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Google has announced that it is to trial a new form of advertising on its search pages..

OK, so I’ve known about this for some time (thanks CK1 for the  insight) but better late than never when it comes to warning you that the company is introducing expandable adverts to its search results pages. If a user clicks on an advert then it will expand over the page, enabling different sorts of media content.

“Expandable ads are rich media ads that can expand beyond the original size of the ad unit, following a user-initiated action,” said the company in a blog posting.

“This creates more real estate for the ad, allowing for more interaction from interested users. For instance, expandable ads may stream a movie trailer, show video game clips, or display various views of an item for sale.”

The company is however anxious to avoid irritating its user base so is imposing restrictions on the adverts. Users will have to click on the advert, rather than just rolling a mouse over it, and the expanded adverts are limited to double the width or height of the text advert.

Users will also be able to shut the expanded advert at any time and can even block them altogether using Google’s Competitive Ad Filter.

Currently the adverts will only be available to advertisers in the United States but, if successful, they are likely to be expanded out to other markets.

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When people hear about online marketing, they often think of two of the more popular methods that a company can use to enhance its visibility on the Web: organic (natural) search engine optimization and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. In an ideal world, you would use both strategically to maximize your site’s profile. However, budgetary constraints often make this impossible, and trying to do both on a limited budget or with minimal resources can result in neither campaign producing ideal results. In this case, it’s usually better to focus on one or the other. But which is best for you?

Organic Search Engine Optimization

Organic search engine optimization campaigns offer several distinct advantages over pay-per-click advertising campaigns, as many recent studies have shown. What follows is a brief listing of some of the findings.

Propensity to Click

Study after study indicates people are less likely to click on paid search ads rather than on results from organic search engine optimization. For example, one study found that search users are up to six times more likely to click on the first few organic results than they are to choose any of the paid results[1], while an eye tracking study[2] showed that 50 percent of users begin their search by scanning the top organic results. Other studies have shown that only 30 percent of search engine users click on paid listings, leaving an overwhelming 70 percent who are clicking the organic listings.[3] And a 2003 study found that 85 percent of searchers report clicking on paid links in less than 40 percent of all of their searches, and 78 percent of all respondents claim that they found the information they we searching for through sponsored links just 40 percent of the time.[4]

Trust

Studies are beginning to indicate that the trust level for organic results is much higher than that of paid results, and that paid results are looked upon as a nuisance by some searchers. One study found that only 14 percent of searchers trust paid listings, and 29 percent report being “annoyed” by them.[5] Another study found that 66 percent of customers distrust paid ads.[6] Clearly, it’s not generally a good idea to upset potential customers before they even click on your link.

Value of Visitors

Organic search engine results tend to be seen as non-biased, and they therefore are able to provide visitors that are more valuable. The overall conversion rate, or the rate at which searchers take a desired action on a site, is 17 percent higher for unpaid search results than the rate for paid (4.2% vs. 3.6%).[7] Trends also have shown that more of the sales that result from search engines originated in organic search listings.[8]

Visitors Becoming More Aware of Pay-Per-Click as Advertising

As more and more people turn to the Internet for research and information, more searchers are becoming aware of paid results as a marketing tool. One study showed that not only are 38 percent of searchers aware of the distinction between paid and unpaid results, 54 percent are aware of the distinction on Google, which is widely recognized as the most popular search engine.[9]

Pay-Per-Click Costs Rising

Meanwhile, pay-per-click costs are rising steadily. Between October 2004 and December 2005, average keyword prices rose from around $25 to just under $55.[10] And the cost of keywords can increase by as much as 100 percent during the holiday season.[11] These costs aren’t going unnoticed either; one study of problems experienced by U.S. companies found that 57 percent of respondents felt that their desired keywords were “too expensive,” while 51 percent expressed concern that they are overpaying for certain keywords.[12] On the other hand, when you outsource to an organic search engine optimization firm, your costs will likely remain more stable than the prices for pay-per-click advertising.

Long Term Results

While a pay-per-click campaign may produce results more quickly than an organic search engine optimization campaign, organic search engine optimization campaigns can give you results that last. When the budget runs out for a pay-per-click campaign, or when your company decides that the pay-per-click campaign should be terminated, the results end as well. With organic search engine optimization, the optimized site content and other changes made to your site can have an impact on your search results until the next change in a search engine’s algorithm, or possibly even beyond.

