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For businesses that market wholly or partially online, it may seem that three words are the only way to get more customers: search engine optimization (SEO). Typically, the search engines being referred to are: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These three engines have almost become interchangeable with the phrase “do a search”, so much so that the word “Google” has entered the English lexicon as “find information”.

There are actually hundreds of search engines, not just the Big Three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) that many Internet users think of. By focusing only on the most well known search engines for your online marketing strategy, you may be missing out on as much as 30% of the billions of searches being done online every single day.

While not the oldest search engine on the internet, Google does have the reputation of being the granddaddy. However, it is worth investigating alternative search engines - niche engines, meta-search engines, and human-powered engines.

Niche search engines focus their searches on a particular subject matter, such as blogs or articles. Meta-search engines (DogPile, Widow) compile results from multiple search engines . Finally, human-powered search engines (Mahalo, DMOZ) are composed of directory pages with link and general information, put together by humans who search for the most relevant content. These alternative search engines tend to have pretty high page ranks, which give more credence to the fact that online marketers shouldn’t overlook them.

There is also the fact that some Internet searchers do not want to use Google because of personal or political views. Because of Google’s popularity, it can (incorrectly) be perceived as having a monopoly on the search engine market. That perception, combined with opposition to a seemingly growing “corporate world”, turns off some potential customers and eliminates your potential to reach them, if you focus only on Google or other big search engines.

As part of SEO, using keywords to bring in consumers is all the rage. Businesses spend a great deal of time and money researching keywords, keyword density, and effects on page rankings in results lists. Guess what? It’s not only a pain for the businesses to constantly be looking for which words may get them more hits and higher rankings; it’s quickly becoming over done.

Consumers are fatigued with seeing keyword-loaded articles and websites tagged with anything that could possibly be related to their search terms. This online marketing strategy may make sense in the short-term, but chances are good that by the time the strategy is perfected by your marketers, there will be a different trend altogether that needs to be learned. Marketing with the intent to only increase your page rankings, by any means necessary, is only a quick fix and could be quite expensive.

SEO tactics are starting to turn customers off. If SEO is the main priority of a marketing campaign and keyword-dense content was the impetus for the customer finding the website, this hurts the site’s credibility with the consumer. Perhaps they’ll buy from you once because you showed up at the top of the results page, but will they remember you next time or just do another search?

Another concern with search engines is the program spiders that crawl the Internet, looking for relevant pages for search results. Even the largest of the search engines can only cover a portion of the internet. According to Wikipedia, no search engine can search more than 16% of the net!

In addition, the spiders have a massive amount of searching to do, which can be a slow and taxing process on the sites they are crawling. By the time a spider finishes crawling the Internet, the information collected can be outdated - pages and links have either been deleted or new information added. Spiders are certainly not a perfect means of finding good results with one search engine.

Searching just one engine at a time is time-consuming and not very cost-efficient for searchers looking for the most appropriate information or businesses to suit their needs. Enter, meta-search engines. As mentioned earlier, meta-search engines compile results from multiple engines.

Among these, dogpile.com is probably the most well-known. The problem with dogpile, as I see it, is that it spits back the top 10 results from each of the Big Three engines. This results in a lot of sponsored results at the top of the result list, followed by a mix of “normal” results and more sponsored results. The truth be known, I simply consider dogpile to be really annoying, so I avoid it.

In comparison, widow.com uses a different sort of math equation that sorts through search engine results for the most relevant information and ranks them in their results pages. In an unscientific but entertaining comparison I performed, I plugged in “celebrity gossip” to both dogpile.com and widow.com.

On dogpile.com, I felt like I had to search through commercials to find the content. The results on widow.com were much more relevant, giving me results with the desired content. Plus, I didn’t have to look between the annoying sponsored results to find the information I wanted.

Utilizing meta-search engines can be very time-efficient and cost-effective for online marketers, especially when doing market research, even for keywords.

More importantly, if you can also rank in the meta-search and smaller niche search engines, you have a better chance of reaching the approximately 30% of searchers who do not use one of the Big Three engines, as their search tool of choice.

The niche audience may be smaller than the number of consumers you’re exposed to on Google, but if you can gain an audience in the niche search engines, you are likely to find consumers intent on buying what you are selling. It’s a good general marketing strategy to remember that “quantity exposure” does not always equate to “quality exposure”. It’s also a good general marketing strategy to never rely on only one advertising platform to help you reach your target audience.

By Bill Platt

It’s important to note that the writing of this article occurred on July 17, 2008. I mention this only to insure that you can put it into context and also so that those who read this article in a day or week or month from now aren’t confused by my noting of Q2 reports and references to “today”.

Any of you who have read some of my past articles or who have visited Beanstalk’s services pages will know - I’m not a PPC guy. Quite honestly, it’s not in my primary skill set and it’s something I would definitely prefer to leave to the experts. Now that said, following Google and it’s health (which is tied directly to AdWords and AdSense) is something I’m keenly interested in. To this end, recent changes in Google’s paid search display and ranking systems will have huge impacts on advertisers and, more important for the purpose of this article, on Google itself.

