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Casting a Line Hook Your Audience with Great Content • 10

PLUS Top Nine Takeaways from 2009 • 4 Popular PPC Pitfalls • 8 Nonprofits & Social Media • 12 Own the Top 10 Results for Your Brand • 28

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CASTING A LINE

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ses london preview: Go beyond search

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From social to video and local to mobile, the new online marketing frontier is here. Learn how to connect the dots at next month’s Search Engine Strategies conference. Learn about the speakers, sessions, and workshops that make SES London a must-attend event. §

Terms and acronyms every search marketer should know. §

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The Impact of Multimedia on News Search

January 2010

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Four New Signals in Search

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How Search Influences Brand Communications Planning

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Frugal Is the New Black

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Communicating Search Success

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Own the Top 10 Results for Your Brand

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The Demise of SEO Won’t Be Caused

by Personalization

GLOSSARY

Top Nine Takeaways from 2009

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Digital Ad Revenue Takes the Form of Content

Six steps in getting your audience hooked on your content — and how to get them to share. §

columns

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The search industry’s phenomenal pace of change continued with fervor in 2009. ClickZ’s Adam Cahill takes a look back and explores the biggest of those changes. §

Consumers, bloggers, and journalists are all gravitating toward multimedia formats, so it’s up to you to provide them with content types that paint the overall picture. §

Popular PPC Pitfalls, and How to Prevent Them If you’re not positioned to hire a professional PPC manager, here’s a checklist of three of the most common PPC pitfalls — and how to fix them. §

Nonprofits Need to Get Clued In to Social Media Almost 80 percent of nonprofit executives aren’t sure how to demonstrate the value of social media to others in their organization. §

As publishers struggle to close the gap in advertising revenue between print and online, e-mail newsletters continue to be a bright spot. §

While search engines will never spell out their formulas, here are some features that, in the near future, could play a bigger role in impacting your page rank. §

How do we combine communications planning with search? How do we move beyond keywords and into the psychology of search? Check out the findings from a recent study. §

the recession has caused a sociological change in consumer behavior that may impact how companies market to us. §

The most important metric of all routinely gets pushed to the bottom of your priority stack: business outcomes. If you see search as senior managers see it, you can grow your practice. §

Six very different approaches that will help you manage — and improve — your company’s online reputation. §

To appear within the personalized results of your target audience, you need to get to know them better than ever before. §

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Staff Matt McGowan VP, Publisher

about SES Magazine

Mike Grehan VP, Global Content Director

Magazine Managing Editor Drew Eastmead Contributors Chris Boggs, Adam Cahill, Sean Carton, Amanda Davie, Bryan Eisenberg, Eric Enge, Mark Jackson, Melissa Mackey, Stephanie Miller, Joshua Palau, Jim Sterne, Jiyan Wei

SES Magazine, now in its fourth year, is brought to you by ClickZ, the leading online destination for news and expert advice in digital marketing. In this issue, you’ll find articles on the latest online trends, as well as a preview of our upcoming event, SES London (16-19 February).

We are grateful to our contributors and readers alike, and we’re always interested to hear your feedback and learn about what topics you’d like to see (e-mail us at magazine@SearchEngineStrategies.com).

For more information on advertising, subscribing, and contributing, or to view past issues, visit www.SearchEngineStrategies.com/ses-magazine.

You can also follow us on Twitter: @sesmag.

PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT VP, Content Development Stewart Quealy Senior Program Director Marilyn Crafts Program Coordinator Jackie Ortez

OPERATIONS Director, Operations Michele McDermott Operations Manager Dan Hoskins

Clickz & SEarch engine watch Executive Editor, ClickZ Director, SEW Managing Editor, News Senior Editor, News Staff Writer Copy Editor

Anna Maria Virzi Jonathan Allen Zach Rodgers Kate Kaye Christopher Heine Caitlin Rossman

Drew Eastmead | Managing Editor

SES Advisory Board

Comprised of both industry thought leaders and real-world practitioners, the Search Engine Strategies 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.

Matthew Bailey President SiteLogic

Andrew Goodman Principal Page Zero Media

Lee Odden CEO TopRank Online Marketing

Mikel Chertudi VP, Demand & Online Marketing Omniture

Mike Grehan, Co-Chair VP & Global Content Director Incisive Media

Pauline Ores Sr. Marketing Mgr, Social Media IBM Corporation

Brett Crosby Group PPM Google

Bill Hunt President Back Azimuth Consulting

Stewart Quealy, Co-Chair VP, Content Development Incisive Media

Bryan Eisenberg Bestselling author bryaneisenberg.com

Anne Kennedy Managing Partner Beyond Ink

Erica Schmidt Global Search Director Isobar

Jeff Ferguson Sr. Director, Online Marketing Local.com

John Marshall CTO Market Motive

Crispin Sheridan Sr. Director of Search Marketing Strategy, SAP Marketing

SALES & MARKETING Sales Directors Andrew Katz Elaine Mershon Elaine Romeo Peter Westerholm Account Executives Elizabeth Huston Katie O’Hea Event Client Services Mgr. JoAnn Simonelli Marketing Director Angela Man Marketing Manager Christian Georgeou Web Designer Rebecca Holz Online Operations Manager Louise Laberge Online Operations Assoc. Aleksey Gershin

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§ FOCUS: trends

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Top Nine Takeaways from 2009 ithout question, my favorite thing about this industry is the phenomenal pace of change, and along with it, the endless number of opportunities to learn each and every day.

As I look back over the past year and themes come into focus, here are my top nine from 2009.

Ad Exchanges and DSPs Revitalize Display

The emergence of ad exchanges has made display advertising more relevant than ever. With auction-based pricing models, third-party data overlays, and impressionlevel bidding, exchanges are making display million more targeted, Number of unique Facebook efficient, and viewers who watched a video effective than in October, making the social network the No. 2 video site by ever. Meanwhile, reach — trailing only YouTube.

Demand-Side Source: The Nielsen Company Platforms (DSPs) A Learn more at ClickZ Stats.

— like MediaMath, DataXu, and Invite Media — enable access into the multiple exchanges, providing buyers with the tools to develop new ways of doing business.

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Separating Audiences from Content

What’s most interesting about exchanges is the underlying change in media planning they enable. Instead of planning via an RFP process that revolves around sites, audience-based planning starts with the question, if you could define your target audience as precisely as you wanted to, what would that look like? Chances are, the combination of available data and the blank canvas of exchange inventory means that targeting approach could be put into place.

Where the ad appears — within reason — is less of a consideration.

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By Adam Cahill

Meteor Solutions are making great progress on the next big measurement frontier — Who hasn’t experienced the cringequantifying the impact of social. inducing moment when you find out your ad ended up somewhere in the red light district? Until now, there hasn’t been a way “Experimentation” versus “Test to control this, other than relying on the and Learn” promises of sellers. But now it’s possible to The industry has always loved the notion buy a form of online advertising insurance. of test and learn. But many smart people Companies like ADsafe and DoubleVerify have recently talked about the need for have emerged to address this concern head experimentation, on, building busiwhich isn’t the same The emergence of ad nesses around the thing. Experimentapromise of preventing exchanges has made tion is about possibilithese issues and gaindisplay advertising more ties, and is inherently ing adoption at a rapid optimistic. Test and relevant than ever. pace. learn is about limiting

Buying Brand Safety

Facebook Becomes a No-Brainer

In the past, I needed to be persuaded that Facebook had a place on a given program.

But based on its explosive growth, strength across demos, and continually improving marketing toolset, the opposite is now true.

I go into a program needing to be convinced that Facebook isn’t a good fit. And that hasn’t happened in a long time.

Social Ads: I’m a Fan

Similarly, I used to think that social spaces weren’t a great environment for ads, but Facebook is convincing me otherwise.

A recent example: Working on a holiday gift card program, our team sent messages to the friends of our brand’s fans that in essence said, “You have a friend who loves Brand X — so get them a gift card.” The postage-stamp creative won’t end up on anyone’s reel, but I’ll take targeting like that all day long.

Measuring the Right Things

We’ve always measured everything online — except some of the things that really matter. In 2009, the industry seemed to turn a corner. The click has been widely and soundly dismissed. It’s become easier and more affordable to measure the offline impact of online sales. And companies like

SES § January 2010 {London preview}

risk, and is inherently cautious. Maybe it’s a matter of semantics, but my bet is that an experimental approach will lead to more — and bigger — wins.

The Need for Speed

Perhaps spurred on by the pressures of the recession, the need to move faster became a requirement. Production timelines were crunched, and biweekly reporting cycles no longer cut it. I’d expect this to become the norm in the future, and an area of competitive differentiation for agencies that can adjust their operations.

Doing is Better Than Saying

I’m a big believer in the “it’s not what you say, it’s what you do” line of thinking. But it turns out that the easiest part is coming up with great ideas. The reality is that many companies just aren’t set up operationally to deliver on this kind of thinking. Agencies will need to go beyond utility-driven ideas, and help their clients with the difficult work of organizational change. §

Adam Cahill is the SVP, director of digital media at Hill Holliday. @adamcahill

The Insiders Guide to Digital Marketing Revolution’s essential guide to all that’s new in digital, provides you with everything you need to know about latest innovations in each of the key market sectors and explains how you can incorporate them into your media plan.

