Link Building Service

Using link building services also enables you to spend more time on the thing that you’re best at; running your business. Using a reputable link building service means that you will be able to leave them to garner your site with quality links while you attempt to win more customers, make more sales, and service more contracts.

Outsourcing Link Building

Google link building services will usually have a greater understanding of the link building process. They operate faster, can create more links, and will provide you with access to a wider range of link types. There are many benefits to outsourcing link building and you can even see cost savings when compared to going it alone because you will be able to bring in more revenue while marketing professionals do what they are best at in the provision of targeted traffic for your web pages.

The IPO Roadshow

The Facebook IPO is set to be one of the largest ever recorded with the company receiving a valuation equivalent to more than $100bn according to these latest figures. Although there is some question over whether Facebook is managing to effectively monetize its massive user base there is no denying that they have massive potential to bring investors large profits and it is this message that Zuckerberg has been delivering to those that may be willing to pump money into the Silicon Valley company.

Facebook Popularity

There is no denying the reach and the popularity of Facebook. They have around 1bn registered users that hail from every country around the world, even more remarkable when you consider that the site was initially set up to cover just one university and its students. However, there is still some debate over how effectively they monetize those members.

Friday Float

The IPO is set for the end of this weekend with prices due to be set on Thursday and NASDAQ trading to begin in earnest on Friday of this week. The offering is being underwritten by a substantial list of high street banks including JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.

Media Reaction

The Facebook IPO has caused a major stir in the media and with potential investors. The initial price target that Facebook set started at just $28 and analysts are now saying that this was wildly underpriced. The new, stricter target, with a mid price of $36 potentially removes the scope for the share price to double in the first day but a 10% share price rise is still expected in many quarters.

Organic Links

The search engines believe that organic links are the best links. Webmasters and other publishers provide you with a link to your page or pages because of the great quality of content that appears on your domain. No money changes hands and no favours are exchanged; instead, the link is given as an indication of the quality of your site and this is why the search engines love to see what they believe to be natural links.

Avoid Black Hat Techniques

Effective link building services should concentrate on quality rather than quantity, more so than ever before. A single high quality link can service you much better than hundreds or even thousands of poor quality links. Blackhat link techniques may even see your website penalised in the search rankings rather than promoted in them.

The Big Three

ComScore regularly releases figures on search engine market share. It tracks how many searches were conducted during a particular month and how many were conducted on each of the major search engines, of which there are five. Typically, most people are concerned with the top 3 engines which are Google, Bing, and Yahoo as these three have traditionally been the main contenders although Google sits some way out in front both globally and in the USA.

Market Share Rises And Falls

Google’s market share rose 0.1% to 66.5% and Bing saw a similar rise up to 15.4% of market share. Yahoo, in third place, saw its share slip 0.2% down to 13.5% while distant fourth and fifth spots were taken by Ask and AOL respectively with 3% and 1.6% of all searched conducted in the month of April. Ask and AOL figures were unchanged when compared to March.

Core Search Figures

There were, apparently, 17.1 billion core searched conducted in the month of April which is considerably fewer than the 18.36 billion searches conducted the month before. Google enjoyed 11.4 billion of these searches and even Yahoo, who are considered the underdogs of the three big search engines now, managed 2.3 billion core searches. Microsoft’s search portals saw 2.6 billion searches conducted on their pages.

ComScore Results

ComScore has had to change the way in which it collates its results because Yahoo contextual search results had been giving the search engine greater figures than it apparently deserved. Contextual searches that do not show intent are now ignored by ComScore, who instead opt to show explicit core result figures instead in a bid to give more accurate and fairer results.

Linking Methods

There are many linking methods employed by SEO companies and you should do your research to ensure that you are using a company that offers reliable techniques. While you shouldn’t expect to learn precise details of how and where your links are developed you can expect to be able to learn a little about the methods that will be used to help promote and increase traffic to your site.

Ethical Link Building

Link building services can help propel your website to the top of search engine rankings. They can target your most important keywords, use ethical link building methods, and help you to develop large quantities of highly targeted visitors straight to the pages of your site. What’s more, you don’t have to pay a fortune to enjoy these benefits but you can enjoy the use of some of the latest, proven link strategies.

Google Webmaster Tools has proven to be a useful addition to the arsenal of tools and services that can be utilized by SEOs and webmasters around the world. The search giant has announced a number of updates and changes that they hope will give the site a cleaner and less cluttered look following the massive number of new introductions and updates that have been seen by the suite of tools.

Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is an online suite of tools that is aimed at website owners and marketers. It provides a wealth of information and can combine with the likes of Google Analytics in order to create an even more powerful and robust online business tool. A recent slew of changes and a large number of introductions since the last update, though, means that the site has begun to look more than a little cluttered.

New Navigation Options

Of the changes, the most notable is the introduction of a new navigation menu on the left hand side of the page. This, in particular, helps to clean up the page’s design and make the whole site easier to navigate. There are options for configuration, website health checks, traffic statistics, and optimization features and all of these are now separated into their own categories so that the user can easily access whatever information they need.

Under The Spotlight

Google Webmaster Tools has been in the spotlight recently as the search engine has been using it to inform webmasters if their websites appear to have been partaking in what Google considers to be unnatural linking. A message is received by the website owner stating that they should look at their link profile and to take action to avoid penalties being imposed on search results and other results.

Benefits And Features

However, in truth, the Webmaster Tools suite has many other beneficial functions and uses. It can be used for submitting sitemaps and then checking internal links are not broken. It can provide you with information on the keywords visitors use to arrive on your pages and it can display a more accurate view of what exactly the search spiders see when they access your website.

Outsource Linkbuilding

The biggest benefit of outsourcing to a link service is the time that it will save you. Techniques like article marketing can take up a lot of your time and if you factor in the time that will be required to study SEO and linking in a bid to stay ahead of the game it means that conducting your own SEO campaigns can prove very time consuming indeed.

SEO outsourcing company

Outsourcing link building also offers the benefit that the service you use should be experienced in the technique that you want them to employ. You should ensure that this is the case before you place an order, but doing so will mean that your SEO outsourcing company will provide you with experience, knowledge, and some of the most effective link building campaign techniques that you can benefit from.

YouTube Growth

YouTube has grown and advanced in recent years thanks to Google’s investment and work. The search giant and current owner invested $100m in a bid to attract 100 artists to the site in order to create their own channel. The list of celebrities they attracted included the likes of Madonna but this was seen as something akin to a record deal whereby Google invested in the hopes of recouping the money against future profits from the artists.

The Machinima Deal

The deal for Machinima is said to be worth around $30m and would see Google actually taking an equity stake in a producer of original content. However, when you look the kind of numbers that Machinima boasts, it still seems like a reasonable deal especially as Google would presumably be able to use the acquisition in a number of other ways too.

Machinima Success

Machinima is the fourth most popular video channel on YouTube. The channel has more than 4 million YouTube subscribers and it attracts more than 1.5bn unique page views every single month. It exclusively makes and releases videos about video games which means that it does attract a tech savvy crowd; the kind of crowd that are likely to buy into a number of Google’s alleged new projects that are set for release soon.

Google Benefits

One such project that may benefit from Machinima investment is the pay per view channel that Google is set to trial in Kansas. The technology giant will be looking for ways to fill the time for their channel and this could prove a popular addition for the younger audience.

Effective link building techniques

Effective link building techniques are those that produce natural looking and high quality links. Generally, services use PageRank as a measure of the quality of a link and while this snapshot is flawed in some respects it does indicate the authority that a domain has and the likely quality of a link from that page. It is, therefore, a useful indicator that can be used to help identify good quality links.

Return on Investment

Cost is obviously important. If your SEO campaign costs more than the resulting website visitors make you then you shouldn’t rely on search optimisation, or you should find ways in which to reduce costs and improve revenue. Consider your return on investment to calculate the efficiency of a service but remember that SEO results can last for some time.

SEO link building service.

Website content strategies and techniques have become virtually as important as the strategies employed by your SEO link building service. It is possible to target long tail keywords and niche keywords while working on creating high quality links for the more generic and more competitive keywords that appear on your website. It is feasible that you can build a decent amount of traffic to the pages of your site by adding new and fresh content. Social media signals and indicators also appear to have gained in their importance which would indicate that there are possibilities here for the avid marketer too.

Social Indicators

Search engines are relying on the use of social indicators more frequently as a means to determine the value of a website and how well it performs in their search results. Generating a buzz on sites like Facebook and Twitter, then, can help to promote a website in the search rankings as well as in social media channels.

Social Buzz Monitoring

Monitoring the amount of social media buzz a website has, hasn’t always proven that simple a process though, but the Yahoo Marketing Dashboard claims to provide users with data on exactly that. As far as online reputation management tracking goes, in fact, they have a number of decent features. You can monitor the buzz about your site on more than 8,000 sites and Yahoo also say the service enables we users to track their search results.

