Top 5 Search Engine Marketing Trends in 2008
January 19, 2008
William Flaiz over at Search Engine Watch has a great post on search engine marketing trends for 2008.
Highlights:
“With 2008 in full swing, the game is already starting to change for the SEO (define) community. After the recent hailstorm of New Year’s predictions and resolutions, agencies and in-house SEOs are buzzing with new ideas and strategies for the next big search thing.” -William Flaiz, SEW
I Love Validation!
Did you really think reciprocal linking could be dead? It’s not. Not at all. Chris Boggs backs me up and explains why claims of reciprocal linking’s demise were greatly and, I believe, intentionally exaggerated.
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The Value Of Social Marketing Is Growing
January 6, 2008
Even though people still trust offline media advertising more than any other form of advertising, social marketing and “one voice” blogging can become the exception in the coming year.
When you dump “word of mouth” advertising into the pot you get a wider view of the power of showing up on a “one voice” blog in your target market. Word of mouth is the most trusted form of advertising on which decisions are made almost instantaneously by people who trust the “mouth” giving the word.
“Despite an ever-expanding array of advertising platforms and sources, consumers around the world still place their highest levels of trust in other consumers, according to a recent global Nielsen Internet survey.” See the full study at Nielson.
In blogging, one way to measure trust is via RSS feed subscriber counts. Not at any given time, but by how the feed count grows and how long people stay subscribed.
Trust can also be measured by what the blogger has generated in affiliate commissions for products endorsed in the last year. One would expect with a high degree of certainty that conversions are higher for trusted one voice blogs than any other form of affiliate marketing. They certainly have been for me and my clients since we started blogging and building trust.
Search Engines Get A Bad Rap As Peer Marketing (Social Marketing) Grows
Search marketing is all the rage and is what gets the most attention and books written about it.� But surveys are showing people are starting to look elsewhere first for opinions on products and services from their peers (other consumers). Then they use the search engines to find merchants because they know they will be hit with a lot of advertising when they Google, and the merchant or best price is bound to be in one of the ads.
This says a lot about what people are starting to think about search engines as they’ve become more and more financially successful vie more and more advertising. If people are starting to think of engines more as billboards or yellow pages, this doesn’t bode well for the traditional search industry.
Indications are that more and more searches are started on non-traditional sites than on Google, Yahoo, or MSN. They’d almost have to since new vertical search and community sites pop up every time you blink. People definitely are finding value in social sites and communities where they feel fewer people there have something gain (other than good will) by reviewing or recommending a product or service.
More People are Digging Before They Buy
An excellent article entitled “Searching for Alternatives” was done by Alexandra Wharton for Revenue Magazine. Wharton reports that people are using sites like Digg.com to see what their peers or other regular consumers of a product think before they hit the “bias engines” to find the best deal. That’s word of mouth advertising on the web. Digg searches very often end up on blogs, one voice blogs, where people feel a high degree of trust even if they aren’t subscribers or have never seen the blog before.
This is based solely on the fact that people trust other people, not marketers or manufacturers, first and foremost.
Social Marketing Silly?
So, still think social marketing is a “silly waste of time?” Lots and lots of people made such brash statements about social media marketing last year. Yet with more and more people using alternate methods to search for and read up on products and services of all kinds, now is a very bad time to get caught saying such things.
Consumers are actually using sites like StumbleUpon.com, Reddit.com, Digg.com and many other “peer information finding engines” and are straying away for the traditional use of algorithm-based search engines which are becoming known for heavy advertising and less trust of results.
Algorithm search is becoming popular for finding the right place to buy something after you’ve made up your mind to buy based on what your peers are saying about the product over at Digg or TechCrunch.
So my questions are, how much social media marketing is in your marketing plan and are you putting your business in front of people looking for trusted information on which to base their buying decisions? Can any trusted information be found on your products or services? Or are all your eggs in the in-your-face advertising methods that are turning people away in growing numbers?
—
More Social Marketing Wisdom…
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Beyond SEO: Guest Article
December 4, 2006
Editor’s Note: Here is a refreshing article talking about reigning in those pesky SEO urges of yours and making your marketing campaign whole again. Regarding the article quality itself, people are really starting to get this whole “writing valuable content” thing.
