Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

Despite the tough economy and the fact that many companies are cutting portions of their budgets, most are maintaining their presence online and adopting an even more competitive, aggressive approach. The following tips can be utilized to help differentiate your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising/contextual advertising strategy from your competitors’.

1. Evaluate the messaging your competition is using within their PPC and contextual ads, and determine how to make your creative stronger. It’s got to really stand out. For example, use questions, customer testimonials and of course your strongest offer within your ad text.

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Posted by: Kerry Houchin, Marketing Coordinator

What is it, and how does it work?
SearchWiki is a new tool that Google has unveiled allowing users who are logged into Google accounts to customize their search results.

Now, in addition to searching, you have the ability to:

• Move your favorite search results to the top of the listings
• Add a URL to appear along with Google’s results for certain searches
• Remove search results you don’t consider useful
• Make public comments about search results

One thing to note, however, is that the public comments are the only customizations that will appear to other users. If you move your website to the top of the results, you are the only one who will see that. read more »

Posted by: Shannon Denny, Project Manager

It seems more than ever marketers are striving to make the most of their marketing bucks. If you’ve previously run search engine marketing (SEM) programs, one of the best ways to stretch your dollar is to evaluate your campaigns’ past performance. Here are a few questions to ask when optimizing your current SEM campaign:

·     What type of traffic did your previous campaign drive? If you were satisfied with the number and quality of the leads you were receiving, then it’s safe to assume you can continue down the same path; however, if the leads didn’t necessarily give you the results you were looking for, consider the strategy of your past campaign. For a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign, you may need to revisit the keyword strategy to determine what terms converted well. For an organic optimization (or SEO) program, see what position your website was showing up in, and try being more aggressive with any terms that aren’t performing to your expectations. read more »

Posted by: Jessica Shepherd, Project Manager

Can search engine marketing (or SEM) continue to sustain itself in the current economic slump? Here’s what some industry experts have to say…

A recent issue alert from BtoB Magazine reveals how search engine marketing remains strong despite the economic downturn. A new Covario study shows 32% growth for Q3 year over year for paid search in North America, while Forrester Research projects that paid search will grow 26% this year alone. Evan Andrews, an interactive marketing analyst with Forrester, said, “Because of its inherent accountability, search offers a safe haven for marketers and advertisers who are pushed by the recession to meet some pretty aggressive goals. You can track every cent and every click.”

Considering the current state of the economy and how some marketing budgets are being cut, it’s more important than ever for marketing tactics to be measurable. Take a glance at how digital tactics are affected during a recession in this MarketingSherpa chart:

My take? It’s no coincidence that advertisers are utilizing lower cost, measurable digital marketing tactics to maintain visibility and customer relationships. It’s critical to engage with smart marketing tactics that provide the best ROI for your business. That’s the bottom line.

Posted by: Leslie Russell, Senior Marketing Coordinator

Where has the time gone? It has been over a year since you last updated the metadata so important to your website’s search engine optimization (SEO), you can’t remember when the content on your site was last updated and some of your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising keywords seem a little stale. Now is the time to see which keywords have been performing, revamp your keyword list and get a refreshed search engine marketing strategy rolled out.

Start off by doing a little investigation on the success of your last keyword strategy.

Phase 1: Research

·      Review your site in-depth. Have you updated content or removed content? Are you keeping pace with trends in your industry?

·      Glance at your key competitors’ websites. Are they using different language and keywords throughout their content or metadata? Reviewing their sites may spark additional ideas for your keyword strategy. 

·      Pull analytics reports looking at non-paid and paid keywords.  Consider if all of these terms are still relevant, or if there are new terms you haven’t considered before.

·      Use keyword tools to gather recommendations of adjectives, synonyms, plurals, etc.

·      Take a look your organic and paid visibility. Are you getting exposure for the keywords you consider most important? If not consider how to make those words a higher priority in your refreshed keyword strategy. read more »

Posted by: Kelly Hall, Account Manager

Companies continue to utilize search engine marketing (SEM) to promote their products and services. Why? The simple fact is that prospects, as a result of the current economic conditions, are evaluating their purchasing decisions more closely than ever before.

In fact, prospects are now tasked with making smarter purchasing decisions. Faced with shrinking budgets, or simply calls to be more careful spenders, they are taking more steps to ensure that their purchases will 100% satisfy their business needs.  read more »

90octane and long-time partner Globus family of friends work together on an SEM program that turns heads. In fact, it was recently named Finalist in the OMMA Awards 2008’s Search Campaign category. See the full list of Finalists here: http://www.mediapost.com/ommaawards/gateway.cfm?ip=finalists.

“Each marketing dollar dedicated has shown tremendous return, with customers converting at an unprecedented rate. Careful planning during every phase, from the initial strategy to creative execution and ongoing optimization, has contributed to program results that far exceeded our expectations,” said Jeff Russell, e-Marketing Manager for Globus family of brands.

In addition to SEO, PPC advertising, contextual advertising and media planning, 90octane manages the travel blog Story Suitcase.

Posted by: Jenny Bachner, Media Specialist

While many people turn to Google, Yahoo or MSN for their answers, others are moving to a more specialized form of search – vertical search.

Vertical search, or “specialized” search as some call it, is a form of internet search based on engines that focus on specific content. With regular search engines, web crawlers scan mass amounts of data to bring back general information about your topic of interest. However, when you have a specific question, and you are typically looking for the most direct answer, there’s no need to go hunting around on Google. Take the direct route and use a vertical search engine for your hunt. Vertical search web crawlers only crawl a highly refined database of information that is specific to your topic of interest.

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Posted by: Brooke Caesar, Account Manager

Building the keyword list is the backbone to any successful search engine marketing campaign. If you target keywords that are too competitive, you end up chasing dreams of grandeur. If you target keywords that are too niche, you’ll get the results, but not the traffic. There are many steps in finding the right balance that will get the results and the traffic.

Begin your strategy by brainstorming keywords that are central to your organization and your audience. Once you have compiled a complete list, move onto what your competitors find important. One of the keys to creating that successful keyword strategy involves investigating what is central to your competitors’ strategy.

Review their meta data
What keywords are they using? How are they enticing people to come to their site (call to action)? Go to the competitors’ site and view their code. Take a look at the keywords that they think are beneficial by looking at their title, description and keyword tags. read more »

Posted by: Kayla Wagner, Project Manager

Are you a business that needs to come up in local searches? Here are some tips to make sure you’re covered and competitive:

1. On your site, make sure your address and contact information are listed in an easy-to-find location (perhaps the footer of every page) – and in proper HCard format! HCard format allows the search engine spiders to crawl your address and see it in a standard, easy to read format and import it into their map tools.

2. Do you have your location in your site content? You should! If you want to come up in search results for “Denver plumbers” you should have “Denver plumbers” in your site content. Not just plumbers and not just Denver or Colorado. Include relevant keywords to all areas of your purchase cycle including general terms (dentist), general + regional (dentist in denver), business name (Dr. Peters dental), and services (root canal). read more »