Back to the basics

SEO is about maximising your search engine positioning. You can Do It Yourself (DIY) or engage a search engine consultant to do the work for you. To save time, another option is to do it yourself with a little assistance from a consultant.

One of the truisms on the Web is that over half of all webpages are not indexed. There are no links to the pages, or the website. If you have a online business, the website is useless if it does not attract visitors.
The key feature and importance of SEO is to make it easy for search engines to understand your site, page by page. That's SEO in a nutshell.
You SEO the site, page by page, to support the next step: SEM.
SEM is the process of making the website and pages visible to search engines and potential customers.
SEO and SEM are part of website optimization, a part of the overall development of a website for business or community information purposes.

Some companies don't need SEM
Some people think so, anyway.
Companies with very well known brand names don't need to market their site to get visitors. Everyone in Australia will type in 'telstra.com' to find the Telstra website. For almost all of the rest of us, we get to squabble with the search engines to be seen.
Some companies will short the queue, expensively, by buying a place on a list called 'Sponsored Links' using PPC advertising. PPC advertising is popular. These links will be in direct competition with the largest companies in their industries for spots on those lists.
And when the PPC campaign stops, the link -and the visitors- stop.
You see, the largest companies know they do need SEM.

There are three important steps for search engine success.
First, the search engine must know of your site.
Second, because most people using the search engines only look at the first or second SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Using the default settings for Google, that means the first 20 listings. Ever notice how many results you get from a search? It's often in the millions.
Third, if you get a page in the top 20 listing, the person has to see what they're looking for.
Actually, you can break down the numbers a little more.

• 40% of searchers will not look past the top 4 listings; another 20% will look to the rest of the first page. That means over half - 60% - won't even look to the second page;
• another 20% or so will look at the second page. It's about the same breakdown there too. Of this 20% of searchers, only 1 in 5 will look past the middle of the page, or 6 listings, on the second page.
• By the end of that second page, only about 1 searcher in 10 is going to see you.
  

If the searcher doesn't see what they're looking for, they'll launch another search.

What if they do find it?
Finding accurate statistics on the behavior of Australians is tough (or expensive.) However, we can get some idea from US statistics (from Coremetrics March 2007)

Samples of Coremetrics’ U.S. benchmark data for March include:

22.41% of visitors left retail sites after viewing one page, while 51.65% got as far as a product page.

Average page views per session was 13.76 and product page views per session 3.78.

The average order included 6.12 items totaling $140.10. The shopping cart abandonment rate was 68.42%.

14.84% of consumers used site search during their visits, resulting in a 5.60% conversion rate and an average order of $151.92.

47.89% of traffic and 67.35% of sales came from visitors who typed in the retailer’s URL or clicked on a bookmark. The typical conversion rate on such “direct load” visits was 3.29%.

Natural search results accounted for 13.35% of visits and 7.83% of sales, producing a conversion rate of 1.66%. Referrals from sites such as affiliate networks and comparison shopping engines accounted for 5.71% of traffic and 1.97% of sales, producing a conversion rate of 1.36%.

What is this stuff telling us?

1. If a visitor (not a searcher any more, hopefully) finds a retail site, one in five will leave. More than half will look at at least one product page.
2. On average, the visitor will look at about 4 times as many product and company information pages than product pages.
3. Once the visitor has figured out what they want, they'll buy 6 items. However, almost 70% of visitors will abandon the shopping cart before completing the purchase.
4. Visitors that are looking for something in particular (using the site search) will buy more often than those just browsing the website, and spend more money.
5. Half of those who came to the site, and 2/3rds (67%) of sales, came from people who typed in the site name.
6. Over twice as many visitors came from natural search results (not PPC) as from affiliate or comparison shopping sites. Nearly 6 times as many visitors who found the site from natural search results bought something compared to affiliate links or comparison shopping sites.

Yeah, I know. I love to play with the numbers. The numbers are the reality of this stuff. They make it manageable.
Take another look.
What those numbers means is people do want to know about the company and the products. They'll go to great lengths to find out, even running the shopping cart and abandoning it to see everything they can.
Those numbers seem to tell us that twice as many people will buy if they find a site in the natural search results as if they type in the name of the site. But that's not the whole story. Three times as many sales and visits came from visitors who typed in the name of the site. That means they've been there before. They know the name of the site.
These are either repeat customers or people who've checked out the company and products.
The time worn adage on the Web is a visitor converts to a customer after 3-5 visits to a website. Guess what? The adage holds pretty well based on those numbers.

The numbers also tell us that about half the visitors won't look past the first page. That starts the old sales numbers game running. To get sales, you have to get visitors.
That note about using site search reminds us to make it easy for the customer to do their job: to buy from you.
And we are back to web design, SEO, and SEM again.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey. Sphere: Related Content