Internet Marketing
December 30, 2008
Best of Search Conferences 2008: Day 3
Welcome to the final day of the Best of Search Conferences 2008! How's everyone feeling? It is New Year's Eve, ya know. And you totally deserve tonight's champagne after all the hard learnin' we just put you through. If you skipped out on the first two days, well, it's not too late to catch up.
Like any good conference host, I'm going to start off the day with a bit of housekeeping. At Bruce Clay, Inc. we're celebrating the last day of 2008 not only with the finale of our Best of Search Con but also with a special episode of SEM Synergy. Tune in today to WebmasterRadio.fm at 3 p.m. Eastern to hear guest Barry Schwartz give listeners an industry insider's take on 2008. Barry has been reporting on the industry for, like, forever in search years and offers an insightful look at trends and developments in the last year.
Also on SEM Synergy, Bruce gives us a preview of his predictions for the coming year (a taste of which you saw at PubCon), with more details coming in the January issue of the SEO Newsletter. And finally, Bruce Clay, Inc. is proud to announce that in 2009 we will be offering three SEOToolSet Training courses in New York!
Alright, thanks for sticking with me. Now, on with the show!
Keynotes
The Coca-Cola Marketing Metrics Journey, Part 2 - eMetrics Summit San Francisco, May 4-7
Speaker: Tim Goudie
- Even the world's biggest brands, like Coke, see ups and downs in the online marketplace. The important thing is to keep learning and evolving as you go.
- Data can be political, but giving everyone access to the data creates clarity and transparency in an organization. As good of a tool data is, it means nothing without the right analysis.
- Coca-Cola created a framework to continually measure brand health, brand advocacy, volume, media value, and marketing productivity. Make sure your metrics get at the fundamental objective of the business.
Keynote - Click: What Search Activity Tells Us About Society - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Speaker: Bill Tancer
- Search queries are a window into human interests and can tell you more about an individual than they might tell you themselves. For instance, the fears most reported by those polled do not match the fears most searched for in a sample of 25 million Internet users.
- Intent is a factor that needs to be considered when making predictions based on searcher behavior. Tancer predicted third-place finalist Stacey Keibler would win Dancing with the Stars based on spiking searchers for the model's name. The problem was that searchers looking for images of Keibler were likely not voting for the contestant on the show.
- Follow the early adopters -- Young Digerati, Money & Brains and the Bohemian Mix -- for emerging trends.
All About Analytics
Top Takeaways:
- The process of analytics is to gather a report, analyze the data, optimize the content, and measure the change. You must have clearly defined goals beforehand otherwise measurements are useless.
- Create a document like Lippay's "grid". Include keywords, number of searches, conversion metrics ($ per PV, LTV, etc.), PPC data, paid inclusion (PI), algo, and search engine CTR by position. With this you can balance SEO, PPC and PI, find SEO referral gaps, find SEO content opportunities, and make traffic and value projections.
- On-site search can act as a productive data point. Searchers actively engaged in your site offer more data which leads to more opportunities for success.
- Segmentation is an essential part of analyzing your traffic. People aren't moving through your site with the same motive and you should be able to track that.
- The 3 Cs of Analytics are context, comparison, and contrast. Key main performance indicators (KPIs) are the time spent on the site, pages viewed, conversion rate, and cost and revenue of the visitor.
- Act on analytics data by improving keyword list efficiency and breaking out the best terms for SEO vs. PPC.
Analytics Every SEO Needs to Know - SMX Advanced, June 2-3
Moderator: Rand Fishkin; Panelists: Brian Klais, Laura Lippay, Jonah Stein, and Richard Zwicky
On-Site Search as a Crystal Ball - eMetrics Summit San Francisco, May 4-7
Panelists: Daniel Shields and Phil Gibson
Identify, Analyze, Act - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Chris Boggs; Panelists: Craig Danuloff, Brian Cosgrove, Heather Dougherty, Michael Stebbins, and Brett Crosby
Actionable Organic Search Analytics - eMetrics San Francisco, May 4-7
Moderator: Mike; Panelists: Matt Bailey and Diane Hoag
Legal Considerations
Top Takeaways:
- Trademark policies in the U.S. are different for each search engine. Google allows bidding on trademarks but does not allow the trademark to be used in the ad copy. Outside of the U.S. Google does not allow advertisers to bid on trademarks.
- The Communications Decency Act says that online authors and not publishers are liable for whatever they write. The law was meant to encourage publication and keep things from turning too defamatory online.
- Google is nearing a monopoly on search advertising market share. A monopoly is not illegal; the problem arises when a company tries to exploit its power to discourage competition.
- Have a contract with your consultants and clients specifying who owns what. Protect your property with management options if your consultant has access to any of your accounts.
- Behaviorally targeted ads raise the question of data ownership. The data is owned by the pary the consumer knowingly and willingly gave the data. Sharing of data requires opt-in consumer permission.
Legally Speaking: Recent Legal News About Search (February) - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderator: Jeffrey Rohrs; Panelists: Clarke Walton, Sarah Bird, and Eric Goldman
Trademark Issues: What SEMs Should Know - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Jeffrey Rohrs; Panelists: Mark Rosenberg, April Wurster, and Eric Goldman
Googleopoly - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Jeffrey Rohrs; Panelists: James Grimmelmann, Shelly Palmer, Kevin Ryan, and Jimmy Wales
Legally Speaking: Recent Legal News About Search (October) - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Jeffrey Rohrs; Panelists: Mark Rosenberg, Jonathan Hochman, Roy Shkedi, and Deborah Wilcox
Advanced SEO
Top Takeaways:
- Link building tools include Link Harvester, Hub Finder, the Langreiter Tool, Search Status Tool, Google Alerts, and the Utility Linking Tool.
- The next generation link building strategies are link bait, article writing and content targeting.
- Mine your existing backlinks for opportunities to improve the anchor text. Start building a relationship with the site manager/owner.
- While it is irresponsible to use black hat SEO techniques on clients, the ethical nature of techniques often comes down to intent (for example, cloaking).
- Paid links aren't evil -- they're advertising. The Web is made for commerce. The line is drawn when the intent of buying links is to increase ranking factors.
Give It Up - SMX Advanced, June 3-4
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Rand Fishkin, Todd Friesen, Michael Gray, Rob Kerry, Marty Weintraub, and Stephan Spencer
Link Building Fundamentals - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Detlev Johnson; Panelists: Debra Mastaler and Eric Ward
Blow Your Mind: Link Building Techniques - SMX Advanced, June 3-4
Moderator: Greg Boser; Panelists: Jay Young, Stephan Spencer, Roger Montti, and Todd Friesen
Black Hat, White Hat: Playing Dirty with SEO - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Matt Bailey; Panelists: Bruce Clay, David Naylor, Jill Whalen, Greg Boser, and Todd Friesen
Advanced PPC
Top Takeaways:
- If you plan to target long tail terms, first bid on the most relevant keywords to build relevancy and then add less-relevant terms later on. This helps to establish a higher Quality Score.
