Guestpost Brett Pringle: 2010 Battle for Conversions

Wed 13 January 2010 11:45, Bas van den Beld

Meet the power of Twitter: not more than one and a half year ago I had no idea of the existance of a company called Mediavision. Living in the Netherlands and the company being in London that might be to strange. Through Twitter I then met Louis Venter who became one of our bloggers. With him came Brett Pringle, a South African with a passion for search. And now he joins our guestpostpanel!

He is a 'growing name' in the industry. This originally South African SEO knows his way around and has been a 'regular cowboyfan' since the start. He therefore couldn't be missed on this list!

The end of 2009 will definitely be remembered for all the Google changes that were rolled out. Recently the new AdWords search ad formats (Ad Extensions) in the hopes of drawing more attention to sponsored results within the SERPS, with the inclusion of related products displaying below the ads or additional sitelinks for the top ad positions.

Prior to the launch of Bing, Live Search still boasted higher conversion rates from Paid Search than Google AdWords. While Google dominates in terms of market share, however for advertisers conversions are vital for online campaigns.

With the launch of the new Microsoft’s Bing Engine, their paid search share increased 44% within 3 months. This together with the Eye tracking study completed by User Centric, Inc in June showing higher conversion rates within the Bing engine for sponsored results compared to Google, may very well be the direct reason for the latest Google changes.

Google responded with a small change to the SERPS layout, moving the top sponsored listings closers to the top organic results as well as moving the sponsored listings on the right closer to organic results. The latest layout change, yet to be rolled out, mimic’s Microsoft Bing layout giving you a slight déjà vu experience. Moving related searches higher on the page together with the always visible sidebar as seen on Bing. All recent Google changes are directly in line with the results from the eye tracking study where Bing’s strengths lie.

The Search Engine battle for conversions has begun, however as many of you will know, what works for one site may very well not work for another. Who needs market share when you can boast higher conversions, drawing in potential advertisers looking for higher ROI.

About Brett Pringle:

"Brett started in a basic copywriting role within MediaVision, moving over within a few into SEM analyst role, which incorporated PPC and SEO.

Re-developed internal company processes and strategies allowing MediaVision to take full advantage of the ever changing SEM industry. Improved internal project/work quality and guidelines overall, as well as helping to spearhead new strategies and services which include online branding and online PR. Appointed Director of Search for MediaVision in September 2008."

Brett can be found:

On Twitter
At the Mediavision blog
On Google

<Censorship: Google considers pul...

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