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Bold Predictions in Online Marketing for 2010

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Okay, so I’ll admit I was wrong about a few of the predictions I made last year. Yes, Google is still the King and Mobile Search has still not yet hit the big time. Still, I enter 2010 with a renewed passion for what we do and where our Industry is going. Many of the changes that were made last year and many that are coming only strengthened the case for building better websites. In 2010 the best sites that best meet the needs of their target markets are those that survive while spammy sites go by the way of the dinosaur. So, that said, below are my bold predictions in Online Marketing for 2010:

Link Builders Go Bye Bye – As a major algorithm cleanup, Google and other engines will drop or purge sites that artificially bought their way to top organic SEO rankings via buying links. Link building companies will start to become obsolete as link building for SEO becomes ineffective. The financial impact is felt as far away as India and the Philippines, where many of these link building companies were stationed.

Shady SEO Companies Go Bye Bye – The search engines will move away from “seo tactics” and instead rank sites based on their “quality.” Sites that best hit their target markets, judged by low bounce rate and audience engagement will be the sites that rank well across all platforms. Shady SEO companies that built their success based on “fooling the search engines” will be exposed and will eventually vanish from site. Good SEO companies that focus on all facets of a web site (web design, web development, web marketing) will become the new “go to” companies. The financial impact is also felt as far away as India and the Philippines, where many of the shady optimization companies were stationed.

Google Increases Market Share to 80% – In 2010, I predict Google will increase it’s market share from currently about 72% to 80% of the market. Their continued growth comes at the expense of both Yahoo! and Bing, where audience share will decline because Google (as a result of algorithm changes) will be providing it’s audience better search results.

Mobile Search – I know I’ve been saying it for years but this is finally the year when Mobile Search hits the big time. Already with staggering growth, it is shocking that mobile search is still not a major part of most people’s marketing mix. In 2010, I predict that mobile gets into the mainstream of all marketers alike, both global and locally-based.

Conversion Optimization Gets Its Due- Finally, conversion optimization will not be just for serious marketers but instead will be a tactic and a topic of discussion amongst everyone who markets online. Brought on by last year’s recession, the business of “improving your bottom line” just by tweaking your landing pages, your messages, etc. will get a serious look. Budgets for conversion optimization in 2010 will be allocated accordingly.

Change is Coming – Something, somewhere, someone is lurking around the corner waiting to capture the hearts and minds of Internet users much like Twitter and Facebook did in 2009. Whether it be a new social media site, a change in technology, or the way that we market ourselves online, one prediction we can count on each and every year is that there likely will be a major change to look forward to in the coming year.

Will any or all of these bold prediction turn out? Only time with tell. One thing for sure is that everyone, from peers to customers, are looking forward to a better year and more prosperous 2010.

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Is SEO Dead?

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Three BIG announcements two weeks ago at the Googleplex has many wondering if the practice of “search engine optimization” is dead. We don’t think so but these changes will certainly impact the way you should go about optimizing your website.

Real-time search – Google introduced real time which now pulls latest news stories from news feeds, blogs, and Twitter posts and lists these stories alongside your regular search results. How this impacts SEO: Real time indicates a swing that puts Social Media into the forefront. Your optimization efforts must now 100 percent include social media strategies or you’ll be missing the boat.
Google Caffeine – Google will become much faster once they launch their latest update, called appropriately enough the Google “Caffeine” update. Sites that load quickly will place higher more often than not than sites that don’t. In addition to speed, this update will level the playing field by reducing the impact of your inbound links (since Google obviously knows that optimizers have literally been buying their way to the top) and will instead focus on good sites with good quality content. How this impacts SEO: Caffeine will ensure that sites that meet the needs of their target markets (judged by low bounce rates and audience engagement) will rank higher than those that don’t. This update will dramatically impact how we go about optimizing as more focus will be spent on web design, development, and content. Less focus will be made on tactics that optimizers have used for years such as link buying, link baiting, content development for the sole purpose of adding page counts. Black hat techniques will be rendered ineffective by this update clearing the way for legitimate websites to start ranking well on their own merits.
Google Personalization – Google is now showing different results to different users, meaning your search results will likely be very different from my search results. Personalization has been around for years but now you get personalized results whether or not you are logged in to a Google account. How this impacts SEO: This spells the end of the road for the ranking report since rankings will vary based on geo-location, IP address, search history, etc. Instead, optimizers must now focus on creating sites that work. Optimizers that spend more time creating a better site are those that will find consistently high rankings regardless of personalization.

