Why Are Google And Yelp Fighting Over Local Search?
It seems that Google Places has moved in on Yelp’s turf. And Yelp isn’t happy about it.
Specifically, Google’s strong moves into local with their new Places push seem to be going right at Yelp’s core. Sure’s it’s potentially about more than just local venue reviews, but that’s a huge part of it. And that’s what Yelp is all about.
So, Google and Yelp had a deal. Then Yelp pulled out of it. It seems that Google thinks it doesn’t need a deal after all. Perhaps that is why they introduced Google Places. Perhaps Google feels it can do local reviews better than Yelp. But it’s using Yelp content to draw in searchers. Is it sending traffic back to Yelp?
I can’t imagine that Yelp isn’t getting any new traffic from Google Places. It may not be as much new traffic as they’d like to get, but Google has far more users than Yelp has and not everyone who searches for local businesses knows about Yelp. That equates to a good thing. So I’m not sure what this is about really.
Is it just me or is Yelp over reacting? Perhaps they just need to focus on quality search engine optimization.
Rankings Vs. Conversions: Is Your Search Engine Marketing Working?
Many search engine marketers spend most of their time chasing the elusive search engine ranking, hoping that if they just SEO their website enough then it will magically appear in the No. 1 spot on Google for their target search term. Unfortunately, it rarely happens that way.
You can rank No. 1 for any search term if you work hard enough. But will you make any money from that ranking? Bottom line: If your web page does rank No. 1 for an important keyword or search term but doesn’t convert any visitors to traffic then you aren’t any better off than if your web page doesn’t rank anywhere at all. You’re still making no money.
Quite frankly, you’re better off with a Page 5 search result that converts at 50% than you are a No. 1 search result that converts at 0%.
You might want to read that sentence again.
Let’s put it into raw numbers. Let’s say your No. 1 search result delivers you 5,000 unique visitors per month but none of those visitors convert to customers. Either you’ve targeted the wrong keyword or your landing page isn’t written for conversions. That’s a problem.
On the other hand, let’s say your Page 5 search result sends you only 10 unique visitors per month but converts 50% of those visitors. Now you’re getting 5 new customers per month. Isn’t 5 better than 0?
Even if your No. 1 search result converts 1 percent of its traffic, 5 new customers from 5,000 visitors is nothing to get excited about. You’re still only converting 1% of your traffic, compared to 50% from the lower ranking page. It’s all in the numbers, man.
Instead of focusing on search results, you should be focusing on building landing pages that convert well. Optimize them for search traffic, sure. But if you are focused heavily on building links and optimizing for keywords and you forget to optimize for conversions then you’ve wasted a lot of time. And money.
Search Engine Marketing – Let Me Count The Ways
When you survey the field of search engine marketing (SEM) it’s easy to get lost. There are so many different ways to get to the end goal. Sometimes you can achieve the same results using different strategies. Which one is right for you depends a lot on preference and style. There may not be a right way and a wrong way.
Search engine marketing has expanded a lot in recent years. There are many ways to go about conducting a search engine marketing campaign. Here are some of the ways you can use search engine marketing to boost your business’s performance in the search engines.
- Search engine optimization – Yes, good old-fashioned SEO still works as a search engine marketing tool.
- Pay per click marketing – PPC falls into the category of paid search and it’s one of the fastest ways to achieve great results through SEM.
- Blog marketing – Blogging has become so popular in recent years that everyone knows what it is and you’d think the blog marketing arena is so saturated there’s not any room for more. But there is. And there’s always room for a better one in your niche.
- Content marketing – Commonly called article marketing, content marketing is a little bit broader of a term that also includes marketing with articles. Effective content marketing includes using your network of like-minded website owners to market your content through their sites as well as your own.
- Social bookmarking – Save your best pages on sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit and watch your traffic, and your links, soar.
- Link building – Building links is one of those things that everyone should be doing on an ongoing basis.
- Social networking – Just because it’s social doesn’t mean there aren’t search engine marketing benefits. Add a well-optimized Facebook page to your online portfolio and you’ll know what I mean.
