According to a recent Forrester Report written in the latest issue of B2B Magazine, spending in the next five years on Interactive Marketing by business to business will continue to climb significantly. It is reported, in fact, that business-to-business spending online will double from $2.3 billion a year in 2009 to $4.8 billion in 2014. These are huge numbers and not unlike what we’ve been seeing here at a local level where businesses continue to invest in online marketing programs such as search engine optimization, pay per click marketing, and social media at record levels. As many businesses cut back on traditional advertising and marketing efforts that are difficult to track, online marketing becomes a natural fit where businesses can get clear data on the actual returns from their marketing investments. These reported anticipated numbers are staggering though and as we all know where there is money… there will be more people arriving quickly to our Industry. We look forward, however, to what may be a flood of new talent, new technologies, and new tools introduced to our Industry. Our company, SD Interactive, has been working in the Online space since 2002 and we have certainly see our share of change over the years. This report, however, indicates that a major shift is currently underway by businesses and we are likely to see changes that we’ve never seen quite before. No matter what happens, it is obvious that “online” is the place to be both now and in the foreseeable future.
Posts Tagged ‘online marketing’
Online Spending Continues To Increase
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Random Thoughts
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010Below are a few random thoughts I have had recently in regards to the Online space. These thoughts were written in no special order and carry no particular weight…they are just…as the title implies…random thoughts. Sometimes my brain works in interesting ways…enjoy!
1) SPAM SPAM, where have you gone – Is it just me or has SPAM gone away for the most part? I still do get Spammed…don’t get me wrong… but the volume seems to have gone down significantly. Sad to be reminiscing about the days of unwanted emails but somehow I miss those messages of weight loss, Viagra, and winning the lottery from a distant relative in Kenya. The truth is, however, that unsolicited email may be finally on it’s way out of the Internet Marketing mix.
2) The day of the online expert is here – Seems like everyone these days is an Online expert. From the person who just went to their first Internet marketing seminar to your neighbor’s 16 year old step-son who apparently chalked up their experience designing a few websites for a school project. The problem here is that our space is becoming extremely crowded and customers who cut corners are getting frustrated in the process. I recently had a prospect cry in a meeting because she was so frustrated. Yes, she cried at our meeting. I got her frustration, as her concept was still not off the ground two years after she went live, but this tale is becoming commonplace. Becoming an expert takes time, experience, education, and instinct. You cannot teach someone how to be a marketer, designer, or programmer and in the case of most things with digital marketing…you get what you pay for…
3) Pay per click grows up – Recent advances in paid search are making it one of my favored online strategies once again. Google, for example, gives e-commerce providers the ability to display products in their ads as long as they have a Google Merchant account. Same for local business owners who can now display their address and phone numbers in their ads as long as they have a Google Business Listing. All cool additions that give advertisers a better chance for a sale. We love it and commend all of these new updates to the platform.
4) Social media woes? – True, Social Media is still hot. Way hot. But if our youth is any indication burn out may be forthcoming. A recent survey stated that 13-24 year old people think that Twitter is lame. They’ve obviously never used it for business but they may be on to something and the trending here may be clear. Sure, Social will never go away and as long as there are people there will always be a need to connect. Still, we are keeping our eyes wide open here.
5) Technology amazes -the iPad, the smartbook, the netbook. Apple MacBook Pro, iPhone, Blackberry Smartphones, DVR’s, Blue-Ray Players, Video Games, Sirius Satellite Radio – the world is changing very quickly and the gadgets we use are evolving at a torrid pace. It’s often hard to believe we once used dial-up to access the Internet and now we get what we want when we want it through our phones. Perhaps the Jetson’s were not that far off…
Guess I’m starting to sound a little like Andy Rooney here but honestly there is so much going on in our world and our space that it’s hard not to feel jumbled, confused, and a bit awed by what’s happening these days. My random thoughts are a way for me to organize some of the chaos and put them into print.
Is SEO Dead?
Saturday, December 19th, 2009Three 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.
Google’s Real-Time Search Goes Live
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009As many of the readers of my blog posts will attest, I’ve been talking about real-time search for a while now. While Bing’s version is still in beta (www.bing.com/twitter), Google’s was launched yesterday. Google’s version of real-time is seamlessly integrated into your regular search results and features the latest news from blogs, newsposts and Twiiter updates. When you enter popular search terms into Google, your search engine results page (SERP) will include a “Latest results for” section that showcases a constantly updating window of real-time results usually about halfway down the page. To website owners, there isn’t any clearer indication that you will now need both a social media marketing strategy and a search engine marketing strategy if you want to compete effectively online. The online world is changing rapidly and Google’s real-time is further proof of it. If you need any help getting your online program in sync with the next wave of the web, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Google Caffeine: What It May Mean To You
Monday, December 7th, 2009Google Caffeine, the “Next Generation” Search Engine from Google is coming soon. With it comes faster speeds for searchers but if you own a website do expect a likely change in your rankings to occur and perhaps a significant change to the way you currently optimize your website. While many of us were able to preview the “overhauled” engine this summer during beta, the test left us with many more questions than answers. Surely we knew that this new Google algorithm would prefer sites that loaded quickly but what about the other factors that have been a staple of website optimization for the past five years, or so? While we have still questions, we believe that there will be some major changes with this update that will once again level the playing field for everyone competing in this space. Below are some thoughts to the way the Google Caffeine update will change the SEO landscape for you:
- Site speed: They call it Google “Caffeine” for a reason. Sites that are fast and load quickly will tend to rank higher than those that don’t.