Relevance

Users also have rated organic search engine results as more relevant than paid results. On Google, 72.3 percent felt that organic results were more relevant, while only 27.7 percent rated paid results as more relevant. Yahoo offered similar results, with 60.8 calling organic results relevant compared to only 39.2 percent for paid.[13]

Pay-Per-Click

While the above statistics may make organic search engine optimization seem the clear choice in all cases, in certain situations it actually can make more sense to do pay-per-click advertising. For those looking for fast results on a small budget, a pay-per-click campaign may be the answer.

Results

As previously stated, the results from pay-per-click advertising are immediate. On the other hand, an organic search engine optimization campaign may take up to three months or more for results to be apparent. In this case, pay-per-click is advantageous for those who are looking to promote an initiative that will go live in a short amount of time, or whose business is seasonal in nature and who only do promotion during certain months of the year.

Budget

Small businesses with extremely tight budgets may find that pay-per-click is a better investment than organic search engine optimization because a pay-per-click campaign will almost always cost less — good search engine optimization companies simply do not work for $100 per month. By limiting a campaign’s keyphrases to highly specific terms relevant to a company’s business, there will not be a large amount of traffic generated, but the traffic that is generated will be specific to the desired result. Plus, choosing such specific phrases can make them less expensive on a per click basis. Moreover, in niche markets with a high average dollar sale, where there’s not a great amount of search activity because the prospect pool is limited, it may not make sense to engage a quality organic search engine optimization firm at several thousand dollars per month when you can instead buy varying niche-specific keyphrases and generate traffic in that way.

Easier to Handle In-House

Non-complicated pay-per-click campaigns can be handled much more easily in-house than an organic search engine optimization campaign. Such campaigns generally involve business to business and high-end, service oriented companies, not those geared toward a large consumer base. Since organic search engine optimization requires a steep learning curve and since there are so many questionable tactics that can put a site at risk of penalization (the tactics that neophytes to search engine optimization are likely to use), it may make more sense to run a pay-per-click campaign. Since you are dealing directly with the engine, i.e., Yahoo Search Marketing and Google AdWords, you don’t need to pay a middleman, and these sites offer helpful tutorials on how to use pay-per-click marketing. Perhaps most importantly, the concept of pay-per-click is much easier to grasp and understand at the outset.

No Contracts

Most organic search engine optimization campaigns require a contract of a certain length because SEO companies know that meaningful results will rarely happen overnight. When dealing with an in-house pay-per-click campaign, obviously a contract is not an issue. But in general, even when you are dealing with an agency, you will not tend to need to sign a contract because the agency instead makes money on a percentage of the spend, although there may be a setup fee. Without a contract, you are free to reallocate marketing dollars elsewhere if you discover that the pay-per-click campaign is not providing the desired results.

Conclusion

Clearly, organic search engine optimization has some distinct advantages over pay-per-click advertising. However, there are undoubtedly certain situations and scenarios where pay-per-click advertising makes more sense fiscally and strategically. With a high enough budget, you would be able to have an effective organic search engine optimization campaign running in tandem with an effective pay-per-click campaign. But if you have to choose one, look into your unique situation before you decide.

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As I sit here brainstorming a new viral social app (or perhaps an existing successful app with a relevant twist) for a client who is launching a TV show, I find that Chris has managed to raise 3.1 million for his venture  “AppsSavvy”, and has already got some heavy hitters onboard. Selling brand exposure and advertising via social apps is a different beast to the traditional methods of selling CPMs, etc. Here’s an interview with Chris via Vator. Stay tuned, as social marketing platforms begin to rival the SE’s as the hippest playgrounds for major brands. Engaging your target audience with a viral social app can potentially be far more effective with brand re-enforcement than serving up an ad impression on a ‘run-of-the-mill’ online network, think about it…

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Social networking sites, primarily Facebook and MySpace, offer some interesting marketing possibilities for higher ed. But which sites to use, and in what ways? There are a number of choices out there. Facebook, MySpace and even LinkedIn are all possibilities. However, what’s the best strategy? If you’re talking about general recruitment, I would forget LinkedIn for your general undergraduate population. LinkedIn is a possibility for certain kinds of specialized masters-level programs that appeal to working people. But, in general, if you’re mainly interested in the undergraduate population, you need to look at Facebook or MySpace or both.