- Video marketing – Marketing through videos is just now reaching the beginning of its run, but it will soon be one of the most important search engine marketing channels available.
- Viral marketing – Not so much a channel as a strategy, viral marketing is much misunderstood. But it’s still a great search engine marketing strategy.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are literally hundreds of search engine marketing strategies you can try: Squidoo lenses, HubPages, Knol pages, Blogger blogs (and not just as blogs), customized search engines, Google Apps, etc.
The key take away here is to pick your poison and use it to boost your search engine rankings. Stay away from risky maneuvers and focus on the tried and true.
MSN Slings The Bingbot
MSN is determined to take over Google’s dominance of the search wars. And its latest weapon in the battle is the newly minted Bingbot. Honestly, though, it’s just a new name, not a new bot.
Bing has changed the name of its bot from MSNbot to Bingbot. But that name change is not all that has changed. The bot is also more adept at crawling non-optimized websites, so Bing says. Take that for all its worth. I wouldn’t purposely fail to optimize my website in hopes that the Bingbot would find room for me in in Bing’s search rankings. That would be foolhardy.
The bright side for webmasters is that you don’t have to change anything in your robots.txt. Bingbot will still respond to calls for MSNbot. In other words, when you look in your log files and see “Bingbot” you can just consider it the same as “MSNbot”. In fact, because that’s what it is under a new name.
So will Bingbot help Bing overtake Google as the No. 1 search engine? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, learn more about how you can sing a song the Bingbot will enjoy.
Has Search Engine Marketing Changed?
You bet it has. In fact, it changes in a major way about every two or three years. The most recent change has been with Google’s update Caffeine.
Caffeine has made some significant changes to the search engine marketing game. In fact, some of those changes may yet to be manifested. But one thing is more clear: The competition is a lot stiffer.
Since Google is now indexing more web pages than ever and they are getting indexed faster than ever, you can say that the Web just moved into hyperdrive. Create a web page and it gets into the index within a couple of hours. But will it rank?
Universal search has been around for a couple of years now, but now that we have Caffeine it just got a bit more robust. Google is returning images, videos, blogs, news, real-time information and whatever it can find for just about any search query now. and it’s happening lightening fast. Which means that if you perform a search now for a specific keyword phrase then perform the same search two hours from now, you may very well see different results.
They won’t be drastically different. But they could be significantly different. Maybe that video that was in the No. 3 position dropped down to No. 9 and was replaced by a press release while positions 1 and 2 and 4 moved around, putting 4 on top, 1 at 2 and 2 at 4.
These kinds of changes have been going on for some time now, but not at the same speed. And I think that search engine marketing is about to become a different game altogether. The next couple of years should be super exciting for Internet marketers.
The Most Important Local Search Criteria
Local search is becoming more and more important all the time. As more small businesses come online and try to compete at the local level, local search will grow in importance.
Several Internet marketers answered a poll and discussed which local search criteria are the most important. Interestingly, most of them agreed on the most important criteria. After that, there was more disagreement but, again, you’ll find a large number of the marketers agreeing on the most harmful local search factors as well.
The top 3 most important local search criteria, according to the poll numbers are:
- Claiming your Place page
- Your business address listed in the city of the search being conducted
- Picking the proper categories for your Place page
Another positive local search factor that is worth mentioning is the number of Internet Yellow Pages and directory listings you have. Many of the marketers in the poll seemed to think that was important.
Regarding negative factors, the following negative factors were chosen as important to stay away from:
- Multiple Place Pages with the same phone number
- Not showing your address on your Place page
- Multiple Place Pages with the same address
- Listing a PO Box on your website without a physical address
- Multiple Place Pages with the same business title
Interestingly, many of the marketers involved in the poll thought customer reviews were important as well. It could be that negative reviews might have an influence in your rankings, but that is subject to debate.
If you’d like to see the results for yourself, you can see them here. It’s quite a read.
