Sesmag tor13

SES Toronto

June 12–14, 2013

SESConference.com

June 2013

Your Company’s Looming Traffic Problem A Growth Strategy Trumps a Narrow Ranking Strategy in a No-Growth Environment page 1

Combining Search and Social 4 Content Is King! 6 Who Should Control Your Big Data? 9

staff

about SES

Matt McGowan MD, North America Mike Grehan Publisher Sharon Morabito Head of Events, Americas Ro Osborne Marketing Director, Americas Program Development Head of Events Content Conference Producer

Laura Roth Anna Lee

Operations Senior Event Manager Event Manager Customer Service Manager Customer Service EXECUTIVE

Kim Kiedaisch Jackie Ortez Charisse Rosales Amanda Targowski

ClickZ & Search Engine Watch special projects editor Copy Editor Asia Desk Editor

Melanie White Caitlin Rossman Adaline Lau

Sales & Marketing Sales Directors

Director, Client Services Senior Marketing Manager Marketing Manager Marketing Associate Web Designer Online Operations associate

Elaine Mershon Elaine Romeo Peter Westerholm JoAnn Simonelli Angela Man Amy Xu Ploy Tangtrakul Rebecca Holz Aleksey Gershin

Welcome to the Toronto issue of SES Magazine. SES Toronto will consist of three days of unparalleled education in online marketing, including the latest techniques and trends in search, social media, mobile, and email. Best-selling author Jeffrey W. Hayzlett will deliver the keynote address, explaining how you can develop the vision and courage you need to make smart, strategic, and lasting changes in your business.

This issue features a roster of eminent practitioners who will be speaking at the conference. Andrew Goodman of Page Zero Media will speak in two sessions: “Paid Search Strategy Deep Dive” and “Smart Retargeting/Remarketing.” Garry Przyklenk of TD Bank Group will be among the panelists in the session on “Analytics Attack: Tracking Campaign Performances.”

Michelle Ross of Firestarter Social Media, along with Nick Beck of Tug, will show you how to develop an integrated social-search strategy.

See page 11 for sample sessions.

To make the most of your time in Toronto, be sure to download the SES Toronto app. The most up-to-date agenda can also be found on the conference website, SESToronto.com.

And don’t forget these upcoming events: •• SES San Francisco, September 10–13, San Francisco Marriott Marquis (SESSanFrancisco. com) •• SES Hong Kong, September 16–18, The Mira Hong Kong (SESHongKong.com) •• SES Berlin, October 9–10, The Kosmos Berlin (SESBerlin.com) In addition to the three-day learning environment, there will be many opportunities for informal networking throughout the conference. See you there!

Best regards, Mike Grehan, Chair SES Advisory Board Chair Publisher Incisive Media

Matt McGowan Managing Director, North America Incisive Media

Magazine Editor Contributors

Dawn Cavalieri McKay Allen Andrew Goodman Heather F. Lutze Garry Przyklenk Michelle Stinson Ross Jasmine Sandler

Corporate

SES Advisory Board

Comprised of both industry thought leaders and real-world practitioners, the SES advisory board brings together top players in the field of interactive media and search. The team works to deliver continually cutting-edge search techniques, more integrated and relevant content, and professional development resources to SES attendees.

Mike Grehan, Chair PUBLISHER SES/Search Engine Watch/ ClickZ

Bryan Eisenberg Bestselling Author bryaneisenberg.com

Jon Myers VP, Commercial Director EMEA Marin Software

Matthew Bailey President Site Logic Marketing

Andrew Goodman President Page Zero Media

Lee Odden CEO TopRank Online Marketing

Chris Boggs CMO Internet Marketing Ninjas

Bill Hunt President Back Azimuth Consulting

Giovanni Rodriguez CoFounder and CEO SocialxDesign

To advertise, contact sales at sales@sesconference.com or +1 (212) 457-4993.

Mikel Chertudi Sr. Director, Online & Demand Marketing Adobe

Anne F. Kennedy International Search Strategist Beyond Ink USA

Laura Roth Senior Conference ManageR SES Conference & Expo

Comments? Want to unsubscribe? E-mail us at magazine@sesconference.com

Eddie Choi Managing Director Frontiers Digital

Anna Lee Conference Producer SES Conference & Expo

Crispin Sheridan Sr. Director of Search Marketing Strategy SAP

Chief Executive Group Managing Director

Tim Weller James Hanbury

SES: Volume 7, Issue 3 | June 2013 © 2013 Incisive Media plc To subscribe, contribute, or view past issues, visit www.sesconference.com/ses-magazine

Incisive Media, U.S. 55 Broad Street, 22nd fl.

New York, NY 10004-2501 tel +1 (646) 736-1888 fax +1 (646) 390-6612

Incisive Media, head office 28-29 Haymarket House London SW1Y 4RX, UK tel +44 (0)20 7316 9609 fax +44 (0)20 7930 2238

contents

Follow SES at twitter.com/SESConf

cover Story

1

Your Company’s Looming Traffic Problem A Growth Strategy Trumps a Narrow Ranking Strategy in a No-Growth Environment Conference Information

2 11

Sponsors & Exhibitors

Columns

4

Combining Search and Social Increase the Impact of Your Brand with an Integrated Strategy

5

Social Media in the Boardroom Building a Compelling Business Case

6

9

10

Content Is King!

SEO Results from 150 Blog Posts in 50 Days

Who Should Control Your Big Data?

Which Division of Your Company Has the Necessary Resources and Talent?