The Insider’s Guide to Digital Marketing 2009

www.igdm.co.uk SearchEngineStrategies.com § SES

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The Impact of Multimedia on News Search

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By Jiyan Wei

n October 2009, the Nielsen Company reported that nearly 140 million people in the United States alone viewed 11.2 billion videos. The statistic represented a year-overyear increase in unique online video viewers of approximately 15 percent and validation for the near-ubiquity of online video consumption in the United States.

The increasing prevalence of multimedia online has changed the ways people produce and consume information. Marketers can use multimedia to enhance the impact of their news distribution activities — here’s how to best implement such a strategy.

Advantages to Multimedia

Multimedia has several advantages. It allows viewers to absorb information in the format they prefer. While some people are more visual, others are more tuned into specifications or technical documents. The latter may not be part of a news release, but they should certainly be packaged as an attachment. Most importantly, multimedia can enhance search, help to build traction, and have a greater influence consumer behavior.

Influencing consumer behavior. Video has the potential to capture the attention of the news consumer, breathe life into dry topics, and ultimately, compel the consumer to act. In 2007, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) published a study, “Frames of Reference: Online Video Advertising, Content and Consumer Behavior,” where more than 1,400 video users were surveyed regarding the behavioral impact of a video advertisement.

Fifty-two percent of the respondents said they took

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SES § January 2010 {London preview}

FOCUS: video & images §

some sort of action after viewing a video grew 32 percent year-over-year, according to advertisement: 31 percent visited the adver- comScore. Furthermore, integrating a news tiser’s website, 15 percent visited the actual release with a video hosted on a video sharstore, and 12 percent made a purchase. The ing site will provide the customer with an study is one of the more comprehensive to opportunity to engage in video search. date and validates the power of video to compel action.

Five Tips for Making Multimedia Generating traction. As the OPA study a Staple of Online News Releases demonstrated, video influences news Embed video from a video consumers to take commerce-oriented sharing site. Hosting your news action. In the world of marketing and PR release video on a sharing site professionals, one of their priorities is to get will provide many benefits to their news releases into the hands of relevant your overall distribution. In addition journalists and bloggers. Just like consumers, journalists, and bloggers have shown to providing bloggers with code that makes it easy for them to use your video, you’ll increasing demand for online video. also create traction by According to sharing your content a recent study by Quality of content is now with the video sharing TEKgroup and Bulldog Reporter, more defined by what happens community where you host it. Embedding in the video rather than than half of journalists your video within your now report they seek how well it is produced. news release will autoaudio or video matematically create a link rial from corporate from the news release websites. Video not only helps communicate stories to journalists and bloggers who are site to your video. You should also make sure writing original pieces, but it becomes part to link your video back to your news release. of the story they tell. Evidence suggests The interlinking between your news release that videos are appearing with increasing and your video will have a mutually benefifrequency on leading blogs, which is facili- cial benefit for both pieces of content. tated by the embed code provided by video Properly optimise images. sharing sites like YouTube and Yahoo Video.

Images should not only be of high Enhanced Search Presence. When quality and relevance to the story Google crawls a news story, it looks for an presented in the news release, image to extract and place as a thumbnail but should also be optimised to help in conjunction with the story excerpt on the search engine results page. The inclusion of search engine categorization. Be sure to a thumbnail can have a tremendously posi- include relevant keywords in the file name, tive impact on click-through rates, which ALT tag, and text around the image. Search become even more important as news results engines will look for signals in all of these areas to determine what the image is about. start to display in the blended search results Also keep in mind that a multimedia Anyone can produce video. release will not only be picked up in the We are in a new age of video standard web and news search engines, but consumption in which profeswill also create a presence in image search. sional production quality is From a search perspective, multimedia was a significant driver for increased search engine no longer a primary attribute of a successusage from 2008 to 2009, as image search ful video. The absence of a professional

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production crew, access to a studio, or professional editing equipment should not deter potential video producers. A quick glance at the most popular videos on YouTube reveals that quality of content is now defined by what happens in the video rather than how it is produced. Get your team together and brainstorm what would be interesting and entertaining for your audience — then go out and shoot it.

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Provide additional content for bloggers and journalists. If your goal is to make a splash not only with consumers but also to prompt bloggers and journalists to pick up your story, think about the types of multimedia you should provide that will help them craft their story. If you’re announcing a new product release, your news release should contain links to product pages on your site, product specifications included as file attachments, and images and possibly video of the product itself. Bloggers and journalists are thinking in multimedia terms, so make sure you provide them with the content they need to tell a great story.

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No multimedia is better than irrelevant multimedia. Great multimedia will complement a great story; however, irrelevant multimedia can ruin a great story. Don’t just throw anything in your news release. We have seen cases where customers have spent a great deal of time crafting compelling stories and then included irrelevant videos just so they can check the multimedia box.

Irrelevant images and video will distract your audience, so it’s better to simply stick with a standard text-based release. § Jiyan Wei is director of product management for PRWeb, Vocus’ online news release distribution service, which has built a distribution strategy for optimising press releases for search engines. @PRWeb

SearchEngineStrategies.com § SES

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§ FOCUS: paid search

Popular PPC Pitfalls, and How to Prevent Them

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By Melissa Mackey s features and functionalNot Editing Account Default ity of the major pay-perSettings click (PPC) engines grow Many PPC advertisers forget that and develop, so does the default account settings, especially in complexity of managing a Google, are designed to maximize campaign. A growing number of advertisprofit for the search engine. This ers have expressed concern about underdoesn’t necessarily mean maxiperforming PPC accounts. A closer look mum profit for the advertiser, reveals some glaring, yet not always easy however. to find, errors and omissions.

The first thing you should do after setting Of course, hiring a professional PPC up a campaign is to check the default manager, whether in-house or agency, is settings. In Google, you’ll find these in the always recommended. settings tab. In Yahoo, But if you’re not in a you’ll need to go to The home page is almost position to do that, the campaigns tab, never the right PPC here’s a checklist select a campaign, and of three of the most landing page because then click “campaign common PPC pitfalls, it essentially forces the settings.” For Microand how to fix them soft adCenter, click visitor to search again. (or prevent them). on the campaign name, and then click Poor Account Setup “change settings.”

I’ve seen more than one PPC account First, opt out of the content network. recently that consisted of one campaign The content network can be an affordable and one ad group. This is almost never the source of additional traffic and converbest way to structure your PPC sions, but it requires a different optimiaccount. This hurts your qualsation strategy and campaign setup than ity score and makes the account search. In Google and Yahoo, the opt-out more difficult to manage. setting is at the campaign level. In adCenSetting up multiple campaigns ter, it’s at the ad group level. allows you to manage each to its own Another important setting to change is objective, and provides the ability to adjust your ad delivery. The default setting in settings based on performance, without both Google and Yahoo is “optimise” — affecting the performance of your entire Google even goes so far as to term this the account. “recommended” setting.

If you’re running more and than one ad variation in an ad group (which you should be), the “optimise” setting search engine marketing will show the adaptive conversion opt variation with the Web performance tuning higher CTR more frequently. This is good, right? Not necessarily.

WebsiteOptimization.com It’s good for the Andy King 877-SITEOPT (877-748-3678) Author search engines,

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higher traffic

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SES § January 2010 {London preview}

because it gets them more clicks. It may not be good for you — the ad with the most clicks may not be converting the best for you.

The only way to tell with any certainty is to change the setting to “rotate.” This will ensure that each ad variation gets approximately the same number of impressions — and enough data for you to decide which one converts better.

Sending all Traffic to the Home Page

It seems obvious, and yet I’m continually surprised by how many PPC campaigns send all traffic to the home page. The home page is almost never the right PPC landing page because it essentially forces the visitor to search again (remember, they already searched once on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or some other engine).

This is where good account setup really pays off. Take the time to create distinct ad groups around a theme, be it product, service, or whatever. Use the most relevant page of your website as the PPC destination URL. For example, if the theme of your ad group is “buy red widgets,” use the red widget page of your website as the destination URL. Don’t use the home page and make the visitor search again for “red widgets.”

If you’ve made these mistakes, it’s not too late to fix them. Tools like Adwords Editor and adCenter Desktop make it easy to create new campaigns and ad groups, and to move keywords and ad copy from one to another. Editing destination URLs is as easy as find and replace. In less than an hour, you can be on your way to improved PPC performance. §

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Melissa Mackey is online marketing manager at Fluency Media, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based digital agency. She blogs at Searching Beyond the Paid, writing about pay-per-click marketing and other aspects of search engine marketing.

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www.SearchEngineWatch.com SearchEngineStrategies.com § SES

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Casting a Line Hook Your Audience with Great Content

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By Bryan Eisenberg

he term linkbaiting has some negative connotations. Its best use can be anything worthy enough of grabbing people’s limited attention and causing them to link to, share, or otherwise promote the content you generate. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen people get overly excited about something they produced and how “viral” it is, only to be forgotten before it’s even shared. Here’s how to avoid that problem.

