Eye-tracking search engines
Search Engine Marketing: Top Five Eye-Tracking Laboratory Test Results
Search's Golden Triangle
Posted by Kelly Abbott
9:29 AM
3 comments 
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Thanks Kelly!
The following is an important excerpt from the "Eye-tracking search engines" study: The role of organic vs. paid listings…
"Organic results (free listings) are far more important and can get more viewership and clicks.
Experienced search marketers have known this for years. That's why if their search budget is limited, they focus first on gaining the best organic listings they can for a wide range of targeted key terms. Mainstream marketers, however, are only now starting to catch on. This partially explains why marketers spent $5.5 billion on paid listings in 2005 compared with just $660 million on optimization for organic listings."
This validates a gut feeling I've had for a long time; the roles should be reversed. 80% spending for Optimization of Organic Listings and 20% for Paid Listings.
It also raises a significant issue for the professional organic optimization community: The future of authentic and reliable organic optimization will require standardization of best practices endorsed by the engines, vendors and industry associations. Training and knowledge transfer will be a key to successful organic projects. Ethics and Code of Conduct will be paramount in avoiding the Hokey Smokey tone which has prevailed within the organic community for many years now.
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Posted byPaul J. Bruemmer at 4:51 PM
Hey, Paul. I'm also thinking that natural or organic SEO is very difficult to defraud as well. Paid link click-fraud is becoming a bigger problem. So add that to your polemic and you've got a pretty compelling diatribe in the works.
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Posted by
Kelly, you must have been eating your WHEATIES cereal today; see http://www.wheaties.com.
Paid Listing fraud has been reported to average 20%; hence the need for excellent management and analytic tools with conversion measurement and testing.
Organic listing optimization tactics and methodologies are now available practices and principles congruent with Google and Yahoo! guidelines; these are tactics and methodologies we can apply with confidence to any website.
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