The 5HITS

Internet Facts video:

from JESS3 on Vimeo.

Search Marketing

Are you Committed

Some of you may have heard the saying: Are you the pig or the chicken. When it comes to eating a breakfast of egg & bacon, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. When it comes to your online search campaigns, are you the chicken or the pig? Should the type of business you are in help decide whether in fact you should be a chicken or a pig?

We all agree ROI is important. We all agree that any marketing or business activity should have some form of ROI. How do we best manage the link between SEO and ROI, especially when there are very different players, angles, business models all trying to rank for the same keywords?

Consider the graph below and how the various players might interact or see SEO in their business model.
The Large Consumer Bank would have a large dependency on their website for operations i.e. Internet banking, applications and so on, however when it comes to sales they would have multiple, multiple sales channels from account managers to television spots to in branch activities, all driving people to convert either online or offline. Operations would be driven by complex systems integrating to the front end behind the scenes. May take a couple of touch points to convert a customer. While the need for SEO might be considered small, being found online for all the campaigns, slogans is not. SEO is integral, most of them just realize how integral.

Read more…

Business online, Internet, Paid Search, Search Marketing SEO Committment

So Valentines Day is over and we move on. Some interesting stats on Valentines Day. Assuming search engines are a good indication of the peoples intention, and we know that Google has in excess of 90% market share, we can say the following:

• People only start thinking about valentines day 16 days in advance, looking for general gifts
• They start to think roses are the answer 10 days in advance and alternate gift ideas 9 days in advance
• Those who are organised get it done 7 days before and then there are those that panic all the way up to the last minute
• Most people still search on the generic terms flowers and roses rather than including valentines day in the search phrase

Interesting and remember this for next year.

Flowers v Roses Search Volume Graphs

Business online, Internet, Search Marketing valentines day

Valentines Day is the most important occasion of the year. Don’t believe me, check out the graph below:

Business online, Internet, Search Marketing valentines day

Most advertising works as follows in larger organisations, right?

• Identify requirements re target market, product etc.
• Develop campaign to meet requirements
• Pitch to client
• Plan media
• Buy media
• Run campaign through proposed media
• Measure success
• Celebrate
• Ad agency wins award

Traditionally, Media = television, radio, magazines, newspapers and more recently banner advertising, paid search maybe given budgets in certain sectors SEO (Search engine optimisation) or social media such as Facebook or Youtube.

Everything is generally measurable for the campaign, everything is short term, switch on and switched off and budget driven. Run the campaign, get the exposure, drive sales. Unfortunately its not always that simple. Social media requires ongoing genuine conversations to be of value, natural search rankings require changes to the website which may need to be planned and take time, taking longer to get results than the campaign itself. So we have some ongoing or longer term solutions interacting with shorter term, campaign driven ideas.

So, why not build your own media instead of buying it? As a large organisations with advertising and marketing budgets why invest all of this into shorter term campaigns? You no doubt have a website with vast information on your products, their benefits and features? Why not extend this and build your own media, including information, tools, communities? In the past many news organisations have morphed into this area, they have a newspaper, add a baby site, dating site, car site etc etc. Guess what, more media for you to buy.

Theoretical case study in point

Theoretical case study and I labour the point, theoretical. Any relationship to actual events, individuals or organisations are purely coincidental. I promise. But consider this. I am say a CEO of a large food company with numerous brands. One of my brands makes breakfast cereals and snack bars for the health conscious professional females aged 25-35 years old, single or married with no children. I know she generally does the household shopping, goes to gym and cares how she looks, feels and takes care of herself.

My website is all about product, how great they are, low GI, good to eat after exercise, handy for snacking and so on. My site ranks well for product names and the brand which delivers some but not a lot of monthly traffic, my last campaign increased traffic to the site but with a lesser increase in sales.

My issue is that I am in a highly competitive market, competitors are doing deals with supermarkets for better shelf space. Supermarkets are 80% of my channel. When customers come in, they are often overwhelmed, time poor and will make a decision based on brand recollection and association or convenience and perception. Great!

Firstly I decide to get rid of focus groups, they are small, not representative of anything in many cases and the results are often influenced by the questions asked and the facilitator. People are naturally polite, especially when being paid and also generally relate to the what is known rather than what could be.

