Online Marketing Blog

If you were to see a publication date on this post older than 90 days, would you still read it?  If you saw more than 2,500 words sprawled in front of you – would your eyes be enthralled or glazed?  And perhaps just as importantly, would you still consider this post useful if you had to dig deep through search and social results to find it?

All questions above, of course, can be taken as subjective – adding another wrinkle entirely to the subject of content marketing to other online marketers.  Speaking as an online marketer, what I look for in content may not match exactly what you are seeking in terms of length, format, tone or design.  That said, my experience working with numerous clients that are themselves, online marketers, within this space has led me to believe that there are at least five constants that should be adhered to in order to successfully attract and engage:

It’s a situation you have never before found yourself in.  It is fraught with anticipation – and potentially –danger.  And oftentimes – it can be the difference between success or failure.

It is the square zero experience – and if you find yourself developing a keyword glossary that will drive your online marketing campaigns for an indefinite amount of time – you might be in one.

For a good primer on keyword research, check out chapter 7 of Optimize, of which I am a contributor.  But showing you the implementation steps for keyword research alone isn’t enough to prepare you for the reality of creating the topical framework that will define your entire online marketing strategy – and could help shape the life of your online business.

Thanks to Ray ‘Catfish’ Comstock for providing the title of this post with his opening remarks during the session.  Joining Comstock on this panel, moderated by Seth Besmertnik, CEO, Conductor, Inc.:

• Crispin Sheridan, SES Advisory Board & Sr Director of Search Marketing Strategy, SAP
• Bill Hunt,  SES Advisory Board & President, Back Azimuth Consulting
• Guillaume Bouchard, Co-founder and CEO, NVI

As a good writer and analyst, I have to ask ‘why’ for even the most obvious problem posed.  So why is enterprise level Search Engine Optimization (SEO) not for the weak? The obvious answer: a lot of people, a lot of content.  Enterprise is difficult because management of a lot of content and people is difficult to scale.

What’s the quickest way to catch a fish? Offer the right bait.

What’s the quickest way to get a B2B marketer to an SES session? Title it ‘B2B Marketing Tips.’

What’s the quickest way to get you to read this post? By diving right in to the top 5 tips shared:

1. Your conversion goals must become more sophisticated**
   Yes, probably even yours.  For the simple reason that you should always be testing and always be experimenting with something new.  The keywords that convert today may transform into completely new derivations tomorrow.  Always be tracking and always be testing.

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.”

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:

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.

“Easy reading is damn hard writing,” opened chancellor Roy Williams at last week’s Wizard of Ads training seminar, ’12 Languages of The Mind.’

Never is this quote from Nigel Hawthorne (not Nathaniel Hawthorne, as it’s commonly credited to, per Williams) more apt than when you are a writer of any trade struggling to find that opening hook.

(To serve a personal example, the percentage of time I spent drafting this opening paragraph will exceed the percentage of time spent on any one remaining section of this entire post.)

SEO copywriting serves perhaps the greatest challenge when finding that hook, as we copywriters are encouraged to begin our posts with keywords as far up and to the left as possible in our titles.  (This post may be a bad example, as a blog that begins with ‘SEO Copywriting’ carries the promise of inherent fascination within.)

Harrison Ford may have been a robot. SEO copywriters are not.

Copywriting, and all of marketing really, represent that beautiful intersection between business and creativity.  Those of us lucky enough to find our way into this niche find that, amazingly, we can actually make a living being creative.

Granted, the work we create may not always grab the attention of our hipster friends, but it will put food on our clients’ tables (most important), put food on our own tables (second most important), and put food on our aforementioned hipster friends’ tables (if they’re lucky).

Perhaps the biggest mistake we can make as copywriters when we find ourselves writing specifically for a search engine optimization initiative is becoming untrue to our own creative personalities.