Table of Contents

I. Introduction

II. Search Engines: A Brief History III. Web 2.0: The New Internet

IV. Web 2.0: The Technical Landscape

V. SEO Linking Strategy in Web 2.0

VI. Social Media Optimization: A Piece of the SEO Puzzle

VII. Usability vs. Searchability: The RIA Search Challenge

VIII. Googles Personalized Search: The End of Traditional SEO?

IX. Search Behavior R&D: Customized Engines and Long Tail Keywords

X. Conclusion

References

I. Introduction To those of us whose passion for the growth of the World Wide Web is exceeded only by the marketing possibilities that emerge from that growth, the Internet has become a playground for the imagination. There is a large number of marketers, however, who are fascinated by the Web but approach its marketing capabilities more out of necessity than lifestyle. The Internets capacity has advanced in so many areas in the past few years that marketers playing catch-up are at a significant disadvantage. Marketing directors and account managers with traditional media backgrounds need to expand their breadth of knowledge in order to make informed decisions in todays e-commerce. This article provides clarification surrounding the fairly recent buzzword Web 2.0 and focuses on the evolution and future of the search engine born occupation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO and its implications are expanding so fast and in so many directions that it has never been more important for C level professionals and traditionally oriented marketers to fully understand the world of Internet search.

II. Search Engines: A Brief History When the first search engines began cataloging the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, obtaining a high rank on search engine results pages (SERP) was not particularly difficult or secretive. It was the webmasters who submitted URLs to the engines and communicated a pages relevancy to a keyword search through keyword meta tags in the HTML code. Early engines, like AltaVista, struggled with providing relevant search results because webmasters, who were paid on a cost-per-impression basis at the time, wrote inaccurate meta tags using high search volume keywords in order to increase visits to their websites.[1]

It was Google who finally answered the call for a more complex ranking algorithm that would greatly improve the relevancy of SERPs. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, invented the concept of PageRank, an algorithm which helps rank web pages based on the probability that a random person surfing the Internet will find a given page.[2] The PageRank algorithm assigns a numerical value to each web page by analyzing the quantity and quality of the pages that link back to a given page. Known as a backlink, each link represents a vote for the page it links to by the page on which the link appears. The significance of each vote depends on how relevant the page giving the link is to the page receiving the link, as well as the PageRank of the linking page.

Along with the changing search engines continually trying to provide more relevant search results to the user, the entire Web has been evolving to meet the needs of the massive Internet population. In conjunction with the growth of the Internet and the popularity of search, a unique profession known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was born. SEO tactics and skills have evolved alongside the changing Internet, but such changes have never been as significant as the most recent. We have entered into a second phase of the Internet, and as a result SEO is taking on a new face. This second generation of the Internet, often referred to as Web 2.0, has moved away from the old model based on static websites, clicks, and impressions and burst onto a cyber playing field built around communities, participation and open cooperation towards better products and services.[3] An unprecedented level of interaction between consumers, businesses, and interest groups exists in this new Web. Due to the existence of a new social presence, vehicles for driving organic traffic to ones website have expanded far beyond the major search engines. While obtaining high rankings on the major search engines is still an SEOs main objective, the means by which this positioning is achieved requires a much broader capacity for creativity than ever before. Many of these new tactics also provide additional avenues of incoming traffic, which has significantly expanded the big picture view of the SEO professional.

PDF version of SEO White Paper at http://www.bkv.com/search-engine-optimization.jsp

III. Web 2.0: The New Internet

Defining or labeling the new Internet is often met with a considerable amount of critique due to the expansive reach of such a description. There are so many different things that have changed about the Internet in the past several years; a concise definition is difficult to come by. In addition, the term Web 2.0, while perhaps the most accurate term, is typically scoffed at by the skeptical industry veteran who is wary of a vendor or brass employee attempting to sound Internet savvy. The World Wide Web has existed for almost twenty years. What is so significant about the changes in the last few years that distinguish the current Web as an upgrade from its previous omnipotent self? The simple answer to this question is you. Web 2.0 represents the users needs, hopes, and desires finally manifesting into a definable force of voluntary motivation.[4] The blogosphere, social networks, wikis, and other new forms of expression on the Internet have captured the Web population by harnessing their goals, skills, and interests onto a platform of collaborative creation and production. Websites are reflecting an up-to-the-minute common voice rather than a collection of static informational documents. The Web has never before experienced this level of effective interaction between its users, and that reason alone warrants its 2.0 designation.