While SEO is absolutely not dead, some of the questionable practices that were created to give artificially high results for clients is finally gone (hurray!). The day has come where online marketers absolutely get to be online marketers. Optimizers that only know “how-to-fool” the search engines will soon be exposed and left for Interactive Agencies and online marketers that understand…marketing.

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Google Wakes Up!

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

On another note, Google is now randomly experimenting with “bread crumbs” in their search engine results pages (SERPS). Bread crumbs, just like on e-commerce sites, provide links that help users know exactly what page they are on and gives them an ability to find their way back home. These are showing up randomly in the SERPS but look for a more aggressive roll out in the near future. This is an exciting feature set that will provide extra value to searchers. Way to go Google on this one!

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The Future Of Search

Friday, November 13th, 2009

The Future Of Search

Every day, it seems, we in the Online Marketing Industry ponder the same question…where is this thing going? What is the future of search? If you’ve been around as many years as I have, this age-old-question never gets tired. In fact, the constant change and the unknowing is likely why many of us got into search in the first place. Those who guessed right over the years (link bulders, content writers, bloggers, reputation managers) have built tremendous businesses for themselves. Others have maintained and grown their SEO companies, one client at a time. Either way, our Industry continues to thrive on the education and understanding of how search works and how can it improve over time.

So, where is this going? Well, if you believe Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, the search engines (if they had their way) would “connect straight to your brain” so they would know exactly what you intended when you searched. Of course, this is a joke, but the point being that the holy grail of search is to give the user one exactly right answer to a query. That is a lofty goal but a goal nonetheless set by the top search engine – so if there is any indication on where this thing may be going – consider this as the proper direction.

When looking at some of the recent advances in search results being made by Bing and Yahoo!, you can see positive strides being made towards making this goal a reality (and really giving the user the exact right result to their query). Yahoo! Search now offers Search History, Related Search, and Search Monkey results in their left hand channel, as well as Yahoo! Travel (a top portal site) information such a hotels, flights, maps, and restaurant guides.

Bing, of course, is the first so-called “decision” engine and had already incorporated these types of feature sets into their SERPS. All these enhancements are meant to provide users with better, more relevant results and a more personalized experienced- the same goal of the future that Eric Schmidt from Google shared above. Interestingly enough, this approach seems to be working. Bing’s share of market increased from 8% to 9.2% last month.

So, what is the future of search? It likely will include more personalization and a better understanding of what you mean when you type (search contextual web). Will it take the form of what we currently see today? Chances are likely that the way we see results will change, as it’s been changing rapidly these past few years. Keep in mind, moble search is coming and coming fast…

Maybe the name signifies a true wake up call but on August 10th, 2009 Google announced it will be launching changes to it’s search engine algorithm with it’s soon-to-launch “Caffeine” update. This update will be geared to compete more effectively with Social Media sites that provide “real-time search”, an important feature already employed at effectively Twitter and currently in-the-works at Facebook. Real-time search will allow searchers to obtain information as it happens, something the major search engines have always been very ineffective at providing. The true goal of the “Caffeine” update is to indexing content faster, something Google already does fairly quickly. According to the Google Webmaster Central Team, this update is “the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions”. Google is still testing the “Caffeine” update but look for it to roll out soon.
On another note, Google is now randomly experimenting with “bread crumbs” in their search engine results pages (SERPS). Bread crumbs, just like on e-commerce sites, provide links that help users know exactly what page they are on and gives them an ability to find their way back home. These are showing up randomly in the SERPS but look for a more aggressive roll out in the near future. This is an exciting feature set that will provide extra value to searchers. Way to go Google on this one!

