The Limitations of Average Time on Page and Average Time on Site in Google Analytics

I’ve been told that I don’t have a very good poker face, and I’m ok with that.  I find it actually helps my clients, since they can tell almost immediately when I don’t agree with something or when a point needs more clarification.
For example, there are times I see marketers heavily focus on time-based metrics like Time on Page and Time on Site (as if those metrics were 100% accurate).  Unfortunately, this isn’t the case and the numbers reported can be far from accurate.


The confusion about how time metrics are calculated usually leads to some interesting conversations (as clients see various times listed in their reporting and want to start comparing pages and visitor segments.)  That’s hard to do, since there are serious limitations with the way time metrics are calculated in web analytics (for now anyway).  Even worse, people can subsequently make decisions based on the data.  This is why I tend to focus on key actions visitors can take versus other measurements of success.  I track these actions via conversion goals and events versus focusing heavily on time-based metrics.  I’m not saying that time-based metrics are useless, but they need to be taken with a grain of salt (at least until we find a more accurate way to track them).


For example, let’s say a marketing manager analyzed a new piece of content and was blown away with an Avg. Time on Page of 5:26.  This is where my (lack of a) poker face leads to a deeper conversation about how the actual Time on Page could be much different.  My comment is typically something like, “I think it’s great that visitors who decided to visit another page on your site spent 5:26 on the page.”  I often get a strange look at this point.  Then I start to explain that Time on Page is actually calculated by page jumps.  So, if someone reaches a certain page and exits from that page (or bounces), then Time on Page is 0:00.  No, that’s not a typo.  Time on Page is 0:00 whether they spent 10 seconds on the page or 10 minutes.  I’ll explain more about how time metrics are calculated below, but I wanted to give a quick example now so we’re on the same page.









Note, although I’m focusing on Time on Page and Time on Site in this post, there are ways to calculate time metrics like Elapsed Time for certain processes that occur on a page.  For example, check out my tutorial for using TimeTracker to calculate elapsed time (or Time to Complete).  It’s an interesting way to extend event tracking to record how long it takes to finish a process like completing an elaborate form.


Access To Data Can Be Powerful But Interpreting Data Incorrectly Can Be Dangerously Powerful
I never want to rain on anyone’s parade, but it can be dangerous to walk around your office telling everyone something that might not be entirely accurate (and can be way off).  When I start helping clients with analytics, I typically make a point to grab a conference room with a white board and start explaining how Time on Page and Time on Site are calculated.  After I explain how the metrics are calculated, there are times that I hear a level of skepticism, since there isn’t hard evidence that the metrics are really calculated this way.  And I’m totally cool with that. I’d be a hypocrite to say that being skeptical is wrong, since I test everything.
In online marketing, I don’t necessarily take anyone’s word without testing it myself.  Which brings me to this post…  Based on what I explained above, I decided to run an experiment to test Time on Page and Time on Site in Google Analytics.  My goal was to document the hard numbers so you can see how the metrics are reported.  I think it’s important to understand the limitations of the metrics, so you can provide context in your analysis.  If you provide context, then your clients can better understand the analysis you provide.


The G-Squared Lab


When setting up this experiment, my goal was to isolate directories and pages and then document the exact time that I spent while visiting those pages (and sets of pages).   If each visit was isolated, then I could drill into the reporting to see exactly how Google Analytics tracked time for each page and each visit.  I’ll detail the paths I took in the experiment below.


Quick Introduction: The Formulas for Time on Page and Time on Site:


Before we hop into the experiment, let’s start with a quick introduction to how Time on Page and Time on Site are calculated.  Both metrics are based on page jumps (or moving from one page to the next).  By calculating the difference between visiting one page and the next page during the visit (via the page timestamp), Google Analytics can determine how long you stayed on the preceding page.  Calculating Time on Page via page jumps is where a major limitation is exposed.


