Is Your SEO Worth $315 Million?

– By Steve Robins

What you can learn from the Huffington Post’s SEO strategy

The Huffington Post’s SEO strategy offers great lessons for any solution marketer.  Last week, AOL agreed to purchase the Huffington Post for a cool $315 million.  According to the NY Times,

The Huffington Post’s skill at using [SEO] tactics to increase readership and revenue was one of the ways it made itself worth $315 million to AOL.

An earlier Times article on the AOL-HuffPost merger stated that the Huffington Post is bringing in 25 million visitors each month, and will generate an estimated $60 million in revenue for 2011.  Clearly their SEO efforts are driving a great deal of traffic, which drives revenue, which in turn drives the company’s valuation.

There’s gold in SEO. If your company sells to consumers or businesses on the Web, chances are you that you already understand SEO and its value.  If not, here’s a simple definition from Wikipedia that’s sure to help any good solution marketer:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.

There’s good reason to be on top. You want to show up high in those results because the top 2 items (that’s right, 2) may well capture a majority of the clicks.  Recent SEO research by Chitika showed that on average, the top 2 sites took 51% of traffic, the top 5 took 76% and the top 10 took 94% of the traffic.  Being #100 is irrelevant – no one will see you.  And search matters since most users use search several times a day to find all manner of information.  Chances are, some of your best prospects are searching for solutions like yours right now.  Question is, will they find yours?

SEO Rank Matters
Top 2 sites – 51% of traffic
Top 5 sites – 76%
Top 10 sites – 94%

Source: Chitika

To learn more, read The NY Times article – it’s a great overview of SEO.  What’s more, The Times’ multimedia graphic dissects a recent story that ran in the Huffington Post.  Who knows, maybe you’ll increase the value of your company with your SEO efforts!  Good luck.

Next: HuffPost SEO Lessons for Solution Marketing

Additional Reading

NY Times: Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets
Chitika Insights: The Value of Google Result Positioning
The Solution Marketing Blog: Improve Your Social Media Skills at IMU
The Solution Marketing Blog: Go Where The Prospects Are