Search Engine Optimization is based on high traffic phrases of one to three words, such as "search engine optimization." That will soon change.SEOPS and PPC strategies have run into two major traffic jams. Canny marketers must look for alternate routes to the prospect's wallet.
First, today's godzillabyte server spiders search the Internet every 60 days or so. In a year or two, they may sweep your site every other month, and change their KW protocols as often. Meanwhile, there are a million or so new pages on the web every day. Smaller search engines have been swallowed by the majors - Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. - who are still hungry. The big engines don't want to give you free listings.
wants you to PAY!
There's no way Seoptimists can possibly maintain consistently high rankings for "free" pages based on simple phrases. You're #5 on Google one day, and on page 44 the next. Larger firms have already switched to PPC, bidding up the prices of profitable KWs and relegating your listing to Page 237. On-line ad budgets now soar 15% to 20% a year. SEOPS, per se, may soon go the way of the 8-track.
Second, Active Keyword Searchers are less and less satisfied with pages that do not instantly address their personal problems. Short phrases yield thousands of irrelevant pages, most of which do not contain any relevant content whatsoever. You get more hits but less Time Spent On-Line and abysmal conversion rates.
Only 60% of people who get to a Shopping Cart actually Check Out.
Only 50% of the adults in America can read a newspaper.
You expect them to wade through the 65 hyperlinks AND the run-on 8 point legally approved Corporate Content Copy on your Standard Format landing page, negotiate the drop-down Flash! menus to get to the Shopping Cart, and fill in the 60-odd Required Forms on your Check Out page, right?
"Oh, well - 1.5% conversion is pretty good."
Oh, really?
The net result of both traffic jams is that you may pay $1.00 for a ninth position "cheese" click on Google, but without a mouthwatering Branded Landing Page that click may produce nothing, or a hideously high Media Cost Per Sale.CONVERSION IS KING.
Content was King. The King is dead. Long live the King.
The MCPS or PPC cost per sale is the price of the click divided by the conversion rate. Example:
In 2003 you paid 14¢ for "cheese" and got 18% conversion from a few thousand clicks.
$.14 / .18 = $.77 MCPS.In 2008 you bid $1.00 for #1 position on Google "cheese" search return page...and get 1% conversion.
$1.00 / .01 = $100.00 MCPS. You'd better sell some pretty expensive cheese!If you'd like to see the effects of 1% increases in conversion on Media Cost Per Sale, click here.
If you cap monthly PPC or accept lower positions on Overture or Google, you simply net fewer sales. If you buy lots of extra KWs at low prices you have to build lots of extra instant-solution landing pages. Neither strategy does much for your bottom line.
Writers to the Rescue!
Ultimately people will learn to describe what they want in longer phrases, spiders will learn to cough up closer matches, and ad-web writers will learn to read.
A query such as "smooth French Gruyere cheese" asks for a fairly specific variety of cheese. What if someone asks for an experience, such as "smooth cheese to go with a red zinfandel?"
Today my browser brings up a dozen wine sites, some restaurant menus, a few health pages, etc. All the words appear, but in various places on dense, turgidly written pages.
Eventually the servers will learn to read my entire sentence fragment, though, figure out what I want, and send me to the right page. Yours?
Meanwhile, your web content and ad copywriters can start paying attention to what your customers are asking for.KW path reports should become as valuable as focus group verbatims. If your site and shopping cart reside on separate servers, make sure the incoming clicks from "creamy cheese" don't lose their identity in the Transerver Chasm.
Start using some of those high traffic phrases in your ad copy. You'll gather media-driven direct clicks today from people who might use them on Google tomorrow.
Here's a spot for Dinovite that uses seven high-traffic keywords, all spoken by actual customers (with a little prompting, of course.) Sales are up from $5,000 a week to $180,000.
If you use longer phrases and sentences from customer comment boxes or those same KW path reports, you'll start doing business the old-fashioned way - talking to your customers as if they were people, instead of statistics.
Branded landing pages that look like ads? Ads that look like landing pages? Branded Keywords? Copy written in the language people actually use? The corporate communication silos are beginning to blur together. Your brand starts to become a coherent entity once again. What's next?
Key Worded Ad Copy.
