Liveblog

April 2, 2009

Bruce Clay Australasia Launches SEO Blog

SMX Sydney is going on this week in Oz. While I use the occasion to abuse Aussie slang, the Bruce Clay team decided to make a rage of it and launch their grouse new Australia SEO blog. Congrats team BCA! Search marketer Marc Elison has been liveblogging flat out like a lizard drinking while Kate Gamble has taken on the bizzo of editor/commentator. The end result is ace!

But since the blog is still just a joey, I thought I'd post about some of the good oil Marc has written so you can see what's going down in the Lucky Country. (Please don't add my name to the list of people banned from Australia. I promise to stop harassing the language now.)

Here are my top takeaways from day one of SMX Sydney, as read from BCA's liveblog coverage.

Blended Search Tactics

• Should you host your videos on your site or on YouTube? Unless your site is the industry leader by far, Google generally returns YouTube results first. Piggyback on YouTube's established SEO strength.
• Podcasts offer more flexibility than videos. Time limits are less important for podcasts than videos and are usually easier to produce.
• Include transcripts of visual and audio media on your site to help with SEO. The text keywords included in transcripts can reinforce silo themes.
• Cross promote your multimedia content through Facebook, other social media sites and any channel that has good visibility within your audience.

Search Engine Friendly Web Design

• SEO vs. Visual Design: In order to create the best possible working environment between the search marketing and Web design teams, specify SEO requirements before plans for design are created. This includes unique title URLs, headings, the amount of content per page and some links.
• SEO vs. Technology: Technology and SEO are not at odds as long as you weigh the costs and benefits of using AJAX and client-side processes that affect SEO. Use such technologies as an enhancement, not for core content and links.
• SEO vs. Accessibility: Accessibility best practices not only allow disabled users to access the site; they often are SEO best practices as well. An accessible site helps: in legal compliance, with low bandwidth users, with mobile browsers, with users with older hardware and software, and with search engines.
• SEO vs. Cost: When compared to any other online marketing channel, SEO almost always produces the highest ROI. In order to continually prove your value, become a Web analytics expert.

Link Building Fundamentals

• Link building strategies:
  • You can never have too much great content.
  • Post press releases online.
  • List your site in all appropriate directories.
  • Analyze your competitors for in-link opportunities.
  • Try asking for a link. It works more often than you might think.
  • Leverage social media and develop your personal brand within those communities.
• Where to start:
  • Become familiar with Google's webmaster guidelines.
  • Begin by looking at authority directories.
  • Press release sites such as PRWeb.com and PRZOOM.com are SEO friendly.
  • Submit articles to sites such as EzineAticles.com and ArticleBASE.com.
  • Find social media news and sharing sites specific to your niche or industry.

Understanding SEO

• Internet searches were around before Google and the current search leader wasn't always the dominant force. SEO is an industry that is always changing and the SEO profession requires enthusiasm and continuous training.
• SEO is like the television show "House". The symptoms of a poorly performing site are hard to diagnose and it can take several rounds of experimenting before a cure is found.
• SEO can be compared to a professional sport. Getting ahead of the competition requires the most cutting-edge and state-of-the-art tools.
• Keep in mind the six key factors of SEO: on-page elements, expertness (or links), copywriting, engagement objects, site architecture and siloing, and spidering.

What's New in Mobile Search

• The mobile Web is evolving quickly. 3G and open WiFi access enable faster downloads and, thus, richer content. The cost of smart phones and data plans are becoming more manageable as well.
• To see how your site ranks on iPhone searches, use tools including iSearch and Google Mobile App for your iPhone.
• A separate mobile site for your domain is not necessary as the mobile browsing experience improves. The .mobi domain is particularly bad for SEO efforts; .mobi sites require cumbersome development standards and are not universally known by users.
• To ensure that your site displays as intended as new mobile handsets and browsers are released, code your site in clean XHTML code with valid CSS.

Keyword Research

• Ten percent of Web traffic in Australia is generated by search engines. Google is the dominant search engine with 83 percent market share.
• A high correlation between the words used on a Web site and the terms used by customers is the best case scenario that signifies effective keyword research.

Photo by Mr. Imperial via Creative Commons

• When looking for the right keywords to optimize on your site, remember to: build your list from internal as well as external sources; avoid general terms as more targeted terms generate higher ROI; and keep in mind the possibility of a disconnect between what you think people search for and what they actually search for.
• Research your competition to see what keywords they have optimized. Also look for competitors that are using misspellings of your brand; you have protective rights as a brand-owner under Australian law.

Day two is about to ramp up so what are you waiting for? Bounce over to Bruce Clay Australasia's new blog and find out what's going down Down Under.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 04/ 2/09 at 3:42 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in International, Liveblog, SMX Sydney 2009

March 31, 2009

Beachside SEO Conferences on the Horizon

Photo by garnet2468 via Creative Commons

Every once in a while it happens that as soon as a blogger gets back from a conference it's time to send another blogger off again. But I've got to think this week we're witnessing one of the quickest turnarounds yet. No sooner do I get back from a week in New York liveblogging SES than Susan's already gearing up for the trek to Florida for IM Spring Break.

Meanwhile, Bruce is back on the road too, getting ready for this week's SMX Sydney and the associated SEOToolSet Training course. With so much to keep track of across the globe, I thought I'd set up the scene for what's coming your way via the Bruce Clay blog.

First, Susan jets off to Deerfield Beach, FL, tomorrow, just in time to attend three days of sun, fun and education at IM Spring Break. It's a conference that offers small attendee-to-speaker ratios and focuses on personal learning and networking opportunities. There is only one session going on at a time and many sessions require attendees to sign NDAs since the information shared with the group is often specific and secretive! Since that's the case, Susan won't be liveblogging anything, but she will be filling her brain with as much good stuff as it will hold and she plans to post some of the sharable highlights when she returns. Plus, I just got word that 7 of the 16 sessions will be available in a webinar for just $50.

Photo by blueriotriver via Creative Commons

Across the equator, Bruce Clay Australia is kicking off the launch of their brand new blog with coverage of SMX Sydney. I'll be sharing some summaries and highlights here on the blog so you can see exactly what you shouldn't be missing. Way to go, Aussie friends!

Bruce Clay Australia search engine marketing consultant Marc Elison will be blogging sessions on one track while technology and travel blogger Neerav Bhatt reports on the other. They plan to update the new blog twice a day during the conference, so keep your eyes peeled! I can't wait to see what comes out of our sister site's new blog and several days of world-class conference education both stateside and abroad. Stay tuned!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/31/09 at 5:15 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in IM Spring Break 2009, International, Liveblog, SMX Sydney 2009

March 26, 2009

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Black Hat PPC Tactics

It's time for my final session at SES New York and the words "black hat" are in the title. I'm thinking there's some more juice to squeeze out of the conference before the doors close, and I'm here to drink it up. Lisa Barone is across the aisle from me. What are the chances she'll be offering up some editorial as part of her coverage? I'd recommend her Outspoken Media post as a companion piece to my reporting.

Our moderator Richard Zwicky, founder and CEO of Enquisite, is introducing the session. There has always been interest in black hat SEO but the crazy things that happen in PPC are rarely discussed. Our speakers are: Jamie Smith, CEO of Engine Ready (who I interviewed before the conference -- check it out); Kevin Lee, co-founder and executive chairman of Didit; David Szetela, CEO of Clix Marketing; and Bill Leake, president and CEO of Apogee Search.

Bill is first. He says that there are more people who are willing to talk to you from Google on the paid search side than the organic. He counsels you to work with your Google reps because they will likely help you since this is where their money comes from. And instead of white hat/black hat he'll be talking about low risk/high risk.

Some folks think that SpyFu is black hat. While the volumes are off, the ability to make comparisons is usually accurate. There's a debate over what is black hat in PPC but he doesn't think SpyFu is it.

Owning more shelf-space

Doesn't Google have a strong policy against double serving and don't they enforce it? A few years ago you'd get emails showing that offending accounts were narrowed down to one or completely blocked from AdWords. They changed it in January to say that the way to get an exception for double serving is if the pricing difference offered by each site is significant and based on the same criteria (for example, if one site includes pricing with tax, the other site must include pricing with tax). From an affiliate/lead generation perspective, this opens the door.

Triple serving can be seen on SERPs as well. So, work with your friends at Google to have them happily take your money so that you have a disproportionate amount of shelf space. Agencies are good at covering your tracks in this practice, which he considers grey and not black.

If you don't like it because it's happening to you, use the Contact Us link from within AdWords. This usually gets the bad ads removed for a day or so. It's kind of like whack-a-mole.

Messing with the competition

If you're running ads you think the competition might not appreciate, geo-target OUTSIDE of their geo or exclude their IP address. This works for affiliates too. It's easy to exclude IP addresses for the brand keywords.

How about trademarks?

What if your manufacturers can't finish giving forms back to Google to make Google happy that you can use their marks in ad copy? That's where dynamic keyword insertion comes in. DKI circumvents the approval process and can also help those that don't have authorization to sell the product.

Here's just down and dirty nasty competitive practices. Have your competitors ever had bad press? Would you be doing a civic duty to help that information get and stay out there?

Or what about messing with their positive reputation management campaigns? For instance, if site one is using marketwatch.com/article, you can try to trump their ad with a better quality score and a higher bid for marketwatch.com/yourarticle.

Black hat PPC for the conscientious is the next presentation by David. He's going to cover what is white, black and gray. He'll share his favorite gray hat techniques and he'll share the ones he thinks are black and should be avoided.

White: Everybody does it
White: Clever things I discover
Gray: Might get you wrist-slapped but not de-listed
Black: Will definitely get you de-listed

Gray Hat Trick 1

He published this in his SEW column and says that it's possible to publish more symbols than Google gives you access to. It's tough for Google to police because of non-English ads. He says PPC Hero is the best blog on PPC. They had an article on how to get trademark and copyright symbols in an ad through copy/paste. Then bgTheory followed up with a method for inserting those symbols with keys. His company hasn't done extensive testing with the special symbols use by some clients have seen good results from using them. Sometime using symbols can save you extra characters.

Symbol guidelines:

• Use only one per line
• A few may not work (like #)
• Test lots of variations (and these guidelines)
• Use AdWords Editor to create ads because you may be able to get more through

Gray Hat Trick 2

There are some tactics that don't get noticed right away. When you do get the disapproval notice, change the ad.

• Capitalize words every now and then. Try "FREE". They've gone months without Google saying anything about it.
• Superlatives: "Top", "leading" and even "best"
• Hyphenated trademark terms: Ep-son, S e i k o
• Trademarks in ad copy via DKI: Could be on the cusp of the illegal
• Pay close attention to catch disapprovals

Way Black Tactics

• Violating rules via day-parting -- for example, only when Mountain View is asleep
• Geo-targeting where competitors won't see trademark violations or IP exclusion
• Shell companies and different accounts

He says, "I'm glad you guys are laughing; it's clear that you probably won't be doing these black hat things."

Kevin is at the podium next. He says that unless you are an affiliate and willing to piss people off, forget black hat PPC. Grey hat PPC is okay. There are loopholes, ambiguous policies and under the radar competitive stuff that falls into gray.

Loopholes:

• DKI and broad match
• Domain names (particularly misspellings) through a broad match
• Layer-style popups (that accomplish much of the same things)

Ambiguous policies:

• Geo
• Time of day
• Cookie and ISP custom serving -- not really gray hat, it's good marketing
• HTTP referrer

Landing page personalization is likely to increase conversion rates.

Under the competitive radar:

Want to grab some of your competition's traffic?

• Geo-segmentation
• Day parting
• Day of week
• Retargeting (through display -- a new development in some engines)
• Synched buying based on media expenditures: Monitor heavy areas of home page takeovers. A spike in search can be utilized.

Stay educated on best practices. Pick the right partners for technology strategy. Be willing to take the occasional slap on the wrist. Never stop testing and never stop monitoring.

Jamie Smith is going to close us off strong. He's going to cover how to gain a competitive edge using secret strategies; the importance of planning and strategy organization; using visitor behavior for conversion inspiration; and the X-factor, what your Web analytics don't tell you.

Be aware of direct competitors. How do you win the battle against the people you don't know? Operation camouflage is a tactic to keep your best performing ads private and hidden from competition and click fraud. When you find winning ad strategy, you can block them from seeing that ad you can win the battle.

Operation camouflage:

• Find the location of your top three to five competitors.
• Set up geo-targeted campaigns for their locations.
• Lower your bids in those locations.

Problem with this exist if your competition is located in a major city or if you're a local business or using an agency.

So, they changed the strategy a bit by doing IP exclusion. This is the best strategy for operation camouflage. To find the IP address look at multiple clicks with no action. You can also send the competition an email asking about pricing or something exciting that they will respond to. In the reply you can identify their IP address. Win this battle before they do this to you.

Strategy organization:

Visibility --> Creative --> Continuity (keyword and ad creative, creative and conversion)

How to keep the in-laws from visiting:

• Impressions: Why pay for visitors you don't want?
• Evolution of match type (exact vs. negative keywords): Sometimes the broad match with negative keywords outperforms the exact match.
• Geo-targeting and day parting.

Ad Creative Tips

The art of writing compelling ads:

• Take a look at organic rankings. Those have been proven as click-worthy.
• Click through rate is not the only measurement. Take into account the data sample. If it's insignificant (less than 100) it could lead you to wrong conclusions.

Continuity and conversion:

When you're shopping in the mall and you think from the outside it's a toy store and it's actually a liquor store, you'll walk right out.

X Factor: What Your Web Analytics Won't Tell You!

• Web site conversion rate vs. call in conversion rate
• Which ad group and keywords are making my phone ring?
• Which keywords are driving assist conversion?
• Test poor performing keywords for call ins before you get rid of them. It may be driving call ins even though there aren't Web conversions.

Call analytics work by serving different phone numbers when someone comes from an ad. Over 10 percent of their 16,500 sales in Q4 2008 had an assist keyword. A lot of the time the conversion comes after someone has searched many times with different queries.

Q&A

What tools can you use to track assists?

Maestro and Enquisite are both mentioned.

Jamie: Sort by IP address.

Kevin: Cookies can track with HTTP referrers filtered or not.

I have a competitor that is doing double and triple serving. I don't want to report them but is there anything I can do?

Kevin: Google wants to see different user experiences -- pricing is only one of those options. But it's a moving line that can vary depending on who is reviewing the ad.

Jamie: While double serving sounds good, it could result in higher cost per acquisition.

Kevin: If you're going to do that, do it a controlled environment, like an agency, not the wild affiliate space.

Bill: This hurts you the most with your brand. Multiple sites can perform very well. The key is to avoid complaints from an end user that thinks they've been hoodwinked. The end user, not the advertiser, is Google's main concern. Another point that multiple results help with is the ability to serve different landing pages to different personas.

My clients are hesitant to get more than one 800 number.

David: Here's a well-kept secret. Every AdWords advertiser has free call tracking. It's associated with audio ads. You can secure an unlimited number of toll free numbers and associate them one-to-one with keywords, ad groups, and so on. This won't be available much longer. When they tested phone numbers in ads, clicks went down but calls went up. In display ads click through went up and they got more calls. Intuition would say that the number makes the ad seem more reputable.

Kevin wants David to test 800 vs. 877 numbers. Bill thinks it might be because the people who are calling skew older and the older group may not realize that 877 is free.

Jamie: Local numbers outperformed 800 numbers for a local merchant in a test against 800, 866, 877 and 888 numbers.

My competitor uses false advertising and Google doesn't do anything about it.

Bill: Is there a published source that would back up what you're saying? There are a lot of things you can do to publicize someone's false statement. A credible third-party study can be shared on AdWords -- "learn the truth about" ads. Google doesn't want to be in the position of policing truth.

Buying trademark terms seems to be growing as an issue as more people start policing their trademarks.

Kevin: Google's policy may be more lax because they're more searcher-focused. The pure consumer advocates will make the argument for consumer choice. At the same time it is driving up the bid landscape.

My competitor bids on trademarks but also uses it in ad copy.

David: You should be able to shut them down through the proper channels; it takes filling out forms and some time.

Bill: It's the best case for a scary legal letter. It's very settled case law.

Kevin: He studied the brand of the client, the brand of the competitor and generic terms. The clients brand performed best but the competitor brand was second best by a wide margin.

We need to scale up our PPC in the millions this year. We have an agency doing an okay job. My boss wants to set up affiliates or black hat PPC guys. Where do we find them?

Kevin: Why? You won't be able to regulate those people. If they share the same shopping cart, you're going to have a huge nightmare on your hands. It needs to be a common environment where there's no internal competition. Caution your boss.

