Posted by: Jessica Shepherd, Project Manager

When building or redesigning a website no one on the team intentionally plans to build one that’s dysfunctional. However, somewhere along the way, the original concept and goals can get lost, timelines start to slip, and before you know it, your website content is in disarray and a well-defined user path is lost. To stop the downward spiral of out-of-control website creation, you must keep the overarching goals in mind. Why you are building the site in the first place? Are you following the original site blueprints for a solid structure?

Building an effective website isn’t just about having great content on every page. The content must be rich, but perhaps even more importantly, you must have a user-friendly and search engine-friendly site structure in place if you want to be found online immediately following launch and then sustain quality site traffic.

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Posted by: Chelsea Maxwell, Marketing Coordinator

Suggested search is a helpful tool that is standard on most search engines. Google is taking steps to make it even more useful. Previously, when a user would enter a search query the menu would drop down with a range of possible search terms and clicking on any one of those would send you to a results page. Now, when a user enters a search query the drop-down menu includes hyperlinks, personalized results, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements. For example, if you start typing “AdWords” into Google, you can see the first result in the drop-down menu is an actual link to the AdWords site. The idea is to cut out the results page, ultimately saving the user time. Google says there will not be hyperlinks for all queries, only the ones in which they are pretty sure they know what the user is searching for.

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Posted by: Meg Archer, Marketing Coordinator

It’s no surprise that YouTube continues to be the leading online video site in the U.S., but what is surprising is the rate at which users are posting content. Currently, 20 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube every minute! That is equivalent to Hollywood releasing over 86,000 new full-length movies in theaters each week.

Over the past two years the number of videos being uploaded per minute has increased from 6 hours in 2007 to 13 in January of this year and now 20 hours per minute. That’s a 233% increase from 2007 to now. Along with hosting millions of hours of user posted content, YouTube remains number one in most views per month. According to comScore, Google/YouTube streams just under 7 billion videos per month in the U.S. With that amount of online video and user interaction, YouTube really is the thousand pound gorilla in the online video space.

Google, the owner of YouTube, is shown dominating the online video space in this comScore chart from April 2009.

Posted by: Nikki Johnson, Marketing Coordinator

In light of all the hype that has been centered around the new search engine Bing, Microsoft recently released a PDF discussing search engine optimization (SEO) entitled, “Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters.” The first part of the document describes the difference in the way Bing organizes search results compared to Live and how this change could affect site owners. Online advertisers will also want to pay attention.

When a user searches today, he or she will notice that results six through 10 have been replaced with categorized listings. For example, a search for “vw beetle” would return normal results for listings one through five, but instead of seeing typical listings beyond that, the user is presented with relevant listings sorted by category, such as “Volkswagen beetle for sale” or “used Volkswagen beetle.” This new method requires search advertisers to be more thorough in the way they optimize their site. read more »

Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

Setting goals for a new search engine marketing (SEM) program and developing the strategy that will achieve them are your first steps toward high ROI. There are several important factors that arise when you go through this process, ranging from qualitative considerations such as the audience’s awareness of your brand to quantitative considerations including your initial budget.

Let’s take a look at a few of these factors more closely:

• Brand Awareness – Knowing how familiar your target audience is with your brand plays a large role in goal setting and strategy development. This will help you define what tactics to consider as part of your program and what metrics you define as important in achieving your goals. For example, contextual advertising is a great way to generate brand awareness by targeting prospects that are searching for content related to your product/service offerings. However, since this is often primarily a branding tactic, you should expect a much lower click-through rate (CTR) than you might from tactics such as email or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. read more »