Online Marketing Blog

Google Analyzes Consumer Device Preferences: Insight Into Mobile Purchasing Journey

Google has just released a blog post and infographic sharing insights into consumer shopping behavior over the recent 2012 shopping season. In many cases, Google said, consumers discovered a business on one device, for example on their smartphone while in a store, and would then engage further with that business on another device at a later time.

It is critical that companies understand the various entry and touchpoints during their customers’ buying journey, then optimize existing and new content to fulfill needs at each point. Your own data will always be most valuable, though the industry trends companies with access to as much relevant data as Google has can be helpful, as well. For example, they found that smartphones were the preferred device for contacting or navigating to a business with 71% of shoppers using a store locator on their phone, while 82% of shoppers used a larger device like PC or tablet for making online purchases. Is your content, whether written, visual or video, currently optimized for mobile formatting and consumption?

In just a few weeks, I’ll be making the pilgrimage to London where I will be speaking at the SES London conference about integrated marketing and content, two very hot topics right now.

As the internet marketing industry evolves with innovations in platform technologies and consumer behaviors changing right along, marketers and brands are trying their best to keep up. This is as true in London as it is here in Minneapolis or New York or San Francisco.

Top of mind these days is “content marketing” and a study from Econsultancy and Adobe reports that content marketing is a top digital marketing priority in 2013 for companies worldwide. Another study conducted by Econsultancy & Responsys shows that UK companies are budgeting accordingly with 99% stating they will increase or maintain their content marketing investments in 2013.

No SEO Migration Plan is much scarier than this pic of Big Ben.

One of the classic scenarios for the intersection of web design/development and search engine optimization is when companies decide to update their website’s design and content management system. Businesses that expect new revenue and continued visibility to various audiences through search need to manage their web site assets for more than just ease of back-end maintenance and customer user experience.

Hopefully the situation doesn’t come to light like this:

A website manager sends an email on Friday saying, “We’re launching a new website on Monday, can you take a look at it to make sure our site optimization is ok?”.

I’m a bit of a travel bug and my third trip to London didn’t disappoint. SES moved its venue to the center of London, literally across the street from Westminster Abbey and a short walk to Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the London Eye and many other well known landmarks.

Whether a conference happens in amazing places like London or New York, there are a few things I try to do in order to maximize the value from attending including speaking of course, but also networking, connecting with media opportunities and creating content. Here’s a rundown of some of that before and during SES London.

SES London 2008 – Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions

Link building is crucial, but linkbait tactics that worked this year may not be as effective next year. This session focuses on the underlying quality as well as ingenuity needed to get other websites to link to you early and often. It will also explain how you should approach journalists, bloggers and other authoritative sources to enhance your company’s online reputation, whether or not you get links.

Moderator: Anne Kennedy, Manager, Managing Partner, Beyond Ink
Speakers: Alan Webb, CEO, Abakus Internet Marketing, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Creative Director, deMib.com and Brian Turner, Director, Britecorp, Ltd.

First up is Alan Webb from ABAKUS.

Link building is a chicken/egg situation. To get the links you need content but to get the content found and linked to, you need the links.

Here’s a roundup of photos from day two of Search Engine Strategies London 2008:

Anne Kennedy and Bryan Eisenberg

Jim Sterne and Andy Beal

Audience

Massimo does his magic as Amanda looks on

Competitive Intelligence panel

Blog SEO session

Lisa Ditlefsen and Rob Kerry

Chris Leggett and Jon Meyers

Post conference activities

Here’s a day SES London day one wrap up video from Incisive:

And here’s a wrap up of day two SES London blog coverage, images and video on Search Engine Watch

On day one of SES London I was able to catch up with Google Search Evangelist Adam Lasnik to do a short (10 min) video on several topics important to web masters looking for better results on Google. Adam starts with a descrption of his responsibilities at Google and then answers questions about Google compliant Flash and JavaScript, duplicate content – especially with press releases and suggested uses of internal site nofollow other than for “PageRank sculpting”.

Let’s kick things off for SES London 2008 with a few photos:

Business Design Centre – Cool venue for a conference

Matt Bailey getting the sock puppet treatment from Greg Jarboe, pre-conference

Frank Watson and his budda belly gets rubbed by Li Evans

Kevin Heisler, Kevin Ryan, Gary Lynch and Stewart Quealy from Incisive

SES London co-host Mike Grehan and Keynote speaker Dr. Ralph Wilson

Registration

Exhibit Hall

Dave Naylor, Edward Cowell and Ralph Tegtmeier, aka Fantomaster duing the Organic Listings Forum

Mike Grehan moderates the Organic Listings Forum

Andy, Dixon, Kristjan, Mel, Brian

Matt McGowan and Rebecca Lieb

Frederick Marckini from iProspect giving day one keynote

Be sure to view many more photos from our SES London 2008 Flickr set.

Coming up fast (February 19-21) is the 2008 Search Engine Strategies show in London. It will be my first time speaking at an event in London and luckily I’ll be involved with 3 panels that are spot on with the marketing consulting work we do at TopRank.

The two panels that I am presenting on are concurrent Wednesday, Feb 20 with “News Search SEO” starting at 10:30 a.m. followed by “Blog and Feed SEO” at 11:45 a.m. I will also be moderating the “Brand and Reputation Management” panel on Thursday at 3:30p.m. Below are more details on those sessions.

We get lots of links recommendations daily from friends, industry peers, PR interns who have absolutely no idea what they’re doing and way too many mindless bots. In a moment of weakness as I wait for the opening reception for SIS to start, I thought I’d share a few worthy links from others and a few of our own.

Stairway to Google Heaven – Mel Carson from Microsoft was inspired by the Fishkins Rand and Gillian to write this blog post ode to what search marketing can do for good causes.

he finer points of top rankings – podcast interview with small business marketing legend, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing and myself on leveraging social media and networking channels such as Twitter, MyBlogLog and StumbleUpon. mp3