Stop The Google Local Hijacking
There is a florist in New Zealand performing community penance for hijacking the Google Local listings of her competitors. I rather think she should get jail time, but that’s an aside.
If you have a local small business and you want to start marketing your business online but don’t know where to start, Google Local is the perfect place. You don’t even need a website. But if you don’t claim your business on Google Local then someone else just may do it for you and take any traffic or business that you might have received had you done it.
While this is considered criminal, consider that it could happen from someone in another country hijacking your business listing. If that happens then you may never see justice.
It’s best to prevent it from happening before you see your business in a compromised situation. Claim your business on Google Local, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask.com. It’s free and it will save you a ton of headaches.
SEM Is About Benefits, Not Profits
Search engine marketing has as many definitions as there are marketers, and most of them are right. But what hardly gets talked about among search engine marketers is that SEM is more than just selling your stuff for a profit. You’ve got to do more than attract audiences with keywords. You are selling benefits.
No one cares about your product. No one cares about your company. No one cares about you. They want to know what you can do for them.
The question is, how can you do that with search engine marketing?
First, the two arms of SEM:
- Pay per click advertising
- Search engine optimization (organic search)
So how do you sell benefits through these two primary channels?
With PPC you’ve got to sell your benefits to get a click. Your goal is to get people to your landing page and then sell the benefits of your product there.
With organic search marketing, you use your landing page optimization to get rank your web page, build links to it, drive traffic to it and sell your benefits to your visitors to close the sale.
Search engine marketing really follows the principles of traditional marketing – sell the benefits. You just do it with modern technology.
Is Twitter Introducing Another SEM Model With Promoted Tweets?
Twitter has announced that it will start introducing ads called Promoted Tweets, except that these ads will be organic tweets with one exception. They’ll be labeled Promoted Tweets.
And there is one other difference as well:
There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet. Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users.
The plan is this …
Promoted Tweets will be added to users’ Twitter streams according to relevance. If Twitter users don’t reply to or retweet the Promoted Tweets then they’ll disappear. They won’t be shown any more. My question is, Will the advertiser be reimbursed for any unpublished tweets or is the risk a part of the deal? Do advertisers pay a flat rate and take a risk on the tweet not resonating?
This certainly looks interesting and if the first phase of advertisers manage to pull off ads that resonate then I’m guessing that other advertisers will be given an opportunity as well. Will Promoted Tweets become another potential advertising stream for search engine marketers who want to reach their target audiences? Will it fly?
Search Engine Marketers Now Need To Consider Site Speed
Does your website load slowly? If so then you need to figure out how to get it to load faster because Google has now made page load speed a ranking factor.
This is very significant. If you do any pay per click advertising then page load speed has already been a factor for your quality score. But yesterday Google announced that site speed will now be considered as a ranking factor.
This actually makes a lot of sense. Users don’t like to land on a page and have to wait for it to load. It could mean the difference between them staying on your site or visiting your competition. So why should Google be concerned about that?
Truth is, they’re not. They don’t care if you make any money or not. But they do care if they make money and they do care if searchers have a good experience on any site that Google sends them to. If your site is an AdSense site and it loads slowly then Google will make less revenue. If you advertise your site using pay per click advertising and it loads slowly then you’ll likely have fewer clicks and Google will make less money. See how it works now?
Fix your site load speed or you might start seeing your pages fall in the rankings.
Is Facebook Good Search Engine Marketing?
Now that Facebook is the most trafficked website online, is it good search engine marketing?
It depends on what you mean by search engine marketing. If you expect that every message you post on Facebook is going to end up in the search engine results, don’t count on it. But if you mean that some aspects of Facebook have a good chance of ending up in the search results then yes, it is good search engine marketing.
Facebook profiles have been indexed for some time now. If you have a Facebook profile and you are active on Facebook then your profile has a good chance of ranking well for your name. At the very least it makes for good reputation management. But profile pages are not the only pages that have the potential to be indexed in the search engines.
Fan pages, too, can get indexed and rank for key terms. Since businesses can start a fan page without having a Facebook profile, it makes for a great opportunity to target a keyword and get a search engine ranking.