Ease of self-expression, now apparent on the Internet through the popularity of websites like MySpace and YouTube, is generating massive amounts of original content. Critics of this tremendous increase in creativity and public opinion complain about the dilution of reliable quality content on the Internet. Many social networks, however, naturally weed out undesirable content, and promote popular, well referenced content to the top of searches. In Web 2.0, popular content emerges via a user-generated ranking system that determines the positioning of articles by the number of user votes they receive. This model was made most popular by Digg.com, which joins several community-based popularity websites like Slashdot.com and Reddit.com in providing a user-edited resource for finding news stories, blog entries and other websites. In Web 2.0, up-to-date, reliable content is produced by the editing abilities of the wiki. Wikipedia, the Internets user-written and -edited encyclopedia, boasts an accuracy level not far from the widely accepted Encyclopedia Britannica. In a study that compared forty-two science entries in both resources, Wikipedia had only four inaccuracies per entry compared to Britannicas three.[5]

Social network websites in the new Internet also have a way of allowing like-minded people to find each others favorite content through a system called social bookmarking. Del.icio.us.com is the most popular example of a social bookmarking website. This system of classification, known as folksonomy, involves users assigning labels, or tags, in the form of keywords, to content on the web. Through this collaborative form of tagging, web content becomes grouped by recognizable categories. Continuous tagging and creation of categories by users increases the contents ability to be searched by a wider range of people. This social phenomenon happens because stable patterns emerge in tag proportions [allowing] minority opinions [to] coexist alongside extremely popular ones without disrupting the nearly stable consensus choices made by many users.[6]

IV. Web 2.0: The Technical Landscape

Aside from the collaborative aspect of the new Internet, there is another reason the Web has earned its 2.0 upgrade. The users interaction, not with other users but with the interface of the Net itself, has changed significantly. Technical advancements in web navigation and design, as well as increased penetration of high-speed and broadband connection, make the new Web a foreign landscape compared to its older version. Web applications have continued to improve, providing a profoundly different user experience. The implementation of rich internet applications (RIA) is gaining ground. RIA technologies, such as Flash, Ajax and Java, are leading the Internet in the direction of a Web without web pages. Websites are traditionally made up of networks of static pages linked together by text in the form of the computer language HTML. These pages behave in a synchronous manner. That is, after the user clicks on a link, there is a short period while the server processes the input, in turn triggering the browser to download the requested page. RIAs operate in an asynchronous fashion, allowing response time to be much faster. RIAs increased responsiveness results from the following five factors: [8]

Information can be obtained from a server by anticipating certain user input.

The screen can be refreshed in pieces instead of all at once, eliminating the need for entirely different pages to load when navigating content.

More than one users input can be collected and validated before it is sent to the server.

Some responses to user input can take place without any server communication.

Certain processing that was once handled on the server end can be stored on the user desktop.

Growing implementation of RIA has important implications on search engines and optimizers alike.

V. SEO Linking Strategy in Web 2.0 The Blogosphere & RSS The common SEO adage continues to be valid in the 2.0 world: content is king. It is the content boundaries and means for dispatching content that have truly taken SEO to another level. Since the inception of the blogosphere a term that describes all blogs as a social network of public opinion rumblings of the peoples voice via the Internet have quickly risen to a powerful roar. Beginning in the form of an online diary in the mid 90s, the blog has since developed into a simple vehicle of communication for anyone who desires to send content across the Web. The dissemination of information through blogging has become so mainstream that one can find a blog from an authority source on virtually any topic. The blogosphere, centered on the concept of original content, has provided a link rich venue for the SEO to plan his or her linking strategy surrounding good content.

