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At a crossroads with your search marketing?
What good are high rankings on obscure keywords when you are getting little or no traffic? Leave the crossroads and follow the latest trends on how search-targeted strategies can drive more qualified leads to your site.

Welcome to the InfoSearch Media Blog and enjoy our expert advice contained within our posts.

All the Web traffic in the world won't do much good without online conversions

"By providing valuable textual content, a site can not only increase its search engine visibility, but also improve the site's conversion rate." - SearchEngineWatch.com

Everyone wants Web traffic, right? But all the traffic in the world won't do you much good without online conversions. Unfortunately, some SEO companies deliver on their promise to increase website traffic via a variety of black-hat techniques (i.e., keyword spam, doorway pages, nonsense text, etc.), many of which can actually decrease a website's conversion rate by alienating visitors.

Instead of risking a decrease in conversions, opt for SEOs that use optimization strategies designed to both increase traffic and improve conversion rates. For instance, unique, optimized content is one of the most effective ways to deliver more traffic to your site while simultaneously increasing conversions. This works because truly valuable content - carefully crafted, keyword-rich articles that provide the reader with useful insights and information - is designed with both the search engine the end user in mind. You see, not only will this kind of keyword-dense content appeal to the SEs, but it will make a lasting impression on the reader, especially one who is looking for a reliable resource of information as well as a product or potential service-provider.

Author Bio:
Author, Diane Sievert, Content Development Manager for InfoSearch Media, Inc., specializes in helping businesses increase website traffic through quality search-targeted Web Content. Find out how informative Web Content can increase website traffic to your site with a free competitive site analysis that makes recommendations on how to dominate your particular online market segment. Or, for more information, visit http://www.infosearchmedia.com.

InfoSearch Media provides a critical calculation for determining SEO budgets
Can you estimate the potential for organic clicks from search engine results pages for keywords? This number is critical if you're trying to figure out how much money to spend on organic SEO.

Good news. There's a simple rule:

Potential organic clicks per month = CPC clicks/day x 1000

CPC clicks/day can be retrieved with the Google Traffic Estimator. The 1000 figure is derived as follows:

1. Assuming four paid links on a SERP, total clicks on paid ads will be four times the Google estimate.
2. There are approximately four times as many clicks on organics as on paid ads.
3. About one in two searches (actually more now) is on Google.

So 4 x 4 x 2 x 30 (days) equals 1000.

For example, clicks on a particular paid ad for "diamond ring" you might run are estimated at about 1000/day by Google, so total potential organic clicks comes out to 1,000,000. (Since one in two users click on nothing, the actual total monthly search volume is double that, or 2,000,000.) At InfoSearch Media we've validated this formula by looking at actual keyphrase rankings and expected click-throughs and matching them against the traffic figures reported by our analytics solutions.

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Author, Bob Myers, Vice President of Operations for InfoSearch Media, Inc., leads a team of Web content specialists helping businesses increase Web traffic through quality search-targeted online text and Web video. Find out how informative Web content can increase website traffic to your site with a free competitive site analysis that makes recommendations on how to dominate your particular online market segment. Or, for more information, visit our website, http://www.infosearchmedia.com.

Website Success Needs Fresh Web Content, Good Linking Structure & Quality Back Links

An abundance of tricks blanket the World Wide Web to get your website at the top of the search engine results, in particular the by means of fast and short term search engine optimization techniques.

I don't know how much it's been repeated throughout the Web and by SEO professionals not to mention there are explicit guidelines that are posted on the major search engines like Google*, MSN* and Yahoo*, but the success of a website begins by applying the following three basic concepts.

Relevant Original Fresh Web Content

Relevant original fresh Web content is exactly what search engines seek. Search engines scour the Web looking for website content such as text, images, video, etc. and attempt to categorize this information in a manner that will bring up the most relevant listings of the searchers query. Each search engine has their own unique method of sorting their databases. Search engines look for fresh content constantly so it is important to have a source of steady content to keep fresh information on your site.

Linking Structure

Great relevant Web content is the beginning of success. Now we need to ensure that we clear the road for the search engines so that they have no problem scanning your pages and getting all the information with ease. This is done by designing a logical linking structure that will not pose any challenges to the search engine's visit. Creating a sound linking structure will also make for a great user experience.