That’s because if you visit a page and then exit the site, the Time on Page is 0:00.  As mentioned earlier, that’s whether you spent 10 seconds or 10 minutes on the page.  On a similar note, if you visit just one page on the site and leave (which is a bounce), the Time on Page is also 0:00.  Time on Site is calculated by adding the time that a visitor spent on the site by combining the Time on Page for each page that was part of the visit.  Average Time on Site simply divides total time by number of visits and does not exclude bounces.  You can see the formulas below.


Time on Page A = Page B Time – Page A Time (based on the timestamp)


Average Time on Page = Total Time on Page A/(Pageviews – Exits)


Total Time on Site (For a Specific Visit) = Page A + Page B  (or the sum of Time on Page for each page in the calculation)


Average Time on Site = Total Time on Site/Visits (this metric includes bounces)


Example:

As a simple example, let’s say that someone visited Page A for 2:00, then visited Page B for 3 minutes, and then exited the site.  The Time on Page for Page A would be 2:00.  However, the Time on Page for Page B would be 0:00.  Google Analytics can identify the Time on Page for Page A only because there was a jump to Page B (and it calculates the difference in time between the two pages).  Since the visitor exited the page from Page B, there is no way for Google Analytics to know how much time they spent on the page.  The Time on Site would also be 2:00, since the time on Page B cannot be determined.  Based on this simple example, can you tell why Time on Page and Time on Site need to be taken with a grain of salt?  What if that visitor spent 7:00 on Page B?  You would think by just looking at the reporting that visitors were more engaged with Page A, when in reality, they were spending more time on Page B!


The Experiment: 5 Scenarios Plus a Bonus


For the experiment, I set up several directories with four pages in each directory.  All the pages within each directory are linked together via simple text links.  For each visit, I identified how many pages I would visit and how long I would spend on each page (give or take a few seconds).  Everything was documented so I could cross reference my notes to see if the reporting matched up.  I will list each scenario below and show you the reporting in Google Analytics.  Then you can see for yourself how the metrics are calculated.


Scenario 1: Bounce After 20 Seconds


For the first visit, I wanted to simply bounce, but after a short visit.  I visited the first page, stayed for just 20 seconds, and then exited the site.  I wanted to show you how the Time on Page for a bounce is reported as 0:00.  After checking the reporting, it surely was.





Scenario 2: Bounce After 5 Minutes


I’ve heard some confusion about what determines a bounce in Google Analytics.  For example, some people think that if you spend enough time on a page, it’s not considered a bounce.  So, I spent five minutes during the next visit, but stayed on the landing page.  Once again, the time on page was 0:00 and it was considered a bounce.  I just wanted to clarify that point.







Scenario 3: Land on Page A, Spend 1:17, Click Through to Page B, Spend 1:30 and Then Exit


For the third visit, I wanted to visit the first page in the directory (Page A), wait 1:17 and then click through to Page B.  I would spend another 1:30 on Page B and then exit the site.  Based on what I explained earlier, the Time on Page for Page A should be 1:17 and the Time on Page for Page B should be 0:00.  In addition, the Time on Site for this visit should only be 1:17, even though I actually spent close to 3:00.  The reporting confirmed this.






Scenario 4: Land on Page A, Spend 1:23, Click Through to Page B, Spend 0:58, Click Through to Page C, Then Exit

For the fourth visit, I wanted to visit Page A for 1:23, Page B for 0:58, then click through to Page C.  I would spend 1:00 on Page C and then exit.  The reporting should show a Time on Page of 1:23 for Page A, 0:58 for Page B, and then 0:00 for Page C (even though I spent over a minute on the final page).  Also, Time on Site should be 2:21, even though I spent 3:21 on the site.  The reporting confirms this.






Scenario 5: Combining Visits to Show Average Time on Site

I mentioned above that Average Time on Site (ATOS) includes bounces, so I wanted to show you how this looks when you combine multiple visits.  So, I visited the same set of pages three times.  The durations for each visit were 0:00 (a bounce), 1:11, and 2:14.  Based on the calculation for Average Time on Site, the bounce should be included and the ATOS should be 1:08.  The reporting confirmed this.