- A granular search campaign will show the most targeted, relevant ads and receive a higher Quality Score. Be sure to send users to the most relevant landing page.
- When optimizing landing pages, remove banner ads, entry pop-ups and cluttered design.
- Use a variety of sources to create your keyword list. Use tools, the Web site, print material and press releases. But when researching potential keywords internally, be cautious of jargon.
- Segment your audience through the ads they click on. Think about who they are, how they reached you, and the location they come from.
Amazing New PPC Tactics - SMX Advanced, June 3-4
Moderator: Matt Van Wagner; Panelists: Addie Conner, Stanislas Di Vittorio, Siddarth Shah, David Szetela, and Natala Menezes
Landing Page Testing and Tuning - SES New York, Mar. 17-20
Moderator: Sage Lewis; Panelist: Tim Ash
Advanced Keyword Research Techniques - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Gordon Hotchkiss; Panelists: Christine Churchill, Ariel Bardin, and Marty Weintraub
Search 4.0: Search Ads and Behavioral Targeting - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderator: Chris Sherman; Panelists: Kelly Gillease, David Kopp, Jonathan Mendez, and Natala Menezes
Happy 2009 everybody!
Posted on 12/30/08 at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Analytics, BestOfSearchCons08, Liveblog, Pay Per Click, SEM Events, SEO
Best of Search Conferences 2008: Day 2
Welcome back to day two of the Best of Search Conferences 2008! Today we're talking about the future of your search marketing program -- whether that's optimizing for blended search, catering to mobile users or entering international markets. There's a whole big world out there. What are you waiting for?
Keynotes
Opening Keynote: Search 3.0, Search 4.0 and Beyond - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Speaker: Danny Sullivan
- In 2008 we saw a generational leap in how search works. Search 1.0 was the first generation where location and frequency of on-the-page terms were the primary ranking factors. Search 2.0 adopted the off-page factor of links as the primary ranking factor.
- We are now in the next generation of search, Search 3.0. Search 3.0 is blended search and vertical results (video, images, news, etc.) are integrated into the main results page. Search 4.0, or personalized search, is the next frontier.
- Search 5.0 could incorporate human refinement. Today human editing is intensive and overwhelming. [Editor's note: But it seems that part of the laborious process that comes with human intervention could be circumvented if SearchWiki became a ranking factor.]
Keynote - Social Search: The Human Challengers - SMX Social, Apr. 22-23
Speakers: Jason Calacanis, Steven Marder, and Jimmy Wales
- The value of social search is that the users are empowered to collaborate, there is an additional layer of quality control and a community is brought together and leveraged.
- The key to reducing spam in a social search model is to build trusted communities. When everything members do appears on a profile page, the transparency helps to weed out the spammers.
- Scaling will be a challenge to social search as human editing and upkeep is time and labor intensive.
The Future of Search
Top Takeaways:
- Personalized search aims to deliver the most relevant results, despite possible search term ambiguity, weighing searcher history and preferences and making subtle changes to SERP ranking.
- Effective personalization of search results depends on transparency, security and control. The user should be able to find out when a change was made, to protect their sensitive information and to delete or edit underlying data. Portability, or taking the history with them, is also a factor that can improve personalized search.
- Semantic search, or understanding the underlying structured data of Web pages via text content, would give searchers more relevant results and the freedom to search win a natural language. Advertisers would benefit from the higher relevance in contextual advertising.
- Recent trends in online advertising include the increase of non-premium inventory (second-tier engines), one-stop ad shopping and advanced ad targeting.
- Yahoo's open developer platform SearchMonkey allows developers to create a personalized search and data experience on their site. Yahoo's not calling it personalization, but rather, is focusing on user experience.
Personalized and Customized Search - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelist: Bryan Horling
Semantic Search: How Will It Change Our Lives? - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Kevin Ryan; Panelists: Nagaraju Bandaru, Amit Kumar, Erik Collier, Scott Prevost, and Kartal Guner
The Personalized Search Revolution - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderator: Chris Sherman; Panelists: Steven Marder and Phil McDonnell
Futuresearch: Watch This Space - ad:Tech San Francisco, Apr. 15-17
Moderator: Jeffrey Pruitt; Panelists: Grazia Ruskin, Jane Butler, Jen Dorre, Lauren Coberly, and David Kidder
Mobile and Local Search
Top Takeaways:
- Local search sees great returns because the targeted audience is more likely to convert and buy. Reviews, directions, ratings and comments make local search even more effective.
- To best leverage local search, detect which users are on mobile devices and, if necessary, redirect users to the mobile site. While a WAP site is no longer necessary because of the true-browsing experience of smart phones, test your site on different mobile browsers to make sure it is mobile friendly. Less than 15 percent of mobile phones are smart phones.
- The .mobi domain extension is effectively dead in the U.S., although it never really took off to begin with. iPhones and Skyfire devices load pages the same way a computer does. The benefit of having just one site is that it is easier for users to remember the URL and advertising can be viewed by both mobile and computer audiences.
- Local search statistics: 86 percent of search engine users search for local products and services; 92 percent of Internet shoppers make their purchases offline. People are researching their local purchases online, but creating a presence in local search is hard for small businesses because there is no leading online source.
- The iPhone went a long way toward bringing local mobile search to the masses. iPhone applications can combine the benefits of local and mobile by driving traffic to the Web site or location.
Tactical Search: Local and Mobile Search - ad:Tech San Francisco, Apr. 15-17
Moderator: Dana Todd; Panelists: Sean Cummings, Ian White, and Zach Anderson
Mobile SEO: Death of the .mobi - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Rebecca Lieb; Panelists: Dhana Pawar, Cindy Krum, and Brian Wool
Why Local Is Different - SES New York, Mar. 17-20
Moderator: Ian White; Panelists: Gib Olander, Benu Aggarwal, Chat Schott, and Vik Advani
The 3G iPhone: Local Search Demos - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Michael Boland; Panelists: Ryan Sarver, Ethan Lowry, Scott Dunlap, Siva V. Kumar, and Sonia McFarland
Marketing with Videos
Top Takeaways:
- In May, Google sites ranked as the top video property in the country with 4.2 billion videos viewed. YouTube made up 98 percent of those views. Viewers watched an average of 50.2 videos per person and 82 million viewers watched 4 billion videos on YouTube.
- You need a video strategy to get high rankings in YouTube. To do this, look for viewing patterns. For instance, if 75 percent of views come from the related videos section, realize that your viewers aren't watching single videos but rather batches of videos.
- Eighty percent of video ads are pre-roll and there is great recall with the advertising medium. Pre-roll ads should be short and unobtrusive (15 seconds or less). Mid-rolls are also good because they engage the user first. Of course, no matter if the ad is pre-roll, mid-roll or overlay, if the ad is relevant than it will be less intrusive.