Razor-Thin Findability Why Keyword Discovery Is Essential to Corporate Growth

SAMPLE SESSIONS at SES TORONTO

June 2013

Cover art via Shutterstock

Your Company’s Looming Traffic Problem A Growth Strategy Trumps a Narrow Ranking Strategy in a No-Growth Environment

by Andrew Goodman

A

mong a wide variety of insightful catchphrases you’ll hear from con version optimization guru Bryan Eisenberg is: “You don’t have a traffic problem. You have a conversion problem!”

I always cheer when I hear my friend say this, but he’s only about 52% right (that still makes him right).

Nearly every company today also has a traffic problem.

Decline in Organic Search Referrals A big traffic problem is looming for merchants and sellers of services, as search engines gradually but inexorably send fewer and fewer unpaid organic search referrals to these kinds of companies.

If your industry or firm is the exception that proves the rule, bravo! But on average, traffic growth today needs to come from extraordinary and broad-based effort—not yesterday’s narrow SEO effort that many seem to think can continue forever.

Many in the SEM industry fixate on anecdotal evidence that some companies see big drops in the wake of a certain version of Penguin, and that a few come out ahead. But this fixation actually masks the secular trend

of anemic or negative traffic growth in the traditional stream of organic search referrals.

The narrow focus on Penguin fallout and the like encourages firms to continue clinging to outdated ranking strategies as if they were growth strategies.

What about Bryan’s assertion? Does it mean that we’re out of line to be fretting about drops in traffic? Unfortunately, no.

While it’s true that a business generally wants traffic to perform, you could be facing serious trouble if you do indeed have a traffic problem. What if you are gradually moving towards a state of affairs in which too few people can find you, and too few people have heard of you?

Overall site traffic can be a pretty helpful indicator of the future viability of a business.

Many third parties (investors, analysts, management consulting firms, etc.) are skeptical of firms that show weakening online traffic patterns. An analogous phenomenon is the company that beats estimates on profit but misses on revenues, and gets killed on its stock. That’s because revenue weakness raises doubts as to a business’ total potential going forward. There isn’t much space in the lexicon of business for 0% growth.

Google organic search is getting harder for most businesses to hitch their growth wagons to, for two reasons: (1) most businesses selling products or services aren’t naturally suited to creating informational resources of the kind that search engines believe many users want much of the time, and (2) Google is devoting more and more search-page real estate to paid listings, product listing ads, Google local results, Google partner sites, media such as video, new forms of information like curated “one boxes” for things like weather and factoids, and so on.

Growth Strategy Defined If a company is looking for a growth strategy, then it needs to map out just that. A growth strategy outlines multiple means of gaining customers in the coming years, and breaks down into three areas: (1) tapping new traffic streams that are over and above the sit-back-and-enjoy-organic-SERP-love strategies; (2) investing deeply in forms of online infrastructure (including but extending well beyond provable, test-based, conversion optimization) and various markers of continues on page 8

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sponsors & exhibitors SES Toronto | June 12–14, 2013 Gold SPONSOR Page Zero Media Keynote Sponsor and Reception Sponsor www.pagezero.com Page Zero Media is a full-service digital marketing agency focusing especially on paid search (SEM), display advertising, and other forms of effective audience targeting. Led by founder and president Andrew Goodman, the company is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Clients include Postmedia Digital, Canon, Direct Energy, Wave Accounting, and Nuts.com. Page Zero is a Google AdWords Certified Agency.

Sponsors & Exhibitors Bing Sponsored Session Sponsor www.advertise.bingads.microsoft.com Search advertising with Bing helps you efficiently reach your next best customer—within your budget and with the support you need to get started and optimized, and measure your results.

Catalyst Charging Station Sponsor www.catalyst.ca Since 1998, Catalyst has been a pioneer in developing strategic digital marketing services for Fortune 1000 brands, including some of the largest companies in the world. With Canadian operations headquartered in Toronto, and an office in Montreal, we serve clients spanning B2B and B2C verticals and covering multiple industries.

At Catalyst, we pride ourselves on being THE Search Innovator of the industry. Our service offerings include search engine optimization (SEO), paid search marketing, social SEO, content strategy, digital asset optimization, mobile search, e-retail optimization, local search optimization, global search, and competitive reporting.

Catalyst is a wholly owned subsidiary of WPP, the world’s largest communications services group. For more information about Catalyst, please visit www.catalyst.ca.

ClickZ Table 2 www.clickz.com ClickZ is the largest resource of interactive marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, research, and reference in the world, online or off-. From search to social, technology to trends, our coverage is expert, exclusive, and in-depth.

Our mission: to help interactive marketers do their jobs better.

The seasoned ClickZ News team serves up smart, original reporting and analysis on the interactive marketing industry and the companies that make it tick. Experts from the trenches provide commentary, opinion, advice, and thought leadership from the leading practitioners in interactive marketing. The ClickZ Stats section is an award-winning source for interactive and Internet research. Facts,

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figures, research, and data on every facet of the online industry, domestic and worldwide.

ClickZ also offers: •• ClickZ Job Board: ClickZ Jobs helps connect job seekers with new employment opportunities and provide employers access to our large audience of interactive marketing professionals.

•• ClickZ Academy: ClickZ Academy has been created to help online marketers develop their skills. From e-learning and webinars, to onsite or in-house training, we offer a format to suit your preferred learning style.

gShift Labs SEO Software Table 1 www.gshiftlabs.com gShift Labs’ industry leading SEO software system, Web Presence Optimizer™ (WPO), helps marketers and agencies more efficiently and effectively monitor and report on SEO campaigns. gShift’s patent-pending WPO software provides insight into an entire web presence—website, blogs, press releases, social media, and analytics—by reporting organic rank data, backlinks, social signals, and competitive intelligence, all of which contribute to the goal of ranking higher organically in the search engines.

