Online Marketing Blog

For mainstream media to survive, if not thrive, it must integrate with the social web and create engagement surrounding content.  For social media to remain relevant and compelling, it must work in tandem with news organizations to create a symbiotic storytelling relationship.

The future may be a stream with the authenticity of the social web and the reach of mainstream media.

Lead by moderator Khris Loux, CEO & Co-Founder, Echo this panel took a bleeding edge look on real-time story telling through an open discussion and Q&A.

Panel participants:

• Dan Schmidt, Senior Product Manager, CBS Interactive
• Andrew Lyons, Commercial Director, UltraKnowledge
• Dermot Waters, Senior Director of Product Development, CNN.com
• Louis Gray, Managing Director of New Media, Paladin Advisors Group

Ultimately, to measure Search Engine Optimization (SEO) success, you aren’t necessarily looking at individual metrics – you are looking for a connection between the metrics – and the resulting affect on revenue.

If my lead seems to negate the name validity of the SES San Francisco session, ‘Meaningful SEO Metrics,’  it is completely unintentional.

Moderated by John Marshall, CTO of Market Motive and SES Advisory Board Member, this excellent session featured on its panel:

• Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite
• Ray “Catfish” Comstock, Director of SEO, BusinessOnLine
• Jon Glick, VP of SEO and GM European Web Properties, Become.com

“Infinitely measureable means adjustable,” opens Zwicky.  “And online marketing is completely measureable.”

Let’s get this out of the way.  100% accuracy does not exist in website analytics.  Repeat. 100% accuracy does not exist in analytics.

What does exist in analytics is data – lots of it – and with this comes fear.

Fear of looking at the wrong data.  Fear of where to start.  Fear of analytics failure.

This fear will only dissipate with knowledge.  Knowing that analytics will never be perfect is a critical first step and a cornerstone shared during the session ‘Deep Dive Into Analytics’ at SES San Francisco.

Bryan Eisenberg, SES Advisory Board and NY Times bestselling author, moderated this session which included on its panel:

• Tami Dalley, Director, User Experience Optimization, ROI Labs
• Marty Weintraub, President, aimClear

Take a deep breath if you feel one step behind in terms of mobile Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  If the crowd size for the session Getting Mobilized! Mobile Marketing Strategies at SES San Francisco is any indication, you are in quite good company.

The session, moderated by Paul Cushman, Senior Director, Mobile Sales Strategy, Yahoo!, featured on its panel:

• Cindy Krum, Chief Executive Officer, Rank-Mobile, LLC
• Sandeep Aggarwal, Managing Director, Internet & Software, Caris & Company
• Michael Martin, Owner, Mobile Martin

“Mobile is a channel, not a strategy,” states Kushman. “Channels may change, but marketing strategy is marketing strategy.”

Creation of a mobile app (whether for iPhone or Android) for no other reason than to launch something ‘really cool’ carries roughly the same weight as creating something viral just to create something viral.  Both are fun, both are consumed, and both are easily forgotten.

It’s been several years since I have seen TopRank CEO Lee Odden contribute to the panel ‘SEO Through Blogs & Feeds,’ so I was eager to sit in on this session to close out my first day at this year’s SES San Francisco.

Joining Odden on his panel, moderated by Craig Macdonald, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Covario, was PRESSfeed President Sally Falkow.

As Odden states, creation and promotion of a successful business blog is just as simple and just as complex as planning a friendly dinner party. How, exactly? More on that shortly.

While Odden opened the session, let’s begin with insight from Falkow as her remarks help expand the notion of traditional blogging.

“According to Google,” Falkow states, “a blog is simply a webpage with a feed.”

BJ Fogg, Director, Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University gave the opening keynote on day 2 of Search Engine Strategies San Francisco.  BJ is perhaps best known for promoting the concept of “captology,” a word he coined to describe the overlap between persuasion and computers.

In his book, “Mobile Persuasion,” BJ proposes the theory that the mobile phone will soon become the most powerful channel for persuasion, more influential than TV, radio, print, or the Internet.