- Blended search, which can include video results on the first SERP, was once a matter of replacing links with blended results, but now the approach is generally additive. Video, however, remains subtractive.
- Tips for optimizing video include: brand your video by adding a watermark and call to action; create media RSS feeds and video site maps and submit the files to video search engines; and keep all video files in one directory and cross link to videos using keywords in the anchor text.
Video Search Engine Optimization - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Joe Morin; Panelists: Greg Jarboe, Chase Norlin, Steve Espinosa, Matthew Scheybeler, and Gregory Markel
Beyond the Pre-Roll: The State of Online Video - ad:Tech San Francisco, Apr. 15-17
Moderator: Daisy Whitney; Panelists: Eric Hadley, Rebecca Paoletti, Chris Allen, Scott Holmes, and Jarvis Mak
Search 3.0: Video, Images and Blended Search - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderators: Vanessa Fox and Rob Kerry; Panelists: Benu Aggarwal, Eric Enge, Todd Friesen, Henry Hall, Cris Pierry, and R.J. Pittman
The Next Wave for Online Video - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Rebecca Lieb; Panelists: Jason Glickman and Pete Kocks
International Search Marketing
Top Takeaways:
- Language is a priority. Target the audience's language skills (young, old, educated, multilingual), capitalize on local dialect, vernacular and cultural references, and work with native speakers currently living in the country.
- China has more than 250 million Internet users and the Internet is the preferred choice for entertainment and communication. Baidu has the highest search market share, at around 70 percent, with Google taking up the rest.
- There are 53 million Internet users in Latin America and the average number of hours users spent online per month is 16 percent higher than the time average American spent online.
- Google is the dominant search engine in the UK, Germany (95 percent), France (87 percent), and the Netherlands (93 percent).
- There are different models you can adopt for a global search marketing program, ranging from centralized to decentralized, and the best fit will take into account the needs of your organization.
War of the Search Worlds: Unifying Your Global Search Marketing Program - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Andrew Goodman; Panelists: Russ Mann, Dan Quinn, Olivier Lemaignen, Jay Middleton, and Mark Scholz
Search Around the World, Part 1: Asia/Pacific and Latin America - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Anne Kennedy; Panelists: T.R. Harrington, Motoko Hunt, and Alicia Morga
Search Around the World, Part 2: The UK and Europe - SES New York, Mar. 17-20
Moderator: Marie Dumesnil; Panelists: Andrew Girdwood, Thomas Bindl, Sebastian Langlois, and Joost de Valk
Global Search for the B2B SEM - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Jeffrey Rohrs; Panelists: Patricia Hursh, Kevin Lee, and Jeffrey Pruitt
Posted on 12/30/08 at 2:41 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in BestOfSearchCons08, International, Liveblog, Mobile, SEM Events, SEM Industry
December 29, 2008
Best of Search Conferences 2008: Day 1
Close your eyes. You've just entered a conference hall where voices are mingling and people are milling about. A bag of conference swag is perched over your left shoulder and a cup of coffee is clutched in your right hand. You're navigating your way toward the music, following a hunch it will lead you to the main hall. There you know a keynote address will be kicking off what's sure to be a rocking three-day conference. You spy a table of breakfast pastries on the way. Maybe a blueberry muffin would appease your grumbling belly. Or a croissant?
Okay, so we're not really providing any breakfast, lunch or afternoon snacks, but we do hope you're hungry. The Internet and search marketing conferences of 2008 offered a smorgasbord of information built on a foundation of months of preparation and hard work. We at Bruce Clay, Inc. want to thank all the conference organizers and speakers for providing these invaluable learning experiences and look forward to next year's undoubtedly awesome growth.
In the meantime, there's so much to be gleaned from the ghosts of sessions past, so prepare yourself for the first day of the Best of Search Conferences 2008. It starts right now.
Keynotes
Keynote Kickoff Address - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Speaker: Shawn Rorick
- There are more marketing channels than ever. Media fragmentation means users are picking where, how and when they consume media.
- The "halo media" approach addresses the multi-faceted marketing environment. Create a "circle of presence" around your company by entering all the logical marketing channels. That way you will be where the consumer is when they're looking for your services.
- Online media spending is currently going to search, display ads, classifieds, videos, rich media and email. Social media, mobile, widgets, desktop applications and RSS are emerging. Remember that new media tactics are not always applicable.
Keynote Roundtable: Technical and Informational Giants - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Speakers: Matt Cutts, Danny Sullivan, Tim Westergreen, Robert Scoble, Kirsten Mangers, and Rich LeFurgy
- Google is going to be the dominant search engine for years to come. The best competition anyone can give to Google will be available in incremental stages. The term "Google killer" has been used too lightly in the past.
- Danny Sullivan didn't think 2008 was the year of mobile and it won't be 2009 either. Mobile search will see gradual growth because smart phone technology is not yet cheap enough.
- Internet marketers should continue to look on the horizon. What makes a great search marketer is someone that understands how people look for information. When people start turning toward new ways to search, understand those venues and how to get there but don't get distracted from what you're best at.
Basic/Intermediate Search Engine Optimization
Top Takeaways:
- Representatives from Google, Yahoo and Live Search recommend adding unique content (images, reviews, etc.) to a page containing duplicate content (such as a manufacturer's product description) in order to avoid duplicate filtering in SERPs.
- If you're working with a very tight budget, look for ways to virally spread your unique, quality content.
- Images posted on Flickr can drive traffic as long as the image either captures excellent subject matter or is of excellent quality.
- Get creative with link building. Some ideas include hiring a student intern and getting a link from their student account, participating on services like Yahoo Answers, and utilizing your partners and affiliates for links.
- Personalized, behavioral, intent-based and blended search have changed the way search engine optimizers can measure success. Rather than focusing on rankings, look at traffic and conversions on the site.
Ask the Search Engines - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Nathan Buggia, Aaron D'Souza, and Sean Suchter
Mostly Viral Top Traffic Alternatives, or SEO on a Shoestring Budget - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Moderator: Carolyn Shelby; Panelists: Brett Tabke, Marty Weintraub, Jessie Stricchiola, and Gary Kirk
Give It Up: White Hat Edition - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Michael Gray, Kimberly Krause Berg, Kate Morris, Tyler Shears, Stephan Spencer, Rob Kerry, and Shari Thurow
Top Shelf Organic SEO - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Moderator: Mark Jackson; Panelists: Jill Whalen, Bill Hunt, Ash Nallawalla, and Bruce Clay
Basic/Intermediate Pay Per Click
Top Takeaways:
- When it comes to finding the best keywords, look at your site, your competitors' sites and trade literature, and remember that brands are often the best performing keywords. Don't forget to filter out negative keywords to help maintain your Quality Score.
- Many of the shopping search engines offer paid inclusion programs, and while the clicks may cost more than in the general search engines, the users are usually closer to the conversion stage of the buying cycle.
