WebMama's Look at the Web

Strategy - Drugs, Milk, and Money: Three Ways to Do Social Media in Regulated Industries : MarketingProfs Article

2011-04-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

Life Sciences companies struggle with how to reach their potential influencers and customers without breaking the complex laws surrounding them. This article from MarketingProfs is worth the read. It uses the same language I do when speaking to my Life Sciences and other companies who are concerned with using social media for marketing and sales purposes.

Going to play in other people's sandboxes
Go To Where the Conversations Are! Join them and engage. Give them some honest answers and point to great places for your influencers to find material about your industry and category (not necessarily your product). Now influence your channel - the patients - by joining their conversations. Trust me, all of your potential clients are spending time online researching. Play in their sandbox of content and conversation.

Strategy - Drugs, Milk, and Money: Three Ways to Do Social Media in Regulated Industries : MarketingProfs Article

Bring Legal and Regulatory in at the beginning

Make "them" your best friend. As the lead counsel in a financial services company told me, "I hate being seen as 'Ms. No.' Bring me in early, and I will help find a solution that works for the customer and our company."

In fact, bring "them" into the critical meetings with Marketing, Sales, Communications, Technology, and Customer service—everyone in the same room. It will force a focus on solutions, not potholes.
Think content

Look at the content (including whitepapers, discussion guides, and videos) that is already published, circulated, and approved. Our experience suggests that half of the battle has already been won if you start with content and information that is already approved.

For example, a globally prominent hospital has mostly scientific content targeted at the medical community. But the title of one of its research reports is "The Cardiological Impact of Stress on the Female Executive." Now, if its marketers were to extract key parts and make it consumer-friendly, how appealing would that content be for millions of women worldwide, including those mommy bloggers?
Go where the conversations are

Take the content, the experts, and the tools, and adopt a "how do I add value to the conversation?" mindset. In our work with DMI and Hood, it was clear that a clinical view would not be differentiated. So we created a series of Web-based branded content around the concept of "Moovision," culminating in a "Gourmoo Cookoff"—a recipe contest judged by celebrity chefs and shared by foodie bloggers, and targeting several foodie communities.

The videos were voraciously consumed; more importantly, brand awareness jumped by double digits and two-thirds of the feedback had positive sentiment around keywords like "taste," nutrition," and "family health"—aligning with the core program objectives.

One Link - High Search Visibility Regained for VMware

2011-03-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

Yes, one link took VMware.com from obscurity to domination under one of the industry keywords it wants to own. Years back, VMware's content and web marketing team and my team at WebMama.com worked to develop relevant, valuable content to describe the world of virtual servers, desktops and computing. The goal was to dominate search results under terms like virtualize and virtualization; to help define a new category and own it. We ensured that the new section was well linked within the vmware.com world and the content was not just text but video, images, pdfs, etc.

Search visibility was instantly high.

Years Later...

Then, a few months ago, VMware was gone from Google search results under the keyword virtualization. Many 2-word phrases containing the word were still highly ranked but not the single word. There were no key indicators as to why this happened. [More proof that you should not rely on only Google organic results to provide all your visibility and website traffic.]

A few weeks ago, before the Google algo change, we selected one of VMware's recently acquired companies to use to regain the lost visibility. Springsource.com is a highly powerful site wrt to search. We added a link to the virtualization section in the footer of the home page of springsource.com. One link. One powerful site. Highly relevant.

Using Google Webmaster Tools (one of my favorite sources of information) we could see that vmware.com URLs gained impressions for the search term virtualization. The change took approx. 2 days after the link was established.

Related Keywords

Using Google Webmaster Tools we also discovered that Google likes to relate virtualization with words like virtualize and virtualizing. Does this mean that an increase in keyword density (relevant content of course) for the word virtualize would help virtualization's increase in search visibility? Is this a clue that paid search should be very, very careful about broad matching the word virtualization because you may end up with paid ad visibility variants that don't make sense for your business? Maybe?

Navigation Word Change Didn't Hurt

A week ago we decided to change the top navigation word from Virtualize to Virtualization. Not just for SEO but it didn't hurt. Here is today's result on my computer. Right into the page we wanted.

Thank you to VMware for authourizing this case study. It was first presented at emetrics San Francisco on March 16, 2011 on the B2B and Search Analytics panel with WebMama.com (Barbara Coll/me), John Forrester of VMware and Andreas Stenzel of TRUSTe.

Writers are the key to excellent search engine marketing. Of course, you know that.

2010-12-07T15:48:00.000-08:00

In the 90s I thought that PR people would be the rulers of search engine optimization and search results visibility because PR people understood that compelling distributed content generated related comments and analysis. Well, PR people didn't rule. For the last 10 years I have felt it was the writers of all aspects of basic, text-based content. And it continues to be those that can write for the web that rule the success/failure of search visibility projects/goals even if the content no longer resides just on the corporate website. Someone who can write a great description/caption for a video is a treasure indeed.

Copyblogger.com is one of the only 10 sites that are on my home page. Each of their articles/posts is easy to read, has a little humour and imminently scan-able by my impatient eye. The article below summarizes what they preach and practice.

http://www.copyblogger.com/scannable-content/

My major takeaway from the article - lots of white space is good.

No Surprise to Search Marketers - Emarketer says Content Marketing Is Critical in 2011

2010-12-01T10:19:00.000-08:00

In order to be highly visible in search results you need to have content. The content needs to be in places other than your corporate website. Having optimized content on your corporate website is just a baseline now for web marketing and SEO activities; a fundamental and required activity that every company should have executed by now. Having rich content of multiple different media elements is becoming required. A new name for the type of web elements, and how you use them, is emerging: "earned media". Finally a word for what search marketers have been preaching for years. And most importantly, all of this content needs to be searchable so all of it has to be optimized.

2011 Trends: Content Marketing Is Critical - eMarketer

But I want to make sure it is clear that encouraging user-generated content (a brief, fun presentation of mine on UGC) is still critical and participating in other people's "earned media" worlds is just as critical for high search visibility and brand reputation. User-generated content is respected by search engines and recognizes that it really is a consumer's (B2B purchaser/influencer) world. Clearly the search engines reward companies who play in other people's sandboxes.

Thanks Geoff for such an important review.

Google Instant Makes Google More Money and Challenges SEOs to Follow Basic Principles

2010-11-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

It is no surprise that Google Instant has increased the click-through rate on paid search ads. With the advent of the 6-8 suggested search phrases that appear as you type in the search box, paid ads are now prominently displayed in the center of the results screen. And have you noticed that you stop typing the whole phrase that you planned on typing and are selecting a search result that you didn't start out looking for?

In paid search results the 'fat middle' (thanks Amanda for that great term) is getting the clicks. Words like 'used ford' cost more than 'used ford truck 1963'. But are you stopping at 'used ford' or maybe 'used ford tr'. That ad may cost more than the long tail term (ie Google makes more money). So for those that have 100,000 keywords when 5,000 and a bunch a negates would do, this is a great opportunity to shrink your campaign and make it much more manageable. (Companies with inventory: sorry but you still need the long tail.)

Try doing this search: vmware do
You were planning on entering vmware documentation but what you saw first was vmware downloads. Would you continue typing in the work documentation or just select downloads to see what was available for free that day or what upgrades you may be missing?

Now look at the organic results - way down the page aren't they! And so the documentation people at VMware may be wondering why they aren't getting their normal clicks and downloads have increased? I cannot confirm this is happening but I can certainly guess.

If organic is way down the page - that is another reason why paid is getting more clicks. But it is also another reason why you need to have substantial cross-linking within your site. If searchers do choose to click a 'less accurate' result based on selecting the result that appeared half way through their search, then they may land on the 'wrong' page from your point of view. Make sure they can navigate easily to the right page; the related page. Of course, this also takes having a significant number of text-based words on web pages so that they engines figure out what pages are related to other pages. Google Instant really shows the value in implementing basic SEO principles on your site: substantial text-based content, internal linking outside of standard navigation, and a clear hierarchy of pages addressing single keywords, short keyphrases and long-tail.

While I find Google Instant very annoying, primarily because I type so quickly, it was a brilliant move on the part of Google to increase revenue and once again push organic results further down the page.

Subscriber, Fan or Follower: Who's Most Likely to Buy? - MarketingVOX

2010-09-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

Subscriber, Fan or Follower: Who's Most Likely to Buy? - MarketingVOX

Bottom line, it concludes, e-mail is the most likely to drive increased purchase intent among the largest number of online consumers. Facebook, by contrast, is the least effective channel to drive purchase behavior. That's because consumers generally become fans of a brand in real life before they become fans on Facebook - in other words, they're already purchasing from and endorsing their fanned brands. Finally, Twitter is the channel most likely to drive increased purchases and recommendations after a consumer chooses to become a follower.

I find this kind of analysis extremely helpful in informing me as to what to think about when evaluating different marketing channels. Take with a grain of salt since the people behind the report are primarily in the email business but their research seems to be right on target.

The report is available with an email address from ExactTarget.

Top Spenders / Month on Google - June Figures - Real Data!

2010-09-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

A leaked document on Google Adwords clients and their spend provides a real insight into what is working for companies wrt search marketing. The assumption, by us detail-oriented web marketers, is that these companies wouldn't spend this kind of money without knowing the return on investment was a profitable thing. Or would they?

Statistical analysis of web marketing spend is still in its infancy for most companies. Do they still give credit to search for closing every deal? Do they look at what it was that increased the search volume and how to increase it more? (the BP increase and reasons behind it are not recommended as a demand generation tactic). Are they even measuring keyword through to sale? And if they are doing this for branding are they looking at the buzz these spends created in other media? Lots of questions that I have not seen being answered at many large companies I talk with. When a student tells me they are interested in business and marketing, I recommend they learn about statistics, data and web marketing.

So of the top spenders mentioned in the leaked report University of Phoenix buys a lot of search ads (under Apollo group). I know that they are measuring to lead and most likely sale. That appears to be money well spent. Are the rest of the companies sure that search is the right vehicle. Could they uplift search volume on the highly converting keywords by increasing spending via facebook or banners on related sites? Did they do the usability work to ensure only qualified leads (ie not Mickey Mouse) are making it through the forms on the site?

Stats like this give us insight into the world of big spenders. I believe that more companies should be big spenders - but only if they are ready to play with a full integrated marketing strategy that can pull and push levers to see what increases conversion, search visibility and/or reputation.

Here are some excepts from the AdAge report:

----------

June 2010 Google Adwords Spending

*Company*	Adwords Spend in $ USD Millions
AT & T Mobility	8.08
Apollo Group	6.67
Expedia	5.95
Amazon	5.85
Ebay	4.25
BP	3.59
Hotels.com	3.30
JC Penney	2.46
Living Social	2.29
ADT Security	2.19
GM	< 0.500
Walt Disney	< 0.500
Eastman Kodak	< 0.500
BMW	< 0.500
Apple	< 1.000
Intel	< 1.000
Yellow Pages	1.200

Adage also state:-

While the search-spending document obtained by Advertising Age is not a complete list of advertisers on Google, the accuracy of its data was verified by multiple sources with direct knowledge of spending levels.

Our review of $574 million of Google's U.S. billings over the first half of 2010 shows plenty of global corporations spending millions each month on search advertising, as well as a great many huge corporations that spend very little, if anything, at all on search.

As a snapshot, it's also remarkable that Google's biggest advertisers, big monthly spenders like AT&T, Apollo Group and Amazon, individually accounted for less than 1% of Google's U.S. revenue in June. The top 10 advertisers in the document collectively accounted for just 5% of Google's U.S. revenue during the month.

The accounts listed are distributed broadly in terms of spending levels. The document shows 47 advertisers that spent more than $1 million in June; 71 that spent between $500,000 and $1 million, and 357 that spent between $100,000 and $500,000. These are direct-billed customers only, not the many thousands of small self-serve advertisers that make up Google's long tail, a key component in its $23 billion global annual revenue.

Want to know more about web marketing analysis? Attend emetrics in Washington and hear me speak on search marketing, but more importantly, hear some statistical experts talk about tools, conversion, analysis and how to make useful recommendations.

Google's New Treatment of Organic Results - Good for Searchers, Bad for Subdomains

2010-08-23T17:16:00.000-07:00

Google has made public its new organic results that serve up more than 2 results from a single domain on the first page of search results. While in the past there has always been an opportunity to have 2 results from a main www domain, plus 8 little sitelinks, now there will be many more www results from any major brand site. Google has decided that for keywords where it is clear that searchers are looking for deep information from the same authority site, then Google will display multiple pages.

You can see this well in the search for symantec

On my computer I see:

6 www.symantec.com
8 little sitelinks
news results above the fold
2 security.symantec.com
the ubiquitous wikipedia
1 from www.mynortonaccount.com

This is good and bad news for brands. It means that the pages people most often click-on through search results will be shown to them directly so you make the searchers happy. The bad news is that subdomains that used to be highly visible under a brand search will not be as visible.

I expect Google to refine this over time so things will be in flux for quite some time. The need to have highly relevant title tags and meta description tags, as well as text-based content, that clearly define the page continues to be very important.

Jim Sterne Reposts from a 2003 Article - Analytics is about Analyzing Not Just Publishing Data

2010-07-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

Let There Be Light
By Jim Sterne in 2003

In the beginning, the IT department created the Web server and the server log. And darkness was upon the face of the marketing department. And the spirit of the home page moved upon the face of the marketing department and the marketing department said, “Let there be reports.” And the marketing department saw the reports. And it was good.

And the marketing department divided the hits from the visits and called the hits pageviews, and the visits they called sessions. And the marketing department said, “Let the reports be gathered together unto one place, and let the PowerPoint graphs appear that we may know the full power and glory of our Web site.” And it was so.

Or so they thought.

For over a span of time the statistics poured forth, the results were displayed, and kaleidoscopic charts were abundant, resplendent in their brilliance and reassuring in that all lines proceeded in their inexorable elevation up and to the right. And the marketing department dwelt in peaceful indolence.
Improvements to the Web site came there none.

For lo, the reports and graphs were generated not from lights in the firmament yielding a font of wisdom, but from the rote recording of Web server transactions which conveyed neither insight nor enlightenment.

And Senior Executives came among them and asked what Knowledge they had gleaned from their reports, charts and graphs. And after a prolonged silence the eyes of the marketing department were opened. and there was heard a wailing and the gnashing of teeth. And they knew that they were naked; and they sewed inkjet printouts together and made themselves coverings.

The marketing department wandered from the dessert of ignorance to the wellspring of IT asking, “Hi-tech, hi-tech, why hast thou forsaken me?” And the IT department said, “Behold, I have given you every datum bearing information which is upon the face of all the Web site, and every report, from the which is the fruit of a server yielding logs.” And the IT department rested.

And the marketing department went unto a Sage and said, “How can the graphs bring forth ideas, the ideas yielding actions, and the actions yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the site of the Web?” For thus is manner of speaking of the tribe of marketing.

And the Sage said, “Let not the issue of the IT department be your guide, but resolve to know your own aspirations. Strive to know your own purpose, and do not prostrate yourselves at the printouts of misguided prophets. To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven,” sayeth the Sage, “and you must know your purpose if you are to adjudicate which data will best divulge unto you whether you have done what is right and good in the site of the Web.”

And the Sage said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Web, and subdue it. And have dominion over the visitors to the site, and over the relationships of thine customers, and over every living thing that clicketh upon your site.

The marketing department returned to their cubicles refreshed with erudition. And they ascertained the identity of calibrations that would lead them not into frustration, but deliver them from Advil®. And the IT department was enthralled that the marketing tribe had become decisive and purposeful and thus were they able to forge new reports embodying valuable wisdom as a veritable tree of knowledge.

And so it came to pass that in the first month in the second year of the web analytics endeavor, on the first day of the month, in the second hour of the third teleconference of that day, that the new reports were brought forth. And the new reports revealed the way and the light to the increase of their profits through the betterment of their Web site for all customers for ever and ever.

Amen.

Originally published on Marketing Profs February 11, 2003
Jim Sterne's Blog
Follow Jim Sterne on Twitter (which is where I found out that he had republished this).

Matt Cutts of Google Articulates So Well! Why Black Hat Fails.

2010-07-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

Search Keywords, SEO and The Sales Funnel - Barbara webmama Coll - SMX Advanced 2010

2010-06-14T12:23:00.001-07:00

At SMX Advanced last week I was lucky enough to sneak into a Paid Search panel and talk about content optimization for keywords in the searchers quest for information about products. I talked about VMware and Zappos success in reaching searchers regardless of where they are in the funnel. Of having content in all web elements (web pages, video descriptions, linked in company descriptions, tweets, etc, etc) that represent broad and specific keyphrases, and talked about it not being all about selling! Establishing yourself as a category or industry leader is not about direct response and the SEO of the site needs to reflect that. A fun discussion and my presentation follows.

Search Keywords, SEO and The Sales Funnel - Barbara webmama Coll - SMX Advanced 2010

View more presentations from WebMama.com Inc..

Google Increases Transparency of Ad Content Network - Higher Conversions Now Possible

2010-05-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

Google has made a move to transparency today for advertisers that would like to use the content network but were afraid or unsure of where their ads were going. They have created a list of the top 1000 sites on the web based on their toolbar-gathered data and released it on for their Ad Planner tool that is part of the DoubleClick world. This list, in my opinion, is a smart method of getting more advertisers to use the content network - and thus spend more money. It will be smart money spent if advertisers and their agencies continue to track conversions but recognize that regardless of being able to know big the sites specifically based on that conversions will (ok, may) be lower than for pure search.

