5 Things To Consider Before Starting An Internet Business
Internet businesses have become their own entity. Even if your online presence is an extension of your real world business, it would be wise to consider a separate business plan for your website. Here are 5 key things to think about before starting your Internet business.
- Branding – There is a lot that goes into branding a business. Even an online business. Should your domain name be keyword-based? Many branded online businesses aren’t (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, just to name a few). Nevertheless, it is important to think about how you will brand yourself online.
- Search engine marketing – This includes search engine optimization as well as your paid search options. How will you ensure your website receives its just deserts at the search engine table?
- Social media – You’ll have to think about incorporating social media into any new business you start online. That includes which social media websites you’ll use and how you’ll use them.
- Traffic conversion – Traffic conversion is more than simply driving traffic to your website, though it does include that. You must think about how you will drive traffic, what methods and techniques you’ll use to perform that function, including possibly video marketing techniques, and how you will convert that traffic once you get it to your website.
- Web design – Central to any Web business is your website design. In truth, all of the above considerations will be integrated into your website design. You might as well consider how each of the above initiatives will be included in your web design right from Day One.
Every business is unique. By the same token, every Web business is unique. You must consider each of these five initiatives for your business right from the start. Don’t settle for any cookie-cutter plans because your business is not a cookie.
The Three Internet Marketing Channels
Internet marketers generally talk about Internet marketing channels as if there are hundreds, or at least dozens. In reality, there are three primary channels with multiple legs holding them up. Learn those three primary online marketing channels and you can more easily manage your entire Internet marketing strategy more effectively.
Here are the three primary Internet marketing channels:
- Search engine marketing
- Social media marketing
- Paid advertising
All Internet marketing falls into one of these categories, and some may easily slip into more than one category.
For instance, pay per click advertising fits into the paid advertising category, but it can also be considered search engine marketing.
Under the search engine marketing umbrella, you’ll find these marketing subchannels: Onsite SEO, link building, local search, PPC, web design and development, and variations on these tactics.
In social media marketing, you have social networking, social bookmarking, video marketing, podcasting, forum marketing, blog marketing, and other variations of these.
For the paid marketing channels, you’ll see pay-per-click advertising, display advertising, PTC (pay to click), CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPA (cost per action), and variations on these channels.
If you analyze the reach of each of these types of online marketing and what they are capable of on their own, then you can select the best channels and subchannels for marketing your business.
Custom Search Engine Marketing
There is nothing about marketing online that is as much a lie as the idea that you can purchase off-the-shelf search engine marketing plans that anyone can use. Yet, many online marketers will try to sell you one of these solutions with no thought about the type of business you are running. Call it “online marketing in a box.” It doesn’t work.
The only truly effective way to go about search engine marketing is to create a custom plan. What works for one website or business may not work for another.
For instance, not everyone needs video marketing. Some Web businesses, however, couldn’t do without it. And that’s just one example.
Is social media marketing right for you? Maybe. But even if it is, the social media marketing plan you finalize for your business will look very different than the plan for another business. That’s because you have a different product, a different clientele, and therefore require a different strategy. Your social media marketing strategy should be tailored to your business.
Every search engine marketing plan rises and falls on its own merits. Just like every website and every business. You cannot take a generic online marketing plan and make it fit your unique business.
Custom search engine marketing is the strategic implementation of a plan based on careful study and market research. Don’t buy into the hype of off-the-shelf marketing products in a box.
How Often Should You Blog?
So you’ve decided to start a blog to promote your business. That’s a good move. But how often should you update your blog?
That’s a good question. The answer is, It depends.
How much traffic would you like your blog to receive? How serious are you about search engine marketing? Do you want the search engines to crawl your blog often and update their search engine listings accordingly? Are you doing it for fun or for profit?
Blog marketing is not a hit-and-miss proposition. It is a commitment. The more often you do it, the more likely you are to see positive results. That’s how it is with just about anything. Right?
