SEO Archives - Page 17 of 33 - WebPro Technologies LLP Ahmedabad

PageRank And A 301 Redirect

Matt Cutts in his latest webmaster video says:

"The amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link."

There is a fairly good discussion going on at http://searchengineland.com/google-pagerank-dilution-through-a-301-redirect-is-a-myth-149656

I think we consider a 301 redirect only when we have moved the URL permanently or when we want to sort out duplicate content issues.

Hence, we should consider the purpose of using a 301 server side redirect or meta refresh client side redirect or use a normal link depending on the purpose and not on the basis of how much PageRank will get dissipated.Its high time we came out of the PageRank syndrome.

Google / SEO - 02/26/2013

5 Most Useful SEO Tools

Guest Post

SEO, the act of optimizing a website for search engines, can be a rewarding undertaking. It can give your site better web presence. It can improve your online visibility. It can give you an edge over competition. It helps draw traffic to your site.

However, SEO is a time-consuming and endless process consisting of multiple tasks. You need to do link building, keyword research and analysis, directory submissions, blogging, and many, many more. Then each task has sub-tasks, and doing them on a day-to-day basis can leave you exhausted and frustrated. How do you stay on top of all these?

Fortunately, SEO developers have created tools that enable webmasters to accomplish specific tasks more efficiently and quickly. These tools enable you to optimize your work and time even as you improve the traffic flow to your site. There are dozens of tools out there, but remember even if you have the best tools on your best laptop, Google is ever changing, so you need to stay updated all the time.

Here are the top 5 most useful tools:

Google Webmaster Tools

The Google Webmaster Tools is a set of resources that gives you a solid understanding of how Google sees your site. It’s actually a keyword analysis and a diagnostic tool in one. It shows you what keywords Google sees when it visits your sites and the number of click-throughs each keyword receives. Do you see your target keywords in the list? Are you receiving the number of click-throughs you have hoped to achieve? If not, the Google Webmaster Tools also provides some tips on how you can improve the performance of your site.

The Webmaster Tools can also audit your site. You can use it to check for duplicate titles, duplicate descriptions, broken links, website speed, moved content, and malware, giving you the opportunity to correct the issues and improve your site’s performance

Backlink Checker

Backlinks are one of the criteria for how search engines rank your site. More important than quantity of backlinks for search engine is the quality. Quality is measured using three criteria: where the banklinks originate from (popular vs low-ranked or empty websites), validity of the link, and the relation of the anchor text to the destination page (e.g. if the anchor text says 'best laptop', it should point to a site about laptops and not cars or something else). Backlink Checker is a tool that helps you determine how the links leading to your site are helping (or not helping) your page ranking. It scours the web, then gives you a detailed report about the quality and the number of backlinks pointing to your site.

SEO Book for Keyword Research

The keywords that you use can mean the whole difference in the outcome of your SEO campaign. The SEO Book is a keyword research tool that helps you find the most relevant keywords to your niche or post topic. It’s one of the most comprehensive free keyword research tools out there, providing you a variety of keyword variations and long tail keywords that you can use in your post. In addition to the keyword research tool, creating a free account with SEO Book also gives you unlimited access to other SEO tools, such as keyword density analyzer, PPC keyword wrapper, and AdWords ad group generator.

Microsoft SEO Toolkit

The Microsoft SEO Toolkit is one of the most powerful auditing software out there. It lets you check your website for SEO violations, such as broken links and missing alt tags, giving you an opportunity to correct them. Even better, it provides potential solutions to these issues and how you can improve it for better search results.

SEO Rank Tracker by SEO Moz

Because search engine rankings directly impact your bottom line, you need to make sure you stay on the top of the search results. The SEO Rank Tracker by SEO Moz makes it easy to keep track of your page and keyword rankings in multiple search engines. If you want to know, for instance, where your site ranks for 'best laptop', just type it into the search box. No more manual hunting for a URL buried on page 20 of search engine results pages.

There are many more amazing SEO tools out there that scale down your efforts and increase your productivity. Sound off below your favorite ones!

This post is a guest post by "Sujatha who is an engineer by profession and loves to write about technology, gadgets and the world wide web."