From SEL: The Google published list ranks sites based on category, unique visitors, reach and page views. Not only has Google come out with this list, but they are also allowing advertisers to specify that they only want their content ads to show on these top 1,000 sites.

Thought I would snapshot sites from 10 to 25. I suggest looking at 300-500 for some real nuggets where others may not venture.

Customer Support and Search Visibility - a VMware case study.

2010-05-11T17:20:00.001-07:00

VMware needs to effectively support its customer base. If the customers don't find the relevant support information served up to them in Google/external search results, then they may phone VMware or file service requests that were not necessary. Search engine marketing and seo tactics can help influence what web content or web communication vehicle will be displayed.

VMware is undertaking this sophisticated SEM project with WebMama.com inc. and this case study was presented at emetrics San Jose.

Customer Support and Search Visibility

View more presentations from WebMama.com Inc..

Google - Changing Up the Search Results Options in Germany

2010-04-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

I may have missed the announcement but searching around the web looking for clients' web visibility I was surprised to see a left hand navigation on the results page on www.google.de. Ok, not terribly surprised. Since Google put the 'show options' button on the results page it was clear that they were going to move those selections into the main stream. They have done it in Germany. Also, at www.google.de's home page, no longer can you select - pages from Germany only. That can be done once you are looking at the first set of results. Bing placed the more specific, timely, search options on the first page of results quite some time ago.

This provides the searcher with a quick way to see 'realer' time results and narrow down their search. Notice that Google also, as it has with blended search for awhile, narrows the main categories (Alles, Blogs, News, and then Mehr); helping you decide which categories of media has some useful content based on your search. Searches on superstars will bring up Bilder and Videos as options.

And here is a shot of the home page. Notice no radio buttons. Let me know when you saw this change. I predict a few weeks before it shows up in .co.uk and a few more weeks/months before it shows up in the .com results themselves.

Remember to use Google webmaster tools to 'tell' Google where your German site/content is.

Search Engine Marketing & SEO - 2010 - User-Generated Content

2010-04-13T11:28:00.001-07:00

At SMX Toronto I was asked to talk about Search Visibility and SEO in 2010. I choose to cover User-Generated Content and how the word of Rants, Reviews and Raving can increase your visibility in search results. Bottom line - engage with your community and ASK for reviews. And watch the stars that appear in search results for clues as to where you should start asking or engaging. Search Engine Marketing includes monitoring and encouraging user-generated content, especially for small businesses.

Search Engine Marketing & SEO - 2010 - User-Generated Content

View more presentations from WebMama.com Inc..

Nielsen Reports February 2010 U.S. Search Rankings | Nielsen Wire

2010-03-16T18:31:00.001-07:00

Nielsen Reports February 2010 U.S. Search Rankings | Nielsen Wire

Posted using ShareThis

Don't Let User-Generated Reviews Ruin You - ClickZ

2010-03-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

Don't Let User-Generated Reviews Ruin You - ClickZ

I loved this article from Sage Lewis (who always has sage advice). He is frustrated that people don't read their reviews; they sit back and let the negative ones go unanswered. I would like to add that my frustration is not only that they don't read the review but also that they don't work to replace those reviews in search results with other positive reviewers. It is usually just a matter of asking your happy clients. I will certainly be using Sage's example in my next talk on User-Generated Content.

User-Generated Content (UGC) and Search Visibility

2010-02-25T12:59:00.001-08:00

Search Engine Marketing strategies should view User-Generated Content as a jewel of a tactic. Highly visible to search engines, communities, rating/review sites, blog comments, status updates are all fresh content, sometimes real-time, and the search engines are indexing and prominently displaying. This is a presentation from BrightTalk that I gave a this week.

A full audio with powerpoint over this presentation can be found at BrightTalk.

User-Generated Content (UGC) and Search Visibility

View more presentations from WebMama.com Inc..

User-generated content & search visibility: live, online presentation by Barbara Coll - February 24 - 9am

2010-02-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I am presenting online a scrumptious talk on User Generated Content and Search Visibility. This is a powerful to increase a company's domination of a brand or category search result, whether it be in instant or traditional search. Come just me.

To attend the talk sign up with BrightTalk.

Talk Description:

Engagement with potential and current customers is a prevailing theme of last decade. This decade we take it a step forward; engagement needs to be in public, open to all comments and not necessarily in the web location of our choice. From the search point-of-view, engagement usually means words and words are still the food of search engines. Search engines favor user-generated content and are increasing giving UGC high visibility in search results – especially real-time results. Join me in talking about UGC and its implications on search visibility.

STILL Reading Code to do My Job as a Marketer!

2010-01-27T08:45:00.000-08:00

When Dana Todd asked me what I am still doing today that I can't believe I am still doing, I said 'reading code'. I thought, as web marketing and search marketing matured that I would not have to look under the hood of a web page anymore. Not so. Yesterday was a banner day in just that, reading code, to get my job done. My job, FYI, is to generate high-quality leads via search marketing campaigns for clients who like to feed their sales reps.

First it was Wordpress. It is a wonderful product for blogs and sites. It has themes that take most of the pain of 'coding' away but there are many times I have to click the little button that lets me 'see' the inner workings of the template or a post. I do some work with Vive and helped them establish a blog (search friendly of course). We wanted to embed a video on the blog. We had to include the code provided by YouTube to do this. Code.

Next it was Google Adwords tracking. We got it all set up so that a new client's conversion pages were tagged with the Google tracking pixel by asking a webmaster to update their site code (appropriate, right?). Didn't work, so into the code I went. I found that the code had been placed inside a table tag - ooops - that didn't work. I took a snippet of the code, placed the Google provided code in the right place and sent it off to the web developer. Code.

And finally it was trying to figure out why a certain set of words were being displayed in the brand search result for a client, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. The little sitelink said 'Broadway Tickets Service Best...'. Since this is one of their big promotions, it isn't a disaster from a search point of view that it shows up but I couldn't for the life of me find it in the content of the site. So into the code I went to look at the part of the site only coders and search engines see. It was an image alt tag and used very prevalently on the site. Code.

Ack - Blogger didn't make it obvious how to put a link into an image for this blog post. I have been using Blogger since 2003 for the WebMama Blog but they changed the interface. I had to click on the 'edit html' tab and find the a href, etc, etc.

People ask me what skills they need to be a strategist in internet marketing. I always tell them to learn to read html. I love the faces on the MBA grads when I tell them that. They will learn.

Passion for SEM Secures Place on Top 100 Marketers List

2010-01-11T14:53:00.000-08:00

Nice to get a mention (at #19) on the INVESP’s list of top 100 marketers 2009. Having worked in the marketing world for over 20 years, I’m still passionate about lead gen and direct response search marketing, especially at a time when so many folk think SEO is dead. I disagree, as do my clients; SEO is absolutely still alive and well, as an integral part of any comprehensive and smart web marketing strategy.

Real-Time Content and the Enterprise - A report on the players

2010-01-11T12:38:00.000-08:00

Sameer Patel released today a report on The Real-Time Enterprise. In the report he discusses the role of interacting real-time with customers as a vehicle for product definition, support, and employee communications. He looks at the companies with opportunities in this area.

This area is something all search engine marketing companies and web marketing managers should be excited about. All external, real-time interactions add content to the web for a company - content that is being eaten up gladly by Google and Bing, and shared on twitter and facebook.

The report is only available with a subscription to Gigaom service for $79/year. You can follow Sameer on twitter. A quote from the report to whet your appetite:

In 2010, expect to see the concept of the real time enterprise ascend the hype cycle. Enterprises will begin to analyze how real-time access can help discrete business processes such as customer interaction, sales intelligence, lead generation, partner interaction and employee project collaboration, and they’ll begin to evaluate the switching cost of moving their systems and data to platforms that have real-time as part of their solution sets. Customers and prospects are interacting with each other and with enterprises in real-time making it imperative for the enterprise to structure its own internal and external processes to respond to customers as fast as possible. Expect this shift to be one of the primary drivers for considering a real-time architecture.

Read more: http://pro.gigaom.com/2010/01/report-the-real-time-enterprise/#ixzz0cL4peaO1

Internet Usage Worldwide - stats by Intac

2010-01-08T11:37:00.000-08:00

Thank you to Intac for this excellent map of internet usage today worldwide. Original image.

MarketingProfs Asked for my B2B Resolution

2009-12-30T12:48:00.000-08:00

MarketingProfs didn't want to know if I wanted to play more soccer, lose weight or visit with more friends - while those are all true - they wanted to know my new years resolution for the B2B space. My reply:

Thanks for asking Ann.

Barb

Response (again) to 'is SEO dead'. No obviously.

2009-12-16T15:33:00.000-08:00

In response to the age old comment - SEO is Dead - Danny Sullivan wrote back again to say NO. I posted this comment in response:

webmama: Let's call it search visibility with the theory that the more visible you are for relevant, converting words the more quality traffic, the more leads, the more sales. Basic right. Ok, now expand it to Real-time search. If you aren't visible in real-time search then you aren't getting traffic. If you aren't paying attention you may never be visible. If your attention doesn't include a thought to 'how' to show up in real-time search, or video search, or news search, twitter search, facebook search or shopping search, then you aren't making the most of the opportunity; you aren't visible enough. Making the most of the opportunity is what SEO is all about. Certainly not dead. It has an expanded role.

I even gave a presentation entitled 'Is SEO Dead' at a conference in Vancouver this Fall.

More and more startups are figuring out that search visibility is critical to their success. Dead? You tell me.

Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO - eMarketer

2009-12-14T10:47:00.000-08:00

I have great respect for Geoff Ramsey's opinions. I think the most important one is #5 "Social marketing works best when it’s earned, not paid for." That doesn't necessarily mean that you don't pay a web visibility expert or consulting firm (that would be WebMama.com) to help you be visible in the social media world when people are searching, it means that buying advertising on the social sites may not be the way to go. I further interpret it as needing to have a strategy for your company's Facebook group and pages, the Twitter feed and your blogs (just to name the top elements). Putting up the pages, etc without a strategy will lead to inconsistent messaging, no lead generation and, probably, a lack of posting/interaction. There are great opportunities for search visibility - for dominating real-time, personalized and regular search results.

Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO - eMarketer

Real-Time & Advanced B2B Search Marketing - Chicago SES

2009-11-30T10:55:00.001-08:00

Next week is the Chicago Search Engine Strategies conference. I am excited to be presenting at two sessions:

1 - Real-time Search (December 7)- Session Designer, moderator and speaker. I will be talking about user-generated content. After all, you can't get 'real-time' unless there is fresh content, in whatever media format, being created. I will be using VMware as an example of user-generated content and how the community helps VMware be highly visible in search results.

2 - Advanced B2B Search Marketing (December 9) - I will bring many, many examples of B2B search marketing tactics that have been highly successful in achieving search result dominance. Pulled from clients like VMware, Verisign, WebEx, HP I will be offering the audience successful SEM tactics that can be implemented when they return to the office.

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 towards 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 optimize.

How can you ensure that your products and services are highly visible in this new search arena? Communities, forums, status messages, breaking news, groups and other methods are in the conversation. These experts know how to take you there and will suggest the best ways to become visible.

Advanced B2B Search Marketing
Is B2B search marketing really different than B2C? The answer is YES... usually. Many B2B companies sell complex, high-consideration products and services, with a long, complex sales process that involves multiple touch-points and ultimately an offline transaction. Furthermore, most B2B marketers utilize their website to engage prospects and generate leads... not sell products online.

Learn how to turn a complex buying process into an opportunity and competitive advantage for your firm. This session will cover:

The significance of the buying cycle.
Review of industry data on how B2B buyers search and how their behavior does indeed change across the buying process.

Best ways to reach prospects.
Provide actual PPC campaign examples showing how keywords, ad copy, and landing pages must change for each buying-cycle phase.

Tips on generating leads.
Review of B2B landing page best practices. Specific suggestions regarding testing website elements including: registration forms, downloadable assets, benefit statements and images. Brief case study on how ongoing testing improves conversion over time.

Presentations will be posted on my slideshare account immediately following the conference.

Using Keyword Clouds for SEO and User Insight

2009-11-04T09:43:00.000-08:00

Using Keyword Clouds for SEO and for User Insight is a valuable tactic in the goal of high visibility in search results. First two definitions:

A Keyword Cloud or Tag Cloud is a visual representation of frequently used words on a website. Keywords having higher density are displayed in larger fonts, so the more frequently a word appears on your site, the larger it appears within the cloud. The following is an example of a keyword cloud that appears on the TrustTheVote.org. In this case, the tags link to a page of community postings that are tagged with the keyword.

Keyword Density is the percentage of occurrence of your keywords to the text in the rest of the website or web content. For example, let’s say your keyword occurs only once in a page of one thousand words, it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that occurs (say) four times in a page of similar length. It is very important for your main keywords to have correct density to rank well in the Search Engines. There are a number of free online tools that will generate an instantaneous keyword cloud that will visually represent the current keyword density on your site, such as: Metamend's Keyword Density Visualization tool.

Tag Cloud Widgets are available for wordpress and look to your CMS or web hosting service for the cloud tag widget and/or functionality.

Why Use a Tag Cloud? There are three reasons to incorporate a tag cloud:

1. For your users – Tag clouds highlight the most important or/and popular subjects dynamically, providing an easy-to-use, visual navigational element that is differentiated from other navigation schemes. This may help users more quickly find the page they are looking for.

2. For the KnowledgeBase/Support/Product Management teams – Tag clouds offer instant insight into user behavior at any given moment - through clouds that have been created from user-generated content; forums, blog comments, etc. This information can be used to optimize the site/product to best meet user needs. For example, what tone and terms are used to describe a certain product? Discovering the vernacular that surrounds a brand or product by observing tag clouds can certainly generate some insight on how an audience feels and thinks.

3. For SEO - Tag clouds are textual and keyword-rich. An increase in text-based content helps with visibility. And here are all of the top keywords in one place.

Best Practices for Displaying Tag Clouds:

1. Consider including a tag cloud within each category on the site; not just on the home page.

2. Be careful not to create more than one URL for each keyword/keyphrase. This will avoid duplicate content issues.

3. Ensure that the links from the cloud are absolute links.

4. If the links need to go through a redirect for, say, rewriting the URL to a friendly one, then make sure it is a 301 redirect so that the destination page will be indexed.

5. Use a single color for the tags in the cloud: this will allow visitors to see fine distinctions in size differences.

6. Use a single sans serif font family: this will improve the overall readability of the rendered cloud.

7. Use consistent and proportional spacing to separate the tags in the tag cloud. Proportional means that the spacing between tags varies based on their size; typically more space is used for larger sizes.

8. Avoid separator characters between tags: they can be confused for small tags.

9. Avoid using Flash to render the cloud as the font rendering in older browsers is not always good or consistent, and you want to ensure indexability by search and indexing engines, both locally and publicly.

Do Searchers Still Start with Google?

2009-11-02T14:48:00.001-08:00

In reading a report/analysis on the ecommerce market I read with interest the following statement:

Bazaar Times: Online Specialty Retailers Thrive. Deep selection, wide
variety, product information, interactive education and shopping
tools, as well as third party product reviews and recommendations will
continue to drive retail sales to online specialty retailers, in our
opinion. Companies such as Art.com, Blue Nile, eBags, Hayneedle, U.S.
Auto Parts, and Zappos are positioned well to thrive in this long-tail
environment.

Each of these sites has created a way for the engines to navigate the key content on the site even if the visitors navigate through the internal search. Some of these sites have extensive user generated content that is indexed and highly visible in 'real-time' and 'show options' search results. Each site is HUGE in terms of number of pages and all that are mentioned in the full report are old domains with good reputations.

My question is: do people still go to Google first to find the a good place to buy shoes or are they navigating directly to the long-tail sites? Are the e-commerce brand sites well enough known for people to go directly to them looking for a bargain or are the search engines still the originator of traffic? I believe that pure search drives most of the traffic into these sites. Pure search could result in any of the optimized elements of these sites being clicked on but the traffic still originates from search. Opinions?

eMarketer's Revised Online Ad Forecast for 2009

2009-10-19T08:21:00.001-07:00

Factors Behind eMarketer's Revised Online Ad Forecast - eMarketer

Highlights from Report

Indications such as relatively strong Q3 results from Google suggest an increase in search spending. Even in down years, second-half growth is stronger. eMarketer predicts a smaller second-half 2009 decrease of 2.9%, which will mean a decline of 2.9% for the year. (Note that 52% of 2009 spending will occur in the second half of the year.)

Internet video advertising will be the main channel for these deep-pocketed companies to increase their digital brand marketing spends, said Mr. Hallerman. Search advertising, too, will draw more large-company spending as their agencies continue to weave online advertising into their cross-media campaigns.

The Synergy of Search and Social Media - eMarketer

2009-10-15T11:57:00.001-07:00

eMarketer has produced a quick overview of some reports that are saying social media mentions/visibility/advertising increase search volume for the subject's brand. Any increase in search volume whether through the paid search ads or natural search visibility should increase sales or leads. I agree with the premise of the article.

Care must be taken so that people don't replace search engine advertising with social media efforts. The social media work, paid or not, increases the volume of searches. If your brand and/or product is not represented on search, then you have lost the benefit of the increased traffic.

