If you had $1 million of marketing budget to spend on Search Engine Marketing – what would you spend it on? SEO or PPC? The immediately obvious benefits are that SEO is a source of traffic which can be milked even as PPC costs become restrictively expensive, whereas PPC is an immediate source of traffic which you could get as soon as this afternoon. But of course there is so much more to it than that.

PPC providers are traditionally (not exclusively) from the school of media buying or advertising, where units are bought and sold, demographics measured and response rates estimated. While traditional advertising/marketing might be thought of as an ‘art’, PPC has evolved as much more of a ’science’ in that you test and experiment, you get actual results and you adjust your strategy accordingly.

SEO providers are usually from the more tech-geek-based schools such as web development, but despite this, they might be considered slightly more ‘art’-like. There is a lot more scope for creative thinking in SEO, there are time lags involved which mean you don’t see results immediately, and if you go too crazy, you could just get banned.

So as you can see, SEO and PPC actually are completely different disciplines, which shouldn’t be compared and contrasted. So much time and energy is wasted by both clients and agencies, trying to prove that one is better than the other, whereas in actual fact both have something to offer, and clients would benefit by having them work together rather than competitively. For example;

•  While you start working on your SEO, spend on PPC to get the immediate traffic you need
• If PPC prices get too expensive in the future, you can reduce your buying to save money as long as you have reasonable natural rankings to fall back on (i.e. if you have invested in SEO early on)
• Use your PPC account to test the relative volumes and conversion rates of various terms to try and see where your SEO efforts should be targetted. You might find terms you would not have considered and that aren’t even mentioned in normal key word tools
• Similarly, use your PPC account to make sure the terms you are optimising for aren’t a potential waste of time
• Keep combined data to show the effects of PPC and SEO on each other, you don’t want to be unnecessarily paying for traffic that you would otherwise get for free (cannibalisation)
• If you include ROI calculations in your combined data you can see where the best PPC position is given your natural ranking for a term and bid accordingly.

The bottom line is, if you are a company using both PPC and SEO, you need to make sure that they are working together and that you are not wasting your money on subtle competition. When engaging an agency for one or both of these services, make sure they understand you want the two services to work together, and ask them to put a strategy together to show you how they will do this.

You need to let them know that a relatively high amount of data and information sharing will be necessary – expect some resistance, but insist this is a necessary part of your marketing strategy.

The combination of the two disciplines into a united ‘holistic’ search strategy is, I think, the inevitable way forward, and undoubtedly the most cost effective method of search engine marketing.

Having recently worked in the internet industry in China, I suppose it might be of more interest to me than others to note todays news regarding China’s intended crackdown on online porn.

China is infamous for having implemented the Great China Firewall, and for getting Google to censor the sites they display in their results. Historically this has been mostly politically related information, but to me, it is no surprise to see that they now want to expand this censorship to porn, China being a relatively modest society.

A Google spokesperson noted “Google has clear policies to protect freedom of expression while not allowing illegal content on our sites in China and elsewhere around the world.” Following up with the comment that Google cannot control the content on the billions of pages in its index.

Now I am not sure if this statement means porn will or will not be displayed in Google search listings, it seems more a “We’ll try, but no guarantees. Unless you make it REALLY illegal”.

Some might think China is pushing its luck with trying to extend the censorship ban. One obvious worry is that the more they censor, the more people it will affect and the more disgruntled it might make the internet population. As it is, there are ways to circumnavigate the wall, and most Chinese people I encountered in the industry did not seem too overly concerned. Foreign Journalists seem to be the ones up in arms about it, and I understand their concern, not everyone would as easily understand that their information was being censored.

As we well know, internet censorship is not so foreign to Australia as we might have previously imagined. While no one seems to be up in arms about the Great Australian Firewall just yet, once it starts accidentally (or purposely) blocking sites that people are actually interested in, I expect the Government to be in a whole load of PR-style-trouble. It just seems like right now people don’t believe it will actually ever happen, so no one is getting too worried about it yet. I am in this camp, I guess I just don’t have a lot of faith in it all working out.

Happy New Year 2009 from Sydney Australia!

As we herald in a brand new shiny year, it is also time for SEO’ers to have another look at their strategies, and think how they need to change them to stay on top in 2009.

