ArticleSnatch Blog

You are browsing the archives of search marketing.

Search Engine Strategies London has wrapped up Day Two and the 2,000 attendees have adjourned until this morning. Meanwhile, the bloggers, videographers and photographers covering SES London have posted another batch of blog posts, YouTube videos and Flickr photos. Here are the ones that I found this morning/evening (depending on the time zone you’re in):

SES London 2008: Day 2 Roundup Feb. 20, 2008. This YouTube video includes just some of my interviews with speakers at Search Engine Strategies London yesterday. (More to come over the next few days and weeks.) Andy Beal, Consultant, Blogger & Author, Marketing Pilgrim LLC, gives positive reviews (however ambivalent his accent) of his own sessions and those he sat in on for their direct applicability to increasing revenue and extensive use of case studies. Piers Stobbs, VP of Comscore Networks, previews his big-picture presentations on user trends in search with implications for search marketing, such as increases in frequency and familiarity/capability of individual searchers. Jim Sterne, Chairman of the Web Analytics Association, evangelizes on behalf of website testing, and breaks down in brief the web analytics players between free and paid packages and their various advantages in increasing ROI. And Jon Myers, Head of Search at MediaVest, provides some down-to-earth comments on dealing with click fraud.

Video: Interview with Adam Lasnik of Google by Lee Odden, who was able to catch up with the Google Search Evangelist to do a short (10 min) video on several topics important to web masters looking for better results on Google.

SES London 2008. More than 60 photos on Flickr provide an overview of the speakers, attendees and exhibitors at the Business Design Centre in Islington.

SES London Day Two Photos by Lee Odden. Additional pictures from Search Engine Strategies London capture the highlights of the event.

SES London 2008 - A Few Pictures by Mel Carson. Even more photos from the event.

SES London 08: The Changing World of Search, Keynote Roundtable by Li Evans, who covers the video from Nick Carr and panel discussion of Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo.

SES London 08: News Search Optimisation by Li Evans, who covers the News Search SEO session.

SES London 08: Video & Podcast SEO by Li Evans, who covers the Video & Podcast SEO session.

SES London 2008 - Competitive Research by Simon Heseltine, who covers the Competitive Research session.

Ralph Wilson’s Introduction to Search Marketing at SES London by Amanda Watlington, who covers the Introduction to Search Marketing session.

Search Engine Strategies - London - Video & Podcast SEO by Mal Watlington, who also covers the Video & Podcast SEO session.

Nofollow, What a Load of Crap! by David Fairhurst, who covers the Organic Listings Forum.

SES Update #1 by Rick Bosch, who provides half a dozen observations from the event.

SES Update #2 by Rick Bosch, who covers the Search Engine Friendly Design session.

Collapsed Lungs & Micro-hoo: SES London Day 2, Part 1 by ciaran, who covers the keynote, News Search SEO session, and Search Term Research and Targeting session.

SES Audience: Pro-Merger by Andrew Goodman, who polled the audience: “From your standpoint as a marketer using these ad platforms: would you prefer that Yahoo remain an independent company, or that Microsoft and Yahoo merge to form a single #2 vendor in the space?”

Pilgrim’s Picks for February 20 - London Edition by Andy Beal, who links to the coverage of Search Engine Strategies London by Li Evans.

Off to London to Tempt Scottie and Simon by Jennifer Laycock, who is hopping a flight to London.

SES London Day Two Recap by Barry Schwartz, who provides a roundup of coverage.

What a Blackhat SEO Looks Like by Barry Schwartz, who comments on one of the photos from the show by Lee Odden.

SES London and SES New York by Jason, who will be going to the post-con party organized by LondonSEO.

Search Engine Strategy à Londres by Estelle Schomann, who provides a roundup of the coverage in French.

På vej til SES og SMX by Mikkel deMib Svendsen, who writes something in Danish that I’m sure is insightful, if I could read Danish.

SEO Headlines by Lisa Barone, who says she is being “ranty” today because she can’t be in London for SES.

As a search marketer, you need to understand landing page optimization because it impacts your results. Higher conversion means a bigger impact for everything you do with search, and the availability of more dollars to invest back into search marketing. In today’s By the Numbers column, “Landing Page Optimization for SEM: Design and Execute,” Eric Enge outlines some of the best practices outlined in Tim Ash’s new book, “Landing Page Optimization.”

The fundamental premise of search marketing remains revolutionary and timeless. We research what people care about and market (organic and paid) directly to SERPs for their queries. Classic keyword research reveals search frequency and phrase permutations to gauge marketplace interest. Lateral stemming thesaurus tools help us brainstorm frequently used alternate keyword clusters. For instance if your ‘re marketing "catering services," some customers are also searching for "wedding food" and "party planning." This is not earth shaking news to most.

However, keyword research’s social-climbing step sister, "Buzz Pocket Mining" is not-so-quietly becoming the 800 pound gorilla next door. Buzz Pocket Mining refers to tools, usually free, that take the temperature of a social community’s chatter patterns. What hot topics are people chirping about enmasse? What do social site SERPs reveal about the marketplace for your product? Who owns the thought leading authority profiles in any given community for a topic? What are the blogs of note? These are crucial questions for social search marketers who are considering forays into paid and organic social media marketing.