Remember that search visibility includes not only the standard ads and your core website, but also the video, news, blogs, forums, etc, etc visibility.

The Synergy of Search and Social Media - eMarketer

10 Mind-blowing Microsites - Definition and Uses

2009-10-13T08:32:00.001-07:00

Microsites let you take more risk? As corporate content continues to fragment more and more, is a microsite a way of controlling some of that fragmentation or does it just mess with the brand message? Different groups within a company will certainly give you different answers.

If you look at from the Search point of view: it gives you a targeted destination for converting keywords, it provides more content associated with your brand that you control, and the sites may get you another place on the coveted first page of results. On the down side: many developers of microsites do not design them in a search friendly way, they don't tend to be linked into the rest of the world, and rarely do they have enough text-based content. If I were developing a microsite and would like it to be visible in search results, I would make sure it was search friendly.

Imedia Connection recently posted a really good article by Fred Brown on the subject. Read the Article on Microsites.

Internet Statistics on China - lots of 'fun' users

2009-10-12T10:59:00.001-07:00

China Internet Statistics 2009

View more documents from Rocky Fu.

East-West: An Instance of the Natural Search Difference

2009-10-08T16:48:00.001-07:00

Those who are steeped in doing search marketing for clients or for your companies know that having appealing visibility in all aspects, all types, of search is key with increased quality traffic being the most common goal.

But we all suffer from the East-West Coast syndrome. This is really a short-hand way of describing the situation where people are looking at Google search results, from all different parts of the world and each with very different histories of searching, trying to see where their website is ranking. [Because I focus on B2B SEM it seems it is always Google.] No matter your opinion on using ranking as a measurement, clients search to see if SEO recommendations and tactics are being successful.

The first thing I do is try to find the time early to give a basic tutorial on blended search. The second thing I do is try to get them to 'sign out' of their Google accounts. By telling them about blended search I hope to show the vast number of elements that are now part of what needs to be optimized. By getting them to logout of their Google account I get a chance to explain the levels of personalization and localization associated with natural search results today.

Here is a great example of the difference in visible results from different coasts of the country.

We are working with a non-profit organization called the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. One of their key phrases is cancer research foundation. If I am logged in to Google then the results are totally useless since I have visited a ton of cancer research sites lately so nobody's results look like mine. If the client is logged in to Google they don't see their own company very often or highly ranked since they have searched for it and NOT clicked on the natural result so many times. If you see it and don't click on it then how else would the engines interpret that except in rearranging things so that you don't see what you don't click on.

So, nobody is logged in. But results still vary in the standard natural search results. West Coast search shows one unique item that changes the view completely - Local Business Results. With local business results being highly visible the instance of Damon Runyon's website result in the search results below the fold and slowing the traffic under that key phrase. East Coast search shows no Local Business Results. [See screenshots below.]

What can you conclude? Certainly one thing: Google knows the location of the searcher whether they are logged in or not. And probably that many people on the West Coast - specifically in the Bay Area - have been clicking on the local business results when they do the same or similar searches, thus reinforcing, in the mind of the algorithm, that displaying those results is a good idea. Maybe that we have a ton more cancer research organizations in the Bay Area than in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Remember that I am not advocating this as the only way to measure success but it is a way and needs to be interpreted in a realistic manner. Realistically very few search results are now the same.

What do you see when you search for cancer research foundation?

East Coast Results:

West Coast Results:

Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has a fabulous facebook group, linkedin group, twitter feed and does regular youtube submissions, all being optimized to help increase traffic to their website. A full case study on the SEO project will be published this year.

Why still use keyword meta tags?

2009-09-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

Google has recently restated its position on Keyword Meta tags. They are very clearly saying that they don't use them. Ok, fine. But we still recommend them for all clients for all pages. Why? For the following reasons:

1. Google admits it may change their mind in the future. Per Matt Cutts:

Q: Does this mean that Google will always ignore the keywords meta tag?

A: It's possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it's unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.

2. We don't know what algorithmic elements other engines are using;

3. We don't know what new search engines will use for optimization elements.

Additionally, my team at WebMama.com and I use the tags to help us and the client remember which keywords/phrases were mapped to which pages. It is a great tactic for helping content writers remember what keywords to use.

Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Dead? No!

2009-09-18T08:47:00.001-07:00

A catchy title for sure. This was the beginning of a presentation I gave at the Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver on whether search engine optimization plays a role now that the world is moving towards real-time search. I, of course, said YES, it isn't dead it has just gotten more complicated. Instead of optimizing just your website content, now you need to optimize every element that you post that represents your company. This includes twitter, slideshare, linkedin group messages, facebook (friendfeed), and in the management of all user-generated content.

This is the time that keyword analysis is critical. Those converting keywords need to be used in all of the postings. Those postings get visibility in search results - so why not under your keywords. Everypost company 'poster' needs to be taught that list of important terms and encouraged to use them often. Search Engine Marketing isn't dead, it is just expanding.

Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Dead? No!

View more presentations from WebMama.com Inc..

Search Uplifted by Banners

2009-09-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

It is true - based on experience and a number of studies - I firmly believe that using the contextual banner networks in conjunction with search campaigns can increase the volume of searches. This is a highly desired outcome - and has been true for many years even though many of us old timer SEM people had a hard time coming to grips with the idea.

Banners increase visibility. They help you dominate the page. Domination leads to more people being familiar with your brands. Familiarity leads to curiosity or clear interest, thus more searches. Hopefully, therefore, more conversions.

Why not extend your Paid Search campaigns to Google's banner network - one of the largest in the world. It is all the same user interface - easy, easy, easy if you can pry the banners from the design team. Even with the belief that this is the way to go, it is still hard to integrate designed elements with search marketing campaigns due to company business structure and internal politics.

Let me know any stats or case studies you have that support this excellent marketing tactic.

icrossing study - Display Ads Boost Search Site Visits and Click-Throughs
Google White Paper - CPA Performance Trends in Google's Content Network
iprospect - Search Marketing and Online Display Advertising Integration Study
Comscore study - a little biased but interesting no the less - Publishers Hire ComScore To Kill Off The Click-Through

5 SEO/SEM Trends that Are Changing Search during 2009

2009-08-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

The real-time Web has arrived and traditional SEO methods of website optimization are rapidly moving to the background, as we the searchers move into an age of continuous and universal conversation. Search engines are making substantial changes in how they present search engine results: to filter the Web of the growing noise, and provide relevant, timely and useful information to searchers.

Fortunately, this fusion of the social Web with real-time search offers businesses a unique opportunity to take control - to dominate - the search landscape wherever the content is being pulled from.

Note: A shorter, edited version was originally published for the Online Merchant Network June 30, 2009 by Barbara Coll with help from Lidija Davis. It was written for the paypal audience to introduce them to new ways of thinking about search marketing.

To get the most bang out of your SEO buck today, you need to have a few things in mind:

understand rankings are no longer as important as they once were due to the weight search engines are placing on personalization and localization,
it is critical to create a virtual shelf for your business in expanded/blended search results,
build buzz around your product/service using the social Web,
monitor your brand via real-time search and
make use of the upgraded tools provided by the major search engines and other useful sources

1. Personalized Search Results

Search engines have been working on the personalization [or reranking] of search results for years . By collecting and storing information about their users (such as search history, types of queries, ads we click on, preferred locations, IP addresses, types of devices we use, and more recently language), search engines in 2009 have the ability to return very specific results.
During this time, site owners have focused on rankings but the personalization of results renders ranking in SERPs less important and overall domination of search results so that personalization will still yeild web assets and properties belonging to our company. Smart businesses no longer focus on rankings, they focus on building their brand and increasing traffic via the social Web, generating fresh content in different formats (blogs, videos, podcasts, microblogs) to ensure they appear across expanded search engines and universal search results, and constantly bettering user experience on their sites. But never taking their eye of the main site either.

2. Expanded Search Engines

Although comScore’s recent analysis found that Americans conducted 14.3 billion core searches during May 2009, it also noted that while 9.6 billion of those searches occurred on Google search, 3.3 billion occurred on other Google properties such as YouTube, News, Blogs, Images, etc.

Not only are the major search engines making substantial changes in how they present search engine results to individuals via personalized results; Google’s Universal Search experience moving to a ‘bento box’ environment; Microsoft’s Bing becoming your ‘decision engine’ and Yahoo! focusing on social since Carol Bartz has taken over as CEO, they are now indexing content from a variety of sources (blogs, video, books, news etc.) (editor's update: at least until Bing becomes Yahoo's search). Is your product/service represented in expanded search?

3. Online Communities

Given search engines are placing importance on indexing the social Web, it is imperative businesses today embrace the social Web culture. Whether you create an online community around your product or service (much like the Online Merchant Network), or participate in any of the many already established online communities (Digg, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc.), you are feeding the search engines and spreading your digital footprint; all good for SEO.
Online communities require commitment, time and effort. If you create your own community, you will encourage repeat visits to your site and receive instant feedback about your product/service; of course this assumes you have a product worth talking about . If you’re joining an established community you can create buzz about your product and build your brand; just ensure you take the time to get to know the culture, the etiquette, the vocabulary and the community before you jump in.

Regardless of the community you wish to involve yourself in, don’t forget the value of pre determined keywords and tags, and reap the benefits of a world that search engines are indexing.

4. Real-Time

Social messaging service Twitter and to a lesser degree social sites such as FriendFeed and Plurk have given Internet users a new platform on which to have public conversations, and a way to find out what is happening right now on any given topic. As a result, it is imperative businesses monitor these real-time conversations for mentions of their brand. Whether the conversation is good or bad, it is your responsibility as the business owner to participate.

Although the major search engines are brilliant at providing the latest search results, they lag behind when it comes to providing real-time results. Google co-founder, Larry Page himself recently admitted that the company has been losing out to Twitter in the race to provide real-time information to Internet users. Monitter , Scoopler , and Twitter’s own search engine offer ways for you to search for your brand in real-time.

5. Smarter Tools

Business owners have always craved information about how search engines see their sites, and search engines have been providing free tools for years. Like the search engines themselves, over time these tools have also evolved. Today, they provide much data on how to improve your sites accessibility and visibility, and are well worth using. Additionally, the major search engines run blogs with updates that you should consider subscribing to.

Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Blog
Yahoo Site Explorer
Bing Webmaster Center
Bing Webmaster Blog

Finally, during this souring economy it’s critical that businesses have all the tools to monitor their brand across the Web. In an effort to help you do that, WebMama maintains a list of over 80 SEO tools (many of them free) to help with the visibility and growth of your brand.

Bing One Month On: Surprising Findings

2009-07-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

In Part 2 of our review of Bing [read Part 1], we'll consider the impact of Bing on the search landscape. Bing launched on May 28, 2009. While Bing's traffic jumped dramatically after its launch, any conclusions drawn from that information so soon after the hype surrounding its launch would have been misleading. Now over a month, there are some surprising trends that are emerging.

Market Share

To the surprise of most, after the novelty users defected back to their existing search engines, Bing has slowly continued to gain market share. Per StatCounter, two weeks after launch there was an exodus of users, but since then Bing's market share has been climbing week-after-week. Into July, it has challenged and briefly eclipsed Yahoo, with both claiming between 11-12% market share. Admittedly, part of this change is the 1-3% residual share of Live/MSN in June has now been folded into Bing, but a large part of the increase is likely due to a preference for the features and search experience Bing offers. Of course, Google still dominates the market with over 75% of market share, but it appears from this analysis of the StatCounter data that the gains Bing is making are coming almost solely at Google's expense.

Microsoft itself says it had an 8% jump in search traffic during the month of June, with the rebranded Bing Shopping seeing a nearly 200% jump in visits and Bing Travel, rebranded from Farecast, seeing a 90% increase. HitWise reported more modest but steady gains for Bing, also showing week-over-week market share increases in the month of June.

Name Recognition

Microsoft's $100 million advertising campaign has resulted in a stratospheric growth in name recognition for its new decision engine. According to this YouGov Polimetrix BrandIndex's study, 8% of U.S. adults had heard something about Bing on June 8. By June 22, that number had grown to 25%. Also according to the study, 81% of users say that while they have a favorite search engine, they are willing to consider other options. Google's dominance in brand awareness tempers this data somewhat. Though 25% of study's participants had heard some news about Bing by mid-June, over twice that many had heard news about Google.

Paid Search

According to search marketing firm Didit, paid search ads are performing 170% better on Bing than comparable ads on Live Search a year ago.

Much of the increase is attributed to how Bing devotes a larger percentage of the page to paid search listings. In a separate eye tracking study comparing Google and Bing, more users were drawn to Bing's right side sponsored links, and they looked over them longer, than comparable results from Google. Highlighted as one of the best features in part one of this series, highlighting related searches in the Explorer Pane drew 31% of the users interest. In contrast, Google's inclusion of related searches at the bottom of the search page drew only 5%.

Some advertisers have observed these trends, as reported on Searchengineland, as click share and spend share for Bing increased in June. Advertisers have reason for concern though over Bing's obnoxious Quick Preview feature obscuring their ads. Another article suggests that, unless you can budget to be one of the top paid listings, it may be better to aim for a much lower placement so that the quick preview pane does not 'fly out' over your ad.

Conclusions

While all of these are positive for Microsoft and the future of Bing, in order for Bing to truly gain traction, people have to be willing to switch away from using Google or Yahoo as their primary search engine. This Catalyst Group study found that though participants preferred Bing's features, they were unwilling to switch from Google because of familiarity with Google and that they used or expressed a preference for other Google apps, such as the Google Toolbar, Google Maps, and Gmail. In another study, J.P. Morgan polled a group of adults, and under half had tried Bing and only 2 percent of the participants intended to switch to it.

On the other hand, Bing has only been released for over a month. Google might have heard the same comments in a showdown between itself in its infancy and Yahoo. Yahoo offered similar free services, including probably the best free e-mail solution at the time, and it didn't prevent people from switching to Google. Even the most optimistic observers don’t expect a serious challenge to Google’s market dominance any time soon, much less a mass exodus of users switching from Google to Bing. Bing's best strategy right now is continue to improve its user interface and innovate in search, either forcing Google to match its innovations or risk losing market share.

Google is already stepping up a PR offensive to convince users its features can be as useful as Bing. To that end, Google has launched an "Explore the World of Google Search" page touting many of the same features Bing is winning plaudits for. In addition, to compete with Bing's universally acclaimed graphical backdrops, Google is promoting its own National Geographic style backdrops for iGoogle.

Author: Chris Pantages, WebMama Team

Leveraging Consumer Generated Content - WebMama Q&A

2009-07-17T04:17:00.000-07:00

At the upcoming Search Engine Strategies San Jose, I will be on a panel discussing how to ignite your viral campaign by leveraging consumer-generated content. I was interviewed by Kate Trgovac of OneDegree about my thoughts on Leveraging Consumer Generated Content.

She asked 5 thought-provoking (on my part) questions. The full article can be found on onedegree.ca. Here are two of the questions I answered. Any comments or additions are more than welcome.

OD: How do I get my customers talking about me?

BC: Ask them! The onus really is on the business to ask for the review - particularly if you are a local business. If you're a restaurant, make sure you let your customers know that you're on Yelp and you'd love their feedback. Give them a card with their bill that has a reminder to submit a review. You also want to make sure that you're doing this on a regular basis. It seems to me that search engines are really starting to value currency - the business or product that has the more current reviews will get better search engine rankings.

Take for example a Bed and Breakfast in Yosemite. They have had a few negative reviews so the owner is no longer reading TripAdvisor, and certainly not recommending that happy clients post their reviews. This leads to the negative reviews being highly visible in search results - not a good thing for a small business owner.

OD: What do you think about incentivizing customers to write about you? Free product? Chance to win? Etc?

BC: This practice would tilt the reviews positively towards the business which many would say is unfair. On the other hand, it is common practice in many lines of marketing and advertising to give discount coupons, freebies, and awards to encourage customers to return to the business, purchase from the business online, or provide material for case studies.

Read full article....

Vancouver IMC Here I Come

2009-07-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled to be speaking at an IMC event once again. It is at these events I met some of the people in the business I like best! Super speakers, great topics and an amazing place to host a conference - Vancouver, B.C. on September 16-18th. Sponsored by the superb marketing organization - IIMA.

I will be doing 3 sessions with the first one being my take on real-time search. Real-time search is my focus these days - both in educating clients and educating myself.

Session #1 Title: Search is going Real-Time. Will SEO matter anymore?

Sessions #2 and #3 are SEO panels with live Q & A. I hope people bring their hard questions to this!

Event URL: http://www.internetmarketingconference.com/vancouver/

See you there!

Facebook Friends in Google Results Today

2009-07-08T12:13:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this? Facebook friends showing up in the Google results. See example below:

Maybe I just missed it but it is great to see a live example of the Facebook friends search result.

Igniting Viral through Reviews, Comments and Threads

2009-07-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

This SES (San Jose August 10-14) I will be presenting a soundbite on how using reviews, comments and forum threads can lead to high search visibility and results domination. The session is about viral and my focus is that you need up-to-date content, shall we even say, real-time content, in order to attract the engines today. One way is to let your audience and customers provide the content. Of course, it all has to work in a search engine friendly way to be visible at all.