So what is good content, and what does it have to do with good linking strategy in Web 2.0? In this new era of the Internet, good content is viral. Whether this content is a written article, a homemade video or a podcast, if it grabs, provokes or tickles the user, it will travel, and it will travel fast. From the contents eye-view, the Internet has become much easier to navigate following the advent of Really Simple Syndication (RSS). RSS allows for a program called an aggregator (or feed reader) to notify users of new content added to a website, retrieve that new content, and present it to the user in an easy-to-use interface. RSS and blogging go hand-in-hand because of the constantly updating nature of the blog. As a result of RSS, people are discovering new content on the Internet, passing it along, and linking to it at an unprecedented rate.

Baiting the Link

The SEO practice of producing content in hopes that people will link to it from their own website is known as link baiting. Good link bait has the same qualities as good content. From a well written controversial article to a video clip of a bulldog on a skateboard, website owners will link to any and all content as long as it is interesting and catches peoples attention. There are no boundaries surrounding the types of content one can use to bait a link. In fact, the very name of a new kind of link baiting suggests an indefinable quality. This new link baiting tactic is called widget baiting. Nick Wilson, CEO and senior strategist of the social media market agency Clickinfluence, declared that the holy grail of linkbaiting in 2007 will be the widget.[9]

In reference to computers, a widget is an element of user interface that displays information or provides a specific way for a user to interact with an application. A widget could be a calendar, a stock ticker, a quote of the day, or an icon that collects the most popular YouTube videos. To get an idea of the limitless widget possibilities, check out Yahoo! Widgets (http://widgets.yahoo.com/). In its most basic form, a widget is a downloadable interactive virtual tool made up of simple bits of code that can easily be added to a webpage. When a widget is added to a webpage, if coded correctly, it will act as a crawlable link pointing back to its page of origin. These links can help to boost a site in the search engine rankings, but they also represent great potential for organic traffic.

Creating a popular widget could, in some cases, outweigh traffic from the major search engines. One example of traffic generated by a widget is a blog editor Firefox extension created by the professional blogging company, Performancing, that received close to half a million downloads when it was first released.[10] The brand awareness that widgets can promote has also made advertisers extremely enthusiastic. One would be hard pressed to find a better method of exposure than a logo attached to a button that sits in front of a users eyes daily.

VI. Social Media Optimization: A Piece of the SEO Puzzle

In this new age of the Internet, people have been quick to deviate from the title Search Engine Optimization when describing the organic promotion of a website. In August 2006, Rohit Bhargava, VP of Interactive Marketing for Ogilvy Public Relations, coined the phrase Social Media Optimization (SMO) and defined it as the following:

[The act of implementing] changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.[11] On one hand, Bhargavas point is well taken. If the tasks one is performing to drive traffic to a website are not intended to do so by improving search engine rankings, but rather by building a presence in social networks, than perhaps SEO is not the appropriate definition of their occupation. There is no doubt that SEO has undergone, and will continue to undergo, a certain level of compartmentalization. As different areas of SEO continue to experience the growth of specialized services, such as blogging, widget baiting and social networking, the future SEO will spend a large part of his or her time moderating and collaborating with more outsourcing opportunities that are not, by themselves, SEO related. In the end, however, SEO is a sum of its parts, and from the perspective of a company looking to pay for SEO services, all methods of driving organic traffic will reside under the umbrella of Search Engine Optimization. Notwithstanding the new coinage, SMO is an important component of SEO in Web 2.0. An SEOs intention in a social network is to create the illusion of natural links that occur during the interaction that takes place on networks such as Kaboodle.com, MyBlogLogs.com and Flickr.com. It is these links that search engines value the most because they happen as a result of real interests, not paid or reciprocal contracts. These links often lead to spikes in traffic, which have been criticized for only providing unqualified visitors and using up bandwidth. While these spikes continue to be a topic of debate on SEO forums, traffic after the spike does typically return to a level higher than it was before. The more authentic the illusion of natural interaction created by the SEO, the better the results. SEO in Web 2.0 introduces a new skill set of creativity that was previously not present. The space for this creativity, which ties in with the above link baiting topic of quality content, is especially exciting for the SEO of the future. The possibilities for attracting genuine links and organic traffic are limited only by the SEOs imagination.

