The new Google layout gave rise to concerns of traffic decreases to websites both in through organic and paid results. Whether or not this was the result of the new layout or simply the adjustments Google made in how they crawl and rank websites and pages that occurred during the same period, was uncertain. Simply put, Google’s “copy” of the Bing layout is not working. As we all know in the internet marketing world, copy and paste solutions do not work and Bing is definitely doing something right in search to drive such large scale changes by Google in an effort to keep up in the search race.

A study by Explido Webmarketing, clearly shows the affect of the new Google layout, and from the above heatmap(before and after) especially within sponsored results, positions 4-10 in paid clearly show a decline in clicks. Unfortunate side effect or intentional move on Google’s part to increase revenue from AdWords with advertisers increasing bidding to compete for top ad positions?

In February Nielsen reported Bing’s US market share reaching 12.5%, a record for the search engine compared to previous years, while Google still dominates the overall market share. Bing still has a long way to go to in terms of market share, however with the engine beginning to power Yahoo results as well, it seems Google may still have to keep a close eye on Bing.

The question is one again, are you optimising for Bing and taking advantage of their increased market share and higher conversions?

Nielsen observed that while users do scroll down and glance over the content that occurs lower down, they allocate the majority of their attention to the information they are immediately confronted with.

This confirms what we already know about typical user behaviour. People don’t like having to work for information on the Internet – they expect that what they are looking for will stare them right in the face within the first few seconds of arriving on a page, and will move swiftly along if it doesn’t.

A corollary of this is that people prioritise information, albeit subconsciously, according to its position on a page. This means that users assume that content at the top of a page is more important than that at the bottom, and will distribute their attention accordingly.

Scroll down for more

Although some industry players have disputed Nielsen’s high 80% figure, most agree that the findings have interesting implications for design and SEO, and serve to reaffirm key page building principles.

Information should always be presented in easily digestible chunks as users are easily overwhelmed. Key page elements such as internal search boxes, navigational menus or links and calls to action must all be incorporated above the fold. If people are unable to locate the required information they are likely to abandon a page quickly, driving up its bounce rate. Remember also that search engines view pages like users do. This means that a search engine will consider your page more relevant if important links and search phrases appear higher up.

However, Nielsen points out that this research should not spell the death of scrolling. A reasonable number of scrollable pages are preferable to many separate pages, particularly for long written articles, as people would rather scroll than have to click away to a new page.

If you expect a user to scroll down to find relevant information, you should specifically instruct them as such, using eye-catching ‘scroll down for more’ or ‘continues below’ icons.

Criticised though it may be, Nielsen’s research confirms the complex nature of SEO, and how all elements of a website, from copy, to design, to linking, must be integrated into a cohesive strategy for success.

Company Reputation:

Company blogs are dynamic and can be regularly updated (unlike your website), thus you can effectively keep clients informed of the day to day happenings of your company. It is also an effective way to communicate your company’s true personality to your customers as blogs tend to be more opinion based than information based. Through this, readers feel like they are getting a peep into the real personalities of the people behind the scenes of the business.

A company blog can also elaborate on the content of your site and the services that your company has available to customers. Static content pages within your website tend to have a word count limit to avoid excessive text on any given page. Blog entries can be as long as you like and therefore allow you to elaborate on your site’s content and better communicate services etc. to clients.

Due to the fact that many company blogs allow user comments, a great interactive relationship is created between the company and their customers as well as between the customers themselves. Through this, a feeling of trust is instilled in the customers and a company can use the feedback from customers to work on their current business strategies and services.

SEO benefits of having your own Company blog:

Internal cross-linking is the immediate benefit of adding a company blog. As you link back to your main website from your blog, each link starts adding up and improving the rankings of static content pages within your website. The cross linking also transfers blog readers from your blog across to your main site.

Recent statistics from HubSpot show that companies who blog 5 or more times a week attract more than 6.9 times more organic traffic and 1.12 times more referral traffic to their site on a weekly basis than companies who do not blog regularly. That is substantial difference. Check out the graphic below:

Company Blogging also plays a part in content building. The more blog entries you post over time all contribute towards the reputation of your blog, and therefore your blog receives better search engine rankings and attracts more traffic. Obviously, the more people that see your blog, the more people will visit your website from your blog thanks to internal linking or any advertising that you have on your blog. See the graphic below:

Conclusion

What it comes down to is that you cannot afford not to have a company blog. When correctly paired with the use of social media, a blog just becomes such a great way communicating with your current customers, prospective customers and industry counterparts. You can use your blog to promote your business or you can simply just keep people updated on the happenings of your company… the choice is yours. Your company blog is your oyster!

