| |
How To Justify A Search Engine Optimization Budget
In this article I show you how to justify a budget to your VP of Marketing, CFO, President, or CEO.
If you're a marketing manager, I'm sure you use all the weapons at your disposal to achieve your sales and profit targets.
Every banner advertising, direct email advertising, lead generation, magazine advertising campaign requires a proposal to justify the investment.
But what about search engine optimization? How do you justify the investment to your VP of Marketing, CFO, President, or CEO. And how do you quantify the value of search engine traffic?
Well, first take a look at these statistics.
Jul 05 2000: Forrester Research reported that over 80 percent of Internet users reach sites through search engines.
This means if your Web site doesn't attract 80 percent of your visitors from search engines, you're losing out on a lot of search engine traffic.
Feb 14 2001: A study from NPD Group found that search listings are more effective than standard banner or button advertisements when it comes to brand recall, favorable opinion rating and inspiring purchases.
In unaided recall, search listings outperformed banners and buttons by three to one, and more than twice as many people gave a more favorable opinion of companies in the top three search positions than those featured in ads.
The study also found that 55 percent of online purchases were made on sites found through search listings, while a mere 9 percent were on sites found through banner ads.
Again, if your sales from search engine traffic accounts for less than 55 percent of your total sales, you are missing out on a lot of potential customers.
So how do you justify the investment of either outsourcing your campaigns or employing a specialist to do it in-house?
Well, let me speak from my own experience.
I managed the for my old company's Web site, www.iBoost.com. I spent a month optimizing over a thousand web pages.
The result was that in total I obtained over 2,000 top 30 rankings in the major search engines and web directories.
This helped grow the site traffic by 33%, which translated to an extra 400,000 visitors and 8 million page views a month.
Based on those figures, one top 30 position generated on average 200 visitors a month, or 2,400 visitors over the course of a year.
The initial optimization campaign was actually carried out back in October of 2000. But the web pages still command somewhere in the region of 1,800 to 2,000 top 30 positions.
So your rankings never really disappear from the index, once you have established your positions. They may move up or down the index, but they don't usually drop off the top rankings completely, for no apparent reason.
Before the online ad market softened, my old company could command up to $25 per thousand banner impressions. So, the extra 8 million monthly page views could have generated as much as $200,000 in revenue, per month.
Since my company didn't sell any products or services on the web site, I can only imagine how much revenue could have be generated by the extra 400,000 monthly visitors.
How To Calculate What Your Visitors Are Worth
Some firms charge on a pay-for-performance basis. For example, one company used to charge $85 for a top 10 ranking. You may have come across this company.
A top 10 ranking would almost definitely produce more
Updated :
Update 2: Swisher reports that Facebook blocked API access to Ping after failing to strike an agreement with Apple, so Apple removed the feature after launch. She credits "sources familiar with Facebook's platform" with this information.
Update: With regards to Facebook and Ping, Dan Frommer points out that the screenshots Apple used in its prsentation actually did show Facebook integration. MG Siegler also notes that he actually was able to connect to Ping with Facebook, but then it disappeared. It appears that Apple may have pulled Facebook from it at the last minute. Siegler writes: I can tell you for sure that yesterday Facebook Connect was a part of Ping — because I used it. When I first loaded iTunes 10 yesterday and started up Ping, connecting with Facebook was the first thing I did to find friends. At first, I will say that it didn’t work. I hit the Connect button, entered my credentials, and nothing happened. But I tried again and it worked perfectly. I found a handful of Facebook friends who had just started using Ping as well and connected with them. He also claims that he's still connected to the Ping app from within Facebook and that while Facebook isn't on iTunes, it's still live. Original Article: At Apple's music event yesterday, where the company launched a new version of iOS, a new version of iTunes with a new social network (Ping), a new line of iPods, and a new version of Apple TV, Steve Jobs took a shot at Google involving numbers of smartphone activations.
Last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that Android gets over 200,000 devices a day.
"People throw out a lot of numbers about how many devices they're activating per day," Jobs is quoted as saying. "We are doing 230,000 activations a day. We think our friends may be counting upgrades - if we were counting upgrades, that would be way higher."
Fortune has a quote from a Google spokesperson responding to those comments: "The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services."
Ping, the iTunes social network, is like Facebook or Twitter meets iTunes. That's the way Jobs described it in the announcement, anyway. While that may be the case, and it may even resemble Facebook, there is no integration with either Facebook or Twitter (or other social networks).
Kara Swisher was able to speak to Jobs about this, who said Facebook wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to." When asked about integrating Facebook Connect to help people find their friends, Swisher quotes him saying (or shrugging rather), "We could, I guess."
She also got this statement from Facebook on the matter: "Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we've partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future."
Om Malik at GigaOm calls Ping "the future of social commerce". "From a content perspective, there are three different types of media we love to talk about: movies we see, music we listen to and books we are reading," he says. "These are accepted social norms. In fact, many relationships are made on the basis of collective love of a movie and many friendships have started with mixed tapes."
Boxee, whose Boxee Box is due out in November, had some comments on Apple's Apple TV announcement. These two are now direct competitors. On the Boxee blog, Avner Ronen writes:
We think people want to be able to watch anything that they can watch on their computer, only on their bigscreen TV. There is an overwhelming consumer expectation that the content we can consume in our cubicles, our dorm rooms, and in our laps should be available in our living rooms, in full 1080p with a gorgeous interface. It’s a simple premise, but the challenge is to do it in a way that makes sense in that space, so you can put your feet up, grab a remote and start watching. No keyboards, mice, windows or labyrinthine menus. It should be calm and it should be beautiful. And it *must* be open.