The fundamentals of SEO still matter. However, SEO in 2013 is about social signals (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest) and fresh content (blogs and press releases).

Track, manage, measure, and report web presence analytics data all in one place using gShift’s SEO monitoring and reporting software. Organizations of all sizes benefit by reducing the time and resources required to analyze and improve organic search optimization. gShift Labs can be contacted at 1-866-743-5960 or sales@ gShiftLabs.com, or by visiting www.gshiftlabs.com.

Internet Marketing Ninjas Sponsored Session Sponsor www.internetmarketingninjas.com Internet Marketing Ninjas, formerly We Build Pages, is a full-service Internet marketing company established in 1999. Though the agency is well known for its expertise in link building, the rebranding has introduced a broad range of additional SEO services including social media marketing, SEO reporting, content development, conversion analysis, and the currently featured Panda Recovery Reports. The company’s CEO and founder, Jim Boykin, is a frequent conference speaker and a pioneer in the SEO industry. Jim’s blog, a renowned link building resource, was named Best Link Building Blog in 2006 and 2007 by Search Engine Journal. Now the blog hosts even more voices, including frequent contributor Ann Smarty and staff writers Bonnie Stefanick and Jennifer VanIderstyne.

Recently, Internet Marketing Ninjas released a number of free public tools including an on-page optimizer and a comprehensive site crawler. Currently the in-house staff consists of nearly 100 Ninjas, expertly trained in various aspects of SEO.

product & service guide Advertising Networks Bing............................................ Sponsor Advertising, Display Page Zero Media.........Gold Sponsor Content & News Feed Providers Internet Marketing Ninjas..................................... Sponsor Content Management SubmitEdge........................................... 3 Data Mining Specialists Training Business Pros................... 10 Interactive Marketing Agencies Catalyst.................................... Sponsor

Interactive Marketing Associations & Publications Search Engine Watch........................ 2 Lead Generation Powered by Search...........................11 Training Business Pros................... 10 Link Building Internet Marketing Ninjas..................................... Sponsor Marketing Optimization Solutions gShift Labs SEO Software...............1 Marin Software................................. 12 Page One Power................................ 13 Search Engine Watch........................ 2

Table #s on right.

Organic Search Marketing gShift Labs SEO Software...............1 Internet Marketing Ninjas..................................... Sponsor Page One Power................................ 13 Page Zero Media.........Gold Sponsor Powered by Search...........................11 SubmitEdge........................................... 3 Pay-Per-Click Networks & Management Services Bing............................................ Sponsor Catalyst.................................... Sponsor Search Engines, General Bing............................................ Sponsor

Search Marketing Agencies Catalyst.................................... Sponsor Page One Power................................ 13 Page Zero Media.........Gold Sponsor Powered by Search...........................11 SubmitEdge........................................... 3 Search Marketing Software gShift Labs SEO Software...............1 Marin Software................................. 12 Training Courses & Certification in Search Marketing ClickZ....................................................... 2 Training Business Pros................... 10 Website Search & Technologies Search Engine Watch........................ 2

Marin Software

SubmitEdge

Table 12 www.marinsoftware.com Marin Software provides the world’s leading online advertising management platform for advertisers and agencies to manage their paid search, social media, display advertising, and mobile campaigns. Marin Software’s platform is designed to meet the workflow, reporting, and optimization needs of advertisers and agencies, helping them to save time and improve financial performance.

Free Download for ClickZ’s Facebook Casebook. Sponsored by Marin Software.

Table 3 www.submitedge.com SubmitEdge specializes in fulfilling all your Internet marketing needs. We believe in continuous improvement in all our operations, and focus on building and maintaining sound relations with each of our customers. Over 30,000 customers worldwide have benefited from our services since 2006. From social media and search engine optimization to video creation, all our services are available in competitive packages to meet the diverse needs of our customers.

Powered by Search Table 11 www.poweredbysearch.com Powered by Search is Canada’s internet marketing agency of choice, with proven ability to qualify, capture, and convert the highest-value online traffic into new sales for your business. We blend organic search, paid search, local search, and conversion rate optimization with our state-of-the-art measurement tools to deliver against the financial indicators that are key to your business success.

Powered by Search has grown to service over 100+ clients in 9 countries and 3 continents, and has been named one of Canada’s fastest growing companies by Profit magazine. Our agency is accredited as a Google AdWords Certified Partner, Better Business Bureau member, and Google Engage for Agencies member, and has been featured in the Globe & Mail, the Financial Post, the Toronto Star, and CTV.

Search Engine Watch

Training Business Pros Table 10 www.trainingbusinesspros.com Training Business Pros is Canada’s leading Internet marketing training company, offering over 100 intensive business training opportunities throughout North America every year. Our clients have exploded their sales into the millions and trainees have increased their personal market value exponentially.

Since 2007, Training Business Pros has helped over 22,000 businesses adopt and adapt Internet marketing and social media strategies. Whether you are a start-up or a Fortune 500 company, it is essential to get valuable information fast in order to get massive results within a short period of time.

Visit table #6 to claim your free introductory training, Or learn live from our CEO, Paul Tobey, on stage on June 12th from 2:35 pm to 2:55 pm You will learn how 20 minutes a day can dramatically boost your rankings and how the social media wheel can be the secret sauce to your back-linking strategy.