You mentioned DKI as a way of getting around trademark. I've tried DKI and been shut down that way as well. Does this have to do with the fact that my account was started by someone who violated trademark laws a lot?

Bill: That's a good assumption. If you're going to try out creative tactics, try it on another account. Use a different street address and credit card if you can.

Kevin: It wouldn't surprise him if there is special code used by Google to manage special cases that are on their radar. Given the level of trademark enforcement that some companies engage in, it wouldn't surprise him.

Bill: Some tactics are trying to fool the Quality Score algorithm with SEO-like tactics. There are people that are masking affiliate links with certain programs. Another potential black hat PPC technique is that there are a certain number of impressions that you need to get before you're given a Quality Score and minimum bid. That leaves you room to test.

If you utilize geo-targeting and IP blocking, if they are reasonably savvy, wouldn't they be able to see what you're doing?

Bill: There are a lot of ways to search outside of your IP address, so if they're savvy than there's a good chance of that.

David: He thinks that a lot of advertisers feel they don't have the time to look into that.

Is there a way to do that as an alternate to cloaking to improve your quality score?

Kevin: The portion of the Quality Score that's attributable to landing page analysis is fairly small when compared to other factors. They already do personalization like routing based on different parameters. This is done for the benefit of the consumer instead of the value of the Quality Score.

Bill: There are a few landing page elements that set off alarm bells to Google. A number of affiliate links is one of those things. There are ways to confuse the spider to they don't really notice and wander away.

And that wraps up the final day of SES New York. See you back on the West Coast!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/26/09 at 1:53 PM | Comments (7)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES New York 2009

Independent SEM/SEOs: Issues & Answers

I've moseyed over to the Issues & Answers track. The moderator is David Hoffman, founder of Search Smart Marketing. The speakers are: Patricia Hall, managing partner of Hallmark Capital; Yuval Marcus , counsel at Gottlieb, Rackman & Reisman, P.C.; Heather Rogers-Symon, assistant director of business development, HUB International, Northeast; and Kathleen Fealy, president of KF Multimedia & Web, Inc.

David says that we often forget to pay attention to our business needs as we try to take care of the needs of our clients. Kathleen is up first.

When it came time to renew her E&O insurance, her insurance broker said that SEO was a high risk profession. They considered SEO irresponsible. Kathleen argued the opposite so she asked her contacts who they were insured with. The problem was that smaller companies were hurting their clients and getting in trouble. From that situation she learned the importance of education, not only for her clients but for her insurance provider as well.

It took about three emails and contracts with indemnification clauses and warranty clauses that explained she couldn't control algorithms but she would try to improve visibility. She had to make it clear there was no guarantee of placement. As a smaller agency she had to be prepared to answer all the questions. Even her attorneys didn't understand SEO well enough to help her prepare her answers. Make enough time to help your attorneys, brokers and accountants understand SEO so they can help protect you.

Heather Rogers-Symon is going to present on the Xs and Os of insurance for search engine optimization and marketing companies. Most people she deals with don't know about insurance.

The Bracket:

• Business property
• Business disability
• Business general liability
• Umbrella or excess liability
• Worker's compensation
• Professional liability
• E&O

There are a lot of different insurance coverages available.

Ask your contacts and get your questions answered. Protecting your business from risk is the foundation of success. Take the time to investigate your insurance needs from professionals and peers.

Get your head in the game:

How is your business prepared for an interruption? Or damage to your firm's repuration?
Are you covered for copyright and trademark infringement? Other media activities?
How would you handle business errors?

First Half: Business Owners' Policy

• A BOP offers building, property and general liability coverage under one policy.
• Protects your company's computers, networks, valuable papers and office furniture.
• Provides coverage from damage from fires, electrical surges, business interruptions, water damage, and even embezzlement by an employee.

It's cheap and covers a lot of things.

Second Half: Professional Liability

Errors and Omissions are not covered under a GL or a BOP policy. A SEO or an SEM can be sued by a third party that suffers an economic loss as a result of their company's actions or errors.
As clients' expectations of performance increase, lawsuits against professionals increase accordingly.

Wrap Up: Insurance is not one size fits all.

You may be put inside a box, but figure out a plan with your broker that fits you at the best price.

David asks how many in the audience owns their own business. Most raise their hand. He asks who has the insurance Heather was talking about. Maybe two people raise their hand.

Yuval is next and will talk about basic intellectual property and trademark concerns that come up in this industry.

Ask yourself:

• If a competitor tarts using a similar name, domain name and/or logo, what can you do?
• Does your company have the right to use its name, domain or logo for SEM services?
• Does the company own its Web site, logo and domain properties?

Trademarks are brands and source identifiers. It can be a word, a logo and even a smell. Copyrights cover creative expression and give owners the right to prevent copying by others.

The benefits of trademarks:

• A brand with proper trademark protection has value and can be sold, licensed to generate revenue or used as collateral to secure financing.
• Owners of trademarks have the right to prevent others from using confusing or similar marks.
• They can be extended indefinitely.

There are trademarks that are better than others.

1. Arbitrary and fanciful (strongest): For example, Apple computers or Kodak
2. Suggestive (weak): For example, Coppertone sunscreen
3. Descriptive (weak): For example, Fish Fri fish batter mix
4. Generic (incapable): For example, the name of the category

How to acquire trademark rights:

• Common law rights
  • Use of mark on goods or in connection with services
  • Use without registration limits rights to areas where use takes place
• State registrations
  • Protection in state where registration obtained
• Federal
  • Nationwide
  • Must use mark in commerce
  • Unlimited duration

To avoid trademark infringement, conduct a trademark clearance search for company name, domain name and logo. The availability of a corporate name or domain name does NOT mean you can use that name. Trademark clearance searches cover:

• PTO database
• State trademark databases
• Common law uses:
  • Internet
  • Business names
  • Domain names

Copyright protects original and creative works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright protection is automatic when it is fixed (this can be written or recorded in video, for example).

Promotional materials, logos, software and training materials are all included. The person that creates the work owns it and can reproduce copies, create derivative works, distribute a work to the public, and perform/display the work publicly. Even if you contract the creation of a logo, you need the artist to transfer the copyrights to you.

By creating strong trademark rights, you increase the value of your company and can stop competitors from using confusingly similar brand names, domain names and logos. Always conduct a trademark clearance search. With copyrights, if you retain a non-employee to create your content, be sure to get all the rights transferred to you.

Pat is going to talk about the outlook for mergers and acquisitions in this economy. She's going to cover the M&A market in 2009. Is this the year to hunker down and ride out the storm, sell out, combine with other firms or seek acquisitions? How have the valuations of independent SEOs been impacted by the turmoil in the financial markets? What is the outlook for revitalized business activity in 2009? Regarding competitive positions, how do you enhance the value of your company in case you're looking toward M&A in 2009?

Hunker Down, Sell Out, Merge or Acquire

Risks in 2009: The main risk is do you have financial reserves? If there's a dip in client business can you hold out?

Opportunities in 2009: There may be companies out there now that never considering selling. Sometimes you can find very good companies that happen to be in trouble, but it has nothing to do with the quality of their operations.

Know your strategic options and figure out where you stand in the equation. What paths are available to you and how would they impact your business. Should you play it safe or go for gold: What is your risk tolerance? It's a risk/reward equation with no right answer.

How Have Valuations Been Impacted?

Demand drives value: Generally, valuations are down 20 percent. Good companies' values are holding steady. Great companies are still seeing premiums, although not as high as in the past.

Strategic buyers are looking: Companies are looking for help in SEO and SEM fields and are prepared to pay to get it quickly.

Value is in the eye of the beholder: If you want a better value, create a better story for why you're different than competitors.

Outlook for revitalized business in 2009

U.S. online ad spending will double over the next five years. She has seen a stronger tendency this year for a "wait and see" approach. But she views this as an artificial approach. People still need your business so it's really pent up demand and there will be a catch-up phenomenon she predicts to see by the end of the year.

The good news is that SEO is here to stay. To enhance businesses, adjust your tactics. Instead of trying to see increased budgets from clients, maybe you want to keep the budgets and make your work more efficient. Among clients there are always smart leaders and slow followers, but in 2009, both parties can be good for your business this year. Be patient with slow followers and the business will come back. At the end, the impact of SEO on the bottom line is what will give you buyers.

Competitive positioning enhances your company's value.

Client lists are more important than ever. Sustainable revenue generation reduces the perceived risk. A unique market niche or a technology hook can help you differentiate yourself. What is it about your company that will carry you through downturns and into the future.

Take aways:

• Know your strategic options.
• Strategic buyers are looking.
• SEO is here to stay.
• Your client list is golden.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/26/09 at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, SEM Industry, SES New York 2009

News Search SEO

Off to the organic track for some news and SEO learning. Our moderator is Mark Jackson, SEW expert and president/CEO of VIZION Interactive. The line up of speakers is: Greg Jarboe, president and co-founder, SEO-PR; Lisa Buyer, president and CEO of The Buyer Group; Dana Todd, CMO of Newsforce; and John Shehata, senior SEO manager at Advance Internet, Inc.

Dana Todd kicks things off.

Photo credit: Bas van den Beld of SearchCowboys.com

News is dead?

There's a feeling that news is struggling. But in reality, news is exploding online. News sites have more 250 million readers -- more than Facebook, with a broader demographic.

• 44 percent of all Web users visited newspaper Web sites in January of 2009.
• Newspaper digital audience has grown 60 percent in the last three years.
• Alternative news sources (search, Twitter, blogs) represent significant additional opportunities.
• News page views are up to trillions monthly.

Here's a funnel:

Awareness
Opinion
Consideration
Intention
Sales

Brand advertising happens at awareness and opinion stages. Public relations happens at the awareness, opinion and consideration points. Search advertising happens at the intention and sales stages.

It's not just about optimizing press releases. It's about changing public perception, one story at a time. It's about creating an emotional perception. She wants us to swear that no one will start their tactics before they set up their strategy.

Start with research and your strategy will write itself:

• Primary research
  • Your questions should ultimately align with your campaign and brand goals:
    • What are the key misperceptions about my product/industry that might be limiting my sales?
    • What do people believe about my company?
    • If I move the needle by X% how much market share or sales does that represent?
• Secondary research
• Keyword research

Set your goals and metrics upfront and align to communications goals, not just sales goals. Plan a one to three year campaign!

Think of PR as content strategy:

• Once you identify the core branding and communication needs, what are the stories you need to tell and to whom?
• What's the best way to reach that audience online and offline?
• Influencers + direct to consumer PR (this is too often ignored)
• Integrate offline promotions with online, and vice versa.

Sample strategies:

• Product/category awareness ("did you know?")
• Corporate social responsibility ("watch a video of our green initiatives")
• Crisis management ("our product is safe" or "we don't need a bailout")
• Build community
• Change political attitude
• I just want links (fill with crap and stuff it in wire stories -- not a recommended long-term strategy)

Measuring outcomes:

• KPIs may look a lot like social media KPIs: buzz, links, social media activity, dwell times
• Document the relative value of a particular writer or publication in terms of their influence
• Use cookies and tracking tags wherever possible, plus unique phone numbers
• RSS and wire services may strip hyperlinks, tags

Free buzz tracking:

Techrigy SM2: There is a paid and premium version that will let you monitor terms for mentions. The cool thing is the story system they create.
Radian6: Great interface
Scout Labs

Next is John Shehata and he'll be talking about tactics.

Why news search SEO? Half of Internet users search daily and 39 percent of them search for news. People expect the news to find them. People, places, events, hot subjects and crises and organizations are the top news searches.

There are traditional keyword research tools but some aren't as good for breaking news search. They can show you what phrases are queried more but there are other types of tools that can help you with breaking news keywords.

• Yahoo Buzz
• SEOmoz.com
• Ask.com
• Google Zeitgeist
• Google Hot Trends - http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends (he likes this one best because it's updated every hour and shows you all the angles that are catching interest for a topic)

Add Google Hot Trends to your Google Reader and then you can see the whole day's trends at the end of the day. You can also get insight about your audience. When they search for certain topics is helpful knowledge.

Headlines:

• Spiders don't understand pithy, poetic or witty headlines. You may want to write different headlines for the Web.
• Include keywords you want to rank for
• Use terms that people are searching for
• Be straightforward
• 5 to 12 words, no more than 21 words
• Create headlines that are fully understood on their own, without sub-headlines or images
• Remember print headlines sell the story. Optimized Web headlines tell the story.

Great news follows the inverted pyramid, which is SEO friendly. Don't write for search engines but for people, with search engines in mind. Look out for acronyms or abbreviations; spell it out.

Sometimes you need to violate the AP stylebook:

• Use full names instead of last names.
• Use numerals instead of figures (9 instead of nine).
• Use passive voice to bring keywords in the beginning of the headline.
• Sometimes non-hyphenated words are more popular than hyphenated ones.

Google News:

• Only indexes articles three days old or less
• Only indexes it once
• Read Google News Help for Publishers
• Google News XML Sitemap and monitor it
• Section names (keywords in News XML Sitemaps)
• Host "most popular" and "breaking news" sections on your site
• Sub-headlines or beginning of article copy is pulled in as Meta description

Google News Search vs. Google Web Search:

Always upload your image to Google News. Include it on the top of the story. It can't be a link. If you want to link to a larger version include a link that says "view larger" that they can use.

Lisa Buyer is going to talk about how news search SEO can be mixed with social media.

How fast does news travel on Google? Look beyond the press release:

• Facebook: Fan pages, groups, profiles
• Twitter: status, events, blogs, names, company names
• LinkedIn: corporations and groups

The PR Opportunity:

There are millions of users on each platform. Offer newsworthy angels and talk about news in an optimized, interesting way.

The results?

• News coverage in the search engines
• Communicate your social media channels to the public
• Drive traffic to social media channels
• Get followers, links, fans

Twitter and news search: Twitter updates can be indexed in Google News. [Really? Maybe I heard that wrong.] The media is on Twitter and is using it to break stories as well as look for stories. Your Twitter PR strategy can report the news, interact with media and connect with clients and prospects.

Employees on Twitter: @youremployeename. Twitter shows up in search and Google Alerts.

Watch out for irresponsible employees on Twitter. An employee saying "eff you" to a client is not a good idea.

• Talk with your employees about their social media use.
• Educate them on how it could show up in search news and effect the company's search news.
• Create an action plan for online reputation management.
• Make a PR plan for prevention and reaction.

Lessons:

• Think before you tweet.
• Avoid online gossip.
• Use Google Alerts to track your news, names and brands -- at a minimum.
• Have employee policies on social media.
• Say online anything you want to be aired on the 6:00 news.

When it comes to PR and news SEO, the benefits are slow and steady but pitfalls can quickly hurt you.

Greg Jarboe is going to wrap up the presentations.

Previously he has shared case studies of what news search SEO generated:

• $22.5 million in ticket sales for Southwest Airlines in 2004.
• 1.3 million searches on SuperPages.com for florists in 2005.
• 450,000 unique visitors to The Christian Science Monitor in 2006.
• 1,100 attendees to the Wharton Economic Summit in 2007.
• 36 percent increase in searches for Better Homes and Gardens brand names in 2008.

The quantity, quality and relevance of links count towards your rating.

"For ranking in Google, however, the main benefit of a press release is not direct links or PageRank from the press release directly; it's primarily the people who decide to write an article and link because of that." -- Matt Cutts

There are a number of newspapers that are closing or are moving to primarily Web editions. If you're doing traditional public relations, good luck. Pay attention to the new stuff because the old stuff is going away quickly.

The buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest. They are helping to fill the void that is being created with the decline of traditional news. They're filling the place because the appetite for news is still there. The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, useful content.

Optimized press releases can rank first in search results. Include an image and get the visual advantage. Contact influential bloggers the day before the press release goes out -- the blog is the new press. They're just as interested in getting the scoop as traditional media counterparts. Traditional media picks up stories from blogs as well. Combine blog outreach and press release optimization to build links.

Q&A

What types of news stories shoot up in search results faster?

John: Your physical proximity to the source of the story, how many people click -- there are certain factors you can't control. But in your niche it could be easier to get high rankings

Greg: There's no short cut like including "breaking news" in your headline. Sometimes the most popular stories aren't really "news" but tips.

Are there best practices for showing up in Google News?

Greg: Submit a specific URL to Google News for consideration. This may take creating a "top stories" page on the site.

What are some tips for a company that has a good chunk of staff doing SEO and blogging that we want them to align with the brand and the public mission statement without curbing the efforts and creativity of staff?

