Web Search & Marketing News

September 2004 Newsletter

Welcome to September’s newsletter, which includes a mixture of news and advice regarding the current search market and how to make the most of it.

The recent Summer period has been a relatively quiet time for search engine activity, although it has been dominated by the build-up to Google’s IPO - this is now underway and we feature this below. The next few months should see more changes taking place in the search market, particularly in the light of Microsoft’s own search engine developments. These are continuing to gain more attention and will be one area that all the established search tools will no doubt be viewing with some concern and considering what they can do to pre-empt this launch!

We covered the Microsoft search engine last month and will no doubt return to this again in future months as more information is revealed.

Best regards,
Clive Hawkins

In this month's news....

• Google's Future
• Building Links
• Landing Pages
• Filtering your searches

Search News – Google’s Future

The end of August saw Google’s IPO (initial public offering) finally begin after several months of frenzied build-up! Google are auctioning around 10% of their company through the issue of 24.6 million shares to US investors only – but it has not been an easy ride so far. Firstly, the unconventional approach to this public offering has alienated parts of Wall Street and then the run-up to the valuation was beset by further problems due to Google’s failure to register 30 million shares previously issued to staff and from an interview with the founders in Playboy magazine – both of which contravened the rules for the sale.

More importantly, the initial share value was dropped just prior to the launch to $85 from an expected level of around $120 per share, but initial trading has pulled the level to $110 which values the company at around £16bn. Not bad for a company that is only 6 years old!

So what does the future hold for Google? Most commentators are linking the company’s future with its ability to retain its unorthodox brand values throughout corporate enlargement and the introduction of new products. Google’s most recent high profile project is a free web based email system in beta testing called GMail, which aims to take on MSN’s and Yahoo’s free mail services and features a staggering 1GB of storage space plus search features to navigate through messages.

There will undoubtedly be increased pressures on Google from shareholders in the future and more stock may be issued as the pressures of the market take hold and the might of Microsoft comes into play next year when they launch their ‘integrated’ search function. Ultimately the success of Google will be dependent upon the quality of their search services in relation to competitors.

It remains to be seen whether in 10 years time (or even 5), the example of Google will be written about as a prime example of an online brand that continues to expand and dominate the markets that it enters, or one of a stunning corporate failure that resulted from a change in the corporate ethos in the face of rapidly changing commercial pressures. Just look at AltaVista as an example of the latter!

Building Links

Most of you are probably aware that inbound links to a website can generate extra visitors. However, relevant inbound links from other popular websites are also an important factor used by major search engines to determine a site's position in their results lists.

Optimised metatags and content can ensure that a website is actually listed in search results, but it is inbound links that are now one of the major factors determining where a website is ranked within search results. In simple terms, metatags and content provide targeting and links provide the power to reach the top!

You can check the number of inbound links that your highest ranking competitors have obtained by typing link: before your competitor’s domain in Google (eg: link:www.yahoo.com) or linkdomain: in MSN. This is often helpful in deciding how many links you may need in order to be competitive in your market.

Owners of popular websites are becoming more aware of the value that a link from their site brings, and as such the number of sites offering free links is diminishing as reciprocal linking (providing a link to each others website) and paid links are becoming increasingly popular.

If you are considering reciprocal linking, you should consider which kind of sites you wish to be associated with and where on your website you want to put a links page. We can help you with this process, as well as identifying the best link sites to approach.

Pay-per-click tip - Landing Pages

A great deal of attention is focused on how best to improve the performance of pay-per-click advertising. However, you should also consider what experience you give users when they actually reach your website.

If you are advertising specific products you should consider which page to direct users to once they click on your adverts. Rather than just sending them to your homepage (which may be a number of clicks away from the product you are advertising) you may find that by creating specific ‘landing pages’, you can provide visitors with more relevant information and a simplified user experience which can improve your visits to sales / enquiries ratio.

When creating a landing page you should ask yourself the following questions:

• Is this a high or low involvement purchase and what level of information is appropriate to strike a balance between simplicity and answering user’s questions?
• Do you need to add pictures, pricing, specifications, testimonials or any other information to the page?
• How can you reduce the navigation required to achieve a sale or enquiry?

Landing pages can also be used to target keywords in natural search engine optimisation and to improve email marketing campaigns. If you are running, or planning, a PPC campaign and would like more information about this, please do get in touch.

Search Tip – Filtering your searches

Search engines can now be so effective that it is easy to forget that the use of some advanced features can refine our searches easily. Here are two simple tricks to try when you are next looking for something and the results aren’t coming up with the goods:

Firstly, you can easily exclude certain words from your searches. If you were looking for the information on the original Starsky and Hutch series, for example, you could exclude references to the new film that features Ben Stiller by typing: Starsky and Hutch -Ben -Stiller.

To specify that you want to only include results that contain all the search terms you have typed rather than any, use a + between them, for example: Wayne + Rooney + Manchester + United.

To make use of the Advanced Search functions on the main search engines, try these links:

• Google Advanced Search
• MSN Advanced Search
• Yahoo Advanced Search

We hope you've found the above information useful. Please contact us if you need any more details on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website's performance.