Look where it landed the author below! Front and center on at least this popular blog, but also in Site Reference Newsletter today as well.
Proof positive that good writing will get you farther than anything else you can do to promote yourself on the web.
—
Looking Beyond SEO
By Matt Jackson
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is one of the most highly talked about topics between Webmasters and marketers. It is probably also the single topic that more webmasters obsess over than any other (in terms of their website anyway!). However, while SEO can be an excellent resource for targeted traffic, all website owners should concentrate their efforts on more than trying to squeeze one more percent out of keyword density, or beg one more PR5 link from an authoritative site. As well as sapping energy, causing breakdowns in family relationships, and being responsible for the onset of male pattern baldness it also causes us to lose sight of our ultimate goal.
You Mean There’s More To Online Life Than SEO?
The ultimate goal for the vast majority of websites is to either make money or promote a service that makes money. How the site goes about it is entirely up to the Webmaster. Whether you choose to make money through affiliate links, PPC advertising, product sales, dropshipping, or any other method the single most important aspect of your website is your visitor. Visitors are those people that you attempt to attract to your site and they are the ones that will essentially make you some cash.
Don’t Forget The Real People
The biggest problem with concentrating on SEO is that while the search engine spiders might be difficult to please they are a walk in the park, a piece of cake, and an absolute breeze when compared to real-life, living, breathing, walking, talking visitors. Search engines rely on mathematical algorithms to determine the quality of your site whereas the visitor relies solely on personal opinion. The next time you’re attempting to inject 2 or 3 more instances of key phrases like “California Mesothelioma lawyer attorney” into your content try to remember that some poor soul might actually have to try and make sense of what you’re writing.
Some Search Engines Are Complying
Fortunately for you and I, of course, some of the mathematical search engines are also coming round to this way of thinking. Google, in particular, want to offer users natural search results. They want to promote natural web pages, with natural content, using natural keywords, gaining natural links. This means that Webmasters are able to start obsessing over a number of other factors now instead:
Optimizing Your Content For Conversions
Conversion rates are not a part of SEO but should be a part of your business strategy. Consider how many people visit your site and the percentage of those people that either click through the links on your page or purchase a product. It is virtually impossible to predict with any certainty what your conversion rate SHOULD be but you should always strive to improve it. Your content should convert, your newsletter should convert, your mailing list should convert, and your emails should convert.
Improving Customer Retention Rates
Customer retention is also important. Once you sell a product or provide a service, even if you persuade a visitor to click a link and make a purchase you should do everything you can to ensure that you retain your customer base and they return to make purchases again. A big part of every successful business is repeat custom and without it you will always be fighting an uphill struggle to generate new leads and convert those leads into customers.
Ensuring that you offer the best service, the best prices, the best results, or the best information and help can generate good customer retention. However this isn’t all of it. Company or website branding also plays a part, and following up with after sale emails and contact is also vital if you have the relevant information to hand. Use business cards and compliment slips whenever possible and always ensure that you include a company signature in all your email communications.
Generating Sales And Marketing Methods
Sales are obviously vital and without sales you will never achieve customer retention. In order to make sales it is important to acquire or generate leads. SEO is obviously a very beneficial way of generating leads but it isn’t the only way. PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, advertising is a good way to instantly drive traffic to your site. SEO can take months to begin to generate results whereas you can truly hit the ground running with an effective PPC campaign. Ensure that you have a compelling advertisement lined up and also ensure that your website content is geared toward the conversion of any visitors you do receive.
Banners And Text Ads
Banner advertising and text advertising (I’m trying to ignore the temptation to mention their use in SEO) have taken a back seat to SEO and PPC, but for some sites they still have their uses. Find websites or newsletters that offer information relevant to your product or your service and then try out a small advertising campaign before you inject large amounts of money in a campaign that may not bear any fruit whatsoever.
Offline Advertising Methods
Offline advertising is also an option, though it can prove costly. For geographically targeted campaigns it may [rove particularly beneficial. Local radio stations, local newspapers, and even billboards are options that do still generate results. These can cost money though. Bear in mind that some websites have been known to take this a step further with skywriting and other unusual tactics. These are best left to the behemoth sites like Ebay in all honesty.