We all watched the Apple announcement. We walked away feeling strongly confident about the space it left for Boxee to compete. We have a different view of what users want in their living rooms. We are taking different paths to get there. The Boxee Box is going to be $100 more expensive than the Apple TV, but will give you the freedom to watch what you want.
We think it’s worth it.
NewTeeVee has a comparison of Apple TV, the Boxee Box, and Roku, which some have also said is superior to the new Apple TV.
Publ.Date : Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:38:24 -0400
NASA has introduced a new free mobile application for the iPad called NASA App HD.
NASA App HD features live streaming video from NASA Television, an interactive map with links to all of its centers, quick links to feature stories and launch schedules, a scrolling “alerts banner,” and a NASA Featured” link.
The app’s landing page features the solar system, where users can learn more about it, the universe and NASA missions. The app also allows users to view and search updated, higher resolution NASA Image of the Day and Astronomy Picture of the Day collections and agency videos on demand.
“Our goal with the first NASA App was to deliver current mission information, images, videos and news updates in the best possible way for the iPhone and iPod touch," said Jerry Colen, NASA App project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
"Now we've enhanced and expanded the application to include even more content and really take advantage of the iPad's larger screen."
Publ.Date : Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:48:57 -0400
Under the right circumstances, search engines can turn the names of a person's city and state into ugly words; users looking for local info may have to type them over and over until they wish the founders had stuck to just two or three letters. New Yahoo search suggestions aim to eliminate that problem, though.
Product Manager Vivian Lin Dufour wrote on the Yahoo Search Blog this morning, "We're making Search more intuitive by taking user context and applying it to the search experience. Today we are introducing an enhanced Yahoo! Search Assist, providing suggestions geographically closer to you as you type your query."
You can see an example of how this works below. The first image shows what search suggestions a Yahoo user in Sunnyvale, California (which is in Santa Clara County) would get after typing "santa." The second image shows how they'd differ for an individual located in Santa Barbara. This should save people some typing, and in the process, also tends to make Yahoo's results look much more useful.
The upgrade shouldn't cross any sort of "creepy" line, either, since Yahoo doesn't seem to be interested in pinning down users' exact addresses or anything like that.
Anyway, Dufour invited everyone, "Give this new feature a try and let us know what you think about geo-sensitive search suggestions in the comments section . . ."
Publ.Date : Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:25:15 -0400
Skype released an update to Skype for Windows, which allows you to make group video calls with up to ten people. This is in beta. There is also a new design. Skype's Peter Parkes writes, "You'll notice that the new-look Skype is sleeker, neater and crisper than before, and we're proud of the work our interface designers have done to refine and mature the interface for this version. We've also added Skype Home, where you can follow your contacts' mood messages, set your profile picture and mood message, receive account notifications and learn more about using Skype." Other improvements include: - Skype Home experience - Offline instant messaging - New contact search and add experience - Enhanced call experience under problematic conditions - Post call experience This version of Skype can be downloaded here. Remember, everyone participating in the video call has to be using this version.
Publ.Date : Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:16:40 -0400
|
click throughs than a top 30 ranking. If we use the figure of 200 monthly visitors for a top 10 ranking at a cost of $85, the cost of each visitor would be 42 cents.
Not bad. But don't forget that once you achieve a top position, little effort is required to maintain that position. So, in reality, it could generate as many as 2,400 visitors in a year. At $85 for a top ranking, this equates to just 3.5 cents for each visitor coming from a top 10 listing.
Analyze your log files. How many visitors do your top 30 search engine positions bring in each month? Now multiply the average of number of monthly visitors these search terms bring in by 12. This is your average return-on-investment of each top position for a whole year.
So for example, let's say you get 20 top 30 positions, and they bring in an average of 200 visitors a month.
Top 30 Positions 20
X
Visitors 200
X
Months 12
---
Total Visitors 48,000
Now if you set a budget to acquire 20 extra top 30 positions, you would increase your search engine traffic by 48,000 visitors.
If we take the rate of $85 for each top 10 position that Coastal Site charges, 20 top positions would set you back $1,700.
$1,700 / 48,000 visitors = 3.5 cents per visitor
How much does it cost you to acquire a visitor at present? Probably somewhere in the 25-50 cent range.
Top positions in pay-per-click search engines, such as Overture, cost as much as $5 to $6 a visitor. According to Overture, the average price its advertisers paid for a visitor was 30 cents, during the second quarter of 2002.
Based on our calculations above, the cost of acquiring a search engine visitor is as low as 12% of what it costs to acquire a visitor at Overture.
As you can see, clearly produces an excellent return-on-investment.
Don't forget that search engine positioning is effective, because the traffic is very targeted. Prospects who find your site through search engines are actively looking for information on products and services just like yours.
Search Engine Optimization Is A Science
Just like other forms of marketing and advertising, requires persistence and a lot of testing.
The optimization process is complex and time-consuming. You're trying to align your Web pages with the ranking algorithms of the search engines, while at the same time trying to out-smart your competitor's optimizers.
But the fact remains, is cost effective, and should not be ignored.
Now go convince your VP of Marketing, CFO, President, and CEO of this fact! ;o)
About The Author: Michael Wong is a respected internet marketing expert , and the author of a leading book , numerous marketing articles , and reviews of marketing software and ecommerce software .
|
|