The session is on Wednesday August 12th and titled:

Igniting Viral Campaigns: Leveraging Consumer-Generated Content
How can businesses leverage social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more to break through and create buzz, encourage word of mouth, and establish relationships with potential customers? This session unveils the secrets of Web 2.0 techniques and technologies that enable companies to stand out and be talked about.

Speakers:
Brian Ellefritz, Senior Manager, Social Media Marketing, Cisco Systems
Matthew Liu, Product Manager, YouTube Sponsored Videos
Greg Finn, Director of Internet Marketing, 10e20
Barbara Coll, CEO, WebMama.com Inc.

A Bing Overview. Part 1: Are the Features Any Good?

2009-07-06T07:21:00.000-07:00

After making a concerted attempt to use Bing exclusively for the last week or so, there are a lot of things about Bing that are excellent. In Part 1, the good and bad features of Bing will be highlighted. Part 2 will focus on the impact Bing has made in the month or so since its launch.

Bing is Microsoft's latest attempt to take up arms against a sea of troubles in capturing more market share in search is Bing, its self-titled 'decision engine'.

The Explorer Pane - Bing reserves the left hand side of the search page for additional links, divided into three categories, Quick Tabs, Related Searches and Recent Searches. I found the Explorer Pane links more useful than not most of the time, especially the search history feature which saves the last 5 searches. Microsoft estimates that up to 50 percent of searches are repeated.

Preview Video in Browser - Bing's most discussed feature is probably its best. When SERP's include a video result, flying over the result with the cursor plays a preview of the clip without leaving the search page. For integrated videos from popular services like YouTube and Hulu, choosing the result plays in a larger in-browser window, also without leaving the search site.

Bing Travel - Bing Travel excels on two fronts. When searching for travel between two cities, Bing will offer its travel results first. For my sample search of New York to Boston, clicking the first Microsoft featured result promised, "Bing Travel utilizes over a billion airfares on a daily basis to bring you Price Predictors, and now we're using that data to uncover cheap flights from New York to Boston every day."

Incorporating technology from Farecast that Microsoft acquired a year ago, the results page will also create a graph showing the likely fares for the next 30 days. Bing will also recognize airport abbreviations, especially useful for cities with multiple airports.

The only downside to this feature is that it's currently available for only the most popular cities. Cities like San Jose and Las Vegas don't make the cut, but flights in and out of San Francisco from most big cities do. Also, while there is a link to Bing Travel from the main page, it is not one of the tabular links across the top.

Scroll for Images - Click on an image search, and Bing allows you to scroll through the first 500 results or so without leaving the search page. Flying over each image created a larger thumbnail, along with a link to the source, the original image size, and an invitation to refine your search by choosing similar images. On the left panel you can specify image size, layout (square, wide or tall are the default options), color, style and type of image for personal photos.

Real Time Search - Bing has also taken the lead in real-time search. First, Bing is giving more primacy in their search results to breaking news. A search for Brett Favre has news about his potential comeback as the top three results. Google’s results go to his website and Wikipedia. A recent TechCrunch review found pretty much the same thing.

Bing is also indexing and displaying Twitter posts in an innovative and informative way. As discussed in this great John Battelle article, for a select group of Twitterati, Bing will tease their profiles by posting their picture, Twitter username, and two most recent tweets in real time at the top of the search results page. Clicking “see more tweets” delivers you directly to their Twitter page. To this feature are having to structure the search query as “[name] twitter” or “@[name]”. Also, tweets are not indexed and displayed by Bing instantaneously, but rather more likely at some sort of interval, perhaps up to an hour. Looking at the Bing and Google SERPs side-by-side, the Bing SERP is definitely more attractive.

While indexing a few celebrities’ tweets is just the tip of the iceberg of search nirvana promised by the potential of real-time search, it is an area where Google and Microsoft are both starting on roughly equal footing. Continuing to index and display real-time, relevant search results will help Bing gain marketshare.

THE BAD

Preference for Microsoft Brands - Just when you were thinking "Hey, this Bing sounds pretty good", Microsoft bollixes it up with a move that is classic Redmond.

Numerous articles, including this one in CIO magazine, have noted that Microsoft is shading Bing results to give preference to its products and partners. In Google, using the search term virtualization, VMware, the market leader, is the first link on the results page after Wikipedia. With Bing, it is not on the first page of results, with Microsoft's Virtualization product ranked third, and a related search dedicated to "Virtualization Microsoft".

A search for smartphone had similar results. On Bing, the search had 'Quick Tabs' truncating the results to four links. Microsoft was at number two. On Google, Blackberry and HTC were the second and third results, respectively. Microsoft.com was seventh result.

Quick Preview - The concept of this feature is more interesting that its execution. An orange dot is to the right of the search result. Flying over it generates a few paragraphs of text about what the site is about and other links from the results page. Generally, the information is scraped from the site, ignoring the Description META tag (making text-based content on the site critical as per usual).

In practice, the information wasn't any more relevant than the standard description. Some sites did not have a Quick Preview. Sometimes it took a second or two to load. Sometimes the preview pane was blank. It was also especially aggravating for me as I usually position the mouse cursor around where the quick preview pane would pop up to scroll through the search results, requiring me to move it further to the right to avoid getting an epilepsy-inducing display of windows consistently opening and closing.

Quick Tabs - With Quick Tabs, Microsoft stretches the SERP page, and inserts its own "categories" of results. For instance, my search for '30 Rock' was broken into Quick Tabs for Theme Song, DVD, Characters, Wallpaper, Quotes, etc. It then displays the top 3-4 SERPs for each category. If you want to more results, you click the "See More Results" link, which brings up a full page of links, not including the links on the prior page.

Why wouldn’t searching for 30 Rock Wallpaper or DVD’s just be a related search? The longer SERP pages were an improvement, considering the primacy of the blended search results, but I hated having to scroll down to see if one of the three results were on the page, and then having to click through if it wasn't. Also, if you wanted more results, the top results were not retained on the “more results” page – instead those results were the 4th through 13th results. If you chose to use one of the ‘Quick Tabs’ as a link and clicked directly through, you’d get the same page that had already excised the top 3 or 4 most relevant results. The categories weren't always helpful (wallpapers?). Moreover, the same resource page could be used to populate numerous categories. In the 30 Rock example, Wikipedia featured prominently in 6 of the 7 tabs.

Conclusion

Bing has some promise. I think it has surprised a lot of people with its feature set, and while it is not going to topple Google any time soon, hopefully it will spur more innovation in the search space. And Bing certainly has seemed to caught the attention of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Titled “Fear Grips Google”, this New York Post article says: “Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service.”

Bing’s market share is also growing. While it’s too early to make any reasonable predictions of long term success, in the week ending June 12, 2009, Bing’s worldwide market share has increased from 13.7 to 16.7 percent, per ComScore. Even though it has Google worried, Yahoo should be even more worried. On the U.S. side, StatCounter reports that Bing has eaten into Yahoo’s market share even more, moving from 7.2% of the search market to 8.3% in the two weeks since its debut. Yahoo’s share is down to 11% with Google at just over 78%.

Author: Chris Pantages with contributions by Laura Reichle, WebMama Team Members

Video and Search - Overview Presentation Stanford 2009

2009-06-21T12:47:00.001-07:00

Why do Video??? This presentation provides some basic information about leveraging the interplay of search and video for direct marketing and branding. It was presented at the Internet Marketing course at Stanford in May 2009.

Video and Search - Overview Presentation Stanford 2009

View more OpenOffice presentations from Barbara Coll.

Wave New World: Executive Summary of Google's New Ambitious Product

2009-06-18T08:53:00.001-07:00

What might email look like if it were invented today?
By Chris Pantages, WebMama.com SEO Expert

During its I/O event, Google introduced its answer to that question, Google Wave. Wave is an extraordinarily ambitious communication and collaboration tool. Wave is an application with elements of email, instant messaging, social media, wiki based collaboration, and, if that weren't enough, allows for integration of an almost infinite number of online applications.

Wave was developed by Lars and Jens Rasmussen, the team behind Google Maps. The application starts much like your current email inbox, with contacts in the left panel of the screen and the messages taking up the center. To communicate, you initiate a ‘Wave’, opening a dialog box into which people you want to write to are added. If the recipient(s) have their Wave application open, your Wave is communicated to them instantly, letter by letter, in real time, instead of waiting for the sender to finish the message and click send. Said Lars, "In our experience, a lot of time in IM is spent waiting for the other person to press 'Done'".

Even more unusual, the Wave can be interlineated with a response, anywhere within the message, at any time. Other recipients can be added at any time, and their responses can be inserted at any point. Multiple people can comment in a Wave simultaneously. While this sounds like it could be confusing, each response from each different person is distinguished by a border specific to that user. Wave's are cataloged in your inbox and anytime anyone adds to it, it is highlighted and moved to the top of your inbox queue. If you want to break off from a multi-person wave into a private conversation, this, too, can be conducted as part of the same Wave.

Probably the most amazing feature of the application is the feature called "Playback". As anyone who has tried to follow an already developed email thread knows, with multiple parties arguing back and forth and attempting to integrate other references, it can be frustratingly hard to follow. Playback solves this problem by allowing any person participating in the Wave to rewind it to any point and view it comment by comment.

Wave can also be used as a collaboration tool. Wave even allows people to collaborate on the same Wave simultaneously, showing the changes on every users screen in real time. These changes can also be unwound with Playback. At any point, the Wave can be exported or a new one created.

But, wait, there’s more! With Wave, you get not only a product, but also a platform. Open APIs allow developers to build new extensions that work with Waves. Online games, polls, and integration with social media services like Twitter and Facebook were examples from the presentation, but the open-source nature of Wave allows developers to built virtually limitless extensions. Wave’s can also be published and embedded virtually anywhere on the web, allowing the Wave to be crawled and integrated into Google’s search engine.

Finally, because of the open protocols of Wave, it can be integrated into organizational networks completely independent of Google using federation. Federation allows users to take the application and tailor almost every aspect of it, even the user interface. As an example, say WebMama decides we want to adopt Wave to carry our own internal messages. Because of the open protocols, we can design our own Wave system, and all the messages are kept on our own servers, completely independent of Google. In this way, it is possible developers can even improve on the version of Wave distributed by Google.

It’s difficult to completely wrap your head around all the possibilities and permutations of Wave. Google has certainly hyped it as the next big thing. If it has a weakness, it is that it seems that its user base is limited. Wave targets those who currently use email as a collaborative tool, mostly high-tech workers who use it as part of their job, or as another social media tool to help people keep in contact with one another. In order for it to be successful, it needs to be more widely adopted. As one of Wave’s developers said, “email is the most successful protocol on the planet.” It’s going to be hard to replace it.

During the presentation, the brothers Rasmussen frequently mentioned the product is still in its infancy. In the interest of keeping this post short, I’ve only scratched the surface of Wave’s capabilities and features. Wave will debut later this year. It is possible Google has created the next big thing – an application that revolutionizes email, instant messaging, and, using Google Apps, challenges Microsoft Office and Sharepoint. It remains to be seen if this brave new world will ever be realized.

Other resources

Official Google Blog – includes a link to the nearly 90 minute keynote presentation. Also has links to the Developer’s Blog, Open Federation Protocol, and Open API’s for developers.
Sign Up for Google Wave – be among the first to get Google Wave.
GigaOm’s article tempering the enthusiasm for Wave.

Google Squared: Toy or Tool

2009-06-08T15:45:00.000-07:00

What Is It?

One of the most interesting new developments to come out of Google Searchology was the unveiling of Google Squared.

Google Squared is a new search tool that renders the results in spreadsheet form (“squared” refers to squares populated by the Squared search). Each "square" of information is independently sourced from Google results. Click on a cell, and you can go directly to the site providing the information.

With every search query, Squared will construct a box with headings germane to the search. Always beginning with “Item Name”, a search for ‘sports cars’ might have column headings for manufacturer, horsepower, price, and mileage, while a search for ‘New York Hotels’ might have headings for location, room cost, hotel size and amenities.

After the squares have been populated, you can add items to both rows and columns, either by choosing among pre-populated selections, or by entering free text. You can also remove columns and rows that are not relevant to your search. Typically, seven results make up the initial square. You can get more results by using the “Add next 10 items” link at the bottom of every square.

By using a feature "Add to this Square", additional searches can be compiled in one square for evaluation. Using your Google account, squares can be saved for future use and also shared.

Strengths

Squared is a comparative search engine. On one front, it competes with Wikipedia to the extent people use Wikipedia to find comparative information or lists of things - U.S. Presidents, Biggest Movie Opening Weekends, Worst Natural Disasters in U.S. History, etc. The flexibility to add and remove columns and rows gives the user the ability to tailor very specific queries. While still in its infancy, if Squared evolves to interpret and resolve searches with the insight and precision of a Google internet search, there are grand possibilities.

One such possibility is that Squared could be the world’s most powerful price comparison engine, unlimited by industry. The business models of companies like Pricegrabber, Expedia, or Rent.com are based on providing comparative price results and charging vendors to be featured in their listings. Currently, Squared search results are far too general to be used for this purpose, but the structure of Google Squared certainly lends itself to be direct competition with these services.

Weaknesses

As a comparative search engine, it is by definition limited by searches that have a comparative element. Searching for a specific product or person returned mostly irrelevant results.

In a separate search for ‘U.S. Modern Art Museums’, a search Squared should excel at, Squared returned results from the Netherlands, the U.K., and had headings for type and price. Columns and rows added with free text frequently rendered ‘no value found’ results. Also, Squared does not allow you to sort the results in any way.

SEO for Squared

Presumably, Google will use the same relevancy factors as they use in Google searches to determine how to populate the Squared searches. Based on a search for ‘San Francisco Hotels’, the ‘Description’ snippet was pulled from the first descriptive paragraph on each respective site. One site without any copy had its menu pulled into the snippet. There is no secret to optimize for Squared. The best strategy is to have an SEO friendly site, with relevant content and keywords and phrases used in context on your front page.

As far as applications for Search Engine Optimization, Squared can offer some insight into which results Google feels are most relevant for certain searches. Again, though, this is qualified by Squared’s limitation of only generating relevant results for the most basic of searches. Squared has potential, but right now it’s more of a fun diversion than an analytic tool.

Other Resources:

Official Google Blog - Google Squared release announcement and more details
Search Engine Journal - Want More Organized Search Results? Google Square It.
SEO Roundtable - Google Squared Is Live: What SEOs & Searchers Need To Know
eBrandz - Google Squared Becomes Live With Mixed Results

Thanks to Chris Pantages, a WebMama Team Member, for providing his prospective on the subject of Google Squared. More to come from Chris on Google Wave. Stay Tuned.

BING - Quick Comments

2009-06-02T14:46:00.001-07:00

BING is game changing for Google as I believe Microsoft may have leaped them in search quality.

BING takes what Google has shown only in the blended search navigation bar and in 'show options' option, and puts the right information on the first page of results. Microsoft, in BING, has categorized into obvious buckets what you would like to see when you do a search. It has uncluttered the page giving you not only what you want to see about the keyword but provides you with a way of interacting with that 'keyword'.

And if you want to interact with UPS to track a package then search for UPS on BING and you get the track package option in the search results - no hidden short cuts, no 9 other results. http://cli.gs/bing-results

If you want to go to southwest airlines and use search to get there, then search southwest on bing. You get the top results for the site. You get Southwest's navigation (top left column of page). You get related searches and similar sites (listing competitors primarily). You get ads. And you get the customer service number - brilliant. And what you don't get are all the other results, unless you want them - a clean page with a ton of white space.

Does this change the game on SEO? The methodology at my company has always been clear - don't let the search engines dictate what you want them to display. That still holds true. There are three things that continue to need to be applied to sites in order to ensure visibility:
1 - make sure your site is indexable
2 - make sure you TELL the search engines what pages are the ones you want displayed in the secondary links through internal and external linking
3 - optimize EVERY online media asset that you control, on and off the site

All opinions welcome.

80+ Online Resources for the Digital Enterprise - Posted

2009-05-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

The WebMama Team recently posted an update to the toolbox on webmama.com.

80+ Online Resources for the Digital Enterprise

There are a plethora of tools available on the Web to help you develop and optimize your Web site, and during this miserable economy, it’s especially important to have all the tools, tricks and tips at hand and easily accessible.

That’s why we’ve created this list of over 80 online, free resources to make your life easier. You’ll find everything from general site research tools, to analytics, to online marketing, to SEO, to search engine marketing, to social media monitoring, to technical performance; many of which can be used for competitive analysis, search visibility and traffic growth.

We will continue to expand this list, so comment on this blog post and include your favorite top free tool that will help with discovery and management of digital enterprise projects.

If you are a 'digger', please consider digging the page. Thanks.

Google Putting Shopping Results on Right Side

2009-05-19T15:45:00.001-07:00

Just a little proof of Google moving shopping results to the right column above the right side ads. This takes the shopping ads out of organic, thus freeing up visible space for other listings. It also pushes the, what I call , the "wannabe ads" (as in, I wannabe across the top ads) down the page. All comments welcome on how this helps them make money (when shopping results are free) or is it finally the day when Google will start charging for Google Product Search, affectionately known as Froogle?

