Most search engines have two types of listings on SERPs, organic listings and sponsored listings. The difference may not seem dramatic, but these differences are critical to who will actually click on a site.           

Organic Listings are the listings that the search engine finds and produces in the results page. These listings are posted free of charge to the website. The goal of any search engine is to provide a useful surfing experience to their users. After all, search engines are businesses and the search experience is their product. These listings are the bulk of what users see on search engine results pages. Most people, about 70%, will click on an organic listing when using a search engine. This figure can be even higher, depending on the search engine. People tend to trust organic listings more. After all, not all sponsored links relate to exactly what a person is looking for. Organic listings will show all pages related to that specific topic, not just the ones that have something to sell.           

Sponsored listings, on the other hand, are websites which have paid Google for their prominent display on a SERP. Since the majority of search engine users click on organic listings, why would anyone want to pay for a sponsored listing? Consider this: the search for “kittens” yielded 15 million listings. There might be millions of pages that use the same keywords and relate to the same topics. A sponsored link is a way to spread the word about a site and get more visitors, especially if that site is lower down on the search engine’s ranking for a particular keyword.

 

By: Clearpath Technology

About the Author:

Links are a large part of the Web experience and are important to websites. Search engines can determine a lot about a site based on looking at links. Search engine spiders look at both the site itself as well as the links within sites. Why do they do this? Isn’t looking at the contents of the site enough to determine how good the site is and how the site should be ranked?

Links serve two purposes online. First, they quickly and easily link users to different and useful information based on topic. Users can choose to click on links if they want to in order to find out more information. On the other hand, links act as a popularity index of all sites online. Take, for example, a very popular online site like Google, Yahoo!, or Amazon. Each of these sites has millions of daily visitors from all around the world. Imagine the number of links to these pages that exists. The more popular a site, the more links there will be to that site on other sites.

Part of Google’s page ranking system depends on the number of links to a page. In general, the more links to a page, the more popular the page is and thus the higher the page rank is. The fewer links, the lower the rating. There are some exceptions to that rule. For example, linking to known deceptive or spam pages, pages that have been banned by search engines, can cause a decrease in page rank. If these pages link to a website, that can also decrease ranking. For more on this subject, see the section on “Black Hat SEO.”

The temptation for website owners becomes to find places to link to their site in order to increase ranking. There are several services that offer to increase a site’s page rank by including links to the page on so-called “link farm” pages. These pages exist only to display links for the purpose of increasing page rank. Link farms are not for visitors, which is why these pages are often problematic for search engines. Being linked in a link farm can cause a site to lose rank, despite the original intention to do otherwise. Over time, websites can find legitimate sites that are willing to link to their site, which will, over time, increase the site’s rank.

Clearpath Technology is owned and managed by a team of experienced search engine optimizers, internet marketing experts, web developers and designers. Clearpath Technology provide the best Internet marketing services found anywhere and we build reliable, innovative software to complement your marketing and business initiatives. Clearpath Technology is SEO firm based out in New Delhi, India.

By: Clearpath Technology

About the Author:

Links are a large part of the Web experience and are important to websites. Search engines can determine a lot about a site based on looking at links. Search engine spiders look at both the site itself as well as the links within sites. Why do they do this? Isn’t looking at the contents of the site enough to determine how good the site is and how the site should be ranked?

Links serve two purposes online. First, they quickly and easily link users to different and useful information based on topic. Users can choose to click on links if they want to in order to find out more information. On the other hand, links act as a popularity index of all sites online. Take, for example, a very popular online site like Google, Yahoo!, or Amazon. Each of these sites has millions of daily visitors from all around the world. Imagine the number of links to these pages that exists. The more popular a site, the more links there will be to that site on other sites.

Part of Google’s page ranking system depends on the number of links to a page. In general, the more links to a page, the more popular the page is and thus the higher the page rank is. The fewer links, the lower the rating. There are some exceptions to that rule. For example, linking to known deceptive or spam pages, pages that have been banned by search engines, can cause a decrease in page rank. If these pages link to a website, that can also decrease ranking. For more on this subject, see the section on “Black Hat SEO.”

The temptation for website owners becomes to find places to link to their site in order to increase ranking. There are several services that offer to increase a site’s page rank by including links to the page on so-called “link farm” pages. These pages exist only to display links for the purpose of increasing page rank. Link farms are not for visitors, which is why these pages are often problematic for search engines. Being linked in a link farm can cause a site to lose rank, despite the original intention to do otherwise. Over time, websites can find legitimate sites that are willing to link to their site, which will, over time, increase the site’s rank.

Clearpath Technology is owned and managed by a team of experienced search engine optimizers, internet marketing experts, web developers and designers. Clearpath Technology provide the best Internet marketing services found anywhere and we build reliable, innovative software tocomplement your marketing and business initiatives. Clearpath Technology is a SEO firm based out in New Delhi, India.

By: Clearpath Technology

About the Author: