Secrets of Natural Search

Let's say your wife is an avid hunter. You decide to surprise her by tracking down a pair of specialty hunting socks to keep her feet warm. You have no idea who carries battery-powered, heated hunting socks, so you fire up Google and search for both “heated hunting socks” and “women's heated hunting socks.”

You discover that a page from Cabelas.com is displayed for both queries in the top-three natural search listings, welcoming you to its store. Of course! You recognize the Cabela's brand as a well-known specialty outfitter for hunting and outdoor products. Plus, your wife already receives the company's catalogs.

You click on the listing and proceed to make your purchase. Yep, she's gonna love her new socks. And she's gonna love you for getting her exactly what she needed.

In a given month, a few dozen other people across the country may conduct a similar query for “heated hunting socks” on a major search engine. Meanwhile, a few dozen others search and find Cabelas.com product pages for similar “hunting socks” keyword phrases that include “merino wool,” “electric,” “warm,” “cold,” “for kids,” and even “diabetic hunting socks.”

On their own, these niche keyword markets may seem insignificant because each term or phrase may generate only a handful of visitors per month — depending on the season. But if you combine these total visits, the number of self-qualified Website visitors who reach the site for such “long tail” terms is of a market size similar to that of a Cabela's catalog drop.

And that's the tip of the iceberg — our research shows that for every brand search query conducted (such as “Cabela's”), there are nearly 40 unbranded search queries (such as “hunting socks”).

Indeed, the power of natural search — also known as organic search — as an advertising channel can no longer be ignored by merchants. By engineering their Website's tens of thousands of pages to rank highly in search listings across hundreds of thousands (or millions) of keyword phrases, merchants can leverage the size of their sites and the strength of their brands to attract self-qualified visitors and buyers. The results are rich in new-to-file customers acquired in greater quantities and more profitably than from any other channel.

We at Netconcepts focus on helping merchants capitalize on this natural search opportunity. Based on our experience, we've uncovered may secrets to natural search. I'll share the three best-kept secrets here; embracing these concepts will maximize your brand reach and sales through natural search in the coming years.

1. TREAT NATURAL SEARCH AS AN ADVERTISING CHANNEL

   In our view, natural search is the ultimate way to capitalize on your brand: The “snippets” that the engines show to represent your pages act as your brand's advertisements. Keyword research estimates the number of exposures your brand will receive. Rankings convert impressions into click-throughs. And what you give up in control over the contents of those advertisements, you gain in access to a bigger market that searchers instinctively trust. (For years, Jupiter Media has reported that 85% of searchers click on natural listings, as opposed to 15% clicking on paid listings.)

   I covered some of the new, natural search KPIs in a previous article. (See “Beneath the surface of search,” January 2007.) We continue to advocate these metrics as a way to attain a true understanding of channel performance. To recap, the metrics that lead to natural search results include crawled pages, indexed pages, yielding (or performing) pages, keyword yield, and visitor yield, by engine. These metrics form funnels that marketing managers can understand and manage against.

   The chart “Natural Organic Conversion Data,” below is an example of these metrics using anonymous client data from March 2007.

   You can see by these figures that the organic conversion funnel can be graphed and understood. Why are only 30% of pages making it into Google's index? Why did 84% of pages yield zero search traffic that month? Are there tactics that can be employed to double the visitor yield per page from roughly five to 10, and therefore double sales?

   These are the kinds of questions that leading search marketing managers are asking — and answering — in order to stay on top of the competition.

2. TEST SCALABLE SITE ENHANCEMENTS

   For most merchants, 85% of the pages of their Websites are what we at Netconcepts affectionately call “freeloaders” — pages that are indexed in search engines, but lack the on-page or social credentials to position them high enough to win natural search traffic. Getting those pages engaged presents the greatest opportunity to radically grow the channel.