Table 2 www.searchenginewatch.com Search Engine Watch provides tips and information about searching the web, analysis of the search engine industry, and help to site owners trying to improve their ability to be found in search engines.

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focus

STRATEGIES

Combining Search and Social Increase the Impact of Your Brand with an Integrated Strategy

by Michelle Stinson Ross

B

ack in the days of dial-up, You’ve Got Mail, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves, when I went to the Internet to look for something, I would usually have to dig through page after page of search results in order to find what I was after. When I search for something now, I head straight for Google on my desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone, and usually find exactly what I’m looking for on the first page. I rarely dig any deeper than the second page.

The reason for this shift is that the search algorithm has gotten more sophisticated over time. Thanks to updates like Panda and Penguin, the system can evaluate whether a link is there just for the sake of the link, or whether a human being has shared a link with another human being based on a shared topic of interest (the social signal). Search is continually taking in the context of who we are and how we relate to information. We are constantly feeding indicators about relevance back into the system.

Social media has played a large role in how we search. By the time we intend to look for something, we most likely have seen several references made to it by friends, colleagues, mentors, and other influencers. We are far better informed before we ever go searching.

So, as marketers and SEOs, how can we maximize the impact of all of our digital efforts? Let’s review how social can boost search and how tried-and-true search practices can enhance social.

The first step to better search performance for your website is creating content that people enjoy reading. When people find helpful, intelligible information, they are more likely to click a social sharing button and pass on the link to someone else. When visitors to your blog read a compelling story, they’re more likely to copy that link and share it with friends. Not only are these

be optimized for YouTube search. Using wellcrafted categories, titles, and descriptions, you can tell the system about the content of your newly uploaded video. SEO savvy can help you improve the performance of your video content.

Pinterest is searchable, too. Pinners can search for other pinners, boards full of pins related to a specific topic, and individual pins.

links natural and valuable, but they are also created in a way that signals to search that a human authenticated the relevance of that content. That signal will raise the level of trust and boost the page’s visibility in search.

Once the on-page content is really rockin’, make sure that sharing is simple and easy.

Include the most frequently used social network buttons on your pages. Don’t fall into the kitchen-sink trap and include every network known to man. Too many buttons will require too much decision making and hinder a reader’s inclination to share.

Finally, take heed of Google’s use of their identity engine, Google+. When search users are logged into their G+, Google finetunes the results they receive based on who they are and whom they are associated with.

Google also determines page rankings based partially on the authority of the content writer with Authorship. When people can put a face with possible content options, they are more likely to click links of the faces they know and trust. Google+ is not going away, and it will give a search edge to those brands that adopt it now.

Profile information, titles, and descriptions of both pins and boards, and use of broad categories, are opportunities to make your images of food, products, and places rise to the top and get the attention they deserve.

Facebook is slowly rolling out Graph Search. Of all the search options out there, Graph Search is the most likely to take relationships into account when a user is looking for something. For instance, Graph Search doesn’t just search for local restaurants; it looks for restaurants that a user’s friends like.

Facebook updated the look of personal timelines in order to encourage users to share more information about what they do, where they’ve been, and what they like. For brand pages, it is important to make sure that all of the basic company information is available and accurate. Better Graph Search visibility will also require more connections and better photo tagging.

Social Search Search success requires not only links and key words, but also relevance, authenticity, and trust. All of the content directly associated with your URL—whether it’s product descriptions, company bios, or your branded blog—has to be readable and engaging enough to win a social share. It won’t matter that your text is full of relevant key words if no one reads the page. Your page will be penalized if the human being that lands there doesn’t find any real value and quickly clicks away to something else.

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Searching Social It’s search engine optimization, not just Google optimization. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest all have search built into their networks, and all provide lots of opportunities to optimize the content you produce for these networks.

I’m sure that many of you bypass Google for YouTube to find product reviews and instructions on how to do something. YouTube is still the second most popular search engine. Your video content can and should

Conclusion Sophisticated search algorithms mean that search and social strategies will have to be integrated. Teams of search and social specialists need to work together in order to maximize the impact of the entire branded presence online.

Michelle Stinson Ross is the founder and CEO of Firestarter Social Media. She is the cohost of #SocialChat, a Twitterbased live chat about social media marketing.

Actionable Analysis

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Social Media in the Boardroom Building a Compelling Business Case

by Jasmine Sandler

T

raditionally, the C-suite and advisory boards of larger corporations have not been directly involved in their brands’ social media voice and community engagement. Social media conversations are happening about your brand right now. If you are not monitoring what is being said and responding to these comments appropriately, your organization’s reputation may suffer. Furthermore, your competition could engage away your target customers in social.

These days, decision makers are doing their due diligence and reading online reviews and case studies of your business.

You know that you need to be present and leading positive conversations in social, but you may be facing resistance or fear from upper management. To build your case, there are steps you need to follow.

Show Management How Brands Are Delivered in Social Media It is crucial that upper management understand that brand delivery in social is unlike delivery in direct response. To maintain credibility in social, the brand must constantly offer engaging messaging and content, driven by a keen understanding of the content needs of the audience. The marketer must have expertise in representing the brand through social media marketing opportunities such as social advertising, content marketing, group and forum participation, and real-time customer service engagement and acceptable response times.

The most important duty here is to remain authentic and provide thought leadership.

Show Client Engagement by the Numbers Besides brand lift and increased awareness in social, executives want to see qualified lead generation and online sales driven from social media activity. Of course, this is the holy grail for online marketers. Walking into to the boardroom with a report that clearly shows an increase in leads and sales from social media activity will certainly sell the case.