Bing / Google / SEO - 02/12/2013

Content Marketing Is A Great SEO Strategy But It Is Not The New SEO

Author : Bharati Ahuja

The regular series of Panda updates have sent across the message to all SEOs that if you neglect the quality aspect of content then Google is going to neglect your site and deprive you of the search presence that you are trying to gain by optimizing your site for search engines.

But, this has put forward a misconception that if you focus on content the rest will be taken care of. When Google introduced the PageRank and gave importance to links the whole focus was shifted to getting links and gave rise to the link spam and a bad reputation for the SEO industry. Similarly now people think that if we regularly go on adding content the SEO is taken care of. This can result into a content spam which again will need some update stronger than a Panda update.

Link building was never SEO and neither content creation and its sharing should be considered as SEO. Content has been king since the first page was published on the web. It is 2012 that Google’s algorithms were capable of identifying quality content to a great extent and hence penalized low quality and thin content. Your website or blog is a container and the container is safeguarded or valued because of the content inside it.

SEO and content marketing are two different industries. Your SEO may or may not create content for you and at the same time your content creator or writer may or may not optimize your site. No doubt that every piece of quality content gives a boost to your search presence provided your site has been optimized wisely for the search engines and the search engines can easily index and extract the right context of the content to make it prominently visible on the search results for their users.

SEO makes the site capable of being indexed and SEO is that unbalanced force which sets the ball rolling and gives it an initial speed. The push of the regular quality content converts the speed to velocity and acceleration. Yes the right content gives it a direction which converts the scalar quantity of the initial speed to the vector quantity by giving it the right direction.

The content cannot get a direction and go far if it does not have the potential for the initial speed which is determined by the SEO of the site.

The SEO activity can be categorized as follows:

On Page Factors:

Title Tags
Description Tags
Suggestions for landing pages to make them more effective
Work on the site architecture and navigation
Image optimization
Making the maximum benefit from videos on the site
Header Tags
Working on the content to ensure that it falls in the category of quality content

Off Page Factors and Quality Web Presence:

Integrating Social Media
Guiding the in house staff on how to use social media effectively to establish trust and authority
Guidance on how to develop a blog and maintain it
Improve on the quality of existing inbound links to the site by working on the details about the domain authority, Anchor Text and the relevant linked pages from the external site.
Work on cleaning the link profile of non topical links.

Local Search

Add the details to Google Places and Google Maps
Integrate the Google Places account with the Google+ Business Page
Suggest methods by which you can encourage customers to write reviews
Optimize for Local intent keywords for organic search

Other Technical Factors:

Set the canonical issues
Robots.txt
XML Sitemaps
Add Structured Data in the form of Microformats and Microdata wherever applicable on the site
Customize 404 (Page Not Found) Page
Work on Improving the Site Speed
Add Authorship Markup to the blog
Add Twitter Cards and FaceBook open Graph meta tags to the blog
Guide the web developer to implement microformats or schemas for products and reviews.

The content of the site can reap rich dividends only if the above mentioned aspects are taken care of. Content Marketing or content creation and sharing is not the new SEO but undoubtedly it is an essential strategy to future proof your search engine presence.

All content creators may not be good SEOs and all SEOs may not be good content creators. These are two separate industries supplementing each other qualitatively.

If we value our industry and want to establish the true identity of the SEO industry, I think we should not propagate content marketing as the new SEO just like in the past some SEOs propagated Link Building to be SEO and brought a bad name for the industry. A Content creator needs to have knowledge about the concerned industry for which you want to create content but a SEO needs to have knowledge about the search engines , their algorithms , updates, webmaster tools, analytics,etc.

If your site is not optimized for search engines then it is like a body at rest in the invisible web. When you optimize the site it becomes capable of getting the search presence and is displaced from the invisible web to the search engine index and gathers speed. The regular quality content and sharing give it a direction and it gathers velocity and further acceleration to reach the targeted destination.

SEO - 01/23/2013

If Content Is King Then Context Is Queen And The Trust Factor Is The Royal Crown

Author : Bharati Ahuja

‘Content Is King’ is a clichéd line which I think the entire universe must have heard by now . The recent Panda and Penguin updates by Google have made everyone work out a content strategy for 2013 if they are seriously interested to have a valuable search presence.

But by just adding content to your blog if you think your job is done then be assured that all the resources allocated to add that content will not reap any dividends if you are not focusing on certain factors.