Another way that Facebook could be good search engine marketing is through real-time search. Some of the search engines, like Bing and Google, are beginning to index Twitter, Facebook and other other social networks in their real-time indexing and that could mean great search engine marketing.
So what do you think? Will you be using Facebook more?
Using YouTube For Search Engine Marketing
It’s called Universal Search. Google has been doing it for a couple of years now. Including videos in the organic search results for certain key phrases. Where do you think those videos are hosted? Most of them are on YouTube.
Most of them, not all of them. But YouTube is the most trafficked video site online and the second most popular search engine. That means that video content found at YouTube is highly valuable to the search engines. You can get your YouTube videos to appear online for search queries and have those videos rank reasonably well for the key search terms you are targeting.
The first step, of course, is to produce a really good video that people want to watch and share with their friends. Secondly, upload it to YouTube.
Beyond that, how do you optimize for the search results page?
Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you optimize your video content on YouTube for the search engines:
- Use your video title as an opportunity to target the right key phrase.
- In the text portion of your video upload, describe your video accurately using the proper keywords.
- Establish a YouTube channel with your keyword in it.
- If you include links in your YouTube video, make sure they point to a relevant page on your website.
Video optimization is just now getting its start, but you can be sure that YouTube videos will have as high a chance to appear in the SERPs as any content can.
Search Engine Marketing In 5 Easy Steps
When it comes to search engine marketing there are some dos and don’ts. But we tend to think in terms of principles. You can get started with search engine marketing in just a few simple steps and it’s not that hard. Be prepared, however. You will need to spend some money.
- Step 1: Make a tentative plan. Don’t just wing it. Search engine marketing involves planning and execution. Your first step should be to plan.
- Step 2: Research. Why is this step second? Because you really should know what general direction you are headed before you start your research. The research will guide you in a more specific direction. What kind of research? Competitive. Keyword. Opportunity.
- Step 3: Adjust your plan. This is where you hone the details. Take your research and make the best plan you can. Include a budget and be specific about your goals.
- Step 4: Open accounts. You’ll need accounts with pay per click companies. Set up your accounts based on your budget set in step 3.
- Step 5: Implement. Remember, it isn’t all about pay per click advertising. Search engine marketing also involves organic search. Make sure they work together.
Now that you know the steps to get started in search engine marketing, why waste time?
Should You Bid On Competitor Brand Names?
There is a heated controversy that has been raging for several years about the practice of bidding on competitor brand names for your search engine marketing campaigns. One camp says it is trademark infringement. Other professionals claim it is perfectly acceptable and likens it to setting up a similar business across the street at a busy intersection in the real world. Who is correct?
There is no easy answer and it is one that you will likely have to answer for your own business if you intend to engage in search engine marketing. You may have competitors bidding on your brand name, but should you bid on theirs?
We won’t tell you how to run your business, but we believe in ethical marketing, which is not deceptive and which is based on a strong commitment to “playing clean”. Competition is tough, and it should be, but it should also be fair. The honest truth is, there are enough keywords in any niche to bid on that bidding on the competition’s brand name isn’t really necessary. But that’s a decision you’ll have to make for yourself. And I hope your sleep habits don’t change.
Facebook Fan Pages As Search Engine Marketing Tools
A new survey shows that Facebook fan pages are effective marketing. This may come as news to some people, but it’s not surprising. What is really surprising is that there was no mention of Facebook fan pages as search marketing tools.
With Facebook, profiles and fan pages are generally indexed in the search engines, but not much else. If you build a highly optimized Facebook fan page then you could see that fan page rank well in the search engines and that could lead to additional business for you. That’s why so many businesses are flocking to Facebook to build fan pages. They are not only effective but good search marketing vehicles.
Why SEM Changes So Much
Search engine marketing is in a constant state change. This may seem a bit odd. Wouldn’t the search engines benefit more by keeping things steady and constant? Not really and it’s a simple matter to understand why.
