Online Marketing Blog

Google is the Wizard of search marketing’s Oz. The all-powerful being around which our universe orbits, and the all-knowing guru to whom we turn for website advice. While Google, like the wizard, may guard its own secrets, it lifts the curtain and lets us look at the inner workings of websites. In this session, two of Google’s own, Avinash Kaushik and Tom Leung, gave us an insider’s tour of changes in Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer, two tools of incredible value to search marketers and webmasters alike.

Google Analytics

Avinash, author of Analytics Evangelist, outlined a few key uses of Google Analytics that can make a huge impact on the success of your website.

Bounce Rate

Who doesn’t like when secrets are given away? I know I do, and I can’t be the only one who thrives on search engine tips, rumors and gossip. This afternoon the expert panel of David Rodnitzky, Terry Whalen, Chris Knoch, Vinny Lingham and Chris Zaharias, we in the audience learned some new, exciting and potentially scary tips from these industry experts.

Debunking 5 current SEM assumptions – the continued growth of the long tail, the 1,001 things to do in SEM, that everyone should do SEM, listening to the search engine and the opaqueness of search – the panel addressed the following realities of the SEM world.

When performing a search on Google, there are two different types of results that show up: the organic listings and the paid, or sponsored, listings. Organically ranked sites are those which Google finds most relevant for that search query. The paid listings show up because an advertiser is paying money to be ranked that highly for those phrases. When a searcher clicks on one of those listings, the advertiser is charged the cost per click price for that ranking, so hopefully the searcher will convert into a sale for that advertiser.

But what if you don’t know anything about search advertising or setting up a pay per click campaign? What are the best practices behind PPC? And how do you track conversions? This session at the end of Day 2 of SES San Jose goes over the basics of search advertising and how to implement it for success.

This sponsored session was an entry level overview of what websites should be doing on their website to get visibility and rankings in search engines.

Here are the 7 Proven Ways to get Your Website on Page 1 Organically & then Convert as stated by the presenter Shawn Moore.

1. Content is King
   What your content says, what your images and video show not only give users a first impression, but those items are also important to how a search engine is going to interpret your website.
2. Navigation and Architecture
   Looking into the way that your menus and internal linking structure are important. Can the web crawlers see and index your navigation? Or is it in JavaScript or Flash that may not be as search friendly?

If pay-per-click ads are the welcome mat to the house of your business, landing pages are the entryway. The welcome mat may get people in the door, but the entryway convinces them to stay. The look and feel of your ‘entryway’ needs to be inviting and interesting to get your visitors to move forward in their relationship with your business. A good, engaging landing page is critical to gaining the conversions that are the meat of your pay per click ad, whether your defined conversion metric is driving traffic to your site, selling a product or gaining prospect contact information.

Sage Lewis of Search Engine Watch Expert and President of SageRock.com introduced this SES session on landing page optimization. Speaker Tim Ash, president of Site Tuners and landing page expert, brought his enthusiasm for his topic and his practical advice to this session of useful tips.

Today the Expo Hall at SES San Jose opened. Time to collect astronomical amounts of swag and drop your business card to win a free iPhone! The expo hall every year is full of some of the best products and services available for any online marketing team, and this year was absolutely no different.

This year they are giving away a pretty sweet Mazda3. If press were allowed to enter, I would definitely be taking this car home with me.

The Google booth is always one of the biggest and brightest booth of them all. They are offering tours of Google Analytics this year, for the conference goers to learn and use later.

So, you’ve launched a search marketing campaign. You spent time and energy putting it all together and now it is live. So how do you track results of the campaign? The panel this morning at SES San Jose shares their knowledge on measurement and tracking in the communicative world of Web 2.0.

Avinash Kaushik kicked us off this morning by talking about how challenging it can be to track results (traffic, links, visibility) from the content placed online. He gave an example of the BBC creating their own content, then distributing that content on their own web channel where users consume that content on the BBC website. However, when Web 2.0 came out and the sense of community and opinion was created, a random Joe Internet can come onto the BBC site and make comments, sharing his thoughts on the BBC website through forums or comments on news stories. Joe also has a blog where he can share his content with the world. And there are news mashups that pull in information from news sites and blogs and it is difficult to find out where the news originated from.

Online Marketing Blog published a record breaking 14 blog posts on the first day of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. Congratulations to Thomas, Ashley, Dana and Jessica on a great job on what was a very busy day.

• SES San Jose: Search Industry Update – Jessica
• SES San Jose: Video Search Engine Optimization (VSEO) – Ashley
• SES San Jose: The Next Wave for Online Video – Ashley
• SES San Jose: Search Around the World – Part 1: Asia/Pacific & Latin America – Ashley
• SES San Jose: Keynote with Lee Siegel – Jessica
• SES San Jose: Pay Per Conversion – Jessica
• SES San Jose: Storyteller Marketing: How The Art of Storytelling Matches Up With the Business of Marketing – Thomas

Earlier today, I attended the session “The Next Wave For Online Video,” which covered some high level insights into video advertising and online video trends. This session focused more on practical tips to get videos ranking in both video search engine and universal search results. Joseph Morin of Boost Search Marketing monitored this session in which five online video optimization experts shared their inside tips and tricks for launching your video to the masses. Each expert had a wealth of knowledge to share, so what follows are some highlights from each speakers’ presentation.

Online video has seen a surge in popularity over the past few years. What started out as simple user-generated content (UGC) has become a medium for everyone from the rich and famous to the video blogger next door. It is no surprise that marketers were quick to recognize this trend and capitalize on the success of viral videos in order to reach out to consumers. Yet online video marketing is almost as varied and complex as the ranting of LonelyGirl15. This session examines these complexities and how they relate to marketers. Moderator Rebecca Lieb, contributing editor at ClickZ, led a panel of three Online Video gurus as they discussed the viral video phenomenon, its causes and its future.

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…

Where is search headed?  We’ve heard of semantic search for a few years now, but what’s going on with it?  Each major search engine is taking the next steps but some are closer than others.  

Actually, what we are beginning to see is semantic and universal search merging together.  Yahoo, Ask, Powerset and Hakia showed screenshots that included images, videos, ratings and other media.  Are universal and semantic search the same?  Possibly. 

– Sorry for the bad pictures. I haven’t got down the art of taking pictures of PowerPoint slides.