To read the last four sections of this white paper — Usability vs. Searchability: The RIA Search Challenge, Googles Personalized Search: The End of Traditional SEO?, Search Behavior R&D: Customized Engines and Long Tail Keywords, and the Conclusion — visit the following URL to download the PDF version of the paper: http://www.bkv.com/search-engine-optimization.jsp

References

[1] Doctorow, Cory, Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia. Version 1.3, 26 August 2001. http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm

[2] Brin, Sergey and Page, Larry, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web 7, 1998, Pages: 107-117 [3] Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. London: Portfolio, 2006, Page: 19 [4] Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. Page: 68

[5] Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. Page: 75

[6] Golder, Scott A. Huberman, Bernardo A. “The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems.” Information Dynamics Lab, HP Labs. Aug. 18, 2005. http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0508082. Cornell University Library. [8] Loosley, Chris. Rich Internet Applications: Design, Measurement, and Management Challenges. http://www.keynote.com/docs/whitepapers/RichInternet_5.pdf. Keynote Systems, 2006.[9] Wilson, Nick. 2007 Guide to Linkbaiting: The Year of Widgetbait? http://searchengineland.com/070118-074231.php. January 18, 2007. [10] Wilson, Nick. January 18, 2007

[11] Bhargava, Rohit. 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO). Influential Interactive Marketing blog. http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/5_rules_of_soci.html. August 10, 2006.

Author: Will Fleiss
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Pressure Cooker

RSS – or what is now known as “Really Simple Syndication” – is a file format that is incorporated by Internet users in their websites to allow for ‘web syndication’, making their web content available in a format that can be universally understood by other people.

In essence, RSS is a ‘mini database’ that contains headlines and descriptions (a summary or a line or two of the full article) of your web content, including hyperlinks that enable users to link back to the full article of their choice.

RSS websites – that is, websites that contain RSS ‘feeds’ (articles or postings) – typically have colorful graphics to indicate to users that the specific web content is available through RSS feeds. These graphics are usually depicted by orange rectangles that are usually marked with ‘RSS’ or ‘XML’.

With its increased popularity, RSS is now being adopted and used by more website owners or publishers. Today, numerous resources are now available that aid Internet surfers (and even beginners as well) on how to set up and use RSS.

Setting up RSS feeds and adding them to your website can be a simple process that does not involve a lot of time or any money. Listed below are some simple and basic steps that you might want to follow:

1. Have your web content and/or news in an RSS feed format, such as XML (appropriate and ‘ready-made’ feeds are also available from other sources).

2. Click the orange graphic – this is the RSS feed icon. Take note of the URL of the RSS feed; this will be displayed in the address bar (for Internet Explorer).

3. Input the feed URL on your RSS feed creation program.

4. Click on the “Generate Feed” button. This will generate the RSS code for your web content.

5. Enter the RSS code in the appropriate place on your own website.

Having created an RSS feed for your website, next comes the task of publishing your web content and news and having them displayed on other sites and headline viewers. This is made possible with the use of RSS readers or aggregators.

RSS readers or news aggregators are used to view particular web contents. RSS readers contain the collection of ‘feeds’ or RSS files from content providers, and they are generally classified into 3 types:

Desktop RSS readers – also known as standalone desktop application, they generally ‘run’ in the background and are similar to an e-mail client, collecting the feeds and refreshing items automatically as they are updated.

Web-based aggregators – these are online services that enable users to personalize web pages, refreshing them each time the page is accessed or each time a person logs in to the service.

Plug-in aggregators/readers – these make use of either web browsers or e-mail clients, which allow users to view RSS feeds while inside an existing program.

Having an RSS-enabled website provides Internet users (especially those who are website owners) with the following benefits:

Allows users to generate up-to-date news and postings, as information and content in the RSS readers or aggregators are automatically updated each time the RSS feed is ‘refreshed’.

Allows users to have control over the information that they wish to view or receive, as they can remove a feed of their choosing any time they want to.

