So a search engine likes my site - Now what?

This pattern is fast becoming a trend in the realm of Search Engine Optimisation. Website owners are finding that they have plenty of visitors coming to their sites all being pushed their by SEO techniques, Google AdWords and other Pay Per Click traffic generation methods.

The sad part is that all these extra visitors are not necessarily translating into extra enquiries and sales at the same exponential rate that the traffic to the site has increased.

The answer to this particularly perplexing conundrum is actually fairly simple : Search Engines Are Not People.

Search Engines may love your site and it may rank incredibly well in Google and other prominent search engines and get excellent keyword reach and relevancy from all the articles and content that you are posting to your site, but at the end of the day a search engine is not going to enquire about your latest and greatest product. So how do we get around the problem?

There are some very simple guidelines to design your landing pages to which will increase the chances of real people liking what they see and actually engaging further with you :

1. Keep the page simple. People have come through to that page for a specific reason and are looking for a specific thing, don’t complicate the page with tons of other “stuff”, just keep the info and required actions on the page relevant to what they were searching for.
2. Ensure that the visitor to the page is 100% sure about what it is that you need them to do on that page. If they need to send you a mail – tell them! And tell them a few times for the sake of clarity and ease of use. The worst thing you can have a user do is get to your landing page and say to himself, “now what do I do?”!
3. Test multiple landing page designs. Don’t assume that the first design you do is the correct one. Try a few designs and see which one gets you the best conversion results and then stick to this one. Be careful of trying to make too many changes at the same time because then you will not be able to judge which changes are the ones which worked.
4. Tell your visitor where they are. They have just come through to you through a search engine which told them that you were the right people to speak to; now reinforce that with some compelling copy that highlights what it is that they were searching for.
5. Once your visitor has completed the required action for that page, your site should direct them to a thank you page which will let them know that their enquiry has been successfully submitted. Now the cardinal sin of most websites is that they leave the page at that and they don’t try and cross sell or up sell a visitor who very clearly is interested in your product offering. Use this page to give them more info or to offer them something else that they would be interested in.

Using these guidelines will ensure that your landing pages do not suffer from having a multitude visitors but rather a throng of active participants who are willing to engage with you and take the next step in the buying cycle.

Bing has arrived in South Africa with local search

It has taken Microsoft many long years to finally realise that the reason no-one liked MSN Search and Live Search was because there was no immediate way to filter out results from other countries. It used to be the case of "Good luck finding a SA Company". Well Microsoft have finally stepped up to the plate with Bing which is a search engine that does indeed compete with Google in the fact that it has the "only for South Africa" option. The majority of website users in South Africa are looking for local products and local sites which is what has put Google ahead of the game for many years as it has been the only major search engine to offer this option.

Microsoft has invested over $100-million in advertising for their “Decision Engine “ search engine. As they try to get more than 8% of the US search market, my guess is that they will now see more of their market share coming from their international users because of this local search feature.

So what is so different about Bing?

From a first-off impression I was not very impressed. When I first logged onto Bing I was sure that I was staring at a Google clone.

• The layout was the same except for Bing having a pretty interactive picture in the background.
• The links all seamed to mark the same options as Google
• The search results (SERPS) were identical to Google with the standard blue links and green URL reference
• The preferences and options are identical
• The cached page option is identical
• Windows Live is the same as iGoogle and Bing Maps is very similar to Google Maps
• Microsoft Advertising which is Microsofts PPC looks exactly like Google Adwords and are in the same place on the page

At first I thought that this was a mistake by Microsoft, but the more I thought about it the more I thought that they really did not have a choice. There was no way to take on a legend like Google so the old saying goes “If you can't beat them – Join them”. Microsoft took the Google shell that users are used to and tweaked it by adding slightly more functionality. Some very neat additional features you will notice are as follows:

• The very cool extra content pop-out which is located by hovering to the right of the individual results. The great thing about this is that it also gives you a few of the target pages' internal links.
• The related search bar to the left of the results is quick and easy to access
• Their image search is much better presented to the user
• They have integrated Bing into MSN Search so that it searches Bing by default.
• They have the very cool "Popular Now" link which shows the top searches (only on the Bing.com and not the Bing.co.za)

How will Bing effect SEO companies

Bottom line is that SEO companies will now have to cater for Bing just as much as they did for Google. These companies need to start to use the tools that Bing offers like Bing's Webmaster Tools and Bing Maps. Microsoft is starting to cater for South Africa so will need to make sure we stay ahead of the game by trying out their product. The search results in the pages are different, if your site was #1 on Google it may be #8 on Bing. The two search engines may look very similar but behind the scenes they use different algorithms for their search so the SEO company needs to adjust to that.

Will Bing gain search market share in South Africa?

My answer is "Yes". Many South Africans use MSN Messanger and other Microsoft programs that may make Bing their default. There is a chance that if South Africans can get the same sort of local results that they would usually get from Google then they may indeed embrace the concept.