In 2012 we saw Google trying to leave no stone unturned for removing the spam , malicious links which degraded their PageRank factor and tried their very best to eradicate or rather push the thin and irrelevant content to the invisible web.

But in 2012 Google started giving more importance to social media signals, consolidated data from Google+ accounts, authorship markup , schemas and webmaster tools accounts. By doing this Google is trying to assess the credibility, popularity , reputation and reliability of the site.

We have written in detail about the various factors influencing content and thereby the content creator in the following posts:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2214849/Googles-Knowledge-Graph-Implications-for-Search-SEO

http://blog.webpro.in/2012/03/how-semantic-web-html5-microformats-and.html

As you can see in the above image of the semantic layers, 'TRUST' is the top most layer. All the other layers contribute in creating the Trust Layer. Trust is the emotional and logical aspect of the users decision to refer and recommend the site and content if he has been getting valuable information from the site.In the long run when the web will be facing the problem of Content Explosion this will be the most important factor determining the overall search presence of any website.

In May 2011 Google discussed More guidance on building high-quality sites

When Google answered the question What counts as a high-quality site? Out of the 23 questions that Google asked, the first and foremost question asked was :

Would you trust the information presented in this article? And all the other related questions determining the quality of the site contributed or correlated to this trust factor.

So the most logical question that follows now is what are the factors influencing the TRUST FACTOR or How does Google determine or rather will be determining the TRUST FACTOR ?

As in the image above the Trust Factor attribute is at the top most layer hence it is influences by the sum influence reflected by each layer below it. It is not like the cherry at the top of a cake having layers of icing but is like the fruit on the top most branch of a tree which has got its nutrition from each and every part of the tree starting from the roots.

Some Of The Factors Influencing The TRUST FACTOR OR Rather The Jewels Which Make Up The Crown Are:

Age of the domain
Quality of the content
Social media signals
Authorship Markup
Security
The context of the content
Usage Metrics (CTR, Bounce Rate, Time On Site, No. of New Visits)
Topical Inbound Links
Webmaster Tools Account verification
SSL Certificate or a secure payment gateway incase of Ecommerce sites
User Privacy Option in user preferences
User reviews on Google Local search, on reputed local directories and user onsite reviews
UGC - User Generated Content by way of comments on blogs
Regular updation of the site as per the latest web standards
Consistent Contact details on site and across the web Address, Phone no, Social Media Accounts linking to and from site to social media account and vice versa
The quality, content and reputation of external links

There is no such thing as a “Trust Rank” as mentioned on some SEO blogs but yes there are certain factors which influence your overall ‘Trust Factor’ and accordingly affect the rankings.
Matt Cutts explains in the following video:

Every piece of content you publish, share or link you get associated with influences your trust factor accordingly. I am not aware of the mathematical formula or the grading system used by Google to evaluate the ‘Trust Factor’ but all the factors mentioned above are collectively responsible in influencing it.

Next time you publish or share content on any web platform, place the quality and the context of the content in mind rather than the quantity so that every footprint you make on the web adds up to your web karma and thereby influence the ‘Trust Factor’ to future proof the search presence.

The Trust Factor can make the site an "Authority Site".

If ‘Content Is King’ then it needs a crown as monarchy is incomplete without the royal crown and the TRUST FACTOR is that royal crown.

SEO - 01/15/2013

How To Get More Comments On Your Blog Posts

Guest Post By:

Kevin Phelps is an SEO consultant and the founder of GuestBlogPoster.com services. In his free time, he enjoys building websites and walking his dogs. In a perfect world, each of your blog posts would have at least 10 Facebook Likes, 20 Tweets, 30 Google +1s, and 50-100 comments. There are so many benefits to having an engaged community on your website, including far-reaching social signals, a natural conversation around topics related to your content, and with the blog comments, a source of superb user-generated content (UCG).

Detail (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But comments on your blog posts can be sparse, and there could be days that go by where you would hardly see any interaction. Why is that? You’re spending time writing great content, researching and reaching out to others in the community, interacting with others on social media, talking with your friends and coworkers about your blog, and on and on. Why aren’t your posts getting any comments? Before I jump into some actionable tips for increasing the number of comments on your blog posts, I’d like to spend a few minutes discussing why comments are important in the first place.