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Define your goal. Is the goal of this piece of content to persuade or sell people to take an immediate and measurable action, or is it more long term, to develop links to improve your search engine rankings or brand awareness? You shouldn’t only think of link bait as a short-term fix to a long-term problem; it doesn’t usually work.

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SES § January 2010 {London preview}

COVER STORY / FOCUS: content sharing §

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relationship with some of them because it How will you measure makes this process easier. But understand success? Once you have your that no one will share anything with their goals in place, you now need network that they don’t believe elevates plans to make sure you’re tracktheir self-perception. ing your outcomes effectively. Start by They want to know that people in their defining the key performance indicators network will think more of them for sharing (KPIs) you want to monitor. Check out this piece of content. eConsultancy’s list of Ask yourself: Will 35 social media KPIs Linkbaiting is rarely a your content make (http://bit.ly/2BRI0k) short-term fix to a them seem funnier, to get your thinking long-term problem. smarter, more generstarted. You should ous? What will motialso consider sentivate people to share your content? Do you ment analysis, such as that offered by know what social networking and bookRadian6 or Scout Labs. marking sites your content will appeal to Remember, it’s still quality that matters most? For example, some content works more than quantity — not only in what better on Digg, over Reddit or Delipeople say, but also in who links to you. cious. Your campaign tactics must match Knowing what you will measure your audience. should define how you measure. Will you be tracking the number and quality of Develop the content. Two simple links, comments, tweet or retweets, social rules your content must follow: bookmarks, positive or negative votes?

What tools will you use to measure your § It must be relevant to your outcomes? Will it require specialized audience; and for your success, reletagging? Will you make it easy for your vant to your business. content marketing team to tag your content § It must be compelling to engage with properly, to make sure you’re tracking as and to share. effectively as possible? For example, if your content is on YouTube, are you optiDepending on your audience, you must mising and measuring it properly? also decide which form your content will It used to be much simpler when all you take. Should it be a post, an e-book (white were measuring was links, but now that paper), a video, a contest? everyone can share content with social Your headline must be incredibly media and bookmarking sites, measuring remarkable. It’s worth spending extra time effectively is more of a challenge. to make sure you have it right, or to test it out with your connectors or original linkers Develop your personas. Know list (much like the Huffington Post does). your audience. There are two If you’re stuck coming up with ideas for parts to your audience you must content, Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. define: your connectors and your final net has shared 20 linkbaiting techniques to audience. Your connectors are individuals use when planning your content. you hope will share your content with their A content strategy that matches your network and thus, lead to greater reach than objectives and meets your audience’s needs you have on your own. is essential.

Hopefully, you have an existing

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Content Guidelines § It must be relevant to your audience; and for your success, relevant to your business. § It must be compelling to engage with and to share.

Want to learn more?

Bryan will be one of three keynote speakers at this year’s SES London conference. For more information, visit

SearchEngineStrategies.com/london

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Make it easy to share. Plan to add elements to make it easy to pass your content along. Use ShareThis or AddThis tools to your posts or pages, or add a retweet button to a PDF. For example, YouTube offers 13 ways to share content. How many ways are you offering? Double-check to make sure they’re tagged properly for your analytics.

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Share and refine. Send your content to a few of your connectors, and see how they respond.

What feedback do they give you? Do they share it with their network? If not, what can you do to refine it before you send it out to other people? Remember, you can change content after you launch it, if it will help your success.

One example of someone who has been publishing great content for the past 15 years is Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today. He e-mails his 100,000 subscribers about a new article, product, or service, and then specifically asks them to bookmark his content using AddThis.com, a gadget that makes it easy for people to use their favorite social bookmarking service. Subscribe to his newsletter and check it out. § Bryan Eisenberg is co-author of The Wall Street Journal, Amazon, BusinessWeek, and The New York Times bestselling books Call to Action, Waiting For Your Cat to Bark? and Always Be Testing. Bryan has been a keynote speaker for Search Engine Strategies, Shop.org, Direct Marketing Association, MarketingSherpa, E-consultancy, and others. He is also co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Web Analytics Association. Bryan serves as an advisory board member of Search Engine Strategies, the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, and several venture capital backed companies. You can reach him at his website, BryanEisenberg.com.

SearchEngineStrategies.com § SES

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§ FOCUS: nonprofit

Nonprofits Need to Get Clued In to Social Media

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By Sean Carton (especially, according to the Pew Internet eber Shandwick and American Life Project, “the wealthy and KRC Research and well-educated”), and nearly half of recently published a U.S. adults are using a social networking survey that has me service. wanting to simultaneAs far as the “digital divide” goes, 79 ously scratch my head in puzzlement and percent of U.S. adults are now Internet users scream in frustration.

— a 67 percent increase from 2005 — and Why? Because after surveying a broad 59 percent of Americans have accessed the cross-section of nonprofit executives web from a wireless device. Clearly, we’re across the U.S., they found that while 88 past the point of, “Oh, percent of them are our folks don’t use “experimenting” with Only 51 percent of the Internet or social social media, only 51 nonprofits are actively networking!” percent are actively using social media.

So, why the relucusing social media in tance by so many their organizations, nonprofit executives? The answer consists and an astounding 79 percent aren’t sure of three parts: how to demonstrate its value to others in their organizations. a misunderstanding of how to use the Over the years, I’ve worked with a lot medium of nonprofits, and I can tell you one thing difficulty measuring results for sure: These aren’t dumb people. In fact, ignorance they’re some of the smartest people in marketing and, more importantly, they’re If I had to add a fourth, I think the “we’ve committed to what they do. always done things this way” inertia effect So why are they having such a hard time is probably a very prevalent (but unspoken) figuring out how to use social media? The factor. answer has implications far beyond the Luckily, conquering these objections nonprofit world and speaks to marketers isn’t difficult. It just takes education, logieverywhere who are struggling to convince cal thinking, and flexibility. Here are some clients to embrace social media. tips: Probably the most telling comment on the report comes from Stephanie Bluma, Help your clients (or your co-lead of the study: “While two-thirds of colleagues) understand they nonprofit executives believe social media shouldn’t get hung up on the has a positive impact on their commutechnology. Most of us don’t fret nications with external audiences, they over the technicalities of how radio or TV are less convinced about social media’s works, yet we’re able to use them in our resonance with donors, journalists, and marketing all the time. What’s important policymakers.” is understanding that this is a medium Sound familiar? Unless you work on for communicating with people, not at big consumer brands all the time, chances them. What’s also important is helping are you’ve had similar push-back from them understand that social media is not your clients, even if they aren’t nonprofits. some magic bullet that’s going to solve “Well, that social media stuff is all well and all their problems (or create more), but good,” they say, “but our customers are rather another tool in the communications too old/wealthy/poor/whatever to be ‘techtoolbox. savvy’ enough to use that stuff. They’re not a bunch of kids.”

Just because you build it doesn’t As nonprofit execs and other clients mean they’ll come. Any social reject social media and deny that their audimedia initiative must be accomences are actively engaged with the web, panied by a communications newspapers are going out of business, civic plan that will let people know what you’re engagement is at an all-time high online doing and encourage them to participate. If

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SES § January 2010 {London preview}

you create a YouTube video or Facebook page and fail to promote it, you — not the medium — should take the blame when no one shows up.

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Measuring results in social media is no different than measuring results with any communications activity. How much did you spend? What did you get back? Divide the two to figure out your ROI. Done.

The difficulty comes when organizations don’t clearly define their success metrics before beginning a new initiative. You need to understand your goals (Donations?

Members? Comments?) before you can know if you succeeded.

4

Ignorance is one of the easiest things to cure: Just educate your clients. There are loads of online resources out there that provide enough demographic data to convince even the most hardened skeptic that the Internet has now reached the point of near-ubiquity.

Unless you have some very special, very niche audiences who have been resisting the web (charities that target the Amish, for example, probably won’t have much luck), chances are your people, your audience, and your clients are using this stuff.

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Finally, breaking past the “we’ve always done it this way” objection is tough, but can be done. It may take time and some small-scale experimentation (and expectation management) to get there, but as we’ve seen over the past decade with the web in general, eventually most folks will come around. They have to. It’s the way things are. Wishing for things to be different is a recipe for irrelevance at best and eventual defeat at worst. Just ask most of the “old media” industries how well fighting the changes worked out for them. § Sean Carton is chief strategy officer at idfive in Baltimore. He was formerly the dean of Philadelphia University’s School of Design + Media and chief experience officer at Carton Donofrio Partners, Inc.

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SES § January 2010 {London preview}

15-19 Februar y Business Design Centre

Your keycode begins with “KEYLN” and is located above your name on the mailing label, found on the magazine cover.

SES London is packed with sessions for search beginners and veterans alike. For more session descriptions, visit SearchEngineStrategies.com/london Introduction to Search Engine Marketing This session will provide a clear and concise overview of the key concepts involved in search engine marketing. Who are the major search engines, and how can you best optimise them to gain “natural” or “organic” traffic without cost? Learn how to achieve top ranking or placement by utilizing search engine advertising opportunities. This is a must-attend basic session for anyone new to Search Engine Strategies events.