There is a constant tug of war between the search engines and webmasters trying to get their pages to rank well. But there are different types of webmasters. Not all of them play fair.
The first type of webmaster is the run-of-the-mill webmaster who just wants to run legitimate business. This type of webmaster doesn’t really have the time to learn everything there is about marketing to search engines, but they do take out time to learn what they can. Their goal is to rank as well as they can and not try to game anyone.
The second type of webmaster is the professional search engine marketer. They spend their time studying the search engines, testing different techniques and doing their best to stay on top of the latest changes.
A third type of webmaster is the “blackhat” practitioner. Like the professional SEMer, he spends his time learning the latest techniques and keeping up with search engine ranking changes. However, this type of webmaster will use any technique at his disposal to gain an edge in the rankings. He doesn’t care if the search engines approve of his tactics or not.
Then there is the spammer. This type of webmaster is simply careless. And sloppy. And somewhat lazy. She won’t take the time to study the search engines. She just learns what the popular theories are of the day and chases rumors without testing them. This webmaster will likely have a few websites de-indexed then wonder why.
Finally, there is the clueless. This webmaster doesn’t know the first thing about how search engines work. He just builds his website and hope people show up to look at it.
The search engines, first and foremost, want to show good search results to searchers. But they also want to be fair to each of the types of webmasters above. And to do that, there must be some kind of way to ensure that no one games the search engines to gain an unfair advantage. That’s why the search engines penalize the use of careless tactics and those that attempt to game the results.
But it would not be fair to allow the professional search engine marketers an opportunity to gain advantage over everyone else by letting them in on all the ranking secrets and shutting everyone else out. So the search engine frequently change their ranking algorithms to wipe out the advantages of the professionals and to ensure that no one games the results for an unfair advantage.
This means it is even more important to study and test to see what works – not just for today, but for all time.
Search Engine Marketing: Who’s In Control?
Are you in control of your search engine marketing campaigns? If not then who is?
The key to getting ahead and staying ahead in search engine marketing is to know the game. If you are not staying on top of changes in the industry – and they happen every day – and adjusting your marketing based on the direction of the search engines then you are not really in control of your marketing. You can be in control or the search engines can be in control, but not both.
Of course, you could give control of your marketing to someone else entirely and hope things go well. But it needs to be someone you trust. Is there a search engine marketing company you trust well enough to run everything without question? If you do hire a company to run your marketing campaigns, make sure you hire a company who is knowledgeable of the latest search engine marketing tactics and is good at communicating with you. They’ve got to keep you informed.
Will Social Search Change Search Engine Marketing?
Search engine marketing has been going strong for a few years now. Social search is just getting off the ground. In fact, Google has made it a point to tackle social search and lead the charge. Only, there are some people who aren’t so impressed with how they’re doing it.
But let’s say that social search were a perfect animal – like organic search (I’m kidding, OK?).
At any rate, let’s just say that social search was at least as good as organic search has been when at its best. Would search engine marketing be any different? Would social search change the nature of search engine marketing? I’m betting it would.
Remember, there are two branches of SEM: Paid search and organic search. How would each of these change with social search? My guess is that each would change in a real sense, but not necessarily in a fundamental sense.
Here’s what I mean: PPC is based in large part on the principles of organic search. You do your keyword research, write a few targeted ads, and watch your rankings based on search engine ranking factors. Social search, however, isn’t anything like that. You still might do your keyword research, but you aren’t so much concerned with rankings. You are concerned with connections. So how will that change search engine marketing?
I think one very important way that search engine marketing will change when social search reaches full maturity is that brands will no longer need to feel threatened by lesser companies who are better at SEO. Brands can actually put more emphasis on their company culture and focus on the benefits of doing business. That’s as it should be.
Why Search Engine Marketing Can Save The World
If you’ve been watching what’s going on with Google lately, it looks as if the company may pull out of China over cybersecurity and human rights issues. If it happens, that will drastically change the dynamics of the world wide web. It will certainly be noticeable in China where Google has 30% of the search market share.