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Bing On The Rise

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Bing On The Rise

Guess what the fastest growing search engine is? That’s right…Bing.com. While Google still owns a gigantic market share (65%), Bing has been steadily climbing the past 5-6 months and now accounts for 10.7% of all searches. In August, the Microsoft-backed engine Bing rose 22.1% making it the fastest growing search engine. Their growth comes mainly at Yahoo’s expense, which fell to 4.2% it’s lowest mark ever. What’s worse, is that the much anticipated Micro-Hoo merger (Yahoo! and Microsoft) is likely to face “fierce U.S. Department of Justice scrutiny” according to the November, 2009 edition of Website Magazine.

So, why is Bing rising so quickly? Below I’ve listed a few thoughts:

• Advertising – Give credit where credit is due. Bing’s advertising has been nothing short of brilliant. Positioning themselves as the world’s first “decision-engine”, Bing has been able to differentiate themselves from the other engine’s by offering something unique. It also doesn’t hurt that Bing’s ad campaign has had the financial backing of Microsoft. As such, Bing ads have had significant frequency and reach in both traditional and interactive media.
• Innovation – Let’s face it, search has been in need of a makeover since 2006. And While Google has slowly introduced enhancements to SERP’s (search engine result pages) such as video, local, predictive text, and shopping nothing much has changed for years. Bing, on the other hand, has been innovating since its launch. Take a look at their visual search where users can scroll through images arranged into rows and hover over images to produce a bubble containing more information about the product and you’ll quickly get why Bing is gaining fast acceptance and notoriety.
• It’s Not Google – For years, many have tried to knock off Google… all have failed. Still, anti-Google sentiment persists and Bing offers a real alternative for people that have grown dissatisfied or were concerned about giving one search engine the entire market. Don’t get me wrong, anti-Google sentiment is small but likely still a factor.

Will Bing ever topple Google’s dominance? Not likely. Still Bing’s meteoric rise has livened up an industry that had simply accepted things as they were (and as they have been for the past 5 years). No matter what, however, Bing has done the unthinkable and has shaken up the search market and have made things a lot more interesting.

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Glossary Of Online Marketing Terms

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Below are a list of commonly used terms in our Industry for your reference:

A.C.R. – Acquisition, Conversion and Retention is used to describe our three step process for success on the web. First you must acquire qualified and targeted traffic to your website. Next, you focus on improving your conversion rate via landing page testing and optimization (i.e. conversion optimization). Finally, you retain your customers with highly targeted and timely messages to increase loyalty.
Advertising network – A service where ads are bought centrally through one company and displayed on multiple websites in their network that contract with that company for a share of revenue generated by placing ads on their site.
AdWords – Google advertising console, aka pay per click management service.
Algorithm – The technology that a search engine uses to deliver relevant search results to a query.
Anchor Text – The clickable text part of a hyperlink. The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is all about. This increasingly is becoming the most important part of an effective link building program.
Big Three – Often used when speaking generally about the top three search engines – Google, Yahoo! and MSN (Bing).
Click Through Rate – The rate (expressed in a percentage) on which users click on an ad. This is calculated by dividing the total number of impressions. CTR is an important metric for Internet Marketers to measure the performance on an ad campaign.
Content Network - A group of websites that agree to show ads on their sites, served by an ad network in exhange for a share of the revenue generated by those ads. Examples include Google AdSense or the Yahoo! Publisher Network.
Conversion Optimization – The process of improving your website experience in order to increase specific actions (sales, downloads, email sign ups, etc).
Cost Per Action (CPA) – A form of advertising where payment is dependent on an action that a user performs as a result of an advert.
Cost Per Click (CPC) – Also known as “(PPC) Pay Per Click”. CPC is a form of advertising where an advertiser pays a set price for every click they get one of their ads that results in a visitor to their website.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM) – An ad model that charges advertisers every time an ad is shown to a user, whether the user clicks the ad or not. The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions. M is the roman numeral for 1000. Most displays ads such as banner ads are sold by CPM.
Geo-Targeting – Delivery of ads specific to the geographical location of the searcher. Geo targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or will not be shown, enabling more localized and personalized results.
Inbound Link – A hyperlink pointing to your website from someone other than you. Inbound links are an important element that most search engines algorithms use to measure the popularity or relevance of a web page.
Keyword – A word or phrase entered into a search engine in an attempt to get the search engine to return a relevant result.
Meta Tags – Info placed into the header of an HTML web page, providing information that is not visible to browsers. Meta tags can be used to help properly index a page. Common meta tags include title tags, description tags, and keyword tags.
Pay Per Click (PPC) – See Cost Per Click (CPC) above.
Personalized Search – As the engines begin to collect information about your specific searching habits, they can show you different SERP’s based on your previous searching habits and behaviors
Quality Score – A score that is assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad’s click-through-rate, the relevancy of the landing page, and the consideration of the other factors used to determine the quality of a site. Usually speaking, the higher the quality score, the higher the average position on the engines and the lower the cost per click. All of the major search engines use some type of quality score in their search ad algorithms.
Return On Investment (ROI) – The amount of money an advertiser earns from their ads compared to the amount of money the advertiser spends on their ads.
Search Advertising – Also called paid search. Most search ads are sold by a PPC model, where the advertisers pays only when the user clicks on the ad or text link.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – The process of building and marketing a site with the goal of improving its position in the search engine results. SEM includes both search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising, or paid search.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The process of improving a web page’s rankings by making it highly relevant for specific keywords. SEO takes the form of both on-page optimization (improving the actual website) and off-page optimization (popularity outside of their own web pages).
Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s) – The results searchers see after they’ve entered a query in a search box.
Semantic Search – A process wherein the search engines know what you intended when you search based on your previous searching behaviors, interests and preferences. I.e. Jaguar the animal versus jaguar the car.
Social Media - A category of websites based on user participation and user-generated content. These are sites usually centered around user interaction.
Spider -A search engine spider is a program that crawls the web visiting web pages to search out information to add or update a search engines index of pages.
Universal Search – Also known as blended search, universal search pulls in elements of different databases into a SERP such as videos, images, news, and local (map) results. The big three recently integrated universal search into the majority of their SERP’s, as it is something generally preferred by searchers.
Web 2.0 – Refers to the second generation of Internet-based websites and services such as wiki’s, networking sites, and communication tools. This is when the web went from brochure websites to sites that let people collaborate and share information online.
Web 3.0 – The next phase of websites in production that will focus more on personalization and semantic-based searching.