Learn from Your Competitors’ Success in Social Social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube make it fairly easy for you to review your competition’s social activity and engagement strategy.

Share competitors’ volume of activity, social media fans, content strategy, and engagement levels with the executive team.

It is crucial that upper management understand that brand delivery in social is unlike delivery in direct response. To maintain credibility in social, the brand must constantly offer engaging messaging and content, driven by a keen understanding of the content needs of the audience.

Illustrate Where Your Organization’s Online Brand Sentiment Sits (Positive/Negative/Neutral) Understanding whether your engagement in social media results in a positive, neutral, or negative response with your target audience is crucial when developing your brand via social media marketing. Track sentiment using specific brand keywords, and assess sentiment by content type, time, and industry.

Use SEO Factors as a Selling Point of Social Media Marketing Executives want to know that their online brands are gaining top Google exposure.

What they do not necessarily know are the social factors that influence organic search rankings. You need to show management where social positively influences brand position in the major search engines. SEO and social are increasingly becoming paired,

and key executives investing in SEO need to understand this.

Create an Itemized Breakdown of Social Media Costs and ROI Social media marketing is more than a fulltime job for one person (the social media manager, if you will). It requires buy-in on messaging, content, measurement, and goal setting across the marketing, sales, and C-suite teams. The ROI of social, when measured with advanced social media monitoring tools, is clear. Present to management a line-item breakdown of how to budget for social effectiveness on an annual basis.

Conclusion At SES Toronto, Luke Summerfield of Savvy Panda and I will show you how to present social ROI in the boardroom. We will review social media measurements and how they can be used in promoting your online brand.

Join us and learn how to demonstrate brand value, market position, ROI, specific budgetary needs, and social media success stories to your board and executive suite.

Jasmine Sandler has close to 20 years of client experience in web marketing project management and corporate training. She is the founder and CEO of Agent-cy Online Marketing.

Don’t miss this session at SES Toronto:

Social Media in the Boardroom: Building a Compelling Business Case Thursday, June 13, 10:30–11:30am Speakers: Jasmine Sandler, CEO, Agent-cy Luke Summerfield, Inbound Marketing Specialist, Savvy Panda

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SEO

Content Is King!

SEO Results from 150 Blog Posts in 50 Days

by McKay Allen

W

hen we launched LogMyCalls call tracking in 2012, we de cided to make a commitment to content. We believed Google when they said that fresh, unique content is critical, so we launched a webinar series and wrote a few blog posts a week.

We thought that we were committed to content marketing. It turns out that we weren’t.

Early in 2013, we started doing research on blogs that got a lot of traffic and, more important, generated a lot of leads. What did they have in common? Obviously the content was good, but what else? The answer we found was that they wrote several times a day.

Consider what Mark Roberge, senior vice president of sales and services at HubSpot, had to say about content, as published in Forbes:

Weekly Results from Day 1 to Day 50 Blog Traffic Increase: 210%

Blog Organic Traffic Increase: 514%

We had heard the rule that you should do 3-4 blog articles a month.… So we tested it.

We first went to 1 article per day … comments, links, and views went up.

Then we kept pushing to 5 articles per day … comments, links, and views went up.

We learned that you can’t generate enough content.

We decided to do something like this at LogMyCalls. We published three blog articles each weekday on Blog.LogMyCalls.com from February 3 to April 13. We’ve continued writing three posts a day since, but the data below reflect only that first 10-week period.

Most of the content was on call tracking and marketing-related subjects.

The following graphs show what happens when you go from writing two posts a week to three a day.

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Blog Referral Traffic Increase: 901%

SEO

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Blog Direct Traffic Increase: 201% much impact in nine months and that our efforts were working.

Leads directly generated via inbound marketing and content increased by more than 800%. We actually stopped using many of our paid marketing tactics partly because of the success of our inbound marketing efforts.

Entire Site Organic Traffic Increase: 69% We’ve since posted the question on our blog: how long should you give an SEO to demonstrate success?

Content Is the New King of SEO

Actual Business Results Leads directly generated via inbound marketing and content increased by more than 800%. And since the first 50 days ended, we’ve continued to write three posts each day. Traffic is still going up, albeit not as fast as it did during the initial 50-day push.

We actually stopped using many of our paid marketing tactics partly because of the success of our inbound marketing efforts.

It worked!

What About Our SEO Firm?

We had been working with an SEO firm for about nine months when we started the blogging experiment. We were getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of results.

Nothing was really working.

About halfway through the blogging process—as traffic was increasing—we realized that the vast majority of the traffic was due not to the efforts of the highly paid SEO company, but rather to our internal content efforts.

Thus, we fired our SEO firm. We simply couldn’t justify paying them a large sum of money every month when it was clear that their efforts didn’t generate the traffic that our efforts were generating.

Keep in mind that we had been leaning toward firing our SEO firm because we hadn’t seen measurable results. The success from our blogging efforts just pushed us over the edge. We’re obviously not advocating that every company fire their SEO firm. We’re simply stating that our firm didn’t have

We’ve had so much interest in our experiment that we wrote two follow-up articles (“How Did We Write 150 Posts in 50 Days?” and “More Q&A”) that answered questions about our process and strategy.

With a company our size, the commitment has to be significant in order to produce three unique and useful blog posts a day. After all, we also produce two original marketing webinars each week, monthly case studies, a variety of marketing white papers, and some humorous marketing call– tracking videos.

We will produce three unique posts each day for as long as we can. For the foreseeable future, we’re going to continue to generate more unique content, blogs, and webinars.