Today I noticed on Google a link below the search box to “Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake.”
Search engine marketing is more than buying clicks. First and foremost, it’s about using the search engines to get your message across. That includes organic search and paid search.
Both of these incidents – the large one and the small one – affect search engine marketing in some way. If Google pulls out of China, that will leave a lot of businesses in China with one less alternative for reaching their customers. It could also slow down progress toward a more open China. And Google’s link to more information about helping the Haitians is the perfect example of how search engines can be used to make a difference in the world. That’s true even if, maybe especially if, you own the search engines.
Search engine marketing continues to be a growth industry. It is not today what it used to be and it won’t be tomorrow what it is today. Keep you eye on the changing nature of the web and look for opportunities to make your search engine marketing efforts better and more effective than ever.
Will Search Engine Marketing Merge With TV?
Screenwerk has a great read here on the Internet on TV.
Imagine sitting in front of the tube watching your favorite TV show and up on the screen (in the corner of the screen so as not to interfere with your viewing) comes a little popup box. It’s your friend who lives thousands of miles in L.A. sending you a chat message through Facebook. You type a message into your remote control to let him know that you are watching a show and you’ll chat in fifteen minutes.
A couple of minutes later you get a another popup box. It’s your mother on Skype. You shout at the TV, “I’ll call you in 30 minutes!” OK, she hangs up.
Across the bottom of the screen you see little text ads scroll by every five to ten minutes. You calmly say to yourself, “Those ads are really annoying.” But then you remember those $60 cable bills. One of the ads, much to your chagrin, catches your attention. (Those ads are provided by Google, by the way.) You pick up your remote and click the ad – a little popup box appears in the top left corner. You’ve been taken to the advertiser’s website.
Since you are still watching your show, you leave it the way it is. When the show is over you send a message to your Facebook friend, “Let’s chat.” You dial your mother on Skype. And you enlarge the website panel in the corner of your TV so that it takes up the full screen. What a multi-tasker you are!
Is this the future of Internet TV? Will you someday be able to chat, talk on VOIP and surf the Internet all on TV? Gone are the commercial breaks, gone are the cable channels and their high-priced monthly bills. Programs are paid for by revenue made from pay-per-click ads. Search engine marketing is bigger and more effective than ever. Can you see it? Am I dreaming? Is it possible?
Search Engine Marketing Is More Than PPC
When a lot of people think about search engine marketing they immediately think about pay per click marketing (PPC). That is a part of it, but that’s not all there is to effective SEM. Search engine marketing is any type of marketing done through search engines, and that includes display advertising.
Of course, display advertising is probably the least effective of SEM strategies. Most small business owners are beginning to realize that now. But search engine optimization ranks as still one of the most effective search engine marketing strategies, and I suspect it always will be.
In some sense, social media marketing can be considered SEM. Real-time search is definitely search engine marketing. Video and image optimization are search engine marketing strategies too. As is mobile marketing when done the right way.
So you can that you have options beyond PPC. Search engine marketing is more than tossing money at keywords, it’s really about devising a strategy for drawing in new customers through the search engines.
What Will Search Engines Be Like A Decade From Now?
Bill Slawski takes a walk down memory lane by showcasing some archived screenshots of search engines from a decade ago. It’s interesting to see what Google, a new upstart, looked like back then. And even better to see some of the sites that are no longer around. But the best thing about Bill’s post is the final comment, “I’m wondering what they might be like a dozen years from now.”
Yeah, I’m wondering too.
And here’s my speculation. I think the search engines will be fully social. Not only will you be able to visit Google and search for real-time information and expect relevant results, but you’ll be able to share Facebook-like information and provide “status updates” in real time as well. Facebook might even be one of the leading search engines. And Google could be one of the leading social networks.
I think Google Wave is the start of a new direction for search engines. You’ll likely be able to search the Web from your desktop – even the “desktop” of your cell phone. There may even be an MP3-size device or Blackberry-like contraption on which you can do all sorts of things including search the Web, send text messages, phone your mother, and project 3D holographic images on your boardroom wall (well, that might be a stretch).