Search Engine Submissions

Unfortunately, not every aspect of the Yahoo Dashboard is as good as this. When you register, your website will apparently be submitted to over 100 search engines and directories. Submission to search engines is an SEO practice that has been left in the annuls of online marketing and while directory submissions are still beneficial, submission to 100 or so will not have that big an impact. However, on the whole, the Dashboard does look to be a beneficial product for small businesses and website owners.

Cost

The basic package is free and this does allow for the checking of certain pieces of reputation management data. For $20 per month, you can expand the amount of data that you receive and are able to view making it an even more beneficial service that could really help you improve your online marketing and reputation management efforts

Content Strategy

Your content strategy could, then, be as important as your linking strategy but you need to find a way to alert other webmasters to the presence of your content before you can expect to see links to your website. This means that white hat link building once again plays a significant part.

Webmaster Warnings

Webmasters have been receiving warnings from Google over what they deem to be suspect links. While some links may simply be ignored by Google, paid links that pass on PageRank have been highlighted by Google itself as leading to potential penalties for the pages of your site. Use link building services that offer natural link building techniques, as well as viable and genuinely useful techniques such as social media marketing and guest blogging.

In papers filed recently, they claim that the social network was infringing on 12 of their patents rather than the originally stated 10. They also denied Facebook’s claims that they were infringing on any of their patents. In a statement Yahoo also accused Facebook of some rather shocking behavior; claiming that FB had only recently purchased some of the patents so that they could sue Yahoo right back!

“Retaliation against Yahoo”

“Eight of these patents were purchased by Facebook in the past five months, and several of these patents were purchased (independent of any separate technology acquisition or merger) after Yahoo! filed its complaint in this action. On information and belief, many, if not all, of these patents were acquired by Facebook for purposes of retaliation against Yahoo! in this case,” the firm said in a statement accompanying their court filing.

Yahoo also claimed in the same statement to have an agreement with the social networking giant in which both would notify the other of potential infringements before resorted to court action and additionally that some of the patents which Facebook were asserting against them were not in the public eye; leading to claims that FB had gotten their information illicitly, “Unless Facebook has unlawfully acquired Yahoo! confidential business information, Facebook could not have developed a good-faith basis for many of the infringement allegations in its counterclaims,”

“Erratic Actions”

Facebook were quick to issue a statement on the points raised “We remain perplexed by Yahoo’s erratic actions,” the statement read. “We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”

Insiders have labeled the action on Yahoo’s part as a rather cynical attempt at attempting to raise funds and support for their restructuring and was a case of hitting Facebook during a period of IPO when they may not be willing to fight back. The news that Facebook has recently snapped up 750 patents from IBM and a further 650 from AOL would suggest that not only are they ready for a fight, but they’re also willing and able.

Experts are predicting that this service could be revolutionary and could be a lot more important than people consider. With that in mind, it’s important to consider what and why.

What is Google Drive?

Google Drive will resemble a Dropbox and will allow users to install their software onto the device which is running Windows, Mac OS X, Android and shortly (“in coming weeks”) iOS. The device is then given a special Google Drive folder and a mirrored version stored online.

For a user, the huge advantage to this is that if they upload a document or amend a saved document to Google Drive, the technology automatically replicates the new or amended documents to their other Google Drive locations. “You can take all your data, regardless of which device you’re on, and make it seamlessly available to you,” said Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Google’s Chrome and Apps projects. “We want you to think of this as the center of your Google apps experience

The Benefits

Although there are rivals who can perform similar tasks, they fall down and Google stays ahead because of the integration with Google Docs, Google +, Gmail and other services offered by the company.

In addition, a further (and major) consideration is that customers will have to pay to get access to any advanced versions of Google Drive, and this essentially means that they become customers as opposed to users – representing a huge shift for the company.

Any users who wonder how they might use this technology could consider the following analogy. You book cinema tickets on a home based computer and save them to Google Drive. You then pull up the tickets on your smartphone when you get to the ticket booth. As with most of Google’s new technology, there are many examples of real world use which could make a major difference to their customers.

AudioSwap

AudioSwap has been available for some time but one of the main criticisms, at least according to the video sharing site anyway, has been that there hasn’t been a great enough choice of audio files or songs to place in the background of videos. Presumably there were also some comments on the usability of the audio editing software because this too has been changed, and a number of new features added.