This blogging effort has permanently altered our content strategy and marketing efforts.

McKay Allen is the marketing content manager at LogMyCalls, the next generation of intelligent call tracking and marketing automation. He is a sought-after speaker and writer.

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cover story/ strategies

Your Company’s Looming Traffic Problem from page 1 business quality; and (3) becoming remarkable through differentiation. You can probably get by with just two of the above, but one or none won’t get you where you need to go.

Consider this argument: your company needs to get bigger so that your competitors get smaller by comparison. This growth strategy is probably the best ranking strategy you can pursue. A ranking strategy alone is—at least these days, for commercial ventures that aren’t natural fits with the kind of content search engines naturally feature—a prescription for flat or negative growth.

Don’t underestimate the importance of growth in overall traffic. If enough people have heard of you, there may be a tipping point at which the snowball effect of wordof-mouth propels some of your business growth at no additional expense. Free isn’t free, as always. The question is how much you should spend on rocket fuel in order to reach this lift-off point.

How to Implement a Growth Strategy Below are four examples of significant online investments that you can make as part of a broader growth strategy. As your rank rises as an overall business in its category, you’ll be on a firmer foundation to legitimately expect increased organic search referrals.

Bite the bullet and change your name (or at least your domain name).

Names usually don’t matter nearly as much as people think, but in competitive, commodity fields, your name and identity may not be positioning you well for future growth.

One of our clients paid mid–six figures for a short, memorable URL. For several reasons, direct traffic then skyrocketed 90% year over year. Over the same period, organic search traffic fell 10% after years of growth. The latter is disappointing, but not catastrophic.

Ecommerce revenues are up 28% year over year, and many marketing costs have actually fallen. For a business doing over $25

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million in annual ecommerce revenues, improvements in response across millions of annual user interactions meant that the name change investment paid for itself in less than a year’s time.

Completely overhaul your website.

Have you ever tried to put lipstick on a pig, especially if the website (er, pig) is more than

in an art supply business had not only a bit of rich content (trapped in one channel, email), but also a helping hand in the form of a full-time content-production employee in another division of the company—a bonus, as many such companies have nothing like this in house.

Your company needs

seven years old? Piecemeal tweaking is a to get bigger so that good idea if it can get you quick wins, but in your competitors get some cases, the look and feel of a site—and smaller by comparison. the state of its technology—make it urgent to overhaul pretty much everything. This This growth strategy is was the case for a client in the travel indusprobably the best ranking try. Even if one major win is achieved as a strategy you can pursue. result of this project—much better conversion rates from the rapidly growing proportion of mobile traffic as a result of responsive By modernizing how the content is propadesign—it will be worth the investment. An gated to various social media, and shifting to investment of under $50,000 that improves a planned editorial calendar, Twitter philosouser satisfaction, positioning, image, and phy, etc., a company creates a more vibrant function is well worth it. online personality. On this propagation issue, Our client had been narrowly focused on it’s worth noting that many companies have SEO, but with so much in disarray, band-aid been admirable in their efforts on Facebook. fixes from the old SEO toolkit would have That’s a good dry run for what is to come, but achieved little of permanence. A wide-rang- it’s possible that too much of one’s Facebook ing refresh, in contrast, will not only position effort will lie trapped in Facebook. Embraca company for better organic rankings, but ing Google+ is a must in today’s context. also increase conversion rates on paid traffic Influential Google engineers have stated that across the board, and lead to a higher likeli- “Google+ is Google.” hood of referral business. How can anyone expect a site to rank consistently and stably Accelerate your market share strategically when, prima facie, it lacks credibility? by spending boldly when it counts.

Companies in an emerging category can Have a thorough content strategy, not a spend in bursts to gain traction quickly. “content strategy” employed as a euphemism More members and customers mean more for low-quality, barely concealed SEO. long-term interaction with the brand from Many merchants don’t have great DNA for a larger base of loyal users (and an expected creating interesting content. They’re often snowball effect once the tipping point is better off optimizing other aspects of the reached). Yes, even the much-maligned disbusiness and reaching for new streams of play advertising channel has the power to (mostly paid) traffic. That being said, no busi- achieve specific goals of brand recall and ness wants to see its organic referral traffic trust, if deployed strategically. dwindle. More to the point, a contemporary approach to communications will enhance a Forward-Thinking Businesses company’s reputation and earn the trust of In truly embracing the value of content and repeat customers. We found that one client resource creation (as opposed to tactically

Data-DRIVEN Marketing

focus

Who Should Control Your Big Data?

Which Division of Your Company Has the Necessary Resources and Talent?

by Garry Przyklenk

building link bait), some forward-thinking companies have had a long head start. For years, SaaS-invoicing firm Freshbooks has been creating a range of helpful resources for the small business community that uses its products, and it has backed a major marketing conference. On top of that, it focuses on making its product best of breed and interacting publicly with customers. Freshbooks is the perfect example of a company that has pursued growth strategies rather than a “ranking strategy.”

Even when they don’t rank perfectly, companies like Freshbooks fill in the gaps with paid search. While they may rank in the top three for many of their core, commercially viable organic search queries, what is the point of agonizing as to why they rank “only” number six for the term “online invoicing app”? They also appear as number one in the PPC listings, with a large amount of page real estate bolstered

by SiteLinks. They’re highly visible, reputable, and poised to win customers. Is there a problem? I don’t see one.