Introduction to Analytics Cut to the chase! Use analytics tools to get the specific answers you need about your search marketing campaign’s economic performance, your users’ on-site behaviors, and how to look for major red flags in traffic patterns. This slate of experts will keep you focused rather than poring through hundreds of pages of meaningless statistics.

Search: A Real Time Paradigm?

Search engines strive to have the most up-to-date content on the web, indexed and ready for display to searchers. They are moving toward that goal quickly, showing fresh, instant content higher in the blended search results. Google has created “show options,” which includes pages crawled in the last 24 hours and forum/review results. Others like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are indexing instant submissions and making them highly visible in search results.

Fresh content is a high priority for search marketers and advertisers to create and optimise.

Crossing Borders: Global Site Clinic Going global with a brand is one of the key challenges facing search marketers today. Non-English, multi-currency, and dealing with symbols (double byte) are the first stumbling blocks. So, if you are running an international search campaign across a multitude of diverse markets and cultures, then you can’t afford to miss this opportunity to get your website reviewed live by a panel of search engine marketing experts who really do think globally. Bring your business cards to the moderator at the beginning of the session, and get concrete advice on ways to improve your site’s SEO, ASAP. Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers As knowledge of SEO practices moves from the offices of the optimisers to the board room, the standard metrics used by the practitioners of this former dark art are straining under the weight of the all powerful bottom line. The days when upper management was impressed by subtle changes in Page Rank have been replaced by questions of LTV and ROI. As more resources are being dedicated to creating the perfectly optimised and keyword rich landing page, C-level executives are demanding proof of the return they are receiving from these resources. This panel will discuss a myriad of ways to move beyond page rank, indexed pages or linked sites and into metrics that can make you a hero and, better still, get your budget increased to a respectable level.

Successful Information Architecture This session will provide a fresh look at how to successfully architect your site for search engines and how specific page elements and design technologies

may impact your ability to gain good organic listings.

The speakers will cover topics such as directory and file structure, server-side includes (SSIs), 404 error trapping, JavaScript, robots.txt use, frames, secure area usage, and much more. If time allows, volunteers from the audience will have their sites examined to see how changes could be made to their site architecture and design to increase search engine traffic.

Digital Asset Optimisation Search result multiplicity is not a new phenomenon, but recent advancements guarantee that the world of search and marketing will be changing forever.

How do the new “blended” search results pages affect your marketing strategy? Do these changes mean that the major search engines are eager to keep the “second click” on web properties owned by themselves? How popular are the new blended search results with users?

Social Media 101 Social media has become a major piece of the search marketing puzzle and is changing the way we work, communicate, and live. Companies are amazed by the influence social media is having and want to understand how to use it effectively. This session is designed to guide you through the complex landscape of social media and how it relates to your brand or web property.

You’ll learn about the leading sites, the functionality they provide, and best practices for interacting in these virtual places. You’ll also come away with some valuable tips on how to effectively leverage your brand, services and products in different social media environments, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, MySpace, Digg, and more.

Keynote Panel: SEO: Where to Next?

It’s been said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. And almost everyone likes to speculate about the future. When it comes to search marketing, none are better at it than our veteran panel of industry insiders. Join us for an illuminating discussion as we peek into the next generation of digital marketing and predict what search might look like in the following five to 10 years. What should be on your search radar for 2010 and beyond? Does the key to the future of search lie in personalization? Do social networks herald the end of search? Certain industry pundits have even been heard to say that SEO is dead. The future is coming. Are you ready for it?

Paid Search 101 Paid search is one of the quickest and most efficient ways to gain visibility on the search engines. Done incorrectly it can also be one of the costliest. There are many diverse components to a pay per click campaign, but all have to work together to achieve the best return. This informative session will familiarize attendees with the key players and cover a variety of paid search advertising topics including writing effective ad copy, creating targeted landing pages and auditing paid listings. Designed for both agencies and brands alike, you will come away with a firm understanding of the paid search landscape and the many paid search advertising options available.

Developing Great Content Without meaningful content and compelling copy, your website is not grabbing the attention it deserves. In this session, we’ll explore a diverse range of web content development strategies, along with

Sessions

innovative techniques for dramatically boosting the visibility and interactive appeal of your site. From SEO copywriting tips that encourage consumers to click to persuasive design strategies that turn browsers into buyers, it’s all about improving the end user’s experience through superior content.

Advanced Paid Search Brain Candy Your campaigns are performing OK. How to take them to the next level? Advanced PPC tactics can actually be more fun than basic ones, because you get to activate both left and right brain power, tapping into your own unique aptitudes as well as your customers’ deepest desires. This solo session covers campaign expansion techniques, advanced ad testing, advanced auction theory, the proper use of relevant analytics reports, ideas for bid rules and campaign automation, techniques for acting on seemingly inconclusive data, and more.

kers Keynote Spea g Bryan Eisenber author ard & bestselling SES Advisory Bo om bryaneisenberg.c

k Avinash Kaushi list Analytics Evange Author, Blogger, Google

Jim Sterne Chairman sociation Web Analytics As

More Opportunities Online Marketing Summit - Training Monday, 15 February Advanced SEO 1/2 day workshop (with IDM) Tuesday, 16 February, 1-5p limited seats available (up to 50). Price £365 Part I: SEO Architecture Part II: Advanced link building principles

SEM Training (with Search Engine Strategies) Friday, 19 February, 8a-5:30p Full day £695, half-day £395 Workshops offered include: § Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Workshop § YouTube & Video Marketing Workshop § Using Analytics to Increase Search Effectiveness § Mobile Marketing 101 For more information, visit SearchEngineStrategies.com/london/training.php

SearchEngineStrategies.com § SES

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Agenda

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Day 1: Tuesday, 16 February Track

9-10:15a 10:45-11:45a

Search Fundamentals

Search Analytics

Search on the Edge

Conference Welcome & Morning Keynote: Avinash Kaushik, Author, Blogger, Analytics Evangelist, Google Introduction to Search Engine Marketing

Introduction to Analytics

Search: A Real Time Paradigm?

Keynote Panel: State of the U.K. Industry Discussion Panel

12:45-1:45p 2:15-3:15p

SEO 101

Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers

Managing a Global SEO Campaign

3:30-4:30p

Sponsored Session

Deep Dive Into Analytics

Industry Specific Search Strategies: Under the Hood

Day 2: Wednesday, 17 February Track

9-10a 10:30-11:30a

Fundamentals

Beyond the Crawlers

Morning Keynote: Bryan Eisenberg, SES Advisory Board & New York Times bestselling author, bryaneisenberg.com Successful Information Architecture

Digital Asset Optimisation

Social Media 101

Keynote Panel: SEO: Where to Next?

12:30-1:30p 2-3p

Searchh & Social

Paid Search 101

Real-Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News

Sponsored Session

3:15-4:15p

Sponsored Session

Pushing Content Via XML, RSS & Site Maps

The Business Value of Social Media

4:30-5:30p

Developing Great Content

New Affiliate Opportunities & Strategies

Social Media & the Marketing Mix

Day 3: Thursday, 18 February Track

Advanced PPC

Geek Speak

Clinics

Morning Keynote: Jim Sterne, Chairman, Web Analytics Association

9-10a 10:15-11:15a

Search Advertising Tools

Introduction to Information Retrieval

Global Site Clinic

11:30a-12:30p

Advanced Paid Search Brain Candy

Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues

E-Commerce Site Clinic

Keynote Panel: Paid Search, Content Networks & Display

1:30-2:30p 2:45-3:45p

Why Does Search Get all the Credit?

Augmented Reality: It’s a Brave New World

Paid Search Site Clinic

4:15-5:15p

Search Becomes the Display OS

Automating Twitter

Conversion Site Clinic

——————————— Training Days ———————————

[ ] [ ] 16

SES § January 2010 {London preview}

Monday

Friday

15 February

19 February

Your keycode begins with “KEYLN” and is located above your name on the mailing label, found on the magazine cover.

Registration

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Venue & Accomodations Business Design Centre 52 Upper Street, Islington London, N1 0QH Tel: +44 (0)20 7259 3535 Fax: +44 (0)20 7226 0590 businessdesigncentre.co.uk As a Search Engine Strategies London 2010 participant, you can take advantage of a discounted nightly hotel rate of £160.00 for a single or double at the Hilton Islington (adjacent to the Business Design Centre). This hotel is expected to sell out before the event begins. This discounted rate is subject to availability.

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SearchEngineStrategies.com § SES

17

§ FOCUS: e-mail

Digital Ad Revenue Takes the Form of Content

T

By Stephanie Miller he Harvard Business Review recently published a cartoon with two dogs chatting. “I’m rooting for the demise of the rolled up print media,” one quips to the other.

As B2B publishers (and all publishers) struggle to close the gap in advertising revenue between print and online, e-mail newsletters continue to be a bright spot in the mix. As subscribers show only fickle loyalty to brands online, the idea of “push” publishing continues to gain ground.

“E-mail newsletters are a key part of our business,” said Sarah Welcome, director of customer intelligence at International Data Group (IDG), a publisher of many tech B2B and consumer properties. “Our heritage is in rich editorial content for IT professionals. E-mail newsletters can be the first place readers interact with companies and products, and are the primary source to generate page views and identify prospects as part of a lead generation program.”

