Search Engine Optimization Research Findings: A Client Perspective

Written by Jimsun Lui


This research attempts to obtain business firms' views on search engine marketing. It gives valuable implications to both business and search engine marketing firms.

The research collects findings from 121 Hong Kong trading firms involving in foreign trade through telephone interview. Also, a separate focus group was held with 8 marketing managers and 1 search engine optimization (SEO) specialist. We believerepparttar implications also apply to other geographical areas.

We have extracted part ofrepparttar 127780 results to present in this article.

1. Employed SEO service or Exercised SEO Before?

103 (85%) respondents reported that they have neither employed any search engine optimization service nor self-exercised any search engine optimization service. However, 18 (15%) respondents pursued some sort of search engine marketing including search engine submission to search engine optimization.

2. Importance and Concerns of Search Engine Marketing/Search Engine Optimization

A rating scale of 1 to 5 was employed, with 5 means Very important and 1 means very unimportant. Respondents reported that they perceived that search engine marketing could be a cost-effective method to help them get new overseas customers (rating 4.7).

Respondents also consideredrepparttar 127781 following factors whether they would use a search engine marketing firm: 1. Pricing (4.6), 2. Deliverables (4.8), 3. Guarantee Clause (4.0), 4. Ranking against rival firms (4.7), 5. Possibility to get to Top 10 ranking (4.1), 6. Chance to increase response rate (4.8)

3. Paid for Performance Search Engine Marketing

This question has an explanation aboutrepparttar 127782 meaning of paid for performance search engine marketing. The question includes pay-per-click and paid-for-inclusion plan.

Again, a rating scale of 1-5 was employed, with 5 means Very important and 1 means very unimportant.

The respondents expressed that they concernedrepparttar 127783 possible high cost (4.8), potential fraudulent clicks (4.9), delivery of message to right persons (4.7), and time required to managerepparttar 127784 campaign (4.2).

4. Understanding of Search Engine Optimization

This question asked about their knowledge of search engine optimization techniques. Respondents were given 3 choices: 1. Yes, 2. No, 3. Don't know.

31 respondents perceived thatrepparttar 127785 major task of search engine optimization was adding keywords in Title and Meta Tags while another 62 of them were not sure aboutrepparttar 127786 answers. 108 respondents did not know link building was an important factor that could help them improve search engine ranking. Interestingly, 72 respondents believed that program “submit to 1000 search engines” could increase their website traffic. 101 respondents did not realize that content analysis and improvement measures such as keyword density ratio and keyword proximity ratio played a role in search engine optimization.

In general, most respondents believed that they did not possess sufficient knowledge on search engine optimization.

5. Focus Group

Another 8 marketing managers were invited to a focus group interview. 4 of them had experience in employing search engine optimization firms, and another 4 considered using search engine optimization services but finally had not taken action. An SEO specialist was acted as a moderator inrepparttar 127787 interview.

Inrepparttar 127788 interview, they generally agreed that search engine marketing could help them to generate business leads. For those who did not use SEO service expressed that they abandoned to pursue as they could not make up a decision. First, they were not familiarize with how to achieve good search engine ranking. Second,repparttar 127789 pricing scheme offered by different SEO firms varied greatly from US$19.99 to US$5,000 up-front fee, and some also required US$500 to US$5,000 monthly service fee. However,repparttar 127790 SEO firms could not express clearlyrepparttar 127791 deliverables that clients could obtain and they also refused to clearly explainrepparttar 127792 methodologies that they would use. These facts maderepparttar 127793 interviewees very difficult to persuade their boss to use SEO service.

In addition,repparttar 127794 interviewees expressed that they feared that SEO firms would require many website changes, and some changes like keywords stuffing in Alt Tag or put too many texts and too little graphics in web pages makerepparttar 127795 site looked unprofessional.

Creating Robots.txt File and its Importance

Written by San Christopher


If you are thinking you have developed a truly great keyword-rich-unique-content fully optimized website forrepparttar search engines and an attracting site forrepparttar 127779 visitors - that's fine, but do you know you are missing something? A robots.txt file. Did you include it? Byrepparttar 127780 way do you know what'srepparttar 127781 importance of a robots.txt file?

Success of big companies lies in keeping their confidential data a secret, hidden from all. They tellrepparttar 127782 world something and do something. This enables them to execute their future course of action easily and change plans according torepparttar 127783 situation. Job of robots.txt file isrepparttar 127784 same. It can or cannot allow a search engine to visit some or all of your web pages. Of course a human visitor is free to visit these pages. That beingrepparttar 127785 case, forrepparttar 127786 search engines your website may be different than what a visitor is seeing. If you think one or some ofrepparttar 127787 pages/files aren't good enough to be visited by a particular search engine or engines you can do it. Although this is not recommended - your website should be made in such a way it should not shy away fromrepparttar 127788 search engines. Nevertheless its always better to knowrepparttar 127789 basics of writing robots.txt file. It will help you. We will discuss farther down - robots.txt file is important. I repeat again - don't make pages you think should be hidden fromrepparttar 127790 search engines. If any search engine think you are up to some tricks, it may panelize your site causing a no-rank - inrepparttar 127791 worst case for ever!