- To protect your paid search advertising budget, define your goals and metrics for success so that you can then prove the return on investment.
- Testing is of course important to optimizing your search ad campaign, but while testing, don't manage the campaign as a test. You want to have data based on real-world performance.
- Qualified traffic is the key to post-click conversions. Carry the message the visitor was looking for through the segmented path they entered with.
Search Advertising 101 - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Rebecca Lieb; Panelists: Dana Todd and Matt Van Wagner
Defending Your Paid Search Budget Against New Ad Fads - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderators: Jeffrey K. Rohrs and Rob Kerry; Panelists: Brian Combs, Adam Jewell, and Kchitiz Regmi
Ad Testing: Research and Findings - SES New York, Mar. 17-20
Panelists: Andrew Goodman, Bill Barnes, and Anton Konikoff
Post-Click Marketing: Converting Search Engine Traffic - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Anna Maria Virzi; Panelists: Carrie Hill, Laura Wilson, Scott Brinker, and Tom Leung
Basic/Intermediate Social Media Marketing
Top Takeaways:
- The point of social media marketing is not conversions. Social media is about gaining reach, increasing branding opportunities, generating links and driving traffic.
- Top 10 lists, how-to articles, current events, offbeat or extreme stories and images and videos are major categories of linkbait.
- Getting a community power user to submit your site's content is an advantage that should not be underestimated.
- Micro communities, or niche portals where communities gather, offer high relevance, increased branding opportunities, and the potential to have a loud voice in a small community.
- Social search, or search that relies at least somewhat on human involvement (i.e., collaborative harvesters like Digg and collaborative directories like DMOZ), disrupted search as we know it. However, with social search comes new potential and possibilities to increase influence and gain traffic.
Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites - SMX Social, Apr. 22-23
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Brent Csutoras, Jane Copland, and Cameron Olthuis
Social Media Marketing: What Is It and What Is It Good For? - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Pauline Ores; Panelists: Erik Qualman, Brent Csutoras, and Vanina Delobelle
Micro Communities - SMX Social, Apr. 22-23
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelist: Rand Fishkin
Search 4.0: Will the Social Graph Change Search? - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderator: Chris Sherman and Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Aditya Agarwal and Sean Lyndersay
Basic/Intermediate Branding
Top Takeaways:
- Traditional marketing channels make up less than half of the marketing channels available today. Create a consistent customer experience by providing great customer service through new and old media channels alike.
- Proactively protect your brand online; Buy MyBrandSucks.com, buy CEOName.com, register your brand name on social media platforms and quickly respond to negative publicity.
- Match your online and offline marketing message. For example, tests have shown that search volume rises after the start of a print campaign and remains high after the conclusion of a TV campaign.
- Before joining a digital ad network, make sure the network meets your needs. What is the level of quality control? How focused can you get? What is the reach? What is the business relationship like?
- You can measure the success of branding efforts with an engagement index. Involvement is reflected in the number of visits, the time spent and the number of page views. Interaction is measured through comments and reviews. Intimacy is seen in the sentiment and positioning of such comments. Influence is gauged by the user's likelihood to recommend, share or link.
Brand Management - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Moderator: Joe Laratro; Panelists: Brian Combs, Lauren Vaccarello, Tony Wright, and Jessica L. Bowman
Old Timers - The Impact of Search on Brand Health Metrics - SES New York, Mar. 17-20
Moderator: Kevin Ryan; Panelists: Rob Graham, Kevin Lee, Doron Wesly, and Stephen DiMarco
Digital Ad Networks: Are They Safe for Brands? - ad:Tech San Francisco, Apr. 15-17
Moderator: Brad Berens; Panelists: Jocelyn Griffing, Dave Zinman, Tim Vanderhook, and Sean Cheyney
Reputation Management in a Social Media World and on Your Site - eMetrics Summit San Francisco, May 4-7
Panelists: Katie Delahaye Paine and Steve Bernstein
Posted on 12/29/08 at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in BestOfSearchCons08, Branding, Liveblog, Pay Per Click, SEM Events, SEO, Social Media
December 26, 2008
Best of Search Conferences 2008: The Agenda
We at Bruce Clay, Inc. hope you are having a jolly holiday season! Part of what makes this time of year so special is that it is a time for togetherness. Last year we started our own little tradition of togetherness that we like to call the Best of Search Conferences. That's where we pull together our favorite liveblog coverage of the most kick-butt sessions from conferences we attended throughout the year.
Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, ad:Tech and PubCon made up a total of nine conferences and about 170 sessions that the BCI team liveblogged in 2008. That's a lot of blog posts! And while every one is filled with juicy Internet marketing knowledge, there are always those that stand out. That's where the Best of Search Conferences 2008 comes in.
Beginning Monday of next week we'll be bringing you three days of the quintessential conference posts you just can't miss. Each day will feature two keynotes and four tracks for a total of 18 sessions on everything from analytics to link building to the face of search to come. The round-up comes complete with some top takeaways to help you find the tracks or sessions that feed your mental hungers best.
Check out the full agenda and get ready to jump in!
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Day 2: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 |
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Time |
The Future of Search |
Mobile and Local Search |
Marketing with Videos |
International Search Marketing |
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9:00am-9:45am |
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10:00am-11:00am |
ad:Tech San Francisco |
SES San Jose |
SES San Jose |
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11:00am-12:00pm |
SES San Jose |
SES San Jose |
ad:Tech San Francisco |
SES San Jose |
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12:00pm-1:30pm |
Lunch |
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1:30pm-2:30pm |
SES New York |
SES New York |
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2:30pm-3:30pm |
SES San Jose |
SES San Jose |
SES San Jose |
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3:30pm-4:00pm |
Afternoon Break |
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4:00pm-5:00pm |
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Posted on 12/26/08 at 7:55 AM | Comments (2)
See more entries in BestOfSearchCons08, Liveblog, SEM Events
December 23, 2008
Search Marketers Feeling Festive
I think Christmas and Hanukkah rank right up there with Halloween for holidays that cause the most decorating frenzy. Take a look at the awesome job the Bruce Clay, Inc. writers did in dressing up our little corner of the office!
The uber-spirited even like to dress up their Web sites! Here's a quick round-up of all the holiday-themed logos I found today.
The less-than-legible Google logo:
Yahoo's animated ice skater:
Search Engine Roundtable is counting the days of Hanukkah:
While not a logo, the folks at WebProNews have a message for you. Click on the image to hear it:
A beanstalk makes for a great tree over at Beanstalk SEO:
The lights are up at Marketing Pilgrim:
Hats off to Hitwise:
Our friends at ProspectMX have a video to go along with their logo. Take a listen by clicking on the image:
Everyone's favorite gypsy dressed up over at HuoMah.com:
At Bruce Clay, Inc. we're celebrating with a couple different Winter wonder-scenes:
They're even sporting our new tagline:
Happy holidays! Any logos that I forgot? Add them to the comments!