- More emphasis on on-page factors: Because every yahoo on the planet went and bought their way to the top by purchasing links, this new update will reward the small percent of people that played it straight. This update will favor factors such as good page design, proper meta tags, keyword density, low bounce rates, etc. Pages with broken links, links to bad neighborhoods, and poor page quality will not rank high any longer.
- Quality unique content: This, ultimately, will be the most important ingredient of a page and is another reason why on-page blogging should be at the top of everyone’s weekly to-do-lists.
- Number of social bookmarks: A page eventually will rank on its own merits by the number of social bookmarks it receives. There is going to be an increasing importance on social networking and lets say, how many tweets or del-icio-us votes a certain page gets before it can rank highly on Google.
A final word: It’s only speculation but the word on the street is that Google will finally be placing less importance on linking with the Google Caffeine update. Google is none to happy with the inequities that linking has had on their search engine results. Link building is a multi-billion dollar Industry and has literally changed the optimization Industry overnight. While Google has long since stated their displeasure for link buying, link buyers have generally enjoyed better rankings than those that don’t. ..that is hopefully until now.
Google Caffeine is supposed to launch sometime after the holidays. In the past, Google made updates to their algorithms during the holidays and many webmasters who depend on their rankings were impacted greatly. We will all be curious to see how this update will change the game plan for millions of website owners and search engine marketers alike.
If you witness anything strange with your results, please feel free to call us at 619-270-8155 to discuss. Until then, happy holidays and good luck to all!
The Future Of Search
Friday, November 13th, 2009The 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!
Off The Grid – Greetings From Hawaii
Friday, November 13th, 2009Off The Grid – Greetings From Hawaii
Every once in a great while, I get a chance to go “off the grid” (also known as a “vacation”) for a short period of time. This year, I am in Hawaii for a friend’s wedding. It is during these not-often-enough breaks from the real world that I get a chance to reflect on the rapidity of change in our Industry and, more importantly, to see how many days I can go without using my laptop/cell phone. As far as locations go, there is no better place on earth than Hawaii to disconnect from reality. Being on “Hawaii time” means never having to be hurried, hassled, or stressed. This, of course, completely goes against my life in San Diego where every minute of every day is spent working on client campaigns or chasing down new business ideas and opportunities. Even my spare time is used to read up marketing books, blogs, and publications to stay current in this ever-changing Industry/profession I’ve chosen. In Hawaii, however, time stands still. My only concern here, it seems, is when to go to the store and get some more POG juice. It is this sharp contrast in realities that led me to write this blog. Just to be clear though… I, of course, couldn’t go a single day here without plugging into the Internet. However, the difference is that the way I manage my time out here is extremely unusual. I can now reorganize and re-categorize hundreds of daily messages into new priorities (with only a handful of them truly being what I would call “important”). I can work periodically instead of at the manic pace I maintain back home. Perhaps it is because I know that when I wake up here in Hawaii, people on the East Coast are just about to finish their day. And perhaps that fact is what causes me to work much more efficiently and in much less time out here? Or maybe the sun is starting to affect my thinking? Whatever it is, I hope to bring this new notion of time back to the mainland with me.
Bing On The Rise
Friday, November 13th, 2009Bing 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.
Glossary Of Online Marketing Terms
Monday, August 31st, 2009Below 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.
Profit Optimization is the Future!
Friday, August 28th, 2009Over the past ten years, I’ve been struggling to find a term that truly defines what it is we can do for our clients. We’ve tried terms such as ACR (aka acquisition, conversion, retention) but that described our process to online marketing more than it did the benefits. We also tried going after specific optimization terms (search engine optimization, ppc campaign optimization, conversion optimization, etc) but that approach always left us too niche and “type-cast” with our clients when we could do so much more for them beyond these single services. Now more and more, however, I have been speaking about “profit optimization” and have come to realize that this not only accurately describes what we can do for our clients but it is the future of our Industry.
So what exactly is profit optimization? Profit optimization, simply put, is where you boost your return on investment by coordinating your search data with your conversion/sales data . In other words, not all conversions are created equal. Some conversions will actually cost you money while others will generate healthy returns. Yet, all this time, we’ve been allocating equal priority to every conversion. With profit optimization, however, we can start making better choices about our marketing thresholds and spends.
So how do you start profit optimizing? Here are some tips:
- Establish a way to integrate search data with conversion data so you know which keyword drove the sale. Some simple ways to do this involve custom tags, unique phone number tracking, and dynamically generated landing pages. A more advanced way of doing this is through automatic data sync’s via API’s.
- Improve your reporting so that you know which conversion are of high value and which ones are of lesser quality. This is an extra step but the most crucuial. For example, a high value sale may have cost three times as much to acquire but the ROI is much better. The only way to know this is with this extra data point.
- Optimize your campaigns -Now that you have these critical technologies and reporting pieces in place, you can now make better decisions optimizing your SEO, PPC, and Online Advertising campaigns, your conversion optimization campaigns, and your retention campaigns. Once you know the high value targets, you can aggressively go after them, while minimizing the spends on the lower value ones.
While we are excited about all of the changes happening in the online space, we are most excited about profit optimization. Here, we finally get to the root of what online marketing is all about – the bottom line – and now we have the tactics and the technologies to make this a reality for all clients.
