Whether you're talking about natural or paid search, the quality of your traffic is key to ROI. Not all traffic sources are created equal. On the one extreme, visitors may browse a site, leave, and never come back; meanwhile, some visitors may frequent the site, convert, and refer more traffic to you. Most visitors will be somewhere between the two extremes.

SiteLogic recently posted an article about traffic from social networks or media sites. Essentially, not all traffic is created equal. Social media traffic tends to drive "a lot of traffic, very fast. However the vast majority of that traffic is not engaged ...".

At some point, sites may start to discriminate among traffic sources to ensure quality versus quantity. In paid search, the CPA ad model would enable you to do that; the CPC/CPM model wouldn't work so well. In natural search, discrimination of traffic sources rarely comes up as a issue - afterall, it's free traffic.

Read the full posting on SiteLogic here.

Hello! It's been awhile since I've posted. Sorry for being MIA. I've been busy with work and travel. Just came back from globetrotting in China, hitting up Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.

Did I learn anything about the search world in China? You bet.

Everyone uses cellphones for search. In Shanghai, you can sign-up for a service called, Guanxi, which helps you find anything from the nearest museum to the best restaurants in town. Just text message your query, give it a minute, then you'll receive suggestions in your message box. It's exciting to imagine the search optimization and advertising potential of such a service!

In terms of search engines, Baidu is the leader. It's game plan is simple - play to the nationalist advantage; Google is portrayed as the foreign bad guy. For more on Baidu vs. Google, click here.

Enjoy the article and I'll post again soon! :)

Yahoo quietly overtakes Google in China

According to a recent report of the search engine market in China, Yahoo! has just overtaken Google in market share.

The increased Chinese market share is a great success for Yahoo!, but Yahoo! and Google still trail Baidu by a significant margin.

Read more here.

SEO vs. PPC

This article highlights how organic search outperforms PPC: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9395.asp

Key points:

- The Search Marketing Benchmark Survey (MarketingSherpa) shows that conversions with organic links outperform paid links thusly:

Average conversion rates: organic links 4.2 percent vs. PPC links 3.6 percent
Delayed ecommerce/service purchases: organic links 6.3 percent vs. PPC links 4.2 percent
Ecommerce product /service purchases: organic links 4.1 percent vs. PPC Links 3.8 percent

- Earlier research shows that 70 percent of your prospects will click on an organic link over a paid link and that organic clicks outnumber paid clicks by 5:1

- While it takes time to generate prominent organic links, once achieved they last indefinitely, and this long-term quality is what makes SEO cost effective.

Search Engine User Behaviour

Wondering about search engine user behaviour? Check out a recent iProspect Search Engine User Behaviour Study.

Visit iProspect and click Search Engine User Behavior Study (April 2006) for full details.

Google gains search market share

Google gained 6 percentage points of the US search market, widening its lead against Yahoo and MSN.

February's share of the search market, according to ComScore:

Google 42.3% (36.3% last year)
Yahoo 27.6% (31.1%)
MSN 13.5% (16.3%)
Ask.com 6% (5.3%)

Learn more:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-03-28T184032Z_01_N2854946_RTRUKOC_0_US-GOOGLE-SEARCH.xml

Google launches Page Creator

Want to create your own web page, but don't know where to start? Google makes it easy with Google Page Creator.

Google Page Creator allows you design your web page using a simple WYSIWYG interface.

See Matt Cutt's blog for a snapshot of the different web page designs you can choose from.

What's in it for Google? They host your site!

Your web page will have the name: http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com