Relevance and Importance for SEO

• By: David Hall
• Categories: Google, Search Engine Optimization
• Comments: 1

Share Tweet

Webmasters commonly know that one of the most important keys to success in any online business is top organic rankings in the popular search engines. However, what is less commonly known are the specific organic ranking factors that indicate relevance and importance for SEO.

To really understand the methodologies that are used to achieve top rankings, we should first put ourselves in the shoes of the engineers at Google. When a user types a keyword or phrase into the Google search box, that user is requesting that the search engine returns a list of webpages that will provide the answer or information the user is looking for.

It is Google’s job to have a clear understanding of every website in the online universe and to instantly deliver a list of results that offers the most relevant and important websites on the subject. To do this Google uses simple programs called “spiders” that crawl and index every website in the known online universe, page by page. As these spiders index each page they apply an algorithm, a set of equations, that has been created to identify and score every aspect of a website.

Today’s search algorithms are incredibly sophisticated with hundreds of factors being taken into consideration. The more competitive an industry is, the more important it becomes that webmasters do absolutely everything right. However, some factors are certainly weighted more heavily than others and it is therefore most critically important to understand the factors that contribute to what is known as the “Relevance” and “Importance” of your site, as they relate to the keywords you want to rank for.

The following infographic depicts how Relevance and Importance affect SEO in the online universe:

PPC Click Through Rates vs. ROI: What’s Really Important?

• By: David Hall
• Categories: Pay Per Click
• Comments: 1

Share Tweet

One of the most common questions we get from website owners is: What is a good click through rate for a PPC campaign?

This question is not as cut and dry as general click through rates for organic listings… PPC click through seems to have a much higher degree of variance based on the keyword itself, the relation of the keyword being searched to the title, text and visible URL in the ad, etc…

You have to do keyword research. Some keywords lend themselves to a higher percentage of PPC clicks. These are typically terms related to purchases… the statistics that I have seen vary widely but all indicate that if the person is in an information gathering / research mode, they tend to click on the organic results. However, if a person is closer to making a purchase then the PPC click through rate increases significantly. As you know this tends to be especially true for the longer tail more specific terms… in many people’s minds paid advertising is closely related to coupons or other advertised savings and this may be a factor in a persons decision to look at paid vs. organic listings.