Back links

Now that we have great content and we've developed clear paths to all of our pages its time to make your presence known to the entire Web community. Having websites link back to you is an invitation for Web acceptance, not to mention a certification to the search engines that you are now important. This importance is key in most search engine algorithms. Keep in mind that while any back link you gather is an opportunity for a good steady stream of Web traffic gathering links that are relevant to your website will prove to be much more valuable to your business and to the search engine's determination of your importance.

These three concepts can be examined event further on their own, but keeping these concepts in mind will guarantee you top spots in the search engine listings for years to come. Search engines are always improving, coming up with technology that will filter out any deceptive techniques. If you follow along with this model it's a sure bet for legitimacy in the eyes of your users and a safe place in the search engine algorithms.

A few useful links:

• Google Search Engine Guidelines
• MSN Search Engine Guidelines
• Yahoo Search Engine Guidelines

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Author, Cesar Garcia, SEO Specialist for InfoSearch Media, Inc., specializes in helping businesses implement SEO best practices and utilize quality search-targeted Web Content to increase website traffic. Find out how informative Web content can increase website traffic to your site with a free competitive site analysis that makes recommendations on how to dominate your particular online market segment. Or, for more information, visit http://www.infosearchmedia.com.

Web Content Clients Using Old Browsers Should Update To Newer Versions

I have had some clients ask if it makes any difference if their site looks good in a new browser version. I have included actual examples of the traffic received by two small business sites via the most common browsers and versions. One showed 99 percent of Web traffic from the US and the other, 99 percent traffic outside the US.

Updating your website templates is not necessary to make your InfoSearch Media website content pages work to drive traffic. But it does ensure your site's Web content templates are cross-browser and version-compatible to work best with the newest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox, and it can make the experience for visitors more user-friendly as well as generate more stickiness to the site.

Our team at InfoSearch Media can help clients who are using old browsers update to the newer versions (at least IE 6.0) when viewing their website so that they can see what other people see. We just provided a client with a template that looks similar in the newest versions of IE and Firefox and we can do it for almost any site! The template we updated is also verified with W3 (World Wide Web).

99 percent US Based Web Traffic:

Versions of Internet Explorer (US Based):

99 percent International Web Traffic:

Versions of Internet Explorer (international):

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Author, Gregory Hillman, Senior Project Manager for InfoSearch Media, Inc., specializes in helping businesses increase website traffic through quality search-targeted Web Content. Find out how informative Web Content can increase website traffic to your site with a free competitive site analysis that makes recommendations on how to dominate your particular online market segment. Or, for more information on updating your website content template, visit http://www.infosearchmedia.com.

The Web video rocket ship has launched and is headed for the stratosphere. What does this mean for small and medium businesses and their websites? Specifically, how does video fit into their Internet marketing and search engine strategies?

Remember the basics of search engine marketing. First, people have to find you - perhaps by searching for "vintage jewelry". Then they have to convert into paying customers - perhaps by buying that rhinestone necklace. Can a website video help with either or both of these steps?

There's been so much buzz recently around video search - all the big search engines offer it - that you'd think it was a great way for consumers to find your Website Videos and be drawn to your site. But there are two problems with this theory. First, few consumers actually use video search. Second, video search engines still only index a small fraction of the video content on the web - mostly video on well-known video sites such as YouTube or Yahoo Video.

That brings us back to good old-fashioned web search. Can it find videos? Yes, to an extent. All the big engines have recently introduced universal search - the names they use vary - which mixes images, video, news and other types of content into their main search results listings. In other words, they've opened up more space on the first results page for media types. Can you leap from page 92 to page one by putting up video and getting listed in the universal results?

Highly unlikely. In reality, very few queries actually return images or video. The images or videos have to rank *very* high in relevancy to make it into the top results. You can even include the keyword "video" in your search query and still not get any videos in the results listings. And the problem remains that few videos outside the big video sites are indexed in the first place.

The bottom line: the easiest way for your target audience to find videos on your site is through a web search that finds the HTML page where the video lives. Put another way, the way to use videos to attract visitors is to surround them with relevant textual content and tag them correctly, so that the page where they reside can be found more easily.

