How Can You Verify and Monitor Listing and Ranking?
2.1 Spider spotting
The effectiveness of your efforts in submitting your pages for listing on search engines can be monitored and evaluated by two methods: spider spotting and URL check.
Spiders from search engines that visit your site and crawl pages leave some unique trace marks in your access log. This can tell you whether a spider has visited or not, what pages they have visited and also the frequency or duration of their visit.
The best way to identify spider visits is by finding out which visitors asked for the file robots.txt from your site. Only spiders make such a request, as this file is an indication to them to avoid covering the page in question. So the first thing a crawler would do is to check for this file. If you see the access log and analyze it using some convenient software, you would be able to spot all the visits that were initiated with this request. Then one can spot the host name and relate that to major search engines. Host names are related to the search engine company’s name (it is the name of the site that hosts the spider). Another name that is used to identify such visits is the agent or browser names used by respective search engines. Get a list of host names and agent names from available resources (these names tend to change often) and also develop your own intuitive list by searching your access logs for all occurrences of known engine, host or agent names. Concentrate only on the top engines; though you may find several other smaller and less known search engines visiting your site.
Pay attention to not only the total number of visits but to the activity pattern for each of the recent visits to actually judge how many pages they covered. This is a very good way of ensuring if submissions have worked or if other inducements such as links from other sites have worked or not. This also helps you to distinctly evaluate the effectiveness of submission, indexing and page ranking characteristics of your site.
Some examples of hostnames and agent names are as below:
• AltaVista: hostname may have altavista.com within its name; agent is often called Scooter
• Excite host name may have atex or excite.com and agent name is Architextspider.
• Inktomi agent and host names have inktomi.com and Slurp is often used as the agent name.
• Lycos uses lycos.com within its host name and Lycos Spider is often part of the agent name.
2.2 URL Search
One can use specific search strings in most search engines to find if your URL is included in their index and also to see how many pages are thus indexed. These search strings have been identified and compiled by some useful resources on SEO.
For searching the pages from your URL in Google for example, insert the following
search string in Google search:
allinurl:yourcompanyname.com/webmasters/meta.html (this depends on the index pages of your site). In the Yahoo directory use the command u:yourcompanyname.com to find the listings for this URL. There are similar, but specific search strings applicable to each search engine.
Again checking the search engine for your URL is a good way to check what that search engine has indexed. Thus through spider spotting and URL checking you have evaluated and confirmed the effectiveness of your actions on submission and indexing activities.
Measuring Performance – Web Logs Analysis
The final step in your search engine optimization campaign is web log file analysis. The value of raw web logs are often not understood, but the truth is that your web log files are one of the most valuable resources you have as an Internet marketer.
Here are just a few examples of what your server logs can tell you:
• Measure the effectiveness of banner ads and PPC search engines.
• What search engine spiders have found your site?
• What keywords are people using to find your site?
• What search engines brings you most traffic?
• How many have book-marked your site?
• How well do people like your site?
• How many people visit your site?
• What pages are most popular?
• Why do people leave your site?
• Who is linking to your site?
Web log files tell you if search engine optimization and other marketing campaigns are working. They will show you exactly in what areas you have success and where you need to put in more work. So, if you run a site but haven't seen your servers web log files, get a hold of them right away. They will teach you things you'd never expect about how to make your site better, not just for you, but also for the people who matter - your customers.
Understanding your customers
Logs are the best tool available for understanding your customers. Know how your customers find your Web site and why they are looking for it. This info will give you an idea about the mindset of your arriving visitors.
Log files ca tell you not only what sites your visitors originate from (whether your visitor arrives via a Search Engine or from a "regular" site), but also what keywords they enter (in the Search Engines) to find you. The keywords give you an idea of your prospects’ level of interest, as well as the kinds of benefits they seek.
Are you successfully drawing visitors through your site? A quick look at your log files will tell you. Of the people arriving to your site, how many are pulled through your page joint to the next page (or stage)? Once you know how visitors act on your site, you will understand how to change your Web site in order to improve your Conversion Rate (CR).
ROI in Search Engine Optimization
We have looked at various strategies and options related to search engine optimization. The key determinant that you have to use to formulate your own strategies would be to ascertain the ROI from your plan. There seem to be a surfeit of techniques, suggestions and tips for SEO. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? Moreover, the importance of each option is closely linked to your own objective, and consequently your budget in terms of management time and expenditure. How do you measure ROI?
Americans conduct an estimated 790 million searches per week, according to research from ComScore Media Metrix. The Yankee Group reports that only 20 percent of U.S. companies tracking their search referrals are measuring performance beyond the initial click-through to the web site. This is very low. The key to a successful search engine marketing strategy is constant testing, revising and optimizing based on metrics. In order to maximize your return on investment, you must measure the performance beyond click- through—by measuring the complete interaction of your visitors with your site from acquisition to conversion to retention.
