Bing and Yahoo to Merge Search in 2010

As news of Microsoft and Yahoo’s search partnership deal has darted around the blogosphere and across the world, SEMs and SEOs are coming to terms with the realities:

1. BingHoo has gained some search market share, but not enough to really threaten Google’s dominance in the short term.

[The Most Important Facts, and Some Opinion, Techcrunch.com, 07.29.2009]

2. Yahoo is out of the search game.

[It's Finally Over..., SearchEngineLand.com, 07.29.2009]

3. Bing will be the new Yahoo search engine starting in early 2010, and will profit from ads displayed.

[Yahoo gives up, Wired.com, 07.29.2009]

4. Yahoo will assume online advertising and relationship management services for both companies.

[It's Finally Over..., SearchEngineLand.com, 07.29.2009]

5. Microsoft just bet heavily on “Middle America”, Yahoo’s primary demographic, and wants their input into their Bing search algorithm.

While these are all worthwhile insights, the most interesting to me is the last. In a period of economic downturn, Microsoft has chosen to shell out vast sums for a 10 year partnership which gives them open access to Yahoo’s search functionality, the single most powerful revenue generator for the site. What remains to be seen is how the Yahoo user base will shape Bing’s evolution, and whether Yahoo’s search will be completely integrated or remain slightly separate.

Bing was hot right out of the gate, and continues to fare well with users looking to make purchases, but recent research shows users choose results at roughly the same rate from all 3 major current search engines in a blind test. Microsoft seems to be betting that there is a demographic overlap with buy-motivated searchers and Yahoo’s enormous user base, but this is questionable in the short term, what with global economic depression felt particularly in the middle-income manufacturing belts of the US. The current stereotype is that people go to Yahoo to “waste time” — how does Microsoft turn that into a buy? Extended sales pitches targeted directly to your Yahoo user patterns? Across weeks at a time? Will BingHoo turn into the new place to subtly place the seeds of brand for travel, shopping, health and local search?

The real challenge in understanding how to improve your website comes in installing and interpreting analytical software.  Now, I won’t drone on about all of the benefits to installing Google Analytics.  Just get it done and start to look at your traffic.

Monitoring what people are doing when they get to your site (”bouncing” vs. clicking) and where they are going can help you determine what features your site might be lacking.

What I see most often is that visitors love to click on pictures.  Pictures are incredibly important – they convey your website’s style and priorities all at once.  If your homepage images do not lead to something valuable on your website, begin there and watch the flow of the traffic.  A picture is worth a thousand clicks – a new (and bad) cliche.

OPO is about user experience.  It can be difficult to look at your own website through fresh eyes.  Try to lead users to your product as quickly as possible, while still providing the most essential information to help them stay oriented on your site.  NOTE: Users tend to read left to right, top to bottom, in English-speaking nations.  The top of your homepage needs to grab and entice immediately (without providing so many options that users bounce feeling overwhelmed).

Websites are maps to important information or a goal of some sort.  The more roadblocks there are between the user and the goal, the harder the conversion.  Make it easy to win, hard to lose, and fun to succeed.  Use attractive images, high-value space above the fold, and your own goals to pave an easy path for your users with OPO.

As an SEO, determining what constitutes a bottleneck for your client’s website is a high priority. After identifying SEO problems, you can define strategies and tactics to overcome them. These days, we see the most common SEO bottlenecks occur in the accessibility-useful-intuitive portion of a visitor’s conversion path. Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this concept was first introduced for website prioritization by Bryan Eisenberg. While Eisenberg mostly sticks with a modified sales funnel metaphor, I think a bottleneck model is currently more relevant, as really any part of the SEO process can have a dramatic effect on ROI.

SEO Conversion Path Bottleneck

One of an SEO’s many jobs is to reduce the number of people who “bounce” from the webpage at a bottleneck, by specifically addressing the five high priority optimization levels seen above.