Aside from these benefits, RSS websites are also useful for people who conduct their business in the Internet, particularly in Internet or Online Marketing. RSS can be an effective marketing tool for your website, especially in the following fields:

E-mail marketing and publishing

Search engine marketing and optimization

Business blogging

Internet advertising

Digital public relations

Branding and e-commerce

In addition, RSS can ‘power’ your website, providing you with the following:

Valuable, updated, and relevant resources for site visitors and potential clients – RSS is ideal for websites that contain (and syndicate) a lot of information that has to be changed or updated regularly.

Search engine optimization for the website.

Increased traffic for the website – your website can ‘harvest’ and display information from other sites, driving more traffic to your own website.

A wide selection of ‘channels’ for content distribution, such as PDA’s, cellular phones, voice mails, and email ticklers.

A reliable way to have your web content delivered to Internet users and potential clients – RSS ensures that your site is viewed by the people who are interested in them, without having them blocked and ‘cleaned’ by ISPs or Spam filters.

These are just some of the advantages that RSS can give your website (and your business). The possibilities are endless, as more and more comes up almost everyday. Do not be left behind – take the advantage of the marketing and publishing power of RSS.

Author: Jeremiah Patton
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Beading Necklace

We were waiting for something like this to happen for a long time. Yahoo!, one of the key providers of mass-market RSS aggregators, finally took a step forward and published their RSS whitepaper, covering their own findings with RSS, based on their usage data.

1. YAHOO!’S KEY FINDINGS

Let’s first take a look at Yahoo! key findings and what they mean for marketers.

a] Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.

Although RSS awareness is increasing, only few internet users yet understand what RSS is and how to use it.

For marketers, this means that simply placing an RSS button on their site it not nearly enough, with the report finally demonstrating that marketers needs to use clear and persuasive copy to get their visitors interested in RSS, explain RSS to them and get them to subscribe to their feeds.

In addition it also shows that marketers need to make sure they are using “user-friendly” buttons to generate subscribers, such as “Add to MyYahoo!”, which consumers do understand.

b] 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.

This finding only underlines the above suggestions.

Stop touting your RSS feeds only using an RSS button, but rather aim for a “subscribe feature” and then explain to the visitor how to use it.

Strong copy has never been so important.

c] 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe to podcasts.

Goes to show that podcasting still has a long way to go and can right now function only as a supplement to your existing marketing activities.

It might also give an indication that audio is not the most appropriate format for much online content.

d] Even tech-savvy “Aware RSS Users” prefer to access RSS feeds via user-friendly, browser-based experiences (e.g., My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).

e] My Yahoo! has the highest awareness and use of any RSS-enabled product.

Both of the findings above, although indicating that these are the results Yahoo! would want to publish, show that having browser-based RSS reader subscribe buttons is a must.

It also shows that the market is ready for the soon-coming IE and Outlook integrated RSS features, which should really boost RSS usage among consumers online.

Now, let’s take a deeper look at the report …

2. “UNAWARE RSS USERS” VS “AWARE RSS USERS”

The whitepaper makes a strong distinction between “Unaware RSS Users” and “Aware RSS Users”, positioning the “Unaware” batch as the mainstream Internet population.

This makes it absolutely clear that B2C marketers, targeting consumers, should take special care to promote their feeds using “friendly” subscribe buttons.

On the other hand, if targeting a more tech-savvy audience, going the way of “RSS” and more complex RSS reading tools might be a better choice. This might also prove more effective for targeting executives and other corporate target audiences that might be using an enterprise-wide RSS solution, such as NewsGator.

3. CONSUMPTION LEVELS

The whitepaper says that on the average “Aware RSS Users” subscribe to 6.6 feeds.

The consequences of this are not as simple as they might seem. Even “RSS Aware” users do not subscribe to “just anything” and seems they only subscribe or keep being subscribed to the content of highest relevance to them.

The message for marketers is to become even more relevant and more focused on providing real value for their target audiences.

RSS does not mean that end-users will start consuming that much more online content, but simply that their primary consumption channel will change. It’s up to you to make place for yourself in this consumption channel, but you can only do so if you become one of the key targeted content providers for your market and can deliver consistently high-quality content.