In the U.S., digital revenue has surpassed print for IDG. “Digital revenue, such as advertising and e-mail marketing, is definitely helping to make up for substantial losses in print advertising,” Welcome said.

The recession might have scared some publishers, but we haven’t yet seen many digital ad opportunities that take advantage of the unique attributes of the digital channel. These are some bright spots: TVGuide.com nicely creates crosschannel advertising opportunities between their print, web, Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail properties.

CondeNet.com offers a sponsored widget for some of its properties.

IDG offers a display/e-mail combination that advertisers value.

Chemical Processing magazine offers a cartoon caption contest, where readers are invited to submit a caption for a cartoon posted on the site.

There is still more change to come,

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context, Southard said. predicts Rose Southard, director of IT for “Publishers can do more to play a leadPutman Media, a multi-channel publisher ership role in helping marketers. Deliverwith titles in many industries, including ing an ad based on context helps to ensure chemical, pharma, commercial food, and you are catching the visitor in a ‘learning manufacturing. moment,’ when they are in the frame of “The B2B publishing industry as a whole mind to absorb the message,” Southard will survive as long as there are indussaid. tries to write about The opportunity for and business buyers Brand endorsement B2B publishers is big, and sellers who want matters more than but not everyone will information,” she content alone. make it — or even said. “However, I evolve gracefully. don’t think the B2B Southard said the generational shift in the publishing business model will look at all work force affects how publishers must the same in the next decade.” present and allow interaction with media.

E-mail is a powerful tool, not just for “This is like ‘new math’ in the 1960s,” editors to reach readers (and for advertisSouthard said. “If you grew up using the ers to ride along), but to provide data back, Internet in the ‘pontificate’ (listen to the Southard said. expert), push marketing era, you may not “We use e-mail newsletters to bring focus understand how to leverage the Internet in to specific content that we believe is valuthe ‘moderate’ (listen to me), pull marketable to subscribers — giving advertisers ing era.” a valuable place to deliver their message.

It’s both an opportunity and a vulnerabilWe also gather sets of stats that can help ity for publishers — and advertisers. a publisher keep the message relevant,” “Publishers are in the middle and need Southard said. to create a balance between what our audiContext and endorsement of the editorial ences are ready for and what our clients are brand is important, but even in our era of ready for,” Southard said. citizen journalists, Welcome is certain that What are other publishers doing that help the brand endorsement matters more than transition to the “new math” of our times? content alone.

As advertisers and marketers, how are you “Visitors look for a range of content pushing your publishing partners? § produced by journalists, peers, and thirdparties such as analysts and vendors.

Stephanie Miller is VP of market They are also overwhelmed with offers,” development for Return Path, the Welcome said. “The relationship and credglobal leader in e-mail deliveribility of the content provider with a key ability and performance. She is ingredient of editorial content is important a relentless customer advocate for engaging readers.” and a champion for quality inbox Content from readers also creates new experiences. An e-mail and soadvertising opportunities. Putman offers cial marketing expert, she helps microsites and forums to advertisers that B2B, publishing, and other marketers optimize reare focused on a specific topic and feature sponse and revenue from their online channels. She speaks and writes regularly for the industry and is user-generated content (from YouTube, very active in several direct marketing and anti-spam Flickr, and Twitter). organizations.

Advertisers are wise to demand more

SES § January 2010 {London preview}

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SearchEngineStrategies.com § SES

19

§ FOCUS: trends

S

Four New Signals in Search

By Eric Enge

it a ranking factor? Cutts indicated that earch engines constantly look Google could start using this within the for new signals they can use next year. to improve the quality of the results they provide to users.

Ultimately, user satisfaction is a Clicks critical component in retaining or increasIn an interview with Josh Cohen of ing their market share, especially over the Google News, he indicated that click data is long term. Let’s explore some of these used as a ranking signal in Google News. In new potential signals and the way search rough terms, the way that this would work engines evaluate and make decisions to use is that Google knows what a normal distria new signal. bution of clicks will be across the results.

Back in the days of AltaVista, search Data leaked by AOL in 2006 suggested engines were keyword-centric. These were that the first result would get 42 percent of the days when spammers loaded meta tags the clicks, the second would get 12 percent, with a large number the third would get of keywords, and also Google may make page load 9 percent, the fourth used invisible text to result received 6 jack up the perceived time a ranking factor because percent of the clicks, pages that load quickly relevance and value of and so forth. But, if a search page. improve the user experience. one particular result Google drove the gets 10 percent in the next generation with fourth position instead its link-centric algorithm. However, this of something closer to 6 percent, this could algorithm was also attacked and manipube a sign that the fourth result needs to lated by spammers. As Google tuned its move up in the SERP. link-based algorithm, however, they were Cohen also indicated that Google News still able to keep the impact of spam much doesn’t use links as a ranking factor. But if lower than it was in the keyword-centric click data works in the Google News envidays of search. ronment, it isn’t a stretch to imagine that it All the search engines rely heavily on would be helpful in Web search as well. links today, and these will remain critically important for the future. However, Web References the complexity of the link algorithms in It’s well known that Google’s local search use today far exceeds that of the original results factor in web references as a rankPageRank paper by Larry Page and Sergey ing factor. A web reference is a mention of Brin. a business that isn’t implemented as a link.

Spammers still have an impact on search Web references count as votes in a results. The search engines want to continue manner similar to the way links are used. As to reduce that impact as much as possible. with click data, it isn’t a stretch that these To aid in this, they continue to evaluate new could start to have some weight in search potential signals that can improve search results. quality while making life harder for spamClosely related to this is the treatment of mers. When good ideas are found, they are nofollowed links. Just because a link has implemented. the nofollow attribute doesn’t mean that it

Page Load Time

Google engineer Matt Cutts discussed this factor at Pubcon in November. Cutts indicated that there is a strong movement within Google to make page load time a ranking factor because pages that load quickly improve the user experience.

Because that is the case, why not make

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counts for absolutely nothing. Certainly, nofollow links in blog and forum comments will count for nothing. Nofollowed links that are implemented in something that looks like an ad will likewise pass no link juice.

However, other sites implement nofollow policies on all external links, such as many U.S. government sites. These sites

SES § January 2010 {London preview}

are trying to identify resources that they consider valuable, even though they nofollow the links. The search engines could choose to associate some value with these links anyway. Remember, the goal is search quality.

Social Media

Facebook and Twitter are all the rage these days, and there are a lot of potential signals available from these sites. These can be treated as a type of web reference by the search engines.

What makes them interesting is the “freshness” of the signal. A surge of discussion on Twitter about some world event could indicate that the topic of the discussion is a hot story. The real-time responsiveness of these sites can provide a strong signal.

Summary

How and when search engines will use these signals isn’t clear. Of course, the search engines will never spell it out for us.

An important goal for them is to reduce the impact of spam, and a lack of clarity about how they use the signals available to them helps their cause. Also, just because we can identify and talk about a potential signal doesn’t mean it will be useful.

Search engines have to look at and evaluate its impact on the results. Certain types of signals are “noisy,” meaning that they provide incomplete, inaccurate, or biased signals. For example, a website that is primarily used by one segment of the population (e.g., teenage girls) may have a lot of usage and present many signals that don’t work well for retired people.

One key takeaway is the engines’ focus on user satisfaction. If you create a website that is useful to users, it’s likely your site will emit many signals that tell the search engines that your site is a good result for users. § Eric Enge is the president of Stone Temple Consulting, an SEO consultancy outside of Boston.

Eric is also co-founder of Moving Traffic Inc., the publisher of City Town Info and Custom Search Guide.

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SearchEngineStrategies.com § SES

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pathways

How Search Influences Brand Communications Planning

E

By Amanda Davie relates to the language of the web pages with which very year in search, a few buzzwords they choose to engage. emerge, but few brands or marketers In a departure from traditional search research, we know how to put the nuances into practook a qualitative approach by inviting a sample of tice. Among the aspirational topics of Internet users of varying levels of online proficiency 2009 were semantic search and the role and with different demographics (age, gender, and of search in brand communications — though skeptics profession) to take part in a two-stage study. would argue that the latter has been an attempt to get First, we asked the participants to consider an our mitts on the big brand budgets. online information need (for the purposes of the Beyond ensuring that brands have the correct represtudy, we selected a common personal finance product sentation (coverage and message) in search, strategic scenario), and to articulate how they might go about brand communications planning tactics have, to date, searching for it, and what criteria would be important been limited. And when it comes to fully understandto them in their selection process. We asked them to ing the psychology and the semantics of the online consider what keywords — or searcher, as an industry, we’ve language — they would use barely scratched the surface The language of intent when conducting this imaginary with our keyword analysis does not equal search journey. methodologies. search language.

