Bing Pushes Yahoo! Down to 3rd in Market Share
Something which caught us by surprise recently were new statistics from advertising network, Chitika. They reveal that Bing has taken second place in search market share from Yahoo and claim it has been this way for a couple of months now.
Although most of the other leading analytics companies (including StatCounter) still show Yahoo leading Bing, Chitika’s statistics show that Bing is ahead of Yahoo! by 4.5%.
The stats show that Google remains unquestionably in the number one position by driving 80.97% of search-related traffic to sites in Chitika network. Meanwhile, Bing jumped into the number 2 spot with 10.6% marketing share and pushing Yahoo! down to third position with 6.14%. AOL and Aim make the remaining positions in the top five with 1.22% and 1.12% of the search market, respectively.
Here are the official statistics from Chitika:
Our question is: why is Chitika showing different results?
The fundamental difference between Chitika’s numbers and other rating services, such as comScore & Hitwise, is in the type and source of data they collect.
Chitika collates its data from the search traffic coming into its own advertising network. On the other hand, comScore and other rating services, measure search traffic data from the search engines themselves. The traffic being measured is both paid and unpaid. So if some sites in the Chitika network are doing major advertising on Bing and not Yahoo that could potentially skew the results, however it is hard to believe that it’s a major contributing factor for the shuffle in Bing’s position.
One thing that will be interesting to watch is the impact on Yahoo! & Bing’s market share when their partnership is fully implemented. We will all have to keep an eye out for those stats!
Link Building: Dos and Donts
Link building has become a hot topic of late in the search marketing arena. While it has been around for years, sometimes it can be done very poorly or overlooked altogether in an SEM strategy don’t let this happen for your website.
I recently came across a great article which outlined the dos and donts of link building. So I thought I would share some of the tips so you can get started:
Do:
- Keep your focus on relevant links only. Build links with high authority websites that are related to your site theme. These relevant links will help you to build authority in your niche. Also, visitors to such sites are more likely to click on your links giving you increased traffic.
- Publish articles, press releases and blogs on article and free blog sites. Make sure your content is unique and original with your links embedded in it using important keywords as anchor text. These incoming links embedded in the content are valued highly by the search engines.
- Competitor analysis. Check all the websites linking with your competitors and try building similar links to your site also.
Don’t:
- Show that you are desperate to get backlinks to your website. Write a professional email to other webmaster and ask them to go through your site and consider giving a link to it.
- Post your website link directly on discussion forums and chat rooms; this kind of self publicity might get your account banned. Simply put your website’s link in your signature in the forum instead.
I hope these tips help you get started on your link building efforts.
4 Tips to Make Visitors Stay on Your Site
By now you all know that SEM is about getting people to visit your website. But how do you get visitors to take a second or third click on your website and explore it further.
I have outlined a few tips to help you in this area. This includes:
- Ensure your keywords match your website content
There is nothing worse than clicking on a website from the SERP’s and finding that the website has nothing to do with what you are looking for. Make sure your website content is relevant to what your searchers are looking for; otherwise you will see them disappear very quickly.
- Does your page load fast enough?
We’ve spoken of the importance of this previously and considering it is now also one of Google’s factors to determine ranking, it might be time to look at it closely. If your webpage takes longer than 10 seconds to load, then it’s highly likely your visitors will become impatient and leave. Remember: there are millions of sites on the internet that they could visit over yours. Rather than wait for your site; they will simply try the next listing in the SERP.
- Location, location, location
It’s no use getting visitors to your site, then expecting them to trawl through your site to find what they are looking for. Put the most popular links and call to action buttons on your site in the ‘best real estate’ of your pages (close to the top and towards the left of the screen).
- Turn off the music and video
I must admit this is my biggest turnoff when visiting a website (and it makes me leave ASAP). Music and videos (or the little customer service representative in the bottom corner of the screen) can be very annoying if set to auto play. If you have an auto play feature set on your website, then I would suggest checking how many visitors leave within the first three seconds of your music or video playing. I think you will be surprised by the results.
So, if your visitors don’t seem to be sticking around on your site, these four tips might just help you solve the problem.
SEO Success is more Than a Top Google Listing for Your Website – How to Dominate Google
Imagine you’ve got your website in the top 20 on Google for a few keywords, or even better Top 10. Don’t get too carried away, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
If you want serious results from your SEO efforts, you should aim for more than just a Top Google listing for your website.
Our clients are discovering that the best traffic results come when you dominate Google’s SERPs for the most effective keywords. And local small businesses and niche businesses are in the best position to do so.
Dominate Google’s SERPs?
