Posted by: Kerry Houchin, Project Manager

Last month both Google and Bing announced they had reached deals with Twitter allowing them to display public Tweets as search results. Currently, Bing is showing live Twitter results only in the Bing Twitter search interface and Google will be integrating Tweets into search results over the next few months.

As Tweets and other real-time results, possibly Facebook postings, are rolled into search results, SEO tactics will need to evolve to keep up with search trends. Having a listing on the first page of search results will become increasingly difficult since pieces of the limited page real estate will be taken by Tweets.  Also, having a presence in Twitter and other forms of social media will continue to be more and more important.

You may be thinking, “Great, it can’t be that hard to set up a Twitter account.” That won’t cut it. Bing states that they won’t index Tweets for longer than seven days. This means that having a steady stream of updated Twitter content is crucial for maintaining Twitter search listings. Also, in the case where two Tweets have very similar content, the higher search ranking will go to the person with the most Twitter followers, indicating the importance of building a Twitter community.

Real-time search is still in its infancy and tactics will continue to evolve as more real-time search features are rolled out. To stay on top of the latest real-time search news, check out the Bing Search Blog and the Official Google Blog.

Posted by: Sean Voorhies, Project Manager

Increasing response is the goal of any lead nurturing program, but it’s easy to get locked into a campaign that isn’t flexible once it launches. Here are three quick insights to use before you go live:

Leverage Learnings from Existing Site Analytics
If you have existing site data that speaks to your user’s behavior, whether it’s product offer preferences, patterns of site navigation or usability or communication frequency, make sure those are leveraged in building out a nurturing campaign. There can be a strong correlation between how users respond to similar offerings or information on your site and how they will initially respond during a lead nurturing campaign.

Use Prospect Profiling
Identifying prospect profiles and tailoring your lead nurturing program to specific user characteristics not only gives your campaign more flexibility from the get go, but it also allows you to provide a better experience for the prospects because it meets their unique needs. An easy starting point could be an existing product user profile and a new user profile.

Consider Progressive Registration
If your offers solicit a clear difference in user desire and intent then consider using progressive registration. By beginning the registration with standard fields and then progressively asking more detailed questions as the offer involvement grows, you’re able to capture a larger amount of leads up front and qualify your prospects further down the funnel with more detailed criteria.

Posted by: Nikki Burmaster, Marketing Coordinator

While it may seem like super-targeted and high-profile ad placements are the primary drivers of online advertising today, a recent study from ad research group Dynamic Logic suggests that poor creative is a large part of what makes online ads ineffective. While placement and targeting of online ads are very important, they are the distribution system of the ad, whereas the creative is what people actually react to. This is sometimes forgotten in the online space, where real-time reporting and analytics make media extremely complex.

Keeping this in mind, what can you do to best optimize your creative? Here at 90octane we know that creative factors such as persistent branding, strong calls to action and even human faces make for better ad recall, brand awareness, and purchase intent. Here are a few more tips to help maximize the performance of your creative:

• Highlight the brand prominently throughout the ad: Omnipresent logos have the highest brand and online ad awareness
• Make each second count: The ad should support the message at all times, whether it’s brand awareness or a call to action
• “Reveal” ads don’t work: Get right to the point. Users are unlikely to wait around and watch an ad in its entirety
• Stay Simple: Try and avoid using more than two messages per execution

Posted by: Meg Archer, Marketing Coordinator

There is so much buzz around social media and how helpful and even necessary it is for companies to have a strong social presence. Here at 90octane we already understand the importance of social media and have created strategies and manage programs for some clients.

One important element of a strong social strategy is the ability to measure the impact social efforts have on ROI.  comScore, GroupM and M80 released a report showing the positive impact search and social media have on one another. The data indicates searchers are more likely to remember a brand if they have seen a combination of paid search ads and social media. There is a 19% lift in searches on branded terms among users who saw some form of social media and a paid search ad relating to the brand, compared to users who where only exposed to a search advertisement.  Furthermore the researchers found a 13% lift among users exposed to direct branded social media.

Another interesting finding is that users who search for product terms are three times more likely to have been exposed to social media combined with paid search, compared to paid search alone.

These findings show that social media and key performance numbers are friends, good friends.

(Source for Graphs:  eMarketer.com )

Posted by: Erin Wilson, Marketing Coordinator

Over the past month, Yahoo has been bombarded with questions about their statements regarding how they use the meta keyword tag as a ranking factor. When Yahoo first stated that they were no longer supporting the meta keyword tag, many were hesitant to believe it and curious how it would affect their search engine optimization. Other big search engines such as Google and Bing have long since confirmed that they do not use the tag for ranking, but this was Yahoo’s first statement surrounding the subject.

Unfortunately for Yahoo, many a company and individual have proven them wrong, performing tests to see if words they place only in keyword tags and not anywhere else on their sites are getting ranked, and indeed they are. This pressure has forced Yahoo to clarify their statements.

According to Yahoo, the meta keyword tags are given the lowest ranking signal compared to words that appear in the body, title, description, etc. Essentially, if you have the same keywords in your meta tag and on your website (body, anchor text, etc.) then the meta keyword tag is ignored. But, if there is a keyword only in your meta keyword tag and cannot be found elsewhere on your site it will be used to rank your site.

So how does this affect your search engine optimization? For right now keep your focus on having a site rich with keyword content and continue to place your most relevant keywords within site copy and within your title, description and keyword portions of the meta-tag.