Lisa: I had some policies in place as far as client names and brand name use. The best thing to do is sit down with the group and explain what could happen and get all the ideas together to form guidelines. You want to have the self expression -- it's the beauty of social media -- but you need guidelines. Keep the conversation going.

Updating stories on the NY Times site changes the URL. That seems not to be a good idea.

Greg: That is a bad idea and the New York Times is working to change that. They're struggling to make those adjustments.

John: When you have substantial updates, don't update the same story. Write a new story.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/26/09 at 12:22 PM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Liveblog, News & PR, SES New York 2009, Search Engine Optimization

An Update on Social Media Optimization

This session of the Social Media & Blogging track has a power lineup. Our moderator is
Kevin Newcomb, managing editor of Search Engine Watch. The speakers are: Liana Evans, director of Internet marketing at KeyRelevance; Dave Snyder, co-founder of Search & Social; Benu Aggarwal, founder and president of Milestone Internet Marketing; Marty Weintraub, president of aimClear; and Chris Winfield, president of 10e20, LLC.

Kevin says that they'll be covering basics as well as advanced concepts of social media to set the stage for the rest of the track today.

Liana Evans is up first.

Social Media's Rise: The Emergence and Rise of Mass Social Media

Rather than just passively accept marketing, people can share and express their experiences with like-minded people. As they do that the market is taking notice that this is where people are going to talk about us. Another industry has risen out of that.

The basics:

• Integral part of marketing plans (strategy)
• Complements sound SEO and PPC practices
• A medium to specifically strategize for
• Difficult and time consuming
• Has many different facets
• About conversations
• Not the same for everyone

People don't like to be marketed to in social media. It's about the end user and the new signals to search engines. It's no just about who is in your audience; it's about where they are.

Video sharing, social networks, photo sharing -- it's more than Digg and Facebook. Creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives are the different profiles of social media users. Most people are watching videos.

Define Your Goals Before Setting Out

There's a lot you can measure. Barack Obama did it right. He understood his audience. He started the conversation in the community. He added videos and his YouTube channel had more than 19 million views. It led to people creating their own videos. He put his photos on Flickr. This also led to people putting up their own photos. He started a LinkedIn profile and a BlackPlanet profile and discussions sprung up. His team tweeted, and it led to people talking and discussing him. He's dominating the SERPs with all these profiles.

Dave Snyder is next. The biggest problem he sees in SM is the cookie cutter approach. Every brand, consumer and social media platform is different. You can't anticipate that every social media campaign would be successful with the same tactics. When the cookie cutter goes wrong you're seeing practices that cost time and money. He'll be pointing out mistakes that companies have made to learn from.

Overstock.com put a community on their site that nobody used. It became a haven for spam. So then they tried to do it again on Facebook. In the last year only 20 comments were made. In 2007 another SMO meltdown happened. The put a feed into people's Facebook streams about purchases made on Overstock. People tweeting for the company put up irrelevant things like birds pooping on your head. Papa Johns has been abusing their Twitter feed by just saying "buy pizza" all the time.

Keep away from the cookie cutter:

• Find out where your consumers play.
• Find out the kind of content that plays best on those platforms.
• Don't be afraid of the niche.
• Don't be afraid to lose the big brand names.
• Set measurable goals before your campaign.
• Use an analytical approach to measurement.

There are lots of ways to measure social media. Many social platforms offer analytics solutions as well.

The number one rule is that you get what you give.

Benu Aggarwal is next and she asks how many people have found themselves in a management nightmare when it comes to social media. It is coming from the agency/customer side -- what are the easy tools to help you integrate your online and offline campaigns in a packaged format.

Decide which profiles you are going to play in. Then put each in a bucket: social networks, UGC, articles/news/events, videos, blogs, bookmarking, and photos.

UGC: What Should You Do?

• Create and enhance your profiles in the online UGC channels.
• How to enhance your profile?
  • Photos, descriptions, links, videos
  • Tag with most important keywords
  • Buy sponsored listings/banners in UGC channels
  • Update information about your product

Online Video Optimized

1. Keyword research, content, voice over
2. Optimize existing videos, develop video from photos or create an HD informative video
3. Encode the video
4. Surround video with HTML
5. Create media RSS

Online Photos

• Create a profile for your brand or business on photo sharing sites
• Upload pictures and tag them with relevant keyword phrases
• Reference your business photo sharing profiles on local profiles
• Reference pictures uploaded on these profiles while writing blog posts or content
• Reference pictures on community map

Be sure to include all your SM profiles in your local listings.

Personal Social Networks

• Create a business profile
• Add widgets, Twitter feeds, blog feed, Flickr account feed, YouTube feed
• Join Groups and Association networks, add special offers, give away whitepapers, tutorials, etc.
• MySpace can be customized in design

Blogs

Take into account your online marketing plan, do keyword research, think of design and development and promotion. Decide the architecture of your blog based on all of that. If it's not doing well, put your blog on your home page and include all the social media profiles. When her company did that the PageRank of the social media profiles went up.

Pulling It All Together

Invite users to join social media networks with a social media dash board. Create an incentive, for instance with time sensitive offers. If you have a Facebook account, check out the plugins that area available.

Marty Weintraub is going to share the things that blow his mind the most.

You can use PPC for SEO multivariate testing. PPC moves much faster and is precise and controllable. You can prove your funnels, conversion, design and more. This kind of testing validates your instincts. You can test SM ideas on Twitter. If you tweet it and it gets a lot of interest that's positive feedback. Twitter is a great research tool. It's a real time proving ground. Test blog post topics, headlines and so much more. With TweetDeck you can have great demographic filtering. Find out if your demographic is talking about the subject.

There's a new intersection of content management and social media. You have to be able to publish yourself in the proper way. It's possible to pre-wire powerful personal distribution networks and touch millions of users quickly. Auto-push your feeds to Twitter.

Great marketing starts with your team members. Use an inside out strategy and identify insiders who are already active. Expand the inner circle and give them a reason to care.

Do the math. If you have 5,000 people in your first degree circle, multiply it by about however many people they are connected to.

Crappy sock puppets are dead! Long live professional avatars! (He's using a sock on his hand as a puppet!) People want actual engaged ambassadors, not fake LinkedIn or Facebook "people". Be authentic and holistic, whether using your actual name or not. Complement your brand with superior resources and it won't help if you're not likable. He makes the wise recommendation not to out bloggers. ;)

Chris Winfield is up next with back to the basics of SMM. With all the new sites/mediums, make sure you use what works for you. Companies are investing in the wrong thing. Look at your logs and analytics to see where people are coming from. Ask customers or potential customers where they spend their time and make buying decisions.

Experiment, test and try new things. But don't get caught up in the hype. If something isn't working for you, don't waste your time. Balance what works for you:

• Facebook pages vs. Facebook groups
• Micro-blogging vs. forums
• Flickr groups vs. wikis

Too many people totally ignore forums. But if that's where your customers are every day, participating in that will be one of the most effective uses of your time. Big-forums.com ranks forums by users, comments, etc., and you might be surprised at where people are.

Strategy:

• Join communities and participate
• You get out what you put in
• Don't use Twitter just to tweet
• Mix Twitter with other mediums

How large sites work:

You're on Digg. Digg connects to TechCrunch, Lifehacker, TMZ, which feeds to Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Facebook, and these are seen by more and more people who share with mainstream press and forums and non-profits and aggregators.

Niche social news sites are great for gaining a targeted audience and building relevant links. Digg won't work for everyone but you can find a targeted niche social news site for you. There are about 40 that he thinks could work well for niche markets. It will be less people but it will be very targeted. Become a contributor in your niche. Smaller communities mean it's easier to reach the home page.

Finance:

• Tip'd
• Feed the Bull
• Motley Fool Caps
• Value Investing News

Products and commerce:

• Dealspl.us
• iliketotallyloveit
• Dealigg
• ThisNext

Sports and leisure:

• ArmchairGM
• BallHype
• Yardbarker
• AutoSpies

Art and design:

• Design Float
• PhotographyVoter
• PixelGroovy

There are more and he'll put them on the 10e20 blog tomorrow.

Final tips:

• Find out what works through tests
• Scrap what doesn't work
• Be active and helpful in communities
• Leverage different social sites -- if a blogger picks you up, promote it like it's your own
• Find your niche

Q&A

Kevin starts of the questions: Some say there's a right and wrong way for social media. Do you have guidelines for ethics or appropriateness?

Li: What would my mom or grandma think about what I'm doing? It's about being honest and transparent.

Dave: What's going to make me money is his guiding principle. Social media ethics are a fallacy -- if he's not hurting anyone he's not doing anything wrong. The grey things he may do may serve better content than people who serve things "ethically" (air quotes).

Chris: Look at the same things as SEO. Look at the type of company and the potential repercussions. A smaller company may have a higher risk threshold than a Fortune 500.

Benu: Small businesses may get excited about things they don't understand. They may not have the bandwidth or the time to invest. Let them know.

Marty: He's first concerned about what the law says. You don't want you or your client getting sued. The other thing is the topic of brand ambassador avatars. He thinks it's okay to manipulate to serve people as long as the friendships you make are real.

If you have a multi-lingual company and are on social sites, can you write social content in both languages?

Chris: Check out mediame (I'm not sure if I got that right). Use that as an example of what to do. Content can get popular there if you translate it into Spanish. It's okay if just a straight translation.

Li: If your audience already expects you to be bilingual, then using more than one language on one page is okay. And it won't hurt you to be in two places if they expect you to be in both places anyway.

Are you seeing lifts from older social media activities?

Everyone cries out an adamant "yes".

I've heard clients that are fearful of giving up their secrets on social media.

Chris: Companies can't be entering social media because they think it's cool. There have to be goals, like links and traffic. He wouldn't suggest companies give up secrets. A big mistake companies make is going from zero to 60. Pick where you can specialize and drive business results.

Benu: Last year she gave tips for social media in a YouTube video. Companies were sharing the video. If you know something, don't be afraid to share. It's not about knowing, it's about doing. There will be few people that will actually do it even if they know how.

Can you make your competitors social media efforts less successful?

Benu: Make you content better than theirs.

Marty: Make your tools for communicating more relevant. Render your competitors obsolete by removing all of your communication barriers.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/26/09 at 8:59 AM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Liveblog, SES New York 2009, Social Media

Morning Keynote: The Brand Bubble by John Gerzema

Good morning and welcome to day three of SES New York. To launch this final day of a whirlwind conference, we'll be hearing from John Gerzema, our keynote speaker, Chief Insights Officer of Young & Rubicam Group and author of The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It.

There's a slide on the screen that says you can download the presentation by visiting thebrandbubble.com/blog. You can also follow John on Twitter, @johngerzema.

I'm sitting next to Lisa Barone, who is also liveblogging this one. Check out the Outspoken Media blog for additional coverage. Kevin Ryan is up here to introduce John, but he mentions that there was a lot of interesting feedback about Guy Kawasaki's keynote. He calls out Lisa and says that there's a chance that in a few years we could be calling what Guy does spam. Lisa needs five more followers to get to 3,000, by the way. [3011 at the time of posting. Nice going, @LisaBarone --Susan]

John comes up to the stage and says today he'll be talking about brand building in the context of the recession. He wants to cut through the two words "brand" and "recession" and see the fundamental societal shift that is exhibited in the crisis of confidence. Cultural trends have made it so companies have to change the way they relate to the consumer.

Managing for an Upturn

• Superior cash flow and sustainable growth: Every household in America is auditing their budgets to spend less. Some people are also reappraising what they're doing. There's a short term and long term emphasis.
• Align brand and business strategy: What can you do to reevaluate your market?
• Acquire talent and quality.
• Do more with less.
• Sharpen messaging and ROI.
• Return to your core.
• Face your customer.

Half of All Global Wealth has Evaporated

• $36 trillion dollar loss worldwide.
• S&P 500 declined 64.4 percent from 2000.
• 45 percent of American wealth was lost.

Consumer confidence is at its lowest point since 1967, when they started the study. There is a fractured faith in the American dream. Housing values have eroded around all 50 states. Now the average price of a home in Detroit is $18,000 and people used to rely on their house as their keylock. The credit crisis has also halted housing starts.

The consumer psyche has been hardest hit by unemployment. Unemployment is at 8.1 percent -- the highest in 25 years. It's the third straight month of a 600,000 job loss. This period is marked by the most job losses and the weakest recovery.

It's an equal opportunity recession. Millionaires have lost one-third of their net worth.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been upended. Individual pursuits, self-actualization were the highest order until 2007. Now there's an understanding that the consumer doesn't feel this way. They are looking for safety and belonging -- more basics needs. Marketing must move from passion to compassion.

Consumers can't trust politicians. They don't know who to trust.

• Lack of leadership and responsibility
• Selfishness and collusion
• Prolonged conflicts and partisanship
• Egregious and criminal behavior
• Failure of regulators
• Decaying infrastructure (emotional and physical)
• Lack of permanence
• The new cultural fault line between Main Street and Wall Street

Consumers are taking a complete reappraisal of who they trust and who they should rely on. He studied data over 12 years and found that brands now represent a third of a company's value. The 250 most valuable global brands were worth more than the GDP of France a couple years ago. But now:

• Brand esteem and regard is down 12 percent.
• Brand awareness has declined by 20 percent.
• Perceptions of brand quality has eroded 24 percent.
• Trust in brands has declined by 50 percent.

This study was done in 2008 and trust in brands has gone down since. The second most important thing for a brand is trust. The most important is quality. In the past quarter, a trust virus has infected many categories. Apparel and accessories, auto and foods top the list for the highest change of trust.

Consumers are beginning to own their problems. They realize there's a long, hard slog ahead so their realizing their behaviors and changing. It takes 5 to 10 years to come out of the kinds of challenges we're facing. Savings has reason in the last five months. Q4 consumer spending fell the steepest in 62 years. They have retreated to rethink their spending strategies.

Create Competitive Advantage Now

Every recession ends eventually so how you act now will affect your future performance.

Post-Crisis Consumerism Rule 1

Cultural Value = Indestructible Spirit
Consumer Strategy = Durable Living
Management Principle = Brands that Last

Durable Living:

There's a rise in shoe repair and clothing. Spice sales are going up as consumers focus on comfort foods in the home. Americans are holding on to their cars longer (9.4 years -- the highest in American history). Couponing is up 300 percent. There's a trend toward nesting, spending money on things for the home. 68 percent of Americans carry a library card -- the highest ever. Recipes are stretched out and there's a trend toward casseroles. Craigslist shopping is up. There's an idea of "settling in". There is a resurgence in layaway programs.

Brands that Last:

Inexpensive beauty products are doing well. Ziploc is leveraging this on their site. McDonalds has been pushing "unsnobby coffee". LG is pushing their lifetime warranty. Campbell's has a kitchen site that helps busy parents put meals together. Tide is positioning the brand with a like-new guarantee. Old fashioned benefits like a meal on a plane is coming out of Continental Airlines.

Post-Crisis Consumerism Rule 2

Cultural Value = Ethics and Fair Play
Consumer Strategy = Empathy and Respect
Management Value = Value and Values

Empathy and Respect:

Everything has to be transparent. There is starting to be an anti-green movement that questions marketers' intentions. Consumers have all the tools to dissect brands and businesses. Empathy and respect comes in the form of honesty as well as "indulge me." Candy sales are up -- holding on to small indulgences. There's been a rise in lingerie sales.

Value and Values:

Denny's free super bowl breakfast was a huge success. American Express has been paying customers $300 to leave their franchise. Alpo is saying, "Enough with the doggie sweaters and day care. Let dogs be dogs again." FedEx offered free resume Tuesdays giving away 25 free copies. Tropicana repackaged their orange juice and quickly changed back after the uproar. Hyundai's assurance plus program was very successful.

Post-Crisis Consumerism Rule 3

Cultural Value = Liquid Life
Consumer Strategy = Declasse Consumption
Management Principle = Dollars and Sense

Declasse Consumption:

It's no longer cool to flaunt your wealth. P. Diddy vowed to tone down his bling. Designer Ducky Brown gave models a coupon for McDonalds. Radiohead lets you set your own ticket price. 5th Avenue stores are giving shoppers ordinary brown bags. At Howie's they are selling second-hand bags. Haggling on prices is coming into vogue.

Dollars and Sense:

Frito Lay is selling larger bags and smaller bags of chips depending on the time of month they find people have more and less money. Gillette Fusion Power has reframed razor blades with a promotion for $1 per week. Toll Brothers have been going straight to consumers to offer mortgages. Miller Lite's one second super bowl ads struck a chord.