Come back tomorrow to find out about the second annual Best of Search Conferences 2008. You won't want to miss it!
Posted on 12/23/08 at 5:35 PM | Comments (4)
See more entries in Fun Stuff
December 22, 2008
Avoiding Extinction: Lessons from the Fall of the Newspaper
By now you know a little bit about me. I tried to step into some huge shoes this September. I'm a Twitter n00b. I help run this sweet radio show called SEM Synergy. And I think turtles and tortoises are the cutest beings in the world. Wait, maybe I haven't told you that yet.
Obviously I'm guilty of blog post confessionals. Why kill the tradition now? Here goes.
I am a traditional media cheerleader. And don't hold it against me but... I went to J-school. This will help you understand why whenever I read about the death of the newspaper a little piece of me dies with it.
First of all, newspapers aren't dead. They're just going through some growing pains. So don't even accuse me of ringing the death knell for newspapers. Hear that Susan? Stop playing Taps already!
As an aspiring journalist, I was captivated by the magical idea of the Fourth Estate, the protector of democracy, the power of information to instigate change. It still gives me shivers to think that a lone watchdog with an insatiable appetite for the truth can knock the walls right off a story and consequently bring forth a whole new world order. All Woodward and Bernstein style, ya know?
Well, there's a new world order alright. And sadly traditional media has very little left to live for -- or live on, for that matter. Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy this month. The New York Times is struggling to stay afloat. The traditional media mainstays are losing the battle for advertising dollars because they're not your preferred news source anymore.
Let's take a moment to reflect on the journey of traditional media.
Traditional media led a rewarding, long life. (As long as anyone could have expected, anyway.) The time came to evolve and I'm pretty sure traditional media had no regrets. (Other than the stubborn short-sightedness of those entrusted to manage it.) Traditional media can commit to much-needed progress knowing that its forebears will carry on its values and ideals. (Or be treated like second-class citizens.)
There's a lot we can learn from traditional media and its fall from grace. James Surowiecki, a columnist at The New Yorker, wrote a thought provoking article in which he points out the Achilles heel that laid out the newspaper. Focusing on the product rather than on the customer leads companies to misunderstand their core business. He compares newspapers' plight to that of the railroads:
Had the bosses realized that they were in the transportation business, rather than the railroad business, they could have moved into trucking and air transport, rather than letting other companies dominate. By extension, many argue that if newspapers had understood they were in the information business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more quickly and more successfully to the Net.
Are you staying on the cutting edge of your industry? Have you looked into mobile and advertising via text? Are you moving into international markets? Do you have your sights set on the next frontier?
I still champion hope for the adaptation of traditional media, and if they can endure a downturn like this, your business can weather the storm, too. Even better than survival, navigate around the storm altogether. Take a moment to think about what you're really offering and where you want to go from here. If we learn a lesson from the media giants of yesteryear, at least they won't have fallen from the throne in vain.
Posted on 12/22/08 at 5:19 PM | Comments (0)
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December 19, 2008
Friday Recap
The BC writers started their weekends off right! Last night I went to the most head-bangingly awesome concert.
Metallica! I am not even kidding.
And Susan and Katie (Have I introduced you to Katie before? Everyone, meet Katie. Katie, our beloved readers. You guys play nice, but not until you've finished reading today's Friday Recap, hear me?) went to the special crew (that's Katie!) screening of The Spirit.
[We'd totally tell you all about it but super-secret Hollywood agreements mean that we'd have to ship Katie back to Albuquerque to face Abu-Ghraib-style torment. She promises us details after the December 25th release. I'm not under a confidentiality agreement so I'll tell you it's freaking awesome. --Susan]
That's all to say we are in a jolly mood at the Bruce Clay offices, just counting down the days 'til Hanukkah and Christmas! And so are my favorite weblebrity gamers, the folks from The Guild.
Last year, my favorite present by far was my iPhone. It's been attached to me ever since I got it. I used to think it could do everything but I was wrong. Now it can do everything -- like let you know if you shouldn't drive yourself home after all that egg nog and mulled wine. iPhone app developer Konami announced a version of Dance Dance Revolution that lets your fingers do the walking. And Microsoft released its first iPhone app, Seadragon Mobile, which allows for high-tech mobile photo-display technology.
Speaking of presents, there are some great opportunities to give to causes this holiday season while at the same time feeding your need for Web 2.0. Use that heart of yours this season. If you don't have one, I hear you can pick one up at the car wash.
If you're trying to think of something new to get that loved one who really deserves a lump of coal in their stocking, try a healthy lesson in humiliation. If you're looking for a perfect gift for that blogger you love, how about a Pulitzer Prize? Yeah, I'd take one.
No weekly roundup would be complete without news on what the search engines are up to. Google AdWords has spiced up the paid search results for the holidays. The pretty images couldn't save the search engine from dropping off the Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe list of the top 20 most trusted companies in the U.S. Could have something to do with sneaky stuff like this.
On the flip side, Yahoo's getting props after announcing that the search engine will anonymize their searcher data after 90 days. Ex-Yahoos have created the Purple People Collective, a resource to help their laid-off peers transition to their next position. In somewhat belated news, Live Search is testing MSNBot 2.0.
A recently reported sleepwalking behavior has researchers amazed at the complicated processes people can perform in their sleep. A woman claims that while she slept she turned on her computer, logged into her email and sent several obscure messages. That makes two reasons to use Mail Goggles.
The end of the year means top (insert number here) lists. E-commerce marketing firm Invesp released its list of the 100 most influential Internet marketers of 2008. Michael Streko graciously awarded his annual list of the top 20 people who didn't suck. What an honor! Now to subscribe to 120 new blogs and Twitter feeds...
I love the Internet as much as the next gal, but such ridiculous hypothetical scenarios are unnecessary. I also love me some Flight of the Conchords. And those wacky Kiwis are hyping the new season (starts January 18!) with a YouTube lip-synch contest. I bet you could top Andy Dick's attempt. Okay, actually, that's pretty funny.
Where my Apple fanboys in the house? Apple gave Macworld the cold shoulder this week, announcing that Steve Jobs would not be giving his usual keynote speech and that January's event would be the last that the company participates in. Kara Swisher at All Things Digital showed us that Apple's press release is eerily close to the infamous "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa" letter of yesteryear. Also, Apple fans in the Big Apple may be disappointed to hear that iTunes downloads may be taxed.
Burger King, usually a shining example of a company that's doing viral marketing right, seems to have overlooked search in its most recent project. It's still better than their latest product release. Sorry, I don't need my man to smell even remotely like charbroiled beef. Maybe if you're looking to attract a pack of hungry dogs -- but even butt-sniffing canines would prefer to lick garlic salt off a road worker's pants. What?
Ralph Wilson posted his PubCon interview with Aaron Wall in which Aaron runs down some innovative ways to attract links to your site -- for free! Aaron runs SEO Book, and in line with the release of the video interview there's a great post up over at the SEO Book blog on small business link building ideas.