Conclusion
SEO is not the be-all and end-all of a website. It is a powerful online marketing technique that can in time generate large amounts of targeted traffic. However, it is important to remember that once that traffic arrives your site must be optimized for conversions and sales. You should also consider using other forms of advertising in order to gain more site visitors and a more diverse range of traffic.
Matt Jackson is a website content copywriter for WebWiseWords and also a recovering SEO addict. Unfortunately, he still succumbs to the temptations once in a while and has been known to offer clients SEO content, link building, and other SEO copywritingservices.
Tags: long tail research, natural search, search engine marketing, seo linking, SEO strategiesKeyword Tools Useless for Long Tail
November 29, 2006
Today’s keyword research tools are simply worthless for finding [tag]long tail[/tag] phrases that have search value.
I have this list of keywords I just wanted to run through an analysis tool to tell me which words were the best performing on raw search data.
I don’t care about competition, duh, because I am looking for long tail. (i.e. no competition. Not anyone that I have to worry about anyway.)
Everyone and their sister is writing about “internet marketing” in my niche because of keyword tools, even Google’s, being so out of touch with today’s publishers’ ranking needs.
All you get back from all the keyword tools is silly, nonsense phrases that are all mixed up if they are 3-5 words, or simple two word phrases that everyone goes after.
The other drawback of [tag]keyword analysis tools[/tag] today is they assume we are all building massive niche site networks and that we don’t already know the market we are serving or might have our own list to start with.
I am not looking for a new niche. I want to know more about searches in my own niche.
Know how I am finding the most valuable information on phrases people use to find stuff in my niche?
My log files!
That’s right. That’s my high-tech market research. Sad thing is it is better than any [tag]keyword tool[/tag] on the market for telling me about my niche and the actual terms people are using to find this site.
Guess what? Virtually NONE of the terms people use to find this site come up in keyword reports as valuable terms to write around!
I don’t care what software or service you use, you are getting very bad data from today’s keyword tools.
They seem to draw a picture of your niche that you can “count on” but more often than not the list of words generated is worthless garbage for people like me who want long tail traffic.
I gave up competing for stupid terms like “internet marketing” long ago. Who wants a bunch of traffic from that term anyway?
What on Earth is someone really looking for when they type such a bland, generic, catch-all term into their engine of choice?
Yet those are the kinds of terms you get out of keyword research tools for all niches; the ones every other person who has already researched your niche is going for right along with you.
I don’t know how it can be done, or if I would let it be done (I would get venture capital just to buy it and keep it off the market I think) but a tool for long tail phrases would really make my day right about now.
The ultimate tool would be one that accesses the log files of all the top sites in your niche and finds exactly what people are really using to find those sites.
Yes, I know that is impossible, illegal and all that. But think about this: what would a list generated by Google’s keyword suggestion tool, or Wordtracker, or (ugh) Overture look like up against a list generated from actual searches used to find the top sites in a niche?
Totally different is the answer. Because people use phrases to search nowadays more than ever. Long phrases. Detailed phrases.
Who wants some aimless person visiting their site who found them through the most searched, yet most generic keyword for their niche?
Not me. I want visitors who know what they want and type what they want specifically into Google. No matter how long the damn phrase is!
Surfers of the world are far advanced of the webmasters who use keyword analysis and research tools available today.
What the tools are spitting out doesn’t match what the long tail searchers are using to find information…period.
And a massive amount of traffic is being missed out on in all niches because publishers like me are guessing at phrases or simply lucking out by constantly writing on hot topics and hoping for the best.
I don’t mind getting hit out of the blue with a search phrase I never actively pursued (a phrase that just happened to hit big in Google that no one else is competing for yet gets a lot of searches.)
But I’d love to peek into some REAL search intelligence and get the phrases for my niche that I haven’t nailed yet.
Heard of any tools that I might have missed?
Let us know about them below!