Bonus: The Virtual Pageview


I mentioned earlier that if you exit from a page (including a bounce), then Time on Page is 0:00.  But that’s not always the case.  Welcome to web analytics.  :)  There’s something called a virtual pageview that enables you to trigger a pageview, but in reality, a page wasn’t really loaded.  It’s a versatile feature in Google Analytics and can help you track clicks off your site, conversions that don’t require a page to load, and other clicks you want to track that don’t necessarily load pages.  You can also use a virtual pageview to track conversion goals (since you can use that virtual pageview as the destination URL for the conversion goal).  Again, you can read my blog post about conversion goals and events to learn more about this functionality.


The Virtual Pageview Reporting:


In this scenario, I visited one page and bounced.  However, I triggered a virtual pageview after staying for 1:28 (before I left the page).  So, does triggering a virtual pageview impact Time on Page?  It absolutely does (see the screenshot below) and it’s important to understand this when analyzing your reporting.  The bounce rate was 0% and Time on Page was 1:28.  If the virtual pageview was not triggered, the Time on Page would have been 0:00 and the bounce rate would have been 100%. Keep this in mind when analyzing your reporting.





Moving Forward With Time on Page and Time on Site


There you have it.  We’ve taken a detailed look at Time on Page and Time on Site in Google Analytics, while exposing some of the limitations with time-based metrics.  I hope the results from my experiment help you better understand how the metrics are actually calculated.  To be clear, I’m not saying to forget about Time on Page and Time on Site, but you just need to take the metrics with a grain of salt.  As you’ve seen in this post, the actual numbers may be off (and way off for certain situations).  This discrepancy makes it challenging to determine if the time reported was good or bad, which can definitely inhibit making solid decisions on the data.


Some key takeaways regarding Time on Page and Time on Site:

1. Don’t obsess over Time on Page or Time on Site.  Unfortunately, the metrics are flawed and can skew your analysis.  Keep the limitations in mind while analyzing site performance.
2. Time on Page does not include exits (or bounces), and can inaccurately report actual time on the page.  It can be much lower or much higher than reported…
3. Time on Site does include bounces, but still cannot determine the actual length of time spent on exit pages.  Therefore, this number can also be way off.
4. Virtual pageviews enable Google Analytics to calculate Time on Page, even for exits (from the time the virtual pageview is triggered).
5. Try and focus on key actions that visitors can take on the site (in the form of conversion goals and events.)  Then you can use time metrics to help support your findings (if it makes sense for the site in question).

Track Back : Search Engine Journal

Is Thumbtack useful in SEO

Microsoft’s Live Labs recently launched a new tool called Thumbtack, at http://thumbtack.livelabs.com/ to make your web surfing easier. The tool lets you to create a personal page that acts like a dashboard, where you can ‘tack’ links, photos, text and many other interesting items you find on the internet.

Yes! You can also share the collections by emailing them to friends, publishing them to blog, or sending them via RSS Updates

Thumbtack is an easy way to save links, photos, and anything else you can find on bunch of different Web sites to a single place. Grab the stuff you want, put it into a Thumbtack collection, and then get to it from anywhere you can get online. Share it with your friends, or just keep it for yourself. Its way easier than sending a bunch of links in an e-mail, and even easier than setting lots of favorites in your browser

Will this Thumbtack will be a new revolution in the online marketing industry or just an other updates.

SEO Strategies for Beginners

11 Strategies for Better SEO Positioning

A new business owner who creates and updates her own websites can implement some very basic SEO strategies to make her website appear higher in the organic rankings on certain keyword searches.