Post-Crisis Consumerism Rule 4

Cultural Value = Return to the Fold
Consumer Strategy = Cooperative Consumerism
Management Principle = Community Organizer

Cooperative Consumers:

Consumers are getting clever with understanding the media game and how they can brand and scale themselves.

Community Organizer:

Mommy bloggers are more visible. Walmart's Elevenmoms act as evangelists for the company. Consumers don't trust companies but rather the people from the company. Check Out blog is a blog from Walmart by employees. The idea of scaling employees is seeing employees allowed to speak for the company -- everything doesn't have to go through PR anymore. Lego lets consumers design their own models.

Big companies are starting to do great things in the social media space. The Chinese character for crisis also means opportunity. Look at it in an optimistic way.

The search engine isn't you. It's your consumer. The rise in search, the declining Maslow hierarchy is bringing consumers back down. Search is emotional. People are looking for value and offers. You have an obligation to own that consumer relationship and that brand.

Q&A

Kevin asks that since we have such a short memory, is the change going to last? John says that they are going to make decisions based on smaller groups of people that they can trust.

How sustainable is CEO bloggers when consumers get the idea that it's a pitch and the message is not sincere?

Every CEO needs to evaluate their own blog strategy and what they're comfortable with based on the values of the company. You have to look at your capacity for interacting with the public that way but there are some great examples of direct consumer communication out there. He thinks it's sustainable because there is no other way.

There's been a big push toward organic and health-conscious products, which are a little pricier. What will it take for them?

It's about communicating the value behind the product, not just the brand itself. Marketers have to be careful with their green statements; they have to walk the talk or consumers will figure it out. We noticed that some marketers are doing a good job of marketing green as green ($) and savings to the consumer.

Is there a way to invest in the employee advocate but at the same time not let that become your company?

Zappos is great because you have to create a culture that allows your executives to rise up and not be solely dependent on one person. More employees have to speak on behalf of the company itself because they don't want to talk to the PR people. Social media has made consumers part of the play, and with that comes the understanding that companies will make mistakes.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/26/09 at 8:03 AM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Branding, Liveblog, SES New York 2009

March 25, 2009

Dealing With Affiliates: A Roadmap to Success

This Fundamentals track session is moderated by Jeffrey Rohrs, VP of marketing at ExactTarget. Our lovely speakers are Kristopher Jones, president and CEO of Pepperjam; Jeff Ferguson, SES Advisory Board member; Lori Weiman, CEO of The Search Monitor; and Peter Figueredo, CEO of NETexponent.

Kris Jones is going to start it off. He says he has a unique perspective as he was once an affiliate marketer. He now helps runs an affiliate network. He'll be talking about how an advertiser can minimize conflicts with affiliates.

Your affiliate network should stand as a resource to help you. He's going to cover ways to identify potential channel conflicts. He's going to help you understand who your affiliates are (transparency) and what promotional methods they use to drive sales. Then you can minimize the conflict and optimize the affiliate channel.

There are four primary potential channel conflicts:

1. Direct linking
2. Trademark bidding
3. Bidding on the same keywords as you
4. Promotion of conflicting (outdated) marketing messages

Direct Linking

Direct linking occurs when an affiliate uses an affiliate tracking URL as the destination URL for PPC marketing purposes, instead of sending the traffic through their own unique landing page and URL. Since Google only delivers one advertisement per unique display URL, Google may show your affiliate's sponsored search instead of yours. To identify if this is occurring, go to Google, right click on your ad and take a look at the link extension that you see. There's another way to do this and that will be explained by Lori. This is an easy way but you don't really want to be right-clicking on your ad all the time.

Unfortunately for you, Google does not provide protection from direct linkers. Therefore, you must learn the rules.

Trademark Bidding

Trademark bidding is a serious concern for many advertisers and therefore it can be prohibited as part of the terms and conditions of the advertiser. Other advertisers allow trademark bidding and see it as a way to push out the competition.

Competing for the Same Keywords

• Many advertisers complain that SEM affiliates run up the pricing for the same keywords the advertiser is trying to bid on.
• This is only true if the advertiser doesn't have rules in place and the affiliate isn't following the rules.
• Before you put a NO PPC policy in place, realize that the SERPs represent available real estate for you and your competitors.
• One of the best ways to cover more real estate is through your SEM affiliates.

Conflicting Marketing Messages

Conflicting marketing messages can occur when your affiliates use inaccurate product info, non-authorized banners/text links, and/or through misrepresented or outdated ad copy on search engines. This conflict can be minimized through increased communication to a smaller key group of affiliates.

Tips on Making the Affiliate Channel Work for You

• Send a request to Google to disallow advertisers from using your trademark within the ad copy. However, you can't get Google to stop bidding on your trademark.
• Amend your affiliate contract with a no direct linking or no trademark bidding policy.

Through increased affiliate transparency, you can grow your affiliate relationship and bring it to the next level. Get to know your affiliate.

• Set min/max bidding rules.
• Restrict or include certain keywords.
• Allow select affiliates to bid on trademarks.
• Provide your key search affiliates with private offers and incentives.

Jeffrey: Is there any abuse happening in the marketplace right now?

Kris: Advertisers are getting smarter but they need to develop a knowledge base in Facebook ads. There are a number of techniques that affiliates are using that may not best represent your brands. Take the time to familiarize yourself with Facebook ads. It's not a different problem; it's just shifting to other channels.

Jeff Ferguson is going to talk about zen and the art of paid search and affiliate marketing. There has been a lot of fiery debate over the topic, but he feels it's all about finding the balance. Zen is difficult to obtain but people, by default, exist close to a balanced state. Outside influences push them towards extremes.

Common Issues

In the ideal world your ad is at the top and there are no competitors, but that's not always the case. Affiliates can be your alternative to having competitors show up next to you in the ad space. But when you see your affiliates up there there's an immediate concern that they're somehow stealing from you.

Issue 1: Cannibals

Should I allow it?

Yes:

• When you're using a highly competitive keyword
• When you're the most relevant ad on the search item
• When there is a high chance of loss of opportunity

No:

• When you're usually all alone on a term

Issue 2: Rising bids

When you need to worry is if your ad is so bad that it ends up on the bottom. It's a knee-jerk reaction to blame your affiliates for ranking above you but the real problem is your own program. You need to step up and figure out what's wrong that your affiliates can rank for your brand.

Should I allow it?

Yes:

• When you can make it work with your ROI

No:

• When someone on the term is a little crazy... maybe. The affiliate is probably losing money. At this point you may want to point out to him that he's losing money.
• When you want to be more cost efficient

Issue 3: Brand damage

What if my affiliates will hurt my brand's good name in their paid search ads. Jeff says it's usually a non-issue but sometimes it happens when the affiliate is lying or promising something they can't deliver or insulting a competitor.

Should I allow it?

No:

• When they're truly damaging the brand or breaking rules

Yes:

• When they may have discovered something that you should have been saying all along.
• When you don't have any brand equity anyway.

Some of the best breakthroughs with brands are done through affiliates saying something that's never been said about your brand before. FedEx is a good example because they shortened their name from Federal Express after everyone was calling it FedEx anyway.

Issue 4: Over dependence

Paid search affiliates are a great way to expand your program. Once you let them in the mix, don't lose focus on other areas. Don't let paid search take over your program. When Google changes policies, like when they stopped allowing direct linking, they lost everything because they were relying too heavily on paid search affiliates.

Should I allow it?

No.

• The end.

One way to look at this mess is to ask if the combined volume of the two programs increased.

If yes, then take a look at your ROI. If your ROI went negative, then adjust accordingly in either program. If no, then you may need to rethink the program a bit. But don't blame them immediately. It could be you.

Jeffrey: What are things you've done to positively incentivize the right types of behavior from affiliates.

Jeff: He'll do the math and give them more or come to an arrangement that the affiliate will take less risk. Determine if the ROI is positive and don't just do it in the name of building relationships.

Lori Weiman will present next and she's focusing on monitoring your affiliates' efforts. She's going to help us quantify things to figure out if you do or don't have a problem.

Her system is a competitive intelligence tool that looks at ads across different mediums, including search. They identify affiliates who direct link, affiliates who operate their own Web pages, watch for brand terms, head terms and long-tail terms.

She's often asked if affiliates are a problem or a solution. They look at it as a solution:

• Increase leads and sales
• Corner the marketing -- push out the competition
• Protect your brand

The problems are:

• Direct linkers which compete for visibility and drive up CPC
• Drive down your rank if their quality score is better than you

Measuring if you have a direct linking problem:

• Measure frequency of ads served -- you vs. the affiliate: The percent of the time that your ads are served.
• Measure impression share: Look at your impression or market share. If it's lower for no good reason, turn to your affiliates.

Impression share:

Your impression share is reported by AdWords. Create a campaign performance report with daily selected for unit of time. Graph the resuls in Excel. Determine your mean/average impression share. Look for anomalous dips. In this case you may have a direct linking problem. Once you've identified the problem you can dive into that date and time and figure out wha'ts going on.

If the affiliate is driving down your rank this can happen in the affiliate has a better quality score than you. You need to either accept it or put rules in place.

Decide if the ROI is there to have the ad in place. If yes then let them stay up there because at least it's an affiliate and not a competitor.

Is the affiliate a solution?

• Affiliates should be in your marketing arsenal. Focus on your goal of making money.
• Increase leads and sales
• Less you corner the market
• You can protect the brand

There are facts you can't avoid. You will never get all the clicks and you can't prevent competition. Let the affiliate take over the other spots for you and occupy more than one position on the page. They may have better landing pages and quality scores and you may not be able to challenge them for that position.

Protect your brand

Don't worry about it. Think about it this way:

• Google does not police your brand.
• Engines let advertisers bid on your brand.
• Legal action is expensive.
• The best solution is getting more affiliates show up. Empower your affiliates to sponsor your brand and then put rules in place to prevent things that concern you. You can even give affiliates the exact copy to use.

One problem could be that each ad on the page has a different offer. That can be confusing and conflicting.

Something to watch out for: Switching the landing page. The rule is that the display URL must match the landing page URL.

Getting around the rule: The affiliate initially sets-up its ad to point to the affiliates own landing page. After it sees the Google bot do its editorial check, the affiliate changes the landing page to the merchant's Web site.

Closing out the session is Peter Figueredo who's going to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. When he advises clients about affiliate marketing, clients are usually worried that affiliate marketing is the Wild West. They either let them do anything or nothing because they're scared.

The Good

These are the heroes of the search affiliate category. Seven characteristics embody the heroes.

1. The Exclusive Ranger: An affiliate that agree to be exclusive with an advertiser. If you have a strong enough relationship and value proposition, you may get an exclusive deal.
2. Testy McGee: An affiliate that tests different offers for you. You can know that your tested and proven offer gets to stay with you but someone else is out there trying new things.
3. The Enricher: Some affiliates will invest in content, write it themselves, hire editors and writers and enrich the affiliate experience.
4. Doc Development: This one will build out sites for categories and brands. This benefits you by enriching the consumer experience and shows you what a conversion rate might look like if your site looked different.
5. Long Tail of the Law: If you're not doing a good job with long tail search, affiliates can help you get exposure.
6. Marshall McShare: A trust level where your affiliate is sharing info with you. Sharing can be a two-way street. They will tell you what they're bidding, where they are and so on.
7. Sheriff SEO: A lot of affiliates are doing SEO, not just paid search. They're getting natural rankings through their SEO talents.

Affiliates doing search can generate 30-50 percent of sales in a program. This will happen in a well controlled environment.

ChilledToPerfection.com is an example of a good affiliate. He clearly states it's an affiliation. He pulls in the client's product feed but is also adding his own quality content. This site uses almost all of the seven characteristics.

The Bad

These shouldn't be acceptable in any case.

• Hijack domain misspellings and confuse natural listings. Citizen Hawk is a service that will identify this bad practice and reclaim the domain.
• Hide ads by geo/daypart targeting around the advertiser or agency.
• Steals your display/linking URL and kills your ad.
• Steals your ad copy and causes consumer confusion.

The Ugly

Just because it doesn't look good to you doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad. You have to figure out what they're doing and see if the problem is you don't have terms that address that and you can reach out and correct the situation.

• Using ad copy that falls into the grey area. Reach out and find out what they're doing.
• Promote your competitors' offers alongside your own.
• Register domains that are similar to yours, but not misspellings.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/25/09 at 2:20 PM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Affiliate Marketing, Liveblog, SES New York 2009

Orion Panel: The State of Search - A Maturing Marketplace or Poised for More Growth?

Our moderator is the witty Kevin M. Ryan, the chair of the SES Advisory Board and CMO of WebVisible, Inc. Our speakers for this high-level strategy session are: James Colborn, director of Microsoft advertising at Microsoft; Robert Murray, CEO of iProspect; Steven Kaufman, SVP media director for Digitas; Jon Diorio, group product manager for AdWords and Monetization Products for Google; and Jeffrey Pruitt, executive VP of iCrossing and president of SEMPO.

Kevin says that the focus of the session is talk about the history of search, where it's going and the key drivers of search. He's showing us a slide of a "day in the search life". Growth of search is coming out of Europe, North America, the Asia Pacific followed by Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Search has to be thought about in the global economy.

Search drivers include search engines and social networks and forums. On the chart, social networking was a growing driver until June of 2007. Then it went down and up and down again. Search, meanwhile, has a steady, gradual growth slope.

In 2007, 87 percent of mobile customers weren't online. By 2011, almost 90 percent of mobile Internet users will be searching. Users expect exact information whether on a mobile device or on their PC, but mobile users immediately act on in. Jon says that the critical point is not the technology or how the ads are rendered -- it's about what message resonates with the user while they're wandering the streets on their mobile. He's spending a lot of time studying how mobile search differs from standard desktop search. Kevin asks if we're going to see a significant number of searches coming out of mobile soon. Jon says that mobile is considered experimental and in the poor economy experimental methods are being cut. It won't be as big as it could be until we get past the recession.

Kevin asks Steven, as an agency representative, where his clients are spending the money. Steven says that on the search side, acquisition is the number one cost and it's not going to be cut because it's measureable and accountable and justifiable. The branding value of search is a more challenging argument.

Robert says that in 2008 large brand marketers were putting themselves in search. Now they're asking how to make search more effective, how can they use display and other types of advertising to drive people to search. Two-thirds of online search users are driven to perform searches as a result of exposure to some offline channel. Both TV and word of mouth influence over one-third each. Jon mentions that he saw a business that had a TV ad campaign that drove searches, but they weren't showing up for those searches so people ended up going to competitors. The problem was the lack of communication between the TV and search marketing departments.

Jeff adds that in the SEMPO state of the market survey, brand was the first priority and driving conversions was the second. However, fewer businesses were tracking their branding efforts than their conversions. Brands are engaged through many different channels and all those become a search component. James says that search is user-directed information sourcing. For Microsoft the challenge is to help advertisers understand all the ways search can be used to improve search results and also to help other media. Jon says search people should go to other marketing departments with keywords.

Are people walking down the hall more than in 2004? Steven says clients are catching on and demanding more. Pitching business as a team is getting better. It's still not great and there are still fights over budgets, but it's getting better. Jeff says that multiple budgets are coming together better but there needs to be an initiative driven from the top level and incentivized. Robert says that there's more willingness to engage in dialogues as people are trying to make their budgets go farther in the tight times.

Kevin wants to know if we're talking in the inner circle and not getting to the wider population. Jon says he agrees that there is definitely an inner circle but as far as awareness of search, it's very high. The cryptic piece that's left is the interplay between the channels. James says that search is finding an easy place and adoption as a direct response channel but brand environment has more barriers to entry. The brand arena is not moving online as quickly. Jon says there is more brand value from search than people realize. Google is looking at studies of 15-20 verticals to study brand value. They asked people in a panel in a controlled environment to do a specific search. Everyone sees a variation and then they are asked about propensity to buy. They're finding that organic plus paid results in higher brand awareness and a decrease in competitor brand awareness.

What is an evergreen challenge in search? James says an evergreen challenge is to address the person's reason for going to search. There is still a lot of variation in the words used that result in different ads being shown. The goal is to make sure the queries are answered as best as possible. Robert says the heart of the problem is attribution and understanding the full purchase cycle of a consumer. He wouldn't advocate search alone -- it's a mix. James says that search is the last click but the billboard can be what gets you there.

Kevin says that according to JupiterResearch, there are four top objections to search: insufficient staff, afraid of risking ROI performance, unable to hit financial targets on cost per keyword, and proving effectiveness to management. Can search grow? These are the biggest internal barriers. What do you think is going to be the next stage of development that will help us overcome these barriers?