Audio Quality

The quality of audio tracks on YouTube video can leave a lot to be desired. Muffled sounds and sub-standard recordings are only a part of the problem as YouTube faces a battle to keep itself and its users on the right side of copyrighting and licensing laws. AudioSwap was meant as a means to improve the quality of the audio on site, but also as an additional tool to attract people to upload their own videos more often.

Choosing Tracks For Your Video

There are now more than 150,000 tracks to choose from and you can opt for genres like classical music and classic rock. One genre that seems very well catered for is cheesy tunes so if this is the kind of thing you want playing in the background of your new video then you’re certainly in luck. You can even choose track according to its duration to help you find the perfect song for your clip.

YouTube Audio Features

Once you’ve chosen track, you can edit the level of the audio before finally settling on your choice and saving it. Happily, the Audio Editing features have also been improved thanks to a simplified user interface.

The feature will be available in the UK, the UK, France and Germany and will allow users to immerse themselves into the actual venue as well as containing unique information about any business featured in one of the maps.

Although Bing have traditionally aimed at visitors to a city who might need tourist information on hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions, they believe that local residents will also be able to make use of the new features with local stores, libraries and malls all featuring.

Further Features

Additional features of the technology will include semi-transparent 3D building outlines for metropolitan areas, giving “a much better context of how the city looks like, where the key buildings and city landmarks are, and ultimately help you better orientate yourself”. Bing is constantly adding to this technology and advises their users to look out for the addition of their city or one they can’t wait to visit.

Zoom to Where you Want to Go!

What’s more, the technology will give users the ability to decide the level of detail they want to see. As a result of this release, the majority of labels on Bing Maps will provide a shortcut to a zoom into that place. Areas where users can zoom into and appreciate include states, cities, parks and entire neighborhoods as well as many more.

The Reception

Blogger, Barry Schwartz seemed impressed and noted that the technology had several benefits and among these he commented that transit symbols were improves, the explore venue maps option was now easier to find, and said “The most visible change is the first, the pushbuttons and popup menu changes. The blue pushpins are standard search results in the maps; the orange pushpins are results you saved to your maps.”

The Federal Communications Commission described their case as they filed the fine, claiming that Google had collected personal information without permission and then had deliberately not co-operated with their investigation.

Controversial Practices

The Street View project first came to prominence some time ago when the Electronic Privacy Center requested a review of Googles’ practices during the collection of data and photographs. At the time Marc Rotenberg, the Executive Director of the EPIC said “Google unlawfully intercepted and stored millions of wireless communications from Wi-Fi routers; we believe that is a violation of the federal wiretap act.”

It was alleged at the time that Google had collected their information for Street View from a variety of places including public places but also from unprotected Wi-Fi networks which gave them access to personal information, including customer Emails.

Unresolved Investigation

According to news sources, the case has remained unresolved because a key witness, the engineer in charge of the project cited the Fifth Amendment and invoked a right to silence.

In an order dated April 13, the FCC stated “Google refused to identify any employees or produce any emails. The company could not supply compliant declarations without identifying employees it preferred not to identify”. They went on to say “Misconduct of this nature threatens to compromise the commission’s ability to effectively investigate possible violations of the Communications Act and the commission’s rules.”

Google have maintained a position of innocence throughout the investigation, saying at the beginning of the process that the data collected was done so in error. They have now released a statement in which they say; “As the FCC notes in their report, we provided all the materials the regulators felt they needed to conclude their investigation and we were not found to have violated any laws.” The statement continues “We disagree with the FCC’s characterisation of our co-operation in their investigation and will be filing a response.”

Though Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley has yet to put his signature to the bill, should he do so, it would lead his state to become the first throughout the USA to turn this manner of restriction into law. The move could, however, lead to something of a ripple effect throughout the country, as other states, including Illinois and California, are currently mulling over enacting similar legislation.

Plenty of plaudits…

The passing of the bill has been welcomed by many. Bradley Shear, a Bethesda social media attorney who assisted state legislators on writing up the bill, insisted that “we need to protect our digital homes”, adding that enacting the law will be crucial as, legally, “the Internet knows no bounds”.

Meanwhile, Shawn Tarrant, one of the bill’s major sponsors in the House and a Democrat from Baltimore City, branded the practice of employers requesting social media passwords from employees as “ridiculous”. Melissa Goemann, the legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, cited the bill’s passing as “a really positive development”.

… but also some criticisms

However, the passing of the bill has also clearly prompted concern from two US Democrat Senators, New York’s Chuck Schumer and Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, who have both asked the Department of Justice and the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to look further into the issue.