Part of the difference is demographics. The Facebook audience is a little more affluent, a little more male, a little better educated by family background. The MySpace crowd is somewhat the opposite…. To understand some of the reasoning behind this, one has to look at how these social frameworks evolved.

Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg whilst he was a student at Harvard, and spawned from him hacking into the administration records and sharing the student profiles across campus. He was told that it wasn’t possible, and he very quickly proved otherwise.

MySpace was hatched by the former ResponseBase team within Intermix, and thus the team had a strong background in direct e-mail marketing and CPA tactics. Once MySpace had acquired its first few million users, it could then rely on pure viral effects.

So, moving right along…

Ideally you need to pick an initial site that most closely fits the demographics you’re interested in, develop that, and see what happens. The most important thing in developing a site on [Facebook or MySpace] is not to close off the ability of people to respond and to add content directly to the site. For instance, Facebook has the “wall” where people can write comments. Some colleges and universities turn that off because they’re afraid that people will write not-nice things about them. If you’re going to do that, you might as well not do Facebook at all, because that goes against the whole grain of what a site like that is for.

Let’s think about the differences between recruiting traditional students straight out of high school, and targeting the more mature market (which is quite popular in the current economical climate).

According to the study by Pew Internet survey called Pew Internet on Adults and Social Media, 57 percent of adults from 25 to 34 maintain their own social networking sites, and 75 percent of adults 18 to 24 do. That’s essentially people still in college. But consider that 57 percent of adults from 25 to 34–that’s prime recruitment territory for adult students, masters programs, and things of that sort. That percentage is only going to go up. The percentage above age 34 goes down pretty quickly.

People in higher ed tend to gravitate more immediately to Facebook and look down their noses on MySpace somewhat. There’s information out there about the demographics of each group. You need to look at it and make a realistic decision about which one is best for you.

For the working professional, LinkedIn is a good source. It’s much smaller in terms of participants than MySpace or Facebook, but it’s an entirely different kind of site. It’s much bigger than Twitter right now, but I don’t know if it will stay that way…

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Make more money with Pay Per Click advertising 

You’ve got the perfect website, now you want to make some money. Does it seem like you’re having problems attracting customers? Are you spending money, but not making any?

Then you need to advertise and one of the best methods, with the fastest results, is a PPC or pay per click campaign. This type of advertising uses keywords and phrases to the max. Businesses that want just a campaign will need to establish applicable keywords that are directly associated with their particular business. This way when customer type in a particular phrase or keyword for a search, they will be led right to you.

One must use caution though because some keywords are quite expensive. You may be better off bidding for a less desired keyword that is still applicable to your site.

If a PPC campaigns seem a bit overwhelming you can consider hiring a consultant to manage your campaign. Consultants are experts that know how to put together a strategic plan after assessing a clients needs. Thus bringing large profits.

Of course, the more keywords you have the more chances customers will click on your site. Software, such as Atlas Search (formerly Atlas OnePoint or GoToast) or Bid Rank can help with the bidding and purchasing of keywords and will track your keyword listings.

Complete the needed research before starting a PPC campaign. There a large variety of PPC search engines to choose from. Most PPC search engines charge a monthly rate. Lesser known engines will be much more cost effective. Of course, if payment is not made then your listings will promptly be removed from their engines.

Potential profits are on the horizon by starting a PPC campaign. With a good list of keywords and wise PPC campaign managment, you’ll be generating more revenue with a healthy ROI compared to more traditional methods.

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Link building has always been a hot topic. In the beginning of the web hyperlinks were virtually the only way to get visitors to a site, because search engines were in their infancy. When search engines grew to be the major source of the web traffic, links didn’t lose their weight, as search algorithms started to rank sites according to the quantity and quality of their incoming links. And today links become increasingly important with the growing significance of the new Web 2.0 social networks.

Link Popularity Building Strategies

Thus, links rule the Internet. Once a routine task of a webmaster, link building has emerged itself into a full scale industry with millions of dollars in turnover. Ranking algorithms perceive links as a proxy for a human judgment, or a user’s positive endorsement of a page. The idea is as follows: a user discovers a page, likes its content, links to the page, and the page gets higher ranking. This is the so-called ‘natural way’ of acquiring links.

The natural way of acquiring link works is too slow and can be pretty unfair. New pages on big and established websites are far more likely to be discovered by web users, and these pages will get the major part of the new links (like 90%); while new pages on fresh sites will get trinkets. This is a serious defect of the link ranking system which is discussed more in details in my article Popularity Ranking Faults.