Like nearly everything in the world today, the internet changes fast, and so do search engine algorithms.

There are over 200 factors (supposedly) which are aggregated and calculated by search engines to give you your place in the rankings – in 2009, what will be the critical few which you need to pay the most attention to?

On December 30 2008, Google updated its Page Rank calculations, shooting some sites up and some sites down. There have been stories of new sites shooting up to PR’s 4 and above, while some more established sites frustratingly saw their PR fall.

While PR isn’t the be all and end all of your sites value, it is one indicator we use to see how Google ‘rates’ our sites (another major indicator, of course, being your site’s ranking in the SERPS).

How does this new PR affect your 2009 strategy? Well, if your PR has gone down, you obviously need a rethink. What have you been doing that might have reduced your value? Why have some new sites experienced massive increases in PR (could it be time to get some new, updated links)? Time to contrast and compare.

Whatever your PR, this update is just one example of how your SEO strategy needs to be constantly reconsidered and improved – and what better time to do that than the beginning of a new year?

Although Christmas is a distant memory already, I got a late Christmas present when checking out Sphinn yesterday.

This article, by Kiss Metrics, offers a MONSTER list of Google Analytics tips and tricks for the beginner through to the more advanced, and is updated enough to even include ten articles focussing on the new advanced segmenting feature introduced in October. This article is now top of my analytics bookmarks as it not only lists but sorts the articles for you, one thing I haven’t personally gotten round to with my own haphazard bookmarking.

Google Analytics is my favourite analytics tool. Not only because it is free (which is fantastic), but because despite being free it is constantly improving, has a great user interface, easy installation, plus it contains all the features you would expect from a paid analytics tool. In my opinion, for the ‘average’ website, it is equal to or better than the paid packages.

Add to this the fact that its zero-cost model means anyone can use it, and you have one of the largest audiences of fellow users, many of whom like to share advice, tips and tricks, as the link above demonstrates. That means that nearly any question you might have regarding GA, has likely been asked and answered elsewhere on the net. It just requires a little searching.

Similarly, there are add-ons and scripts being written all the time by GA enthusiasts which I think makes GA more user-friendly, ‘cutting edge’, giving users what they actually want.

Enough of the sales pitch, get onto those Google Analytics links and start using this free tool and the myriad of free advice that goes with it.

Well, me obviously. And maybe you, since you are reading this blog.

But my family would not care how they work, even though they would use search engines quite regularly.

My friends from school and university aren’t in technology related careers, and they woudn’t have a clue either (unless I have explained to them what my job is).

Surely most people would not care. However, one technology company cared enough and put out a survey in Britain which revealed that the majority of people questioned don’t know how search engines work, despite the fact that 97% of them regularly used search. Less than 30%, for example, realised that the ordering of natural search results was based on relevance.

I am not sure why this is a surprise. Sure people use search engines every day, but that doesn’t mean they need to know how search algorithms work. They also use computers, lightbulbs, internet and television every day, and I doubt they know the intricacies of all these things. I had cereal for breakfast, and while it might be interesting (perhaps) to know where it came from and how it is made, it is not something I am caring too much about.

While a bit of knowledge about search engines might help people be more discerning about what entries are most relevant to them, I think the whole point of the algorithm is that the most relevant results are at the top (for natural) anyway. Of course, if dubious SEO practices by black hat companies render inappropriate sites in the top places, then this would be interesting to know – but I can see the “Today Tonight” episode already, encouraging people to be cynical about search engines, not trusting any of the results because a few irrelevant sites are SEO-ed to the top.

The other point people might be a bit murky about – the paid vs natural listings. Maybe people don’t know the difference? This could be a tiny bit misleading if assumptions were made that the paid listings were equally relevant to the natural listings.

However, the survey repeats the age-old line that ’sponsored listings’ are considered less trustworthy than organic listings. From this group of people who didn’t really know how search engines work, the fact that most of them understood there was a difference between natural and paid listings, insinuates that the search engines do an alright job of making sure they appear different.

The funniest result from it all I think was that 5% of respondents thought the results in search engines were completely random! A lucky 8 ball, which you hope for the best with. Google could save a bucket load on engineers if this was all the people wanted.