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SEO News Tip of the Day!Something big happened to Google's SERp's
Just as I was complaining that little has happened in the SEO forum world, a massive change has happened in the Google SERP’s.
A big debate is still continuing on the Webworkshop SEO Forum - Is the sandbox no more? What’s actually happened no one can really say for sure just yet but a few days ago a huge chunk of results have been updated with the end result of many webmasters sites seeing drastic changes in their rankings, some good and some bad. What at first sight seems to be a mass sandbox drop e.g. Google removed the sandbox filter from a huge quantity of websites all in one go. But is that really what happened, what are your thoughts? Some have said it may be the start of a semantic ranking algorithm, while others are saying it may be Google trying to play us with a bit of good old fashioned confusion. A few more people have even said that the only sites that have dropped into the rankings are all either SEO websites or related to SEO in some shape or form e.g. an SEO clients website. Personally I have seen a few sites that I have been working on affected, all dropping straight onto the first pages for the search phrases optimised. Quite a relief as some of them I have been working on for the last eight months (You can imagine how the clients felt after eight months of SEO with few results). I do not know what happened but I have a strong gut feeling that what we have just witnessed is something to do with the sandbox. If I’m right and it was Google experimenting with the sandbox it begs a few questions. Is this the end of the sandbox? Hopefully yes but it may be the start of an even greater type of sandbox. My own thoughts on the sandbox are quite well known and I fail to see how it benefits the webmaster and more importantly the end user. The internet is the fastest moving form of communication we have ever seen and search engines need to reflect that. What use is it if a new trend becomes popular and by the time a webmasters site has come out of the sandbox, the trend has ended. If Google continues using a sandbox type filter, the likes of MSN and Yahoo will defeat them by showing fresh content. The new MSN search already has a search builder that enables you display sites with recently updated content. Is this the start of something new, a new way the sandbox works? This could be the one and I just hope it isn’t. Google has made it clear that they do not want people to be able to interfere with their ranking algorithm. What we have seen may be a taste of things to come, a “mass sandbox” type effect where sites are held for a longer period of time and then all released in one go. This could enable Google to test the new SERP’s to spot trouble areas and address them before the new SERP is public. The above is pure speculation and the truth of what actually happened is probably something completely different. One thing for sure though is something has happened and it is likely to be something big! 
How To Measure Search Engine Marketing ROI
According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), advertisers spent $4 billion in 2004 on search marketing programs and are expected to spend 39% more than that this year. Search engine marketing appears to be a great way to advertise but is it right for you and your business? If you are not already employing search engine marketing(SEM) for you business is there a way to forecast the return should you decide to invest in it? Is there a way to measure the results you are getting if you have already invested in SEM? The answer is mostly yes. By utilizing data discovered in recently released research surveys and with the help of a few free online tools you can put begin to take some of the guesswork out of search engine marketing ROI. By using Overture's free keyword suggestion tool (inventory.overture.com) you can get an idea of how many times a keyword is getting searched each month. Another free tool to use is called Good Keywords and can be downloaded from www.goodkeywords.com. Let's say for instance that you are a mortgage broker in the Denver Colorado area and you are interested in getting more leads for your business. You have a website and are considering search engine marketing to bring in some new leads. You get a quote from a search engine marketing provider who can guarantee top 10 positions among the major search engines for 6 months for your keywords for $1,500.00. The question now becomes is it worth it to you to spend the $1,500.00. To figure this out we need to look at some numbers. Berrier & Associates estimate that 65% of all traffic generated by a search in a search engine will go to the sites listed within the first 10 results (first page) returned for that search. By using Overture's keyword suggestion tool you discover that the term "Denver mortgage broker" gets approximately 540 searches a month. Using this criteria a first page position for "Denver mortgage broker" would bring you approximately 65% of 540 searches a month = 350 visitors to your site each month. Having a compelling title tag in your website's pages might even boost this visitor number since the title tag is what appears as the clickable link in the search results. The formula we just used would then be applied to all the other keywords you are targeting such as "mortgage Denver" which gets approximately 2,600 searches a month or "mortgage company Denver" with 466 searches a month. A first page placement for any of those would yield similar results. So let's say we just use the "Denver mortgage broker" key phrase as our example with its estimated 350 visitors a month for a first page position. You would now need to know what your website conversion rate is. The website conversion rate is the ratio of leads or sales you get per visitor amount. The average website conversion rate is about 1-2% or 1-2 leads or sales for every 100 visitors according to Shop.org. If your website conversion rate is average then you would expect on average 2-3 good leads from your site each month for that one first page listing. Then depending on your sales conversion rate which is the number of sales per leads you get on average multiplied by your average sale price you can begin to calculate what your return might be. So let's say as a mortgage broker you make roughly $2k on each deal you broker and your sales conversion rate is 1 sale for every 3 quality leads. In any given month then you could estimate 1 sale at $2k out of the 3 quality leads generated from your website which came as a result of the 350 visitors you got from being on the first page of Google, Yahoo or MSN for the term "Denver mortgage broker". You paid the search engine marketing company $1,500.00 dollars for 6 months of first page listings. From one of those first page listings you stand to gain $2k x 6 months = $12,000.00. That sounds like a really good return for money invested. In closing the methodology outlined in this article to calculate search engine marketing ROI is by no means 100% accurate due to several factors but it is a good way to get a "feel" for what you might get back for your marketing dollars. Its also a way to get business owners to start thinking about how to better track their e-business. I have just finsished building a quick and easy seo tool that will enable you to do these calculations automatically available for free at this link SEO Tool Copyright 2005 Charles Preston. All rights reserved. Charles Preston is an Austin based SEO with 7 years of industry experience. Charles is the President of Click Response an internet marketing company focused on teaching small businesses how to get the most out of their internet marketing. For a free consultation or more information please visit http://www.clickresponse.net
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