Website
statistics cost just $5.00 + GST per month
and offer an extensive range of valuable information about
your website's performance, who is visiting, what countries
do your visitors come from, what pages are most popular,
what sites are referring to yours etc. etc. No other form
of advertising offers this type of insight into your potential
customers/clients. Are you paying for links to your website
from other sites, if so your stats can show you exactly
how many visitors are coming from those sites. Contact us
to arrange to start receiving statistics now!
Natural
Search - The Great Equaliser
You
scroll down past the banner ads and enter your search
term. You pass the "sponsored results" without
a glance. You ignore the shaded results to the right,
as well as the additional "sponsored results"
at bottom. Hiding somewhere in the middle of it all,
you finally find the results you came for. Welcome to
the world of natural search - a world where small businesses
compete with million dollar companies, where million
dollar companies compete with billion dollar corporations.
And, while many will argue to the contrary, the playing
field is more or less level. Small companies can and
do dominate their multi-million dollar competitors online
for a variety of reasons.
What
Is Natural Search? For those who aren't
quite clear what the term means, "natural"
or "organic" search describes the "editorial"
search results on any particular engine. These results
are purported to be completely non-biased, meaning that
the engine will not accept any amount of money to influence
the rankings of any individual sites. This is quite
different from the paid advertising that appears in
"sponsored" or "featured" results,
in which higher positions are rewarded to the companies
willing to pay the most per visitor.
Why
Is Natural Search Important? Savvy searchers
who understand the difference between paid and natural
results are more likely to hold the natural results
in a higher regard, much like a person reading a magazine
would probably be more positively influenced by an article
about a particular company or product than by a paid
advertisement from the company or about the product.
Average searchers are learning the differences between
paid and natural search results, and many will instinctively
favour the latter.
What
Advantages Do Huge Corporations Have?
Certainly, large companies do have some specific advantages
when it comes to natural search.
a. Links - the primary advantage that
large corporations have is their ability to obtain large
amounts of inbound links, which can have a huge impact
on search engine rankings. Often these links are given
freely without the company asking (or being aware that
it is happening). Many of the huge corporation's vendors,
affiliates, partners, etc. are eager to show their association
with the company and link to the corporate site readily
and non-reciprocally. Large corporations can also facilitate
huge increases in link popularity through a simple corporate
policy requiring inbound links from any companies wishing
to work with them. In addition, very large corporations
may have several websites, which can sometimes be effectively
linked together for additional link popularity.
b. Budget - although history shows
that a large percentage of major corporations do not
spend wisely in this arena, larger corporations typically
have larger marketing budgets then their smaller competitors.
However, this does not necessarily mean that they will
readily allocate a portion of that budget for search
engine optimisation, as discussed below.
What
Advantages Do Smaller Companies Have?
While the advantages of huge corporations, particularly
in the area of link popularity, can be difficult to
overcome, it is often unnecessary to try. A large percentage
of such companies consistently seem to “shoot
themselves in the foot” when it comes to natural
search engine optimisation, a primary reason why small
companies can often outperform them. Specific advantages
include:
a. A willingness to pursue the channel
- Smaller companies are typically more willing to devote
resources to natural search than large corporations.
Huge things have to happen for a major corporation to
get involved in this "new" channel, a channel
far removed from the traditional marketing methodologies
used to build the giant. Few corporate employees want
to be the one to put their neck on the line and recommend
something completely new and "unproven". Even
when a large corporation looks into natural search engine
optimisation as a potential marketing tool, it can take
many months, and sometimes years, for a final decision
to be made.
b. A willingness to change the company
website - Huge corporations face similar problems when
it comes to changing to the corporate website. Within
such entities, a person can often not get so much as
a comma removed from the text of a secondary page without
holding several upper-level management meetings and,
ultimately, making a board presentation. Smaller, leaner
companies are able to approve necessary website changes
more quickly, and are almost always more willing to
quickly adapt to the needs of both visitors and search
engines.
c. The willingness to outsource - Larger
companies have more internal resources at their disposal,
and are less likely to outsource this specialised service
to someone with proven experience. Often, search engine
optimisation is treated as an afterthought and dumped
on an IT person, who typically has too much to do already
and will approach the problem solely from a technical
standpoint as they may not have specific SEO knowledge.
Natural search engine optimisation is by necessity a
combination of marketing and technology. Newcomers to
the field (especially those who treat the discipline
as strictly a technical issue) often make fundamental
mistakes that at best do not get results and at worst
put sites at risk of penalisation.
d. A lack of technical hurdles - Huge
corporations are more likely to have technical issues
on their website that can prevent search engines from
indexing all of their pages. Often the pages of corporate
websites are generated "on the fly" from large
databases, and such pages (without modification to the
URLs) are sometimes never indexed. In addition, (although
usability studies are making this happen less often),
some huge corporations have their sites built entirely
in flash or use other technologies that are virtually
invisible to search engines.
The
Bottom Line - To most huge corporations,
search engine optimisation is often a very small piece
of an enormous puzzle - and it is a piece they have
been doing without for years. The necessary steps required
to fully embrace the channel are often enough to stop
any well-intentioned initiative in its tracks. As most
search engine optimisation experts will tell you, some
of the most flagrant search engine mistakes are consistently
made by household name companies - leaving their smaller,
leaner competitors the opportunity to take full advantage.
If
it's been a long time since we designed your website
or carried out a directory and search engine submission
(directory and search engine submissions should
be carried out at least annually), then we have
a special deal for you ... for
just $99 & GST we will optimise
the metatags (Title, Description & Keywords) on
your index page (homepage) and complete a comprehensive
submission to around 200 of the top NZ and International
search engines and directories. This
cost related to the time involved to do this work would
normally be in excess of $150 + GST, so
this special offer represents a saving of at least $50
+ GST and is only available during March 2007, so
don't delay, contact us now to have this done.
Leanne
Taylor
:: www.wwwdesign.co.nz
::
Award Winning Website Design, Hosting & Maintenance
Phone/Fax (09) 817 9656 ~ Mobile (0274) 701990
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