Fresh, user-generated content User generated content is an integral part of a healthy website. Imagine you’re driving down a highway, and you stop to fill up for gas and grab a bite to eat at the service station. You sit down at the table, and you can’t help but notice swarms of people coming in, buying a package of gum, and then leaving in a cloud of dust. Where’s the conversation? Why are people in such a rush? Don’t they want to hang out here? Google uses a lot of factors when determining how to rank a page, but one of the things that is important to remember is user-generated content can add natural keyword variations that you couldn’t add naturally on your own. Without blog comments, your page may rank just fine, but it could rank better with a natural influx of comments, much like my gas station metaphor. If people noticed others sitting down and having a conversation, they might be inclined to do the same. User-generated content can also affect your freshness score. In a 2011 post on SEOmoz, Cyrus Shephard mentions the fact that the amount of change on your page can play a role in its freshness score. Obviously there are other factors at play, but a living, breathing document (a page with new comments coming in) could rank higher than if it didn’t have any comments at all.

How to increase your blog post’s comments OK, now on to the nitty-gritty. There are some things you can change right now that could increase the level of engagement on your blog posts, including:

1. Placement of the comments widget Place the comments box as close to the end of your content as possible, so users won’t become lost in a sea of calls-to-action such as related posts, ad blocks, social buttons or other distractions. 2. Participate in the conversation Let’s say you’ve come across a new blog post that you really enjoyed reading, and decided to leave a comment. Weeks go by, but there’s still no response from the author. Bad form! At the very least, that author should have thanked you for reading! You can keep the momentum going with your post long after you write it by asking questions, sparking conversation and responding to comments.

3. Make it easy to comment How many hoops are you making your readers jump through to leave a comment? Sure, you want to combat spam (who doesn’t), but college-level algebra CAPTCHAs should not be mandatory, and registering for an account in order to leave a comment will only turn people off. There are a host of great WordPress comments plugins that are easy to use right “out of the box”.What are your tips for increasing the number of comments on your blog posts?Leave a comment!

Bing / Content marketing. / Google / SEO - 01/09/2013

Points To Ponder On For SEO 2013

The 24x7x365 moments of 2012 have flown by leaving evolutionary and historical footprints on the web for the SEO world. Its that time of the year again when on a cold wintery day its time to sit and look back and reflect ahead with the light of good and bad experiences of the past year.

After the Panda and Penguin updates by Google for penalizing spammy links and thin content the optimization took an about turn for SEOs who focused their SEO efforts and strategies on links and low quality content as they got warnings from Google via friendly emails. In response to these emails they had to go on an undoing spree and remove and disown the links created just in the name of SEO. Google also created a Disvow tool to make them confess the unethical work done by them.

I know the above words allude to spirituality and ethics but are very much correlated to SEO as these black hat activities and misconceptions led the SEO industry to a juncture where the SEOs themselves wanted to call their services by some other name and give a fresh start and meaning to their work.

But, just by addressing it by any other term does not solve the problem. We as SEOs need to spread the true meaning and scope of SEO widely rather than campaign and write posts for its rechristening.

Its not only the search engines which have upgraded their algorithms and made them smarter but the searchers and website owners too are more aware of the search scenario and have become smarter. In early 2000 when a website owner wanted to optimize his site he just thought about rankings but today when people discuss SEO projects they focus on immediate goals to be achieved to have quality search presence and these goals vary from industry to industry.

Search is not only limited to the search engines it has got integrated to the various other inbound signals like social media, blogging, comments and discussions, videos, etc. hence an SEO has to integrate the overall web presence on all these platforms and shape up an online identity for the client’s business and this is possible only with due cooperation and help extended by the client. Today each and every aspect of the business is contributing to the search presence or cutting it down depending on what footprints they are leaving on the web for their business.

Overall Aspects to Focus On for SEO 2013

1. On Page optimization as per the W3C standards

2. Have a web presence on various platforms

3. Update blog regularly

4. Co relate web presence with fresh content by blogging, commenting, discussing, sharing links on social media from your own site and blog plus from other authority sites of your industry.

5. Have YouTube video channel and share videos and embed them on site or blog.

6. Google+ as of now may not be the most widely used social media platform but it as major Google products in some way or the other converge on Google+ your Google+ account has the potential of becoming your passport to your online identity hence ignoring this platform or not having a presence on Google+ is like applying for a VISA without a passport .