4. TYPES OF RSS CONTENT CONSUMED

Even in the world of RSS, mainstream media rules, with World news and National news both leading the pack at 52% and followed by Entertainment at 34% and Weather ad 31%.

If we take a look at what lies beneath this we can see that end-users still see RSS as a news consumption tool and a tool to receive time-sensitive updates, such as weather info.

The interesting part is that blogs achieve only 23% and although they are gaining quickly are still not part of the mainstream.

Whichever way you look at this, the real long tail is still far from fruition.

There are two are interesting categories listed in the report: investment/financial info/banking at 13% and Shopping/online commerce at 10%.

The popularity of these two shows that RSS in fact is appropriate for delivering business info and that RSS can be used for e-commerce. A strong case in point urging e-retailers to start providing RSS feeds.

5. WHY END-USERS USE RSS

“RSS Aware” end-users subscribe to feed because of “ease” or “convenience”, followed by being able to choose what they read.

To marketers, these three should be the founding stones of how to get their visitors to adopt RSS.

6. THE FAMOUS ORANGE BUTTON

Marketers, pay attentin to this.

Only 4% of total RSS end-users actually use the orange XML button, and only 38% of RSS aware users use it.

It seems the orange button isn’t dead … it was never alive.

Let’s move on and replace it with something more user-friendly.

And BTW — 22% of the people that clicked on the button don’t even know what action they took after clicking the button and 26% left the site. Goes to show the RSS button is only losing us subscribers.

7. HOW USERS FIND THEIR FEEDS

50% use the defaults available in the RSS reader and only 13% use the search engines to find them.

Yes, it’s cruical to be in the RSS feed search engines, but it would be even better if you could move your way to the default seetings. And by all means, actively promote the feeds on your site as end-users, according to the report, actively tend to subscribe to the feeds on the sites they find interesting.

8. CONCLUSION

To conclude this, here’s a direct quote from the report, saying exactly what I’ve been trying to get through for a couple of months:

“To position RSS among mainstream Internet users, it is essential to effectively communicate the benefits of RSS (ease, convenience, access to information of interest). Internet users do not understand how to use the XML button, how to actively seek out RSS feeds, or even what the term RSS means. Instead, they need a simple interface where they can choose the information and content that interests them. This is where personalized start pages and browser-based experiences can help move RSS into the mainstream.”

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: US Dollar credit card

When you are first deciding on online marketing in order to promote your business online, the main online marketing methods that you will encounter are Organic search engine optimisation and Pay per click advertising such as Google Adwords.

Organic search engine optimisation and Pay pr click advertising are the two main methods of online marketing.  Both these forms of online marketing are aimed at getting highly targeted visitors to your website by making your website rank on search engine results for the keywords that you are targeting.

Ideally a business needs to utilise both, organic Search engine optimisation as well as Pay per click advertising on order to get the maximum exposure for their business online. However cost and budget considerations often result in a business having to make a choice between using organic search engine optimisation or Pay per click advertising for their business.

Before discussing which form of online marketing is better for your business, it is important to understand the difference between organic search engine optimisation and pay per click advertising. Organic search engine optimisation refers to the search results that appear in the main centre section of the search results. Ranking within organic search engine results cannot be bought and ranking is a result of organic non-biased steps taken over a period of time.  It is dependent on the overall popularity of your website on the internet in general among other on site factors. Organic listings are the results that appear in the main section of a search engine such as Google when we search for something. Pay per click advertising on the other hand refers to the paid listing or sponsored results that appear on the right of the search results page and not in main middle section of the page.

Pay per click result is paid for and results are almost immediate to achieve. However there are many drawbacks to pay per click advertising as compared with Organic search engine optimisation. The recent years have seen an exponential rise in competition and a steep rise in pay per click costs. Click fraud is another rising concern in pay per click advertising where an advertiser may be charged for clicks that are not by genuine customers.

1)      Many surveys and search engine marketing studies have pointed than users are more likely to click on organic search results that appear on the main section of the page rather than the paid listings that appear as ads on the right.