Conclusion The problem with tying too much of your business growth to one particular gatekeeper is that you keep waiting around to be picked (see this article in Entrepreneur magazine). Pick yourself: start broadening your approach to growth. Invest in fundamental elements of content, quality user experiences, and even, if need be, a better name.

There has never been a better time to diversify beyond mere ranking strategies.

Weirdly enough, once you do, you may find yourself ranking better. Goodbye, traffic problem.

Andrew Goodman is president of Toronto-based Page Zero Media, a full-service marketing agency that focuses on paid search campaigns and custom digital marketing programs.

A

nalytics has evolved rapidly over the past few years. It wasn’t very long ago that most companies relied on log files for website monitoring, and the insights gleaned from this data were far from actionable for significant value creation. A little later, many businesses found opportunities in using web analytics data, analyzing their digital marketing campaigns against a high-level, cost-to-sales, ROI-like measure, which did not factor in the cost of goods sold or operational business expenses.

When optimization came along, marketers and content publishers could split-test different user experiences quickly and easily, but it was hard to correlate what seemed to be success in an optimization test with actual business results and lifetime value.

The current talk in the analytics community centers on the buzzword “big data.”

Big data solves many business problems through the integration of online and offline. Ownership and responsibility for big data have migrated to several core internal groups, including technology, marketing, and finance. The question is, who should own your big-data strategy?

Marketing, Technology, or Finance?

There is plenty of support for the argument that your big data should be owned by a marketing team. For instance, your marketing department likely has full control and ownership of your end-to-end digital acquisition strategy, including digital marketing tactics, messaging, content, and even customer experience. However, the traditional marketing organization is often creative and executional, not necessarily highly technical with respect to various “book-of-record” financial databases and CRM data that are required to fully leverage big data.

There is also a strong case for the technology division to own your big-data strategy. They have the resources to develop and deploy tactics based on big-data insight.

The obvious risk here is time to market, as these employees are often tasked with large

foundational projects and mitigation of operational issues ranging from the business critical to the malfunction of the color printer.

Technology would not be able to go it alone, however, as the finance department is better suited to validating actual book-ofrecord numbers and correlating these back to marketing strategies. Very few technologists, or marketers for that matter, would have a keen interest in validating actual spend with vendors such as Google (on ad credits, for example), or keeping a running record of lifetime cost of goods sold and lifetime value of a customer based on intricate profit-and-loss line items (such as refunds).

All of These, and More At this point the answer becomes clear: the ownership of big data should lie with highly focused, cross-functional teams responsible solely for integrated insights. Silos are things of the past. A truly data-driven business requires agile approaches across the entire organization, with support from senior leadership. This means garnering support, approvals, and resources not only from marketing, technology and finance, but also from sales, support, and even thirdparty partners.

While you may not be able to create a cross-functional team immediately, you can take a lesson from the companies that are leading the charge in big data. They use the teams closest to integrated insights to build centers of excellence organically, starting with leaders in marketing, technology, and finance and building out additional expertise as required. In this way, you can leverage the power of big data for enterprisewide change and a continuous optimization cycle built on integrity and value creation.

Garry Przyklenk, manager of analytics implementation at TD Bank Financial Group, is an expert in lead generation, SEM, web analytics, and social media marketing.

sesconference.com • SES 9

focus

SEO

Razor-Thin Findability Why Keyword Discovery Is Essential to Corporate Growth

by Heather F. Lutze

O

ften when I go to internal team trainings and keynote presentations, I get complaints from attendees along the lines of “SEO people are snake oil salesman,” “I’ve spent so much on SEO with no results,” and “My marketing team cannot agree with my IT team—therefore, we just are stalled on SEO.” Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?

I hear your frustration; I’ve heard it time and time again. The line between being lost and being found on the Internet is razor thin.

If you want to make SEO work, you have to evolve as a leader in your organization.

Remember when you didn’t have a cellphone? I even remember the brick-like telephones with the battery backpacks. Ok, now I’m dating myself. But we are, in most cases, digital immigrants. We didn’t grow up in today’s technological world, mobile devices in hand. We didn’t learn to text at a young age, and we certainly didn’t grow up with social media. But we absolutely need to master these things now, or we risk becoming extinct.

Go from Lost to Found The key to making SEO work for your organization lies in understanding the components of SEO: findability. Keyword domination online is based solely on increased traffic!

“Ok, great,” you say. “And how do I get that, again?”

Simply follow this roadmap: 1. Lost. You realize that you are lost on the Internet—no findability. Your mom can’t even find your website. Sigh.

2. Discovery. Do your customer discovery or keyword-phrase discovery online.

What keywords do my target searchers use? How are they looking for my type of business?

3. Optimize. Rewrite or add to your website’s content, page titles, descriptions, meta-descriptions, etc., optimizing for those key search phrases.

4. Found. Google easily and efficiently matches your site with searchers using

10 SES • June 2013 {Toronto}

those keyword phrases. You start being found online. Hallelujah!

5. Convert. You start converting search traffic into action on your site and money in your bank account. Double hallelujah!

6. Dominate. Finally, you dominate search results under a small number of specific and vital keyword phrases. Everyone can find you. Raise a glass of bubbly!

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

As the leader in your organization, you must figure out the roadmap for success, but leave the tactical implementation to your SEO firm or your internal teams.

This can be challenging when you’re still a digital immigrant, not a full-fledged citizen in the world of geeks, techno talk, and SEO tactics. How can you assess the use of money, time, and resources for a topic you know nothing about?

The Right Kind of Findability After a recent meeting in LA, I spoke with a group of some of the best CEOs in their respective industries—florists, uniforms, health food, and many others. I came across an excellent example of razor-thin findability.