Yes. They’re moving beyond just their website for their SEO strategy which is allowing them to have more than one listing for keywords and search terms – and there’s good reason for doing it:
- Eliminate the competition
- Increase the profile and authority of your brand/business
- Stack the odds in your favour and increase click-throughs
Now before you say “BUT that’s gonna take hard work and marketing budget I can’t affordâ€, try some of these easy ways to dominate Google’s results:
- Keyword optimize your social profiles
a. Rather than just have your social profiles featuring your business name, why not incorporate your important search term or relevant keyword in there. Not all social networks and services will allow those, but for the one’s that do, utilise the opportunity to your advantage.
- Develop a content strategy beyond your website
Creating fresh, engaging and relevant content on your website is critical for your SEO strategy. There’s no denying that. But more small businesses should look at creating content beyond their websites. And there’s a plethora of ways to do it:
- Slideshows/Presentations
- Videos
- Blogs/articles on other sites
- Images/Media
- Press releases
Just think of the various types of content that exists online and rest assured there’s probably a website that allows you to share it with the world – and yet again create a potential Google listing for your business.
- Directory and Business listings
Like your social profiles, often small businesses don’t leverage the immense opportunities offered by the various business listing and directory services available. Have you posted your business on Linkedin or in a local online community directory? Probably not – and why not. Guess what – most will let you include important keywords in your title and throughout your profile. Another way to get a listing!
There’s plenty of other ways to create Google listing opportunities for your business. And more of these opportunities you embrace, the better your chances of dominating Google and improving the traffic results from your SEO.
If you have used other techniques to increase your businesses exposure across Google’s results, why not share them with our readers via the comments below.
Google Boasts 30% Cost Reduction for Click-to-Call Advertisers
Early this year, Google introduced Click-to-call as a component of its location extensions offering in mobile ads.
Google click-to-call allows advertisers to track online-offline searching and consumer buying patterns across mobile, online and traditional advertising mediums.
If we compare click-to-call to pay-per-click, the latter is based on the idea that a customer visits the website (for which the advertiser is charged), makes an inquiry and then decides whether or not to make a purchase. On the other hand, click-to-call (for which the advertiser is charged) eliminates the first 2 steps and goes directly to the idea that the customer will call to directly inquire about the business, creating a lot better chance of a purchase.
Research from comScore and TMP Directional Marketing shows that more than 83% of customers search online and then contact a business offline, often in the form of a phone call. With click-to-call, Google can successfully eliminate the need for the customer to go offline.
Google recently outlined the success of click-to-call in a case study of San Francisco based auto insurance company, Esurance. The aim of using click-to-call was to enable all customers with a mobile phone to quickly reach an agent live. Esurance ran click-to-call ads and tracked the success of the campaign using unique 800 phone numbers in their ads and the results are quite impressive.
Esurance acquired customers at 30% less than through other marketing channels. Click-to-call mobile ads drove a 30%-35% higher response and a 5-10% lower cost per click on mobile than on online.
Tolithia Kornweibel, Esurance Director of Online Marketing backs up Google’s claim:
With Google mobile ads and click-to-call, our cost per acquisition is 20-to- 30% less when compared with other channels.
The only down side of the click-to-call is that it is still quite new. Once people begin to realize its benefits it could raise the cost as demand increases. But currently this is a hidden treasure for those who got in early.
MSN & Yahoo! to Let Visitors Choose Ads
In an attempt to find the best possible way to deliver advertisements to internet users without annoying them, come September will see websites like MSNBC.com, Yahoo.com, and Hulu.com allowing their visitors to decide which ads they want to watch before the video they actually want to watch.
This new ad-selecting tool called ASq aims to improve customer targeting by letting video viewers decide which of three sponsored ads are most relevant to them. Though there will still be a section of consumers who will not welcome these ads, it may help websites command higher rates while letting sellers attract and improve their client list. Now marketers will have to carefully plan their video ad campaigns for websites that will indeed help them increase consumer targeting through the ASq ad-selector.
Google is yet to decide whether to adopt this format for YouTube, because the potential power of video ads on Google sites can not be ignored. The latest online video ranking reveals that Google sites had the most unique video viewers and the most video-viewing sessions in June. Video ads on Google also reach a commanding 15.4 percent of the U.S. population.
Developed by VivaKi, the digital media branch of Publicis Groupe, ASq has been tested on the new Hulu designed format and research results show that users are twice as likely to click an ad when given a choice
Microsoft’s Global Research Director, Beth Uyenco Shatto says “when you give people a choice, they tend to love you because you’re showing them respect. If it wasn’t for advertising, they wouldn’t be getting the content for free.”
If successful this step may boost the development of the $3.1 billion global video advertising market, an already fast-growing sector.
-
-
Twitter
-
-
