Top Search Engine Ranking Can’t Really Matter! Can it?

Are SEO specialists just trying to pry our hard earned money out of us by beating the mantra that it is important to get top search engine ranking? Is there any evidence that search engine rank optimization makes a difference? What could be the impact of effective search engine optimization?

Website Usability Testing

In recent years, specialized research methods have been employed to assess how search engine page results are viewed. The general approach is called usability testing because it’s testing how people use the search pages. There are many approaches to usability testing, ranging from simplistic to sophisticated.

Some recent technological advances make it possible to measure and map eye movements as people observe search engine pages. This research provides valuable insight into the impact of search engine page position.

Viewing Organic Listings

A study was conducted by Eyetools, an eye tracking firm, which was commissioned by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it. It evaluated visual response to Google search pages.

The study demonstrated that, during a search, attention focuses on a triangular area at the top of the search results page. The triangle extends from the top of the results over the top of the first result, then down to a point on the left side at the bottom of the “above the fold” visible results. This key area was looked at by 100 percent of the participants.

On Google, this area includes top sponsored, top organic results and Google’s alternative results, including shopping, news or local suggestions.
Viewing of search results started at a high of 100% for the top organic listing and dropped to 85% at the bottom of the “above the fold” listings. It then dropped dramatically for results below the fold. It went from 50% at just below the fold to 20% at the bottom of the page.
Organic vs. Paid Listings
The research also points out that organic listings and paid ads at the top of a search page are similarly viewed by 80%-100% of users. But sponsored ads on the right side of the page in the top 4 positions are viewed by only 20%-50%. Sponsored ads in positions 5 through 8 have only 10% viewing.
Conclusions
It appears that SEO wisdom is upheld by this research. It is well worth it to apply best SEO practices to have a website ranked in the top positions because such an approach will result in more people looking at the site.
The research results also suggest that it may be more worthwhile to spend on SEO, to achieve top search engine results, rather than on pay-per-click. This would especially be the case if there is a very high price to pay for the top of page paid ad position.

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How To Advertise Your Business with Effective Ads

Most people who are starting out in MLM, Internet Marketing or any small business have tight budgets, but need to advertise and connect with prospects to their businesses. It would be helpful if ads could be created and tested for their effectiveness with a free online service. This would reduce the expense and risk of placing ads through various advertising media such as pay per click ads or paid classified advertising.

Fortunately, there are free online services through which test ads can be evaluated. This article points out how to advertise your business based on one such free way of testing ads. The approach combines free advertising and click tracking through a free online tool.

First, multiple versions of an advertisement should be created. Different formulations of the ad title as well as variations of the ad copy are needed.

These ads should then be placed in some media through which reactions to each ad version can be tracked.

Multiple versions of an advertisement can be placed on online classified ad sites that do not charge for the placement. There are many such sites available. But not all the free classified ad sites are the same. Some sites are more restrictive than others. Some sites may restrict the number of ads that can be placed during a specified time. Or, some sites require a lot of contact information to be filled in before placing an ad, making the task of placing ads very cumbersome and frustrating. Both of these restrictions may limit the ability to adequately test multiple versions of an ad.

There are four free classified ad sites that are user friendly and produce fairly good traffic. They are: homeworkads.com, web-free-ads.com, hotfreelist.com and inetgiant.com

The ads are almost ready to be placed on the free classified ad sites. What’s next? A method is needed for tracking how many times each version of the ad is clicked. This is usually done by creating a unique link for each ad. Each of the link versions connects to the squeeze page, website or blog that you want people to access. The main difference between the links in each ad is code built into each of them.

In addition to creating unique links for each ad version, statistics are needed that summarize the number of times the link for each of the ad versions is clicked.

There are many fee based tools that create these links and provide statistics on the number of clicks. There is one free online tool that does both of these functions very well. It is clixtrac.com

Put each unique link created by clixtrac.com into each ad. Then place the ads on the free classified advertising site(s).