Every search engine has a "robot" (a software program) that doesrepparttar 127792 job of visiting a website. Their purpose is to "know"repparttar 127793 website, what it is all about, gather all information about it etc. Search engine robots gather this information and bring them back to their databases to show them in their search results. So, if your site is not there in their database it never shows up inrepparttar 127794 search results.

Web Robots are sometimes referred to as Web Crawlers, or Spiders. Thereforerepparttar 127795 process of a robot visiting your website is called "Spidering" or "Crawling". When somebody says "the search engines have spidered my website," it meansrepparttar 127796 search engine robots have visited their website. This robot is known by a name and has an independent IP address. This IP address is of no importance to us, but knowing their names will help since this name will be used when we create a robots.txt file. This is whyrepparttar 127797 file is called "robots.txt." Given below isrepparttar 127798 list ofrepparttar 127799 robots of some ofrepparttar 127800 very popular search engines:

Search Engine - Robot Alexa.com - ia_archiver Altavista.com - Scooter (Bought by Yahoo) UK.Altavista.com - AltaVista-Intranet (Bought by Yahoo) Alltheweb.com - FAST-WebCrawler (Bought by Yahoo) Excite.com - ArchitextSpider Euroseek.net - Arachnoidea Gendoor.com (Genealogical Search Engine) - GenCrawler Google.com - Googlebot (http://www.google.com/bot.html) Hotbot.com (uses Inktomi's robot) - Slurp Inktomi.com Slurp - (slurp@inktomi.com) (Bought by Yahoo) Infoseek.com - UltraSeek Looksmart.com - MantraAgent Lycos.com - Lycos_Spider_(T-Rex) Northernlight.com - Gulliver Nationaldirectory.com - NationalDirectory-SuperSpider UKSearcher.co.uk - UK Searcher Spider

Writing Robots.txt:

Let's learn to write robots command. Note that there are two ways to write robots command. One is to include allrepparttar 127801 commands in a text file called "robots.txt" and another is to write robots command inrepparttar 127802 meta tag.

We will learn both ways of writing robots command.

Writing robots command in Meta tag:

There are 4 things you can tell a search engine robot when it requests (visits) your page:

1) Do not index this page -repparttar 127803 search engines will not indexrepparttar 127804 page. 2) Do not follow any links on this page -repparttar 127805 search engines will not followrepparttar 127806 links included inrepparttar 127807 page, i.e. they will not index any page that this page links to. 3) Do index this page -repparttar 127808 search engines will indexrepparttar 127809 page. 4) Do followrepparttar 127810 links -repparttar 127811 search engines will indexrepparttar 127812 pages that this page links to.

Note that "index" is different than "spider". A search engine first spiders a page and then indexes it. Indexing is giving a certain importance torepparttar 127813 page onrepparttar 127814 basis of its content, information, meta tags, link popularity with respect torepparttar 127815 searched keyword. All this is decided at run time. When you tell search engines not to index a page, it means they know that "certain" page exists but do not rank them. That is, a no-index page will never be shown in their search results. This in any case does not mean a no-index page will not get visitors, it might get visitors indirectly from a page which links to it. Yes, no direct visitors fromrepparttar 127816 search engines.

Suppose you wantrepparttar 127817 search engines to index and also index (follow) its linked pages then includerepparttar 127818 following command inrepparttar 127819 Meta Tag:

Suppose you wantrepparttar 127820 search engines to index a page but not follow its links then includerepparttar 127821 following command inrepparttar 127822 Meta Tag:

Suppose you do not wantrepparttar 127823 search engines to index a page but follow its links then includerepparttar 127824 following command inrepparttar 127825 Meta Tag:

Suppose you do not wantrepparttar 127826 search engines to either index or follow links of a particular page then includerepparttar 127827 following command inrepparttar 127828 Meta Tag:

Note: Google makes a "Cached" of every file it spiders. It's a small snap shot ofrepparttar 127829 page. Want to stop Google from doing so? Includerepparttar 127830 following Meta Tag:

Like any meta tagrepparttar 127831 above written tags should be placed inrepparttar 127832 HEAD section of an HTML page:

your title

Creating robots.txt file:

A robots.txt file is an independent file and should be written in a plain text editor like Notepad. Do not use MS-Word or any other text editor to create robots.txt. The bottom line is this file should haverepparttar 127833 extension ".txt" else it will be useless.

Let's begin. Open Notepad (it comes free with Microsoft Windows) and saverepparttar 127834 file withrepparttar 127835 name "robots.txt". Make sure thatrepparttar 127836 extension is .txt.

Byrepparttar 127837 way, did you note we did not use name of any robot inrepparttar 127838 meta tag! What does it indicate? Simple - by using meta you direct allrepparttar 127839 search engines to do something or not do something on a page. You do not have control over any one search engine. The solution is robots.txt.

It can always happen you do not want a particular search engine to index a page for certain reasons. In that case using a robots.txt file will help. Even though I do not recommend such a thing. The search engines get you traffic, why hate them. Stop them from doing their job and they hate you. I again repeat keep your pages smart forrepparttar 127840 search engines and welcome them. Fine, then why takerepparttar 127841 trouble to learn robots.txt? Why should you include a robots.txt file at all?

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