Search Engines:

First of all, let’s take a look at the UK search engine ranking report and compare it to last year’s report:

As you can see in the above search engine comparison, Bing didn’t even feature in the April 2009 report and now they are 3^rd behind Google. The Bing search engine most likely wont be ever be able to take on Google’s search engine, not in the foreseeable future anyway, but they certainly are making their presence felt. Yahoo on the other hand have dropped down one position even though they have remained steady as far as market share goes. Ask have dropped out of the top 5.

Let’s take a look at the search engine ranking report for American search engines:

As you can see above, Yahoo is performing twice as well in the States compared to their UK presence; however they have lost a few percentage of the market share thanks to the introduction of Bing into the top 5. For Bing to gain a massive almost 10% market share in less than a year is extremely impressive. Once again, Ask search engine have dropped out the top 5 as well as Microsoft’s search engines which have been replaced by AOL’s search engine.

Social Media:

Facebook, Twitter and Myspace comparison

As you can see above, Facebook is naturally still leading the pack when it comes to social media with Twitter (orange line) making a steady increase. Twitter yesterday reached an all time high of 50 million tweets in one day which they will be very proud of.

However, what’s more impressive is the way Facebook has continued to grow and is now competing with the Yahoo and Google search engines. Check out the graph below that shows the steady growth of visitors to Facebook compared to Google and Yahoo:

Facebook compared to Google and Yahoo

As you can see above, Facebook equaled Yahoo’s search engine and is now only fractionally below Google. They are however still very much on an upward curve so it will be interesting to keep an eye on them in 2010. It was reported that over the festive season in Asia, Facebook managed to top both Google and Yahoo search engines in popularity which is something nobody would have even considered two years ago. It seems, Facebook is much more than an overnight trend, but is rather here to stay.

So, that’s how the market share of the ever-growing online industry looks at the beginning of 2010. We’ll have to keep a close eye on the Bing search engine, as well as Facebook and Twitter’s constant growth. Another interesting factor to keep an eye on will be to see how the newly launched Google Buzz performs over the next few months. Only Time will tell.

At the beginning of this year, growth and spend for 2009 was predicted to fall somewhat as we all battened down for the long hard winter of recession.

I had a much gloomier picture in mind than what the actual figures to date reveal as quoted by e-marketer. Looking at this growth curve would hardly have me believe that we were in recession this year!

This online spend is of course funnelled from various sources and as Search Marketing Experts we like to know where our visitors are coming from. Figures from Hitwise show the top distinct traffic sources for e-commerce to be Organic Search (31%), with over 3 times the volume of the next segment which is Paid Search (9%). Interestingly, Social Networks are a close third at 7.1% with e-mail marketing at 4.5%. No surprise then that there is so much social media hype.

The real clincher comes as we reveal the percentage split in the distribution of search clicks between SEO and PPC, with natural search accounting for close on 90% of clicks and only 10% landing on PPC.

The real question then is, why do decision makers choose to spend 9 times as much on PPC than on SEO? Is it seen as the easy solution? Is it because they believe it does what it says on the tin? Or do decision makers still believe that SEO is unpredictable and is our industry still tarred by cowboys promising first page results for $100? (No offence to Bas and the Cowboys)

I believe this sets the scene for some interesting times ahead for SEO’s. Everyone wants a piece of the action and we clearly have not seen the end of the $100 special, but we have certainly seen the decision makers getting wiser to these sales pitches.

Search is a maturing market – we have spent the last 5 years educating the market as to what Search can achieve, and our job is far from over. I find myself speaking less about what we can do with search and more about what we can do for your bottom line, and a large part of this discussion is conversion. Whether the visitor arrives at your door via SEO or PPC, the focus is still to convert into a sale. Business owners very quickly do some sums and work out where they are getting the best ROI and we always see them shifting more budget from PPC to SEO. Our most recent example is Douglas and Gordon where we showed a 250% increase in non branded search relating to a 75% drop in cost per conversion while actually cutting the spend by 33%!

I expect this pie chart to shift with the SEO wedge becoming far more prominent through 2010. A lot of empirical data shows that folks trust natural listings more than sponsored listings. The conversion rate of natural traffic is higher than that of PPC traffic and, last but not least, SEO is an investment going forward whereas PPC is like a fireworks display – at the end of the night it has all gone up in smoke!

Many thanks to Rand and SEOMoz for putting pretty pictures together out of the mass of stats data out there.