1. Page title tags: This is the page information that you see in the blue bar of your browser in the upper left-hand corner when you visit a website. For best SEO, use your top 2 keywords in your title tag. The best way to do that is separated with a bar, as illustrated in this example: Social Media Optimizer | Yahoo! Web Analytics


2. Domain name: If at all possible, use one primary keyword in your domain name. You will have a slight edge over your competition by doing so. If you already have a domain that you have used for some time, include a keyword in the name of files for your website pages. Example: http://seoshankar.blogspot.com/2008/11/yahoo-web-analytics.html


3. Meta tags: These are descriptions on a web page that are not seen by most visitors except when looking at the page source code in their browser. While the keyword and description metatags used to be the primary way that search engines indexed sites, that is no longer the case. However, you shouldn't ignore them entirely, as it is still worthwhile to include them as a part of your page description. For optimal SEO, your meta description and keyword tags should be no more than 150 characters each.


4. Header tags: Header tags are the HTML code that indicate a headline, like H1, H2 and H3 and show up as bolded headlines in your page content. The first 3 header tags are the only ones you need to be concerned about, and the primary header tag, H1, is the most important. Use your primary keyword one time in the H1 tag, 2-3 times in your H2 tags, and multiple times in your H3 tags.


5. Alt image tag: The alt tag typically describes an image in a floating text window when you put your mouse over the image if the image isn't able to be displayed. The best use of any <ALT> tag is to use your keywords in your image descriptions.


6. Content formatting: Search engines pay attention to formatted content, as in when text is bolded, italicized, and underlined. Make sure that you are bolding your keywords in the content of your website.


7. Keyword density: Keyword density refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears on a web page. Rather than trying to focus on the number of times a keyword appears in the content of your page, aim for a more natural density by keeping your keyword phrases in mind as you write the copy for your page. Optimally, keyword density should be between 2% - 7%. There are a number of keyword density checkers available online to assist you with determining the keyword density of a page.


8. Anchor text: Anchor text refer to links on a page that connect your visitor to other pages. So, rather than telling someone to "click here" in the content of your page, include a keyword in your anchor text, as in "click here for dog training tips."


9. Inbound links: Reciprocal link exchange (you link to my site and I'll link to yours) used to be a great way to attract the attention of search engines to your site. Now, search engines pay attention only to the quality and popularity of the site providing you with an inbound link that is not a reciprocal link. One of the best ways to get quality inbound links back to your site is to submit articles to high traffic article directories and submit press releases to paid press release services. A second way to gain high quality inbound links is by listing your site in search engine-friendly directories in which humans review the listings. Google and other search engines place more credibility in the directories in which the listings are reviewed by real people than they do other kinds of directories. Consequently, these links are weighted more heavily and favorably in the inbound link evaluation process.
   


10. New content: Content is still king, so one way to increase your page rank for a search term is to write high quality articles containing one or two of your keywords in the title and posting those regularly (weekly is best) to your site. Search engines are always seeking good, fresh, content, so your goal should be to make your site into an information-rich resource for your industry.
    
    
11. Site maps: There are sitemaps that help a visitor navigate a site, and sitemaps that are expressly designed for the search engines. The two are not the same. To enhance your site, submit an xml sitemap to Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer. I use XML Sitemaps to build search engine-friendly sitemaps on my sites.
    

Internet Marketing Advantages

Internet Marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience.

· Immediate response is possible

· Ability to quickly modify your message and experiment with different/multiple messages

· Ability to scale up fairly quickly if you have a formula that is working well

Internet Marketing, in other words known as SEO, is considered the most effective form of marketing, online as well as offline. This is because Internet marketing has performed accurately and ethically on one's Website that allows the site to reach the most online visitors, across the most states and countries, across many search engines, for numerous keyword terms.

Other advantages include: being able to build brand recognition, a site can achieve first page keyword rankings across search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo and others, eliminating costly PPC programs if a site is optimized naturally/organically in engines, and a site owner can see a fast ROI (return on investment).

Can we call us the internet marketing as the wireless marketing which we are gonna use it in the latest online techniques

In internet marketing there are also various methods in which everyone is specialized I the one way or the other

1) SEO - SEO is more appropriate method to attract the potential customers.

2) PPC - Pay Per Click the advertiser pays the search engines and various advertising firms to get advertized separately if a keywords is related to his/her industry

There are more various types which I will let you people know in the next mean time

On-page SEO Techniques

On-page SEO is anything that you do to your site files themselves in order to rank better in the search engines. This differs from off-page SEO, which is primarily concerned with gaining links to your site from other sites.