Since the natural way of getting links for a new website can take forever, some additional boost is required. There are many strategies of link building able to ensure you some initial ranking and exposure, which are necessary to make the ‘natural way’ work. Some of these strategies can be very tricky and do more harm than use. So it is critically important to keep in mind the following tips of link building.

Link Building Tips

Be a user when building links . The point is to make your link exchanges look like they are acquired the natural way. Make sure that your links appear in places where search engine expect them to be. This should be pages relevant to your content. Link must be in the page copy or in a sidebar possibly among the other links pointing to pages also relevant to your topic. The anchor text must look naturally - so no keyword stuffing.

Analyze your own motives of linking to the sites you like. What motivates you to cite a web resource? Is it a collection of online tools or handy tutorials? Or may be it is a provoking title? Apply this ‘reverse engineering’ to your pages, and use unique interesting content to attract links.

Avoid things that can damage your reputation in the eyes of search engines. No link farms, suspicious looking websites or poor quality link exchanges. Forget the reciprocal links - they no longer have any significant weight. Do not participate in three-way or similar linking schemes - these attempts to disguise reciprocal linking are easily to detect. NASA managed to get a man on the Moon with computers less powerful than a GameBoy, so why do you think Google can’t discover link triangles with all the computing resources at its disposal?

Buying links. This practice is pretty much discouraged by Google, because it undermines the idea of the proxy for human judgment. So you have to be especially savvy when buying links. Avoid link trading sites or any site publicly announcing that is sells links. Don’t mix buying links with paid advertising. You pay for an advertisement on a high traffic page expecting visitors referred by your ad. Buying links has a different purpose - increasing your link popularity.

Do not be obsessed with backlinks. There is an intense focus on link building but not enough focus of content creation. Links must reflect the quality of content. If you think your site has not enough incoming links, you should think about how to improve the quality of content and make it more appealing, not about more link exchanges.

Link penalties. Many people are afraid to get penalized for linking or being linked by fishy websites. If there is a need to put a link to a site which you do not want to be related with, use rel ‘nofollow’. Google confirms that this attribute is critical in link analysis, so you should be fine. Links from dubious sources to your site are out of your control and all the major search engines assure that they don’t punish people for that. However too many links from such sites (like tens of thousands) can bring an unwanted attention of search engine quality teams. They can ban your site if they found you responsible for boosting your rankings, but you can always submit reinclusion.

To sum up
Make your linking strategy look natural. Avoid the known patterns of artificial link building and do not obsess with links at the expense of content creation.

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Here are a few ground rules that will save you a lot of work in the long run
As an online marketer, website owner and editor, I’m exposed to a huge number of articles every single day of the week. The importance of quality article writing is paramount, and so is the need to follow some basic common sense. Here’s what a friend of mine had to say (he’s an article directory owner):

“I sometimes receive complaints from authors who are angered by the fact that their article has not been published, which leads me to believe that there are still a lot of people out there who do not understand article marketing, nor the role that directories play… “

Hmmmm…
For those who are not finding success with articles, or for those considering starting out, here are a few ground rules that will save you a lot of work in the long run and will likely get your article marketing career off to a much more auspicious start.

Read the article directory’s specific terms of service and guidelines. This may seem like a boring, tedious and long winded waste of your valuable time but in the long term it will save you hours of frustration and wasted effort. All directories set their own rules and some are stricter than others. Most directories labor under a huge number of submissions and the work of sifting through them is often the job of one individual. This means that if your opening paragraph or introductory statement is poorly written or contains mistakes, that is as far as the editor will go before hitting the delete key. The luxury of time to edit an author’s mistakes or to decline an article as opposed to deleting it, is one that most editors do not have.

Mass submissions are usually viewed as spam. Let’s face it, none of us are capable of writing over 200 articles in a day - I would say that even producing more than ten would be a pretty amazing feat of productivity. It should come as no surprise to those submitting large numbers of articles in a 24 hour period to find that they are all deleted. Article directory software usually allows for quick erasure of such submissions, so if you don’t want your work to fall victim to mass deletion, don’t mass submit. All that is needed is a little common sense. If you are using a submission service, set the option to stagger your submissions over a longer period of time.