CANONICAL LINK ELEMENT – Definition & Practical Uses

2009-05-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

CANONICAL LINK ELEMENT – Uses of Tag and VMware Communities Case Study
by Chris Pantages – WebMama.com

In short, “A canonical tag is a simple piece of HTML code that you insert into the section of a duplicate page, letting the search engines know that they are on a duplicate page and they need to find the original content elsewhere, and guide them there.” (Daily SEO Blog)

Matt Cutts, head of the Google Webspam team, consistently refers to it as the Canonical Link Element, but the popular name seems to be the canonical tag. The tag itself looks something like this:

link rel="canonical" href="http://www.website.com/original-content.html"

The value of the tag is that duplicate pages that serve up duplicate or nearly identical content confuse search engines and risk siphoning page popularity away from the main or “canonical” page. By using the canonical tag, website developers can ensure search engines are seeing the original page (the parent page) and not numerous, identical, or almost identical pages – which could be possibly a sign of spam or take up valuable space in search results.

The tag goes only on the duplicate page – and instructs the search engines to redirect any link and content metrics to the original page. In this way, the effect of the canonical tag is the same as a 301 redirect. The canonical tag must be entered on each duplicate page you want the search engine page value redirected.

Unlike a 301 redirect, the canonical tag can only redirect the page popularity within one domain. Also, the canonical tag does not redirect visitors.

The pages themselves must be identical or nearly identical. There is no need to use the canonical tag if your site does not have a structure that allows for users to find the same content through numerous paths, or you have addressed this possibility already by setting the preferred URL in Google Webmaster tools, your CMS, or any other program.

It is part of the WebMama methodology to never leave it up to the search engines to decide what pages achieve high visibility in search results. The canonical tag can help direct the engines to the parent or main page.

All major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask) have agreed to honor the tag.

Uses for the Canonical Link Element

Basic Uses

The most basic use of the canonical tag is to mask systemic differences in a site’s URL structure. The canonical tag can be used on the non-preferred URL to transfer the visibility to the preferred URL.

www.example.com vs. example.com
http://www.example.com vs. https://www.example.com
www.example.com vs. www.example.com/print (for “print only” versions of pages)

It can work between secure and unsecure pages.

A preferred location can also be addressed in Google Webmaster tools and Yahoo Site Explorer. These preferences can also be expressed in a sitemap.

Advanced Uses

The primary use for the canonical tag is for pages that have unavoidable duplicate content issues:

You have different landing pages (a/b testing, etc) for the same content
Different URLs depending on the path you take to get to a page. For example:
- A site that generates different URL’s for products based on “sort by” choices
- Pages that allow breadcrumbs to alter the URL – different paths create different URLs for the same terminal page.
You add tracking codes or session ID’s to track the user’s path through the site, therefore resulting in different URL’s for each parent page
In community discussion forums, replies/comments to each thread/question may be set up to look like separate files while the content is almost identical. This leads to lots of pages that look like duplicate content.

Case Study: VMware Communities –
http://communities.vmware.com/community/developer?view=discussions

The VMware Communities website has an architecture that unfortunately generated duplicate content, due to the fact that "thread" pages include a number of messages, and each of the individual messages were duplicated in a "message" page.

A discussion thread has a URL like this:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/208441
has 3 replies like this:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1243852#1243852
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1243992#1243992
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1244024#1244024

VMware decided to implement the canonical tag to the thread URL and each of the message URLs in order to tell the engines explicitly which page was the main/parent page – in this case, the single thread page. It was an easy implementation -- just a small amount of code to calculate the /thread URL for each message, and then adding the one line to the section of each page. It appears it took less than four days to implement in Google.

Miscellaneous Items

The original page URL should be an absolute URL as a best practice.

Per Google, the canonical tag is not a directive but it is “a hint that we honor strongly. We'll take your preference into account, in conjunction with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.” Canonical tags can be chained (e.g. page 3 refers to page 2 which refers to page 1 → link power from pages 2 and 3 go to page 1). This practice, per Google, is not recommended but permitted.

Some CMS systems already have plug-ins that allow you to specify canonical pages from the front-end. Drupal, Wordpress, and Magento already have plug-ins. If the tag gains traction, expect there to be more.

Other Resources

SEOmoz has one of the best summaries/articles.

For the more intrepid, Matt Cutts' Blog has a link to a 20-minute video he did explaining the tag and the slides he uses as part of the presentation.

Insightful Sitelink Results: Phrase From Blog, Result from Website

2009-05-13T09:55:00.001-07:00

Like all companies should, I track the reputation of my brand on the search engine organic, paid, twitter, video, facebook, etc results. I especially look at Google.co m for the search keyword webmama.

Recently the sitelinks changed. The pages that each link points to did NOT change but the phrase that appears in the list did. Two of the sitelinks now show phrases from a blog postings of mine at blog.webmama.com but point to the same page on www.we bmama.com that they previously did. [The blog posts do link into the same page as well.]

What used to be nice, clearly worded link text is now weird to searchers I am sure (see image below). When I first saw the new links, I did a search on Google for the phrase: webmama 'present in front of an audience'. This turned up a blog post from July 2007 posted about the now extinct SES Latino conference. The link in the blog post said exactly that 'present in front of an audience' and it linked to the speaking page on my website.

The other link that changed, much to my chagrin, was the SEO audit link. I used SEO in lower case in a blog post in March 2008 and that is what Google picked up. The blog post also appeared in blogcatalog.com with exactly the same text. I have since retroactively changed the blog post wording to capitals and am waiting to see how long it takes Google to update the site link. I am always watching traffic to see if I lose ground on clicks to the audit page.

New Sitelinks:

Old Sitelinks:

How I found the link text that was showing up in the sitelinks:

WebMama Team Expands

2009-05-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled to announce two new additions to the WebMama Team: Amy Middleton and Chris Pantages.

Amy joins the team bringing with her a deep understanding of the opportunities of Paid Search campaigns for all WebMama clients. She will specialize in keyword expansion, ad creative testing and budget management through bid optimization.

Chris brings a wealth of experience in all aspects of technical Search Engine Optimization (SEO). His knowledge of how search engines 'see' sites, whether it be from the infrastructure, design, domain usage, or outside factors, he will be a great asset to clients who want to increase traffic from search engines.

Our customers, and future customers, will find that these two are great additions to their account team.

BtoB Magazine Marketing Guide 2009 includes WebMama.com -

2009-04-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

WebMama.com is listed as a top search engine marketing agency in the 2009 Interactive Marketing Guide put out by BtoB Magazine.

WebMama.com is mentioned as providing: Full-service SEM; paid search, blended search, video, content and site optimization.

Thank you BtoB.

Wes Blemker Stars in new Google Adwords Video

2009-04-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

Wes Blemker, Director of Search Marketing for WebMama.com Inc., is featured in a Google educational video talking about the new Google Adwords Interface. He is in full agreement that the changes are for the better. See how Google Adwords campaign management has improved by watching the entire video featuring Google product managers and Wes.

SEMPO - State of Search in Asia - Survey Results Presentation

2009-04-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) released to the public today the results of its survey of Search Marketing and the Search Industry in Asia. SEMPO is committed to providing accurate education material on search marketing for marketers - both members and not - around the world.

Summary of Survey Results: With China being the largest Internet population market in the world, 40% of the world's Internet audience comes from the Asian market. This webinar will provide information about the current market status and how to do business in Asia including Japan, China, Korea, and growing emerging markets such as Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia, as well as the huge off-shore businesses opportunities in India.

The presentation is available at WebMama.com - State of Search: Asia (pdf) or listen to the previously recorded webcast.

If you would like to get involved in the SEMPO Asia Member Committee please contact the committee Chairpersons. Consider becoming a member of SEMPO today, when a few of us started the organization in 2003 who would have thought that we would be conducting research on Asia.

Excellent Speaking Tips by Jim Sterne (emetrics)

2009-04-16T13:29:00.000-07:00

Jim Sterne knows that of which he talks. His emetrics conferences are top notch. The sessions he does himself are casual, funny and yet full of valuable content. He obviously follows his own advice.

Here is his advice:

1. Don't underestimate the audience. I would much rather have people gripe that the material was too advanced than too simple.

2. Err on the side of brevity. Think of your presentation as the warm-up to the Q&A session. And if they don't have any questions - come prepared with questions *you* want to ask *them*. Your goal is to be interesting enough that people tweet about it, blog about it and want to continue the conversation in the lobby bar.

3. Be passionate. If people want to know what you think, they'll read your blog. They come to a conference because they want to know how you feel. What do you *really* find exciting? amazing? astonishing? ridiculous? Feel deeply and express emphatically. They will thank you.

Next chance to see me attempt to follow his suggestions is at his emetrics conference in San Jose on May 5-7th. Session entitled: All Your Search Questions Answered.

Online Communities - An SEO Dream

2009-04-15T10:07:00.001-07:00

It has been a theme of mine since 1998 -
search engines need FOOD.

My definition of food today - Fresh Content that includes relevant and converting keywords. The definition has not changed much in 11 years but the respect online communities are getting makes offering relevant food much easier.

What online communities offer is tons of text-based content - an SEOs dream. It is not a world that is over designed causing barriers to search engines for indexing. It is a world that embraces simplicity. It is a conversation with the visitor and thus with the search engines.

One of the critical pieces that has to be addressed is whether the platform/application used as the base for the community is search friendly. I encourage all community development companies to ensure this is true and then promote it on their sites.

Here are some suggestions for content optimization and some visible examples of excellent implementations:

- Ask Moderators/Community manager to create topics/threads with top keywords discovered during keyword analysis for the company (beautiful example at babycenter community)

- Check and ensure that some keyword-rich content is open to public and that nofollow and noindex tags are NOT used

- Make sure there is a way for Tags and category entries to be added by community (they tend to be relevant words) but you also establish a set of top keywords to use as tags

- Dynamically create meta tags and titles from content written by visitor

- And as always - use a breadcrumb for navigation and to increase keyword density in a user friendly manner

A couple of questions I posed to the audience at Search Engine Strategies New York when the subject of communities and search. The session was the first that discussed this topic at an SES and I hope to be doing it again at SES San Jose in August. [Session Description. Session PowerPoint].

Q1: Community content is super rich but as a company that needs to sell products do you want to drive people deep into the site where there may not be much marketing/selling and maybe even negative stuff going on?

Q2: Do you want to put 'marketing/selling' deep into the site in the forums and communities?

If you have answers you want to share - great.

Proof that Google Can Index Flash Movie Contents?

2009-04-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

I am excited that I found a great research report through Google. That doesn't sound exciting to you? That is because you haven't seen the document - it is all done in Adobe Flash. Page turning, cover viewing, zooming, etc, everything in a movie.

When I searched for the razorfish/CafeMom report

I found the top two results on Google pointing me to two results. Each result had very descriptive copy. I expected a regular word/pdf/text document. Nope, all Flash. And the content was all indexed by Google. Yeah Google!

Here is the text that Google read to index.

Now, is it because there is another copy of this somewhere in clean text under the Flash file - didn't see one? Is it because they used the version of ShockWave that 'allows' Google to see the words in the file? Hard to tell. I just didn't want the example to go unnoticed. Feel free to comment and tell me about other Flash documents you have seen 'read' by the search engines.

EMarketer: Searching for New Customers in the Recession?

2009-02-25T11:03:00.000-08:00

Am I preaching to the choir when I say that search marketing - especially high visibility in organic - are the way to reach the low hanging fruit during the recession? Recession or not I have believe that fruit that is ripe and about to hit the ground is the stuff that searchers readily find and then eat (ie purchase). And the fruit that is not quite ripe is just primed for searchers to squeeze (ie - doing a little research).

Emarketer's latest report on search and customers provides some backup to my way of thinking, and that of my companies experience with B2B and B2C clients over the years. Here is a blurb from the report:

"It makes sense when you think about it. As tough times force many customers to buy less—and to be pickier about what they do buy—search is becoming ever more important to marketers.....Search is the ultimate online acquisition tool, and therefore is positioned to do relatively well in this economy.”

And my favorite straight forward way of saying it: “Customers are going to search engines because they are looking for better deals,” says Mr. Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics. “And marketers are going to search engines because that’s where the customers are.”

I gleam a lot from the Emarketer Daily Briefing on Digital Marketing and Media Trends and suggest to all they get the RSS or daily email.

Communities, Content and Search

2009-02-09T10:11:00.000-08:00

My talk at SES New York is unique this year. It is about content! And it is 50 minutes long with 1 speaker, me. Session on Thursday March 26th at 2:15. Description follows. Hope to see you all there.

Online Communities: A Bonanza of Content for Searchers and Search Engines

An online community for your niche can be a welcoming place for current and future customers. Let your customers and prospects engage in conversation while they/you provide valuable information, give them a place to connect with others, and let them praise and vent. Of course you also make it easy for them to learn more about your product or service and help them purchase. You should also think about the fact that search engines LOVE this kind of content! It is relevant to the category and has lots of text and keywords. Search engines want to see more content that is customer-generated instead of the same old product pitches. But you need to make sure your community and review/rating environment is search-friendly as there are some potential issues that can take you unaware.

All the basic SEO best practices should come into play when developing a community based site. This session will discuss techniques for getting your community and review sites indexed, including Google webmaster tools usage, minimizing duplicate content, technical issues that may arise, and tagging. Attendees will learn how to use communities and review sites as part of an internal linking campaign to help the engines understand what pages on your site are important for displaying in search results. Two case studies - 1 B2B and 1 consumer - will be used as examples of well-indexed, well-linked communities.

Introduction By:
Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor, ClickZ

Solo Presentation by:
Barbara Coll, CEO, WebMama.com Inc.

How Search-Like are Social Media Sites - Danny Sullivan is Brilliant

2009-01-28T07:55:00.000-08:00

Danny has always kept his head in the search space but this article shows his true inner self as a business strategist. Many of us have branched outside of the pure search world and are taking our clients to the next level looking at their visibility in the extended search world.

Danny's article looks at the search value of the best known social media categories. The category breakdown is the most interesting to me:

Social News Sites (such as Digg, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz)
Social Bookmarking Sites (such as Delicious, StumbleUpon)
Social Networking (such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn)
Social Knowledge (such as Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers)
Social Sharing (such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Urban Spoon, Yelp)

Danny goes on to talk about how each of these categories matches against the search level of intensity. Do they have any of the power of search? Thanks Danny for such an amazing article.

Why Paid Search and Organic at the same time.

2009-01-05T09:52:00.000-08:00

Lots of discussion on whether Paid and Organic at the same time. Here is my response to one of the postings.

I would like to point out a few other reasons that you want to carefully consider before you decide to stop bidding on your highly relevant keywords/brand names.

1. Competition. It is difficult to ensure other companies will not bid on your brand name. It requires legal action with the search engines, a rigorous set of affiliate guidelines and daily policing as the engines can not be expected to do that for you. As most of us know - a competitor can bid on the keyword as long as they don't use it in the ad text. This is a well used tactic by some of my client's competitors.

2. Paid moves faster than organic. Trying to get the web designers/programmers to update tags and body content (textual not images) to reflect tactics that will improve the words in the search result is a slow moving process for most large companies. But, paid search can be updated instantly to reflect new messaging, like 50% off.

3. Landing pages. You mentioned landing pages as a reason that you may want to continue with paid search regardless of organic results - I totally agree! To me landing pages and websites are different things. Websites give you an opportunity to engage the searcher in a conversation and tell them stories. Landing pages for marketing campaigns are for closing deals (usually). This is not necessarily something all clients agree with but something I feel strongly about.

4. The uncertainty of blended search results. What is the search engines decide to put the shopping cart results ahead of your organic listings. Or they put 4 ads and push your organic results below the fold. Even if you rank #1 in the way we all used to think about it, you may not have a visible result above the fold. I don't believe we will ever be able to control all results as Internet marketers and thus need to cover all bases.

5. Day parting, demographics, localization. I lump these all together because they are switches you can pull to optimize paid search campaigns. You can't do this with organic.

6. Other paid search opportunities. Let's not limit the discussion to pure search results. If you aren't bidding on paid search terms you may not show up in YouTube/video results for your brand names. You may not show up in book results, travel results, shopping results, all of the other aspects of paid search. Even if Google is giving away some of this for free right now - plan on that changing and build it into your budget.

Hope this helps continue the discussion.

SES Chicago - playing devil's advocate doesn't always work

2008-12-15T10:09:00.000-08:00

People in the SEM world know that I like to spark a little controversy. For the Video Search Optimization Session I did just that. I know that the panelists enjoyed the approach because they were used to me but I am not sure the audience did.

I put forth the 'proof' that video optimization or videos in general do NOT get you any sales. I was talking about companies that are doing videos for direct response; where they are expecting instant sales. And I completely dismissed 'going viral'. I stated, boldly, that zero sales will happen no matter how many views. Not a happy thought - and not a popular thought.

I did give a few very useful pointers but I think they got lost in the rest of the presentation. Here are the useful thoughts for direct response marketers.

- make sure your URL is in the submitted description of the video
- add your URL graphically to the video somewhere
- submit to all video sites and use Google video sitemaps
- promote your video from other places (links)
- extend your Google advertising campaign to include adwords/adsense on youtube
- look into 'channels' on youtube as a way of controlling what videos are visible for your products
- other excellent point I wish I had made: embed your youtube video in blogs and other sites

The presentation is on the webmama website. Please watch it in slideshow mode as it makes more sense animated.

Feedback welcome. Oh, and PS, Gregory Markel and Greg Jarboe - thanks the for the lively discussion. Great fun.

Fabulous Pictures from SEMPO NASDAQ Ringing!