No type of SEO is more important than the other. You need both on-page and off-page SEO to rank well, the best on-page SEO isn't going to get you anywhere without good incoming links. And the best incoming links in the world can't help you if your site is crawler poison. However, there is an upper limit you can reach with your on-page optimization where you time will be then better spent on off-page optimizations.

Fundamentals of on-page SEO Techniques.

Title & Meta Tags

The single most influential piece of Marketing on your site is your title tag. Reaching back to the article on choosing a domain (link), by using keywords in your site name you can easily ensure that they will appear in your domain, many of your incoming links, and in your title tag, all of which is extremely important.

Meta Tags have a somewhat controversial past. In the 90's they were the main criteria for search engine rankings, however because they were so easily abused by webmasters they were all but dropped from use. However for years many refused to believe this and the SEO world was divided into two camps, those who believed meta tags were still a major factor, and those who didn't. Now though I think mostly everyone has finally come around to accept that meta tags are one of the least important aspects of optimizing your site.

Creating Search Engine Accessible HTML

The markup on your site should be clean, clear, and as limited as possible. Pull open the source code of a page on your site and check out how it looks, if it is a mess of HTML code you might want to trim that down or switch to a lighter markup specification such as with CSS. Again, here we worry about density and extraneous code could potentially hurt your keyword density.

Spiders Read

Spiders read your source code from top to bottom, and content placed at the top tends to be given more credence than content at the bottom. Additionally some crawlers may stop reading pages after so many kilobytes. So you really need to prioritize your content.

ALT & TITLE Attributes

Two key accessibility features that are part of the HTML specification are ALT attributes for images and TITLE attributes for links. The ALT attribute is meant to provide a description of an image for the blind or those with images turned off in their browser. The TITLE attribute is meant to provide a description of the linked-to page to give the browser more information before they click the link.

Frames, Javascript, Flash, & Forms

FRAMES

HTML frames were once a really good technology for controlling page downloads. When people were connection at 9600 baud it was a pain to have to reload the header, menu, or footer, on every page load. Frames fixed this problem. However, since then bandwidth has increased, and there are better technologies that accomplish the same thing. Server side includes & other server side scripting platforms provide the same maintenance benefits to the webmaster. And things such as external CSS files provide the same bandwidth savings to the browser.

JAVASCRIPT & DHTML

As the capabilities of HTML & CSS have increased the use of Javascript & DHTML have decreased to an extent, and that is a good thing. However you still need to be aware of issues with these technologies.

Search engines do not read javascript, and so yes, you could block content from being crawled by printing it with javascript much like I mentioned with the use of iframes. The problem with javascript though comes when people use it for content they do want crawled.

USAGE OF FLASH

Like javascript, Flash is another technology that search engines cannot crawl. There have been strides made, and there exists a way now for search engines to crawl links placed within Flash files, but not all do and the content, which tends to be mostly graphic based, still does not get crawled.

Your site homepage is the highest weighted part of your site in most cases, and if all that is there is some Flash welcome movie then you have almost no spiderable content, ranking for any keyword will be extremely difficult.

FORMS

Forms are necessary for allowing browsers to interact with web pages, but like with other technologies search engines do not fully support them. Specifically a search engine will never submit a form on your site. So, if the only way to reach your content is through submitting a form, a search engine will not reach that content.

This can be used to your advantage. If you have a link you do not want a search engine to follow, making the navigation form based and then dressing up the form submit "button" to look like a link with CSS is certainly an option.

Headers Tags, Fonts, & Sizes

Heading tags, specifically <H1>, can be used to denote important content on your site, however just like with your title tag you must think in percentages.

Use H1 for the on-page title (such as the article title at the top of this page). Use H2 for secondary content sections, H3 for tertiary ones, and so on down the line just as you would if you were making an outline.

