Online Marketing Blog

A trap I fell into early in my career as an SEM specialist was to ensure clients we would do our best to drive all the traffic we could to their site. Looking back, I’m glad I learned the obvious error of this statement before becoming involved in a client’s burgeoning PPC campaign.

The session “Creating Compelling Ads”, moderated by Allan Dick of Vintage Tub & Bath had at its core the powerfully obvious notion (in hindsight) that driving all traffic to your site is not only a fool’s mission, but in the realm of PPC, a costly mistake.

Day two of SES San Jose found me fighting for an outlet as I prepared to impart details to you on the session “Putting Search Into the Marketing Mix”.

The session, moderated by Free Agent Consultant Sara Holoubek included on its panel:

• Misty Locke, President & co-Founder, Range Online Media
• Curtis Dueck, Senior Account Manager, Epiar Inc.
• Bill Mungovan, Director of Search, Carat Fusion
• Bill Hunt, CEO, Global Strategies International

“Writing for Search Engines” is a long standing session by Heather Lloyd-Martin and Jill Whalen. It’s a great session covering the basics of SEO friendly copywriting and a good primer for those new to SEO.

Search Engines are constantly improving their ability to sniff out the spam and de-value irrelevant links such as those from link farms. They are making the same kinds of improvements to the indexing, categorization and sorting of web pages in the search results.
In order to make it easier for search engines to do their job, it’s important to incorporate the keywords for which you wish to be found in your site content, title tags and meta descriptions. Now when people search for those keywords, there’s a greater likelihood that search engines will rank the web site higher than a competitor site who doesn’t have relevant keywords in the content and links of their site.

Tuesday’s SES’s keynote was with Jim Lanzone of Ask. He talked briefly about the past, present and future of Ask.com.

Jim stated that they’ve seen great growth since launching Ask 3D. They feel that they are the fastest growing in their category. Ask is not as concerned with beating the others at market share, they are more concerned with getting satisfying results back to the searchers. After launching ask 3D they are finding that about 50% of their users are not clicking on the web results but rather on of the other offerings on the page. Jim also pointed out that they are trying to get as much information above the fold as possible. To do this theyare putting content where other search sites are putting ads.

Day Two coverage of the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose:  The Popular Kids Have Good Content 

Tuesday morning was the morning to learn about link building. As a linking specialist at TopRank, I knew I would learn a lot, and review what I already know, in this session by listening to Mike Grehan and Christine Churchill.

The topics we focused on this morning were ways to increase a website’s ranking, such as link requests, paid links and reputable links from authority sites.

If you see these smiling faces at SES, be sure to say hello!

Here is a summary of the coverage by the TopRank blogging team for day one of Search Engine Strategies, San Jose 2007:

• SES San Jose Day Minus One
• The Search Landscape
• SES Videos: Dan Perry Cars.com
• SES Videos: Conversation with Michael Gray and Bryan Eisenberg
• Universal & Blended Search
• Public Relations Train Wrecks in the Interactive Biz
• SES Video Tim Mayer of Yahoo Interview
• Ads in A Quality Score World
• Winning the Search Engine Lottery

TopRank’s Melinda Cayetano and Dana Larson attended the Women in Search Luncheon with over 50 in attendance. TopRank is proud to have been a co-sponsor of the event along with Danny Sullivan. TopRank wanted to give recognition to Jill Whalen and Kim Krause Berg as being key influences for us from waaaay back when to get involved with the search marketing industry. Amanda Watlington and Heather Lloyd-Martin were also great motivators and facilitators for us as well.   I’d say it’s worked out pretty well so far.

Mike Grehan stopped by.

The personalization of search results is not the only way to target someone, you can also personalize your website to ensure your visitors feel engaged as soon as they arrive.

Gordon Hotchkiss gave some great examples and data behind personalized search and proved that I actually does work. Everyone remembers the golden triangle right? It shows how people use Google and where they actually click. Now, with personalized search and universal search enabled, the golden triangle changes quite a it. The focus shifts to the content targeted directly to the user and, if there is imagery in the results, the users start there. In their test, Gordon said that when personalized search results were given, users were 3x more likely to click on a results and much less likely to click on ads.

The core message of the Searcher Behavior Research Update at this year’s SES was that there are missed search marketing opportunities as traditional marketers fail to take into account the exponential growth of online marketing.

Each study presented valuable data and insight into how search engines can help reach your targeted audience.

For example, Pavan Lee of Microsoft described how marketers of the “soccer mom” segment may miss considerable opportunities by utilizing only traditional marketing. Lee presented a study indicating, that of their sample of “soccer moms”:

• 90% Use search engines at least 2 times a day

In 1981 when legendary Minneapolis agency Fallon first opened their doors, a full page ad was run in the Star Tribune, Minneapolis’ primary daily, alerting the local business denizens that a new ad agency was promising to help them outsmart the competition, rather than outspend them. The concept of quality score as it relates to PPC ads always reminds me of this anecdote from the traditional ad world.

Going through proper channels, I was able to coordinate a short video interview with Tim Mayer of Yahoo. I’m a bit of a Yahoo fan and it was great being able to chat with Tim for a few minutes before we recorded on the various questions other speakers suggested.

In this video, Tim answers a few questions including:

• What’s in store for Yahoo’s version of Universal search?
• From Mike Grehan: “Why does my spam work so much better in Yahoo than it does in Google?”

Online Marketing Blog’s coverage from day one of Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2007

Day 1 at SES San Jose began with the “no more horsing around” session, “Public Relations Train Wrecks in the Interactive Biz: Disaster Can be Avoided”, moderated by Kevin Ryan, VP & Global Content Director of SES & Search Engine Watch.

For those that remember my introductory post, this session held special interest, for, in my role as an Account Manager handling the Public Relations initiatives of several client firms, I constantly strive to ensure the phrase “train wreck” is the furthest concept away from not only my own personal vocabulary, but my client’s business psyches.