The search engines view each of your blog posts as a single web page. But they also pay attention to your entire website. Every time yo update your site, they send their spiders back to crawl it. Update it every day and you’ll get crawled every day. That means each blog post you write has the potential to achieve high search engine rankings in addition to your site as a whole achieving those rankings.
Every blog post is a new opportunity. The more opportunities you have, the better your marketing. So how often do you think you should be blogging?
The 80%/20% Marketing Rule
You are likely familiar with the old 80/20 rule. 80% of your production comes from 20% of your employees, or money investments, or whatever. Well, online, there’s another 80/20 rule. It says that 80% of your website’s traffic comes from the search engines. The other 20% comes from other sources (direct, social media, etc.).
The actual number is more like 85/15, but let’s not count pennies. The point is, if most of your traffic is coming from search engines, then the majority of your budget should be in search engine marketing.
If you have $1,000 to spend on Internet marketing, you don’t want $800 of that going into social media when most of your traffic is going to come from the search engines. Instead, you should allocate 80% of that ($800) to pay-per-click advertising, blogging, and content creation. The remaining $200 can go into video marketing, social media, and other non-SEM activities.
This isn’t a matter of effectiveness. You can always test the waters and see if you get better results from video marketing, social media, or non-SEM marketing initiatives. If so, then by all means put more money into those channels. But you need to start with a base. That base is 80% search engine marketing and 20% other.
When you have a solid base from which to start your Internet marketing initiatives, it’s easier to track your results. You can set better goals and you can allocate your marketing budget appropriately.
Is Search Failing Us?
Michael Martinez of SEO Theory has some interesting thoughts on what search engine optimization should be doing for us. I like what he has to say, but at this point he may be dreaming some kind of wild science fiction dream.
He says that semantic language indexing, which Google has been doing for a few good years now, is not the right way to go. Instead, he says, search should be a much more three-dimensional experience.
Particularly, Martinez suggests:
- We should be searching for objects, not information
- The search engines (RE: Google) need to get away from keywords
- Search should be individually configurable
- Every individual should be able to compile his or her individual library of information that is taken from the “main” library of information (the Internet), which is cataloged in such a way that it mimics the Dewey Decimal catalog system of a library
In other words, Google has it all wrong. And all the other search engines too since they are chasing Google.
Michael Martinez says the current search system is a failure because it is based on crowd-based metrics. We are choosing information based on what someone tells us is popular. But in order for that metric to have value, the searcher must be able to select the crowd whose opinion really matters.
I can see where Martinez is going with this. Clearly, we’re nowhere near that paradigm. But while we’re waiting for the search experts to figure out a better method, we’re stuck with marketing to Google. Search marketers have no choice but to work within the system that is available to them. And that causes me to ask, do you consider our current search model a success or a failure?
Finding Conversations To Promote Your Business
Internet marketing covers a wide range of activities, all designed to promote your business, your brand, your website and/or yourself. One area of Internet marketing that is often either overlooked, or misused, is that of blog commenting. In most cases, people are looking at blogs as possible link opportunities and while this should not be dismissed, blog comments can deliver much more than just a link.
The key to successful blog commenting is to find blogs that have a high profile in your niche. It doesn’t matter if the comments are ‘no follow’ or ‘do follow’ since links should not be your primary aim. Your primary aim is to determine what factors are affecting people in your niche, and to promote yourself as an authority in that niche.
You need to identify conversations early, and to participate in them using your knowledge and experience. Don’t even consider participating in conversations that don’t relate to your area of expertise. Instead, cultivate relationships with those that are regular participants themselves. You may find it useful to follow their links to their blogs where you can continue that relationship. Overtime, you will develop a reputation for being an expert in your niche.
Being recognized in this manner will naturally lead to traffic from those blogs, and over time, perhaps even links. Your reputation will also travel to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, furthering your circle of influence. The end result of this activity is a good reputation, traffic, and perhaps even a boost to search engine optimization outcomes. The hardest part is simply finding conversations early so you can make significant contributions rather than arriving late when the action’s all over.
Here’s a tip – find high profile blogs then subscribe to their feeds, that way you should get early notice when they publish new content.
