Some research by Comscore, an online traffic measurement company, came out last week. It was covered in some depth over on Techcrunch.

The research is based on US traffic, but it applies here too.

Comscore have basically found that whilst the number of searches rose last year by 68%, the number of clicks on search advertisements went up by just 18%.

Here’s a graph that shows it all:

Comscore are attributing the relative decline in clicks compared to searches to the increasing length of search queries. They say that as the number of 3, 4 or 5 word searches increases, (something we’ve discussed before) adverts are less likely to appear because advertisers are less like to have those word combinations in their AdWords account.

Comscore say: “And this apparently reduces the likelihood that an advertiser has bid to have his/her ad included in the results page from these longer queries, due to paid search advertising strategies that limit ad coverage, such as Exact Match, Negative Match, and bid management software campaign optimization.”

Techcrunch think that this doesn’t explain it enough. They reckon that clicks on adverts have declined because many US advertisers have reduced or stopped their AdWords campaigns.

They say: “Sharper Image, Wickes Furniture, Levitz, Foot Locker, Wilson’s Leather, Ann Taylor, Zales, Mervyn’s, Macy’s, Circuit City and a ton of other retailers are either shutting down entirely or closing lots of stores… All of these companies used to spend tons of money on paid search ads. Those budgets don’t exist any more.”

Another idea is that as Google gets better at displaying more relevant results pages (SERPs), maybe users are less drawn to the sponsored AdWords ads because they find what they want in the organic listings. I haven’t got any evidence for that, it just seems like logical conclusion.

Whatever the reason, once again its a good opportunity for your to get your website to the top of the SERPs. Make sure you are ranking highly for the specific search phrases that people will use that are relevant to your website. Follow our Search Engine Optimisation guide (SEO) to help you achieve that.

Do you find yourself clicking less on ads these days? Or have you never done so? Leave us a comment below.

Here’s a good news economic story to cheer up Alistair Darling.

And good news for website builders in the midst of this recession. Whilst the national news rakes over the budget and  talks of doom and gloom, of industries and sectors in decline with thousands being made redundant, online advertising still growing. Whilst advertising is just one way that online businesses make money, its continued growth can provide cheer to any in the sector.

The figures this time, as reported on Search Engine Land, are from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). They say that in 2008, online advertising grew 10.6% to reach $23.4 billion. Within online advertising, the niche showing highest growth is search engine advertising, which now makes up 46% of the sector.

These graphs tell the story visually. First off, the annual growth of online advertising from 2007 to 2008.

And here’s the same info going back a bit further, check out that growth!

Of course online advertising can mean lots of different things: it could be search engine, banners advertising, or any other commercial messages which you see on a website. So where is the money spent?

So one thing is clear: If you’re building a website, and business model involves selling advertising, then there are plenty of reasons to feel positive!

How has the downturn affected your business, revenue, or even website traffic? Leave us a comment below.

On average, almost half of all traffic that arrives on a website comes through search engines. This is according to recent research published by Internet traffic measurement company Hitwise UK.

Whilst in January 2008 search engines contributed 37.1% of total traffic to websites, by January 2009 this had climbed to a whopping 40.5%.

Here’s a graph from HitWise:

Apart from anything, this shows that if you want more visitors to your website, you need to make sure that your website appears high up in the search engine results page (SERPs). Read our guide to search engine optimisation to boost your website up the SERPs.

The dominance of search engines in website traffic is a huge opportunity for small businesses. Big brands used to be able to dominate the media landscape. What small company has the money to buy advertising on television, in national newspapers or in glossy magazines? But when it comes to search engines the game has changed. You don’t need big  budgets to reach out to potential customers, just an understanding of how search works, and a product or service that people want.

The flip side is that search has made it harder for large companies to ‘own’ consumer interest. Just because you’re a big brand it doesn’t mean you’re going to appear high in the search results. And spending lots of money on search doesn’t necessarily mean lots of traffic. A well optimised website of a small business or an individual will beat a poorly optimised big company website every time.

Just search for a common household product and you’ll see that the results page is full of unknown websites and unknown brands. None of these could afford to buy airtime of on TV. Before search engines, how would these brands have been able to reach potential customers?

The other interesting information arising from this research is the way in which we are now using search engines. 90% of the top 1,500 terms were brand specific. This means that people are using search engines to navigate the web, rather than typing a website’s address directly into the address bar. That’s the same sort of user behviour as seen in Japan, where people almost always use search engines rather than type in a domain name.

Do you a have a big budget competitor that you’ve managed to beat in the SERPs, using the WebEden website making tool? Leave us a comment below.

Lots of the stuff we’ve been writing about on this blog has been about how to improve your website’s position in the search engine results page. We’ve tried to make it as easy to follow as possible. But not everyone is at the same level, so if there’s one thing that you must do when setting up a website, it is to add your website to Google. Here’s how:

Good luck, and let us know if you have any problems

The domain name industry is gasping this week at the news that the domain Toys.com was sold at auction for an eye watering $5.1m.

As reported over on Techcrunch, the bidding went back and forwards for hours, but the eventual winner was High Street retailer ToysRus.

Of course many are asking: how can a domain name be worth that much to anyone? Lets look at why ToysRus went for it.

1. Getting the address bar traffic

First off, people navigate the web in different ways. As previously mentioned, many type the website address directly into a search engine. Lots of others do the exact reverse, and type a domain name directly into the address bar. So all those millions who are interested in toys and therefore type toys.com into the address bar will now be taken straight to the ToysRus website. If that equates to 1 million people, who each spend £10 at Toys.com, ToysRus will have recouped almost double their original investment.