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A World Without Keywords?

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Imagine a world where keywords are not used for searching. Instead, in this world, the major search engines know exactly who you are and deliver content to you based on your previous browsing behavior and indicated interests and preferences. As crazy as it sounds, this future may not seem as far fetched or as far away as it sounds. At this month’s Search Engine Strategies, the experts in fact discussed that improvements are currently being tested that will deliver better search results, more highly targeted advertising, and an overall enhanced user-experience without the necessary dependence on keyword searching. So, how exactly will the engines know what to deliver to you? To look at this another way, isn’t this already what happens in Facebook to some extent? You get content (in this case adverts and fan page suggestions) delivered to you based on your indicated preferences and interests (things you said you like). The search engines may not be far off from that type of form and function.

So, what does this possible future mean to the website owner/search engine marketer? Especially those of us that have been so dependent on keywords since the dawn of the Internet? Below are some tips for preparing for this possible new world:

Design your website for your customer – make it easy to navigate and user-friendly and try to keep your users on the site as long as possible. In the future, Google will likely place more value on on-site user experiences.
Build your brand – branding and positioning will also grow in importance for Google.
Hire Experience – Hire a search engine optimizer that is looking at all your data and is thinking about the future of SEO (i.e. predictive technology).
Hire Experience II – Old School SEO tactics are now a commodity and too many people claim to have expertise in this field now. BUT Google is always looking for new ways to determine relevancy, and most SEO’s do not take the time to keep up – so make sure you choose an expert who can advise you on the latest SEO trends.
Mine Your Data – Begin by looking at your own website data from Google Analytics, Google Trends, Google Insight to get a sense of existing user patterns. Learn a little about how your users are using your site right now.
Think profit optimization over search engine optimization – If you build a site and a brand that delivers a good product or service, you will not be left out of the mix. If you instead focus on tactics and strategies that are too narrow -minded (give me a top ranking), you may completely miss the boat.