Furthermore, the scathing Maryland Chamber of Commerce had argued prior to the bill’s passing that the legislation failed to “address appropriate parameters and criteria to determine when an employer may access the account of an employee”, adding that “circumstances involving potential severe misconduct or claims of discrimination or harassment may require such access”. The bill was, however, altered to lend employers greater control over proprietary information that employees share online.

Bing Video

Bing Video is effectively a video search engine offering users the chance to search for clips and video content on any particular topic or keyword in much the same way they would search for text based content. Search for a term and you would previously have been provided with a list of search results and the ability to view a size restricted version of the content. The changes unveiled by Bing do mean big alterations in the way that we can deal with, sort, and view content.

Grid Layout Means More Results

The first change that users will notice is the grid layout that means you will see dozens of results on a single page rather than a more severely restricted number. Also, when you search for a term you will be given results chosen for their accuracy to the given search term. However, now you will be able to see a related searches tab and clicking this will give semantically related results. You can search topically as well as for particular terms and keywords.

Film Reel Related Content

There is also a film reel type section added at the top of the video page. When you are viewing a particular clip, this film reel will present you with related content. Bing believes this will enhance the way that users can explore and discover new content and, presumably, keep users on their own video search site rather than send them to another.

Video Viewer Size

The final change is in the video format itself. When you click to watch some videos you will be able to watch them directly on the Bing website, as always, but you will be given a considerably larger viewing screen to enjoy your chosen clips.

Facebook Requests

Facebook has long been used as a tool by potential employers to vet candidates. Photos and status updates have been snooped on and used by recruiters as a means of determining the efficacy of a candidate for a role according to their personal life. More worryingly, though, has been the number of reports that companies are now asking for login details to snoop more heavily on a user’s details.

Why Recruiters Demand Facebook Access

Recruiters have said that this access to Facebook accounts can provide invaluable and highly useful information. Access would allow them not only to view friend lists and status updates, as well as photos, but to see private messages, and the level of interaction and usage of the network. Many have complained that such information is private and companies should not have the right to access it.

Facebook’s View

Facebook joined the argument, siding with individual users and stating that according to their terms and conditions, members are not allowed to share their passwords with others and that recruiters that demand such information are breaking their terms and conditions and forcing others to do the same. The amendment, which was put forward by Democratic Congressman Ed Perlmutter that would have provided the Federal Communications Commission with the power to stop such demands being made by prospective employers.

The Law

It is believed that one possible reason for the amendment being rejected is the fact that demanding such information may already be deemed as illegal as part of the Stored Communication Act or even the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In which case, further legislation shouldn’t be required.

Facebook Popularity

Facebook is indisputably popular. They have around 900 million users and many believe they have reached saturation point in a lot of their major markets. The company, who are preparing themselves for their IPO, however, have been dogged by privacy issues throughout their life and, as the online population becomes more Internet savvy, it seems that they are also more willing to jump on the bandwagon and criticize privacy moves, even when those moves are taken for the good of users.

Information For Employers

Employers have said that accessing a recruit’s Facebook account is a valuable way of seeing information on their friends, viewing photos, and generally checking that a particular recruit is the type of person they wish to employ. As such, they have made the bold move of asking potential employees for their logon details and, in some reported cases, have even gone so far as to tell candidates that not providing the information could harm their chances of employment.

Password Sharing

Facebook has a strict policy against sharing passwords with others and have pointed out to companies and employers that ask for this information that they are breaching the site’s terms and conditions and are encouraging others to do the same. The discovery that companies were taking this action caused a fairly serious ruckus and most people were condemning the action.

Facebook Controversy

However, as Facebook reiterated some of its terms and conditions, a group of around 30,000 German users believed there were changes that had just been made and refused to accept these changes. In some cases, the “changes” were made way back in 2007 but because Facebook makes so many changes it is difficult to know what is new and what has been around since the beginning.

Browser Options

When it comes to browser software, there are surprisingly few options. Internet Explorer is installed on the majority of new machines that are sold which means most people will stick with it simply because it’s easier to do so. Firefox was long considered the main rival for the throne until Chrome came along and browsers like Safari and Opera fall some way down the pecking order but are popular with mobile users and text only users.

Ubiquitous IE

The problem for Google is that Internet Explorer is everywhere. When you buy a new computer or laptop it will usually have IE installed and the majority of workplaces have it installed on their work computers. Then there are those that haven’t updated their browser for several years and are highly unlikely to want to change to a whole new browser. This means that the battle is made all the more difficult for Chrome.