Robert says first and foremost, integrated technology that lets you understand offline and online will help streamline the process. Jon says that answer to a lot of the problems can be addressed with automation services they're working on now. This would let you do more with less people. On the ROI side, the biggest growth will come from the audience in the room. Search advertisers are looking beyond click through and conversion rate to ROI. The mentality is shifting to a realization that there's no need for a budget cap if you're making a good ROI. James agrees and says that eight years ago, advertising and searching was based on one keyword. As time went on searchers became smarter and their queries were more sophisticated. The new goal for Live is to keep up with the trends and make it easy for advertisers to keep up with the trends through tools. Increasing the pool of commercial keywords will add opportunities for advertisers. As the market evolves, the opportunity for advertisers continues to evolve.

Kevin says that as CMO, people are trying to sell him crap all the time. It's hard to figure out what he should and shouldn't be paying attention to. So take the following questions and answer home. What are the social drivers? Search integration? Growth?

Robert says that the integration argument has been beaten to death. If you're not integrating at least display and email to your search campaigns you're missing easy pickings. Steven says social is going to continue to grow as a driver. Make sure whatever social content you're putting out is findable and indexable. As for growth, the product needs to evolve as well. He mentions search retargeting and Yahoo rich ads as evolution. New products will help overcome search integration barriers.

Jeff says that the engine relationships with marketers are getting better. The engines are asking for feedback with issues from advertisers. Integration is a point to focus on because search is really broader than just content in engines. The distribution can be optimized in engines and social networks. They've all got to come together under the same plan at some point.

James says that now the plethora of solutions available means finding the right mix of media and targeting types to solve campaign objectives. Without stepping on toes, there's a growth opportunity in engines suggesting new channels to the advertisers. As for as social drivers, they are very interested in becoming the key search provider for Facebook and offering educational opportunities to advertisers and create solutions for advertisers, agencies and partners. Jon says that in the growth arena they're looking at words that aren't being monetized today. They're working to open up the inventory and make it more accessible. In a study they found that users are searching longer and deeper in their research. This means branding at the early stages is important.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/25/09 at 11:09 AM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Branding, E-commerce, Liveblog, SES New York 2009

Advanced B2B

This session's moderator is Rebecca Lieb, VP of U.S. operations for Econsultancy. Our speakers are: Scott Brinker, president and CTO of ion interactive; Kevin Lee, co-founder and executive chairman of Didit; Ian Harris, CEO of Search Laboratory Ltd; and Adam S. Goldberg, chief innovation officer of ClearSaleing.

Scott Brinker is up first. He specializes in post-click marketing -- landing pages and conversion paths, everything after the click.

4 Reasons Why Segmentation Matters

1. Complex offerings, many value propositions.
2. Multiple people involved in the sales process.
3. Long sales cycles with multiple stages.
4. Wide disparity between best and worst customers.

Segmentation granularity as a strategy: It's becoming easier to increase the granularity of interactions between specific people. Segmentation can happen through keywords and ad creatives; landing page behavioral choices; IP address profiling; forms on the landing page or the site; site-wide behavioral analysis. The first two are self-selected and incentivized. The others might be transparent, but not likely incentivized.

When you're segmenting by keywords, you shouldn't just have one landing page, but many landing pages. How many is determined by how many you can manage and deploy cost effectively and still generate ROI. Clients that go from generic landing pages to specific landing pages can see a four time growth in conversion rates.

A landing page that's a form including a drop down menu is a poor example. The form is actually the conversion, so you shouldn't have that up front. Instead they changed it to a landing page that had a targeted message that made it clear what they were getting when they filled out the form. They also streamlined the form.

Landing pages can have more than one page.

They can have a conversion path type structure with segmentation choices on the page they land on. If you're audience is businesses, there could be big differences between small- and medium-size businesses and enterprise businesses. Sharing the same message to both audiences waters the message down or, worse, turns off one of the audience groups. When given the choice to segment which group they were in, 65 percent of users chose their group and they saw a 14 percent conversion rate. This way you can figure out which segments convert best.

How many pages can you have in a landing page?

It depends on what you're talking about. You may need fewer pages for users that are already customers and more pages to educate people who are unfamiliar with your business. You get a lot of data this way as well.

He's got a book called "Honest Seduction" that has a lot more in-depth info.

Kevin Lee is up next and he's focusing on ads. He asks how many are running Google AdWords -- almost everyone. A few more hands drop when he asks if they are using Yahoo. Only a few are left up when he asks about Live. He thinks that if you're not in Yahoo and Live you're missing a chunk of your audience.

B2B search challenges

• Difficult to pre-select B2B clickers
• No single decision maker
• Offline conversions
• Long lead time and lagged conversions
• Keywords are often not B2B specific
• Huge range in lead quality and lifetime value

Which searchers want to buy? You have the prospects coming in. You think they came in to get out of the rain? A guy doesn't walk on the lot unless he wants to buy. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you going to take it? (paraphrased from Glengarry Glen Ross)

Media auctions can be painful -- the winner's curse. Success requires figuring out how to either: a) be the brilliant marketer or b) challenge the irrational bidder. Which is your competition?

Post-click activities might be included in your list of success metrics at different values. Lead forms/white paper requests/newsletter registrations; visits to the "contact us" page; phone calls (tracking at the keyword level). Targeting landing pages dynamically based on IP address or reverse DNS can help deal with B2B uncertainty.

When the keyword alone doesn't work, the other predictors are:

• Search engine
• Daypart
• Day of the week
• Geography
• IP address and ISP (not targetable in search)

Each is an additional segment you can analyze to cherry-pick the best audience. Each segment with the possibility to drive scale should be considered for separate bidding and targeting.

Other specific solutions for B2B:

• Custom-serving landing page based on IP blog, ISP, cookie
• Click routing
• Integration of automated or manual proactive chat if lead value is high and traffic mix is good
• Heavy use of retargeting campaigns for sticky visitors who are more likely to really be B2B

Ian Harris is going to talk about the PPC process:

The major issue he comes across with B2B is terminology. Everyone wants to call what they do something different than what the average searcher will look for. Marketing teams are uncomfortable letting go of the name they've created.

The risks are higher with B2B than B2C because in the former, people can lose jobs and a lot of money can be lost. The B2B sale is more complex. A salesperson is needed. The prospect is not ready and there is prospect fear. There is a long time to order. So what to do?

Set Up Phase

• Product/service
• Competition
• Differentiators
• Target organizations
• Target person

Take time on the set up and it will pay off later. Understand how to sell and have the top sales person involved in the set up phase. They know the key selling points that resonate with potential buyers.

Conversion

• Education
• Research
• Shortlist

Post-Analyze

Conversions are not sales. Because you're giving something away, there are probably some nonsense conversions. You have to take out the bad email addresses and phone numbers. As you go through the sales process the numbers get fewer and fewer. But you have to retain and find out the performance of keywords, ads, landing pages and conversion offer. Certain keywords cause more rubbish than others. But don't look at how much garbage it causes but how many good conversions you're getting.

Summary

• Take time to set up
• Understand how to sell
• Understand buying stages and connect
• Use qualifying conversions
• Analyze conversion quality
• Don't translate -- localize properly

Adam Goldberg is going to share next. He says that leads become opportunities that convert into profitable business. We don't talk about profit enough when that's really all that matters. He sets up a scenario where a business compares the cost per lead across the big three search engines. But that's a bad focus point because even though the lead may cost more, you may get more sales per lead and a lower cost per acquisition. It goes even further that you get more profit from a lead that cost a little more up front.

Since this is an advanced panel, you're going to need tools and sources to help you. You need a program where you can funnel in all your data and you can find out which leads close deals.

Phone Call Tracking

Phone calls are a big part of a B2B's business. He's not a fan of a band of 800 numbers with each dedicated to a keyword. It's too much to manage. Instead he prefers two other methods. A number on the site itself is delivered to each user on the site. When they call in you ask them to read off the number on your screen. You can track them from then on. You can figure out that customer 123 bought this and that this ad was what brought in customer 123. Then you can put the two together and know what ad converted. The other way is by sending an email to a phone call customer. Include a link in that email back to your site and you can track them that way.

There is a last click fallacy. The purchase is not the only thing. There are many steps made to get there: problem recognition; information search; evaluation of alternatives; purchase decisions; then the purchase. We only look at the purchase decision and purchase. We ignore all the steps that led to the decision.

Introducers --> Influencers --> Closers

• Introducers: broad/phrase match, banners, emails, general terms
• Influencers: Any match type, any ad source, manufacturer name, white papers
• Closers: Exact match, search marketing, model numbers, branded terms

This is why branded terms are considered so valuable, but really they're not as valuable as you think.

There's a latency effect -- there's time between the first visit and the time they convert. Don't act on false information that could cause you to kill this keyword prematurely.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/25/09 at 9:19 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES New York 2009

Small Voices, Big Impact: Social Media for the Little Guy

Good morning and welcome to day two of SES New York. Forget the pleasantries; I skipped coffee this morning after an argument with my alarm clock. And Kim Krause Berg of cre8pc and Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media are both blogging this one as well. I see Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR and Mike McDonald of Web Pro News up front as well. I should probably skip over to another session to avoid this battle of the bloggers. Instead I'm just going to make this good.

The moderator is Stoney deGeyter, president of Pole Position Marketing. Our speakers are Amber Naslund, director of community at Radian6; Jennifer Evans Laycock, director of social media at SiteLogic; Christina Kerley, marketing specialist at ckEpiphany; and Tim Kendall, director of monetization at Facebook.

It's going to be mostly Q&A but Jennifer Laycock is going to start off with an overview.

Social media marketing is the name but it's really about conversations. You have to get in conversations with your customers so you can improve your business.

Social media is the bleeding edge of marketing -- they call it that because it hurts. Technologies pop up and clones come along, there's always the next big thing. Social media existed before Facebook and Twitter. It's anything online that lets people connect with one another.

It's not about finding the next big thing. Look for what has already taken hold and go there. This is how you get the biggest audience. Focus your efforts on the established areas. The people at the frontlines are also marketers -- not the people you're trying to reach.

She shows an XKCD comic of the map of online communities.

Consumers Hunt for Info --> Social Media Conversations <-- Marketers Hunting for Consumers

Social Media Launch Point: Flickr

This platform is largely ignored by marketers. But images are very powerful. The people on Flickr are very engaged because they're already taking the time to post their pictures. There is conversation taking place about products and businesses.

Flickr can also be a tool on the links front. You won't get link juice but you can get engaged traffic. You can post pics with links in the description. If you have anything that's visual about your products or services, do some research and see if that's somewhere you can be. [More on the value of Flickr for link building from Lisa's great article for Search Engine Land.]

Why you love it: Flickr is affordable -- $25/year for a pro account -- and it's easy to access.

Social Media Launch Point: Twitter

She describes Twitter as a giant wall covered in post-it notes. You could read a huge amount of conversation, but you want to narrow it down to what is important to you. There are also messages about you. Twitter search makes it possible to narrow down the conversations.

The power of the retweet is that things you say get shared to more networks than just your own. This is what makes Twitter great for news and viral sharing. You can also ask for feedback quickly.

Why you love it: You can use it anywhere and it's easy to get started.

Social Media Launch Point: YouTube

YouTube is being ignored in favor of sexier, newer mediums, but it's really only second in search market share to Google. You can optimize YouTube content the same way as content on your site. The Will It Blend campaign from Blendtec is a great example of using YouTube for marketing right. It's catchy and an entertaining and it also proves the value of the product. The first five videos cost roughly $100. These videos got covered by the Today Show, Newsweek and the NY Times. Their online sales quadrupled. Greg Jarboe pops in to say Blendtec saw a 700 percent increase in online sales (as a result of the campaign).

Why you love it: You can organize, customize and utilize YouTube videos.

Social Media Launch Point: Networks

LinkedIn is often overlooked because people don't know how to use it. One of the big benefits is figuring out how you're connected to someone. If you're looking to connect with someone, find out who you know also knows them.

The Value Triangle

Blogs and articles (the top is the widest point)
Social reviews
Discussion forums
Search results
Social news
Microblogging (the bottom is the narrowest point)

More context is at the top and more competition for attention is at the bottom. Figure out where you'll get the most bang for your buck.

Q&A

How has marketing changed?

Christina: Overall, think of where you before you purchase something. We're looking for our information from other customers rather than salespeople. That's the biggest thing that's changed. The other thing that's changed is how the marketing message is delivered. Now it's back and forth rather than just one way.

Amber: The pace and volume is what's overwhelming to marketers today. You have to be incredibly targeted and focused in talking to the people you want to talk to.

Jennifer: It hasn't changed as much as it's taken us back to a long time ago. 100 years ago you'd go to the same vendor for your meat and they'd know what cut of meat you like and even save it for you. Then the big box retailers came on the scene and you weren't known personally. Now consumers have the option to choose who they want to purchase from -- anywhere around the world.

Christina: The tools have broken down the boundaries and extend your reach. You can give a small business type customer service even though you're a big business.

How do you pull yourself away from traditional marketing? Social media takes a log of opportunity cost but traditional media costs a lot up front but you don't have to manage it.

Amber: She works for a small software startup that started in 2006. She says that the company has spent less than $2000 on traditional media. They knew that the opportunity cost was high but by building organically over time, the customers are intensely loyal and those who aren't customers are fans because of the community building, engendering good will even though they've never done business with them.

What if your audience skews older and isn't really involved with social media?

Christina: There's a misunderstanding that only the young are on social networking sites. There are more seniors that are joining online communities. For those that aren't, it's a great opportunity to introduce them to the new online tools. It has to be done in simple ways, which will make marketers better communicators.

Jennifer: We forget sometimes about all the things that count as social media. Blogs are clicked on through search engine results. Product reviews are filled out on Amazon. People are doing those things and reporting that they don't take part in social media.

Amber: The reason it's important to investigate is to find whether or not social media is right for your business. It's not right for every business but you have to find out.

Christina: If nothing else, use social media for research. You don't have to write a blog but you do have to listen. You'd be amazed at what you can find out for free.

What are the top ways that Facebook is being monetized? What do you see small business taking advantage of?

Tim: FB is primarily getting money through advertising. They have two types of offerings. The brand offering is an engagement ad that shows up on the right side. They also have a self-service PPC offering. You can target your ad very granularly. The primary tool they see people using are Facebook pages. There are seeing a lot of businesses getting good distribution through the presence of a Facebook page and people can choose to affiliate themselves with you.

What is keeping business from jumping into social media?

Christina: Businesses are mostly afraid of people that will speak negatively about the product or service. But they'll be giving you your feedback freely. 99 percent of the time it works out really well.

Amber: Social media didn't create criticism. It's just easier to hear it. Her company is big on listening and engagement because they recognize that when someone is complaining about you, they just want someone to listen. You can help them and are given an opportunity to fix their situation. It's an opportunity to respond in a way that's never been available.

How can reach out to people within a radius of your location?

Christina: On Twitter you can target you geography. On Facebook you can as well. Use the tools to filter the information to geo-specific conversations.

We're going to see another presentation now, this time by Tim Kendall.

Building your customer base with Facebook

How do you create a presence? Build a profile. You can customize depending on what type of customers are coming. People who are already fans will see a wall with the latest information. For people coming for the first time, you can default to a different tab and put out a flashy message.

There's an ability to share photos, video and other multimedia content. That shows up on the wall and is published in front of all the people following you on Facebook. Another cool thing you get is insights into who's on your page. Page views, uniques, fans, gender and age are all broken down, among other things. You can tailor your marketing campaigns based on these insights.

The most important thing to remember about these pages is that they can be powerful distribution tools. A user can show that they "like" a piece of content. It's a lightweight way to show you like something and it's shared with their friends as well.

In the ad space, there's paid search. It's a good way to show something to someone who has explicitly said they are interested in something. But there are a lot of people who maybe aren't searching for a product but they'd still be interested in buying it. Facebook is an effective way to reach those customers before it occurs to them to search. For ads you can target by city or state, you can target by age and sex and relationship status.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/25/09 at 8:27 AM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Liveblog, SEO Tips & Tricks, SES New York 2009, Social Media

March 24, 2009

Getting Mobilized! Mobile Marketing Strategies

As Matt Bailey explained during the last session I attended, SES organizers are working hard to drill down into topics more. More deep and focused content was requested through surveys that attendees submit following conferences. Solo presentations are one solution they're experimenting with at SES. So here's another solo presentation, this time by Cindy Krum, founder and CEO of Rank-Mobile. This mobile-focused session is part of the Search and the Fundamentals track.

Amanda Watlington, owner of Searching for Profit, will give a quick intro to mobile search. Mobile is the next big thing. How many of you carry a smart phone? Almost everyone. How many of you search on your phone. Also almost everyone. Cindy has authored a book on the topic and hosts the WMR show Mobile Presence.