Each community has different methods and tools available to measure it’s users’ Buzz Pockets. One of my favorites is StumbleUpon’s socially moderated SERPs. It’s free, so let’s have a look .

First, navigate to the StumbleUpon buzz page. This illustrates, at an overview level, what tags and sites are hot in SU. As an aside, getting your site to this level can mean 5K to 20K unique visitors in a day. Type gibberish into the search box (outlined in red) and submit.

The search results for this nonexistent keyword offer a treasure trove of information revealing what StumbleUpon users are interested in. Depending on the demographic of the product you’re marketing, this insight can truly be worth its weight in gold. The font size is proportional to community interest-level.

Ok, say you’re marketing candy bars. Yay! There’s a relatively small (but statistically significant) chocolate Buzz Pocket in StumbleUpon. Click on "chocolate" in the Tag Cloud. The results are exciting. First, you’ll note the SU users who are interested in chocolate. Yup that’s me. I’m active in SU and happen to love chocolate. Make note of these users for one- to-one conversation marketing later. These are potentially valuable evangelists for your candy product. They’ve expressed interest in chocolate by the sites they’ve bookmarked and tagged.

Further down the page is a list of featured chocolate sites. Note: getting your site on this page can result in 300-1000 unique visitors over the course of several days, depending on the size of the Buzz Pocket. There’s even more word-of-mouth value to be gained here. Click on the Chocolate Travel Tours link. Now you’ve identified a blog comments-thread to participate in order to grow your involvement in the chocolate blog community.

Each social community presents a different methodology to mine: it’s Buzz Pockets for social media marketing. The insights gleaned are invaluable while researching the likely success of SMO efforts. While traditional keyword research remains the cornerstone of search marketing, Buzz Pocket Mining is becoming more and more important as "marketing to the social graph" comes on line and evolves.

Yahoo mailed a letter to shareholders outlining the reasons the Board believes Microsoft’s proposal significantly undervalues Yahoo and isn’t in the best interests of Yahoo stockholders.

In the missive Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang emphasizes its strong brand, financial strength, strategic investments, technology, and relationships with marketers, reminding shareholders the company holds a leadership position.

The upside for Yahoo without Microsoft? Not surprisingly, Yang sees “a huge market opportunity” in the $45 billion online advertising market projected to grow to $75 billion in 2010.

A copy of the letter from CEO Jerry Yang follows:

Dear Stockholders,

On February 1, 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited proposal to acquire your company. As much has been reported in the press recently, I wanted to reach out to you personally to let you know why your Board of Directors, after a careful review by Yahoo!’s management along with our financial and legal advisors, believes that Microsoft’s proposal substantially undervalues Yahoo! and is not in the best interests of our stockholders.

Most importantly, I want you to know that your Board is continuously evaluating all of Yahoo!’s strategic options in the context of the rapidly evolving industry environment, and we remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all our stockholders.

We have a unique combination of strengths

– Yahoo! is one of the most recognizable and admired brands in the world. We have over 500 million users (nearly 1 out of every 2 internet users worldwide). In the U.S., we are # 1 in many of the most used online services including personalized home pages, mail, news, music, shopping and travel. Because we have leadership positions in so many indispensable online services, users spend more time on Yahoo! sites than anywhere else online.

– Yahoo! is an attractive partner for marketers. Yahoo! is #1 in online display advertising, which represents 90% of the advertising inventory on the web, and we are also a leader in search marketing and a pioneer in the growing fields of mobile advertising and online video advertising. Through Yahoo!, advertisers can now connect with consumers on our owned sites as well as those of our growing network of partners including eBay, Comcast, AT&T, a consortium of over 600 newspapers, Forbes.com, Cars.com, WebMD and more.

Click to read the rest of this post…

Online publisher E-consultancy in conjunction with search agency Neutralize (*\*) are conducting follow up research to last year’s widely read 2007 UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report, which contained a comprehensive analysis of the UK Search environment.

This year’s research will cover online marketing budgets and the effectiveness of search marketing, as well as looking at the use of social media. Those taking part in this year’s survey will receive a free copy of the ensuing 2008 UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report.

Lotte Mahon, marketing manager at Neutralize (*\*), said in a press release issued this morning, “We are really looking forward to working with E-consultancy on the 2008 report. Last year’s results offered a unique insight into UK Search Engine Marketing and the report received a wealth of positive feedback. We are aiming for an increase in respondents this year so I would urge everyone involved in the industry to give us their valuable opinions!”

The online survey, which is open to both advertisers and agencies, will be live until Thursday, March 6, 2008. Those wishing to complete the survey should go to http://tinyurl.com/3al59r.

More than 700 digital marketers responded to last year’s survey, including just under 400 client-side search marketers and more than 250 agencies.