I've got some good news to share with you regarding the recession. No, it's not over yet. But, it has brought down the price of yummy, yummy lobster. And it's helped reintroduce people to laughter. Try it once in a while. Also, there are some serious deals ripe for the swiping.
And to prove I'm not getting soft...
Things I learned from Boing Boing this week:
- Found a lost wallet? Check toothbrush color, of course.
- This Australian court needs to cut back on the catnip.
- The Muppets are master musicians!
- Talk about putting your foot, uh, through your mouth?
Posted on 12/19/08 at 5:21 PM | Comments (7)
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December 18, 2008
Let's Make Intolerance Intolerable
As much as I laugh at him and try to convince him otherwise, my father still fears the Internet. He worries that we may not have the best anti-virus/malware/spyware/adware/be aware software. He wants his Internet-roving children to be cautious of predators lurking the Web, searching for vulnerable people. He's not so naïve that he implores us to unplug ourselves and act out of fear, but he wants us to take care.
With tragedies like Abraham Biggs and Megan Meier, who can blame him? The Web can be a cruel place.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project released The Future of the Internet III report this week. I mentioned it briefly yesterday regarding the forecast for mobile Internet use, but there's an even more thought-provoking prediction in those pages. When those surveyed were asked if they believe the Internet will advance society's social tolerance by the year 2020, an overwhelming majority disagreed.
Out of the more than 2000 people surveyed, 55 percent did not think the Internet would help spread social tolerance, about 33 percent thought that it would and the rest did not respond.
The problem of hate-spew on the Web has been well documented. According to Lee Siegel, author of Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, much of the intolerance oozing on the Web comes down to this simple equation (paraphrased from Penny Arcade's less family-friendly language):
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fudgewad
This kind of behavior plays out in the physical world, too. Here's a story for you.
Bruce Clay, Inc. rents out office space in a tidy little business park in Simi Valley, California. We share the building with a number of other businesses and the bathrooms on the second floor serve all the second-floor suites. While in the ladies' restroom the other day I was appalled by a note that someone had left on the mirror. The note included strong, antagonizing language reprimanding the building's cleaning crew for a sub-par job.
I never had any problems with that bathroom myself, but even if I did you'd better believe I wouldn't rail on the hard working maintenance staff of our building who are cleaning our messes in exchange for peanuts. I have a sneaking suspicion that if the author was put face-to-face with her intended audience, she would have made the point more gently.
I'm not blaming the Internet for the problem of society's intolerance. The same thing happens online -- only amplified in an echo chamber for all to hear. In reading the results from the Pew Internet & American Life survey, Geert Lovink, an author, professor and expert on culture, sociology and the Internet, summed it up:
Let's not overstate the importance of media and communication. The Internet will not change human nature. We know from the twenty or so years of online culture that conflicts are rather accelerated. The Internet is not an ideal platform for tolerance and conflict resolution. There is a lot of distortion on the line. The critical point here is the real-time nature of online communication, which prevents people from reflecting on what they do.
The Internet marketing community has proved it is not immune to the plague of sharp words. But from what I've seen, every time a conflict arises, most people eventually make their peace. Let's try to keep it that way. Everyone has those bad days when they react out of emotions (like pride or disgust) rather than a desire to be a smarter, wiser, bigger person. I'm glad to be part of an industry that's striving to be a collaborative and supportive community so that even when the mob is lighting their torches I can be proud of where I came from.
Posted on 12/18/08 at 3:52 PM | Comments (2)
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December 17, 2008
SEM Synergy Extras: My Interview with Matt Cutts
Over at SEM Synergy we wanted to close out the year with style and substance. Today on the show I talked to Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam Team and an all-around authority on Google guidelines and practices.
People like hearing from Matt because he's an open and principled spokesperson representing the most popular search engine on the market. Matt's a regular at all the search marketing conferences, chiming in during Q&A if he's not on a panel himself. He's a master at walking the line between giving away the keys to the Google kingdom and lifting the mystery from the black box called ranking. I may not have squeezed any secret info out of him during our interview, but there are certainly a number of nuggets there for the harvesting.
My favorite takeaways came from Matt's thoughts on the future of search and the Internet. Some of these he's mentioned before, like cloud computing and mobile search. Others, like his new focuses for spam fighting in 2009, I haven't seen or read about yet. Here are a few of my personal picks on what Matt said that you should know about.
2009 will be a big year for mobile. Yes, another big year for mobile -- but for real this time! It's not that the last several big years for mobile were hoaxes, but rather that we've been building to this point for a while now, and the time is finally upon us. The Pew Internet Project, an initiative of the Pew Research Center, released The Future of the Internet III report this week and the verdict is in. By 2020 (and maybe even before that), mobile devices will be the primary connection tool to the Internet. This is a prediction that has rightly scared a few people who realize that this could blur the line between work time and personal time even further. Matt's concerns lie elsewhere though, focusing on how to make search useful on a small screen and on things like the progress of speech to text, machine translation and face recognition technologies.
The role of SEOs will be broader in the new year. Matt says that the uncertain economy will push SEOs to take on new skill sets in order to offer clients the most helpful services possible. This is a point that he also made during his PubCon interview with Mike McDonald of WebProNews. Bruce Clay agrees. As the value of rankings as a metric of SEO success drops, the need to provide more rounded Internet marketing services rises.
The biggest spam issues in 2009 are international spam and hacked sites. The spam that's out there is also more malicious than its predecessors. Hackers and crackers are breaking into sites through vulnerabilities that most users are not aware of, and Google employees are now stepping up to the plate to cut down the breaches and boost education efforts. He says that if a Googler notices that someone is using a hackable version of WordPress, he may drop that webmaster a line to let them know how to patch it. Spammers beware!
Check it out for yourself on WebmasterRadio.fm or SEMSynergy.com. Thanks for coming on the show, Matt!
A quick programming note: Next week's episode of SEM Synergy will be a rerun featuring Mike Moran, co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc. We'll be back with a fresh new episode to close out the year on the 31st with guest Barry Schwartz giving us the best of search in 2008.
Posted on 12/17/08 at 4:52 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Google, Mobile, SEM Industry, SEM Synergy, Search Engine Optimization
December 16, 2008
Just Blog Already
Yesterday I admitted that I'm a newbie on Twitter. Now for an even more shocking confession: I'm a novice blogger.
I would never have expected that I'd end up the primary blogger for a well-respected company -- the outward facing voice, if you will, trusted to publicly express the values and principles of a group much larger than myself. But it happened, and in a pretty painless way, I might add. [I keep telling people the ankle cuff and subcutaneous RFID chip aren't painful but no one ever believes me. --Susan]
I was lucky enough to be passed a torch from one of the most esteemed and beloved bloggers in a burgeoning industry, and I can pretty confidently say that I haven't screwed it up too bad -- yet. In reality, the responsibility of blogging wasn't as daunting or scary as I thought it would be. Basically, if I can do it, you can do it. And you should.