She started in SEO so she likes to look at how to make your site work for mobile. There is mass convergence to build right now. It's the most personal marketing medium ever and there are more interactive marketing possibilities.

People usually like the audience to put their phone away, but she wants you to take your phone out. We're going to be playing a game!

Mobile is different

• Mobile bots
• Mobile algorithms
• More interactivity
• Simplified rendering
• Smaller screen
• More sophisticated searchers
• More specific searchers
• Immediate intent

Why now?

• Real mobile Web browsing, in part thanks to the iPhone
• Flat-rate data pricing
• Faster download speed
• More processing power
• U.S. adoption has hit critical mass

iPhones only make up 5 percent of mobile phones in the U.S. but 75 percent of mobile searches. She thinks that shows that the hindrance was browsing experience. Flat-rate data plans means there's no disincentive to search on your mobile.

How can I benefit?

• Mobile Web is not just a fad. If you embrace it now you'll be ahead of your competitors.
• Master the medium before your competitors.
• There's lot of market share to be moved.
• The cost of failure and testing is low.

Hurdles in Mobile Marketing

Challenge: Too many browsers that render the Web differently.

On the traditional Web we came to the realization that every browser ends up rendering in mostly the same way. We're moving in that direction with mobile but aren't quite there yet.

Challenge: Different handsets and different screen sizes, screen orientations and slow rendering speed.

Challenge: High mobile data chargers prevent mobile search.

Challenge: Slow download speeds, wimpy networks. You don't have great coverage everywhere. That means it's going to slow your message down. Also, if someone's trying to access your site from their mobile, they might not get the message at all. Streamline your site and your messaging so that it doesn't choke the network and gets to the phone faster

Mobile Search Landscape

• On-deck search, also called carrier search
  • Walled or semi-walled garden from the carrier
  • Monetized content and downloads
  • Search from white-label or traditional search engines
  • Preferred 38 percent of the time, when compared to off-deck search (but 87 percent said it was because of convenience and only 28 percent it was because of good results, according to iCrossings.)
  • On-deck search is going away because people are realizing they're being limited.
• Off-deck search
• Like regular Web search
• Not controlled by carriers
• Handset/browser can impact search results
• Not location aware (yet)
• Preferred 69 percent of the time, when compared to on-deck search

Searcher demographics: 20-29 year olds are using mobile Internet the most. As far as income, it's pretty even. For gender, it looks like men have only a very slight amount more but it's shifting toward equal.

What people are looking for, in order of most to least: maps/directions, weather, local info, news, entertainment, sports, finance and other.

Mobile Search Applications

Yelp, YP Mobile, Urbanspoon = they're taking feeds from existing search engines and integrating results from there. Figure out where they're drawing their data from and make sure you're ranking well there. There are mobile search apps for video, shopping and more.

Mobile SEO

• It's an industry in its infancy
• Many aspects of mobile optimization follow traditional SEO wisdom
• Different bots/crawlers
• Very different results pages
• An optimal mobile experience = return mobile traffic = better results in mobile search engines
• Slow download speed and connectivity issues
• Device independence: traditional sites being viewed on mobile technology

It's important to understand that with mobile search a click through isn't necessary for success. If the user finds what they need right on the search page, that's great.

Quick Wins

• Follow all traditional and local SEO best practices
• Provide info relevant to mobile users
• Submit your site to mobile search engines and directions
• Don't rely on:
  • Embedded images
  • Objects
  • Scripts
  • Frames
  • Flash
  • Pop-up windows
  • Mouse-over events

Code in XHTML and Use CSS

• Traditional browsers are forgiving but mobile browsers are not
• Infinite handset/browser/view setting combinations are possible
• Rigid accessibility standards make XHTML ideal
• External CSS is ideal for mobile

Have a mobile specific CSS: Use multiple style sheets: Use a "screen" style sheet for traditional computers and "handheld" for mobile devices. This means that you don't have to have a separate site. You'll avoid duplicate content that's created from a separate duplicate site as well. "display:none" elements can hide elements in either rendering, but it can still effect download speed on mobile.

There are a number of mobile-specific search engines so submit to mobile directories and search engines. Next she shows a chart comparing different results that are displayed through various mobile search engines.

iPhone optimization: http://www.google.com/uds/samples/iphone/isearch.html is a search page for iPhone you can use to see how you line up.

.mobi is rarely ideal. It's not preferred in mobile search, not universally accepted, it has cumbersome development standards, there are no unique assets or features, it has a limited useful life, it's bad for SEO (mobile and traditional) and bad for consumers.

Non dotMobi architecture options are:

• Do nothing
• Mobile only pages
• Page that works for both mobile and traditional Web -- hybrid

Know that rendering can show columns of your site tracked; images may break and background images might not show; JavaScript and AJAX display in full; and forms, action scripts and embedded objects might not work.

Test your mobile site on Opera, Skweezer, the iPhone simulator and iPhone SDK.

Other ways to drive mobile traffic:

• Same email, rendering different places
• It should be compelling anywhere
• Do all email best practices
• Don't replicate your site and especially don't replicate your navigation
• Have a good header
• Include a phone number since it's clickable

Text Message Marketing

• Turns everything into a direct response marketing effort which is more measureable
• Up to 160 characters of text
• Use clickable text
• Collect mobile opt-ins, phone numbers and email addresses via text
• Have your phone system interact with text (ex: send the word "Yes" to opt in to text message coupons and alerts)

When you send the first mobile coupon, give a link for terms and conditions and let people opt out. When you send the first text, be clear and precise and allow users to opt out.

QR codes and couponing hasn't taken off yet but it's has in Asia and she thinks it will be coming soon. She thinks new generation iPhones will come with QR code readers and that will likely bring QR codes to popularity in the U.S.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/24/09 at 2:26 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Liveblog, Mobile, SES New York 2009, Search Engine Optimization

Advanced SEO Strategies: Integrating Analytics, Usability, Persuasion and Journalism

This is a solo presentation by Matt Bailey, a member of the SES Advisory Board and president of Site Logic Marketing. Jumping right in...

At the base level, all you have are words. Words are the building blocks of communication, and it's never more true than on your Web site. They are necessary to persuade people to take action. Mao Zedong said, "Words are like little dynamite sticks in people's minds." By diffusing the power of words, he was able to take control of his country. We have to do the same on our Web sites. Create a reaction in the user's mind that says, "This site helps me find what I'm looking for."

Communicate at a level beyond "about us". If content can go on someone else's site, then you need different content.

Rule 1: Call things what they are

Get rid of the corporate speak, the jargon, the branded tendencies. Realize that your consumers may not talk the same way as you. If you're trying to widen your reach beyond the brand to people who need what you've got, you have to be willing to go beyond the brand.

Rule 2: Co-dependency of words

How do search engines rank Web sites? It's the question that's on our mind. Who are the search engines trying to satisfy? The Web site creator? No, the searcher. You have machines trying to please people. The search engines are machines that want to be real boys -- the Pinocchio principle.

Start with SEO 101 -- the biggest thing you can do for your rankings is optimizing the page titles. The SERP is the first marketing message a searcher will see about your company. Make sure the page title is a call to action. You have 60 characters to get your message to your user in the SERP.

Headlines, subheadings, bullet points and paragraph headers are what are used as a navigational device to find out if it's worth reading, if it's what we're looking for.

Search engines are a means to an end. It's the way that you get to your customer. Meta descriptions are used in your SERP description -- this effects your marketing message. Links are the nuts and bolts of the Internet. They are critical for search engines to find your site. Give alternate text because there may be times that no images show up. You never know how your site will render so give an alternate option.

Rule 3: Context

Context is important for images. Use the alt attribute on images so that you can explain to the search engine what the image is about. Universal search means that everything is searchable and everything is rankable.

Location of words makes a difference. According to a Jacob Neilson study, 79 percent of users scan a Web page; 16 percent read word for word. Scanning is done through headlines, sub-headings, bulleted lists, paragraph headers and content arrangement. Make sure you follow understood conventions -- for example, never use blue underlined text if it's not a link. Make sure your navigation supports the content. People should be able to look at navigation and know what section they're in.

Rule 4: Credibility

People surveyed said privacy policy, SSL, address and phone number is what makes a site credible. But when put in front of a computer, layout, typography, font size and color schemes were what they saw as factors of credibility. Most importantly, it's about readability. Small text, scrolling, blinking, rotating, text on fire and low contrast are bad for readability.

Rule 5: Variety of words

The top 10 keywords that generate traffic actually get less traffic than the long-tail put together. The top 10 terms are just 3 percent of the traffic coming to your site. Don't forget the long tail.

Rule 6: Performance of words

Anchor term (primary keyword):

• 2.7 minutes average time on site
• 46 percent of visits were less than 20 seconds
• Term conversion rate was 2.2 percent
• 1.8 percent conversion rate from the home page
• 4.3 percent conversion rate from category pages

In response they de-optimized the home page. The also found that by adding the brand name to the optimization process, average time on site, visit time and conversion rates all went up. Segment your analytics by how users come into the site and you'll figure out if something is wrong with your landing pages.

Rule 7: Branding

Searches are refined as a researcher goes along. First they look for their need, then they start adding brands. Year-long trends can help you see when people are looking for your product. There are needs at different times.

Rule 9: Clarity

(I have no idea what happened to rule number 8...)

A home page that serves as a directional is better than a destination. It should push people to where they want to go. You should have content that satisfies the need and shows that you have the answer to what they're looking for. Committing to what your product or service can do is necessary.

Regionally there are variations of words. Verbal variations exist, too. There are many words that can be used to describe the same thing. Understand that people look for what you offer in many different ways. Writing requires that you do research into keywords to find out what people are calling what you do. Search engines are getting better at understanding context behind semantics. Search history may help to refine your search when the word means more than one thing.

This has international implications. Your product may have an accent in it, but searchers may not search with the accent. He doesn't recommend you optimize your site for the grammatically incorrect version, but when you bid use the more searched word. Avoid euphemisms and slang.

Searcher types

1. The sharpshooter: They want an answer right now.
2. The shotgun searcher: They know what they want but they're open to suggestions.
3. The artillery searcher: For example, you were told by a doctor that you have this. As soon as you get home you hit the search engine and read everything you can.

Personality types include: the planner, the decision maker, the browser, the price shopper (no loyalty), and the last-minute shopper.

Value exchange: What you're asking for from a visitor has to be of equal value to the searcher. Don't ask for more info than you need. If you ask for too much, it's not worth the user's time right now. Make sure you're giving value back.

Sales 101

• Elevator pitch
• Benefits
• Rapport

Persuasion is based on three elements:

1. Logic
2. Emotion
3. Credibility

Get more info on the blog, www.SiteLogicMarketing.com/blog.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/24/09 at 2:03 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, SEO Tips & Tricks, SES New York 2009, Search Engine Optimization, Usability

Beyond Googling: Where Will Your Customers Be Searching in Five Years?

After stepping into the wrong session with a similar name, I'm coming in a few minutes late to this search and the future session.

Anne Kennedy is currently on the podium. She is the managing partner and founder of Beyond Ink and is also on the SES Advisory Board. It sounds like in her presentation the future is all about video. Although, I heard some talk of mobile as I walked in.

ComScore says that in the UK, the mobile video audience has increased 10 percent. In the U.S. it's doubled.

Points to ponder

• Online U.S. ad spending will increase despite declining total advertising spending.
• Now nascent video online advertising will grow most.

What's in it for Google?

• Google YouTube = video platform
• Google TV = video ad platform

Suppose Nike could:

• Broadcast a game on YouTube.
• Embed a link or two.
• Would their viewers bcome buyers?

Small screen video is the next big thing in search

Concrete Networks TV in 2 years had 1 million views. DIY searches on YouTube are greater in quantity than traditional Google traffic to their site.

Pauline Ores is next and is going to go outside the box with the deep Web and semantic search. She is also on the SES advisory Board and is senior marketing manager of social media engagement at IBM. She asks if people have heard of the deep Web. The public info on the deep Web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web.

The deep Web contains nearly 550 billion individual documents.

The other thing she hears people talk about is the semantic Web. If she's looking for a pizzeria, she has more requirements, such as equidistant between her friends, gluten-free for the vegan, etc. Semantic Web would be able to handle all these questions for you.

Deep Web and semantic Web are more complex than the current Meta data now available through current search engines. Deep content has to do with expertise. The best way to get into a database like that is to find someone who specializes in that. Semantic is something people are better at than current algorithms. Tourists in NY stop her all the time to find something located between such and such places. She thinks that beyond the Meta model will be another model. She says that that's been started with human-based Web resources. The artificial intelligence of computers is not going to be as good as humans. As far as search engines, it'll be about figuring out the semantic and getting to more deep, niche content. Social media can help with the semantic needs.

John Marshall, the moderator and CTO of Market Motive, says that Yahoo Answers and Mahalo are much more successful than Google's Answers program. But Anne says that that model was pre-social. Now people go to Twitter to ask their network for help and answers. It's still possible that people can utilize those networks.

Frank Watson is next to talk about Twitter. He is the CEO of Kangamurra Media. John says that in the session they aren't going to predict that Twitter as a company or brand is going to be able to do all the following, but the technology in general.

Frank says that he had a script worked out but he walked out to get a newspaper this morning and the front page was about a woman tweeting her giving birth. He says the existence of an alternative has to make you smile.

Twittering, Tweeple, Twilly

People like communing and being social. There are a number of services built on Twitter (TwitLinks, TweetValue, twhirl, TwitPic, tsurch, etc.). There are a lot of companies making money on Twitter because it generates serious traffic.

Could Twitter be Google's Excite?

• Google should buy Twitter
• Alta Vista, Lycos, Excite
• GoTo -- Overture -- AdSense

Real Time Search

• Natural disasters
• Major accidents
• Newswire
• Polls

How Google loses

• Real time search may be seen as better.
• Ask friends instead of search engines.
• Momentum can cause change.
• Greater Twitter traffic sources seen.

How Google wins

• Becomes too spammy.
• Something else comes along.
• Google buys it.
• Everyeone gets bored.
• Twitter gets eaten by whales.

John says that when he hears about new technologies, he feels like he did 15 years ago when he tried to explain email to his parents. A key way to think about things is email is for old people. Pauline says that her kids think of email as FedEx. Anne says that her kids have figured out that to reach her they DM her and it shows up in her email.

Q&A

What monitoring tools would you recommend for brand and reputation management?

Frank says that you can use Search.Twitter but there are a number of other tools. Guy mentioned some good ways to do keyword monitoring. Anne says that you can build a dashboard to monitor via iGoogle. Check it out at sempdx.com

How do you differentiate between innovative branding and innovative technology when there are so many fast-changing channels.

Frank: You don't absolutely know but you might as well surf the good waves while they're around. It's hard to say but as an industry you look at it and you know that the social media elements are taking over a lot of our communication. As a technology, search is more than just search engines. Take opportunities to monetize all of the elements that are growing into what we do.

Pauline: What peers say is very important. Doing CRM is a big part of what you can do and it's blending into Twitter.

Frank: There's a Salesforce app for Twitter now. There's a lot of information out there.

Google is taking over the world and buying everything, but how's it going to work in the future? Is all information about us going to be sold? Are the things we're searching always going to be private?

Pauline: You are being tracked and we don't want Minority Report to be a reality.

Anne: The ACLU has said that we give up our privacy for convenience. It is something to remain concerned about. As much as we may not like it, it's reality. Stay vigilant.

Pauline: At some point you do need regulations because it's not the big bad Google that's selling your data; it's organizations that are compiling lots of little things and putting the pieces together.

There's a lot of search happening on social. There's also a lot of social results coming up in search. What do you think of that cross-over?

Frank: He says it's great for reputation management. If you have something you want to push down you can try to move up social pages by registering for more.

Anne: It was inevitable and here we are.

John: Social media is more transient. If you think you can use Twitter because it's focused on real time, content then appears on search. Social pages are now treated as a peer of other results, but he wouldn't be surprised if Google started to devalue social pages since they change so quickly.

Anne: As marketers we have to be aware of new things and how to use them. Start thinking of the new models and how to use them.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/24/09 at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, SES New York 2009, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media

Survival of the Fittest 2.0

Let's start with the line-up. Sara Holoubek, a consultant, columnist and member of the SEMPO Board of Directors is moderating. Speaking is: Bryan Eisenberg, SES Advisory Board member and co-founder of Future Now, Inc.; Jason Ciment, co-founder of LaDezign.com; Bob Myhal, president of MuscleMaster; and Kevin Lee, co-founder and executive chairman of Didit.

