Over the Edge

If you want to sell something, tweaking your organic search is a great place to start. That's the conclusion of a new study (PDF) published by Forbes.

The study found that:

• The tools seen as most effective for generating conversions were SEO (48 percent) email and e-newsletter marketing (46 percent), and pay-per-click/search marketing (32 percent).
• In the coming six months, respondents expect that ad networks will see the biggest declines in allocation of marketing spend; viral marketing and SEO will likely see the biggest increases. Behavioral Targeting is the category that is least likely to see any changes in spend.

Note that "effectiveness" is defined here as generating conversions, not mere page views -- and that SEO is half again more effective than PPC. Notice also that SEO campaigns exceeded expectations of 45 percent of respondents; the next most satisfying tactic -- PPC -- exceeded expectations of only 25 percent of those surveyed.

And one more encouraging thing: the companies Forbes surveys understood that the important thing about search isn't traffic (37 percent) or SERP position (34 percent.) It's conversions: 70 percent.

Organic search = money. Remember that.

Rob Kelly, as best as we can put it together, is a guy I didn't quite get to work with CMP. He was a senior adviser to the SEO out on the West Coast while I was editing NetGuide in New York. Now, he's off building building a bunch of interesting sounding new companies.

Rob interviewed me the other day about SEO, and it came out pretty well, although I was talking a little faster than he could type. Click through for the whole deal, but here are a couple of pullquotes:

Ranking in the SERP (Search Results Page) is meaningless. Anyone can get to the first page for something. What I always watch for is traffic, and changes in traffic. I care about the conversion of what happens once someone hits my page…clicking the buy button or the ad. I can rank #1 on a search of “cellphone”…but if they come to my page and don’t convert, all I’ve done is cost my company money. If I can generate meaningful traffic to my reader, to my customer…that’s the win.

SEO isn’t an event, it’s a process... Too often, employers aren’t emotionally equipped to understand what SEO really is — it’s a quality process… that involves the entire company. When Toyota decided they were going to out-quality Detroit, they didn’t hire a quality guy and stick him in a cube. They hired someone who would come in and look at the operations of the entire company and build a process that baked quality in. And the best companies that do SEO, bake SEO in.