In the second stage, we asked So where do we go from here? the same participants to carry How do we stop talking and start out the task online, and we recorded what language doing? How do we combine communications planning they used, how they responded to messaging within with search? And how do we move beyond keywords the search results, and also how they responded to and into the psychology of search, to understand the the content upon arrival at the branded destination intent behind search behaviour and search language? website. We then compared the language across both In 2009, my company, Reform, collaborated with the imaginary and the actual stages, and we analysed the U.K.’s leading digital content strategy consulthe influence of the journey itself to identify distinct tancy, CDA, to conduct a research study on the language phases or pathways. linguistic journeys of online search. For example, One of the key findings of the “online language what motivations lie behind search queries, and pathways” research study was that the language people how does this language adapt during the “search and used to describe what they wanted to find online before find” process, from the initial search to the destinathey started their search — the language of intent tion website? We wanted to understand how people — was not the same as the terms and phrases they articulate their intentions and motivations when they used when they actually started to search — search start their online searches, and how search behaviour

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SES § January 2010 {London preview}

FOCUS: linguistics & branding §

A

An Integrated Planning Approach

How marketers can model the integration of search language into a brand communications strategy.

A

Language Pathways

How brands can harness language filtering.

language. The study found that a language filtering process takes place as searchers refine their online language to eliminate irrelevant search results, and that, broadly speaking, the language of intent can be described as natural and human, while search language becomes more mechanical and staccato.

The research revealed that the language people used to deepen and refine their searches was often influenced by the brand language that they saw within the search results listing.

The study also found that the language that people appeared to respond most favorably to when they actually engaged with a website was that which most closely resembled their original language of intent. Hence, brand communications planners and branded content strategists must incorporate search linguistics analysis into their audience planning efforts.

Finally, the study highlighted the need for content publishers to work hand-in-hand with search marketers, so that brands can start to use content more intelligently to attract customers. As we search marketers know, SEO cannot be a web development afterthought.

This is but one example of how the search industry can move past the “aspirational” and begin to take practical planning steps to ensure that brands are delivering the information and the brand experience that online searchers are looking for.

My search wish for 2010 is that search marketing strategists use this kind of rich behavioral insight to refine their linguistic analysis output, so as to encourage more customers and higher conversion rates. To this end, I hereby call for a ban on the phrase “keyword analysis” in 2010. § Amanda is founder and director of Reform, an independent search consultancy that helps businesses to improve their search marketing strategy, operation, and commercial models. Amanda has nearly 15 years’ experience in the digital media industry and is one of Europe’s leading search marketing specialists. Prior to launching Reform Digital in 2009, she spent eight years running search operations within market leading digital agencies i-level and Outrider (WPP). Amanda is passionate about the standardisation and quality of search business delivery and innovation, and works closely with brands and business leaders to ensure that search is an integral part of the broader communications and commercial planning piece.

SearchEngineStrategies.com § SES

23

§ FOCUS: the changing economy

I

Frugal Is the New Black

By Joshua Palau

change in consumer behavior that may t seems as though you can’t pick impact how companies market to us. up a magazine or listen to a news report without someone chiming in on how there are “signs of hope” for Keeping Your Base the economy. And these economic Sometimes people look at search as only conversations seemingly break into two an acquisition model. In this day of comparcamps. ison shopping and consumer fragmentation, The first believes we’ll recapture the prehowever, there is money in keeping your recession glory days, where both consumbase of existing customers ers and advertisers will return to spending.

Instead of focusing on the acquisition People will go back to buying houses, cars, side of your business, let’s spend some time and clothes without any concern. Those in keeping the people who are here. Accordthis camp point to history. We’re Ameriing to an April 2009 BancVue survey, 67 cans; we have short percent of Americans memories. Only one would be willing to When the economy month after 9/11, travswitch banks in the returns, don’t assume elers were complainnext year. Isn’t this a ing about the lack of that what worked before big deal for banks? curbside check-in and There are plenty will continue to work. the need to remove of “switch” trigger their shoes when words, such as “best” going through airport security. and “compare,” which should signal to a The other camp (which is where I side) brand that customers are looking. Target believes that this economic period has those folks with comparison tools and changed us as a society. This wasn’t the content, so they know you have the best dot-com bubble of the ’90s, affecting only checking interest rates or the most “no fee” one segment while others thrived. This ATMs. You’ll gain some new customers recession impacted everyone. There is no and also keep a portion of that 67 percent. discrimination by age, industry, or profession. We’ve had sequential growth in the Changing the Message unemployment rate, and Americans who When the economy returns, you can’t had planned to retire within 10 years are assume that what worked before will remaining in the work force. continue to work. If we’ve truly changed,

The New Normal

This recession has caused us to hit the reset button. A large majority will change their behavior. Even those of us not tremendously affected are still thinking twice about taking on expenses.

In my house, Santa will bring fewer items this year — not because my kids made outlandish requests, but because my wife and I feel the money we’ve spent in the past would be best kept in our reserves.

Consumers believe that the economic changes are the “new normal” and not just a short-term blip.

Those of us in the advertising space have been waiting for the consumers to return so that our clients will start spending again.

But the recession has caused a sociological

24

search queries will show this.

We’ve already seen that people are more frequently inputting search terms with keyword qualifiers like “value,” “low cost,” and “deals.” Search marketers need to focus their strategies around these consumer needs.

Even if your brand hasn’t always been known as affordable, now is the time to play up money-saving items. As much as BMW wants to push the 5 Series, it needs to acknowledge that people may be looking for more affordable or hybrid vehicles.

Again, offer incentives to current customers while reaching out to new customers.

Yes, building out copy and landing pages that speak to new trigger words is different, but businesses need to adapt to survive.

SES § January 2010 {London preview}

Bundled Services

We must find ways to sell existing customers more, while pulling in new customers through incentives. Targeting messages around bundled services or a “third night free” or “10 percent off oil changes” can all reach this new, more frugal consumer. Customers are looking for ways to stretch their dollars (just like marketers are), and playing to that will be more effective than previous triggers such as luxury or convenience.

As a good marketer, you’ve also (hopefully) spent a good deal of time learning about your customers. Depending on your industry, you should have the opportunity to look at frugal consumers and target them with the other services you offer. Again, this keeps them in your network and increases the chances that they will remain loyal over time.

Embracing the New Landscape

Despite the far-reaching effects of the recession, people’s needs remain constant.

Consumers still need cars, clothing, and health care. People still desire entertainment and information.

What has changed is their motivators.

People may no longer want your cars, your clothing, or your health care options.

People may choose a short camping trip over an all-inclusive getaway — or look for career retention advice instead of how to get rich quick.

Service the needs and desires of your target audience, and appeal to their motivations. You may need to adjust your messaging and your offerings, but by staying attune to the needs of your customer base, you can ensure your success in any climate. § Joshua Palau is VP of search for Razorfish. He helps clients to understand how search fits into the overall marketing plan. He writes a SearchEngineWatch. com column and serves as the editor of Razorfish’s weekly newsletter, Search Marketing Trends. Joshua began his digital career in 1996. Prior to joining Razorfish, he worked for About.com, Hearst Magazines, and Johnson & Johnson.

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Communicating Search Success Juggling the expectations of senior managers from different departments isn’t easy. To grow your practice, see search as others see it. By Jim Sterne

Y

ou certainly have your hands full.

You track enough keywords to fill five dictionaries. You juggle budgets that fluctuate more than a health care bill in Congress. You drive people to landing pages designed either by an agency addicted to winning awards, a freelancer with only a passing knowledge of the English language, or a multivariate testing tool programmed to act like an infinite number of monkeys.

You try to please marketing directors, product managers, public relations supervisors, advertising executives, new media marketing mavens, and the CMO. You do your best to shut down your laptop before midnight.

Amidst all the demands, the deadlines, and the dread that you’ll never have enough tools or

26

SES § January 2010 {London preview}

FOCUS: the bottom line § are leads worthy of the sales representatives’ Want to learn more? efforts and how much each one of them costs.

Jim will be one of three keynote speakers at this year’s SES London conference. For more Customer-centric types are somewhat information, visit interested in the number of contact center calls SearchEngineStrategies.com/london you helped avoid, but they will be delighted that your work has improved customer satisfaction. Yes, that’s right. You are expected help your fellow diner make his or her boss to do such a great job at search optimisa- look good, you will make a friend for life, tion that prospective customers routinely say make the company successful, and make information on the company website is easy yourself indispensable. That’s golden, but to find. What’s that? You didn’t know you it’s not the end of the story. were in the satisfaction business? You didn’t think that measuring customer satisfaction Deliver the Goods But the more you explain what you do to was important? It is if you want to commuPeople consume information in a variety those around you, the more you talk about nicate in terms that senior managers already of ways. Some read spreadsheets at a glance. click ratios and differunderstand.

Some can look at a chart and intuitively ential keyword traffic If you live in an grasp the relationships between elements The business objectives generation, the less that matter are connected e-commerce world, and spot dangers and opportunities by shape time senior executives your task is decep- and color. Others absorb information best by directly to profits. seem to have for you, tively simple: Deliver reading a couple of paragraphs. the less attention you the sales. Ring that Until you know how each of your interget for your team, and the harder it is to get cash register. Bring in the orders. But the nal customers consumes information — more resources. people managing the shopping cart are well and their supervisors — your best bet is to The most important metric of all routinely aware of tweaking the persuasion process deliver reports that include a: gets pushed to the bottom of your priority and segmenting it by lead source right down spreadsheet stack: business outcomes. The key is to start to the keyword level. That means they expect graph or chart looking at things from the other end of the you to be well aware as well. They want to couple of paragraphs of insight spectrum. It’s time to start at the ultimate know what the searcher searched for, what list of three or four bullet points business objective and work top-down. he clicked on, how long he stayed, whether he came back, and more. Yes, you are going Make sure that each of these elements only to have to get to know web analytics better.