Tags: Blog Marketing, keyword analysis tools, keyword research, keyword tool, long tail, longtail, search engine marketingStatic Sites And SEO Are Dead: Please Make A Note Of It
October 2, 2006
The Dodo, T-Rex, and Aggressive Search Engine Optimization – Gone Forever. Here’s What You Can Do Now…
You can really take a lot of flak from people who don’t read and listen carefully to what you say.
Note to reader: Never declare the death of something even if it is a foregone conclusion and 100% true unless you are ready for some grief from the peanut gallery.
Such was the case when we started telling people on webinars and teleconferences that SEO was dead.
SEO? DEAD? My goodness you could hear the cans of whoopass opening up from all the 90-pound geekling search engine optimization firms around the world.
The pocket protector (a geek’s gauntlet) had been thrown down.
Context has a lot to do with any bold statement and declaring SEO dead was in a context that explains perfectly what I meant by it.
The web has changed drastically this year. Call it web 2.0 or whatever you wish, but the webscape is a mighty different place than it was a year ago.
Everything has changed from search engines to social networking to publishing platforms (what you actually run your content on).
I guess I should qualify that by saying the web has changed, but most marketers have yet to wake up and smell the coffee.
Back to SEO being dead. The context in which this declaration was made was when we were recently discussing the new results we’d gotten from heavy testing and the fact that what used to work for us no longer worked.
One might think “bummer, man!” Actually it is a blessing in disguise. With the right system for publishing, the right technology, tools and tactics, the web is easier to market on than it ever has been before.
Website owners no longer have to pour through endless forum threads and documentation, expensive courses and training seminars to learn heavy-duty search engine optimization.
It is no longer necessary to do anything more than post and rank, once you have the right tools working for you.
One big reason is that Google and the other engines are switching to become more dynamic and fluid in their rankings. This is evidenced by our own testing and what you’ve probably seen yourself.
There has been a fluidity to search engine rankings in the last few months unbecoming the slow, lumbering state the engines used to operate in when trying to stay up to date and relevant.
Google is actually living up to its promise to reward webmasters who develop relevant, topical, visitor-useable content. [TAG]Visitor Optimization[/TAG], they call it.
It was a leap of faith, but we started publishing solely to please our markets without aggressively optimizing. Just like Google asked us to do. No hardcore late night sessions doing endless keyword research or inflating our keyword densities to cheat the system.
(We’ve concluded that trying cheat a multi-billion dollar mega corporation with thousands of geeks programming and watching our every move was a dumb idea.)
Simply putting out content that the market wants and appreciates is all we do now.
Guess what? My sites now enjoy a plethora of top 10 rankings in Google for scores of keyword phrases. Keywords people are actually using to find my site, not just “vanity” keywords no one searches on.
We are doing this with no aggressive or even moderately aggressive search engine optimization.
We are using a blog platform that performs better than anything else we’ve used (based on Wordpress). We are using high tech RSS tools to syndicate content. We are using social networking to get links. We are tagging and pinging and using autodiscovery in a new way.
Aside from using common sense SEO strategies like carefully naming our posts, linking within our sites with keyword phrases (as long as it makes sense to do so) and naturally writing about relevant topics, there is nothing remotely like the old SEO we had to do on the old web.
Once people take the same leap of faith we have and start using publishing tools that engines eat up along with posting regular, ORIGINAL, relevant content, they will start to see the same results.
What you need to see this happen for you:
- You must be blogging on a high-tech platform (At least Wordpress out of the box – nothing does better in the engines.)
- Create multiple tagged RSS feeds based on your top keywords and use autodiscovery in your template to shove content in the face of spiders.
- Tag, Tag, Tag! And Ping! Ping! Ping!
- Supplement your original content with relevant syndicated content.
- Post every single day, even more than once a day, on real topics of interest to your market.
Make these changes and watch the fun begin. Post, rank, and watch those aggressive, sleepless, stressful search engine optimization days fade away in your rearview mirror forever!
Want to simply USE the tools and not have to program them yourself? Click Here!
Tags: post and rank, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization, seo, seo is dead, Visitor OptimizationRecent Changes at Google, Yahoo, and MSN
September 6, 2006
There are many changes taking place in the top search engines. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are all adapting to the many transformations occuring within the search industry. Because of these changes, I thought I would take the time to give you an overview of what’s taking place within the market and how it affects you as a webmaster. To begin, let’s start with Google.