A couple weeks ago a friend of mine, Richard Stokes from AdGooroo sent me a PDF entitled, “Search Engine Advertiser Update - Q208″ . With this document they outline the changing trends in the paid search marketplace and many of the stats are surprising. If you’re a PPC manager they’re obviously directly important. For those of us in the organic optimization world they are still both interesting and important. They’re interesting for reasons which will become clear below and they’re important because anything that affects the economic health of the search engines affects the search landscape both inside and outside of the paid search realm.

Paid Search Market Share

What could be more important to the engines than their percentage of the paid search arena. Does Google really care about being the dominant search engine as far as organic search goes? Let me put this a different way, if Google was standing in front of their shareholders - would they prefer to announce that they held 80% of all worldwide searches and reported revenues of $7.8 billion dollars for the quarter OR would they rather stand up and say they hold 20% of all worldwide searches and reported revenues of $8.7 billion dollars? Organic results drive traffic which in turn results in clicks on paid ads. From a business standpoint that’s the only reason that organic search even matters.

So which engine has the healthiest paid search environment? According to AdGooroo, Q2 results show a different world than one might guess (which is why I noted that it is interesting).

Over the past twelve months advertiser growth (or lack thereof) breaks down as follows:

Google: -8.5%
Yahoo!: +9.8%
MSN: -6.7%

Advertiser counts have also changed (i.e. the number of advertisers on the engine). Yahoo! leads in this area as well with a growth of 0.03%. Google dropped by 6.4% and MSN dropped by almost 20% (good thing they have their OS revenue to fall back on).

And A Drop In Ads

To go even further, Google has increased the importance of quality which has resulted in a reduction of nearly 40% in the number of ads that appear on a results page. 6 months ago ~6.5 ads appeared per page whereas now that number is closer to 4. This has the potential to significantly help or significantly hinder Google’s revenue.

As Richard Stokes points out and I completely concur, this places Google in an environment where one of two things will happen:

1. Advertisers will realize that their clicks are converting much higher, search marketers will spend more time and resources creating more and more relevant ads and landing pages and advertisers will be willing to bid more as the conversions increase, or

2. The competition for the top spots will be reduced and so too will the average bid prices.

Google’s Q2 Report

And what inspired the writing of this article was actually the release of Google’s Q2 report earlier today. After reading it I immediately had to contact Richard and let him know that the results confirmed some of the predictions noted in his work. He writes:

“… the auction-based bidding system makes this a double-edged sword. As the number of advertisers declines, so does the competitive pressure for higher bid prices. If advertisers don’t step up to the plate and bid more aggressively for placement, then it’s possible that search revenues could stagnate.”

Google revenues were up only 3% over Q1 of this year and revenue from paid clicks was down by 1%. This is the first time in Google’s history post-IPO that I can remember them showing reductions in revenue in one quarter over the previous. It appears that this new paid search model in not quite as effective at pulling in money as the old.

Now, to be fair, the new system of requiring higher quality scores and better ads and landing pages is new - only a few months old at this point and so there are likely still bugs to be worked out, but Wall Street did not react favorably to the announcements today and I suspect that the situation isn’t going to look better for Google at the close of day tomorrow (though what do I know about stocks).

What Does This Mean?

So what does this mean? This means that Google has a lot of work to do and those in the paid search space need to pay close attention (even closer than normal) as shareholders don’t like to see losses and Google is going to need to make moves to recover and show significant gains by the time their Q3 reports come out.

One might guess that this also means that Yahoo! is gaining ground (which is true) but it’s definitely a case of too little too late. Also earlier today (it was a busy day in search) Yahoo! released a letter to its shareholders that on one hand referred to the alliance between Microsoft and Carl Icahn as a destroyer of shareholder value for Yahoo! and then went on to say that they would be willing to sell the company to Microsoft at $33/share (which is what Microsoft has offered previously and which is more than $10 above their current market value).

It seems that one can’t look at the stronger relative results in the paid search area that Yahoo! has achieved as a win when they seem to be backsliding on their initial position regarding the sale to Microsoft.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

For one thing, watch closely. Monitor resources such as AdGooroo’s research library, and the Clix Marketing blog. Pay close attention as we’re going to see a lot of changes to what’s going on and these changes are likely going to have effects on both the paid and the organic results as Google strives to provide the better results they’re targeting through paid search now but at the same time increase their revenue.

This may involve adjustments to the quality scoring (I can pretty much guarantee that one) and may involve adjusting how paid ads appear on the page with the organic results. All we can really do is watch, wait and adapt.

About The Author
Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization, Inc. Dave has been active in the SEO industry since 2001 and provides SEO services to companies around the world.

The Internet is such an unknown commodity anything is possible. One of the most intriguing questions concerns the idea of a perpetual traffic machine. Create a website and design a system of automatic programs (both interior and exterior) that delivers content and backlinks to a site that updates itself automatically and keeps growing without any help from the creator. In the process you build a flow of traffic that never stops, even if the site is abandoned or not touched for a couple of years or never again.

