The report, from the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, is based on an online survey of 920 companies carried out in February and March. The companies reported a rise in mobile marketing, which accounts for some of the rise in search advertising. Local search was cited as the most significant new trend, though the respondents said behavioral targeting is becoming more important as well. The survey also found that more marketers are outsourcing their SEO and social media to agencies.

The 16% growth figure for search is a slight jump over last year’s 14% rise. Meanwhile, researcher eMarketer predicts an 11.2% jump in search marketing revenues for 2011 vs. 2010 and places the total revenue figure for the end of 2011 at $16.6 billion. That said, eMarketer’s figures refer specifically to U.S. spending, while SEMPO’s refer to North American spending. Below are SEMPO’s estimates for the market over the past few years:

However, as we quickly realized, the update was only released for Google.com. Thus it has not affected any other countries until yesterday when Google announced that it has rolled out Panda globally to all English-language Google users. Interestingly, Google confirms that for this update it’s also using user data from its “block these pages from your results” function.

We’ve performed an analysis with millions of different keywords in the short -and longtail of the impact of this update. We analyzed the top 100 domains with the greatest gains and losses in our Organic Performance Index (OPI) from the previous week. The OPI is calculated according to a keyword’s search volume, position and the statistical value of traffic distribution.

The update is made every week and we can definitely confirm that the update has hit the UK and Ireland – in a big way.

Most platform hosted websites do this naturally already, but if you have a custom built website you need to think about your Sitemap, Folder structure and HTML readability.

Most website designers spend lots of time making the graphics layout look visually appealing to their human audience, but you also must remember that search engines look at your site through a very technical lens.

There’s no “style points” here!  If your site is heavy on Flash, make sure there’s a text based description that lives in the HTML to help clue in the search bots. Consider removing your splash or welcome page, and instead build a homepage with descriptions and pointers to the main content areas of your site.

2. Make a list of keywords you want your website to appear for

Without thinking about it too much*, jot down the three or four ways you’d search for your website if you had to find it quickly. Ask your friends and family members the same question and tabulate the results. Chances are there will be some overlap, and you’ll quickly see which terms are more likely to be searched on first.

Next, run the searches yourself, and for each query try to find what position your website has in the results and jot it down. Stop if you can’t find it after ten pages. If you can find it by then, don’t expect anyone else to either!

If you can, also take note of the other sites that come up on the results of the first page for each query.  Are they similar to yours? Local or national? Are they competitive to your business?

When picking your top keywords, it’s important to be honest about how competitive certain terms might be.  You must assume that others will try to keep their site listed high in the search results as well.

Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience

The first step is to identify your target audience. Who are they? Are they performing the search at home, in the office, or both? It may be helpful to assign titles and personas for the target audience to help determine and organize what words they use and how they search.

Step 2: Brainstorm

With your target audience defined, then proceed with a brainstorming session. Write down as many keywords you think your target audience would employ to find your products and services and enter them into a spreadsheet master list file. Do not edit this list even if some of the keywords are too broad.

By this time, you should have two or three keywords that are at the top of your priority list.

3. Ensure your homepage contains a text description with some of the top searched keywords

This is where we start crossing over to the artful/creative side of the process. The goal of this step is simply stated: “If you want someone to find your website by searching for these terms, where do you have them listed on your website for the search engines to find them?”

For small business sites, they typically have one main page. Make sure you add a couple sentences that naturally describe your business, and weave in your top three keywords somehow. To gauge success of these keywords, keep an eye on your site ranking to see if there is movement.

4. Write a page or blog post on your site that’s dedicated to each of your top keywords

This is also a good way to show your customers you know all about the product or service they’re interested in. A good way to start is to see what blogs your competitors have done see. Picture yourself explaining to a friend or relative in five minutes what you do in that specific area.

The write up doesn’t have to be more than 200 – 300 words and should list the target keywords no more than two or three times. Remember this should be as natural and easy to read as possible, but have the keywords mentioned in a way that makes sense.

5. Post links to your site and/or key pages on social sites like Facebook & Twitter

Once you have these blog posts or articles on your site, it’s ok to post them out on the web. Start with the social sites as these offer the easiest access and contacts.

Search engines are starting to crawl and track these links back to your site, plus it’s an easy way to get your friends and top customers involved. Seems like everyone has a Facebook page these days!

For more information on this speak to us @ www.thenet.ie

“Not only must an online business be visible, but it is imperative that it ranks on the first page on the search engines because that’s where all the traffic is generated from and where most of the clicking occurs.”

The stats speak for themselves.”If you have a number 1 ranking on Google for the keyword relevant to your online business you will receive approximately 42% of the search engine traffic for that particular keyword. A number 2 and number 3 ranking for that same keyword would generate 12% and 9% of that search engine traffic respectively. As you can clearly see the further down you are in the rankings the percentage of clicks that a website gets decreases, so the goal should be to get your website on the first page of the search engines and ultimately the number 1 ranking.”

Last week, Google released their “Content Farm – Panda” update to all English speaking countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada, where WebiMax, an online marketing company specializing in search engine optimization (SEO), has expanded operations. The initial release of the Panda update took place in February, released only in the United States. Now with the update reaching English language based countries abroad, additional websites that are managed through “black-hat” SEO tactics will be affected.

To find out why this might affect your website ranking speak to us at www.thenet.ie

Unless you’ve lived in a cave for the last 10yrs

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Is your website generating new business or are still in that cave? We have been helping companies maximize their online presence for over a decade and can get your phone ringing again, call thenet.ie today to get started.

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