I get detailed keyword research done, understanding what the masses want and are looking for. I realise there are few searches in search engines for my products and some are on brand but that bounce rate is high, unles I have promotions, free give-aways or competitions. Fickle bunch…

Read more…

Business online, Internet, Online marketing, Search Marketing Advertising, Digital Strategy, Marketing, Media, Online

Bruce Clay Australia has finalised dates for the 3 day SEO training for 2010. Bruce Clay himself will be over to conduct the training from March 10-12th 2010. The course will be held in Sydney at the luxurious Observatory Hotel in the Sydney CBD and I would advise booking early. The last 3 courses ended up being fully booked and unfortunately having to turn some people away. Prior to releasing the training date this time, we already have 10 bookings, so would advise that you book sooner rather than later. Find out more about Bruce Clay 3 day SEO training here.

For those of you with less time and who think the 3 day training may be a little to hectic, we are also running our global 1 day Bruce Clay SEO training course in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane during 2010. The dates for the 1 day training are as follows:

• 17th February – Sydney
• 7th April – Brisbane
• 12th May – Melbourne
• 9th June – Sydney

Search Marketing

New business models for social marketers. Managing your brand on the web just got interesting. Sidewicki, the tool in your Google Toolbar allowing you to see comments made next to websites has been upgraded to allow you to view these for an entire domain, per the Google blog. You are pretty quickly going to get a view on what a business/ restaurant/ website is about using this feature.

On the upside, to comment users need a Google profile and also need some “trust” or “authority”, lets call it PageRank for profiles before they are published. As more people comment so this bar will rise. So you spam the sidewicki, as with search you will become invisible. But comment wisely and responsibly and you build an ability to influence an extremely important part of todays marketing mix.

Granted:

• Low use and understanding of Google profiles
• Not that hard to set up a profile
• Low use or understanding of Sidewicki, let alone having the toolbar installed

But

• Gmail, Local Business Centre and so on will continually enhance our understanding
• Google social will encourage all to set up profiles, also just to claim your own space
• Online profiles will continue to grow in importance and need to be managed

So this has the opportunity to bring power to the people. You want to book a flight and have some adventure, search for “air tickets to Iraq” and find the #1 ranking site, but low and behold there are numerous sidewicki entires about how that airline runs late, loses your lugage, are rude to customers etc. You still going to book with them?

In the future of search, if there were enough of these and the quality was good, why would they not Read more…

Internet, Online marketing, Search Marketing Google sidewicki, reputation management

New Youtube campaign released by Poise Australia on pelvic floor exercise videos. This includes 13 videos from Jane Simmons a leading advisor in this area. There are also a lot of competitors competing for this space such as Tena.

The Poise channel is professional and the videos, clear, branded and easy to recognise. I actually might do some pelvic floor exercises myself. So well done on the channel set up, be interesting to see if these will result in blended search results.

Optimising Youtube videos in this day and age is no longer a luxury, it is a must.

These videos are also available on the www.poise.com.au website, under in the  Benefits of pelvic floor exercises. The videos are well explained on the site, walk you through the steps and are in the correct sequence. A great way of showing multiple channels to market, through the vendor site as well as through Youtube to maximise the brand awareness of Poise Pilates, created by Poise for woman suffering from incontinence.

Search Marketing

Sub domains are always an interesting part of SEO and we often get questions about their status and when to use and when not too, use of keywords in the domain.

Using say this bedwetting example of a subdomain of a well known bed wetting product used in Australia. While this subdomain will appear if searched in the toolbar it does not appear when searched in the main results, in fact it appears non existent, just the main site is in the results. It is however in the index.

Any other experiences with subdomains, rankings and use of keywords in the domain.

Search Marketing

We have long been building paid and unpaid Youtube channels for clients, The great video shows some research on Australia specifically, using 3,000 participants. These go further to proving what Nielsen and Comscore say but with more detail. Great insights, you cannot afford to ignore youtube as a channel to market.

Having said that, you cannot ignore SEO. As more and more clamber onto the Youtube wagon if you want proper ROI, make the extra efford to optimise your videos propely. Also ensure you have an appropriate strategy for the videos on your site and those you make available on youtube.

Consider:

• Whats your objective, Youtube to website? or brand recognition?
• Do you know how to differentiate videos between those onsite and those on Youtube? Keep in mind hosting source and productID
• What search terms are you trying to rank for?
• Are your videos and video content aligned to the search terms?
• Are you measuring the results properly?

Search Marketing