The 5 Levels of SEO Explained

1. Functional

— The website has a goal or goals which all visitors can complete. (Exists for a purpose and “works” in the most basic sense.)

2. Accessible

— The website can be found by search engines and other entry points. (Has “SEO 1.0″ in place, i.e. title and meta description tags, as well as “alt” attributes for images)

3. Useful

— The website fulfills its intended purpose and is easy to use and navigate. (Relevant, info rich, “gets the job done”)

4. Intuitive

— Visitor personae goal paths are established and easy to achieve. (Aesthetically pleasing, attention-drawing, multiple navigation scenarios, “happens by itself”)

5. Persuasive

— The website converts visitors to sales or leads with good content, products, and copy, images, and videos. (Call to action.)

I find these levels helpful when thinking about how to prioritize a website’s opportunities, as it provides convenient categories into which you can sort your many options.

Turning Your Conversion Trickle Into a Flood

Conversion Path without SEO Bottlenecks

After you determine where the bottlenecks for a website are, attack them! It doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get a flood of conversions, but the odds are much higher. Additionally, by dealing with the first 3 levels (functional, accessible, useful), your site’s “rating” for the intuitive and persuasive levels will naturally rise. With the right content and the right product, there’s nothing to stop conversions pouring in.

Low Hanging Fruit

When a client comes to you with a new website project, it’s easy to get excited by the prospect of all the little and large SEO 1.0 and SEO 2.0 changes you can make with regard to making a website more search engine friendly. Better branding, better web design, more aesthetic appeal, new copy…where to begin? This brainstorm is a necessary part of the process. You have to have blue sky sessions where all possibilities are explored uncritically in order to prioritize your project for maximum ROI, but are all these ideas relevant today? How do you choose?

Low Hanging Fruit

Time and again I find the most important and appreciated service we offer our clients is website prioritization. From among the hundreds of changes you can make to boost natural rankings, it’s a good SEO’s job to tell you which ones will give you the most bang for the buck. This is what entrepreneurs often refer to as low hanging fruit:

Targets or goals which are easily achievable and which do not require a lot of effort.
~UrbanDictionary.com

Evaluating Your Client’s Priorities

Since each business, organization or individual’s website is at a different point in its life cycle, in order to prioritize, remember general top level priorities for all sites online. Most websites should be:

1. Easy to maintain
2. Easy to extend
3. Easy to scale
4. Easy to navigate
5. In line with best webmaster practices
6. Memorable
7. Visually appealing
8. Easy to use
9. Regularly updated (1 update/month min.)
10. Relevant and info/media rich
11. In the spirit of the website’s community
12. Easily accessible by the visually impaired

~ List adapted from w2mw.com’s website priorities

What is going to give your client the greatest benefit for the least cost/effort? What are the sweetest fruits within easy reach? This is how you prioritize a website.
0. Adaptable
1. Functional
2. Unique
3. Accessible
4. Usable
5. Useful
6. Intuitive
7. Entertaining
8. Persuasive
The exploration process for a good consulting firm can take a week to a month or more, depending upon the state of the company and the website in question. Do your research on your client’s full website, their ecommerce system / back end, their competitors, their keywords, their demographics, and their business model. As well as understanding what they would like the website to be, understand what role the site currently plays in their overall business model and workflow cycle before making recommendations. A discrete list of the top 5 to-do’s that will help most for a given area of SEO, web design, web development, or internet marketing is often the best place to begin. Overall, accurate prioritization is the most important service you can offer as a web consultant.

Videos create a lasting impression for visitors, engaging users to stay on websites longer and make more purchases. Research indicates that embedded videos are not as highly-valued as proprietary site-run videos. Some have reported a 55% jump in conversions after enabling videos about their services on their website!

If you or your client are looking to boost traffic and sales, getting them involved with a quality video production company might be just what they need. Make sure the video is:

High quality
Completely original
Informative
Linking to the product or services you offer directly

Happy SEOing,
Tanya