This session is part of the Search and the Fear Economy track. The alternate title is "Hanging In There". Sara kicks things off with the speakers telling the audience what they were doing in 1999 -- when the bubble burst. Bryan was focusing on conversions, but no one was paying attention. Jason says that his conversions weren't great back then. Bob says that he was doing everything from building the site to packing the boxes for shipping. Kevin says he was in the process of transitioning from a notorious cloaking SEO shop to paid search and paid inclusion.

Sara says that they're going to take a broad approach to how they survived back then and how it applies now.

Bryan jumps in and says that in 2000 he went to a tech convention and met a guy who had been through many ups and downs, but in the biotech industry. He says that during the depression, people who put the pedal to the metal in hard times really see their competitors fall by the wayside. Bob agrees and says he's seen this now and saw it in 1999. He says his company never had the luxury of funding, but that made them face the challenge with toughness. One of the things he was able to do then and now was acquire competitors for short money. They have grown at an average of 70 percent then and now in about two years.

Jason says that when he started MagMall there were competitors that were blowing lots of money -- companies were overspending with plans to make it up in lifetime value. Instead you should be showing results very quickly, not in a year or two. Kevin says the business eco-system is always Darwinian -- survival of the fittest. He's restructured Didit 10 times in the last 13 years. He's constantly thinking of new avenues and what's going to be strong at the end of the year. Every time you transform your company, your competitive set changes too. Jason says that the defining characteristic that separates your company from competitors is customer service.

Bob says that as online marketers we spend a lot of our time trolling for new customers, but the most valuable source of revenue is existing customers. He's gotten more innovative with ways of reaching out to existing customers. Mine the data to establish good relationships. Bryan agrees and says that real success comes from constant execution -- don't set it and leave it. Continually measure and prove.

Sara says that along with the cautious consumer, the economy is hurt by the broken credit system. Jason says that his funding was always "in the mail." The strategy that worked was always communicating with clients and targeting niches. Dominating a niche is great because social networking allows happy customers to promote your services.

Sara recognizes that she's hearing a lot of business basics. Has anything changed radically? Bryan says the fundamentals don't change. But look at basketball in the '70s and now. The dunk has come a long way and is a bigger part of the game, but it was always there. New tools have come out and new uses to use old tools have emerged. Now there's almost too much data and people almost don't know how to act on it. But it will be interesting to see if companies will invest resources into using new tools.

Kevin says the biggest shift has been speed. The fundamentals are the same but everything has to be done quicker. Bob says that the numbers have changed because more marketing budgets are going online and they are more ruthless in cutting poorly performing channels. Jason says there are now new ways of listening to customers, such as Twitter. Bryan asks how many people have an active program for measuring conversions month after month. A handful raises their hands. If you're not doing it, you need a smack to your head. Tweaking should happen constantly.

Q&A

Are you incorporating competitors into your site or as separate sites?

Bob: They are run separately. We determined early on that site A may not appeal to one segment and site B might not appeal to another. It creates challenges and when he dreams at night, he dreams of one site, but he doesn't see it as an immediate reality. The Web is so diffuse and there are so many things going on that you really need to target.

Sara: Were they coming to you or were you going to them?

Bob: It was half and half. When word got out we were in acquisition mode, we got some interested parties reaching out to us.

How do you use blogs and how does it help your bottom line over all?

Bryan: He built a business out of content back during the first wave. It snowballed into writing for ClickZ, several books, etc. Content writing has built a multi-million dollar business. The hard part is that people still have to catch up with how content dissemination has shifted.

Kevin: If you're going to have a content-rich strategy, know why you're doing it. Verbal diarrhea is not usually useful. Make sure there's a strategy behind your content, especially if you're not a publisher. It's all a means to an end.

Do you ever have problems with running multiple sites?

Bob: There is cross-over between sites. Some customers are familiar with the fact that a few sites are done by the same company. It mostly comes down to price shopping. Early on they were able to have the best content, but eventually everyone got on the content boat and the competition was too great. Instead they had to rely on offering the best products.

Does a content-rich strategy work for an e-commerce store, considering the competition and the difficulty of tracking ROI?

Bob: It hasn't worked for us the way it used to. The Web became so efficient at people finding the right price that it became difficult for them to spend a lot of their time focused on generating content -- and it was very difficult to track. Now they focus on bringing in people ready to buy, people who aren't researching.

Since Google is still trying to reward good content, but you want good customers, is there a disconnect between what the search engine thinks is important and what the customer really wants?

Kevin: AdWords has become the last good location for marketers targeting the ready-to-buy market.

Jason: TALLA -- target customers within a niche; be authoritative; leverage users; leverage affiliates.

Do you use product reviews and is affiliate marketing helping drive sales?

Bob: Product reviews have grown in importance. Affiliates are great sources for casting a broader net and bringing people in. But affiliate marketing has substantial negatives (especially for ROI).

Jason: Affiliates can focus on different segments of universal search and improve your visibility.

Can you follow up on your comment about the negatives of affiliates?

Bob: There's clearly a sense of competition where you're competing against your affiliates for sales. The other tricky thing is to get a true ROI, do you just count the last click? Who gets credit when a user finds you on an affiliate and goes to Google and clicks on your ad?

That's all of the Q&A I'm going to cover. Time for lunch!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/24/09 at 9:56 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES New York 2009, Search Engine Optimization

Entrepreneurs and C-Suite Executives: A Fast-Track to Search Marketing Fluency

Next I'm hitting up the Search & the C-Level Executive track with an intro by Bryan Eisenberg, SES advisory board member and co-founder of Future Now, Inc. Amanda Watlington, owner of Searching for Profit, is giving the sole presentation.

Bryan says that when he was asked to introduce this track he was excited because Amanda is the author of the first version of "Call to Action" and is someone with great depth of knowledge in the field. Amanda asks who is at their first SES conference. She says one of the problems with the conference format is that sessions are a dive into a micro topic. You walk away and don't know how to put all the pieces together. This session is going to help you put it all together from a macro view.

We're living in amazing times for marketing. We're going to look at:

• A quick cup of alphabet soup
• The economics of search in 2009
• Search and the marketing mix
• C-level role in managing search
• Getting the KPIs right
• 10 challenges to take with you

A Quick Cup of Alphabet Soup

• SEO = Search Engine Optimization
  • Content and site design enhancement to achieve relevant rankings on SERPs = search result pages.
  • Results are variously called: natural, organic, free
• SEM = Search Engine Marketing, also used to refer to the entire industry

SEO is a long term effort with long term results.

• KWs = keywords, the drivers of success
• CMS = Content management system, a search-unfriendly CMS is often a constraint on SEO success
• ROI = Return on investment, a typical macro-measure

SEM is short term efforts, often referred to as "campaigns".

• KW = also the drivers of success; lists are long (vs. short in SEO)
• ROAS = Return on advertising spend, a typical measure
• ROI = Both at a campaign and even keyword level

The Economics of Search

• Spending on search accounts for half of all dollars spent on online marketing. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)
• $13.4B search spend for 2008, $11.9B (88%) was on paid placements. This is less than the original projection ($15.7B) made in January 2008 due to the recession. (Source: SEMPO survey)
• $26.1B expected size of industry in 2011. (Source: SEMPO survey)
• Inclusion of social media in search is expanding the footprint of search and the overall dollars spent.
• Even Google is anticipating declining revenues.

Search Continues to Grow

• Search is expected to grow 8-10% even in the current down economy.
• Search is poaching budget from:
  • Other online efforts, as in 2000 bubble burst
  • Offline, particularly print
  • Television: the economics are very tempting

Effects of the Slowing Economy

	Less buying, less searching, more browsing, lower ROI -->
Slowing economy -->	Reduced ad budgets reduce CPC competition -->	Search
	Big spending sectors in trouble (auto, retail) -->

Universal Search Changed Everything

When she first started in search (1995), all you had to worry about was the page for a slew of engines. In 2007 there was a major change in how the model worked.

• Google announced its universal search model on May 16, 2007.
• Yahoo followed soon afterward with blended search.
• Images, news, video and local info are now being delivered in one easy-to-use increasingly personalized interface.

Now to get on the page you have to add to the clutter.

Search Now Looks Beyond the Site

The top result for a "coldplay" search is a news story, then the official site with site links. Then there's a Wikipedia result. Then videos, social networking sites, multimedia sites then blogs. Video is the current darling of search. Eye tracking has shown that eyes go to the images on the SERP. Every part of multimedia can be optimized. Search is not just your Web site. You can control blogs, video, the news, some social sites, images, articles and site content.

How Has This Changed the Management of Search Marketing?

Context: Before Universal Search

• SEO was assigned to a specialist with a narrow set of expectations and tasks all framed similarly around visibility for the target site in search engines and directories.
• SEO was a (difficult) collaboration of the webmaster, IT and marketing/content stakeholders.
• SEO agencies were tasked with achieving search engine rankings and traffic.

Context: Today with Universal Search

• SEO must be the visibility manager, the digital asset performance optimizer, not a soloist.
• Video, images, news, products, maps, local search and mobile search go beyond the role and skills of most traditional SEOs and many traditional search agencies.
• The demands of optimizing for Universal search create a need for boundary spanning:
  • Video: Which department has a videographer and editing suite?
  • News: Responsibility of SEO/marketing/PR?
  • Local listings: marketing?
  • Images: Who owns them -- product, merchandising or content team?

Skill Sets: Require New Collaborations

• SEO manager must interface with the PR team, videographers, and product/content specialists (all who may not know SEO)
• With co-content creators, search must develop protocols for optimization of various new types of content.
• Search must create new checklists and procedures to ensure that other collaborators' efforts work in sync.
• SEO must be collaborator and boundary0spanner.
  • Must have sponsorship at the highest level to accomplish results.
  • Must be prepared to function as a manager, not just an implementer.

Organizational challenges -- whether in-house or agency -- stay the same.

Search and the Marketing Mix

• Search is a synergistic connector
  • 5 minutes after a TV spot airs, there is an increase in searches for that product or brand on the Web.
  • Display advertising influences conversion on natural search.

To achieve maximum power, the goals must be clearly articulated. Budgets must reflect the revenue impact. Set aside a portion of the marketing budget for new, experimental endeavors. Develop marketing results attribution models now, if they are not already in place, to clarify which marketing efforts should get the credit. Make sure there are appropriate metrics for measuring all channels.

KPIs

• Use data from search-driven marketing efforts to create models for consumer behavior for your business.
• Challenge Web analysts to bring in and integrate multi-stream data.
• Avoid dashboard blindness -- send divers deep while navigating from the top level.

She has two role and responsibility decision models. I can't get them both down but she'll be making these slides available and I may just swipe it then. Check back later!

Using a decision-making model for search begs clarification of how things really work in the organization. With everybody on board, a decision model will keep things working forward and avoid friction.

• Leverage the power of social media.
• Improve the performance of paid search through testing of landing pages.
• Focus on improvements to conversion that will increase revenue.

10 Challenges

1. If you were unable to afford to buy or had to cut PPC ad spend by X% after a certain date, what would happen to our online presence, sales, branding, etc.?
2. How should you measure the effectiveness of a PPC campaign? Organic search?
3. What in the org/Web site is limiting search performance?
4. What skills or training do you need to do your job more effectively given the changing nature of search?
5. What's the impact of offline advertising on online results?
6. What percent of overall ad/marketing budget does the online presence warrant?
7. What must you do to improve the effectiveness of search relative to conversion?
8. What is the expected conversion rate for the site, how is it measured and how does it compare to the rest of your industry?
9. Who is not included in the current search marketing team?
10. What can you do as a manager?

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/24/09 at 9:45 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES New York 2009, Search Engine Optimization

Opening Keynote by Guy Kawasaki: Twitter as a Tool for Social Media

After a harrowing plane ride and the revelry of the IM Charity Party, it's time to get down to business. Welcome to SES New York!

A couple weeks ago I attended a webcast preview of this morning's presentation by Guy Kawasaki. Based on the discussion spurred then, I think I'm not the only one looking forward to what Guy has to say today. I'm a little rusty in the liveblogging department but let's see if I can do this presentation justice.

I see Guy up on the stage now staring intently at a computer screen. Any bets he's tweeting?

I'm skipping Kevin's intro in favor of figuring out the wireless.

Guy asks how many people are on Twitter right now. A big chunk of the audience raises their hand. He says there are people who are going to say "Guy thinks everyone should go out and spam Twitter, so just start the rumors now."

He loves Twitter because it democratizes the social media space. No matter who you are, you get 140 characters.

How about a historical example? In ice harvesting, there was ice 1.0. It needed to be winter, you had horses to do the heavy pulling and a saw to cut blocks of ice. In ice 2.0 there were ice factories -- the ability to make it cold no matter where you were. Ice 3.0 was the refrigerator curve. Instead of going to the ice factory, you have your own PC - personal chiller.

On the Web, 1.0 was Web sites. 2.0 is blogging -- anyone can do it. Version 3.0 of online marketing is a tweet. He loves Twitter and thinks it's the most powerful tool in online marketing. You can reach hundreds of thousands of people and it's free.

1. Forget the A List

With blogs, you needed the famous to promote your stuff. Their wisdom would trickle down to the masses and get you in front of eyeballs. The new mental model is not trickling down but bubbling up. The beauty of people is that people can find you. Don't ignore the A List -- TechCrunch can still get you lots of traffic. But there are people in the community that loves what you do and embraces what you do, bubbles up for you and becomes your evangelist.

2. De-Focus

In the Twitter world, in the social media world you don't know who will be your most useful follower. Rather than the top dogs it's always some person that you've never heard of that will carry your message forward for you.

3. Get lots of followers

Twitter is a numbers game. If you want stuff to bubble up, you need more swamps. This is controversial because some people believe that rather than numbers, it's about the depth of relationships. He doesn't buy it and says it's a game of big numbers. Here are some tips for getting big numbers.

He says he was late to the Twitter game -- he didn't understand why he would want to know about someone's cat. Side lesson: if someone unfollows you, it's not necessarily okay to unfollow them back. Twitter is not rational.

Step 1: Follow everyone back that follows you. He goes to SocialToo.com. It monitors all followers and auto-follows back. He thinks it's inherently arrogant that you're more worthy of following than the person following you. The other reason he follows back is that he wants to enable people to DM him. He only deals with @s and DMs -- that means he's more open to discussion that way.

Step 2: The best measure of how valuable your tweets are is the number of retweets. He goes to Retweetist.com, which is what he uses to measure his retweets. He's in a competition with Pete Cashmore at Mashable to see who gets more retweets. He's currently number one. Retweeting is the highest form of flattery.

Step 3: Followers are not the best measure of how successful your tweeting is. TwitterCounter.com shows that Barack Obama is at the top of the list. He points to Twitter's suggested users and says that being in that box automatically gives you a huge advantage. Twitalyzer has an algo that he doesn't understand but it takes into account followers, retweets, "generosity", and more. It's another way to figure out your influence on Twitter.

Step 4: Find interesting stuff to tweet. StumbleUpon is very useful for getting more followers. He'll point someone to a good story on SU and then shorten the URL at Adjix which can automatically tweet it. He uses Alltop the same way as SU. There will be someone following him who loves peanut butter cheesecake and they would retweet it.

Adjix is somewhat controversial as well. He says people think that he uses it to get the ad revenue, but that's not true. It has a Firefox button, you can schedule in advance, and it lets you track how many people click on the link. 140 people have already clicked on the peanut butter cheesecake link.

4. Monitor what people are saying about you

He has a dedicated search at Search.Twitter. The search is "guykawasaki OR alltop -alltop.com" (he subtracts to domain so he doesn't have to see people's links to alltop). He watches this all day and responds to people, debate people, etc.

5. Copy other people/companies

Twibs.com tracks what companies are doing on Twitter. Whole Foods, MTV, DunkinDonuts, Comcast, etc. You can find companies to copy and be inspired. Comcastcares is an outstanding example of how to use Twitter as a company. Mr. Comcastcares monitors and responds to all people talking about them on Twitter. When he once tweeted "I'm throwing DirecTV out of my house," an exec called him the next day to find out what's wrong. He understands the argument that not everyone would get that service, but it shows they know what's going on. @amazondeals is doing it right and driving sales through short-term sales broadcast on Twitter. They are worth copying.

6. Search

This was how Guy finally got it. He does a simple Twitter search for "scion" [my car!]. If you sell Scion aftermarket parts, monitor people asking about Scion and you can tweet people that are looking for your service. You can do an advanced search for a radius around a zip code (e.g.: seo near:10019 within:100mi) and find people looking for you within a 50 mile radius. You can see how this could be used for direct marketing.