Blogs are an important source of knowledge sharing. Even when I don't have the answers to a question, I can still ask and hope some reader will chime in with their insights and opinions. Just the most basic conversation starter can spark debates that further the thinking of a community or industry. Even the act of writing helps to develop one's thoughts on a subject, bringing the discourse to a whole new level.
Why I'm telling this to you, I don't know. You already know the value of blogs. That's why you're reading this! With that out of the way, there are plenty of resources out there to help you direct your blogging efforts.
Personally, I take my blogging cues from my mentor. And one of our analysts introduced me to Steve Yegge's blog, which has an excellent post that knocks down all the reasons people have for not blogging. The moral of the story is you should be blogging.
One of the recurring themes of blogging best practices is be yourself. Lisa says that you should write with a style that reflects your passions and humanity. Steve says that people are looking for your real voice, and while not everyone is going to think like you, certainly there are those who do and they're going to be most interested in your real interests. Sometimes my most-read blog posts are the ones that I didn't spend tons of time researching and overworking. They're the ones where I just wrote off the cuff, straight from the heart. Who knew?
Posted on 12/16/08 at 5:19 PM | Comments (4)
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December 15, 2008
Welcoming New Social Network Friends
I've been on this thing called Twitter since May. Have you heard of it?
Heh.
So anyway, in all that time I've racked up an impressive -- wait for it -- 330 tweets. Needless to say, I'm still pretty green in the ways of Twitter. [I have 3123 and we're both just babies in the tweet world. --Susan]
Let me start by saying yes, I have a closed account. I'm not comfortable broadcasting my inner monologue to the masses and I don't expect that to change any time soon. However, if you mention SEO or Internet marketing in your bio, I will gladly accept your follow request and I will likely follow you, too. I'm easy to find on social networks, always opting for the obvious, in this case @virginianussey.
One thing I started doing differently is greeting new followers with a personal DM. In the past I've gotten sweet little personalized messages from new followers I've accepted and from people I'm newly following. But a recent message gave me the warm fuzzies:
All this savvy Tweeter had to do was take a look at my bio and everything he or she needed to throw together a quick, easy, and most importantly, personal welcome message was right there. The J. Paul Getty Museum is clearly doing social media marketing right.
In part two of his Twitter Rockstar series, David Brown shares a social media case study on how he welcomed his new followers to his feed. In 38 short seconds, David's welcome video introduces who he is and touches on his social media passions. Not only were followers impressed, but David reaped the benefits of additional subscribers to his YouTube channel and hundreds of new friends on social networking sites. (If you're new like me and not quite in the position to produce a welcome video, check out part one of the series, How to Become A Twitter Rockstar - Sort Of for some great tips on making the most of Twitter.)
At MarketingProfs last week, an article explained how welcome emails can drive customer engagement and ROI. The same holds true within social networks and communities as well. The welcome message performs many vital marketing tasks:
- Confirm that they are now your friend or follower. This can act as an additional branding opportunity.
- Affirm your value proposition. Remind the new friend or follower what great stuff you can offer them.
- Invite new friends or followers to take an action. On Twitter, the most natural opportunity for this is inviting someone to subscribe to a blog or newsletter.
Personal welcome messages don't have to take long. With just a few friendly words, you could be building a foundation for a lasting relationship. Judging from the smile that stretched across my face after reading @GettyMuseum's personalized message to me, I realize that, hey, it really works.
Posted on 12/15/08 at 5:24 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Branding, Social Media
December 12, 2008
Friday Recap
We're closing in on the merriest holidays of the year. What do I want for Christmas? A pony.
More specifically, a mini pony. Like this darling foal:
[No, you can't have a pony. --Susan]
If that's too much to ask, what about a little white Christmas action here in SoCal? We're busy making our own paper snowflakes to decorate the office but nothing beats real snow. Sure, digging out cars and wearing umpteen layers at a time gets old after a while, but the beauty of a single snowflake would make it worth it. (Except the last one. Yuck.)
Sorry, did you come here to read about search marketing? My bad. Consider that snowflake Mother Nature's lesson in design. And consider this a marketer's lesson in article design. (Nature lovers may also be interested to know that tonight's full moon will be the biggest and brightest in more than a decade.)
Hmm... why am I trying to justify the worth of this blog post, anyway? No one trusts bloggers, you know. We're almost as bad as those nasty Spartans.
Earlier this week I talked about the predictions for the Internet in 2009 that are popping up. Jane Copland shares her predictions over on the SEO Chicks blog. Here's me crossing my fingers that the reintroduction of professional journalism will in fact come true. [Keep dreaming, Journalist Girl. --Susan] Although professional and traditional are a world apart these days, as evidenced by Facebook's newest board member, Washington Post CEO Donald Graham. It's a brave new media world we're living in.
In the spirit of the season, there are a number of ways marketers can give back to the community. Sign up as a new advertiser with Local.com and the company will donate a toy to Toys for Tots. Joe Hall showed us how donating time to SEO a site for charity can lead to backlinks. If you're on Twitter, Squidoo will give a dollar to the charity of your choice in exchange for a quick tweet. Or give back to the SEM community by filing out the Search Engine Watch Readership Survey.
Google had some announcements this week. Misspelled results are being presented differently in the SERPs. The Local Business Referrals program, which paid people to visit local businesses and gather contact info and photos, is closing its doors at the end of the year. AdWords is coming to an iPhone and Android phone near you.
This year's fastest rising queries on Google were announced, with everyone's favorite lovable (or laughable, depending on your preference) governor topping the list. Google released a new way for webmasters to add social features to sites with Friend Connect. And they threw their engineers a swanky holiday party in NYC complete with filet mignon.
Despite the flamboyant celebration, Google's in the same boat as the rest of us. But hopefully the economy is looking up. So says the NY Post in their story of how an out-of-work MIT grad finally increase in online spending last week which made up for the four percent drop in sales this November. Overall, online consumers are spending about the same amount as last year. Search advertising is up this quarter, although the ad spend is apparently not coming from the small business sector.
On the lighter side, Internet marketing company Squareoak compiled a thorough list of SEM resources, the majority of which are more like general life resources. I was also alerted to a comprehensive directory of Web 2.0 sites. I only wish it was easier to navigate. Luckily, there is a yin and yang to this world -- Apple has decided to make iTunes easier to use, announcing that DRM-free music will be available in May. [It's about freaking time. --Susan]
And not to be forgotten, Search Engine Strategies Chicago was this week and Search Engine Watch has kindly rounded up each day's top stories.
Things I learned from Boing Boing this week:
- If your kid is the type to destroy a toy through rough play soon after receiving it, go ahead and give him the gift that keeps on giving!
- I know I said I wanted a pony, but I'd settle for a monkey riding a dog because this couple is equally adorable.
- I keep hearing that it's important to work with a language expert before jumping into the realm of international SEO. Case closed.
