Web Search & Marketing News

June 2004 Newsletter

Welcome to the first monthly newsletter from The Web Marketing Workshop!

With so many changes going on in the search market over recent months, plus new opportunities emerging that can help with the marketing of your website, we are launching this newsletter to keep you informed about the latest events and to help answer some of the frequent questions that arise. These might include new ways to get the best results from your online activity, whether through the main search engines or other marketing channels that are available.

If this newsletter helps to explain something new, create some fresh ideas, or provoke questions, then it will achieve its aims. Of course, we always welcome your feedback and comments, so if any of the issues covered this month raise further questions, or if you would also like to see any specific items covered in future issues of this newsletter, please get in touch.

Best regards,
Clive Hawkins

in this month's news...

• New staff join the business
• Search engine news - User research
• Search tip - checking your inbound links
• Online marketing news - Overture launches the SiteMatch Paid Inclusion Service
• Online marketing tip - bidding position differences
• Virus news

New staff join the business

Firstly, I would like to introduce two new staff members who have joined the company this month.

James Taylor has joined as Web Marketing Assistant and will working on many of the optimisation and marketing campaigns for our clients. Having achieved a degree in Business Information Systems, James is also completing an MSc in Electronic Commerce with Marketing. He has designed and marketed a number of websites, including one for the Royal Yachting Assoc, which he has been closely involved with through his skills as a coach and World Championship level competitor in Laser Class sailing.

Alison Harston has joined the company to help compile the monthly search engine ranking reports and pay-per-click summaries for our clients. Having previously worked in the IT industry, Alison took a year out to travel around the world and has now settled in Crowborough to help us monitor the ever-changing global search engine activity!

Search engine news - User research

There has been limited research conducted on search engine usage over recent years, but US search marketing firm I-Prospect has just published a detailed survey looking at the search behaviour of a sample of 1,649 respondents from that country. The findings make interesting reading:

• 52% used search engines at least once a day
• 82% will try a new search if they do not find what they are looking for within 3 pages -This highlights the importance of keeping you search term rankings in at least the top 30.
• 72% of Google users found natural search results to be more relevant to their queries than sponsored listings whereas 71% of MSN Search users found paid listings to be more relevant than natural search results to their query - This could well be due to MSN blurring the difference between sponsored and natural results and may also indicate that Google attracts a more experienced or sceptical breed of user! It will also be dependent on the quality of results being provided within the natural listings.

The full survey in PDF format is available from IProspect.

Search tip - checking your inbound links

Inbound links are a key factor in the way many search engine rank your site. To see how many links there are into your site you can type link:www.yourdomain.co.uk in Google's search box, (or many of the other main search tools), and the resulting page will list those pages where links are recognised into your domain.

Online marketing news - Overture launches the SiteMatch Paid Inclusion Service

Paid inclusion services represent an opportunity to guarantee that your website will be spidered for inclusion within natural search engine listings.

Overture - who are traditionally a pay-per-click search provider - has now established itself as the major player in the paid inclusion market, having taken over the Inktomi SearchSubmit service through their position as a subsidiary company of Yahoo. Previously pages could be submitted directly to Inktomi to enable listings to appear on MSN, HotBot and some smaller search tools, but with the new Overture inclusion option, you can now get your site regularly spidered by all of the Overture partner search engines, including Yahoo, AllTheWeb, AltaVista & MSN.

This package can be purchased directly from Overture or through a number of their partners. There is a hybrid pricing model of paid URL submissions which cost around US$45 for the 1st URL, US$25 for URLs 2-10 and US$10 thereafter. The additional cost factor now added, however, is that there is also a pay-per-click element of between US$0.15 and US$0.30, depending on your industry sector.

SiteMatch can provide you with fast track listings in the majority of major search engines, except Google. However, your site will only get indexed and you still need to be optimised to enable a good ranking under your chosen key phrases. Its value is also questionable if your site is already well established in all the search engines and it is still possible for new or updated sites to get indexed in time without paying the inclusion fee.

Read more here or ask us for advice about this option and whether it would benefit your site listings.

Online marketing tip - bidding position differences

Staying with Overture, if you're running a pay-per-click campaign on this tool, you may be surprised to know that not all of its partner search engines display results in the same way. Here's a chart to show how different bidding positions can get you the most exposure:

Wanadoo (Freeserve) and Tiscali both list every sponsored result before the first natural results are displayed.

Therefore, if you are competing in a particular competitive bidding market you can still achieve some reasonable exposure by bidding around position 4-7 which will be displayed in a subsidiary section on page 1, or the top of page 2's results, depending on the search tools used.

As a topical example, searches on MSN UK for 'euro 2004': http://search.msn.co.uk/results.aspx?q=euro+2004&FORM=SMCRT currently has 'euroteam' in 4th bid position with Overture's sponsored sites, so that their advert appears at the top right of the first page and also top of the 2nd page of results. They are also paying around 30p for each visitor, compared to 50-60p for the top 3 sites, who only get one appearance on the first page.

If we are running a PPC campaign for you we can test the comparative costs and click-through rates for these different positions where high bid costs are an issue.

Virus emails continue to spread

Finally this month, and on a separate issue, we are still seeing many virus emails coming in to our mailbox each day, along with the usual spam sales messages. Old attachments entitled 'Re: Your Details' or 'Re: Secure Delivery' are still appearing with depressing regularity, as well as apparent Mail Delivery Errors with an attachment claiming to include details should be avoided.

Another email doing the rounds appears to come from Microsoft's Support Dept, with a patch that should be installed immediately. Don't do it!! And, of course, ignore all the bank emails where there seems to have been a spate of technical problems and they need you to confirm your account information online!

One advantage about all these recent virus attachments is that there is a heightened awareness about them. However, here are some tips to keep viruses at bay:

1. You should definitely have virus software in place and regularly updated. Norton AntiVirus is a market leader and the Symantec website includes regular updates on current threats.
2. If you use a Microsoft operating system - particularly XP - check for their latest security patches and download them to all PCs to avoid threats like that posed by the recent 'Sasser' worm. However, note that none of these updates are ever sent by email!
3. You can also use email filtering software to view and delete emails, if necessary, before downloading them. Try the free Mailwasher software (www.mailwasher.com), although as this site is not currently available, search on Google for other examples.
4. If you have any doubts about an email attachment, certainly don't open it - you can try searching for the subject line on Google and see what information is available.

That's all for this month. Please contact us if you need any more information on the items above, or if there are issues you would like to see covered in future issues of this newsletter.