7. Submit XML sitemaps for site, blog and video XML sitemaps for videos embedded on site or blog.

8. Apply for Twitter Cards and integrate them with your blog once the application is approved by Twitter.

9. Integrate FB Open Graph on blogs.

10. Integrate Authorship Markup on the blog to co relate your content with your online persona which can lead you to be a thought leader of your industry which in the long run can add to the trust factor.

11. Focus on ‘Less Is More’ instead of having 5 posts a week publish 2 posts per week but of relevant in depth information in all forms i.e text, video, infographics, podcast,etc. It’s the quality that counts not the quantity.

12. If you cannot create content regularly then curate content.

13. Use Schemas for addresses, events, people, recipes, books, ebooks,video, etc.

14. Focus on building a community and retaining their trust as your community can play a major role in helping your content go viral.

15. As in real life you are known by the friends you keep , in the online world you are known by the people that follow you and the people that you follow.

16. In the real world you are what your thoughts are and in the online world you are what you publish and share.

17. The above points help you earn links. Let the inbound links get built as a result of quality web presence rather than running after them.

18. All the above points have a direct impact on the off page optimization giving a boost to the search presence .

19. Focus on the technical SEO by working on XML sitemaps, by monitoring Google WMT , canonicalization issues, HTTP headers, rich snippets in search results which are achieved by using schemas and microformats , customized error pages, robots.txt, improving the site speed, etc.

20. Local search is as important as global search hence cannot be ignored.

21. Follow the path of hard work to develop this overall presence gradually rather than following the short cut of buying fake likes , followers and +1s . The short cuts followed today will become a penalty in future once Google upgrades its algorithm for detecting it like the Penguin Update for spammy links which made all the link builders undertake the task of undoing those same links which they ran after once.

22. Go mobile and check the accessibility of your site on hand held devices else develop Mobile Apps. For widely used services of the site.

23. Help Google to give quality search results to the users and Google will help you in return by giving you the search presence you deserve.

24. Focus on the metrics that matter in Google Analytics according to what goals and priorities you have set for yourself to improve search presence.

25. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Have a Bing WMT account too and monitor the search presence on Bing too.

The SEO industry is at that point of the graph where its going to scale new heights and emerge as more meaningful and essential for website owners and search engines as well. Content and quality have been king since the first web page was published but it in 2012 that Google has been successful in penalizing the low quality content and help clear the content and the linked clutter on the web with its algorithmic updates.

2012 has witnessed the most evolutionary phase of the SEO industry and I think this is the most positive phase too. As these quality algorithmic updates by Google are making the SEOs and website owners think and work on the quality aspects of the website.

Wishing Everyone a Great And A Successful 2013 !

Bing / Google / SEO - 12/31/2012

Google Introduces Data Highlighter To Webmaster Tools For Event Data

Google has been lately giving a lot of importance to rich snippets in search results. Data Highlighter is a point-and-click tool that can be used by anyone authorized for your site in Google Webmaster Tools. No changes to HTML code are required.

Instead, you just use your mouse to highlight and "tag" each key piece of data on a typical event page of your website.

To get started with Data Highlighter, visit Webmaster Tools, select your site, click the "Optimization" link in the left sidebar, and click "Data Highlighter".

As of now it's available in English only and for structured data about events, such as concerts, sporting events, exhibitions, shows, and festivals.

Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2012/12/introducing-data-highlighter-for-event.html

Google / SEO - 12/13/2012

The Google+ VP Bradley Horowitz Says: “Google+ is not like the social networks of the past”

In one of his recent interviews, the Google+ VP Bradley Horowitz mentioned that if FaceBook had 1 billion users then Google+ too had 1 billion users or more if the users of all Google products were put together. According to him unlike FaceBook, Google Plus is not only a social media platform but an attempt by Google to weave all the Google products together to offer more value to users and brands.

Google plus is the foundation layer and not a parallel product which exists individually. It is the identity and relationships system for Google which is woven in all the Google products. As per their statistics 400 million users have signed up for Google Plus but 100 million of them are active as per their strictest definition of an “ Active Google+ User” and the numbers are growing on a regular basis.