2008-12-01T09:51:00.000-08:00

SEMPO / NASDAQ / Search Maturity?

2008-11-30T19:13:00.000-08:00

When we founded SEMPO in 2003 we the founders envisioned a search marketing industry that was beyond the grassroots-type marketing most of the industry was mired in at that time. We wanted to see a grown-up industry where search marketing was equally respected along side email, tv and other display media. We wanted to see an industry where best practices were practiced by the majority of the consultants and companies involved. It was a vision that was supported by the top search engines as they believed, as I did, that a successful industry association could encourage the movement of traditional marketing dollars into paid search spending. It was a vision that many consultants and search agencies bought into, literally, without obvious, tangible return on investment.

Has SEMPO succeeded? To me, the amazing educational offerings alone make it a success but there is so much more. And now we have solid proof that SEMPO has established itself beyond the realm of just the search marketers and the search engines - into the realm of finance. SEMPO has helped establish search as a mature means of direct response and brand marketing. SEMPO has been recognized as representing a group of professional marketers, publishers and tool makers. The big news is that Dana Todd - the current SEMPO Chair (Barbara Coll (me), Kevin Lee and Gord Hotchkiss were previous chairs) - rings in the start of December at NASDAQ. SEMPO is being recognized as representing an industry that will be one of the shining lights in the year to come.

As the first President and first Chair of SEMPO, I couldn't be prouder of where SEMPO has come from the days around Noel McMichael's table in San Francisco overlooking the bay.

Here is the information on how to see the big event tomorrow.

Related Articles: SearchEngineLand, ClickZ, Sphinn.

Go Dana.

Image below from second elected Board.

A Piece of Good News - Online Spending to Increase over Holidays

2008-11-24T10:53:00.000-08:00

MarketingVox has reporting some positive news from The Conference Board. The are predicting a slight increase in online sales over the holidays. Whew - somebody thinks things are going to be ok. The Conference Board's Consumer Internet Barometer tells us:

Online Consumers to Spend Less in Stores for Holidays

Online consumers intend to spend less in stores during this holiday season than last, but slightly more online - where they expect free shipping and deals not available in stores, according to The Consumer Internet Barometer from The Conference Board and TNS, reports Retailer Daily.

Bargain hunting will remain the driving force behind online sales, notes the quarterly report, which surveys 10,000 households across the country and tracks who's doing what on the internet.

"Free shipping, exclusive online deals, coupons and discounts are among the incentives consumers will be expecting this season," said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center."

Online sales across retail channels are forecast to grow 9% this holiday season, compared with a total retail sales forecast of just 1.5% growth this year in the key holiday shopping retail sectors, according to TNS Retail Forward. It expects online sales to reach $42.5 billion in the fourth quarter, up $3.5 billion from last year.

Consumers More Cost-Conscious

The ongoing sentiment among online holiday shoppers is that free shipping, coupons, and discount offers would encourage them to spend more online.

Shipping charges, which are the most frustrating aspect of online shopping, tend to frustrate women more than men: 47% versus 38%.
About 93% of women versus 87% of men say free shipping would serve as a motivation to spend more online this holiday season.
More than 71% said special offers and deals not available in stores would boost their online spending, with little difference between men and women.
More than 70% of women and 68% of men said they would be willing to spend more if merchants offered coupons/discounts.
Also, 48% of women say they would spend more online if sites offered free return postage, compared with 39% of men who felt this way.

....

Comments on GM's Video Strategy by Gregory Markel

2008-11-20T12:56:00.000-08:00

One of the leaders in Video Marketing gave a fabulous interview on Fox Business Channel. Gregory Markel, CEO of InfuseCreative, looked at the latest GM video about the U.S. auto industry and gave some pointed comments about what they did right and where they missed opportunities.

Here is his list of what they missed:

Constant In-Video Branding/Call To Action Absent: Should have branded registration goal site www.gmfactsandfiction.com URL throughout entire video instead of at the end and included registration call to action within the video while suggesting a click on a live URL in the description pane.
Description Pane Lacking Clickable URL: Should have included a clickable full http://www.gmfactsandfiction.com URL in the first line of the video description and told viewers to click on it throughout the video. This would have generated more clicks to www.gmfactsandfiction.com
Negative Comments Work Against The Goal: 99% of the 1st page comments at YouTube are negative. This visibly counters their goal of eliciting empathy and support through education. Should have turned off, or moderated/filtered, or responded to negative comments in visible effort to dialogue with consumers
Light Keyword Targeting: Should have included more popular and relevant keywords and phrases in the video's title, description and tags: The video is not found within the first two pages at Youtube by primary and related keywords: general motors, general motors video, general motors bailout, general motors bankruptcy, gm video, gm bailout. Took test subjects 3 attempts to find the video by keyword
No Paid Search Support: Should have supported the YouTube and www.gmfactsandfiction.com registration effort with paid search via Google adwords & YouTube promote your video keyword targeted results for both root keywords and secondary yet related keywords like bailout, economy, economic bailout" etc.

Yahoo/Myspace/MetaCafe Video Engines Missed: Not found by keywords general motors, general motors video, us auto industry ripple effect

Hard to Find: Not directly found on 1st page by keywords general motors, general motors video, gm video, gm bailout
No Paid Search Support: Should have supported the YouTube and www.gmfactsandfiction.com registration effort with paid search via Google adwords keyword targeted results for both root keywords and secondary yet related keywords like bailout, gm, gm bailout, economy, economic bailout, etc.

Digg: Not found for u.s. auto industry ripple effect

Thanks Gregory. Gregory and I will be on the Video Marketing panel at Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2008 in December.
.
.

What to tell brand companies about 'social media'

2008-11-18T07:59:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking a lot about how to respond to requests from potential clients about a social media strategy. Joe Jaffe is right - Social media is a commitment, not a campaign. So how do you tell a client that is familiar with and bought into outward bound communication with a potential customer being a Press Release or an ad that they aren't ready for 'social media'? They are still caught up in making the best website ever and may not be ready for engagement outside of the walled area of their site. How do you show them the value of their brand engaging in open environments when you can't show the value from a lead generation point of view. It isn't about direct response initially.

Social media is time consuming and requires someone obsessed with reputation management. They need to be free to step outside the brand guidelines once and awhile, and more importantly, need to be able to react instantly without checking with a lawyer first. This is hard and scary for public brand companies. You need to have a sense of humour because people will laugh at your attempts and comment on your content, even if it is well though out. I would consider a twitter posting a success if people tweeted back in any form thus starting the conversation.

So, what to tell companies that are asking for social media strategies? Social media is a commitment, not a campaign. And to find that right person to start small and give them the freedom to succeed.

Google Monetizing YouTube

2008-11-06T12:25:00.000-08:00

In Google's important and critical strategy to monetize YouTube they have introduced Click-to-Buy links. If you hear a song you like while watching the music video - then down in the links where you can share, etc you will see a new selection where you can buy the song. Same with games and I am sure, coming soon, products from packaged goods companies. Maybe you will be able to buy the blendtec blender or the thing they are blending directly from the YouTube page?

When Google introduced videos into their universal search results, they added an appealing, eye-catching element to organic results. Not so good for the paid search advertisers who definitely don't want a potential consumers eyes straying to the video thumbnail. Unless...Google can help you monetize the click-through on the video thumbnail as well. They are trying.

Some data suggests that when a video appears in the first page (I suspect above the fold) then less people click on paid search compared to when those thumbnails are not present. The chart above is the Click Performance Index from Comscore for January 2008 which shows just that, when video thumbnails appear in 'organic' search results then searchers click less on paid listings. Google needs to get youtube monetized asap.

Of course, this is mostly speculation on my part. But it makes sense and if you own a website, make sure you have a YouTube strategy.

Stanford Continuing Studies - WebMama Team lectures on Affiliates and Video

2008-11-04T09:21:00.001-08:00

Last month Amanda Evans, VP of Search Strategy and Barbara Coll, CEO, from WebMama.com, spoke at the Stanford Continuing Studies course on Internet Marketing and Customer Acquisition. Amanda spoke on working with affiliates and Barbara spoke on 'why video'.

Amanda and Barbara will be speaking on similar topics at SES Chicago at the beginning of December.

Barbara - Video Search Engine Optimization

Amanda - New Distribution Value using Search and More

Presentations will be posted after SES.

Help Me Create a Top 10 SEM List for Blogs.com

2008-10-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

The folks over at Six Apart have asked me to give them a list of Top 10 SEM blogs for their new service blogs.com. First thought, I thought I’d put it out to you and ask for your opinion: who do you think should be included and why?

Here’s a little bit of background information on blogs.com:

After owning the domain for 9 years, Six Apart launched blogs.com in August 2008. It’s a blog directory with categories that include business, entertainment, news and politics, life, technology and student life.

Additionally, the site features top ten blog lists across various topics, some of which are written by Web celebs such as Craig Newmark (Craigslist), Chris Anderson (Wired), Marc Andreesen (Ning), and Sarah Lacy (BusinessWeek).

Now they’re looking for SEM specific blogs, and I want to give them the best of the best. The types of blogs that I’d like to include would be written by forward thinkers who can offer fresh opinions of the search industry, as well as some tacticians.

So I turn to you and ask:

Who do you think belongs on the Top Ten SEM blogs list?

Website Link Architecture - Google Guidance

2008-10-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

Google has posted some insight into internal link architecture that matches the WebMama methodology closely. It is always rewarding to have recommended and implemented a website development and usability method that is useful to humans and useful to bots; it provides relevant information to both. More importantly, once again, it is shown that no tricks are required to have an optimized site that achieves high visibility in search results.

Here are some snippets:

"Keep important pages within several clicks from the homepage"

"Although you may believe that users prefer a search box on your site rather than category navigation, it's uncommon for search engine crawlers to type into search boxes or navigate via pulldown menus. So make sure your important pages are clickable from the homepage and for easy for Googlebot to find throughout your site. It's best to create a link architecture that's intuitive for users and crawlable for search engines."

"Use descriptive anchor text"

"Writing descriptive anchor text, the clickable words in a link, is a useful signal to help search engines and users alike to better understand your content. The more Google knows about your site—through your content, page titles, anchor text, etc.—the more relevant results we can return for users (and your potential search visitors)."

"Verify that Googlebot finds your internal links"

Complete Posting of Google WebMaster Blog - Internal Link Architecture.

Social Media Successes? Stats and Case Studies

2008-10-06T14:02:00.001-07:00

Dabbling with social media has been successful for some companies and disastrous failures for others. Customers and consumers, though, are calling for interaction with the companies they are purchasing from. I am skeptical of experimenting with 'social media' when the economy is putting at question the size of the marketing dollars and instead 'put your advertising dollars where they make you the most profit'. Of course that would be in search marketing which isn't sexy or trendy and therefore ignored by those that like fancy graphics and feel the need to try something new. Same old, same old.

I certainly feel that blogs, forums and rating/comment interactions with customers/clients/prospects/distributors/affiliates, etc is critical and I hope that some companies can turn this new engagement opportunity into bottom line profits. If it is thought leadership or brand reputation that are top of your list, then social media is critical.

Cone Finds that Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media
When asked about specific types of interactions, Americans who use social media believe:

Companies should use social networks to solve my problems (43%)
Companies should solicit feedback on their products and services (41%)
Companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand (37%)
Companies should market to consumers (25%)

Blogger Campaign Case Study: HP's 31 Days of the Dragon

What HP did was give an HDX Dragon laptop to 31 bloggers, letting each one give away the laptop to its readers, in a week-long contest. Each day, a new blog started a new week-long contest. Success:

Sales of the HDX Dragon increasing by 84%
Overall 10% increase in PC sales
14% increase in traffic to HP's hpshopping.com site

Analyst: Half of 'social media campaigns' will flop

Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, has projected that over 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with Web sites will have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes. But, he added in an interview with CNET News, 50 percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures.

"(Businesses) will rush to the community and try to connect, but essentially they won't have a mutual purpose, and they'll fail," Sarner said. By a "mutual purpose," he means a way to serve both the company putting out the campaign and the audience interacting with it: finding that balance is not easy. The quirkiest and most addictive campaigns often provide little value for the company and turn out to be fads, whereas marketing efforts on the Web often don't go over as well with the public.

Google Bucket Tests User-Defined Blurb Length In Search Results

2008-09-29T10:22:00.001-07:00

Small, Medium or Large no longer just for T-Shirts but for what your search results look like. Google Bucket Tests User-Defined Blurb Length In Search Results on TechCrunch talks about the variable length, user-chosen descriptions that Google may one day offer. It is based on a user selecting either a short description to show - that would just be the title; a medium description - what you see today; or a long description - what you see today plus a snippet. It would certainly benefit sites that have good title tags (nothing new), appealing meta tags (nothing new), and tons of text-based content (nothing new). Some webmasters voice interesting concerns in the comments of this article.

Image available in the article. It may never come to fruition but worth knowing that they are testing it.

Technorati Releases State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report

2008-09-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

State of the Blogosphere / 2008 - Technorati Report

Introduction: Blogs are Pervasive and Part of Our Daily Lives

There have been a number of studies aimed at understanding the size of the Blogosphere, yielding widely disparate estimates of both the number of blogs and blog readership. All studies agree, however, that blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream.

The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay

* comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
o Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
o Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million
o Total internet audience 188.9 million
* eMarketer (May 2008)
o 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)
o 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)
* Universal McCann (March 2008)
o 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US
o 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US
o 77% of active Internet users read blogs

What is a Blog? The Lines Continue To Blur

Wikipedia defines blogs as:

* A Blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.
* The Blogosphere is the collective community of all blogs. Since all blogs are on the Internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked. Discussions "in the Blogosphere" have been used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues.

But as the Blogosphere grows in size and influence, the lines between what is a blog and what is a mainstream media site become less clear. Larger blogs are taking on more characteristics of mainstream sites and mainstream sites are incorporating styles and formats from the Blogosphere. In fact, 95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs (see The Bivings Group).

Read More..and thanks Technorati..fabulous...

Double Column Video Results on Google Search

2008-09-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

Amanda's keen eye got a look at Google's new double column, double video serving in results. Take a look:

Analysts Lower Ad Projection - oops - but not search

2008-09-15T14:10:00.000-07:00

Carol Krol wrote an excellent article in BtoB Magazine about the tough times ahead for the U.S. ad market. But this comes as no surprise to those of us tallying the ROI at the end of the day that the article goes on to say "internet advertising remains the one bright spot in the otherwise bleak picture".

"Emerging media ad spending - which includes search, social media, online video and mobile - will grow 29.5% this year to $14.9B, and 25.8% next year to $18.8B, according to MAGNA."

Some of this growth, I admit, is companies jumping on the trendy bandwagon and not necessarily paying attention to tracking through to sales, but much of the money is on search - and search is the deal closer.

MAGNA reports also said, "growth projections have been downgraded again for North America (from 3.7% to 3.5%)" and similar for Western Europe. They mention that global numbers have been adjusted upwards - suggesting that all companies who sell globally should be investing advertising dollars in countries like Argentina, Russia, China and Brazil.

ZenithOptimedia said, "it expects Internet Advertising to grow 26.7% this year and break the 10%-share barrier, a year earlier than its forecast 3 months ago". Wow, only 10% still. I would have thought we would see higher amounts than that. I expect for online businesses the numbers are much, much higher.

"U.S. advertisers have found that online reaches a very wide scale of customers for a relative bargain compared to TV and print", said Emily Riley, senior analyst at JupiterResearch. "We're not seeing TV money being taken away. That's still the dominant medium. As budgets grow, though, a larger percentage of new budgets will be dedicated to the Web."

David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer, agreed. "It's where the audience is found," he said. "It's underdeveloped as a branding tool, and it's very strong and effective with direct response through search. The effectiveness of paid search is a large factor contributing to the growth".

Thank you Carol for putting some great statistics and forecasts in one article for us search marketers who are still trying to get clients to pay attention.

More information: Magna's Coen report July 8th, 2008

Paid Search: Teaching Affiliates to Play Nice

2008-09-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

Affiliates can be invaluable for a paid search program, specifically when used to control the search results page real estate; the caveat, of course, is that you must manage them very closely.

As the WebMama team is very active in managing SEM and affiliates, I’ve decided to turn to our Director of Client Services, Wes Blemker, and our VP of Search Strategy, Amanda Evans, with a few questions about the advantages and disadvantages of affiliates; we’ll end the post with their five top tips for working with affiliates.

Advantages of Affiliates in a Paid Search Program

Affiliates can block competitors effectively, or push them lower on the SERPs, thereby giving more visibility to your brand message, according to Amanda. “They’re a useful tool in controlling search results page real estate – or the ‘virtual shelf life’ - for your brand.”

Wes agrees, adding that it gives your company far more control over the bid marketplace: “Otherwise, competitors will find it cheaper and easier to bid up your top keywords (especially branded) and steal traffic and targeted exposure. With the official site appearing on top and then affiliates dominating the rest of the page one results, it becomes more expensive, and less effective for competitors to enter the fray.”

Disadvantages of Affiliates in a Paid Search Program

“Affiliates make most of their commission off branded keyword conversions, so they will be extremely aggressive in bidding on these terms without guidelines,” Wes explains, “and this will no doubt drive up your company CPC to unacceptable levels on branded terms. Problems can and always do arise with affiliates, especially when they are given free reign to use the trademarked brand term in ads.”