It’s hard for all of us to imagine a world without keywords. For those using search engines for some time now, we’ve grown accustomed to getting to what we want via keyword searching. The change would inevitably shake up the Industry but if the end game is really a better experience for searchers and for advertisers, this change will ultimately be a positive one.

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Google’s Conversion Optimizer: Proceed With Caution

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Every once in a while, a new featureis announced by the Google team that helps improve the experience and the results you get through the Google AdWords Pay Per Click Advertising Console. Recently, in fact, Google started implementing a new user interface that allows their advertisers to more easily, more readily, and more efficiently manage their campaigns. This, in fact, has been a very positive change (although the new interface takes a lot of getting used to after so many years working with the old platform).

Google Conversion Optimizer, on the other hand, has not been something that seems to be working for a lot of advertisers. A recent google search for ‘google conversion optimizer review’ brings up a number of web posts, blogs and case studies that do not exactly paint the optional service in a very positive light. Below are quick links to a few of those reviews.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adwords/3858558.htm

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdWords/thread?tid=1b46b2064debcd8c&hl=en

http://www.marketingmorgan.com/ppc/google-adwords-campaign-optimizer-review/

Google Conversion Optimizer has been in beta testing since 2007. Now, released to all advertisers that qualify, it represents a chance to bid on a “cost per action” versus a “cost per click”. In theory, this is all great but what happens in reality? My own results over the past few weeks for a client did not perform well at all. In fact, our cost per conversion went from less than $20 per conversion to over $35 per conversion. Obviously, not a good thing for me or my client. I have now turned the service off.

How does Conversion Optimizer work? The Conversion Optimizer is an AdWords feature that uses your AdWords Conversion Tracking data to get you more conversions at a lower cost. It optimizes your placement in each ad auction to avoid unprofitable clicks and gets you as many profitable clicks as possible. To begin using the Conversion Optimizer, you must have AdWords Conversion tracking enabled, and your campaign must have received at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days. Also, the campaign must have been receiving conversions at a similar rate for at least a few days.

The “Conversion Optimizer” option is a tempting one… and Google does its best to make sure you know that your ad group is “eligible” for this option. Instead of taking the bait, however, you are better served perhaps working with the proven Google Website Optimizer, which in essence allows you to take better control of your landing page experiences. This truly is a better way of managing your conversions anyhow. True marketing and testing of headlines, offers, photos, etc. should always give you a better lift than trying to do it from the acquisition side. In other words, the “post-click” environment (landing page) is always more important than the “pre-click” environment (traffic) in my humble opinion.

Still, optimizing both pre-click and post-click environments are important tasks to the overall scheme of things and that is precisely what makes Conversion Optimizer something that should make sense to all advertisers that qualify…but just a word of warning to all… proceed with caution ! There are better ways to optimize your traffic, including key word analysis, analytic review, and writing better, more targeted ads. If you don’t heed my advice…well, you’ve been warned.

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The Return of the Banner Ad?

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Okay, I know what you are thinking. And I can almost hear your laughter and snickering because, let’s face it, banner ads have been on life-support for a long time now. How bad has it been for banner ads? A recent report in OMMA suggests that banner ad click-through rates are “as low as .1%” these days. That’s point zero zero one for those of you counting at home. So, that being the case, how can I possibly suggest that banner ads will at some point be making a comeback? Because, at some point, online advertising will be given credit for what it does in leading someone up to a conversion. In other words, many in the online advertising world believe that someone’s “last click” activity has been given too much credit for a conversion whereas little is given to the branding and impressions that are seen well before someone makes a purchase decision As OMMA puts it, “someone doesn’t just wake up one day and decide to search for something”.

There are advances coming, many being headed by major companies such as Microsoft, that will help to measure “view-through” activity that will ultimately give online advertising the credit it deserves for leading someone to a conversion point. Some studies show that exposure to online ads have led to a 27% increase in online sales and 17% in offline sales versus control groups not exposed to the same ads. Still, as a pure ROI vehicle, banners are far inferior to search engine marketing. However, when put in proper context ultimately I believe that banners will be given their credit for what they do – increase awareness – much like their counterparts do in traditional advertising such as magazine, radio, TV, and outdoor. When that day happens, I am confident that the return of the banner ad will occur.

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Posts Tagged ‘internet marketing’

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