Google beat competitors like Microsoft and AOL to market with the release of its Google Desktop Search tool, which seamlessly integrates traditional Google web search with the ability to search the user’s PC hard drive to find needed files and information. Google Desktop Search enables users to retrieve email from Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. It also searchs files in Excel, Powerpoint, Word and text files, and looks for information in chat logs from AOL and AOL Instant Messenger. It even provides quick search of cached web pages, offering a historical archive of useful information. With its Desktop release, Google is stepping squarely into Microsoft’s turf by attempting to make Google the “central portal” for any type of web or PC search.

So, how does it work? The process is simple. Google Desktop is installed on your PC, and at initial set up, it scans your hard drive and indexes text folders and files, emails and chats and cached web pages. And to minimize disruption, the software waits until your PC is idle for 30 seconds or longer to do the scans. After that, new documents are scanned in real time. So, when you need to find information about your vacation to “Hawaii”, you are presented with a choice of web and/or desktop results, all in the familiar Google interface. You might find a Hawaiian travel web page, a text itinerary to Hawaii, an MP3 file of Hawaiian music or an email chat with your significant other about your upcoming trip. Results can be ranked by date or “rank” as determined by Google’s algorithms.

As you can imagine, Google’s motivation is to “own” the customer’s search experience, regardless of the sources searched. This presents the opportunity for Google to become the default home page for more and more computers worldwide. While Google will not collect personally identifiable information, there will still be privacy concerns, as the user’s entire web browsing activity, online chats, emails, etc., can be accessed at the click of a mouse. Those who never lock their desktops or who share PC’s will certainly want to pay attention to which items to hide or turn off in their preferences to avoid any uncomfortable situations.

The golden nugget for Google over time is that they can collect advertising revenues for both public web search and private PC search. For now, Google plans only to serve up ads next to the search results, as is currently done on Google.com, and to benefit from increased traffic. In the future, though, you can imagine being served up ads each time you search for your Outlook contacts or for your personal files on your hard drive. Somehow, having Google so much “closer to home” may feel a little “too close for comfort”.

There has been a dramatic but subtle change over the past few years with regards to promoting websites via search engines. Rather than being two interchangeable terms, Search Engine Optimization is actually an element of Search Engine Marketing, with the other element being “Paid Search Media.” It is those site owners and managers that truly understand this, and utilize it on their site along with all of the elements involved in each, that are achieving success on the search engines at a reasonable cost.

Let’s define the terms before continuing.

• Search Engine Marketing: The act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this is improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination thereof, along with other search engine related activities. (Source: SEMPO.org) 
• Search Engine Optimization: The act of altering a web site so that is does well in the organic, crawler- based listings of search engines. Also called “SEO.” (Source: SEMPO.org) 

   

• Paid Search Media: Advertising programs where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. Also called “Paid Placement,” “Pay Per Click” and “Cost per Click.” (Source: SEMPO.org)

It is important to understand that there is no less value in performing Search Engine Optimization because of the rise in popularity of Paid Search Media and Pay Per Click (PPC) programs offered by companies such as Overture and Google (Adwords.) If anything, it has increased the importance of optimizing your web site, namely due to the fluctuating costs of PPC programs.

The following tips will enable you to take full advantage of Search Engine Marketing. They will also assist you in achieving your online goals as rapidly as possible, and at a very reasonable cost.

1. Understand your online business

There are a lot of business owners that believe their offline business is the same as their online business; that the two mimic each other. Usually, this is only partially correct. This is especially true when it comes to competitor analysis. Many times the companies you compete with offline are markedly different from the ones you compete with online and visa versa.

To begin understanding your online business, simply write a description of your company. Have your colleagues, family and friends do the same. If you own a brick and mortar business, ask your customers to describe your business for you. Most will be happy to provide feedback. You may find that many of the descriptions are similar, yet different.

Next, go online. Search for your competitors’ sites and pay careful attention to how they are promoting and positioning themselves in the marketplace. Use the information you’ve already gathered about YOUR company and refine it to ensure you are properly differentiating yourself. Take the time to integrate your own identity, as you now understand it, and based upon feedback from others.

2. Understanding your online customer

Frequently, your online customer’s profile WILL be similar to your offline customer. You should use this information when performing optimization to your website and when buying pay-per-click keywords.

It is important to understand that much like traditional, brick and mortar customers, there are different types of online customers. These customers will search very differently and can sometimes be segmented by gender, race, and income level. It has been proven that men search differently than women and further, older men and women search differently than younger men and women do.

