subject: SearchPath Articles April 2010 [print this page] I went to the trade show Internet World at Earls Court 2 in London yesterday, and saw some interesting seminars. Here are the main takeways I got from the seminars I saw:
1. I saw one guy give a good talk on forecasting for SEO: this can often be a problem when pitching to clients. After all, it can be hard to predict conversion rates and CTR on organic results, plus it can be hard to give definite gurantees on traffic
The guy I saw had drawn up a spreadsheet from various data sets. in order to forecast how much profit a customer is likely to make. First in the left hand column he had the search term, then the estimated traffic from the Keyword Tool in the next column. He then had the estimted CTR, based (I think) on the new Webmaster Tools data.
The next column was an estimated conversion rate, based on an internet average of 3%. The remaining columns in the spreadsheet were the order value, than the profit in the last column.
Laying the spreadsheet out in this way enables internet marketers to make (admittedly estimate) predictions and forecasts for clients' possible ROI, if they were to come and work with you.
2. People who search for long tail terms are much more likely to click on position 1. The fact that these phrases convert well makes it all the more important to rank highly.
3. Search is about the past, social media about the present.
4. Keyword clouds are a useful tool for determining what a given page is about.
5. When you've got a very big site (with thousands of products) it is not realistic to SEO each page manually. This is where automated tools come in.
6. At Dell, long tail terms gives 83% of traffic and 67% of sales.
7. To SEO a site properly, you should make sure you have unique descriptions on every page.
These were the main points I took from my visit to Internet World. Its a free show, and runs for the next two days at Earls Court 2 in London if you are interested in attending.