Proof read your articles. If you don’t know what this means, look it up! If your writing is riddled with spelling errors, poor structure, punctuation horrors and grammatical butchery, don’t be surprised if none of them get published. I could write thousands of words on the most common mistakes seen in people’s writing. These usually involve spelling and grammar. Spell check your articles, even if you think you’re perfect, you will often be surprised at the mistakes you make. If you tend to misspell a word regularly, you will never correct it unless you make yourself aware of it.

If you are of the opinion that these things don’t matter (after all, people will know what you mean!) then think again. If you want to write and, more importantly, see your work published and picked up by other website owners and bloggers, you need to demonstrate an ability to write well.

As an example, all the “SEO experts” who talk about search engine optimisation (sic) but don’t even understand that being able to spell their claimed occupation correctly would lend a little more credibility to their claims. Just for the record, most words ending in “ize” use a “z” and not an “s”. This is a very common mistake, but it would be corrected by the use of a spell checker, as would so many others.

If you want to write with authority, you have to be able to exhibit basic literacy. Yes, this is important and should be borne in mind by those who eulogize about “the Queen’s English”, thus making themselves look even more foolish than those they chastise. (a good example of a word that does actually end in “ise”) Regardless of who is on the throne, it is always “the King’s English”.

None of us are perfect and this is not a lecture on grammar and spelling, no matter how needed it might be.

If you are tempted to use PLR articles, even if you rewrite them in an attempt to make them unique, remember that you will be competing with all the other shortcut seekers who are doing the same thing. It’s another shortcut to the delete key for a lot of directories.

When it comes to the resource box, it is quite amazing how many authors defeat their entire purpose by making a mess of this vital section. If the article directory in question allows one, two or three live Hyperlinks, make good use of them. Think about your anchor text very carefully. In other words don’t say……to find out more click here and Hyperlink the words “click here”. The resource box is where you need to give readers a compelling reason to visit your site(s) but it is also the one place you can make the most of good keywords as the anchor text in your links.

Use the resource box wisely and take full advantage of everything the directory is offering you by way of promotional tools. Adding your URL without making it a live link is a pointless waste of time if the directory allows you to use Hyperlinks in your resource box. Conversely, adding more than the quota of permitted links will probably result in deletion of your work.

Another thing to watch is linking directly to affiliate programs. Read the directory’s policies on this point or again, you may well find yourself on the cutting room floor. Many directories will stipulate that you may only link to affiliate programs indirectly by referring readers to your own site or domain. Some do not allow straight redirect links either.

Relevancy is also an issue here too. In other words, submitting a PLR piece about gardening and linking to your MLM program is not very helpful or wise, just one more recipe for deletion.

I should finish by saying that yes, you can churn out badly written articles to your heart’s content, just don’t be surprised at the results.  

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As more consumers browse the Web on their cell phones, the No. 1 search engine must cope with less space to place ads…

Google’s biggest threat may not be Microsoft (MSFT) or Yahoo! (YHOO).

No, one of the most formidable challenges facing Google (GOOG) is likely sitting in your pocket or purse. It’s your cell phone, and it will put added pressure on Google and other Internet companies to revamp the way they handle online marketing.

As more people use cell phones and their tiny glass screens to gain access to the Internet, Google and its fellow online advertisers will have less space, or what’s called ad inventory, to place marketing messages for customers. Google makes money selling ad inventory. And its ad inventory is diminished on a cell phone.

iPhone as Tipping Point

Google can now fit about 10 ads on a standard computer screen. (If you look at Google search results on a PC monitor, paid ads are the listings at the very top and along the right.) But on your cell phone, if you type in a search query at google.com you get only one or two paid ads in response.

Imagine the horror that would befall your business if a large slice of what you sell suddenly disappeared. A similar fate could befall companies that depend on online advertising, as small screens become the gateway to the Internet.

Of course, no one’s suggesting that consumers will abandon standard computer screens overnight. And early research shows that mobile advertising may be more effective than standard online advertising, suggesting that it will be more lucrative for the companies that rely on it. Still, the shift is coming fast enough that Google must get prepared.

It was Apple (AAPL), a frequent Google collaborator, that tipped the trend. Consumer use of mobile Internet in the U.S. has longed trailed Asia and Europe, where standardized cell networks made it easier for handset makers to produce gadgets that tap the Web at blazingly fast speeds. But in the summer of 2007, Apple rocked America by launching the iPhone. The computer maker wasn’t the first to put the Web on phones, but for many consumers, the iPhone made the experience more robust.

