Online Marketing Blog

Earlier this week I gave a presentation on the intersection of SEO, online PR and social media to a great mix of people (mostly agencies) at a SEMPO Arizona event. The SEO/PR/Social topic is an interesting mix due to the convergence that’s been happening over the past 2-3 years and of course, because it’s the essence of what we’ve been doing at TopRank.

Forward thinking companies are investing in social media for a variety of reasons, including gaining a competitive advantage through building relationships, creating content and capturing mindshare.  I think it’s safe to say that companies making investments in better connecting with their customers now, will have a distinct advantage over those that are resolved to “wait and see” with this social web thing.

If you are in the market to harvest leads from your web site, then this is the session for you! Industry experts Barbara Coll, CEO of WebMama.com, Patricia Hursh, President and Founder of SmartSearch Marketing and Adam Goldberg, Chief Innovation Officer for Clearsaleing gave some tips and insight to help B2B marketers develop search strategies to increase the number of qualified leads from their search campaigns.

Patricia kicked off the session with 10 tips for B2B Marketers!

1. Reach prospects early in the buying cycle
The sales cycle can often be long and complicated. B2B marketers rarely face the fact that people are conducting product searches at the beginning of the buying cycle. Reality is, your customers are looking for your product information way before they are ready to convert. You have to be there early!

Satya Nadella is the SVP of the Search, Portal & Advertising Platform Group for Microsoft. In this session, Satya discussed the evolution of search and outlined strategies to help prepare for success. Specifically, he brings light to how we think about the evolution of search and the unique assets that will take it to the next level.

The evolution of search:

We can categorize the history of search by looking at 3 dimensions:
1. Core technology of search
2. Business model
3. Expectations

The core technology of SEO is the magic of keyword base search. The business model continues to shift with CPC driving efficiency as we continue to measure quantitative results and ROI.

Paid search not only accounts for nearly 45% of the global online ad spend, but it is also one of the fastest growing online ad formats.

I’m currently enrolled in the Advanced Search Advertising course through the SEMPO Institute and am excited to learn about the new trends in search marketing, shared by industry experts like Heather Dougherty, Research Director for Hitwise, Kevin Lee, Executive Chairman & Co-founder of Didit, Sean Walsh, VP Online Marketing for LuxuryLink.com and Jaideep Singh, CEO & Co-Founder of Spock.com.

Online advertising spend reached $35 Billion in 2007 and is projected to continue to reach $44 Billion in 2008 and $54 in 2009.

Everyone is so familiar with the expression “When in Rome…” that most people don’t even finish the statement. Yet this piece of well-worn advice is sometimes ignored or forgotten in practice. Emerging markets around the world are growing and attracting U.S. attention in every industry, and search engine marketing is no exception. Online marketers, like other business professionals, need to ensure they have a good understanding of the local market they are targeting and interacting with in order to effectively market to them. This SES San Jose session gave a good introduction to the international markets of China, Japan and Latin America from an online marketing perspective.

Moderator Anne Kennedy of Beyond Ink introduced our three presenters, each with an extensive professional background in online marketing to one of the highlighted regions.

When in China…

While there is still a debate over the effect of the recession we are in, or even if we are in a recession at all, it seems most companies and individuals are preparing for it the best they can. Talks of budget cuts and conserving resources are on everyone’s minds these days.

So where does search marketing fit in to all of this?

Our expert panel this morning at SMX Advanced - consisting of Jon Miller from Marketo (a TopRank client), Russ Mann of Covario , Dave Davies of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning and Andrew Beckman of Location3 Media - gave great advice and opinions in how to come out of this recession thriving.

While I am presently an offline/online media relations guy, my background spans a variety of media and tactics. As such, I have always been fascinated with the phenomena of SuperBowl advertisements. What other event allows you to generate buzz simply by making a media buy?

When it comes to search, it is nearly useless to play Monday morning quarterback with SuperBowl advertisements. Whether Budweiser had a funnier ad than FedEx is not necessarily relevant to our world. But in order to determine whether companies maximized their $2.7 million investment, it is important to assess the lasting impact on searches for their products.

In a trend that is sure to continue, many companies endeavored to drive traffic to their website in hopes of generating online buzz. Godaddy.com was certainly the most explicit about this tactic, sending viewers online to catch a racy “forbidden” ad featuring NASCAR sensation Danica Patrick.

Today’s Orion panel at SES NY really took a different spin on the topic of universal search. I went in expecting to hear the same info  about what it is, how info is gathered and how to optimize for universal search. Which, if you are interested, can be read about in a previous SES Chicago post regarding universal search.

This session was moderated by Kevin Ryan and Mike Grehan. The session was lively and engaging. Panelists included:
John Battelle from Federated Media, James Lamberti from comScore, Lyndsay Menzies from Big Mouth Media and Jack Menzel from Google.

James led the group by presenting not-seen-before data about universal search from a study comScore recently conducted.

Of the 1.2 billion queries studied, 220 million contained a universal result, categorized as news, video, images etc.

This week we did a bit of house cleaning and removed 37 blogs from the BIGLIST of SEO blogs - some of them from well known SEOs. One of the quality measures we use for inclusion on the BIGLIST is frequency of posting. If a blog gets stale, we say bye bye for now. Get your BIGLIST updates via Twitter.

This week’s update includes several SEO blogs new to our list and a few re-inclusions. Enjoy!

• John W. Ellis SEM Blog - John writes mostly about PPC, analytics, SEO and social media marketing with a bit of sports, travel and Nashville sneaking in from time to time.

• SEM Geek - Besides contributing at SMG, Greg Meyers writes an awful lot about paid search marketing including specific PPC platforms, analytics and overall marketing on the internet.

Just as with Leverage Your Brand Lovers, the “Branding and Search” session gave the SMX West audience much to think about.

Bob Tripathi, Search Marketing Specialist at Discover Financial, reinforced the need to understand your brand as it relates to SEO/SEM.

Brand Recognition: Do searchers recognize your brand?
–ex. McDonalds’ arches are recognized worldwide

Brand Perception: Do searchers know what you do?
–ex. Discover Financial doesn’t just offer credit cards, but they offer a slew of other financial services

Brand Loyalty: Are searchers loyal to your brand?
–ex. Google and its VERY loyal followers

Brand Affinity: Are searchers aspiring to be part of your brand and culture?
–ex. Mercedes and the status associated with the brand

Day 1 of SMX West wrapped up with a tailgating party and the SMX Search Bowl which pinned the search engines, the search marketers and Microsoft against one another in a game of industry-related trivia.

Tailgating party at SMX West

More tailgating

and more tailgating, but this time people were paying attention

The SMX Search Bowl contestants, with host Danny Sullivan

Matt Cutts getting ready to play

A packed house for ‘kick off’

Look - I’m one of the contestants!!!….sort of

Check out all of the photos at TopRank’s SMX West Flickr set.

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The personas session, today at SMX, reminded me so much of psychology classes in college. A large group of people discussing why other people behave the way they do.

Gord Hotchkiss, President and CEO of Enquiro, kicked things off by helping the audience understand the factors impacting how humans make decisions, including:

• explicit, implicit memories
• past interactions with a brand
• current interactions with the brand
• emotions

Additional panelists included:
Brian Bond, VP Marketing and Products, Future Now, Inc
Ian Lurie, President, Portent Interactive

As Ian put it, personas are our brand’s imaginary friends.

I think the advantage of personas is really in the research it takes to get there. In order to develop personas, you must dive deeply into what’s behind prospects’ decision making, something that companies may not always invest the time in understanding.