Two excellent studies have been produced recently that discuss the different types of searchers. Those studies are:

• Enquiro’s Inside the Mind of the Searcher (free download registration required) is a first of its kind study covering the types of searchers using search engines, what search results caught their attention and what enticed them to click on results. 
• iProspect’s Search Engine User’s Attitudes (free download) is an in depth study that reveals the relationship between profession, age, education, race and sex and how that influence a persons’ searches.

These studies will provide you with valuable insight to help you understand your customer base better. Once you have a thorough understanding of how your customers search, you will be better positioned to apply that knowledge to choosing the right keywords.

3. Determining a successful conversion

If you were to ask most web site owners what they want from their web site they’d say “to make money”. That generally rings true even if they don’t sell anything on or through the web site. Understanding what the true purpose of your web site is the first step to determining what to deem a successful conversion. After all, conversions will determine the success or failure of your website as a business tool.

If your web site is just brochure-ware, or used primarily as a promotion tool, a successful conversion may simply be traffic. Conversion may be measured as getting a user to browse through your web site, then filling out a contact form, placing a phone call or downloading a PDF.

If you sell something through your web site then a successful conversion will more than likely be defined as a completed transaction, or “selling something.” Remember, your web site may even have multiple types of conversions.

It is impossible to determine the true success or failure of your search engine marketing efforts without first knowing what success is, as defined by setting standards of conversion for your site. Once you know what a success is, you can begin to track that success. Tracking is covered more thoroughly in Tip 5.

4. Researching, Choosing and Implementing Keywords

Researching, choosing, and implementing keywords can be one of the most daunting aspects of Search Engine Marketing. It is also one of the most important.

Researching Keywords

Now that you have a better understanding of your customer, your online business, and what constitutes a successful conversion, you can begin to develop the best keywords to meet your goals.

Fortunately, there are many well written tutorials and tools to help you succeed in researching, and choosing the right keywords. The August edition of Market Position has an excellent article on Choosing the Best Keywords.

This article provides you with the following keyword techniques:

1. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience.
2. Target Niches.
3. Brainstorm for keywords in your category.
4. Choose only relevant keywords.
5. Understand that keywords can have multiple meanings

WordTracker is an excellent tool to conduct keyword research. It provides you with the ability to determine exactly what words are being used in search engines to find the products and services that you may offer. If you haven’t tried WordTracker yet simply download the free trial of WebPosition Gold 3 and click on the WordTracker icon.

Choosing Keywords

Once you’ve compiled a thorough list of keywords using WordTracker you must decide the ways in which you are going to use those keywords.

Unfortunately most web sites do not have enough content, or aren’t large enough to support all of the good, quality keywords you have found using these tools. Therefore, you should narrow your list. How?

You need to consider the following for each keyword on your list:

1. Does this keyword support my online goals?
2. Do I have the content to support this keyword? If yes, then is my page optimized for it?
3. Do I have to create content to support this keyword? If yes, then is it worth the creation effort or should I buy it through PPC?
4. Is it a seasonal word? If yes, then should I buy it through PPC or Optimize for it?

Pay Per Click keywords should be words that are seasonal, marginally related to your web site, or cannot be ranked for in a reasonable amount of time. PPC words will cost you more over a long period of time, so great caution needs to be exercised when participating in PPC programs. For an excellent PPC tutorial, see the WebPosition Gold 3 Page Critic.

Once you have created your final keyword list and have determined how those words are to be used through either PPC or SEO, then you can begin implementation.

If you have to build optimized web pages to take advantage of some of your selected keywords simply download the free trial of WebPosition and click on the Page Builder icon. With WebPosition, you can build and upload your optimized content all with one easy to use tool.

5. Tracking your rankings, website traffic and conversions

Now that you’ve completed the process of creating and launching your Search Engine Marketing program, you need to be able to determine if your efforts are succeeding. Of course, more online sales are an easy way to determine if your efforts are succeeding; however, there are many more metrics to analyze in order to get the most out of your efforts and money.

It is imperative that you be able to assess how your web site is ranking for the words you’ve targeted. You need to know, for sure, if those words are successful and are converting. You also need to know whether your SEO or PPC efforts are bringing you the most traffic and conversions.

Fortunately, WebPosition and WebTrends Analytics work together to provide you all the reports and answers. You can check your rankings across search engines and keywords, compare rankings to your actual traffic from those search engines and track conversions from your SEO and PPC efforts.