2. Getting the Search Engine traffic

Those of you have read our search engine optimisation guide will be familiar with the factors that help your website appear high up in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for a particular keyword. One very important way to boost your position in the SERPs for a particular keyword is to have that keyword in your domain name. Now ToysRus can use the toys.com domain name, their opportunities to gain more highly relevant traffic from search engines are improved. A quick look at the Google keyword tool will tell you that there were over 300,000 searches for toys in February alone. Add up all the variations and there are ten times that. If the ToysRus can get just 10% more of this search traffic by using the Toys.com domain, its probably worth the money.

3. ToysRus is a (slightly) confusing name

We’ve all heard of Toys ‘R’ us - they’ve spent enough on television advertising over the years to make sure of that. But if we were all asked to search for their website, how many variations of their name spelling would we get? Here’s just a few that I can think of

Toys r us

toysrus

toys are us

toys ‘r’ us

At the moment these variations and thousands of others are opportunities for ToysRus competitors when it comes to search engine advertising. At the moment ToysRus need to make sure that they are top of the organic and sponsored listings on all the search engines for all the variations of their name. That’s quite a big job - and a big opportunity for competitors to get in and ’steal’ that search engine traffic by appearing at no. 1 instead. Put it this way, if you wanted to buy a Thomas the Tank Engine model and you went to Google and typed in ‘thomas the tank engine toys are us’ and another website (website X) appeared in the top position for this search term (Toys are us), AND they had a Thomas the Tank Engine cheaper than ToysRus, who would you buy from?

Most people would carry on looking for the real ToysRus website, but a significant minority would by from Website X.

And if their shopping experience was good (the product was cheap, delivery was free and on time, customer service was clear) they might well look to buy from website X second time around. Maybe they buy 5 products a year… for 10 years… and tell 2 friends who do the same… You can see that pretty soon company X is reaping the rewards for getting their website to number 1 for the search term ‘toys are us’. And the money spent with company X is money that isn’t spent at ToysRus. Even though the person originally wanted to buy from ToysRus. The effort and expense of defending the ambiguous ToysRus name is huge.

4. Owning the Real Estate

At the moment in the offline world many turn to ToysRus when buying a toy. But for a variety of reasons (they don’t like the brand, the shops are too big, they’re often out of town) many don’t. If ToysRus can dominate the online toy buying market by effectively blending the ToysRus brand with the generic ‘toys.com’ domain, their dominance of Internet toy shopping may be even greater than their high street success. Only time will tell.

So you can see that $5.1m may be a small price for this particular domain name.

How much do you reckon yours is worth? Remember, you get a free domain with all max packages and above. If you’re inspired by the toys.com story then search for a domain name now!

Now we’re going to look at inbound links. We’ve broken this into two parts because its very important. In this first part we’re going to look at the theory behind inbound links. Part 2 will cover how to go about actually getting inbound links.

The inbound link theory

What Google will never tell you is that for all the ‘best practice’ and ‘SEO guidelines’ that you follow when building your website, inbound links are where high rankings are won and lost. Inbound links – from other websites to yours – are the single most important factor that determines your website’s position in the Search Engine Results page (SERP).

More accurately, inbound links make up about 70% of the ‘importance’ of your website in the eyes of the search engine.

Why won’t Google tell you this? It’s because they want you to build a website for their spiders that’s as easy to read as possible. They don’t want you to hijack the system using this simple method.

Why are inbound links important? It’s all about how Google sees the Internet. For them, the web is like a topographical landscape with hills and valleys, dips and bumps. Within every subject area, there are hills or ‘authority websites’ that people look towards for new information. They have lots of new and relevant content, so many other websites link to them, as we all want to be referred to a good source of information.

Well known authority sites are the BBC.co.uk, Adobe.com, CNN.com etc. In your market an authority website might well be the website that is associated with your industry magazine, or a well used forum.

A link from one website to another is like a vote from one to the other. It’s like the website saying ‘I trust this website I am linking to’. So when lots of websites link to a single website, lots of websites are voting for that website. Google thinks ‘this website is obviously a trusted source of information; I therefore want it to appear in the SERPS, since I also want to give people trusted information’.

The next question Google faces is, ‘OK, I want it to appear in the SERPs, but for which search query?’ To find the answer to that Google looks at the words used as the link from the first website to the second. This is called the anchor text.

Just to illustrate what I mean, the words ‘build a website‘ are a link to the home page of webeden.co.uk, using the anchor text ‘build a website’.

Google will make that website (the one that is linked to) appear high up in the SERPs for the keywords used in the anchor text of the link.

If you think about it, this is very logical. For example, if I was writing here about ‘blueberry muffins’ and I wanted to link to a great recipe for blueberry muffins, it would make sense for me to link using the anchor text ‘blueberry muffin recipe’. This not only tells you, the reader, where to find the information, but it also describes what that information is.

By creating this link, I will be boosting that blueberry muffin recipe website (the one that I am linking to) up the SERPs for the search query ‘blueberry muffin recipe’.

It’s important that these links are one way, and not reciprocal. If website ‘A’ and website ‘B’ link to each other, it’s like both saying ‘I vote for the other one’, which is the same as a vote for yourself. And a vote for yourself doesn’t really count for anything!

That’s it for the theory. In the next part of the SEO guide we’ll show you how to get inbound links!