Google frequently tweaks its algorithm to target sites with low-quality content, particularly those that scrape content.

Google calls these updates “Panda.” The first one came out in February 2011 and the latest kicked into gear on April 19, 2012. Google says, “We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the over 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.”

The main question our customers ask when looking to promote their websites with Search Engine Optimization is “how can we calculate the Return On investment of our SEO Campaign?”. There are many tools to measure that variable, but it’s not as easy as it might seen.
Why is that? – ROI implies a growth on business transactions to make more income. Improved Search Engine Optimization results doesn’t correlate immediately to bigger income. If your website ranks on position #1, with your “mainkeywords” and brings a high volume of of new visitors to your website but no conversions, no new income will be generated. That doesn’t mean the campaign didn’t work or that you’re not obtaining your money’s worth, this actually means the other elements of your web site and/or your sales system is not seixing that traffic.
From our point of view, Search Engine optimization must be seen as a very important piece of an overall Marketing strategy, and in that context everything is being done to bring more visitors, make conversions, and obtain more clients.

Considering the above, there are methods to track the way your SEO campaign is paying off.

SERPs – Where is your website ranked with the main keywords? What has been the improvement on those positions? Consider that a huge proportion of clicks is lost after the first Google Page and any ranking improvement towards the top 10 position is highly valuable.
Traffic – The Main Goal of any Search Engine Optimization campaign is to bring more visitors and continuously increase their volume. Monthly analytics of the traffic will tell us what keywords is performing better, which one should be changed or even discarded. Monitoring visitor volume, behavior and source is a verry important component of the off-page optimization activities.

Links from other websites – The number of reputable inbound links is one the the best indicators of the success of your SEO campaign. Google considers highly ranked links as “votes” for the content on your website and this affects the position your site will finally have on search results.
PR or PageRank: part of Google’s ranking system that gives a number or PageRank to every site on the internet. The main reason of this rank is to differentiate the important sites from the least important. It’s not a heavy component of Google’s algorithm anymore but it still affects Search Results. When SEO is properly done the PageRank for any site is improved helping it become more important and credible next time it will be indexed by search Engines.

Contact us for more information about SEO in Miami, or to request a Free SEO Evaluation of your website.

Google and its user experience is constantly evolving. For a company that controls over 60% of the search market, it’s normal to hear the question, “How many visitors can we expect, if we rank in the position [x]?”

The latest study on the benefits of ranking high on Google.

There have been many changes to the Google user experience since previous studies/surveys were published years ago. There’s a new algorithm, a new user interface, increased mobile search, and social signals. On top of that, the blended SERP is riddled with videos, news, places, images, and even shopping results.

These calculations revealed an 18.2% Clich Through Rate  (people that actually click on the search results and enter the website they’ve found) for a No. 1 rank and 10.05% for No. 2. CTR for each position below the fold (everything after position #5) is below 4%. An interesting implication of this CTR curve is that for any given SERP (Search Engine Results Page), the percentage of users who click on an organic result in the top 10 is 52.32%. This makes sense and seems to be typical user behavior, as many Google users will window shop the SERP results and search again before clicking on a domain.

THIS MEANS THAT IF YOU ARE ON THE POSITION #1 YOU WILL GET 18.2 %  OF ALL THE VISITORS THAT ARE SEARCHING FOR THAT KEYWORD.

How does this applies to your business? Think of it as If there were 1000 possible clients per day walking by your door, being number one will make 192 of those possible clients enter.

Source: The Slingshot SEO Google CTR Study Whitepaper: Mission ImposSERPble

Blogging frequently  is a great way to keep having fresh content on your website but more importantly, blogs can be a search engine traffic magnet! Your long-tail keyword-rich blog has the potential to rank highly for many  long-tail keyword phrases that are relevant to your industry.

Many marketers are inclined to target head terms, which are high volume keywords consisting of a few words (1 or 2). Example ‘attorney’ or ‘tax attorney.’ But head terms are too competitive and there’s small chance they’ll improve your position on search engines. The best strategy is to use long-tail keywords. Example, ‘tax attorney specializing in small business.’ Yes, there are far fewer searches on longer keywords BUT, a recent study demonstrated that using these long keywords can help a website move up in the search rankings more rapidly than head (short) terms. And, long-tail terms converted (visitors clicked on them) two and a half times more than head terms. Long-tail keywords might bring smaller traffic  to your site but chances are, it will be the most profitable kind of traffic!

Need even more proof that targeting long keywords can be good for your search results? Last December, Google announced that it would be doing more comprehensive indexing, making long-tail documents available in its search results. That means that your blog that contains long keywords is now more likely to rank for relevant queries!

There’s a lot of  people that throw a blog post up every day without worrying too much about keywords or quality. IBIS Studio advice: concentrate on using long-tail keywords in your blog and make sure the content you write is useful to your readers.