King For A Day

It is quite an achievement then that the underdog became the most widely used browser, even if it was only for a single day. Sunday, which is one of the days when Chrome usage traditionally spikes, saw Chrome overtake IE as the most popular browser in the world, although it dropped back again on Monday morning when people returned to work usage.

Chrome 15

These figures take into account the numerous versions of different browsers that are available and, if we look at individual browser versions, Chrome already holds the crown thanks to its version 15. Google will take heart from the fact that when users are given the choice, i.e. when they head home to use the Internet, they are picking the Chrome browser rather than IE.

Social Media Sites

Facebook and Twitter have been praised and condemned in almost equal measure for their news breaking and story spreading. Social networking was almost single-handedly blamed for outbreaks of riots and praised for the overthrowing of dictatorships round the world. Celebrities take to Twitter, especially, on a regular basis in order to break news and update their followers and citizen journalism does have a tendency to rear its head on these sites.

Readers Not Using Social Media Sites

However, while Twitter and Facebook may be popular for breaking and spreading stories, they are not as popular for reading about them. Only 9% of American adults say that they use social media sites Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis to access the latest news stories. News organizations are the most popular source of online news with search engines the second most popular and aggregation sites coming in third.

Where We Consume News

Of all US adults, 36% turn to dedicated news organizations regularly for their news fix, 32% use search engines and 29% turn to news aggregation sites. The figures do rise dramatically when you consider only people that regularly read the news online. Of these, 52% consume some news on sites like Twitter and Facebook. While Facebook is more popular than Twitter, research actually shows that Twitter users believe the content they see to be more unique.

The Changing Face Of Internet Use

The way we use sites like Facebook and Twitter is changing, especially our interaction with companies and organizations on Facebook. As on the mobile Internet, apps are becoming increasingly sophisticated and news organizations are being encouraged by Facebook’s latest content sharing features to add their headline and stories to the social network.

The Social Media Impact

Numerous stories are released on the impact that social networking has on the population of the world. Facebook is more popular than just about everything and, at least according to one study, is more difficult to give up than smoking or drinking. It is also the first thing that many of us do when we get up, even before we head to the toilet or take a shower.

Facebook

As we already know, Facebook is the world’s largest and most popular of all social networking websites. It has more than 800 million registered members, which is approximately 1/12 of the world’s population. Twitter do not, strictly speaking, publish details of the number of registered users they have but recent estimates place the figure at around 500 million.

Facebook Figures

Delving more deeply into Facebook facts and figures, the USA is head and shoulders above the rest of the world when it comes to total registered users. More than 141m members of the social networking giant hail from the USA with India proving the second most populous at 68.1m. Indonesia ranks 3rd, Brazil 4th, and Mexico 5th.

Further Development

While it could be argued that Facebook has reached somewhere near saturation point in markets like the USA, there is still a lot of room for growth in massive markets like Russia and China. If Facebook could increase their user base in countries like these, which are fast picking up pace in terms of Internet usage and mobile Internet access, their figures could be increased even more in the coming months and years.

No Ads = No Clicks

In Google’s words, an initial study that was taken back in July 2011 showed that “an average 89% of paid clicks are essentially lost and not recovered by an increase in organic clicks when a search campaign is closed.” Unfortunately, Google went on to give this 89% figure the title of Incremental Ad Clicks which could prove highly misleading to many readers but, essentially, the research shows that if you stop paying for ads you lose the benefit of those ads.

Research Findings

The research does, though, show that PPC and SEO can certainly be combined highly effectively in a single marketing mix, and it even shows that while it doesn’t account for much, organic traffic will pick up a fraction of the slack that is left behind when ads are paused. The research also shows that the opposite is true and if you go from zero ad spend to some ad spend it will increase traffic.

Your Online Marketing Mix

Advertisers are encouraged to use more than a single form of online marketing to help promote a website and increase exposure. If you rely solely on SEO, for example, and there’s a massive algorithm change that negatively affects your page rankings then you will lose at least a large portion of all your traffic. If you also have other advertising methods running, your exposure to this loss will be less.

Leveraging SEO And PPC

PPC and SEO have very different requirements. SEO requires long term work and investment while PPC can provide traffic straight from the off. However, traffic from organic results is often considered to be more highly targeted and, per visitor, will usually work out costing less than Pay Per Click advertising, although actual figures will depend on a number of verticals.