Almost two-thirds of Americans have had some experience with mobile Internet use, and the adoption trend is most pronounced among teens and young adults, according to Pew Research Center. About 60% of adults 18 to 29 use text messaging every day, compared with only 14% of their parents. Nearly one-third of young adults use mobile Internet. This is the future, because people take their media habits with them as they age.

Why Google Wants In on Cell Phones

So, as Apple and demographic trends thrust the mobile Internet upon us, how will advertisers and we consumers of electronics respond?

Google will try to expand ad “shelf space,” especially by redesigning cell-phone software. In November, Google announced it was launching an Open Handset Alliance to design a new operating system, code-named Android, which would provide a “truly open and comprehensive platform” for cell-phone users. A few scratched their heads as to why Google would get into the cell-phone interface business. But now it’s clear; Web screens will soon be two inches wide, and Google wants a say in what fits on that tiny screen.

Our bet is that the new Android interface will encourage mobile device users to flick through multiple layers or pages, similar to the iPhone album-art menu. This will create more room for ads. Expanding the visual ad inventory will be crucial for Google, as evidenced by the recent announcement that it will begin selling small display ads on cell-phone screens.

Another implication is that consumers may have to start paying for “free” stuff. Sure, there’s a lot that’s free on the Web now, as many, including Chris Anderson of Wired, have noted. Yet, even Anderson notes that most “free” content models really just transfer the hidden cost from you to third-party advertisers, who subsidize your content in hopes of getting attention. If online social media such as Twitter, Facebook, or Digg can’t figure out ways to entice money from advertisers, they’ll have to grab it from you.

More Personal Ads on the Way

Our hunch is that free content systems may stick to the big Web pages, where more ads can fit. For tiny screens, systems such as Twitter that work well in small detail will
eventually have to charge, make money some other way, or go away. Consumers push back on paying for something that is already free, so the only solution we see is to keep ads very minimal—and very personal.

Which brings us to one of the biggest implications of wider use of the mobile Web. Advertisers will increasingly rely on personalization. Today, collections of Web sites known as ad networks track consumer behavior across multiple sites, and then shoot targeted ads to users. This behavioral targeting approach, found via WPP Group’s (WPPGY) 24/7 Real Media, Blue Lithium, Tremor Media, and other Web networks, often results in ad response rates 5 to 10 times higher than standard banner ads.

Personalization works, and several companies are working on ways to make it work better. Microsoft recently filed a patent application that would use offline data such as credit-card transactions, estimated physical location (from cell-phone towers), and TV viewing habits to serve you a customized ad the next time you go online. The fact that you bought cleats for your kids this morning, went to a high school football game in the afternoon, and turned on ESPN when you got home would conceivably trigger a personalized sports ad on your cell phone.

Better Marketing Through Profiling

ComScore (SCOR), the Web site ranking service, is taking a different approach, using “biometric signature” profiling to match the keystrokes and mouse-click patterns of different users on a single computer. The idea here is to get beyond the gadget to the individual user who touches it. The system can identify whether Dad or Mom or Sis is sitting at the keyboard, and then match the individual user with a rich profile of demographic data to improve ad targeting.

Pondering all this, we called Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, to see what concerns privacy groups might have about a future where marketers track your every move. “Personalization is actually a great idea,” Rotenberg said, “but it should be done in a way that doesn’t require detailed data collection” about an individual.

It’s a nice hope, Rotenberg’s, that advertising and Google can survive in a world where the ways to reach consumers via glass screens grow smaller and smaller. But we suspect hyperintrusive data profiling is coming fast.

After all, Internet screens will soon be a lot smaller. And no one as rich or as smart as Google gives up so crucial a slice of sales without fighting back.

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1. Do search engines care about the usability of your web pages? Does it make a difference whether your web pages are easy to navigate or not?

A recent patent application from Yahoo indicates that search engines might take a look at your web page design. The document includes a long list of factors that search engines can consider to determine the usability of a web page.

Why can usability be important to search engines?

The patent application contains a short paragraph that explains why search engines might consider the usability of web pages:

“It can be important to make web pages easy and pleasing to use, which can be particularly important for web pages it is desired to monetize. [...].