Search engine marketing is similar to advertising and other marketing campaigns. The marketing people would be interested in knowing the results of any campaign and most often the result is desired in terms of increase in company revenues. Name recognition, brand image creation and other outcomes are important; however the bottom line is sales. ROI should be able to determine your website’s conversion rate in terms of the ability to persuade your visitors to take the action that you desire them to take. At the same time, the success in terms of increase in sales depends on several other factors such as the competitiveness and value in your product or service offerings and the quality of your website to induce the visitor to take action. The search engine marketing effort is to bring the right targeted visitor, and bring the visitor to the right section at the right time. Converting such a targeted visitor to a customer is not within the ambit of SEO.
How does search engine optimization compare with other options for online advertising and promotion? Jupiter Research predicts that by 2006 the spending on E mail marketing shall be $ 9.4 billion, whereas the spending on online advertisements shall be $ 15.6 billion, and that on digital marketing initiatives such as campaigns, promotions, sweepstakes, coupons etc. shall be around $ 19.3 billion. Forrester predicts that total online advertising spend should be $ 42 billion by 2005 a significant 9.5% of total ad spending.
Costs in search engine marketing include the cost of optimization services as well as the paid inclusion and pay per click programs. Typically the cost of optimization for a small to mid-sized site through a firm may run from a few thousand dollars to over $ 50000 for a large site. If you do it in-house consider around four person months’ work plus around two person months of maintenance time over the ensuing six months.
How do you compare costs per click or costs per thousand impressions for search engine optimization vis-à-vis other forms of advertising? PwC report that the effective cost per thousand impressions or views (CPM) for an online ad is around $ 3.50 for a general site (though it could be higher at $ 10 to $ 100 for other specialized sites) compared to $ 19 for newspaper ads and $ 16 for Prime-time TV. The CPM for search engines is certainly higher, but then it leads to targeted impressions. Thus it is important to look at targeting and conversion rates, not just CPM. Clickthrough rates for ad banners, in general, can be as low as 0.4 to 0.5%. Conversion rates would show you what percentage of visitors actually resulted in business. As discussed below, this may be easier done in e-commerce sites.
Cost per click for important keywords at Overture could be as high as $ 0.50 to $ 5 or $ 10. The average bid reported according to one source is $0.73 per click (for Overture). Thus this is already lower than the cost per visitor for online ad banners. Overture can only cater to a small percentage of search traffic, while Google, Yahoo and others comprise the larger portion; thus it can be said with certainty that SEO is the most cost effective ROI generator.
Balancing Paid Search Engines and programs with Free Search Engines for maximum ROI
It is crucial that you optimize your performance with both Paid programs as well as free listings. Search engine marketing is like playing 3-D chess—it is complex and multi- dimensional. To win, the marketer must not only select the right keywords and align them
with content that matches the user’s query target, but also select the right search vehicle for each keyword.
The marketer must weigh the value of long-term results gained from organic search listings against the short-term returns of paid advertising. In most cases, the right answer is to have a balance of both.
It is a misconception that free listings do not generate traffic. In fact, the top 2 free listings receive more than 50% of the clicks. This is too high a number to ignore. You would be missing out on important traffic if you completely ignore free search engines. On the other hand, paid listing bring you focused traffic.
This again supports the fact that a balance of both kinds of listings is extremely vital for successful Search Engine Marketing.
ROI Tracking Tools
There are several tracking tools that measure the traffic coming to your website and that can identify what search engines and what keywords have brought that traffic. Moreover tracking tools can also tell you what the visitor has done online, including page visits, time spent, actions taken (relevant for e-commerce sites or query/contact forms) and so on. You will have to find your survey methodologies to relate the traffic history to the revenue results. Some of these are mentioned below:
DoubleClick's DART http://www.doubleclick.com/us/advertisers/adserving/dart5/
DoubleClick's DART paid placement and advertising ROI tracking tool generates web- based reports on cost per click, number of clicks, overall media cost, conversion rates, gross sales, return on investment (ROI), and net profit. Such tools are suited to online merchant sites.
WebTrends from NetIQ http://www.netiq.com
Offers server-based software to determine how many visitors are coming to the Web site, where they're coming from, what they're doing on the Web site, and which search engines are sending the most traffic, along with which phrases drive the most traffic from each search engine.
HitBox from WebSideStory http://www.websidestory.com/
It uses a different data collection method, by enabling site owners to add code to their site. It tracks the same type of information that the WebTrends product does.
Urchin http://www.urchin.com/
This is another useful measuring and tracking tool.
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