7. Use the right tools

Tool 1: TweetDeck

The panes (direct messages, searches) let you see lots of things at once. The limitation is that you can only be in one account at a time. He knows they are working on a solution to do this, but now he uses twhirl.

Tool 2: Twhirl

He has two accounts and can see both in one window. Buttons at the bottom let you switch through @s, DMs, etc. in each column/account. You can see that a lot of people are talking about this presentation right now!

Tool 3: CoTweet

It's Web-based for users/companies with multiple accounts. It's still in beta but is powerful for a company with multiple people with Twitter accounts. He thinks it will be very useful when it's released in full.

Tool 4: Tynt

The greatest lie right now is: "It's only one line of JavaScript". But Tynt is a line of JS that when people copy something from your site it will be pasted with a link to the original source. The Tynt dashboard tells you how many times something was copied and even which paragraphs were the most copied.

8. Squeeze the trigger

People are afraid to use Twitter for commercial or marketing purposes, but you need to be able to squeeze the trigger. TwitterHawk.com is interesting because you can set up searches. Auto tweets are generated for people that tweet about a subject you are monitoring. You can auto-send or manually approve.

If you're thinking this is the ultimate spam tool, there are some measures in place. It costs a nickel to reply this way. There are certain blacklisted words (like "the) so that you can't abuse the service. He knows people are saying that this is spam and Guy is a spammer, but he says "tough" -- he can handle it. He also manually approves tweets so that when someone tweets something negative about the search topic, it's not appropriate to send his suggestion to check out Alltop's dedicated page. TwitterHawk records if you've already sent a tweet to someone so you don't send the same tweet twice.

He's not sure that TwitterHawk is good for everyone, but if it's appropriate, it's very useful.

9. Make it easy to share

On Alltop there is a tweet button right on the page that will draft a tweet like "Pretty good stuff about (blank)" and lots of people use this function every day. He thinks that giving too many choices (Digg, SU, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) confuse users. He believes you can just choose Twitter.

Another good way to share is Twitterfeed. It's is a tool that lets you feed your RSS into your tweets. It also lets other people sign up to your feed and they will also automatically tweet your tweet. The downside is that if you're following those people, you'll see those tweets again. But an unanticipated upside is that it is a convo starter for those signed up to retweet your Twitterfeed.

10. Take the heat: UFM

You'll get heat that you're a spammer, that you're not using Twitter right. That it should only be used as a social networking tool. There are people that believe that and it's legitimate, but there are other legitimate ways to tweet. To those who disagree he says "UFM" -- unfollow me.

So there you go. Twitter as a marketing tool. Maybe you can make Twitter work for you as a marketing tool, too.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/24/09 at 9:04 AM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Liveblog, SES New York 2009, Social Media

March 2, 2009

SES New York Liveblog Schedule, SEO Training & Special Events

Search Engine Strategies New York is three weeks away but my excitement has already arrived! I've been checking out the agenda and whoo-ee there are some awesome search marketing sessions ahead.

I always enjoy getting a behind-the-scenes sneak peak of sessions. For me, this usually happens in the form of Q&A posts, like when I spoke to Debra Mastaler, Greg Jarboe and John Marshall before SES London. But this time SES is hosting an exclusive preview of social marketing genius Guy Kawasaki's keynote presentation via webcast. Yup, this Friday, March 6, anyone can tune in to Guy and Matt McGowan sharing their social marketing brilliance by simply registering for the free event.

Another exciting feature of SES New York is going to be Bruce Clay, Inc.'s SEO training course on Friday, March 27. It's a foundational, hands-on SEO workshop that complements the week of sessions and kicks your Internet marketing knowledge into high gear.

Of course, if you aren't able to attend the show, or if you've already registered and are planning your schedule, it may help to know what sessions will be reported here on the blog.

Tuesday, March 24

9:00 a.m. - Opening Keynote by Guy Kawasaki: Twitter as a Tool for Social Media: Liveblog Coverage
10:30 a.m. - Entrepreneurs and C-Suite Executives: A Fast-Track to Search Marketing Fluency: Liveblog Coverage
11:45 a.m. - Survival of the Fittest 2.0: Liveblog Coverage
1:45 p.m. - Beyond Googling: Where Will Your Customers Be Searching in Five Years?: Liveblog Coverage
3:00 p.m. - Advanced SEO Strategies: Integrating Analytics, Usability, Persuasion and Journalism: Liveblog Coverage
4:30 p.m. - Getting Mobilized! Mobile Marketing Strategies: Liveblog Coverage

Wednesday, March 25

9:00 a.m. - Small Voices, Big Impact: Social Media for the Little Guy: Liveblog Coverage
10:45 a.m. - Advanced B2B: Liveblog Coverage
1:00 p.m. - Orion Panel: The State of Search - A Maturing Marketplace or Poised for More Growth?: Liveblog Coverage
2:15 p.m. - Slash Your Search Budget: What Are Your Alternatives? - Not covered due to live SEM Synergy show.
4:00 p.m. - Dealing With Affiliates: A Roadmap to Success: Liveblog Coverage

Thursday, March 26

9:00 a.m. - Morning Keynote: John Gerzema, Author of The Brand Bubble: Liveblog Coverage
10:30 a.m. - An Update on Social Media Optimization: Liveblog Coverage
12:45 p.m. - News Search SEO: Liveblog Coverage
2:15 p.m. - Independent SEM/SEOs: Issues & Answers: Liveblog Coverage
3:45 p.m. - Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Black Hat PPC Tactics: Liveblog Coverage

Session rooms aren't the only places I'll be during the conference. I'm planning an episode of SEM Synergy from SES New York that I think will be great. And, as always, the Internet Marketers Charity Party will be a blast of good will that I refuse to miss. Is there anything else happening during SES New York that you're looking forward to? As for me, I can't wait to see everyone there!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/ 2/09 at 2:43 PM | Comments (6)
See more entries in Liveblog, SES New York 2009

February 12, 2009

Ask the Search Engines

Danny Sullivan, our fearless leader, moderates this panel; he's already in casual mode. Google's rep Matt Cutts, Google Inc., is here. Other search engine reps Keith Hogan, Ask.com, Sasi Parthasarathy, Live Search, Microsoft, and Priyank Garg, Yahoo!, are ready to sit quietly while Matt gets a billion questions. Too harsh? I'm just trying to be accurate.

Wow, big news.

Right before the session started, the big three announced a new tag rel=canonical. There's coverage popping up everywhere and I won't try to duplicate it so just get yourself over to the Google Webmaster Central blog and read about it. In talking to Matt, he emphasized that this is not a substitute for a proper redirect. If you can, do that first. Vanessa Fox covered it for Search Engine Land. Joost de Valk does a good job of explaining what it means over here Canonical URL Links, and he's already got plugins ready for this for Wordpress, Magento and Drupal already. Can you say on the ball?

Matt's going to do the official introduction now so if those links aren't enough, you can try to follow along here.

Duplicate content is the bane of a lot of people's existence. There are many many preferable ways to fix duplicate content: Fix your CMS, link consistently, make all non-canonical URLs redirect, etc. However, that doesn't mean that you're going to catch every single instance. Even Her Majesty the Queen has dupe content issues.

So they've come up with a very simple link element that you put in the head section that identifies that clean, pretty, preferred URL. It's .

They'd rather not have to resort to this. Do everything else first. This is a hint, not a mandate. They'll choose. And they reserve the right to treat spammy uses of it as spam.

This only works on the same domain. It does work across subdomains/host. You can use it for https versus http. They don't have to be 100 percent identical but the differences should only be slight. You can use relative or absolute URLs but they'd prefer you use absolute URLs. Google can follow a chain of canonicals but... you know, don't do that.

What if I point to a 404 or have an infinite loop or an uncrawled URL or a non-www/www conflict, etc.? Don't cross the streams. They're going to handle it as best they can.

Thanks go to Joachim Kupke for doing the heavy lifting at Google to implement this.
Okay, ready? Time for questions.

What are you doing about the problems related to deep crawling?

Matt: We try to crawl as best we can. We look at PageRank and backlinks and if you have a higher PageRank, we'll try to crawl deeper. If you're not getting crawled, you might need more links. Also, check for duplicate content and make sure you have a simple site structure.

Priyank: Having a clear site map helps Yahoo. The link canonical will work very similarly to a 301. Be careful; don't mark unique content with a link canonical.

Sasi: Those two pretty much summed it up. Ease of navigation and site architecture is important. At the end of the day, if it's good content, they want to crawl it.

Keith: We go a step further and look at the content. If it's good content, we'll crawl faster. If it's bad content, we're going to slow up and not crawl as much.

Should the new canonical tag be used on pages that we don't think there's a problem with?

Matt: Yeah, you can but be careful about it. Think about what the user is going to want. It is just a hint though so if you pick the one that we think is not as good, we reserve the right to pick the URL we think is best.

Priyank: Be careful. We all want to emphasize that. Use it with caution.

If someone under a penalty 301s to you they can pass the penalty. How do you protect from that?

Matt: We do look at it. We try to be fair.

Does Yahoo have a hard time with special characters like pipes and ampersands in Title tags?

Priyank: That's a very specific question but no, I don't think so.

How is the canonical tag different than IP-based cloaking?

Matt: One is a mini 301 and the other is not in any way.

Why doesn't the canonical tag work across domains?

Matt: You could use it across domains but it would be hard and it could be a little unsafe, so we decided not to implement it like that.

Will the new tag slow down crawling?

Matt: It won't slow it down, but we don't follow 301s immediately anyway so it'll just get stuck at the end of the queue.

Priyank: Same. We also have dynamic URL in Site Explorer so that you can tell us if you have a session ID or something that can be dropped while crawling and that will speed up the crawl.

Let's revisit nofollow. Do nofollow comments mean no impact or help to you?

Sasi: It's not helpful from a search engine perspective, but it may be from a user perspective. We just ignore them.

Matt: We drop it completely off the link graph, nothing flows, no PageRank.

My competitor is spammy. What is going to happen to them?

Matt: White text on white background is definitely spam. Catch me afterward, I'd love to hear examples. [There's much laughter and Danny uses this to segue into...]

Google Japan has been buying links. What the heck, Matt?

Matt: I just want to take a minute and apologize for it. They didn't think about how it was going to affect search engines but that doesn't excuse it so they were lowered from 9 to 5 to reflect the decreased trust in Google.co.jp. They have to file a reconsideration request, just like anyone else. There are a lot of people at Google who were angry about that but that was the right thing to do.

How does the message of what you can and can't do get out?

Matt: I think we took a very clear position that this is bad. I've been thinking a lot about this the last few days. Google can't just assume people know, they have to keep talking about it and they still have a lot of communication to do about it.

How do you determine what's natural and what's not?

Keith: We look at each individual page, at the content.

Sasi: We use neutralization as well as penalization.

Priyank: We run analysis on every page. Cloaking is remarkably ineffective.

Matt: All of the above, particularly what Sasi said. Google's more likely to penalize sellers than buyers because it's usually more clear cut, but they will penalize for it if they have a high degree of confidence.

The new spam technique of 2009 is going to be hacking sites. You need to keep your servers patched, watch your open redirects and monitor them. Watch your server load. Keep your software patched. If you don't have a recent version of WordPress, you're going to get hacked. Stay patched.

Priyank: I agree with Matt. The onus is on you.

Sasi: Security should be a primary focus for webmasters. It's your page, not anyone else's. You'll end up getting the penalty.

Matt: Danny had a really good point about "craphats" and how it's like racist jokes -- they're that out of fashion. Don't put up with it.

My competitor is coming up as a "did you mean" for my site! How do you stop that?

Matt: We do pushes every few months so sometimes that fixes it. OR you should do a blog post and call Google an idiot for getting it wrong. [Hee!!!] You can also report it via a feed.

All others: We want to know about it and want to fix it. Give us feedback.

Will you notify webmasters if you see them get hacked?

Yahoo does already and so does Google. Ask has a partnership with Norton for notification. If you get flagged in Yahoo and you're not malware, there's a link right there in the warning that you can respond. Google and Microsoft will tell you if you've been penalized as well.

Matt: I want to know from those in the audience. Would you want a notification in case of hacking or penalization? Do you want an email? (The audience says YES.) Should it be a check box? (Another YES!)

Priyank: How many people target content at a state, regional or city level? Language? Country? [I can't see the responses.]

Matt: Would people want a fetch as googlebot feature? (The audience says YES.)

Priyank: How many people would like to have their content crawled at a specific time of day? [No one seems to care. Except Hilton.com who doesn't want to be crawled during the day. Um... yeah.]

Posted by Susan Esparza on 02/12/09 at 3:03 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in AOL, Ask, Google, Live Search, Liveblog, SMX West 2009, Search Engines, Yahoo

SEO & Usability

It's still cold in here. I'm slowly freezing to death. Hopefully, this panel will be nice and lively. Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO, Enquiro, moderates. Lance Loveday, Closed Loop Marketing, and Eric Papczun, Performics.

Gord is promising very quick site reviews instead of Q&A. Yeah, those I'm not recapping. It's the last day, I'm punchy.

Eric Papczun starts with the stat that 30 percent of people online are shopping and 75 percent of those are researching. The average ecommerce shopping cart has a 60 percent abandonment rate. I think I'm responsible for about 40 percent of those.

You need to think about the user first in order to avoid losing them across each stage of the conversion funnel. Align content with searcher intent, provide all the required information, change content according to searcher behavior but don't necessarily change the focus -- if you have a page about Valentine's Day, you don't want to drop it just because it's February 15th. Become an authoritative site with reputable links and provide an intuitive process to complete a task.

SEO is a left brain task while Usability is a right brain task.

Consider what is going to draw the eye to the content and make the connections that will answer the questions that the user has. Where are you leading the user? This connects back to keyword research -- matching intent to landing page.

Bullet points are great for catching the eye and giving the user the information up front. Use anchor text to set up expectations -- keywords create expectation. Use breadcrumbs to orient your user and to set up siloing. Breadcrumb navigation is a must.

You must have a site map link with a robust site map as well as a customer service link with all the information they need there.

Benefits of pairing organic SEO and Usability:

• Higher rankings
• Increased efficiency
• More qualified leads
• More conversions
• Less bounce traffic
• Positive experiences
• Stronger brand loyalty

Use A/B and multivariate testing to test impact but think about it from all angles before implementing.

Up next is Lance Loveday. He's named his presentation "How to Lose Money and Alienate Your Customers". Heh.

Babies! He's showing us pictures of CUTE BABIES! I have no idea what the babies are being compared to but they're CUTE.

Ahem.

So, why does this matter? Because ROI = visibility x effectiveness. Visibility is traffic is SEO. Effectiveness is conversion is usability.

MYTH: Applying SEO to a site limits design flexibility and inhibits usability.

We want to think that there's one right way to do things and there's got to be a number one. You need to balance extremes. There's no inherent trade off between these things. It's just more work to do all three. You need to start early and get management to understand the opportunity cost.

He shows a screenshot of the Snuggie page. I could so go for a Snuggie right now. I can't feel my toes anymore. I think his point is that the user interface and the code are largely separate. My point is that I'm freaking cold.

A word about Flash: You can still design in it but it's more work.

What people say to defend Flash: "Having a deep immersive experience is more important that search engine rankings" "We'll sacrifice search engine rankings for the experience."
What they mean: "SEO is boring. We want to use Flash."

What people say to defend Flash: "Usability needs to be balanced with design, branding and user experience objectives."
What they mean: "Usability is boring." "We want to use Flash."

All Flash page/sites are hard for the search engines to crawl even with advancements in tech in the last year.

Options:

1. Ideally, don't design entirely in Flash. Use elements instead.
2. Provide important Flash content in alternate manner visible to search engines using Progressive Enhancements. (HP's site is a good example of this.)

Now a word on short URLs versus long URLs. According to a Marketing Sherpa/Enquiro study, "Long URL length contributed to more clicks on... the next ad down the page. Those viewing the listing on the long URL clicked on the listing immediately following 2.5 times more than those viewing the listing with the short URL. The long URL repelled the click as it was interpreted as being less relevant. The long URL may act as a visual wall, directing attention to the next ad."

What's the impact of usability on design: 75 percent of users admit to making judgments about the credibility of an organization based on the design of their Web site. You're judged in as little as 1/20th of a second. Just the blink of an eye. What can you absorb in that time beyond the sense of space and color. That's why it's critical to get that right.

On average, sites that take usability into account double their conversion rate. That's money left on the table if you don't do it.

Now it's time for mini-site reviews. Later, folks.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 02/12/09 at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, SMX West 2009, Search Engine Optimization, Usability