Online Marketing Blog

Many small and medium sized consumer products marketers strive for the biggest bang for the buck when allocating budgets. While our SEO firm specializes more in BtoB SEO, PR and blogs, there are some fundamental consumer product site promotion tactics we’ve found to be appropriate in many cases. Each is measurable to ROI and can be scaled to some degree.

1. Pay per click - Advertising on Google, Yahoo, MSN
2. Site optimization - Improving “natural” rankings on search engines
3. Optimized press releases - Announce sales, contests or special offers via press release

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Aaron Wall has posted an excellent article on search engine relevancy over at SEOBook.com explaining his perception of the different relevancy criteria used by Google, Yahoo and MSN. Aaron offers both a short version and long version. Yahoo is great, but can still be manipulated. Google is best at determining relevancy. MSN is still new and currently easiest to manipulate. Ask is good, but their small market share does not necessarily warrant specific attention from a SEO perspective.

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JupiterResearch has release their “US SEM Executive Survey 2006″ reporting that 40 percent of search marketers spent at least $500,000 on search in 2005, compared to 12 percent in 2004. A significant number of those companies are using search marketing to satisfy their online branding objectives.

The JupiterResearch survey also found that, while search marketing has traditionally been used for direct marketing purposes, more marketers are seeing the value of search for branding.

While generating immediate sales of online products is the goal of 37 percent of sophisticated search advertisers, 31 percent say building brand awareness is their main objective.

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Yes dear friends, I’ve said it. Paid search can be a pain in the rear. But no worries, search engine marketing guru Andrew Goodman of Traffick and Page Zero Media promises to shed some light on the subject in conjunction with a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) seminar next week.

Goodman’s presentation, “IT’S NOT JUST YOU: PAY-PER-CLICK CAN BE A REAL BEAST” will cover examples of Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing challenges, SEM relations, click fraud, CPOs vs. market share growth, data privacy, auctions and more.

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Next week there will be a “must listen” SEO Rockstars and Daily SearchCast show on WebmasterRadio.fm. The show will start out with Todd Friesen (oilman) and Greg Boser (webguerilla) and then cut to a 45 min Danny Sullivan interview with Matt Cutts at the GooglePlex and back to Friesen and Boser. The show airs Tuesday, May 16, 2006 at 7:00 p.m. EST.
If you can’t wait and just need an audio fix of Mr. Cutts, then point your iPod over to Mike Grehan’s recently posted clip of a podcast interview he did with Matt Cutts at the GooglePlex last week. Of course there’s also this podcast interview with Matt Cutts that Chris Pirillo did at Search Engine Strategies NYC.
As long as I’m on the topic of SEO and podcasts, here’s a podcast of the fireside chat on organic seo session with Barbara Coll and Bruce Clay from ad:tech in San Francisco. (via iMediaConnection) I think they do a handy job of sizing up their audience and providing great overview information on organic SEO.

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The class action noise about Google and the company who’s rankings have dropped is a pure waste in my opinion. Google has no legal obligation to treat sites in any particular manner as far as I know. No one pays Google to be included, so is there really an obligation by Google to explain legally? Granted, it would be unfortunate to have one’s site removed from Google, particularly since Google can mean the difference between being in or out of business. But a lawsuit?

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The Magazine DM News publishes a supplement called “Outlook” each year that collects interviews and articles from some of the leading direct marketers and their perspectives on the coming year in direct marketing. Executive Editor, Mickey Alam Khan has provided a list of trends that coincides well with what we’re seeing “on the ground”. A few trends related to search and blog marketing:

• Buzz marketing or word of mouth will be big - at least the buzz about buzz marketing will be big
• Ecommerce will emphasize “interactions not transactions” per Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli

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