Fortune 500 Companies Fail At SEO [U.S study]

proper SEO is crucial

We just came across this article from MediaPost. Unfortunately this problem is not contained to the USA.

Fortune 500 companies fail at search engine optimization, and many still don’t link paid-search keywords to SEO campaigns, although they collectively spend about $3.4 million daily on 97,559 keywords, according to a report.

The Conductor Research Q4/2009 Fortune 500 Report released Wednesday identifies that only 25% of those keywords rank in the top 50 natural search results on search engines such as Google, Microsoft Bing or Yahoo. The Fortune 500 report analyzes national search results and optimization effectiveness, as well as trends and integration plans for the corporate and the consumer brands during the December 2009 quarter.

Analyzing the most expensive keywords that companies bought allowed Conductor to measure intent by assuming these words should float to the top of natural search in query results.

“Since they spend all that money on paid-search keywords you would expect these companies would want the keywords in natural search to correlate with investments on the other side and make them as visible as possible,” says Nathan Safran, senior research analyst at Conductor Research.

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Does your web designer understand internet marketing?

Does your web designer understand internet marketing?

In the early days of the Web the imperative was upon having a website and as a result an industry was born, and boomed, creating websites. Good, bad or ugly, it didn’t really seem to matter a long as you were part of the the new wave online.

These days however its a lot different. Everyone has a website and a substantial portion of the population uses the web to shop, search research, chat, meet, discuss, review…well you get the point, we’re online a lot. In fact a recent study revealed that 97% of clients purchasing decisions were influenced by websites.

Now, amid the clutter and competition online, mere web existence isn’t good enough. Now professional internet marketing is crucial. You don’t just build a website, you build a web presence.

Search engine optimisation, social media, conversion strategies, data analysis, geo-targeting, the mobile web, real time search. They’re all part of a sophisticated internet marketing plan that enable you to compete and thrive online.

Unfortunately, many web designers are still just building websites.

Check if your designer understands internet marketing by asking:

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Does your website need a rebuild or a re-think?

One of our biggest frustrations here at Sticky is seeing organisations pay little attention to their web presence. They run old, rarely updated websites that provide the user with little information and a generally poor experience. These organisations are finding it increasingly harder to compete and will be left behind unless they totally re-think (or start thinking about) online.

However, at the other end of the scale is the organisation who is enthusiastically online but is constantly thinking about a rebuild, or a new look, or an expensive new addition to their under-performing website. We see them all the time. I can think of a few examples where a site is going through its 2nd rebuild in as many years, when the original site was fine.

The thing is….if a website is under-performing the first thing everyone should look at are the real reasons why. In many cases its not the layout / design / format that necessarily needs work.

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9 more reasons why you need to optimise your website for Google

Its essential to optimise your website for Google

We read plenty about Google’s market share and general ubiquity but how do they relate to the average business?

Here are 9 very interesting statistics recently published on Google’s blog that demonstrate why your organisation needs to ensure that it is making the most of the opportunities presented by being found easily on Google.

We particularly like the third stat about fraction of Google queries never seen before – it speaks volumes for the long-tail of search, which every business can use to their benefit.

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Why does Google index blogs faster than other sites?

We are constantly asked why we use one platform over another when creating new websites. A big part of our rationale is that blog sites seem to be indexed faster and crawled more frequently by Google. We have had some ridiculously fast results over the years, but only on certain platforms.

So we thought you’d be interested in what the gurus at Google have to say on the subject. This video is from their Official Blog. Please note the last comment: make great content, get well known and Google will probably crawl you more frequently.

Watch the video = 2 mins

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