Highlights from last year’s report included:
• Just under half of respondents (48%) said that their companies carried out paid search exclusively in-house. Some 57% of companies were doing SEO exclusively in-house.
• On average, company respondents said that they spent 32% of their total marketing budget on online marketing. On average, they spent a third of their online marketing budget on Search.
• Overall, respondents said that SEO was more important than PPC in terms of impact on brand.
• Google was viewed as the best search engine across a range of criteria. However, half of respondents believed that Google had an unhealthy dominance of the UK search marketplace.
• According to company respondents, lack of internal resource was the biggest problem preventing success for both Paid Search and SEO (natural search).

Go to http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/search-engine-marketing-report-2007/ for more details about last year’s report.

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• You Must Be 21 to View This Site: Yahoo Searchlight Award
  The third annual Yahoo Searchlight Award winner: “Partay” the whitest boys in the room hip-hop video promoting the responsible consumption of Smirnoff Raw Tea by search marketing firm Outrider.
• Yahoo OneSearch T-Mobile vs Google vs Nokia
  The players change partners as the mobile phone is fast becoming the gateway to the Internet, Wireless Web and local search.
• Find Your Dream Job with the New SEW Job Boards
  If you’re reading Search Engine Watch, it’s likely that your skills are in demand, or soon will be, if you’re just starting out. To help you make the most of your search marketing skills, we’ve launched the Search Engine Watch Job Board.
• SEW Experts: High Performance SEO Requires Fast Load Times
  Many large companies assume that site speed isn’t very important to the overall user experience, but they’d be wrong.
• SEW Experts: Microsoft Responds to Yahoo: a Micro, Who Cares?
  Who wins or loses the Microhoo battle won’t change the mission of most search marketers: helping clients or employers acquire leads and customers, and generating online sales.
• SEW Experts: SEO Outsourcing: Don’t! Until You Read This
  One basic rule in life: it’s difficult to buy things you don’t understand. SEO can be difficult to understand, especially for marketing folks who’d rather put the search budget into PPC campaigns.
• One basic rule in life: it’s difficult to buy things you don’t understand. SEO can be difficult to understand, especially for marketing folks who’d rather put the search budget into PPC campaigns
  CNN will soon launch iReport.com for citizen journalists. News sharing is a natural next step, because people already send far more videos and images than CNN could ever show online or on air.
• Microsoft Won’t Take “No” for an Answer
  Microsoft made it clear that it would continue with its plans to acquire Yahoo, one way or another.

Click to read the rest of this post…

Warning: You must be 21 years of age to view this site.

You must be of legal purchase age to enter the corrupt world of this online video / search campaign — winner of the Yahoo Searchlight Awards.

The third annual Yahoo Searchlight Award winner: “Partay” the whitest boys in the room hip-hop video promoting the responsible consumption of Smirnoff Raw Tea by search marketing firm Outrider.

Target demographic for search ads: Who cares? Par-tay! You don’t have to type in your age to click on a “Crizazy” text ad for Russian hooch.

Don’t agree with the winner? Don’t blame the judges. All, including Kevin Ryan, were limited to “one man, one vote” while the big audience voted electronically.

That’ll teach interactive agencies not to send a whole crew to an awards ceremony.

Funniest line: Ron Belanger called Kevin Ryan, “The Howard Stern of Search.”

2nd Funniest line: What world-famous comedian and emcee Craig Ferguson called Kevin Ryan.

To find the answer, go to the Search Engine Strategies blog.

For more drunken rap videos in the East vs West Rap WarGames, go to TeaPartay.com. (No link love for preppie rappers.)

Outrider copywriter say, IF YA WANNA ROLL WIT DA TEA PARTAY WE NEED TO KNOW YOUR AGE PLAYA. Submit, yo.

This year, those of us interested in search marketing in general can look forward to several events sponsored by Third Door Media. The Search Marketing Expo will be held in different locations through out the year, the soonest of which is the Search Marketing Expo West which is to be held from the 26th [...]

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• Social Media Could Thrive In a Recession, Says Forrester
  A report from Forrester out today says this time online and social media marketing could escape budget cuts if a recession does emerge.
• Super Bowl Advertisers Fumble on SEO
  The advertisers who spent millions on TV airtime during Super Bowl 42 should have spent a little more of their budget on basic search engine optimization.
• Yahoo Desperately Seeking Suitor
  With limited options, Yahoo board members face increased pressure to accept Microsoft’s hostile bid.
• SEW Experts: How to Engage Customers in Search Marketing
  Relationships between businesses and customers are changing. Search marketing can no longer operate in a vacuum, but is just a part of the bigger marketing picture.
• SEW Experts: 2008: Google, Yahoo and MSN Join Together
  This just in: Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have agreed to combine forces to create MicroGooHoo, a universally accessible platform to provide clearly unbiased information access points for all humanity. Or maybe not.

Click to read the rest of this post…

Relationships between businesses and customers are changing. Search marketing can no longer operate in a vacuum, but is just a part of the bigger marketing picture. In today’s By the Numbers column, “How to Engage Customers in Search Marketing,” Eric Enge shows you how to turn these new types of customer relationships into a weapon for your business.