I’m looking forward to the next decade of search. I believe we’ll see some striking technological innovations and likely from some unexpected sources. The part I’m wondering about is what will search engine optimization be like?
Search Engine Marketing: The New Telemarketing
Search engine marketing is becoming an integral part of doing business. Not just business online, but business in general. And the reason it is becoming so important for businesses who want to get ahead and stay ahead is because there are so many people online now and more and more going online every day. People are starting to trust the Internet.
It took awhile, but it’s happening. Search engines are becoming as ubiquitous as utility companies. They’re accessible from anywhere and they have all the answers.
Well, maybe not all of them. But all of the important ones.
Remember when telemarketing became all the rage? Every company that wanted to increase its position in the marketplace conducted a telemarketing campaign. Then consumers started blocking the calls, or acquired Caller ID and didn’t answer the phone. Then, e-mail marketing became popular. Search engine marketing is the new telemarketing. If you want to get ahead, this is where it’s at.
But how do you do it? It’s not easy. Like telemarketing, it looks easy, but it is something that you’d better learn in a hurry or let the professionals do it. When it comes to search engine marketing, who do you trust?
Will Search Engine Marketing Move Into Real-Time?
Yahoo! was one of the companies that pioneered search engine marketing. Back then it could be called directory marketing. It was one of the first companies to use paid inclusion and the company still relies on paid inclusion to some degree. But not as much as it did in the late 1990s.
Since purchasing Inktomi, Yahoo!s search technology, and Overture, which used to be WordTracker’s main competition, Yahoo! hasn’t really done anything innovative. They dropped Google as their primary search technology provider in 2004 and that kind of sealed the deal on their own fate. It might have been the biggest mistake Yahoo!s ever made. Since then they’ve done nothing but trail and slip.
Recently, however, Yahoo! announced that they’ve incorporated Twitter into their search results, providing Yahoo! searchers with real-time results. There’s nothing innovative about that. Both Bing and Google beat them to the punch. But Yahoo! did do it a little better.
Yahoo!s incorporation of Twitter into its search results includes an algorithmic formula for obtaining relevance to the search query. You’d have thought that Google would be the first to do that. No, it was Yahoo!
Now the question is, where will search engine marketing go from here? If searchers can rely honestly on relevant real-time search results, will that spawn a whole new industry of spam, or will it lead to greater search satisfaction? Will Yahoo!s reputation climb as a result of this new industry development?
My guess is that Bing and Google will respond with a relevance algorithm attached to their real-time search results as well. Search engine marketing, in the future, will likely be real-time based to some extent. But by how much?
Link Building As A Search Engine Marketing Tactic
Search engine marketing is the practice of influencing a website’s rankings by increasing their visibility in the search engines. It is generally thought of as existing in two branches: Paid search and organic search.
Link building falls into the organic search model, which generally is defined as the process of building web pages with search engine optimization in mind and increasing a page’s chances of ranking higher in the search engine results. On-page factors alone generally are not enough to hold search engine rankings long term. Hence, the reason for link building.
Link building seldom does well by itself, however. A poorly defined website with poorly written content will not be made better with great link building. If your link building succeeds you will only be successful at driving traffic to poor websites.
But if your website is well written, has a great design, and your on-page SEO is excellent then great link building can give your site a real boost in the search engine rankings. And if you do any paid search marketing, your paid ads existing alongside your organic search listings will be much more effective. That’s when you know that your search engine marketing efforts are really paying off.
In Search Marketing, You Gain Control By Giving Up Control
It doesn’t seem possible, but this is one of those zen aphorisms that rings true because it’s so contradictory. Give up control and gain more control. That’s how search engine marketing works.
Typically, small businesses start off building their website knowing just where they want to go. And that’s the problem. They do the keyword research. Narrow down the list of keywords to target. Write great content for their website. Do the requisite promotions. And no one shows up to buy anything. Why?
The problem is you have too much control. Give it up.
