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Organic Listings: The Hype at this Year's Search Engine Strategies Conference in Boston

Interface Business News
April, 2003
by: Elizabeth Harvey

The speakers at The Search Engine Strategies Conference in Boston this past March bombarded web marketers with more brain-spinning search engine terminology like organic listings, link popularity, keyword density, and - drumroll, please - relevancy! Nearly 1,200 search engine experts gathered at the Park Plaza Hotel to talk SEO, SERP, and Spam.

SERPS and Page Rank

When you enter a word or phrase into a search engine like Google.com and click Enter — a page comes up with sites that match your query. This is known as the search engine results page, or SERP. How a Web page ranks on the results page defines your page rank. Your goal is to rank high on the search engine results page. Users who don't find what they are looking for on page one typically only go two or three pages deep before starting over and trying another search term.

The Old Way — Spam

Until now, companies just hoped and sometimes even prayed that spiders found their Web site. (Search engines use spiders to search the Web). Spam practices such as doorway pages and link farms used to be the common method for tricking the search engines into ranking you higher. These methods are now a big no-no in the industry — and search engines have caught on. They may even remove you from their listings for employing such deceitful methods. Yes, really. Search engine representatives are serious about cracking down on it. (This, straight from the mouth of David Fischer, Adwords Manager of Google.com.)

Tip: If a web designer or web marketing firm says they hide Web pages or keywords on your site or that they will get you listed in the top 1,000 search engines — Hang up! You don't want this. It's a sure sign that the company uses unethical search engine practices. (Besides there aren't 1,000 search engines, there are about 10 that cover over 90% of all results.) Read a True Story about how a spam penalty caused a retailer to lose visibility, traffic, and sales.

The New Way - Organic Listings

It turns out that the search engines got smart. You can actually get listed organically (no paid inclusion, no per-per-click advertising) and ethically (you won't go to Web Purgatory), by creating a content-rich and relevant Web site. In order to get a high organic ranking, you first need to optimize your site. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to applying specific methods to increase visibility for Web sites in search engine results.

Search engines look for three primary things: Content, Keyword Density, and Link Popularity.

Content

Is your site a static brochure or brimming with useful information? Let's say a company ships live lobsters (we'll call it Lizzie's Live Lobsters). The site should give instructions on how to order lobsters, but it should also include pages about how to cook a lobster, how to eat a lobster, and lobster recipes. This would be a content-rich site. Search engines spiders love content.

Tip: Search engines can only see text. Make sure your Web Designer is up-to-date on the latest search engine design requirements. It could save you a lot of money down the road.

Keyword Phrases (or Keyphrases)

Keyword phrases are groupings of words that are relevant to your industry. Search engines devour keyword phrases. Use 2-3 keyword phrases, 3-4 times per page. Next, they look for keyphrase density, or how many of these phrases are on your site. A site that is keyphrase dense will rank higher.

Lizzie's lobster site might choose phrases like: live Maine lobsters, Maine lobsters shipped live, best lobster recipes (if someone is searching on lobster recipes — they're going to need some lobsters!), and lobsters shipped from Maine.

Try to write like your customer thinks. Don't be afraid to ask your customers what phrases they used to search for your product or services.

Tip: Search engines put more weight on the keyphrase density of your home page than other pages.

Tags

There are three places you want to incorporate keyword phrases: in your titles, your copy, and lastly your meta-tags.

Title Tags

The title tag shows up on the bar at the top of your browser. Make sure the keyphrases in your title match your keyphrases in the other two areas. A common mistake is to put only the title of your company in the title tag. Instead of Lizzie's Live Lobsters, Lizzie's title might be: Live Maine Lobsters Shipped Anywhere — Lizzie's Live Lobsters. This title incorporates her keyphrases and her company name.

Tip: Title tags should be different for each page based on the content of that page.

Meta-Tags

There are two primary areas to focus on in your meta-tags: meta-keyword phrases and meta-description. It used to be that meta-tags were where you stuffed all your keywords. This is no longer true. In fact, most search engines don't even consider meta-tags for page rank anymore. So why are they still important? Since the search engines are a fickle beast, and change their algorithms frequently, experts agree — keep them for now.

The meta-description is important because the search engines pull this tag for the search engine results page. The meta-description tag is a sentence or two about what the site offers. Users will see this tag in the search engines, so make sure your description is clear, concise, and includes your relevant keyword phrases.

Example:

Lizzie's Live Lobsters description:

Tip: One-word Keywords are no longer recommended.

Wordtracker Rocks!

How do you know which keyword phrases to choose? Go to wordtracker.com and buy a daily subscription for $6 or a full year for $200. Type in the words and phrases that are relevant to your business. It will spit back the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) for each phrase. The KEI compares popular searched words with how many Web sites are using that phrase. Choose phrases with a high KEI.

Tip: The higher the KEI, the more popular your keyword is and the less competition it has.

Link Popularity

Another way search engines determine your page ranking is on link popularity. Basically this means that search engines like sites that are popular. It figures, if the site is popular, it must be highly relevant to the subject. The spider goes out and searches for all the links with keyword phrases related to those in your site. Search engines also like Web sites with links to other sites with related information. It helps even more to have links to you from popular and relevant sites.

If Lizzie's Lobsters can get recipes.com to link to her site from their page on lobster recipe, she will score.

Tip: Make sure recipes.com puts your keyword phrase in the link.

Example - Click here for Live Maine Lobsters.

Why Organic?

Some experts feel that the rising costs of pay-per-click advertising may eliminate the small business from access to top search engine pages. Overture recently raised the minimum bid per keyword phrase from .05 cents to .10 cents per click. Unfortunately this is putting the squeeze on very small businesses.

Barbara Coll, owner of WebMama.com agreed, "Organic Marketing is the future. This is definitely where Search Engine Marketing is heading."

Tip: While Organic listings are critical for your long-term Web marketing strategy, if you need a quick turn-around and want to guarantee that you show up on the first page of the search engine results page, it is wise to buy some paid advertising, as well.

So what do you do now?

Optimize your site. Create interesting and relevant content. Provide useful information. Incorporate keyword phrases. And, trade links. Team up with complementary, non-competitive sites to increase your link popularity.

Content. Keyword phrases. Link popularity. Focus on these three areas, and your Web site will shoot to the top!