code, the spiders don't care too much for your site. And they leave without having indexed you.

Spiders love websites with content (text) and good code. They dislike Javascript and images, since they can't read either one. That's not to say you can't allow them to "see" the images with good web design, they'll be more than happy to crawl over your image if you happen to attach an ALT tag to it.

It's a tricky business, designing a site that both human and search engine spider visitors will like. You want the human visitors to stop by, visit and potentially buy your product or service. And the best means to get your prospects to your site is to have sound web design: good content, good site design and good code.

At a minimum, those three items are necessary to get the spiders to crawl your site and index it. We won't even go into linking strategies, the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and valid XHTML, the latest generation in HTML standards, right now.

Once you're indexed, if you've done things correctly and continue to do so, you're on your way to the top of the rankings.

It's complicated. It's confusing. It can drive you nuts if you do it on your own.

And, yes, you can do it on your own, but as you see, there's a lot of work involved. But it's necessary work.

According to some surveys, as many as 86% of all people arrive at a particular website via the search engines. So if you want prospects to find you, you've got to have a site that is properly designed and search engine optimized.

A high ranking on the search engines can bring you highly targeted traffic, traffic that is searching for your service or product. You can't afford to miss these vistors just because you want a "cool" site and ignore proper SEO-freindly design conventions.

And by the way, if you get a smart webdesigner and copywriter together, you can have a site that is both "cool" and spider-friendly.

My suggestion? If you don't have time to educate yourself on spider-firendly webdesign, check into using a professional search engine optimization company.