Is such a perpetual traffic system really possible?

Before you conjure up pictures of HAL and creepy talking computers in distant space… realize that question may carry more weight than it would seem at first glance. But is it like its predecessor, the perpetual motion machine - just more an illusion than actual fact?

For curiosity’s sake if for nothing else, the idea of a perpetual traffic machine does require further investigation. Such a system would have special interest for millions of webmasters whose main task is acquiring traffic for their sites, not to mention the potential for monetary gain a PTM (rhymes with ATM) would produce. Some credence was given to the idea recently when Tinu Abayomi-Paul, a well-known online free traffic expert, produced with the help of Marlon Sanders an info-product entitled “The Evergreen Traffic Machine.”

Tinu’s story is very interesting. Tinu had built up a whole array of sites and optimized them successfully for countless keywords in all the major search engines. She had built up a steady flow of traffic, resulting in thousands of visitors “a day” to her sites. This in itself is not that extraordinary, but that’s not the full story.

Because of a personal illness she abandoned or left alone most of her sites for over a year or more - only to discover the traffic systems she had put into place didn’t just dry up, they still kept producing tons of traffic even though the sites weren’t being updated.

The traffic was still coming. The traffic was still fresh.

Tinu basically built her perpetual traffic system around three major areas: High Profile Article Marketing, Exact Keyword Focus and Blogging/RSS Feeds. Tinu’s system proves you can create a traffic system for a year or two, but the real question is will it still produce traffic five years from now? Fifty years from now? How about a hundred years?

The real question: how long will such a system work without fresh input of unique content like the viral articles and blog posts now feeding it? This question is even more tantalizing when you consider it is now possible to create fresh content on your sites with RSS feeds, blog comments and user contributed content.

What’s more intriguing is the fact that all aspects of a website can be automated, including payment for all renewals: domain, hosting, autoresponders… as well as the collection of revenues such as affiliate commissions and advertising fees.

Are we at the stage where the Internet will be filled with these automated human-less web sites drawing traffic/visitors and slowly building and expanding on their own for eternity? Many cynics would argue this is already the case with the majority of sites on the web.

In case you like that idea and want to fully embrace this brave new automated perpetual Internet, here are a few tips to create your own eternal traffic machine:

1. Build lists and pre-load your AR system with follow-up messages to keep visitors coming back to your site. You can rotate these messages and ask your subscribers to opt-in to different lists on related subject areas. Always ask your readers to recommend your content to others.

2. Use social bookmark software or links so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content which brings in both new links and new traffic. Simple programs like the one offered by Addthis.com will get your visitors building your backlinks for you, bringing in fresh visitors who in turn will also bookmark your content.

3. Write viral articles, reports and ebooks that have your backlinks in the resource boxes. Likewise, viral software programs can help bring a constant flow of traffic to your site. If your content is of a high quality and your themes universal… new sites will pick up your content and build your backlinks, creating fresh traffic. The search engines will also index these new links and your rankings will increase, bringing in more traffic.

4. Use blogging and RSS feeds to get your content out there. You can also use these RSS feeds to bring in new fresh content to your site. Creating new content will be your main obstacle to creating perpetual traffic… you can get new content from feeds but will it be unique? Comments in your blogs could bring in unique content but if you’re not monitoring them, you must have solid software in place to fight against spam.

5. Have “Tell a Friend” forms on all your content. This will bring new traffic to your site, which can be self-refreshing as new people discover your content.

6. Encourage user generated content such as articles, comments, posts… you can even have a community monitoring system where your site’s members monitor this new content.

7. Form JV alliances with webmasters in your related field. Do co-registration so that you help build each other’s lists and traffic.

8. Likewise, if you have products to sell, create an affiliate program to get your affiliates to build your traffic for you. Affiliates are an excellent source of permanent traffic.

9. Automate all aspects of the running and managing of your website. Set up automatic payments for your AR system, hosting, domain renewal, PPC payments… thru PayPal or credit card. Likewise, receive affiliate commissions thru PayPal or direct deposit. Many advertising programs like Google Adsense offer direct deposit.

10. PPC Traffic - While we have mainly looked at free traffic systems, don’t forget creating a PTM is relatively easy with Pay Per Click advertising if you know what you’re doing. Target less competitive keywords to keep your costs down, tie this traffic into a good squeeze page for feeding your AR system with leads and have a good landing page that converts. You can create a system that delivers perpetual traffic and pays for itself from your affiliate commissions and advertising fees.

In summary, the argument for the existence of the PTM mainly relies upon the quality of your content or site. Is it unique enough to draw in new visitors? Does your topic have universal appeal that people never tire of? Does it solve or offer advice on a common human problem? Will or does it have a viral “word of mouth” element to it?

As we move to a more and more automated world, all the automated programs and hardware are in place for the creation of such perpetual traffic machines.

Computers, autoresponders, content management software, RSS feeds, viral marketing, direct deposit, automatic payments… and the list goes on. If we haven’t already created the perpetual traffic machine - we are getting tangibly close to doing just that.

 By Titus Hoskin