First, put the entire transcript of the video, if relevant, on the same web page as the video. Put additional verbiage describing or promoting the video near where the video is embedded. Add the same alt and title attributes to the embed tag that you would to an image. InfoSearch Media also recommends putting metadata about the video directly within the HTML page as an XML island - we use an extended Dublin Core - although it's not known precisely how engines will react to this addition. This will be invisible to the browser. If you're embedding Flash-encoded video, by all means take advantage of the Flash metadata fields such as title and description. The search engines may index these fields as they rank the page with the video.

Of course, you can also put your video on YouTube, and even serve it from there. If you add good YouTube metadata (tags), people will find the video when searching either on YouTube directly, or any of the video engines. And you can provide "more information" that includes a link to bring people back to your website.

All of which is well and good, but will still play no more than a 5 percent or 10 percent role overall in increasing your website's visibility. That brings us to the second part of the SEM equation: online conversions. This is where video really shines.

Video is a great medium for providing a quick, compelling introduction to your company, product, or service. That will give consumers a good feeling about you and your brand, not to mention keeping them on your site longer, increasing the chances they'll buy. A funny or quirky video may spread virally, giving you backlinks. Such a corporate intro video demands higher production values, which can drive up the price into the thousands, but this will be money well spent. Additional lower-cost videos can be used to provide specific product or usage information, but still engage the consumer and create stickiness.

There you have it. Video is now accessible price-wise to any small or medium business owner. By all means consider video for your site, first and foremost as a way to engage and communicate to users, and to tell them about yourself and your products. Video can also have a meaningful - if not huge - traffic-generation effect if implemented correctly.

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Author, Bob Myers, Vice President of Operations for InfoSearch Media, Inc., leads a team of Web content specialists helping businesses increase Web traffic through quality search-targeted online text and Web video. Find out how informative Web Content can increase website traffic to your site with a free competitive site analysis that makes recommendations on how to dominate your particular online market segment. Or, for more information, visit our website, http://www.infosearchmedia.com.

Online marketers continue to lose ground in local search results and lost Web traffic as the savvy consumer searches for products and services on a local level in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The consumers are looking to organic search engine placements to find what they want, and marketers continue to play catch up as as the savvy consumer searches for products and services on a local level in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The consumers are looking to organic search engine placements to find what they want, and marketers continue to play catch up as a result of ignoring local search results in the organic search engine listing. Some of the highest valued keywords are local geo-targeted keywords, like “Data Recovery Services Los Angeles” with a pay per click value of $51.18, “Austin Texas DUI Lawyer” at $50.03, and “Mesothelioma Attorneys San Diego” at $50.78. With pay per click values climbing, marketers need to look at geo-targeting and optimizing on a local level with good content to guide the consumer.

Companies are clamoring to join the PPC bandwagon while ignoring the local geo-targeted keywords in the natural search. Everyday I find myself in a conversation convincing Marketing Directors, advertising execs, and small- to medium-sized advertising agencies of the value of localized search keywords, and nearly every time they reply, “I don’t search like that. “I’m not typing in my city (or zip code) when performing a search.”

Many companies are missing the boat everyday. Thousands of searches are performed on a local geo-targeted level, looking for products and services many companies are missing out on the traffic streams in the natural organic search listings, due to the lack of high-quality optimized Web content.

I’m finding that small business owners are grasping the importance of this and are optimizing for local geo-targeted keywords while more regional and national companies are completely ignoring the local search in the organics, but are paying massive amounts of dollars in pay per click and even on banner ads in a quick rush to tap into local markets to show that they are marketing on a local level.

I’ve been listening to new buzzwords from local online media outlets like hyper-local banner networks and such. Consumers are tired of clicking on geo-targeted PPC ads, and even banner ads since they are being directed away from valuable information, and instead to a shopping cart or some lead generation form at the first click, when the reality is the consumer is in a different mindset or simply not at that part of the buying cycle. They simply are not ready to make a purchase and they don’t want to put personal information into a form that in their minds could lead to more junk mail, spam or worse, the dreaded telemarketing call during dinner.

