The 2010 search share has just been release by comScore. The overall market is up 12%. Google gained 13 points, Yahoo is up 4, and Bing is the big winner at 29%. Good data below regarding the percent change, the percent share, and the top phrases.
Thank you to Search Engine Land for the heads up.
There are hundreds of factors that determine a website’s ranking. Individual pages must stand on their own two feet and overcome the scrutiny of the search engines. I contend that one of the single biggest factors continues to be a webpage’s title. The simple title tag appears to have a huge impact on where that webpage will be found.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with title tags, they look like this.
<title>Some Webpage Title</title>
These are the items that drive the clickable portion on a search engine result page. See below. The title is displayed in blue.
As you can see, this is the search engine result for KansasCitySEO.com. We are obviously targeting the term “Kansas City SEO”. You can see the keyword in the title. Not only is it included in the title, but it is prominently displayed. Said another way, the proximity of the keyword to the beginning of the actual title string is as good as it can possibly be. See below.
Not everyone agrees that the keyword should be displayed this prominently in the title. My stance is that if it works, then use it. There are times when your target may need to move down the title in favor of a more readable or clickable implementation. Just make sure the primary keyword target can be found somewhere in the title.
This section could probably be a post on its own, but I want to take a minute to touch on brand utilization. Brands are certainly keywords, but brands carry their own baggage to the party. They can be good for a website to be associated with, or they can be something a website would be wise to keep in the closet. In most cases people looking for your brand will find you without problem. The keyword targets should be selected in such a way that you get your brand out in front of searchers who do not know whom they seek. So even though you may have an awesome brand, it is likely best to push it to the back of your title text. Go with something like: “Product 1, Product 2, and Service 1 by Acme Inc.”. A tag like this accomplishes both a non-branded and a branded focus. It allows the brand to support the products and services instead of letting the brand overwhelm and overshadow these non-branded targets.
What happens if you have a situation like ours where we have built our brand around a term that may be considered non-branded? This allows for the best of both worlds. Our brand, Kansas City SEO, is also the primary keyword target for our website. When Kansas City SEO is mentioned in the title it refers to our company, the service we offer, and the city where we focus our service offering. Not bad, huh? This is why domaining is so interesting and why so many businesses are springing up around generic keyword domains. That is a post for another day though.
What are your thoughts on title tags? Are they here to stay? Are they the most important factor or just a factor? What is your preference for title tag layout?
I just wanted to give a quick example on the importance of keyword selection. I am doing some analysis on keywords for the insurance industry and noticed an opportunity in the auto and car insurance sector. It seems people search for auto insurance on average 13.6M times per month. Car insurance is queried 11.1M times per month.
The corresponding cost-per-click (CPC) for auto insurance is $30.44, while the CPC for car insurance is $14.66. This means that we get more than a 50% discount for nearly the same volume of traffic (81.6% to be exact).
Taking this one step further, we see that the daily clicks on auto insurance are estimated at 7,101, while car insurance drives 8,161 clicks per day.
To summarize, by selecting car insurance you will be paying less per month for more traffic. I realize the traffic quality is another piece of the puzzle, but hopefully you can see the importance of keyword selection through this illustration.
As of 7/6/2010
We are often asked the question “Why should I renew my SEO program?” and while the answer should be fairly obvious it turns out that is not always the case.
There are a number of reasons why a client should continue their search engine optimization efforts from year to year. To run through a few reasons quickly there are findings to implement from the previous year, content on a site is continuously changing, consumer search patterns are different from year-to-year, online competition is always in flux, search engine algorithms are constantly being updated, our research findings are continually updated, and new product offerings become available throughout the year. The sites that let down are the sites that get outranked. The sites that let down are the sites that rely on PPC and bookmarks. The sites that let down are the sites that get the majority of their traffic from brand-based queries. What kind of site do you want to be?
The Internet is not a static marketplace. As mentioned above, there are new websites, updates to existing sites, changes and evolution of search behavior, changes in search engine algorithms, etc. that will impact a site’s SEO efforts. This having been said, it becomes clear that even the most fundamental aspects of all SEO programs should be revisited every year. The page targets, keyword research, site analysis, competitive analysis, content updates, link building and linking strategy, search engine submissions, directory submissions, etc. must be revisited to ensure that a site maintains and/or continues building an authoritative presence within the search index for any specific category.
What Changes:
What We Revisit and Rework:
Search engines constantly evolve, searchers are always changing, competition never ends and it is up to us to help our clients navigate through this landscape to obtain the most value possible. We won’t let down and neither should our clients.
Kansas City SEO on Twitter
© 2012 Kansas City SEO