Back in 2003, Google would index and crawl the web about once a month and everything would change all in one shot. WebMasterWorld would actually name these updates with names like Brandy, Florida, and Bourbon.
Google has moved away from these monthly updates to an ever- changing process. You can now see daily changes within the SERPS with the biggest changes occuring during algorithm updates.
Late June and July of this year saw some major changes within the Google algorithm. If your site was hurt from this algorithm change, you should re-examine your site and be sure to follow the guidelines below:
1. Pursue a continuous linking campaign with other quality sites. This can be achieved through article syndication, exchanging RSS feeds, submitting to directories or syndicating a press release.
2. Create a Google sitemap to increase the coverage of your webpages.
3. Make sure your site has a clear navigation system. Every page should be reachable from at least one static link.
4. Avoid all deceptive or manipulative behavior. Don’t get involved in linking schemes. Avoid all forms of cloaking and avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Besides the changes taking place within organic search results, there have also been recent changes within Google Adwords. In July of 2006, Google updated their landing page algorithm. These changes have harmed a number of online marketers. Many advertisers who had been paying five or ten cents a click are now required to bid at least 50 cents to a dolloar or more. There are also other advertisers who kept their bid prices, but those bids are now buying only 3rd or 4th page positions when they used to buy first page positions.
Some advertisers have even been effectively shutdown.
However, keep in mind that not all advertisers have been affected. There are four main types of sites that have been hit the hardest. These include:
- one page sales letter websites
- squeeze pages
- adsense sites (particularly those involved in Adsense arbitrage)
- affiliate sites
The new landing page algorithm gives a quality score to every landing page. Fortunately for us, Google has left some clues as to how they are ranking these pages.
Below are 3 general guidelines that will help those who have been hurt by the recent updates.
1. Provide relevant and substantial content.
2. Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information related to the product or service in your ad.
3. Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site’s content.
To stay in accordance with the new quality score guidelines, you may want to remove all Adsense ads from your landing pages, create or find more original content for your sites, ensure that your landing page has at least 500 words, and check to make sure that your ad relates perfectly with the content of your landing page.
Google is getting smarter everyday. Our job is not to trick the search engines but to deliver truly valuable information to our visitors. By doing this along with some basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques, you should perform very well in the search engines over the long-haul.
There have also been some recent changes at MSN.
They have changed the name of their search engine spiders. Before the changes, they were all called “msnbot,”. Fortunately, they are now starting to group their spiders into separate categories.
- The MSN Shopping bot is msnbot-products.
- The MSN News bot is msnbot-news.
- The MSN Image Search bot is msnbot-media.
- The MSN search bot is still called msnbot.
It should now be much easier for webmasters to decipher what’s really going on in their web logs. In addition, webmasters can also block specific bots if they need to, without blocking MSN Search.
Last, but not least, there is Yahoo. This company has experienced some very exciting changes within the past few months.
One of these is the launch of a new Yahoo Search Crawler. The new crawler is faster and more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, website owners should notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the Yahoo crawler.
Yahoo also released an index update in mid-July. You can read all about it at http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000327.html .
In addition, there are a number of other, smaller-based search engines who are leading the way in the future of search engine technology. One of the best examples I have seen is Eurekster.com.
They have developed a social search engine powered by the wisdom of crowds.
Eurekster makes use of its own SearchMemory technology, which remembers the sites a user finds useful and presents them higher in the results the next time they search. Then, Eurekster lets a user share their searches and sites with friends. For example, if you do a search on “internet marketing”, you’ll see sites related to “internet marketing” that your friends also found useful. These results are marked with an icon.
This personalization helps to increase relevancy in a way that no algorithm can match.
I expect to see many changes within Google, Yahoo, and MSN in upcoming years as they merge search engine technology with social search in order to make search results more relevant as well as personalized. One thing is clear, the future evolution of search is sure to be exciting to watch.
About This Author
Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews & SEO-News newsletters. You can contact Kim at: kim@seo-news.com