Where SEM And SMO Intersect
Search engine marketing and social media marketing have long had an interesting relationship. It’s easy to compartmentalize and say that such and such belongs here while this and that belong over there. But it’s not necessarily helping your business to do that.
Search engine marketing and social media marketing are both forms of Internet marketing. As such, they have something in common. But they also have some overlap, which means that they likely have more in common than simply categorization.
For instance, you’ve likely seen social media profiles, or even posts, updates, and tweets, in search results. That means that social media can be a form of search engine marketing. And certain social media – like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube – even have their own search features, some of which are quite popular. YouTube has even been called the second largest search engine in terms of volume.
I think someday Facebook may surpass YouTube in terms of volume of searches. But will they include off-site search in that deal?
Long story short, don’t expect to compartmentalize your Internet marketing strategies forever. You should really develop one Internet marketing strategy that pulls all of your online marketing together and crafts it such that the strategies work together – not against each other.
Stale Content – Are You Destroying Your Own Reputation
There are two things that visitors are going to notice when they first land on one of your pages – how it looks and what it says. Let’s assume you have hired a professional website designer to create attractive easy-to-negotiate pages, so your website looks great. What about the content?
One of the problems with search engines is that they generally rank old pages above new pages. Google, for example, may talk a lot about ‘fresh content’, but for most searches the pages listed are fairly old. If your site has been around for awhile then those old pages are going to rank fairly well, even if the information on them is a little outdated.
This is where your reputation could take a real hammering. If visitors feel the information is too old, too out of date, or no longer relevant, there is a good chance they’ll hit the back button rather than seeking fresher content on your site. Flagging the fact that the information is outdated and linking to fresher content may not attract them either.
You have several options. You could redirect to fresher content as long as the new page is about the same subject. You could also rewrite the content to bring it up to date. It seems to be pointless having a redirect to new content when you could simply update the content on that page.
Reputation management starts at home – that is, it starts with what you say and do on your own website. While search engine marketing and social media marketing are all the rage at present, taking time to review those old pages on your website is equally important. Is the content still relevant, accurate, and able to answer the needs of your visitors? If not, give it a lick of polish and bring it up to date.
Questions To Ask Before Hiring A Professional Internet Marketing Firm
Internet marketing is a very broad field taking in every online aspect from web design through search engine marketing and on to social media marketing. Whether you need all of these services, or just some components, before shelling out what resources you may have, consider asking these questions first.
- Do they offer agency support for all search engines – many firms can offer support for Google, but they are not the only player.
- What sort of training and experience have their consultants had
- Do their consultants have technical knowledge and expertise of the search engines; again, not just Google
- Do they have PPC management experience including keyword selection and split testing
- Do they have access to PPC Beta programs
- Can they identify and monitor click fraud
- Can you agree to a month-to-month contract rather than committing to longer periods
- Can they offer complementary services such as video production and the creation of Facebook Fan Pages
- Do they have social media marketing experience
- Can they provide professional reviews or examples of the work
- Can they guarantee results
The last is almost a trick question. If they do guarantee results, ask them on what basis. In most cases, Internet marketing professionals may offer guarantees on their work, but not necessarily on the results since there are so many uncontrollable variables. If they offer guaranteed results – be wary.
When asking questions of prospective Internet marketing firms, you are looking for two things. Number one, you are looking for a team that is professional and proficient at what they do; and, number two, you are looking for a team that you can comfortably communicate with. The latter is almost as important as the first since poor communication often leads to disappointment and unsatisfactory results. It’s your money and your business – you need the best that you can afford.
Why Hire A Search Engine Marketing Consultant?
What can a search engine marketing consultant do for you? For starters, he can improve your current SEM plan just by analyzing what you are currently doing and making a few suggestions. But that’s not all. There are specific benefits to hiring a consulting firm to help you improve your search engine marketing efforts.
Here are a few of the benefits to hiring a search engine marketing consulting firm:
- You get a month-to-month contract, not a long-term contract. If it isn’t working for you, end the relationship and go your own way.
- Agency level support on all search engines.
