What's Up At Google?

In case you haven't heard, some major changes took place at Google early in December, 2003. What is being referred to as the "Florida update" has apparently turned out to be a major change in Google's ranking algorithm. Apparently, similar changes occurred again in early 2004.

Search engine experts say these were major shakeups, as many sites that had previously had very high rankings have dropped precipitously, and sites that seem to have no relevance at all to certain search terms are suddenly at the top of the rankings for those terms.

All of this prompts us to ask, "What's up with Google?" Frankly, nobody outside of Google seems to know, and SEOs are hard at work trying to figure it out. The change is a major concern, since Google apparently controls a very high percentage of search engine traffic.

This prompts us to consider alternative action for getting traffic to our sales pages. Many "super affiliates" have long been fans of the pay-per-click (PPC) search engines, and swear by this strategy for generating targetted traffic. A little simple math demonstrates why. Let's say we're selling a product on which we make a $20 commission per sale. It stands to reason that if we pay less than $20 for the traffic necessary to generate one sale, then we are showing a profit (not taking into consideration our monthly cost for hosting our site, and the original development cost).

Suppose we had signed up at a PPC search engine, bidding 10 cents per click on a number of search terms and phrases relevant to our product. At 10 cents per click, $20 would buy us 200 clicks (200 people who clicked through the link in the ad and actually visited our site). At that rate, we need to "convert" (i.e., sell to) only one half of one percent of visitors to break even on our investment in the traffic.

Now our problem becomes one of making sure that our site effectively "sells" the product(s) we feature, at a conversion rate of 1% or better. Based upon what I've read, it appears that most internet marketing experts consider this an attainable goal. While conversion rates vary widely based upon the product and how well it is presented, it appears that conversion rates of a fraction of a percent on up to about 5% are typical for many sites and products.

To learn more about how to create a site that effectively converts your visitors, check out Ken Evoy's Make Your Site Sell and the companion volume, Make Your Words Sell

You might also want to check out this ebook on how to most effectively use the PPC search engines, written by a guy who makes a nice income this way.