A visual explanation of captology:

Following is a summary of BJ’s key takeaways from his keynote – Hot Triggers: The Power to Change Behavior:

TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden gave a solo presentation at Search Engine Strategies 2010 on content marketing optimization.  Following is a summary of Lee’s comprehensive presentation including 10 essential steps for your organization to achieve success.

The core of any search or social media marketing program focuses on content.  But what exactly is content marketing?  It’s creating and distributing relevant content to attract, acquire and engage customers which you know detailed information about.

It’s different than search – where you’re seeking in-demand phrases and creating content.  In content marketing, which grew out of the B2B marketing space, you’re developing personas.  In addition to this you should activate the intersection of search and content marketing.

Where do forward looking industries look when asked to look further?

This was the core question behind the SES San Francisco panel session, ‘Search – Where To Next,’ moderated by Graham Mudd, Vice President, Search & Media, comScore, Inc.

Joining Mudd were the following search marketing professionals / soothsayers:

• Brian Kaminski, Chief Operating Officer, iProspect
• Marc Poirier, Co-Founder and CMO, Acquisio
• Shashi Seth, Senior Vice President, Search Products, Yahoo!

So where are search marketing and social media definitively heading? Would you believe that no one quite knows for sure?

That said, below find 10 actionable clues and predictions that can help guide our direction as search marketers:

The average conversion rate for a website is around 3 percent, but many websites convert at 10 percent or higher.  What are they doing right that you’re missing?

Bryan Eisenberg, NY Times Bestselling Author gave a solo presentation on the secrets of top converting websites and how you too can achieve high conversion results.   Following is a summary of his presentation.

What exactly is conversion rate?  In essence, conversion rate is a measure of your ability to persuade visitors to take the action you want them to take.  It’s a reflection of your marketing effectiveness and customer satisfaction.  For you to achieve your marketing goals, visitors must achieve their goals first.

No one should settle for a conversion rate of less than 10%.  Looking at top retailers, many have conversion rates greater than 15% monthly.  What are they doing that you’re not?

How exactly does one become a celebrity CMO?  Jeffrey W. Hayzlett, former CMO of Eastman Kodak Company showed us as he robustly (and at times, profanely) opened the 2010 Search Engine Strategies conference in San Francisco, CA.

A crowd of thousands, waiting in anticipation after being detained in a lobby holding area for twenty merciless minutes with only designer coffee for sustenance, were eased into the presentation via an excellent introduction by Mike Grehan.

In the conference’s opening remarks, Grehan asked a question that has likely only been asked by most of us in hushed, frightened whispers, “Why do I deserve to rank #1 in Google?”  It’s a difficult question to answer or even to come to terms with.  It’s also a question that each one of us will keep firmly in mind throughout the conference.

I started interviewing people in the search marketing industry long ago (inspired by Aaron Wall) as a way to provide access to search marketing practitioners, pundits and employees at search engines. Beginning in 2005 with this interview with Brett Tabke from WebmasterWorld & Pubcon, interviews with search marketing types have been posted here covering a variety of search marketing topics.

The search engine marketing industry changes often, so it’s pretty interesting to see some of the predictions made in some of those older interviews. Below are 10 more recent SEO interviews from client side practitioners or search engine employees that you can get a lot of value from in terms of understanding how facilitating SEO works in organizations, SEO and social media, resources, tools and specific SEO tips.

Search Engine Strategies San Francisco is upon us and marks a watershed year for this event.  For the first time the annual August conference hosts in San Francisco and integrates with Connected Marketing Week, boosting an already large happening to an all-inclusive digital marketing experience.

In addition to TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden presenting on several sessions as both speaker (Content Marketing Optimization & Blog SEO) and moderator (Selling Search to the C-Suite), TopRank team members (myself and Mike Yanke) will be out in force liveblogging the event.

During the 2009 conference we put together the “Search and Social Media Puzzle“.  Our 2010 conference coverage will be no different.  Online Marketing Blog readers won’t miss a thing.  We’re all familiar with such phrases as “content is king” and “context is queen.”  So this year, we’ll be helping you outsmart competitors, think strategically and “make the right moves” with expert advice from industry thought leaders.