Posted by: Gloria Dutton, Senior Marketing Coordinator
2009 brought a lot of changes and innovations in the wide world of the Web and its search engines. We witnessed the explosion of Twitter and Facebook and the introduction and advancement of Bing and smartphones. These innovations are forcing search engines to alter what is included in their search results, as well as how these results are displayed. The greatest changes to search that will alter search engine marketing (SEM) programs in 2010 include a new emphasis on personalized search, the inclusion of real-time results, and new methods of local and mobile advertising.
Personalized Search: Google’s personalized search is actually not a new development, but the changes to it at the end of 2009 are. Google uses personalized search to present different search results to users based on their search history and demographics. This alteration of search results used to only occur when users were signed into their Google accounts, but now it has been introduced to signed-out users worldwide. The reason this is important to take into account when optimizing is that your company’s listing may be a first page listing for one user while not even rank for another.
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Posted by: Kerry Houchin, Project Manager
With the release of Google’s Nexus One smart phone, Google has spent some serious time creating innovative mobile search applications. Now on-the-go Android users can search for businesses using the “What’s Nearby” feature and can search for information on landmarks, artwork and other objects using the Google Goggles app.
Here’s how they work:
• What’s Nearby uses the smart phone’s location feature to build a list of the 10 closest places including restaurants, businesses and locations of interest. Since listings are pulled from the Google Local Business Center listings, this reinforces the fact that having a presence in the Local Business Center is becoming more and more important.
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Posted by: Shannon Anderson, Project Manager
As one of the newest kids on the block, Bing is already making great strides in becoming a major player in the search engine world, frequently launching new features. Some of the newest include:
- Task-Focused Homepage allows users to select to search from various categories such as Shopping or Travel.
- Instant Answer returns the least expensive times to fly when users enter their travel specifications.
- Preview Feature has been made more visible and comprehensive than before.
- Event Search shows a summary of events in each city and can be filtered by category.
- Sharing Feature allows users to share their gift wishlists through Facebook and Twitter as well as email.
- Health, Medication and Hospital Results organizes information on health conditions, medications and hospitals to make it easier to find relevant results.
What do these advancements mean for your search engine marketing programs? Search is becoming increasingly personalized within Bing returning more relevant results to its users. Continuing to target your strategy and make use of these new features will definitely pay-off in this search engine. Other search engines, such as Google, appear to be increasing their emphasis on providing more relevant search results too.
Posted by: Jessica Shepherd, Project Manager & Gloria Dutton, Senior Marketing Coordinator
You’ve done some SEO work, by hiring an SEO agency or dedicating some in-house time and expertise. What’s next? Is your team giving you regular actionable reports prioritizing the tactics they are engaged in? Are you seeing how the program is performing and what your next high-priority steps are? If not, are you considering an SEO audit?
Some search professionals describe an audit as a “99 point assessment” of every possible SEO tactic, from meta data to links to social presence. That’s nice, but it doesn’t tell you much when your budget only allows for 20 tactics – and you may just need to do five of them right to dramatically improve your program.
The key is to start not with a laundry list but with evaluation and prioritization. As long as you are focusing on the right keywords – an assumption that an audit can help validate – you can use a broad set of analytical tools and a solid methodology to efficiently identify where your program is strong, where it is weak, and where the low hanging fruit is. Consider taking these steps:
- Focus on major tactical areas like on-site factors, linking, social media and local visibility.
- Identify the areas that are most likely to get you listed and convert your target audience.
- Measure how well you are executing on the high priority tactics.
- Scope out the level of effort required to fill the gaps in each of these areas. Play to your organization’s strengths – e.g., if you have a great story and a PR engine to tell it, use that asset in your SEO program.
With this approach, you can direct your team or vendor to focus their time where the impact will be greatest. If you are also engaged in paid search, combine your SEO and SEM analyses. Contact us to get started – email info@90octane.com and ask about our SEO/SEM audit.
Posted by: Rosemary Riley, Storyteller/Senior Copywriter
Inc. magazine today ranked conversion-driven marketing agency 90octane no. 1,682 on its third annual Inc. 5000, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies reporting at least $2 million in 2008 revenue. The agency also ranked 43rd for the Denver-Aurora, CO metro region. The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy – America’s independent-minded entrepreneurs.
The Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2005 through 2008. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by the first week of 2005. Additionally, they have to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent – not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies – as of December 31, 2008. Revenue in 2005 must have been at least $200,000, and revenue in 2008 at least $2 million. 90octane achieved 190.1% revenue growth over the three-year period.
Founded in 2000, 90octane is a pioneer in response-based interactive marketing tactics. The agency creates custom lead generation, lead nurturing and search engine marketing programs for its clients in the B2B, B2C and nonprofit fields. View 90octane’s Inc. 5000 Company Profile.
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 »
Posted by: Leslie Russell, Senior Marketing Coordinator
Analytics tools provide tremendous insight into the activity that is taking place on your website. These tools, such as Google Analytics or Omniture, reveal how users reach your website by disclosing the keyword phrases that are driving traffic, generating the best performance and helping drive the highest conversions. Plus, Analytics tools will break down your top-performing keywords based on paid traffic and organic traffic. All of this can be a big help in your search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns.
By narrowing in on the data that these tools make available you are able to expand your keyword list based on your most successful keywords with the help of other keyword tools. Once you’ve identified the best performing keywords generating the highest ROI, you can use Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool to find additional keyword phrases related to your top terms.
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Posted by: Nikki Johnson, Marketing Coordinator
There are now advanced segmenting options available in Google Analytics to help advertisers better understand the behavior of “micro-segments” within their visitor base. The new ways to segment an audience will give advertisers “actionable insight” into identifying different users, tailoring offerings toward these users, and driving conversions on the site through search engine marketing and other channels. According to Avinash Kaushik’s blog, you can segment users into three main segments: Visitor Source, Visitor Behavior, and Desired Outcome. These are recommended for a few key reasons:
- Branded Search Keywords: Distinguishing how many users visit your site using branded keywords versus non-branded keywords is helpful in determining your level of brand awareness. Also, it might be useful to compare the site behavior of visitors who already know your brand to visitors who do not. Do they visit more pages? Do they spend more time on a specific page? read more »
Posted by: Megan Amick, Marketing Coordinator
Google Analytics is an extremely effective tool for managing the performance of your online marketing (or search engine marketing) endeavors. There are numerous findings that can be generated within Analytics to look at each aspect of your website visibility and traffic. Below are some suggestions to consider while performing your Analytics analysis:
General/Basic Knowledge
- You can link your Google AdWords account to your Google Analytics account for better pay-per-click (PPC) campaign optimization and website performance.
- Tagging within your site helps to distinguish referrals (visits generated by other websites) vs. search engine visits.
- There are many goals that can be set up to see if users are completing a desired outcome, but you need to implement code on your website to monitor these goals in Analytics.
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Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager
Ever since search engines have become such a commonly utilized gateway to the Web, new engines have continually emerged in an attempt to steal searches and market share from bigger companies like Google and Yahoo!; however, besides a small threat made by Ask, no other engine has been able to break through. Cuil, a search engine developed by some former top Google engineers, did pose some threat with its launch in July 2008. It was touted in the blogosphere as a potential “Google Killer,” but according to Search Engine Watch, it had a disappointing start, and traffic numbers are dismal.
So, what will it take for a new search engine to emerge onto the scene and show staying power? read more »