Marketers need to get back to basics when it comes to Internet marketing otherwise they are in for a long painful journey of spending massive amounts of money for no return or very little results. Marketing Directors need to realize the importance of localized organic search and make it a part of their Internet marketing Strategy.

The savvy consumers are looking for the credible source, an informative resource, or some authority on a product or service. They want to read useful information before making a purchasing decision. These searchers are drilling down in the organic search even if it takes them to page eleven of the search results to find the authority in their area.

Marketers need to be patient and consider adding informative content to attract the savvy searcher and most importantly to improve search engine visibility to increase website traffic. This needs to be done in a strategic manner to generate ROI and increase sales. Companies need to look at other outlets specializing in Web content solutions, and not take a quick cut and paste content approach to their Web content, which search engines penalize as duplicate content, and which many others view as plagiarism.

Author Bio: Author, Jon Gursha, Search Traffic Executive for InfoSearch Media, Inc., specializes in helping businesses increase website traffic through quality search-targeted Web Content. Find out how informative Web Content can increase website traffic to your site with a free competitive site analysis that makes recommendations on how to dominate your particular online market segment. Or, for more information, visit http://www.infosearchmedia.com.

Greetings. As the President and CEO I have the honor of kicking off this blog with an inaugural posting. It seems to me that although this blog will cover a variety of topics from experts both from within InfoSearch Media and from elsewhere, what I should be articulating is the central insight which has lead to InfoSearch Media value proposition. Though it took the hard work of many people here at the Company to finally figure it all out, the concept is really very simple. In the on-line world, no matter what kind of content is needed for a website – text, images or video – everyone is simultaneously thinking about website traffic!

This, of course, makes perfect sense. In fact, for most of our eBusiness clients, it is ALL about the traffic. In the past year or so, people have gotten smart about what their business needs. They don’t care about where they “rank” – pretty much everyone has realized that appearing on the first page of search results for a keyword that is never used will not deliver Web traffic (customers) to their business. It is all about the traffic. How much traffic should a customer expect? We decided to aim high. We should be able to deliver better Web traffic results than our customers receive from Google — the accepted gold standard of pay-per-click.

That bold thought triggered a good deal of research around here. At the risk of over-simplifying, we learned that if your site has a Page Rank of 3 or higher and you are paying an average of $0.55 or more per click, then we can deliver traffic more cheaply than Google. And unlike the vague promises often made by SEO companies, we believe we had to develop ways to measure and report exactly how much website traffic we are delivering – just like Google. Then we built an entire product line around that concept – text products that deliver traffic, online video products that deliver traffic – you get the idea. Finally, all we needed was a name for these products. An employee suggested “TrafficBuilder” and we thought that name pretty well summed it all up.

We recognize that each business’ website has different Web traffic requirements and ISHM has created packages to reflect those unique needs. For publishers and certain types of businesses where the written and video content needs to closely follow brand guidelines, Web traffic is accordingly emphasized somewhat less. Again, we will work to match our client’s needs.

As more and more business is done on the Web, businesses are getting smarter about what it takes to win. Makes perfect sense to us at InfoSearch Media.

In the end, most traffic still comes from organic search results, not from advertising. And according to IAB, March 2007, “Consumers are 9 times more likely to click on an organic link.”

• In more than 80% of searches, users go directly to the organic search results, bypassing sponsored links completely. While pay-per-click campaigns offer quick traffic, organic listings deliver long-term results and higher amounts of traffic.
• 80% of Internet users utilize the search engines and directories to find products, services and information.
• Out of which, 90% of all search engines users click results within the first 3 pages.
• 62% of these users click only on the first few results, hence the first 2 pages.
• Only 20% of search engine users click on the sponsored advertisements.

If your business is experiencing the pain of poor quality website traffic, it’s time to consider quality web content, online video and text to lower your marketing costs. Why rent website traffic when you can own it?

With that, I have hereby inaugurated this blog. Stay tuned for expert tips and insights.

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Author, George Lichter, an authority on search engine placement and Web Content Provider in the SEO services industry and President and CEO for http://www.InfoSearchMedia.com, writes on how to increase website traffic. Find out more about our TrafficBuilder products and services and receive a FREE Website Analysis.