- You also get access to all Beta programs. As an individual doing your own PPC, you may not get that privilege.
- Your marketing will be less expensive than using your in-house team. When you add in salary and benefits plus time off for sick days, etc., we’re way cheaper.
- We’re trained in all aspects of SEM. You get a full crew that can handle all your needs from PPC to SEO.
- A search engine marketing consultant is trained to understand each search engine’s unique specifications and operate within those guidelines.
- There are no sick days or vacations. When you call, someone will always be available.
Search engine marketing is one of the most important channels for marketing your business today. Hire a specialist who knows the game in and out.
Social Media: Monitoring Vs. Measurement
Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim asks, Would you search for social media monitoring or social media measurement? It’s a good question and it must be pointed out that the two are distinctly different. However, I wouldn’t say either is more important than the other.
His Twitter audience overwhelmingly favored monitoring. Some of the responses were quite interesting:
@schachin monitoring… social sounds like it needs monitoring not measurement like ROI or CTR
Point well taken, but I think social media needs both.
@tonicarr I think I would be more apt to search “social media analytics”, then I would vote for your “social media measurement”
Here’s another point well taken, but not everyone knows to search for a term like “analytics”. But that’s essentially what the term “measurement” implies.
@SurjGish Depends, monitoring & measurement are 2 different things
Let’s see, where have I heard that before? ;-)
@1000cigarettes would depend on my intentions. measurement if i were looking for my own results, monitoring if looking to see cumulative mentions
This is perhaps the most revealing of all the responses. If I was looking for ways to measure and analyze data acquired from social media then I’d search for “social media measurement”. But if I was looking for ways to monitor mentions of my company brand then “social media monitoring” would be the more appropriate phrase.
@jimmyrey Social Media Monitoring is what I search for when looking for people who want to buy it
I’m not sure why you’d search for that term when looking for people to buy, but it’s an interesting response.
@chriskovac I’d search for “”social media monitoring” — “measurement” seems to vague, especially to people that are just now experimenting
Social media measurement is a rather vague term. If you don’t know what it means or you aren’t sure what it might mean then you likely would not search for it.
@EvanKRob social media monitoring. Seems to project a proactive philosophy where measurement suggests reactive.
Here’s another very telling response. I’m not sure that “social media measurement” is reactive. It depends on whether you intend to act on the data you collect.
@KidQuick my vote goes to social media monitoring. But, my 1st search query on that topic would be something else “social media analytics”
Another interesting response that favors “analytics” over either of the other two terms.
Personally, I think which search term you’d use depends on your knowledge and experience of social media marketing in particular and Internet marketing in general. If you’re familiar with the terms then you’d likely search for the term that is most appropriate to your needs. If you’re only familiar with one of the terms then you’d like search for that one. I doubt that anyone would search for any of the terms unless they’d heard them before somewhere.
But Andy Beal’s point shouldn’t be missed. What’s important when marketing to search engines is what people will search for. You may provide social media analytics, but if more people will search for social media monitoring then you should probably include that in your keyword list and target the phrase.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
Hitwise Offers Competitive Intelligence Analysis
Hitwise, one of the most credible companies reporting on competitive intelligence issues, cites some interesting stats from the past couple of months. First, if you are a part of certain industries such as automotive, sports, entertainment, business and finance, news and media, and social networking then your industry has experienced a double-digit increase in the percentage of traffic coming from search engines. The same industries also saw a double-digit increase in the amount of traffic coming from Google. These stats are a comparison between October 2008 and October 2009.
This just simply proves that search engine traffic is still good today. And it doesn’t look like any other traffic source will pass the search engines any time soon.
As far as competitive intelligence goes, the best way to use this information is as a benchmark. If you are below your industry average then perhaps you need to step up your search engine marketing. If you are well above your industry average then you can take that as a sign that you are doing well at search engine marketing. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t improve.
There is more than one way to gather useful competitive intelligence. One way is to get your hands on information that you can use as a benchmark. It may not reveal anything about any specific competitor, but if it helps you better understand where you fall within your industry then it’s good information.
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.