Start at the Top and Tailor Your delves down into a few issues. Overwhelm Oh, and don’t forget about those image Message executives with data, and they will take you The business objectives that matter are managing, media manipulating, spin doctoroff their Christmas connected directly to profits. Clearly, the ing people in the PR Don’t give executives data. card list. Don’t give search-specific metrics listed earlier are department. They want them data — give to hear how their press Give them analysis. profit divers, but they’re exclusively the them an analysis. language of the search professional. And as a releases are impacting That “insights” metric, profits are crucial, central, and funda- site traffic. They want item above is the kicker.

They want your mental to business — but are not directly to talk view-through just like the advertising opinion. The rest of the report is there to managers.

Everybody wants credit. controllable. back up your perspective. You, after all, are When talking with, working with, or the expert. Tell them what the numbers are simply reporting to senior managers, stick Find Out What They Need — by all means. But then be sure to tell them Your best defense is a strong offense. to the language they know. The secret to what the numbers mean and what they might success here is that the language they know Don’t wait for them to beat down your door do about it. is different from company to company and with specific requests. Instead, expect them Give them an opinion, a frame of reference, to show up, unannounced, at the most inconfrom executive to executive. and some options, and they will reward you Those in advertising or with a Madison venient times and ask the most off-the-wall, with more tools and more people. Someday, Avenue background still want to talk about ill-considered, and senseless questions that you’ll amass enough to find yourself turning eyeballs. They want the raw numbers of need answers yesterday. So be proactive. off your laptop before dinner. Stranger things reach and frequency. They want to know if Take them to lunch. have been known to happen. § When you’ve got your colleagues or search is the best way to get the word out Jim Sterne is an international conto the masses or if they should push even clients in a relaxed, non-meeting, non-politsultant who focuses on measuring more dollars into television or fire up that ical environment, do not ask them what they the value of the web as a medium want.

Given the choice between A, B, or C, old direct mail machine. for creating and strengthening Sales-oriented individuals want to know they will, in all sincerity, tell you, “Yes, all of customer relationships. Sterne about the cost and quality of leads. You can them. Thank you.” has written eight books on InInstead, ask them what they are trying get a billion people to show up on a landternet marketing, produces the ing page because you have this minute’s to accomplish. Get them to talk about their eMetrics Marketing Optimization hot YouTube sensation. Good for you, but business goals, and then go for the gold: Ask Summit (www.emetrics.org), and is co-founder and so what? They want to know if any of them them how their boss is evaluated. If you can current chairman of the Web Analytics Association. people to really do your job, it’s understandable that you tend to focus on those things over which you have direct control: keywords searched key phrases searched search results position links clicked ads displayed ads clicked landing pages served landing pages seen landing page engagement

SearchEngineStrategies.com § SES

27

§ FOCUS: reputation management

R

Own the Top 10 Results for Your Brand ecently, I received a call from a that you’ll want as much unique content on prospect who works in the info- them, so they aren’t seen as duplicates of mercial space. They get plenty your other profiles. of traffic to their website, by Then, it’s helpful to get some links to your virtue of the promotion on profiles so that they have the necessary juice television, but they wanted to speak with me to actually rank for your company’s name. about conversion rate optimisation.

Some prefer to link their websites to their While I shared some thoughts on the profiles, asking their site visitors to “follow topic, and referred them to my friend Tim us” or “join us” on certain social networks.

Ash who literally wrote the book on landing page optimisation, these people might still Press Releases Writing press releases for reputation want to consider search engine optimisation (SEO). However, this SEO effort would management means using the keywords have a different focus: owning the top 10 that you’re focused on within the title of the press release and the header, and including results for mentions of their brand.

For companies like this, people will mentions of the company name within the search the brand name to see if others are body copy of the press release itself. Then, spend the money on bashing the brand or product. Imagine how Only use a subdomain when some good distribution partners, such many conversions are you have enough content as MarketWire, lost because of any within a given topic/vertical BusinessWire, and bad press or blog posts of your business to support PRNewswire. That and reviews that exist. said, there are many Websites like Ripoff a website of its own. quality free PR distriReport make it too easy for anyone — including your compe- bution providers, such as PRlog, FreePresstition — to post something negative about Release, and PR.com. your company, and these pages tend to rank well.

Linking to Positive Mentions of The time and money you put into SEO Company seems well spent, right? For any company in Find some positive news on other websites any space, just owning as much SERP real and develop a linking plan. This will help estate as possible for mentions of their brand boost these from perhaps page two or three is a basic, fundamental element of controlof the search results to the first page. ling the public perception.

Here are a few methods you can employ Subdomains to own more of the top 10 results.

Your main website may be www.mycompanywebsite.com. And, because the search Social Media Profiles engines are primarily interested in delivering Social media profiles include things like a variety of results for searches for “mycoma company Facebook profile, LinkedIn pany,” they will most likely not include profile, Flickr, Twitter, Mixx, YouTube, more than the No. 1 ranking for searches for bx.businessweek.com, Digg, StumbleUpon, your company name. However, other official and FriendFeed. There you go — 10 profiles “mycompany” websites can also rank, but that each have the opportunity to rank within they must be different websites. the top 10 results.

With subdomains, the search engines will You can do different things to optimise see an official relationship with “mycomyour presence for each of these. At a minipany.com,” but because it’s a subdomain, mum, you should have the keywords that the search engines will grant a top 10 rankyou’re focused on (most likely the name ing for this, because it’s seen as a unique of your company) as the profile name and website. Again, include the keywords that the user ID. In many cases, when you set up you’re targeting within the title tag, but the the profile, the title tag includes the name or subdomain will piggyback off the value keyword you use, which will help the profile already established with the root domain page “rank” for the keyword (or company (the links/authority already achieved) and name). the subdomain will, in a short period of time, It’s helpful to fill out the profile with as earn a top 10 ranking for searches for your much information as you can, including a company name. unique bio or “about us” information. If you Walmart.com does this with a subdomain fill out several of these profiles, remember

28

SES § January 2010 {London preview}

By Mark Jackson

of its website established for sales of mp3s (mp3.walmart.com). Only use a subdomain when you have enough content within a given topic/vertical of your business to support a website of its own. This section of walmart.com has more than 6,300 pages indexed in Yahoo.

Building Other Official Websites

Perhaps your company is involved in charity work. Why not own have a website designed to speak to all of the positive things that you do within your community?

Walmart again shows us how they have tackled this by setting up www.walmartstores.com. This website is dedicated to giving visitors a look at the corporate side of their business, speaking to their charitable work, and other news and information.

Optimising all Official Websites

About a year ago, I did some reputation management work for a multi-level marketing company (you can imagine what the top 20 results looked like, as these companies tend to get bashed by all comers). They had many websites basically sitting on the sidelines not doing anything. They were live, but hadn’t been touched in years.

With just a little effort in optimising these to include the company’s name in the title tag and content, and getting a few good links to each of them, we were able to get a couple of them to pop into the top 10 results for searches for their name. It certainly doesn’t hurt if your company’s name is actually contained within the root of the domain (www.mycompanywebsitenews.com or something similar).

Summary

You can employ many methods to gain ownership of your brand and own the top 10 results. I’ve only listed a few here. By following these steps, you can ensure that you’re doing everything you can to protect one of your most valued assets — your brand. § Mark Jackson is president and CEO of Vizion Interactive, a search engine optimization company.

Previously, he worked at Lycos/ Wired Digital and AOL/Time Warner. A regular speaker at SES and Pubcon conferences, he earned a B.A. in journalism/advertising from The University of Texas at Arlington and spent several years in traditional marketing — radio, television, and print — before venturing into all things web.

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§ FOCUS: personalized search

The Demise of SEO Won’t Be Caused by Personalization By Chris Boggs

A

t the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago, a few people — including some panelists and many influential members of our industry — made it seem like personalization will mean the death of SEO. Aside from the obvious jabs from paid search extremists — whose model would predict growth as a result of less emphasis on organic search — others seemed to lean a little too far toward fear-mongering.

There were voices of reason as well.

During the “Search Industry Today” panel, SES board member Anne Kennedy eloquently stated: “(SEO) is evolving, not dead. What is dead is the rankings, yet over and over people talk about top 10 rankings.”

I couldn’t agree more.

In recent discussions with some of our leading clients, it seems the marketers who have accepted that ranking alone doesn’t equal SEO success are rapidly moving forward to define In the IT/Internet category, the importance “paypal” was the most searched of future organic term in the U.K., garnering 14.4 search metrics. percent in November.

Perhaps, finally, Source: The Nielsen Company broader personalA Learn more at ClickZ Stats. ization will really drive home what one commenter accurately lamented: “For SEOs, this creates additional confusion in explaining to our clients that the Google results they see in their browser are not necessarily what others see. But that already was an issue.” Marketers will at last focus on traffic.