The clixtrac site records each time someone clicks on the link for one of the ads. The statistics can be viewed at the clixtrac site.

Here are eight titles for ads that were tested using this approach. Which four do you think received the most clicks?

- Brand new home base business opportunity
- Looking for easy ways to make money
- Let the best home business work for you
- Automatic wealth building
- Automated system makes money for you
- Make money while doing nothing
- Afraid of starting a home business
- Brand new money making opportunity

Here are the results. The four least appealing ads were:

- Automated system makes money for you
- Looking for easy ways to make money
- Afraid of starting a home business
- Let the best home business work for you

The most effective ads were:

- Automatic wealth building
- Make money while doing nothing
- Brand new money making opportunity
- Brand new home base business opportunity

Notice how titles with similar themes produced very different results. For example, the title “automated system makes money for you” was the least appealing. But, the title “automatic wealth building” was one of the most appealing.

It would probably be difficult to predict this kind of outcome. Having real data helps make clear, less risky advertising decisions.

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How To Avoid Facebook Disabling Your Page for Business Networking

Through the Web 2.0 explosion, a lot of emphasis has been placed on utilizing Facebook for making contacts and possibly generating business. However, this social networking site actively discourages the use of personal pages for business social networking practices. Facebook writes that: “Facebook profiles are intended to represent an individual person and should not be used for business purposes”.

There are other social networking sites that are more supportive of networking for the purpose of business building, but they have much fewer participants.

To support its non-business promotion policy for personal pages, Facebook actively polices member activities and will disable pages of members that act in ways that appear to be counter to this policy. Despite that fact, some well-meaning people are providing advice on the use of Facebook that could actually result in pages being suspended. Having personally experienced the suspension of a Facebook page, it seemed worthwhile to set the record straight.

Following is advice gleaned from other sources and comments based on my actual experience.
1. “Obviously you’re on Facebook to network, and in order to do that you must create a friend list. You don’t want to do this too aggressively – maybe 40-50 friend request per day.”

It is not just the number of friend requests you make, but how many are made in a short period of time. Facebook wrote: “Your account was disabled because Facebook determined that you were going too fast when sending friend requests, despite being warned to slow down, or because your friend requests were being rejected at a high rate.”

Facebook will give warnings if they determine too many requests are made in too short a period of time. Making three or four friend requests in immediate succession may result in a warning. Therefore, spread out friend requests throughout the day. Several warnings may result in disabling of a personal page.

2. “Add a personal message in your friend requests. This slows the process down some so you’re not as noticeable. I like to copy and paste messages, and add the person’s name. Oh, and ask them to respond on your profile page.”

Adding such a message does not slow down the process sufficiently to avoid warnings and then page disabling.

3. “Where to find friends. I primarily work on MLM networking, so you would think the first place to visit is any group with an interest in network marketing. Wrong! Find other entrepreneurial sites and fan pages. Less saturation there, and many of them are fellow networkers.”

Facebook looks at how many friend requests are ignored/rejected. So, you need to establish a connection with those you contact in a way that resonates with them. If you’re involved with MLM, other networkers might be more receptive to your invitation.

Alternatively, you might want to take the time to visit the Facebook page of someone you want to invite to be a friend and find common points of interest that can be written about in your invite.

4. “Video tagging. Not many people know how to use videos on Facebook, but they are the most powerful means of creating a bond. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s a video worth? 30 seconds to introduce yourself and your personality makes you stand out in the crowd of people just typing messages. You want to be noticed, videos will do that.”

Video tagging may not be the best way to send a video. Tagging is meant to indicate who is featured in the video. Some Facebook members become upset in receiving a video where you welcome them and tag them. Members may file a complaint with Facebook about being tagged, even though this is not a policy violation, and there are ways that recipients can control whether tagging of their name appears on their page.

It may be better to send the video by the Facebook message function.

By being aware of these potential pitfalls and taking the proper precautions, you can take full advantage of the networking opportunities available through Facebook, whether for fun or profit.