Natural-Organic Search Result Quiz
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Here’s a quick SEO quiz:
The best way to get into Google is through excessive meta-tagging.
a. True
b. False
Factors that search engines take into consideration include all but the following:
a. Build a strong linking infrastructure
b. Continually add new content to keep the site fresh
c. Upgrade the site so that it’s all in flash graphics
d. Make sure URLs for the site include a relevant keyword
What kind of search results do I want my company to rank highly in?
a. natural
b. organic
Okay, so the answers to this quick SEO quiz are b, c, and the last one was a trick question. What is the difference between natural and organic search? Nothing. Both these terms refer to the main search results, separated from the sponsored links. Using different terms can be a bit confusing, but no matter what you call the main results that a search engine displays, this is where you want your website to be.
Try it. Pick some of what you think are your most important keywords. Where are you in the search? Where you want to be? Okay, now what about some less obvious keywords. Try some longer keyword phrases. Where are you now? This is actually where most of your qualified traffic is going to be coming from. These are the natural or organic search results that make up what is being referred to as the long tail. And no paid ad-word campaign is going to give you the same kind of traffic as ranking highly on these kinds of searches.Labels: Google, seo
posted by Jessica Ek
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Fotolia Partners with Slide
Friday, March 17, 2006
As a PR firm, we have a lot of releases going out on a regular basis and we want to keep you updated on some of the cool things we're working on. So in the future, you'll be seeing some of our client releases posted on the blog to share our latest news. To start this off, I want to include a new release from Fotolia, the online marketplace for stock images.
FOTOLIA and SLIDE Partner to Provide Customized Crawl for Stock Images NEW YORK, NY – March 15, 2006 – In an exciting partnership, Fotolia is teaming up with Slide Inc., making the search for the perfect image or inspiration easier than ever before. Through this agreement, Fotolia ( http://www.fotolia.com/), the global online social marketplace for stock images, is making their entire collection of images viewable on Slide. In turn, Slide ( http://www.slide.com/), a free downloadable desktop program, will allow viewers to watch scrolling slide shows of Fotolia images on their screens. When a desired image passes, a user can click on it to go directly to the Fotolia website and purchase the image for as low as $1. As the first stock image company to partner with Slide, Fotolia is now giving designers and buyers the opportunity to immediately see and review the latest stock images for sale that match specific tags or topics. Designers and buyers can also use Slide to stay current on new photos that have been uploaded by individual Fotolia photographers whose work they find particularly interesting. Fotolia buyers can use Slide to quickly scan and find pictures that pertain to current projects. Photo sellers benefit as well with the ability to display their images in Slide show form on their own professional or personal websites. Clicking on any Slide show will link to Fotolia and give the viewer options for purchasing the desired picture, increasing sales.
Slide is able to offer this unique stock image search option by utilizing the Fotolia API to plug into Fotolia’s photo database, index requested photos, group them into intuitive channels, and play them back via a unique always-on ticker interface. In this way, Slide is expanding the Fotolia community by creating an open invitation that is housed on a user’s personal desktop or webpage. This allows Slide users to easily view and purchase the images that are offered in the Fotolia image library.
”Our partnership with Slide gives designers and buyers another tool to facilitate their search for stock photography. By including Fotolia as part of a personalized “slide”, it allows people to look out for the images they need with out taking hours out of their day to search,” commented Oleg Tscheltzoff, Co-Founder and President of Fotolia.
Max Levchin, Founder and CEO of Slide, said “Slide is very happy to give Fotolia’s photo buyers the ability to constantly stay updated on the very latest stock photographs that match their creative interests. We’re also thrilled that Fotolia selected Slide to syndicate photo content for their user community and we believe that Fotolia’s photographers will be delighted with how Slide brings their photo feeds to life.”
Launched in early November 2005, Fotolia’s digital image marketplace has acquired over 450,000 images in its database and more than 49,000 international members.
About Slide
Slide offers a new visual web browser that automatically keeps viewers up-to-date with the latest content that matches their favorite interests. Slide was founded in 2004 by Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal, now an eBay company. Slide is privately held and is located in downtown San Francisco. Slide is currently available in public beta for Windows XP and Mac OSX computers.
About Fotolia Fotolia is an inclusive, global community in which photographers and designers come together to form a marketplace free from traditional royalties and rights management. The web site allows photographers and designers of all levels to share and monetize their passion or profession while allowing graphic artists, web designers, arts directors, marketing professionals, and consumers to obtain high quality, legal digital stock images for as low as $1. Pricing is based on Fotolia’s ranking system, which provides photographers and designers the freedom to set their own prices as well as increase revenue potential based on purchases. For more information about the company and to access the marketplace, visit http://www.fotolia.com/. Labels: blog, Microsoft, Paypal, pr
posted by Jessica Ek
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Click Fraud Settlement
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Google recently agreed to a $90 million settlement concerning click through fraud. Such a large settlement seems to indicate that Google does recognize this as a problem. Will settlements from Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN adCenter, and Ask Sponsored Listings follow? It would make sense. If you’re paying per click, competitors have the opportunity to add to the rate of your click-throughs without adding any sales. It's hard for any Google, let alone end users to track while it can skew your data and ending up costing you an unknown amount for bogus clicks.
This is a flaw of pay per click ads. And this on top of the difficulties of trying to run a real-time, comprehensive paid search campaign can make increasing search traffic a difficult and expensive proposition. Is the traffic from paid search even worth it? Search engine algorithms consistently go through changes and refinement, yet one thing doesn’t change. Natural search has advantages over paid search results. It gets your site into the most credible area of search results, on the main page of search, not buried among random advertising from eBay or NexTag, and also comes without the per click price tag.
Paid search has become big business. Yet it is more vulnerable than regular search results because you can have issues such as click fraud and the results disappear as soon as you stop paying for them. The safest bet in search is still bolstering organic search results, naturally avoiding any click-through fraud. And by settling this lawsuit and admitting this flaw in their system, Google seems to agree.Labels: Google, MSN, SEM, Yahoo
posted by Jessica Ek
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