And here’s how you give up control. You simply let the customer have it. They know what they want. They’ll search using the phrases that are important to them, not the ones you’ve picked out of a line up. Your customers will purchase what you have to offer if you offer what they are looking for. So quit guessing and ask what they are looking for. Then provide it.
The way to be successful at search engine marketing is to give up control and to let your customer have it. When you do that, you’ll gain control over your success in the best kind of way.
The Integration Of Social Media And Search Engine Marketing
We’ve seen the integration of online marketing strategies and resources and they seem to be drawing closer together rather than further apart. Specifically, I’m talking about social media and search.
Facebook is the largest social media site online and many of its best features offer search engine benefits. Twitter is leading the way into a more robust and scalable social media environment online. Plus, each of the search engines is playing around with offering real-time search, a social media phenomenon. Social search is the next big thing.
But what about search engine marketing, or more specifically, pay per click marketing? Will PPC be integrated into that mix any time soon?
Strangely, fewer and fewer people are clicking on those ads. The search engines are actually looking for ways to increase click throughs. But the social networks do offer their own brands of pay per click marketing – Facebook and StumbleUpon have led the way in this regard though the results have been less than stellar. The world is still waiting to see what Twitter will do.
Nevertheless, we stand at a precipice. Social media and search engine marketing are coming together in a big way. There’s no telling where we will be in a couple of years.
Search Engine Marketing Management: The Real SEM
Search engine marketing (SEM) has only been around for about a decade, or just a little bit short of it. Online journalist Danny Sullivan first introduced the term in 2001. Since then, search engine marketing has grown by leaps and bounds.
At its core, SEM consists of paid search and SEO – search engine optimization. Early SEM professionals spent most of their time focusing on driving traffic to websites and increasing the number of site visitors. That, however, has proved to be an unprofitable venture as high numbers of traffic do not necessarily lead to conversions. That’s why search engine marketing management, or SEMM, has started taking hold.
SEMM professionals focus more on increasing ROI through search engine marketing efforts. If you can increase your ROI by decreasing traffic, would you?
That’s not to say that decreasing traffic is always a necessity, but sometimes you can increase profits by decreasing traffic to your website. This is done by focusing on a narrower niche or topic or by writing about your niche in such a way that it appeals to a certain subset – i.e. specialization. If you reach the right target market with increased specialization then you can increase your ROI. You may lose some traffic from people not interested in your specialty, but they weren’t likely to buy from you anyway.
SEMM involves a tighter focus on profits and ROI instead of vague concepts like traffic an site visitors.
Search Engine Marketing’s Upward Mobility
Search engine marketing is getting better and better every year, as it gets more and more challenging. The latest news is that Bing is incorporating real-time results from Twitter and Facebook into search results. Nice. We’ve been waiting for this for some time. But the interesting thing is how they are doing it.
Tweets that are deserving of rankings evidently will be weighed by a Twitterer’s follower count. That will make Twitter popularity very important.
What I do see happening down the road is a quality score for social media content. The search engines – Bing and Google primarily – will give an algorithm-based quality score to a tweet or Facebook update based on keyword usage, follower count, retweets, and other measurements of social proof. Social proof will actually become a relevant ranking factor and added to the ranking algorithms. Remember, you heard it here first. Search engine marketing is on the move.
What Compliments SEM?
Search engine marketing, or SEM, is any kind of marketing that targets the search engines. SEO, social media marketing, pay per click marketing, or paid inclusion are types of SEM that have been popular now and in the past. Are there any other forms of marketing that compliment SEM well and that should be used alongside search engine marketing to increase your brand’s online presence?
Truthfully, almost anything you do online, if it involves creating new content, can be considered SEM. That leaves off line marketing. But can it compliment SEM?
Yes, it can. Why shouldn’t it?
That’s a good question. Why shouldn’t it? Off line marketing is a great compliment to search engine marketing and provides opportunities to reach the right market for your business in ways that online marketing can’t. It’s the perfect compliment to search engine marketing. We call it integrated marketing.