Whether affiliates rank higher, drive up CPC, block your ads, or misrepresent your carefully crafted brand strategy, Amanda points out that you need to remain focused on the end result; especially when “good affiliates go bad.”

5 Tips to keep Affiliates Playing Nicely

1. Create Guidelines for Trademark Usage - Amanda

Communicate clear guidelines for trademark usage and the consequences for violating the guidelines. Typically, this works best with a select group of top affiliates (about five).

Consider crafting guidelines surrounding the use of trademarks in display URLs, titles and description copy, as well as which specific affiliates have the rights to trademarks.

2. Monitor Trademark Usage Closely - Amanda

Don't assume that once the guidelines are in place and clearly communicated, that everything will go smoothly; you will need to closely monitor trademark usage across affiliates and take appropriate action.

Aside from simple searching to police affiliates, be aware of significant changes to impression levels and clicks on brand terms. Significant swings in impression and clicks on brand terms are a key indicator of affiliate issues.

3. Measure, Test, and Measure Again - Amanda

Finally, above all, measure, test, and measure again to ensure that you are leveraging the strength of both your search marketing and affiliate channels.

4. Maintain a list of Trusted Affiliates - Wes

Keep a very tight list of top, trusted affiliates - no more than say 5 - that are allowed to use your brand in ads. Additionally, these trusted partners must be held to a maximum bid that can be determined through testing; keeping the official site ad on top is a must with daily monitoring of your CPC for top branded terms.

5. Ask for Reports - Wes

If it comes to it, to be certain affiliates are following the rules, you can have them send automated reports from Google [for example] weekly, showing their actual bid price for the terms you care most about.

At the end of the day, these rules will help you to have some pricing control over an open marketplace while maintaining excellent coverage across page one of the results. Please feel free to add your thoughts in the comments so we can continue learning together.

SearchMe - Old News but Good News

2008-09-02T10:18:00.001-07:00

I have just found out that the founder of the search engine Searchme is the father of one of the boys on my soccer team. (I coach my son's BU14 AYSO team). Randy Adams has quite the history of entrepreneurial work in Silicon Valley.

I did some playing around with the engine and love it. My discovery of Searchme may be old news to some, but when the application beta was announced in March my attention was elsewhere. I don't believe Blog postings need to be about current news but about things that may be of interest to people who are NOT of the search marketing industry. Searchme is blended search with an excellent user interface. Kind of takes the iphone approach to flipping through relative content. It is smart about related searches and categorization. It has a bit of delicious as well with its 'stacks' model. Listings and snippets appear only if you want them. The diagram shows a search on webmama. I liked the results.

The TechCrunch article talks about their funding and the founders. Backed by some big wigs. Randy Adam's professional bio on linkedin.

Just FYI - here are three other applications that have crossed by macbook recently.

Quantcast - for competitive analysis and industry comparisons
Spy FU - for competitive analysis and industry comparisons
Addictomatic - for stalking and reputation management

Coverage of Advanced B2B Session at SES

2008-08-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, last week I attended SES San Jose and spoke on the panel: Advanced B2B Marketing. The session inspired quite a few posts, so if you didn’t get to San Jose, it’s may be worth your time reading these.

From Top Rank Blog: http://www.toprankblog.com

10 Tips For B2B Marketers
1. Reach prospects early in the buying cycle
2. Advertise in ‘the tail’
3. Include non-branded keywords
4. Pre-qualified clickers
5. Focus and align ad copy
6. Create very specific landing pages and microsite
7. Test pages continuously
8. Offer multiple action options
9. Simplify registration forms
10 Turn web inquiries into sales leads

Read the entire post, which goes into greater detail.

Other posts that talk about this session:

B2B Lead Generation Tips and Buying Cycle Notes by Todd Mintz: http://www.aimclearblog.com/2008/08/22/b2b-lead-generation-tips-buying-cycle-notes/

B2B Tactics by Kent Lewis: http://newt-echnology-news.blogspot.com/2008/03/ses-b2b-tactics.html

Advanced B2B Marketing by Daryl Pereira: http://www.cagedether.com/2008/08/25/advanced-b2b-marketing

Advanced B2B Marketing at Seroundtable:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018029.html

And a picture (not close enough to see me almost fainting).

Finally, if you’re interested in more tips from the speakers, take a look at:

Patricia Hursh’s resource page

Adam Goldberg's blog

WebMama’s presentations including slides, video and audio

or consider subscribing to my WebMama blog to stay up to date with all things Search Marketing: http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebmamasLookAtTheWeb

Great Blogs Complement SEO Efforts - Summary of Lee Odden Talk at SES

2008-08-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

Most businesses don't realize the value of blogs when it comes to SEO. But - they want to.

"SEO and blogs equal success" Lee Odden told the packed audience at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose Wednesday. "Blogs with great content, that are optimized and promoted, create overwhelming competitive advantages."

By way of case studies, Lee made a strong case for why blogs are an indispensable and valuable tool for business and should be treated with great care and much forethought.

Currently, Technorati tracks over 112 million blogs. According to Lee, of those blogs, 100 million have less than 20 inbound links, 400,000 have more than 20 links, and the top 2,600 have over 1,000 inbound links.

"Think about that," he points out, "to sit within the top 1 per cent of blogs, one thing you'll need to do is get 1,000 links."

Assuming the blog contains quality content, this is achievable. While it may take businesses a little longer to do it themselves, this number of links is attainable by proficient search marketers--easily and within a reasonable time frame.

Take a look at the case studies, and let the numbers speak for themselves.

Case Study 1: Senior housing development company

Strategy
- Create an informal communications platform to present issues important to its target market.
Tactics
- Launch optimized blog and promote unique content via blogger relations, article promotions.
SEO Results

Blog top 5 source referring traffic to corporate site
Monthly Web site visitors doubled
Top 30 SERPs increased from 2 to 20
Unique visitors increased 500%.

Case Study 2: Online book/games retailer:

Strategy
- Stimulate online community and book sales by offering brain teasers, puzzles and learning games.
Tactics
- Create SEO'd blog, communities on Facebook, Twitter and promotions on Flickr and StumbleUpon, etc.
SEO Results

Unique keywords referring traffic Jul 07: 9,874 Jul 08: 18,809
Monthly unique visitors Jul 07: 31,820 Jul 08: 159,138
Monthly Page views Jul 07: 77,287 Jul 08: 406,455

Case Study 3: Top Rank Blog

Strategy
- Increase thought leadership, industry visibility, media coverage and lead generation.
Tactics
- Publish a regular schedule of unique content: industry and SEM agency insights, interviews, conference coverage, surveys, blog reviews and blog tools, photos and video.
Results
For 07/01 -07/31 (worst month in 2008):

Search: 26,980 visits via 12,653 keywords 95,668 page views
Ranking: "online marketing"#2
Ranking: "blog optimization"#2, 3
Average 4 advertising inquiries/week
Average 1 media inquiry/week
4-5 business inquiries/week

Summary

Lee ended his presentation with five takeaways:

1. Goals drive content
2. Automate SEO as much as possible
3. Socialize
4. Measure
5. Refine and repeat

Visit Lee's blog for a more detailed post on SEO for blogs.

Other speakers at this session included (Chris Boggs, Daron Babin and Amanda Watlingon).

Written by: Lid Davis web strategy manager at large for WebMama.com Inc.

SES Advanced B2B Session Wrap Up

2008-08-21T07:23:00.000-07:00

Chock full of pain killers and boiling hot I was still able to provide some useful information about working with an Enterprise Sales Force with search marketing leads; convincing or forcing them to look at the leads as highly valuable. [Barbara Coll, WebMama.com, Advanced B2B Presentation, SES San Jose]

I did add something to the discussion that I think could be a talk into itself: How to manage the distribution of search engine marketing funds and keywords between low-end, low-cost products that are available to purchase directly in an online store and the enterprise product sales. There is no doubt in my mind (and in most of my client's) that in the long run the enterprise products make a company more money. The lifetime value of those customers is much higher and the average selling price huge. The difference could be between an open source free product and a $10000 site license. But the low-end product sale is instantly measurable and provides a compelling case backed up with lots of data. Not an easy thing to do with enterprise sales with direct sales reps involved. In my opinion the company needs to do both of these things:

Look at the lifetime value of the customer;
Do a ton of up selling online and in vigourous follow-up.

There is often a battle between low-end and high-end and it needs to be resolved strategically at the business strategy and sales level - not at the marketing programs level. Keep in mind that this applies to paid search activities and search engine optimization. There needs to be a choice as to which pages are truly the ones that 'should' show up when a searcher types in one of the high converting words for the company.

The SES conference was busy and all the great speakers were there. Sorry I couldn't spend more time but healing from foot surgery is a long process. I even missed the Google Dance for the first time since its inception; my 2001 t-shirt wasn't even taken out of the back of the closest. One comment to the organizers - the rooms were far too big. We had approximately 100 people in the Advanced B2B session and it felt like 10 as they were so spread out across the 300 seats.

Barbara Coll - SES San Jose 2008 Speaking Events

2008-08-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

Once again I get to bring my 13+ years of internet marketing experience (wow!) to Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2008. I will be speaking in my favorite session - Advanced B2B Marketing - focusing on how to work with an Enterprise/Direct Sales team. Search Marketing, as most know, is not just about how to generate quality traffic but also about how to convert the traffic.

I will also be moderating a session on Affiliate marketing. Affiliates and Brand owners battle with who gets the top spot and what are the rules. This should be an interesting session.

Hope to see you there.

Google is the Winner by Far in the UK - new comScore Report

2008-08-08T11:51:00.000-07:00

Some new data from ComScore confirms what we all already knew -

More than 3 out of 4 Searches Conducted in the UK are on Google Sites.

ComScore goes on to say:

There were 3.9 billion total searches conducted in the U.K. during the month.
31 million U.K. Internet users conducted at least one search.
U.K. searchers conducted an average of 124 searches per searcher during the month, or 4.1 searches per day.
U.K. searchers made a combined total of 937 billion visits to a search engine in May, with an average of 4.1 searches per visit.

Interesting that Comscore considers Ebay a sources of searches....

SEMPO San Francisco Group - FIRST meeting

2008-08-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

SEMPO has a San Francisco/Bay Area Group. With the growth of the organization many have realized that it would be fun and advantageous to get together small groups to talk about search marketing.

The first meeting is Wednesday August 13th from 6-9 at Medjool in San Francisco. All the details and rsvp page are at http://marketing.meetup.com/305/calendar/8432265/.
There is also a FaceBook group you can join. No need to be a SEMPO member even though that is one of the goals of the group and event; to grow SEMPO membership.

Since 2003 when I was part of a group that founded SEMPO I have watched the organization grow into a social network of like-minded souls. It has exceeded all our dreams for the organization.

Thanks so much to Jessica Bowman in all her work in getting this started. See you there.

Ranking Reports Still A Necessity of the Business?

2008-08-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, we run ranking reports. Yes, the demise of WebPosition Gold is painful because of that. I posted on a few forums about it and wanted to show the thread. Hope it is helpful.

Initial Comment on WP:

"Has anyone else noticed that after years of threatening it appears that Google has now blocked WP Gold from reporting rankings through their tool? We called the WP support line and they said they are waiting for Google to 'do' something and have NO ETA has to when it will be fixed."

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3716136.htm
and taken up by http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017890.html

My response to comments that people can't believe that we are still doing ranking reports. Bottom Line: Give the client what they want. Multi-billion dollars companies don't change status quo easily.

"I knew that I would get the 'I can't believe they still run ranking reports' comment. You are right, I am not so behind the times and am very, very clear with clients that it is NOT the measurement they should be using for tracking.

That said: in order to track organic, video, or image download or whatever that is not a paid search or online click you need the cooperation of a whole different group in the company. Sophisticated clients have most web marketing run out of marketing organizations with marketing budgets - they don't own IT or the traffic analysis packages. Some are using completely different systems to track marketing campaigns, of which search is a part, like marketfirst or eloqua. The in-house SEO people at these clients are in the marketing divisions now and we work with them. It is the sign of a mature company if SEO and Paid Search are all in marketing - but it creates other problems.

The best way to track organic is to tag the visitor in some way but because it is not tracked say with a dart tag or a Google adwords tag, which can be set up by marketing people at the campaign level, this tracking requires 'help' from a different division.

Executives need something that is highly visible, isn't just about numbers and shows improvement or problems readily - thus rankings.

So, as we mature and move SEO away from the IT/developer crowd into the world of marketing campaigns we lose some of our ability to control the technical side of the business. I would rather it be part of marketing anyway. "

45 Online Resources for CEO's

2008-06-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, building a website was a no brainer. “Build it and they will come,” was the general consensus. You left the technical details to your IT department; the promotional details were handed off to marketing.

Today, this is no longer an option. If you’re a CEO, you must be involved in your company’s online strategies if you plan to stay ahead of your competition. And by being involved, this means understanding the fundamentals of the Web and keeping up with all of the changes taking place online.

I hope you find this list of resources useful.

Business Blogging - Reading and Writing

1. RSS in plain English
If you don’t know what RSS is, watch this video (3 minutes, 44 seconds) for a simple explanation in plain English.

2. The Best 10 RSS Readers for Windows, Mac, and Linux
Determining which reader to use can be difficult; take a look at these descriptions of ten of the best.

3. RSSFwd
If you’re still uncomfortable reading via a feed reader, why not begin by getting blog posts delivered to you via e-mail. RSSFwd delivers RSS feeds straight to your inbox.

4. EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created this guide to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger.

5. Basic Business Blogging Suggestions
To create an authoritative and trusted blog, consider these 12 recommendations.

6. Blogging Mistakes to Avoid
Not only are there basic guidelines on how to do it right, you also need to understand what to avoid when blogging. Take a look at these 15 mistakes to avoid.

7. The Opportunities and Challenges of Corporate, Team, and Personal Blogs
Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang describes the pros and cons of the three main types of blogs.

8. Blog Topics for Business to Business
If you’re unsure what to blog about, consider these seven ideas to put get the creative juices going.

Social Media - Learn and Use

9. Your Social Media Strategy Begins With Monitoring
Before you can launch a successful social media strategy, consider monitoring existing conversations about your company.

10. List of Social Media and Social Networking Sites by Industry
A regularly updated list of over 400 sites, listed by categories that include: arts, bookmarking, auto, connecting with friends, consumer reviews, cooking, cultures, dating, education, event planning, family, games, fashion, health, networking, kids, Internet marketing, mobile, music, news, pets, photo sharing, pop culture, professional, real estate, religion, shopping, sport, technology, teen, travel, video sharing.

11. Social Media Press Release Template (free of copyright)
If your marketing department is planning to send out social media releases, give them this template to begin with.

12. Essential Guide to Social Media (Free e-book)
An overview of how to listen and participate in social media and new media marketing.

13. Social Media Networking and ROI
Gain insight into the goals and benefits of social networking, the challenges, and understand into how to best maximize your social networking efficiency.

14. Press Release Grader
HubSpots Press Release Grader evaluates your press release and provides a marketing effectiveness score; helping you create better and smarter press releases.

SEO and SEM - Visibility That's Relevant

15. --

16. SEO Jargon Busters – A Comprehensive SEO Dictionary
Commonly refered to SEO terms, explained in English.

17. The Definitive List of Resources for Keyword Analysis
Your site won’t get search engine traffic without using keywords. As the CEO, make sure you are involved in this critical step.

18. Linkbuilding: 22 Dofollow Social Media sites
If your marketing department is not working on getting links to your site; or doesn’t know how to do it without being penalized by Google, point this article out to them.

19. Pay Per Click: The basics of Paid Advertising
Make sure you understand paid advertising; after all, you’re paying for it. Read this to get the basics down.

20. Best Practices for Pay-Per-Action Campaigns
Understand pay-per-action campaigns and best practices with Google’s start guide to Pay-per-action campaigns.

21. Google’s Conversion University
Free online resources from Google that include videos and tutorials, to help you understand search, marketing, and how your company fits in.

22. Google’s AdWords Learning Center
Another offering from Google; free training to sharpen your knowledge of AdWords.

Brand Marketing

23. A Practical Guide to Branding
From Business Week: Understand and define your brand identity—your product’s ‘personality’—before you spend money on advertising or marketing.

24. Word of Mouth Manual
This free e-book is available to download as a PDF. Alternatively, buy the book on Amazon ($45).

25. Brand Personality
Guy Kawasaki interviews Ogilvy’s Rohit Bhargava where they talk about the role of ‘personality’ in branding.

26. How’s your Rep? Online Reputation Management
When a potential customer searches for your firm on the Internet, you want to be in control of what they see on their first search engine results page.

27. Protect Your Brand Online
Everything you need to know about monitoring and managing your online reputation. eBook ($39).

28. Free Tools to Monitor Your Online Presence
Take a look at these nine free online tools to monitor conversations about you on the Web.

Free Online Courses

29. Entrepreneurship and Business (Carnegie Mellon)

30. Open Source and Distribution of Digital Information (UC Berkeley)

31. Understanding Computers and the Internet (Harvard)

32. The Future of the Internet (Stanford)

Reports About the Internet - Trends and Stats

33. Forrester: Consumer Technographics data
Understanding the impact of technology and the Internet on your business.

34. Comscore: Key Measurements of the Digital Worl d
Comscore covers today’s hottest business trends, with key measurements of the digital world.