Those of you who know me know that I’m addicted to the Google Keyword Tool (and other keyword tools that help companies go from lost to found on the Internet). But it’s not just about findability; it’s about the right kind of findability, targeted to customers who are ready to buy when they get to your site.

A large, international floral business represented in this CEO group called themselves “wholesale florists”—that was their main keyword phrase. When I looked deeper into how they saw their company and what they did, it became clear that they were missing a large part of their searching audience by calling themselves only “wholesale florists.”

Let me explain: •• Go to google.com and type “keyword tool” into the search box.

•• Click on the first organic listing that shows up.

•• This takes you to the AdWords Key­ word Tool, which is often used for payper-click advertising, but I recommend it for “customer connection” research, via keywords.

I conducted a keyword brainstorming session with the floral company. (You can find out how to do this type of brainstorming in my book The Findability Formula.) Take a look at some of the keywords that came up:

Keyword Competition wholesale florist High wholesale flowers High flower supplier High florist supplier High bulk flowers High

Local Monthly Searches 60,500 110,000 1,900 590 27,100

Notice the difference between the keyword wholesale florist, with 60,500 searches per month, and the term wholesale flowers, which gets much more—110,000 searches per month. This customer already dominated under wholesale florist. That’s what got them to where they are today. But they ranked nowhere on the search results page for wholesale flowers, which is an even bigger search term—and they are a wholesale flower company at heart!

It’s all too easy to flatline in your site’s traffic. To grow their business, this client needs to optimize for findability using the keywords wholesale flowers. I’d recommend that they also incorporate the phrase bulk flowers (with 27,100 searches a month). Why not?

What important search terms is your website missing out on?

Heather F. Lutze, CEO of Findability Consulting & Speaking, is the author of Findability Formula and Thumbonomics. Find her at Facebook.com/Marketing Speaker and Findability.com.

Download the app or visit SEST0ronto.com.

sessions

Sample Sessions

Download the app or visit www.SESToronto.com for complete agenda and session descriptions.

Day 1—Thursday, June 13

Day 2—Friday, June 14

10:30–11:30am

1:45–2:45pm

Track 3 Bringing Together Paid, Owned, & Earned Media

Track 3 The RTB & Programmatic Trading Opportunity for Online Marketers: Truths & Myths

In this session you will learn: •• How to analyze PPC keywords and adjust for SEO linking.

•• How to increase organic keyword saturation using PPC data.

•• How to maintain lasting SEO ranking and increase PPC effectiveness.

•• How content and social media drive SEO rank.

Solo presentation by: •• Andrew Beckman, CEO, Location3 Media 11:45–12:45pm

Track 2 Developing an Integrated Social-Search Strategy This presentation will discuss: •• How to develop an integrated social-search strategy.

•• Key points of crossover between search and social marketing.

•• Ideas for achieving synergy and efficiency between the two channels with actionable strategic frameworks.

•• The importance of combined measurement and analytics strategy.

•• Client examples from some of the world’s most revered brands.

Moderator: •• Anne F. Kennedy, SES Advisory Board; International Search Strategist, Author, Beyond Ink USA Speakers: •• Nick Beck, Managing Director, Tug •• Michelle Ross, CEO/Lead Consultant, Firestarter Social Media 3:30–4:30pm

Track 1 Content Marketing Tactics from the Trenches: How to Execute a Blog & Social Strategy This session will help you to: •• Develop a framework for creative and efficient content creation.

•• Find resources and ideas where others cannot.

•• Leverage a mix of evergreen, repurposed, curated, and co-created content for better marketing results.

•• Apply SEO and social media optimization principles to amplify content reach and engagement.

Moderator: •• Laura Roth, Head of Content, Interactive Marketing Division, Incisive Media Speakers: •• Natalie Henley, Director of Marketing, Volume 9 Inc. •• Miranda Miller, Search Engine Watch Columnist

This session will begin with a short, high-level presentation on the programmatic landscape. The conversation will then expand to a facilitated discussion among a group of experts, covering where we’ve come as an industry and where we are going. It will take a look at the likely future of programmatic from several standpoints: strategic, infrastructure and tools, metrics, and analytics opportunities. Moderator/Speaker: •• Christopher Hansen, President, Netmining Speakers: •• Andrew Casale, VP Strategy, Casale Media •• Raymond Reid, Managing Director, Neo@Ogilvy Canada •• Victor Wong, CEO, PaperG 3:00–4:00pm

Track 2 Beyond the “Like”—How Companies Are Using Social Advertising to Drive User Acquisition & ROI This session will cover: •• Actionable tactics such as the planning process to ensure a successful output.

•• Practical information brands of all sizes and with all budgets can use immediately.

•• Aligning content, ad copy, and targeting to achieve the best results.

Moderator: •• Miranda Miller, SEW Columnist, Speakers: •• Rohan Karunakaran, Sr. Account Manager, AdParlor •• Helen M. Overland, Vice President, Search Engine People 4:15–5:15pm

Spotlight Session Get Inside Your Customer’s Head: Leveraging Big Data Key takeaways from this session will include: •• The impact big data will have on modern marketers, forcing them to become part marketer, part chief information officer.

•• How to leverage the latest advancements in technology to gather, analyze, and react to new consumer behavior uncovered by big data.

Moderator: •• Anne F. Kennedy, SES Advisory Board; International Search Strategist, Author, Beyond Ink USA Speaker: •• Ian McAnerin, CEO, McAnerin International Inc.

sesconference.com • SES 11

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