14.4%

SEO Best Practices Still Required

To rank for non-branded keywords within search results, you need to have performed some sort of SEO, be lucky enough to not be in a competitive space, have an old domain with strong content, or a few other “ways

30

in.” Traffic comes from ranking for terms Deeper Consumer Insight is that are often searched.

Paramount to Success Although Google has a lot of information If you want to increase your chances of from power users, the majority of “partappearing within the personalized results time” searchers will take a while to get of your target audience, you need to get to results that have been drastically personalknow them better than ever before. You also ized. The rest of the results are then likely need to provide content for them, as well backfilled from the as the search engines, “regular” results (what The marketers who have which shows that you you optimise for) for accepted that ranking alone know them and what at least six months. they’re seeking.

According to doesn’t equal SEO success In the past, are defining future organic Google: “Previously, especially in the search metrics. we only offered e-commerce model, personalized search the primary goal of for signed-in users, SEO was to get people into the purchase and only when they had web history enabled cycle and move them toward conversion. on their Google accounts. What we’re doing For branding and awareness efforts, the goal today is expanding personalized search so is slightly different, but still requires the that we can provide it to signed-out users as same focus in order to drive qualified traffic well. This addition enables us to customize through organic search. search results for you based upon 180 days Not all websites have the type of content of search activity linked to an anonymous that provides the answer to problems people cookie in your browser.” are trying to solve through search engine How many searches does someone have use. In the past, this was often referred to as to perform over 180 days for the system to “finding the hidden keyword.” really begin changing results?

One excellent way to understand your This doesn’t even address users who regu- target market needs: Do deep dive segmenlarly clean their cookies. There is conflict- tation research and properly classify groups. ing information about how many web users You can also find plenty of hints within your disable cookies or regularly clean them. visitors’ keyword search behaviors, both Granted, many of those may not be disabling from search engine referrals and internal all cookies from their systems. (In related, search use. albeit old news, 99 percent of web users eat Lastly, primary research of personalized cookies.) results, especially using different varietI’m not sold on how many results will ies of keyword phrases, will lead us to be personalized for most users, even after better chances of driving qualified traffic to 180 days. Of course, we may never know. A websites — personalized search or not. § good test would be to develop some persoChris Boggs is a director of search nas and use proxies to study, but obviously engine optimization at Rosetta. this will come out after some time.

Formerly with Brulant, an interYou still need to rank in personalized active agency and application development shop acquired by search to drive traffic. Why not just focus on Rosetta in 2008, Chris has been traffic and its quality, along with improving living and working in the Clevethe user experience, and just forget about land area since 2007. He is also rankings?

SES § January 2010 {London preview}

associate editor of the SEW forums, and has served on the SEMPO board of directors since 2006.

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31

glossary advertising network: A service where ads are bought centrally through one company, and displayed on multiple websites that contract with that company for a share of revenue generated by ads served on their site. algorithm: The technology that a search engine uses to deliver results to a query. Search engines utilize several algorithms in tandem to deliver a page of search results or keyword-targeted search ads. anchor text: The clickable text part of a hyperlink. The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is about. click through rate (CTR): The rate (expressed in a percentage) at which users click on an ad.

This is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the total number of ad impressions. CTR is an important metric for Internet marketers to measure the performance of an ad campaign. content network: A group of websites that agree to show ads on their site, served by an ad network, in exchange for a share of the revenue generated by those ads. Examples include Google AdSense or the Yahoo Publisher Network. contextual advertising: Advertising that is targeted to a web page based on the page’s content, keywords, or category. Ads in most content networks are targeted contextually. cost per action (CPA): A form of advertising where payment is dependent upon an action that a user performs as a result of the ad. The action could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or asking for a follow-up call. An advertiser pays a set fee to the publisher based on the number of visitors who take action. Many affiliate programs use the CPA model. cost per click (CPC): Also called pay-per-click (PPC). A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC model. cost per thousand (CPM): An ad model that charges advertisers every time an ad is displayed to a user, whether the user clicks on the ad or not.

The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). Most display ads, such as banner ads, are sold by CPM. geo-targeting: Delivery of ads specific to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or won’t be shown based on the searcher’s location, enabling more localized and personalized results.

Googlebot: Google uses several user-agents to crawl and index content in the Google.com search engine. Googlebot describes all Google spiders. All Google bots begin with “Googlebot”;

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Below you will find commonly-used terms that every search marketer should know. Keep this list handy!

A

for example, Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for Google’s mobile index; Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for Google’s image index. inbound link: An inbound link is a hyperlink to a particular web page from an outside site, bringing traffic to that web page. Inbound links are an important element that most search engine algorithms use to measure the popularity of a web page. invisible web: A term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that isn’t indexed by search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth. keyword: A word or phrase entered into a search engine in an effort to get the search engine to return matching and relevant results. Many websites offer advertising targeted by keywords, so an ad will only show when a specific keyword is entered. link bait: Editorial content, often sensational in nature, posted on a web page and submitted to social media sites in hopes of building inbound links from other sites. Or, as Matt Cutts of Google says, “something interesting enough to catch people’s attention.” link building: The process of getting quality websites to link to your websites, in order to improve search engine rankings. Link building techniques can include buying links, reciprocal linking, or entering barter arrangements. meta tags: Information placed in the HTML header of a web page, providing information that is not visible to browsers, but can be used in varying degrees by search engines to index a page.

Common meta tags used in search engine marketing are title, description, and keyword tags. pay per click (PPC): See cost per click (CPC). quality score: A score assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad’s clickthrough rate, analyzing the relevance of the landing page, and considering other factors used to determine the quality of a site and reward those of higher quality with top placement and lower bid requirements. Some factors that make up a quality score are historical keyword performance, the quality of an ad’s landing page, and other undisclosed attributes. All of the major search engines now use some form of quality score in their search ad algorithm. return on investment (ROI): The amount of money an advertiser earns from their ads compared to the amount of money the advertiser spends on their ads. search advertising: Also called paid search. An advertiser bids for the chance to have their ad display when a user searches for a given keyword.

These are usually text ads, which are displayed

SES § January 2010 {London preview}

above or to the right of the algorithmic (organic) search results. Most search ads are sold by the PPC model, where the advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad or text link. search engine marketing (SEM): The process of building and marketing a site with the goal of improving its position in search engine results.

SEM includes both search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising, or paid search. search engine optimization (SEO): The process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. SEO includes technical tasks to make it easier for search engines to find and index a site for appropriate keywords, as well as marketing-focused tasks to make a site more appealing to users. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases. search engine results pages (SERPs): The page searchers see after they’ve entered their query into the search box. This page lists several web pages related to the searcher’s query, sorted by relevance. Increasingly, search engines are returning blended search results, which include images, videos, and results from specialty databases on their SERPs. social media: A category of sites based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, social bookmarking sites like Del. icio.us, social news sites like Digg or Reddit, and other sites that are centered on user interaction. spider: A search engine spider is a program that crawls the web, visiting web pages to collect information to add to or update a search engine’s index. The major search engines on the web all have such a program, which is also known as a “crawler” or a “bot.” title tag: An HTML meta tag with text describing a specific web page. The title tag should contain strategic keywords for the page, since many search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing pages. The title tag should also make sense to humans, since it is usually the text link to the page displayed in search engine results. universal search: Also known as blended, or federated search results, universal search pulls data from multiple databases to display on the same page. Results can include images, videos, and results from specialty databases like maps and local information, product information, or news stories. web 2.0: A term that refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services. These usually include tools that let people collaborate and share information online, such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies.

Online Marketing Summit 2010 San Diego, California: Feb. 22 - 25

Get out of the cold.

And into the know.

Collaborate, network, and learn online marketing best practices in sunny San Diego.

Laptop and sunglasses required. Surfboard and flip flops optional.

NEW! OMS 2010 will offer a special SES Search Marketing Day. It will feature the latest in paid and organic search case studies and best practices, presented by the top thought leaders of SES.

Why Attend The Online Marketing Summit?

Our Topics • Education First. No distracting exhibit floors or vendor sales pitches, and our speakers cover topics from Social Media to Search Engine Strategies.

• Social Media Marketing Integration Strategies

• 1-on-1 Labs. Get personalized consultations with experts on search, usability, analytics, and email.

• Search Engine Marketing and SEO Beyond the Basics

• Peer Matching & Networking. Connect with over 500 marketing peers at vertical industry round tables and “Job Title Connect” social events.

• Web Analytics and Measurement Tactics

• Certification & Training. Choose from several training workshops and courses offered by the Online Marketing Institute and the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative • Knowledgeable Speakers. Senior executives, best-selling authors, marketers and social media experts from Cisco, Disney, Eastman Kodak, Federated Media, Google, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, MTV, REI, Southwest Airlines, the Wharton School of Business and Yahoo!

• Integrated Marketing and Strategic Planning • Website Usability and Conversion Best Practices • Email Marketing • Online Advertising, Affiliate Marketing and eCommerce

Register now to save 25% with discount code SES25 www.onlinemarketingsummit.com