Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®

Article from News.com – Google made it’s entry into the social networking marketing live yesterday. Officially, Google says Orkut is not part of it’s product lineup – the site indicates it is “in affiliation with Google”.

Interesting move by Google, but is it a strategic initiative, or just a pet project by Orkut Buyukkokten, the Google engineer who developed the app? Anything new that Google comes out with prior to the IPO is going to look like a bit of beefing up, I think.

To join Orkut, you must be invited, you cannot sign-up on the site, which is interesting. “orkut is a trusted community. In order to join, you need to receive an invitation”. I’m not going to hold be breath for that. That may be an intentional effort to make the service exclusive. Google news started out much the same way so I gues we’ll see.

Press Release from Business Wire

Yahoo recently announced that it’s formed Yahoo! Research Labs, a team of scientists that will investigate and develop future Internet technologies. The team is led by chief scientists from Yahoo and recently purchased PPC firm, Overture.

If you’re not familiar, Google Labs has been around for quite a while. Cool tools like voice search and Google deskbar as well as features like Google News have come out of the Google Labs initiative.

With Yahoo discontinuing to use Google search results soon, Yahoo is clearly positioning itself to edge in more aggressively on the market share it once had from Google. With Inktomi soon to replace default search results on Yahoo, businesses that rely on traffic from Yahoo will do well to ensure their rankings are also prominent within Inktomi. Otherwise, when the changeover happens, traffic from Yahoo may all but disappear.

Starting with “Tech marketing rebound”, this article from BtoB lists 10 marketing trends to watch for in 2004 based on comments by top marketing, agency and industry execs interviewed by BtoB.

Additional comments:
“Search will continue to be big,” said Greg Stuart, president-CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Keyword search made up 31% of total online ad revenue in the first six months of the year, and Stuart said it will keep growing. “Search has not peaked, and it‚Äôs not going to level off any time soon” he said. “Most people are making profits on first customer contacts with search.”

Link to Article

Heavy Internet Marketers Reveal What’s Working What’s Not, & 2004 Budgets

Article: From MarketingSherpa.com

At the time of this post, the link above will reveal the entire article, but after a week or so, I believe it’s placed in a pay-to-view situation (nominal fee).

One of the comments I found interesting was, “We expect SEO spending to continue strong in 2004…” Companies that are tired of spending money on PPC like a water faucet will increasingly look to reputable SEO firms for guidance. That is not to say PPC is going away, or has matured, or anything like that. As marketing organizations within companies are increasingly held accountable, the drive towards finding cost effective tactics will simply increase.

What a year it’s been. Am very optimistic about 2004 for online marketing. The one thing you can count on in regard to marketing online is that things will change. Convergence of SEO and public relations tactics, more active involvement by Ad and PR agencies in SEO, not just PPC. Mergers, acquisitions, IPO’s and new technologies are most likely all in store for the search engine industry in 2004.

When the Florida update occurred our site felt it like many others. On a Saturday morning, I checked a particular phrase on Google that has driven many, many new customers to us and our site was gone. I know better, but that sinking feeling set in.

About 3 weeks before, we began the process of changing our domain name from a keyword rich, hyphenated name to a shorter name that included the name of our SEO service www.toprankmarketing.com. The shorter name had already been used in radio interviews and our listing in the Marketing Sherpa Guide to SEO Firms.

With recent email legislation, will tech marketers be as enthusiastic about using email for new customer acquisition? Regardless, there’s more and more noise about paid ads within email newsletters which could open up opportunities for very targeted advertising.

Overall the research and article are promising news for BtoB tech marketers. “Confidence with the medium is encouraging marketers to allocate more money to online marketing.” Many technology companies already initiated online campaigns in 2003 that had never explored search engine optimization or PPC as a viable tactic for lead generation. That trend appears to be continuing and 2004 could be a very promising year for tech marketers that can deliver measurable results cost effectively

If your company is in need of expert search engine optimization services, contact TopRank Marketing at 1-877-872-6628 or online.

Online Marketing Blog was created to provide up to date news, resources and information on the search engine industry as well as tactics ranging from search engine optimization to blog marketing and online public relations.

Posts are made by Lee Odden, President of TopRank Online Marketing, a search marketing firm that provides search engine optimization, online public relations and blog marketing services. He is also co-founder of Misukanis & Odden Public Relations firm.

TopRank has been recognized as a leading SEO firm by TopSEOs.com and has been the only Minnesota search engine optimization firm included in Marketing Sherpa’s guide to SEO firms for 2 consecutive years.