Keywords & Writing Effective Content

The one of the biggest factors in your search engine ranking is going to be your keywords, or what words appear on your pages. Choosing the right keywords is vitally important, While search engines once used to rely on keywords found in your meta tags to rank your page they now have more sophisticated software that analyzes the text on your page and not only checks for keywords or phrases, but also checks that they are in a proper form and not just repeated over and over again.

Keyword volume or density is still important though, and so you must try to include both your main keywords (the ones you most hope to rank well one) prominently, as well as as many minor keyword as you can.

SQUEEZING MINOR KEYWORDS

One easy way to make sure you always get your major and minor keywords on your site is to use a boilerplate sentence or two as a site description. Typically you can find these in the footer of a site along with a copyright statement.

Wrap-Up & Further Reading

On-page optimization is, in a way, less important than off-page optimization. Or, less time consuming in the long run at least. The reason is that your on-page optimization can only be so good, whereas there is no upper limit on the number of quality incoming links you can find. So follow the tips presented in this and my other articles, however if you've done it all and still are not making progress start instead to focus on the off-page factors instead of overtly stressing yourself out over your on-page optimizations.

The one on-page topic I did not heavily cover in this article is menu optimization, internal site linking, and or site architecture. This very important topic is deserving of it's own article and so can be found here: Site Architecture: Optimizing your Internal Links

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION CHECKLIST:

• Descriptive literal title tag that includes your keywords.


• Descriptive literal meta description tag that includes your keywords and entices clicks from readers


• Meta keywords tag that includes your main keywords, minor keywords, misspellings, and words you may wish to target but that are not commonly found in your content. Don't stress out too much when making it.


• Clean, coherent, HTML or CSS markup with as little markup coding as possible, externally included files for CSS definitions. Fast loading, accessible, and compatible.


• Source code formatted so your most important menu items are read first.


• Descriptive literal ALT & TITLE attributes for images & anchor tags (links) that include your keywords.


• No use of frames for public content you want search engines to see.


• Conservative use of javascript, do not use it to display important content.


• Conservative use of Flash as an option for viewing your site, never a requirement.


• Normal HTML based navigation alternatives if form based navigation must be used.


• Descriptive literal heading tags (h1, etc) that include your keywords with good density and are used properly to sectionalize content.


• Effectively keyword rich content that is descriptive, literal, and goes into great detail.


• A fully optimized and accessible menu.
  

Comparison of SEO and SMO

Comparison of SEO and SMO

There are a lot of similarities and differences between SEO & SMO. Because of this, and the idea that one cannot take over the role for the other, it is important to know when and why to use each optimization technique.

Similarities are..

• Linkability - If people don't have a good reason to link to you then they probably don't have a good "real" reason to visit your website either. Be careful though, linkability and linkbait are not the same thing. Some of the keys to linkability are: content, design and usability.


• Good Content - This almost does not need an individual category because part of linkability is the good content. But, the point needs to be stressed; you can have good content that does things besides giving people a good reason to link.


• Pull Marketing - Both SEO and SMO are way to attract people to a website without pushing a message on them, but instead showing them what value your website can bring to them.

Differences are...

• Channels - This is obvious but needs to be mentioned, SEO is about search engines, primarily the big 3, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (GYM). SMO is about the "new" social media sources that have crept up, including blogs, bookmarking websites, media sharing websites etc...


• Target Audience - Often times, the people checking their new messages on MySpace are looking for something different than they guy shopping for a new TV.


• Goals - With SMO you might be looking to build community while with SEO you might be looking to sell something. Both SEO and SMO can also share the same goals.


• Participation - With SMO you should actively participate in the same activities that your audience does, with SEO there is not as much participation.
  

SEO Strategy

SEO Strategy
The process of SEO is not easy to tackle, largely because so many pieces of a site factor into the final results. Promoting a site that writers on the web are unlikely to link to is as deadly as creating a fantastic website no one will see.

SEO is also a long-term process, both in application and results - those who expect quick rankings after completing a few suggestions in this guide will be deeply disappointed.