The Google+ VP Bradley Horowitz also mentioned that Google+ is not like the social networks of the past. It had a completely different edge and was following a different path. It was clearly indicated by him that they considered FaceBook was a social network of the past. He further added that they want Google+ to work the way the real world works and the advertisements and Sponsored links on social networks is annoying the users and they want to add the commercial aspect to Google+ but in a very holistic way. All the examples given by him clearly indicated that Google+ signals enhanced and added value to search Ads. by offering recommendations from users in your circle.

Hence, the search and social are supplementing each other rather than having independent individual existence for Google. He also added that in 5 – 10 years from now Google is aiming Google+ to be a platform for uncluttered meaningful communication where context is also in the picture along with the connections.

As a SEO I get the message clear and loud that Google+ signals will get more and more integrated in search results and if brands adopt and adapt to Google+ as soon as possible then they are going to grow alongside with the growth of Google+ as they have an opportunity to create footprints on social and get topically correlated ASAP. As mentioned above all the Google products are being woven into Google+ and Google+ as a social media platform converges to diverge and diverges to converge.

SEO - 12/02/2012

The Evolving Face Of SEO - 14 SEO Facts For 2013

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google turned 14 in 2012 and like any teenager it is still trying to acquire skills to face the world with more confidence and put its best foot forward. Obviously SEO – Search Engine Optimization has a direct correlation with search engines but as the search engines become more capable and as the search algorithms evolve and become more sophisticated many in the SEO world are even contemplating to rechristen SEO with some other name.

But does calling SEO by some other term change the true meaning of SEO? As a matter of fact has the SEO process and procedures changed or as they say is actually SEO dead?

The answer is NO, NO and an emphatic NO.

As black hat SEOs first focused on keyword stuffing and then went on link building sprees now after the Panda and Penguin updates this confused lot is talking about content development and undoing all the link building they have done in the past.

Survival of the fittest (Photo credit: onkel_wart (thomas lieser))

But some of the SEO Evolution facts are:

1. SEO is not dead but has gained more life for people who understand the genuine meaning of optimization for search engines.

2. SEO has come under more scrutiny as the search engines are more capable now to detect spam and have upgraded their algorithms to penalize spammy techniques.

3. As websites moved from static websites to dynamic websites increasing the potential for regular additional content the search engines too first worked on indexing such content but this year the focus has been on penalizing thin and poor quality content to give more quality results to the users.

4. Websites penalized are the ones with poor quality non topical, spammy links and thin content.

5. Websites which catered to technical aspects of SEO and do not have low quality links and thin content were not affected by the updates.(That’s what my experience says) Its like if you have a good track record it adds up to your goodwill.

6. With social and search integrations and upgraded algorithms one needs to do more that just on-page optimization and technical SEO. One needs to focus on UGC (User generated Content) and offer a regular flow of content in the form of blog posts , videos, infographics , images, podcasts, etc. to be able to generate the UGC and share it on various social media platforms to generate the much needed social signals.

7. Panda or no Panda content has been king since the first web page was published on the web. It is Google who has become capable in picking quality content in 2012

8. The on-page and technical SEO still remain the same but as the search engines have evolved and are better equipped with advanced algorithms the completion for high rankings has increased and Darwin’s theory of “The Survival Of The Fittest” is largely applicable today on the web.

9. Where there is content there is a creator hence Google came up with the Authorship Tag and the Knowledge Graph – The next big step to qualify content and the creator.

10. If content creation is a necessity then content curation is the answer if coming up with regular content is a problem.

11. SEO is just one aspect of the whole online presence. As Scott Gardner of Bank of America had mentioned in a related discussion on SEO 2013 : Search is multifaceted. Don’t forsake any part of the pie. Make sure you don’t lose the market share you’ve gained in other areas. You need a balance.

12. When we optimize the site the focus is on factors which will retain a long term search presence and thereby generate targeted traffic .

13. Rankings are important but when we speak of SEO we work on the quality factors of the website and then earn the rankings to get targeted traffic but incase of PPC we pay for the rankings and buy the targeted traffic.

14. It is the prime duty of every SEO to educate the client about the true meaning of SEO and make them set realistic SEO expectations.