- The day when computers can read our minds is that much closer.
- This year will be a second longer than last year. [Oh good, now I'll have time to finish my novel. --Susan]
Posted on 12/12/08 at 2:28 PM | Comments (2)
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December 11, 2008
The Rarity of the Shared SEO Experiment
I've heard from a number of superstar SEOs that experimentation is the cornerstone of successful search engine marketing. Considering the competitive nature of this field, the results of such testing are often held close to the vest. It's not everyday that you get to see a search marketer's detailed testing process and findings laid out for the masses. But that's just what Matt Ridout did earlier this week.
On the SEOUnique Blog, Matt shared a little experiment with us. Using a test site that has apparently been around for at least three months, he says he:
- Optimized the Meta data.
- Included keywords and phrases within the page content.
- And optimized the images (presumably addressing the ALT text, file name and surrounding text).
After improving those three basic SEO issues, Matt sat back and watched his rankings dance. He recorded the SERP positions of his keywords before making the changes and then once a week for six weeks. He then plotted his findings on nifty graphs and proceeded to share them with everyone interested -- like me and (at the moment) 47 other impressed Sphinn members.
(As an aside, if people are wondering what kind of content is really worth our Sphinns, in my opinion, this is it.)
Let me quickly outline his findings as the experienced search marketers reading this are probably already aware of what goes down.
- During the first two weeks, there was a gradual increase in rankings for most keywords.
- The third week of the experiment brought a dramatic rankings drop for 85 percent of the keywords.
- By the fourth week, 70 percent of the keywords did a 180, surpassing their baseline rankings.
- There was little movement in rankings during the final two weeks of the experiment.
(Another aside. The graphs were a bit confusing to me until I realized, thanks to commenter John Spickler, that a drop in rankings is visualized as an upswing on the graph and a rise in rankings appears to be a dip in the graph. Makes sense considering high rankings are represented by low-value numbers, like the number one.) [He should have plotted them as negative numbers so he didn't confuse me people. --Susan]
I've never conducted an SEO experiment myself so I was delighted to come across a study like Matt's. In the time that I've become a student of the industry, I've seen few case studies. Conferences are always good for a couple, but other than that, I continue to collect my industry knowledge from the news, vague secondhand accounts and the occasional example of an outlier that has dropped off the face of the SERPs. I can understand why the Colonel keeps his secret recipe secret, but I often wish that wasn't the case in the search world.
Imagine if this cryptic attitude was the norm in the realm of science. Think of all the findings that no one would know about. Even scarier, think of all the developments that would have never happened (shoulders of giants and all)! How far could the industry have advanced by now if openness didn't put someone at a disadvantage?
Am I naïve? Is my science comparison completely off base? Is secrecy the real reason I don't see more case studies? Where do you go to get your information?. If you know where to find case studies or where an Internet marketer is giving it all away, I'm all ears.
Posted on 12/11/08 at 3:54 PM | Comments (8)
See more entries in SEM Industry, Search Engine Optimization
December 10, 2008
Could Web 2.0 Go the Way of the Dino?
This week's episode of SEM Synergy is all about SEO tools, featuring announcements about the new version of the SEOToolSet and our bright and shiny new tool, the SEMToolbar. We'll be talking about these updates and new features in lots of detail once they're released early next year. Until then, tune in to the SEO tools show to find out what to look forward to. Since you'll be able to hear all about our new tools closer to the release date, I wanted to take a look at another subject that I've been thinking about recently.
At the end of the year, people start to talk about what they see coming down the pipeline. Like clockwork, the predictions for the search industry in 2009 have started to roll in. The first one I've found is Steve Baldwin's Ten (Highly Cynical) Predictions For 2009 over at MediaPost.
(Note: I just talked to Bruce and he's pretty sure he didn't say that there are 200,000 "dark and shady" SEOs out there. But apart from that, there are several points Steve makes that are worth a few moments of your consideration.)
Some of Steve's forecasts seem spot-on in that 2+2=4 kind of way. He's obviously been following trends in the search industry for some time and can see the trajectory of developments as they play out over the long term. Others left me wondering if they could really be true. What jumped out to me the most was prediction number 7: "Web 2.0 will officially be proclaimed dead".
To make his point, Steve points to Razorfish CEO Clark Kokich's comment that marketers should stop looking at Web 2.0 and start blazing the trail toward Web 3.0. Kokich defines Web 3.0 as the "integration of all currently available technologies". If Steve Baldwin sees this as indicating the death of Web 2.0, I think he may have missed the point. Kokich isn't saying that Web 3.0 will replace Web 2.0. Quite the contrary! Web 3.0 could bring all the Web 2.0 technologies together!
A number of Steve's predictions are worth thinking about in terms of adjustments you might make to your search marketing process. Certainly, it's likely that keyword prices will continue to rise -- more and more organizations are vying for those goldmine keywords. And it follows that the SEO profession will grow -- search is where the marketing dollars are going, so it makes sense that more and more people will find their way into the industry. And of course, as much as it pains me, traditional media is on its last leg. *Tear*
But to say that Web 2.0 is dead?! I must take a stand! (Hear that, Bruce? I don't want to see that the death of Web 2.0 has a place next to the death of rankings in your predictions for 2009.)
Can you imagine what it would be like if the creative, collaborative and interactive technologies classified as Web 2.0 disappeared? Web 2.0 is part of what makes the Web so cool! Videos are educational, entertaining and fun to share. I suck down RSS like it's being fed to me intravenously. My social network is my daily portal to my friends' latest life activities. Blogging is where I make my bread. I don't even want to think about a Web devolving so far backward as to render useless many of its most attractive and helpful features.
Posted on 12/10/08 at 2:47 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Rumors, SEM Industry
December 8, 2008
Integrate Your Online and Offline Marketing Channels
Search Engine Strategies Chicago is up and running this week, causing marketers the nation over to descend upon the freezing, snow-speckled Windy City. But don't fret too much for our popsicled pals. They're being served with hearty presentations that I hear are almost as satisfying as chili in a sourdough bread bowl. Or hot cocoa with mini marshmallows. Mmm... [You horrible woman! Now I'm starving. I'm calling my mother for ingredients right now.--Susan] I'll take that as a compliment, thankyouverymuch!
Of course, like me, not everybody can attend the conference. But that doesn't mean we can't get some of the first-hand info being talked about in the sessions. WebmasterRadio.fm is broadcasting a number of keynotes, panels, press conferences and speaker interviews this week.
This afternoon I caught the Orion Panel on The State of Integration. It's a topic I've heard about before, most recently at SMX East, but it's an important one. And I wanted to know what this group of experienced marketing professionals would add to the conversation.
Basically, the topic revolves around how well online marketing is complemented by offline marketing. Robert Murray of iProspect explained the significance of online-offline marketing integration with this simple statistic collected in a survey of Internet users: two-thirds of the people polled were driven to perform a search because of somethin