35. Internet World Statistics
The latest data about Internet users worldwide.

36. Top US sites from Quantcast
Rankings for sites in the US; how many visitors, and type of visitor.

37. The Future of Media (video)
A panel discussion on the Future of Media, with journalists David Carr of NY Times, Keith Kelly of NY Post, Kenneth Li of Reuters, and Johnnie Roberts of Newsweek and Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch.

38. User Generated Content, Social Media and Advertising—An Overview (PDF)
In 2008, if you’re not on a social networking site, you’re not on the Internet. A report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Top 10 Management Blogs You Should Subscribe To:

39. David Kellog, CEO
Mark Logic, Inc.

40. Joel Spolsky, CEO
Fog Creek Software

41. John Mackey, CEO
Whole Foods

42. Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director
Garage Technology Ventures, founder of Truemors and Alltop

43. Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

44. Mark Cuban, Owner
Dallas Mavericks

45. Craig Newmark, CEO
Craigslist

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and hope we can start a conversation about what CEO’s most need to know about the online world.

Please let me know your opinions and suggestions by leaving a comment below; questions too are welcome.

If you liked this post, consider bookmarking it at Delicious for future reference, or vote on it at StumbleUpon by clicking on the respective link below.

How to be an SEO Rock Star - by Lidija Davis

2008-05-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

Lidija Davis (WebMama Web Strategist) equates Rock Stardom in the Search Visibility world with keeping up in the social media world. Really an amazingly clear look at what should now be basics in SEO.

How to be an SEO Rock Star
By: Lidija Davis
June 2008
Visibility Magazine

BIO:

Lidija Davis is the Web Strategist for WebMama.com Inc. WebMama.com Inc. is Silicon Valley's premier search engine marketing company providing SEO and SEM services to corporations around the world. Lidija is also the Silicon Valley Correspondent for Tech Talk Radio Australia and runs her own blog at http://blog-well.com

Lidija's First Page Digg and Technorati Information Articles Include:
100+ Useful Web Resources for Small Business and Non Profits
100+ Resources for Web Developers

BAD Mess in Google 1st Search Result for AMAZON

2008-05-15T16:17:00.001-07:00

Hard to believe but the first result for amazon in Google organic is a URL that takes you to a redirect page that doesn't go anywhere until you click on link shown (or wait long enough and I didn't have the patience to wait). To the right is the result and below is the resulting page.

If you click on the page you finally get to Amazon's home page. What a mess? I wonder if Amazon is tracking organic? Is anybody else seeing the same thing?

Edicts of Search Engine Marketing - WebMama Learnings

2008-05-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

There are some things that are always constant in the world of search engine optimization and marketing. My team and I remind ourselves of these edicts when we are approached by a potential client. If the potential client does not accept these truths, we don't work with them.

Business Expectations:

1. Search Engines change their algorithms all the time.
2. A business CANNOT survive by relying solely on Google to rank them highest in organic results (see #1).
3. It is about Conversion not ranking (see #2).

SEO Tactics:

4. The fundamentals of SEO never change, they just adapt to new media.
5. Never leave it up to a search engine to decide what is important on your site, tell them through internal linking, tags and content.
6. Do NOT expect anything to happen overnight even if you use sitemaps.

Paid Search Tactics:

7. If you need to own a category then bid higher (#3 may need to be ignored).
8. Control your affiliates with changes to their written contracts, not just threats.
9. Automated bid management systems are not the best way to manage #7.

A final thought, encourage your clients to educate themselves on the world of search marketing through courses, respected blogs and conferences, not forums.

Graduated Search Marketers at eMetrics San Francisco?

2008-04-25T09:20:00.000-07:00

I love Jim Sterne. He comes up with the most fun sessions for his eMetrics conferences! I will be on a session called Serious Search. In our cap and gowns a few us will provide the audience with the top 3 things we learned in graduate school and open the floor to discussions about - well - search analytics. eMetrics is THE educational conference for advanced web analytics people with a great focus on teaching the basics of managing paid search marketing. May 5-7 in San Francisco. He saved the best for last - come hang out with us on Wednesday May 7th.

SA-6 Wednesday, 1:30 - 2:30
Serious Search - Graduate Level

Barbara Coll, WebMama.com Inc.
Gary Angel, Semphonic
Michael Stebbins, Market Motive

You’ve read the books, you track the blogs, you’ve got most of your search marketing in hand and are doing a pretty good job of it. Now it’s time to take it to the next level. Find out what Gary, Michael and Barbara learned in 30 years of combined experience in search and analytics. They have definitely matriculated and are ready to outline where things are going next with online search. Come learn from the graduates.

Dana Todd and The WebMama Working Together

2008-04-21T21:02:00.000-07:00

Dana Todd and WebMama.com are joining forces to provide WebMama.com clients and prospects with exciting (some would say explosive) insights into the future of marketing. Dana and I are both well known in the world of internet/online/web marketing and have been search marketing visionaries and disturbers of the peace for at least 10 years each. Both are founders of SEMPO. Both have been Presidents and Chairs for the organization. Dana has the reddest hair and WebMama is one of the most recognizable brand names in the industry. What a team!

Dana's forward-thinking into direct marketing and brand marketing strategies will provide my company with opportunities to discuss with the C-Suite the value of search marketing as an integral part of all marketing strategies and programs. For the prospects and clients who can handle the phenomenal, out-of-the-box ideas and the fast-paced presentation style of Dana Todd, there will be great rewards in helping their company navigate the ever changing world of search and web marketing.

In addition, Dana will be working with the WebMama team to increase their knowledge of a broader range of marketing strategies and tactics based on Dana's experiences with SiteLab. Dana has also announced her involvement in start-up NewsForce, working as CMO.

Can you imagine the two of us together in front of companies like HP, Guthy-Renker and VMware? Can you imagine the two of us ever letting the clients get a word in edgewise!!!??

Moving your Site to a New Domain Name - Scary!!

2008-04-18T15:42:00.000-07:00

The Google Central Webmaster blog has posted "Best practices When Moving Your Site"; and it confirms everything my team and I have been preaching for years and adds some additional good stuff. A summary in my own words:

- Use a 301 redirect on a file by file or directory by directory basis (this is really hard)
- Check to see if the new pages are in the index and the old pages are being taken out
- Don't change too much at once. Move the entire site, let it settle and then throw up a redesign or vice versa
- Watch to make sure pages aren't ending up in 404s unless absolutely unavoidable
- Make sure all internal links are pointing to the new domain
- Try (this is really, really hard) to get external links pointed to the new domain
- Keep the old site up and running for a while (Google suggests 180 days). [I would never give up control but I might take it offline]
- Submit a sitemap to all engines that accept the standard

They suggest using Google Webmaster Tools on both domains to help track 404s and to ensure that 301s are working. Some great questions and comments follow the posting.

Thanks for the validation and the great information Google.

Google Ads on Yahoo - Screenshot as proof

2008-04-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

On the East coast my colleague has seen our client advertising campaigns on Yahoo switch from Yahoo/Overture to Google AdWords. On the West coast I can not duplicate the appearance. Here is a screen shot from the East.

Search yourselves for VMware or Vonage and send me what you see. DON'T CLICK unless you are interested in the product ;) We measure everything!

The Definitive List of Resources for Keyword Analysis

2008-04-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

Determining what keywords to use for optimizing a website is the first step in the SEO process isn’t easy. Here the WebMama team gives you our list of sources for information for this critical stage in all Search Engine Marketing projects. Hope they help make you more successful.

Tools

1. WordTracker [info , free trial]
2. Google AdWords [tool – no account required]
3. Google Trends [tool – relative volume analysis]
4. MSN Keyword Focus [tool - volume analysis]
5. MSN Keyword Group Detection [tool – no account required]
6. Keyword Discovery [info – free trial]
7. Thesaurus
8. Overture [tool – times out regularly]
9. Answers.com

Informational Online Sources

Inside the Client Properties

10. Corporate Blogs
11. Blog Tags
12. Press Releases
13. Current website content
14. Marketing creatives for banners, etc
15. Email campaign content
16. Personas developed for the site

Outside the Client Properties

17. Industry forums
18. Product/Service reviews (and comments)
19. Online magazines
20. Competition’s sites and marketing campaigns
21. Relevant social media group discussions

Non-Online Sources

22. TV ads
23. Radio copy
24. Print ads
25. Focus groups “what would you put in a search box to find our products and/or services”
26. Magazines/newspapers
27. Video advertising
28. Other forms of marketing, especially those of competitors
29. Sales training materials

Data Sources

30. Paid search statistics from all campaigns
31. Organic traffic statistics
32. Internal site search

People in the Company

33. Executives
34. Product Managers
35. Web Developers
36. Web Producers
37. User Interface Designers
38. Customer Experience team
39. Direct Sales
40. Inside Sales
41. Call Center
42. Customer Service
43. Content writers
44. Marketing brand managers
45. ‘whomever hired us’

Use your source information, filter it through the VCR edict that all keywords need to be a balance of Volume, Conversion and Relevancy, and the result will be the right keywords for optimizing your website and increasing visibility and converting traffic to your website.

This list is available in a Word document called KeywordResourceList.doc should you want to spread the word.

Google Filling in Forms - security risks & marketing disaster

2008-04-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

Seriously this is scary. Matt Cutts talked about Google filling in forms to get at more data. From an SEO point of view it is unnecessary - if the site owner wants stuff indexed they should make it available. WebMama's clients are all directed this way.

From all other points of view I see this as a real problem.

1. Marketing uses forms all the time to capture lead information. And they measure it. Let’s say Google tries to ‘fill out’ the form and get to the inside information once a day for a month. That is 30 hits on the form that were completed but did not convert. Kind of messes with the data.

2. No matter what they say would you, as a security/risk manager, be satisfied that Google isn’t going to try and ‘guess’ the login or password just because the button or form element has something familiar on it like ‘password’. A lot of personal information (aka healthcare) and business information (aka intranet access) lie behind forms.

3. What if the form is about gathering demographic information. I am not sure that the demographics of a search engine or the demographics of some bot with keywords that are randomly chosen is information an advertiser is trying to capture.

“So now we get GoogleBot instead of Donald Duck as the false name on our forms.”

Google Organic Search - Second Search Based On Previous Query

2008-04-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

This is important. Danny Sullivan reports from Austrailia today:

Previous Query

Last year, we covered (and here) how Google was changing the ads it displayed based on the previous query someone performed. For example, search for [spain] then do a new search for [travel], and you may notice how the ads will be targeted around Spanish travel (see also Google's help page on this).

Google's never given this feature a formal name, but Marissa said internally the company calls it "Previous Query," the first time to my knowledge that we've had some type of formal name put to it. Learn the name well, because Previous Query refinement is now coming to unpaid or "organic" search results, she said.

For example, if someone were to search for [spain] and then [travel] after that, BOTH the ads and the organic results will be altered to take the previous query into account. To some degree, it will be as if the second query was for [spain travel].

This is a big deal. Big deal. It means that the results for many "single word" queries, which can be hard for sites to rank for when billions of listings come back, will become queries involving two or more words -- and much more specific ones.

When's it happening? "Soon." Indeed, it's already been happening for several weeks for some people randomly selected. Who will get it, when live? Everyone that accepts a cookie. IE, it's not personalized search thing that only happens if you're logged in.

How could a user opt-out. Heh. I didn't get to asking that, sorry. But I imagine any search where the + symbol is used before a word or words will override Previous Query.

Google & Trademarks & UK: A Good Thing For Clients

2008-04-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

What is all the complaining about? I am thrilled we will be able to bid on competitor's brand words in the UK and Ireland starting in May 2008. That has always been a successful tactic - for years and years. People seem concerned that the bid price will go up. Yes, the price will probably go up but it has been cheap for a long time and I am sure that smart marketers can find a way to control their Affiliates and Partners. We had to put those controls in in the US/Canada a long time ago. I am not saying it isn't still a battle and that it doesn't take constant policing, it does.

NetImperative- Google Sparks Controversy with New Trademark Policy
BigMouthMedia - Google to Introduce Open Keyword bidding on all terms in UK and Ireland
WebProNews -Google Gives UK Adwords Trademark Bidding
BlogStorm - Big Changes to Google's Adwords Trademark Policy and its follow up reactions

Note - I am constantly surprised by people who think Google shouldn't do this to 'line their pockets'. Of course they should. They are a public company who is accountable for their bottom line to stockholders. It isn't about good and evil - it is about growth and making Wall Street happy.

More Search within a Search - tell Google to take it down.

2008-04-04T09:43:00.000-07:00

Search within Search addition to Google search results is a more implementation of Google's desire to get more people to see ads if they don't click on them the first time. And I agree with Janel Landis that this may increase advertiser's brand search CPC.

Janel's article on 'Working with Google's Search with Search Functionality' April 4, 2008.

One note - 10 cents for a brand search!!!! No way. Higher, higher, higher. And even higher if you don't have your affiliates, resellers and/or competitors under control.

WebMama's Look at the Web

Strategy - Drugs, Milk, and Money: Three Ways to Do Social Media in Regulated Industries : MarketingProfs Article

One Link - High Search Visibility Regained for VMware

Years Later...

Related Keywords

Navigation Word Change Didn't Hurt

Writers are the key to excellent search engine marketing. Of course, you know that.

No Surprise to Search Marketers - Emarketer says Content Marketing Is Critical in 2011

Google Instant Makes Google More Money and Challenges SEOs to Follow Basic Principles

Subscriber, Fan or Follower: Who's Most Likely to Buy? - MarketingVOX

Top Spenders / Month on Google - June Figures - Real Data!

Google's New Treatment of Organic Results - Good for Searchers, Bad for Subdomains

Jim Sterne Reposts from a 2003 Article - Analytics is about Analyzing Not Just Publishing Data

Let There Be Light By Jim Sterne in 2003

Matt Cutts of Google Articulates So Well! Why Black Hat Fails.

Search Keywords, SEO and The Sales Funnel - Barbara webmama Coll - SMX Advanced 2010

Google Increases Transparency of Ad Content Network - Higher Conversions Now Possible

Customer Support and Search Visibility - a VMware case study.

Google - Changing Up the Search Results Options in Germany

Search Engine Marketing & SEO - 2010 - User-Generated Content

Nielsen Reports February 2010 U.S. Search Rankings | Nielsen Wire

Don't Let User-Generated Reviews Ruin You - ClickZ

User-Generated Content (UGC) and Search Visibility

User-generated content & search visibility: live, online presentation by Barbara Coll - February 24 - 9am

STILL Reading Code to do My Job as a Marketer!

Passion for SEM Secures Place on Top 100 Marketers List

Real-Time Content and the Enterprise - A report on the players

Internet Usage Worldwide - stats by Intac

MarketingProfs Asked for my B2B Resolution

Response (again) to 'is SEO dead'. No obviously.

Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO - eMarketer

Real-Time & Advanced B2B Search Marketing - Chicago SES

Using Keyword Clouds for SEO and User Insight

Do Searchers Still Start with Google?

eMarketer's Revised Online Ad Forecast for 2009

The Synergy of Search and Social Media - eMarketer

10 Mind-blowing Microsites - Definition and Uses

Internet Statistics on China - lots of 'fun' users

East-West: An Instance of the Natural Search Difference

Why still use keyword meta tags?

Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Dead? No!

Search Uplifted by Banners

5 SEO/SEM Trends that Are Changing Search during 2009

Bing One Month On: Surprising Findings

Leveraging Consumer Generated Content - WebMama Q&A

Vancouver IMC Here I Come

Facebook Friends in Google Results Today

Igniting Viral through Reviews, Comments and Threads

A Bing Overview. Part 1: Are the Features Any Good?

Video and Search - Overview Presentation Stanford 2009

Wave New World: Executive Summary of Google's New Ambitious Product

Google Squared: Toy or Tool

BING - Quick Comments

80+ Online Resources for the Digital Enterprise - Posted

Google Putting Shopping Results on Right Side

CANONICAL LINK ELEMENT – Definition & Practical Uses

Insightful Sitelink Results: Phrase From Blog, Result from Website

WebMama Team Expands

BtoB Magazine Marketing Guide 2009 includes WebMama.com -

Wes Blemker Stars in new Google Adwords Video

SEMPO - State of Search in Asia - Survey Results Presentation

Excellent Speaking Tips by Jim Sterne (emetrics)

Online Communities - An SEO Dream

Proof that Google Can Index Flash Movie Contents?

EMarketer: Searching for New Customers in the Recession?

Communities, Content and Search

Online Communities: A Bonanza of Content for Searchers and Search Engines

How Search-Like are Social Media Sites - Danny Sullivan is Brilliant

Why Paid Search and Organic at the same time.

SES Chicago - playing devil's advocate doesn't always work

Fabulous Pictures from SEMPO NASDAQ Ringing!

SEMPO / NASDAQ / Search Maturity?

A Piece of Good News - Online Spending to Increase over Holidays

Online Consumers to Spend Less in Stores for Holidays

Comments on GM's Video Strategy by Gregory Markel

What to tell brand companies about 'social media'

Google Monetizing YouTube

Stanford Continuing Studies - WebMama Team lectures on Affiliates and Video

Help Me Create a Top 10 SEM List for Blogs.com

Website Link Architecture - Google Guidance

Let There Be Light
By Jim Sterne in 2003

SA-6 Wednesday, 1:30 - 2:30
Serious Search - Graduate Level