The search for success 89
optimized for three- to five-keyword phrases. Shorter copy ranks just as well, as does longer copy. Use as many or as few words as you need to use to say what you need to say. Myth 10: You need to optimize for the long tail. No, you don’t. By their very nature, long-tail keyword phrases are uncompetitive, meaning that not many pages are using those words and not that many people are searching for them in the engines. Because of this, ranking for long-tail keywords is easy – simply include them somewhere in a blog post or an article and you’ll rank for them. But that’s not optimization. Before you go spreading these myths or any other SEO info that you believe is true, test it many times on many sites. Even if it appears to work, keep in mind that it may not always work or that there could be other factors involved. Jill Whalen, CEO and founder of High Rankings, a search marketing firm outside Boston, MA, and co-founder of SEMNE, a New England search marketing networking organization, has been performing SEO since 1995. Jill is the host of the High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter. Her ‘100% Organic’ column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.
Advertising on the search engines Paid search marketing, paid placement, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or search engine marketing (SEM), as it’s also known, has in a very short space of time transformed search from what was essentially seen as a ‘loss leader’ activity into what’s probably the digital world’s biggest cash cow. PPC advertising is the principal way in which the search engines generate revenue – lots of revenue. According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), in 2007 the PPC industry in North America alone was worth a staggering US $10.65 billion – or 87 per cent of the total spend on search marketing for that year. The organization predicts that the total North American search marketing spend will grow to a massive US $22.5 billion by 2011.