Search engines can often be frustratingly slow to respond to improvements that will eventually garner significant boosts in traffic.

1. Unique Content - Something that has never before been offered on the web in terms of depth, quality or presentation (i.e. a unique value proposition)


2. Access to an Adoptive Community - Connections or alliances with people/websites in an existing online community that is ready to accept, visit and promote your offering


3. Link-Friendly Formatting - Even the best content may be unlikely to be linked to if it displays ads, particularly those that break up the page content or pop-up when a visitor comes to the site. Use discretion in presenting your material and remember that links are one of the most valuable commodities a site/page can get and they'll last far longer than a pop-up ad's revenue.


4. Establishing Plan - Intelligent systems for monetizing powerful content must exist, or bandwidth, hosting and development costs will eventually overrun your budget.


5. Market Awareness - If your site is targeting highly competitive terms you should make available, an online marketing budget, including funds for link buying, and hire or consult with someone experienced in bringing newer sites to the top of the SERPs.

If you take these steps and have a robust knowledge of the methods described in this guide, you are ready to begin an SEO campaign.

SEO Advantages

Advantages of SEO

Few would argue that SEO is potentially the most important search marketing approach for marketers since most searchers click on the natural listings.

Indeed, research shows that some searchers NEVER click on the sponsored listings. Others still don’t realise these links are paid-for.

Generally, the 80:20 rules holds true with 80% of the clicks on natural listings and 20% of the clicks on the paid listings as suggested by the first Stats box earlier in this section.

A key benefit of SEO is that it is relatively cost-effective since there is no payment to the search engines for being placed there. This is particularly important for the ‘search head’, the high volume, low intent phrases shown in Table 1 which can be expensive in paid-search. But it can also be useful for generating visitors on the long tail of search shown in Figure 7. Many companies bid on these phrases through paid-search, so giving opportunities for those who use an SEO strategy for the tail.

Additionally, the cost of SEO is relatively fixed, independent of click volume. Effectively, the cost per click from SEO declines through time after initial optimization costs and lower ongoing optimization costs. Conversely, paid-search is essentially a variable cost.

So, there are no media costs, but resources are necessary for key phrase analysis and to complete optimization on the website pages.

Together with paid-search it can also offer a highly targeted audience – visitors referred by SEO will only visit your site only if they are looking for specific information on your products or related content.

Competing SEO

SEO or search engine optimization is about topping your competition. By looking first at web sites that rank high for your key word phrases you will have an understanding of the time and cost involved to have high rankings in the search engines. If you are going after a competitive keyword phrase the amount of time involved will dramatically increase.

When analyzing the competition, search for your keyword phrase or phrases in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Look at the top sites and especially look at the sites that rank high in all three of the major search engines. You now have a list of competitor web sites; these are your targets to pick off one by one.

When evaluating your competitors’ links, keep in mind that this can be a link source for your web site. See if the web sites linking to your competitors accept web site link submissions. When submitting to other sites use your keyword phrase for your anchor text when ever possible.

Using the Google toolbar can be helpful too when evaluating links. Google assigns each page a page rank score based on a 1 to 10 scale with 10 being the highest. Do not solely look at a page’s page rank score; it is better that the page be on topic rather than an irrelevant topic and a high score.

Next look at the competitors’ title tags; are they using keywords in the tag? Be sure to check the keywords tag and description tag - I always find good keywords this way. There are some great free SEO tools on the internet that will automate these processes. Just do a search for free SEO tools and you will have a lot of tools with different and unique features for your needs.

Links are very important but if you are smart you will not need as many to beat out the competition. Build your inbound links slow and steady, and from a variety of sources. Make sure to use your keyword phases in your anchor text and vary the text for some of the links. This will appear natural to the search engines and should help you to avoid over optimization or spam penalties. If you are trying to acquire one hundred inbound links to your web site, space your acquisitions out over a three month period or longer.

One hundred back links appearing all at once looks very unnatural especially if you do not keep building back Links at that rate. Make sure you have well written relevant content. When optimizing your web site stay with in all search engine guidelines.