If such web pages are not easy and pleasing to use, the money-making potential of those web pages can be jeopardized. One conventional indication of whether a web page is easy and pleasing to use is called ‘clutter’.

Web pages with good usability usually have a higher conversion rate than cluttered web pages. Web pages with good usability often have a higher quality than other web pages and search engines try to return high quality web pages in their search results.

Which factors can search engines analyze to determine the clutter of your pages?

Yahoo’s patent applications provides a list of 51 web page elements that can be analyzed to determine the clutter of a web page:

• Total number of links
• Total number of words
• Total number of images (non-ad images)
• Image area above the fold (non-ad images)
• Dimensions of page
• Page area (total)
• Page length
• Total number of tables
• Maximum table columns (per table)
• Maximum table rows (per table)
• Total rows
• Total columns
• Total cells
• Average cell padding (per table)
• Average cell spacing (per table)
• Dimensions of fold
• Fold area
• Location of center of fold relative to center of page
• Total number of font sizes used for links
• Total number of font sizes used for headings
• Total number of font sizes used for body text
• Total number of font sizes
• Presence of “tiny” text
• Total number of colors (excluding ads)
• Alignment of page elements
• Average page luminosity
• Fixed vs. relative page width
• Page weight (proxy for load time)
• Total number of ads
• Total ad area
• Area of individual ads
• Area of largest ad above the fold
• Largest ad area
• Total area of ads above the fold
• Page space allocated to ads
• Total number of external ads above the fold
• Total number of external ads below the fold
• Total number of external ads
• Total number of internal ads above the fold
• Total number of internal ads below the fold
• Total number of internal ads
• Number of sponsored link ads above the fold
• Number of sponsored link ads below the fold
• Total number of sponsored link ads
• Number of image ads above the fold
• Number of image ads below the fold
• Total number of image ads
• Number of text ads above the fold
• Number of text ads below the fold
• Total number of text ads
• Position of ads on page

According to the patent application, Yahoo might also consider the presence of animated and flashing ads and the average ad luminosity.

What does this mean to your web pages?

Good website usability can greatly improve the conversion rate of your website. If your website gets many visitors but only a few sales then it might be that your web pages are too cluttered and that you have to improve your website design.

Google has a similar patent application with the name “Detecting and rejecting annoying documents” so it seems that good website design becomes more and more important if you want to get high search engine rankings.

The HTML code of your web pages must make a good impression to search engines. If search engines find that your web pages don’t have the right content then these pages cannot get high search engine rankings.

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I don’t normally review new IM products so quickly but this one has saved me about a days work on my adwords campaigns over the last two hours. Now I only purchased it 3 hours ago so the learning curve is not steep. In fact its the opposite. Its downright easy as pie…

A new PPC tool I’ve tested for the last 6 hours is Google Assassin. It has a dashboard called the Affiliates Den which is stacked with heaps of very powerful, easy to use and time saving tools for Pay-Per-Click advertisers (especially Clickbank Affiliates although I don’t really use it for that).

I’ve used this tool on one of my clients Adwords campaigns for Fitness courses this morning and I’ve doubled the CTR already and lowered the click costs by over 40% using some of the tools. This is in about half the time it normally takes me.

The Google Assassin is the ‘brainchild’ of the ‘Day Job Killer’ team, led by Chris McNeeney, who is the best-selling author of the most popular online guide to making money with Pay-Per-Click.

Chris and the team have achieved an impressive record of success with their online guides on selling Clickbank products and have collectively sold almost 20,000 ebooks through Clickbank and establishing a solid reputation for explaining some of the most vital secrets of making money online.

Chris has spent the last 2 years providing affiliates with the very best techniques and information to make money from their PPC campaigns. During this time, it was clear to their team that there were some big problems facing anyone wanting to make money online using PPC advertising. In particular, there was a lack of effective tools to help affiliates choose the right product to promote, undertake proper keyword research, and create/manage winning PPC campaigns that really make money.

This realisation led to several months of intensive research and software design work by the team and their programmers to create the ultimate affiliate online resource. And the result of all that hard work is the powerful array of tools which you will find within the Affiliates Den. These include a “Clickbank Marketplace” which has a search function, making it easy to promote the hottest selling products from the digital retail giant.

Now as I’ve said I’m not using this for ClickBank yet. I’m mainly using it for my own adwords campaigns and also i’m about to launch two completely unrelated eBook products. This tool is well worth it for the price of $67 Per month.

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