Bing / Google / SEO - 11/20/2012

SEO Objectives, Budgets, Metrics, Challenges and SEO Fee Structure In 2012 As Per The SEMPO Survey 2012

Author : Bharati Ahuja

The State of Search Marketing Report is based on an online survey of nearly 900 client-side (advertisers) and agency respondents. The survey was live between March 12th and May 15th 2012. A total of 883respondents from 36 countries took part in the survey, with US-based respondents accounting for 64% of the total. The sample included 272 advertisers and 611 supply-side respondents (mainly agencies) carrying out search marketing and social media activity on behalf of clients.

Following is a brief synopsis of the survey regarding the SEO trends for 2012 :

Objectives For SEO 2012

To generate leads and drive traffic to the website is the major SEO objective for companies investing in SEO. But the objective of driving traffic to website has gone down by 8% in 2012 since last year.

The other main SEO objective is to sell products, services or content online which is the prime objective for companies investing in paid search according to the survey.

As the focus on driving traffic decreases the focus on increasing brand awareness and enhancing reputation has gone up by 6% since 2011. I think this indicates that companies investing in SEO are focusing more on quality SEO metrics and activities.

Metrics To Measure For SEO In 2012:

From the above metrics being focused on, by the companies the SEO trend will take a true turn for quality when the quality of the sales/leads will be more important that the quantity. As good SEO should drive targeted traffic not just volumes of traffic.

Secondly, it is not only about keyword rankings but about ranking for global keywords and global terms and terminology for the products and services offered by the companies. So its more about getting the site rank for correlated terms which can be achieved only by having substantial quality content and an engaging social media presence. This global keyword search presence should be a more important metric than traffic volume as the traffic volume and brand perception will follow if this has been achieved.

Though from the above objectives we can see that the companies are more open to quality SEO activities, a lot still needs to be done to educate the clients to focus on quality metrics so that the objectives can be achieved.

Budget For SEO In 2012

Though the companies having a budget of $1 to $25000 has gone down by 7% in 2012 as compared to last year , the companies allocating a budget of $25000 to $75000 has gone up by 9% in 2012. There is a 4% increase in the no. of companies allocating a budget of more than $3 million too. This again is a positive trend that companies are willing to allocate higher budgets for SEO.

This will pave the way for quality SEO activities as good content and good social media presence both are highly priced.

SEO – Inhouse v/s Hiring An SEO Specialist or Agency

Glad to see that there are more companies willing to hire SEO specialists rather than SEO agencies. This again proves that SEO is a specialized service which needs to be implemented by individuals or small close knit and like minded teams for better results.

Challenges For Managing SEO In 2012:

Measuring the ROI from SEO seems to be still at the helm for the challenges faced for managing SEO. This problem will be automatically solved when the metrics to measure SEO is decided upon by the company. This will be a continuing trend though, because the total ROI from SEO can never be measured as the ROI from SEO is an ongoing thing. This is because the brand and reputation created by SEO makes the company accrue returns in future. Many times the targeted traffic which visits the site as a result of SEO services may not take any immediate decision for buying or contacting the company but may delay the decision for various reasons.
Typical Fee Structure For SEO

40% of the companies pay a flat fee to their SEO specialists or agencies. This is again a very positive trend and I am glad to see this because we have been having this SEO flat fee structure for our annual SEO projects since 2005.

Overall SEO seems to be on the main agenda of the companies. This again proves that SEO is evolving and not dying.

The full SEMPO report is available to SEMPO members which can be downloaded from SEM Research page.

Bing / Google / News / SEO - 09/13/2012

Editorial Policy: Human Expertise, Enhanced by AI

At WebPro Technologies, our content reflects over two decades of experience in SEO and digital strategy. We believe that valuable content is built on accuracy, clarity, and insight—and that requires human judgment at every step.

From 2024 onwards, we have been using AI tools selectively to brainstorm ideas, explore perspectives, and refine language, but AI is never the final author. Every article is researched, fact-checked, and edited by our team, ensuring relevance, accuracy, and originality. AI supports our workflow, but the responsibility for quality and credibility remains entirely human.

This hybrid approach allows us to combine the efficiency of technology with the depth of human expertise, so our readers get content that is both informative and trustworthy.

At WebPro, we see AI not as a replacement for human creativity, but as a tool that helps us raise the standard of excellence in the content we share.

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+91 9825025904
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