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• 

  Daily Search Forum Recap: October 6, 2008

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 11:51pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Forum Recap  

  Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

• 

  SMX Boot Camp: Link Building Fundamentals

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 11:39pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Marketing Expo 2008 East  

  Moderator: Detlev Johnson, CEO, SearchReturn introduces the panel. He basically shows the age of the panelists, at least in web years. :) He describes link building as a "cat and mouse" game between search engines and SEOs.

  Debra Mastaler, President, Alliance-Link is first up.

  Why are Links Valuable:
  - They connect sites like threads in a web
  - Links provide paths
  - They are an indicator
  - They are value indicators

  She goes into how the internet came around. Soon after came search engines. Search engines use to just read content. Then came along Google who went beyond content and looked at link analysis (PageRank).

  Link Popularity:
  - It measures the quality and quantity of links pointing to a web site.
  - All major engines use
  - Off page factor
  - Link love, juice, pop, rep

  4 Components:
  (1) Link Quantity
  (2) Link Quality (authority of host sites) PageRank is a lot different than it was, it is more about quality over quantity.
  (3) Anchor Text, it is a query ranking factor. This is the most powerful component in links.
  (4) Link Relevancy. It helps establish where you belong. Search engines read text around links. Linking out and being linked to establish connections. Build links within your neighborhood. Links to and from contextually relevant or "thematically related" sites convey more authority

  Authority Sites:
  - Rank well
  - Well known
  - Have strong inbound links
  - Are insulated against algorithmic fluctuations

  Bottom Link Line... Focus on linking efforts on securing keyword rich anchors from authority sites.

  Part Two: Ranking Influences...

  Avoid:
  - Control your rate of link acquisitions
  - Repetitive anchor text
  - Dont use the same tactic over and over again

  Optimal Linking Success:
  - Screen partner sites carefully
  - Place links in content areas
  - Understand all links have value
  - Redirected links or links passing through third party sites will not pass link pop
  - Avoid losing PageRank, be consistent in your links (www vs non, etc.)

  Link Learning and News Sources
  - She lists a bunch
  - Link Harvester
  - Hub Finder
  - Langeriter.com
  - GoogleGuy.de
  - Quirk.biz/SearchStatus
  - SoloSEO.com/tools/linkSearch.html
  - bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.html
  - google.com/alerts

  What's Working?
  - Everything still works but link building strategies using content generation tactics work best.
  - Traditional, edus, wiki, content targeting, media, press releases, directories, reclamation, trust links, local links, article writing.
  -- Create a media contacts database and then break out editorial and commercial sources.

  -- Look at review sites and contact those people leaving reviews.
  - Directory Submission, general, niche, rss, article, podcast, blog, wiki, local.
  -- Avoid directories hosting excessive ads
  -- Check pages for nofollow or robots.txt
  -- Steer clear of directories with a lot of wite wides
  -- Yahoo Directory worth it for newer sites
  -- Niche directories tend to be less scrutinized such as Directory Big Board, ISEDB and Blog Catalog can give you some ideas.

  Article Writing:
  - Write a shorter version for syndication and write a longer version for your site.
  - Answer questions in your article
  - Add bio to your articles
  - Add links within content if possible
  - List of article directories given

  Content Network:
  - Publish content on any topic
  - Distributes content to engaged audiences through its web site and content partners
  - Some use nofollow

  Guest Blogging
  - Search for "looking for writers" + keywords etc...

  Link Bait:
  - Digg, Propeller, Mixx, SU

  Eric Ward, CEO, EricWard.com

  November 1st, will be his 15th year doing link building for pay. 15 years!

  Link building is PR work, public relations...

  In 1993, he had 10 places to submit to. He showed off the Netscape What's New page. That is where you built links. In 2008, it is endless - where you can submit links. Big change was Google and PageRank. You want click traffic and you want that helps you rank. Some links can do both. That is the holy grail.

  Effective link building is PR, linkbait, link buying, etc.

  The approach is to get trusted links, its not the link, its the author of the link. Find out where people care about your topic and reach them.

  Link building has to vary based on content, focus and audience.

  Your link tells a story about your site. Like a transcript or "rap sheet."

  You don't need a lot of links to do well.

  FYI, here is Eric's presentation: ericward.com/smx/.

• 

  Search and Reputation Management

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 11:22pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

  Tags:  Search Marketing Expo 2008 East  

  What do people find when they search for you by name? Is it negative? If so, what do you do? What can you do? Depending on the situation, there are a range of tactics that may help. This session explores the issue.

  Moderator: Jeffrey K. Rohrs, Vice President, Marketing, ExactTarget

  Speakers:
  Veronica Fielding, President and CEO, Digital Brand Expressions
  Jordan Glogau, Partner, Internet Reputation Management
  Simon Heseltine, Director of Search, Serengeti Communications
  Michael Jensen, Co-Founder, SoloSEO

  First up is Veronica Fielding. She talks about proactive reputation management - how to fortify yor brand before there's an issue that arises. She recommends to develop a game plan before there are problems and having something in place if a problem were to arise. It may not prevent the information to trickle to the surface but it can help you address issues and leverage them for the issues that may be causing your brand a problem.

  There are 3 essential considerations:
  - Determine which content sets and chalnels you will use, in what combinations, and how often: SEO, social media, and paid search are part of this mix.
  - Prepare your messaging and be consistent. Make it channel-appropriate. You don't want to be Digging information that doesn't wor. Weigh your options for Facebook elements. Your myspace page should be different from Facebook because of the different audiences.
  - Determine how frequently you will check in and talk with your audiences.

  Implementing your SEO portion of the plan gives the search engines time to find and index the relevant content on your site and on other sites that link to yours.
  Having paid search ads gives you realtime placement if a problem arises and quick adjustments make the copy relevant for off-setting negative inforamtion.
  Leveraging indexable social media adds to the numbero f quicj spidered sites that can be drawn upon to come to your brand's aid. It's also a forum for transparent dialogue with your brand's stakeolder.
  Use Wikipedia prudently. There may already be an entry for your brand so don't get caught tinkering with the content. Address yur concerns on the article's "Talk" pages.

  There are key social media sites to consider:
  - Your brand's blog
  - LinkedIn
  - Twitter
  - Facebook
  - MySpace (for consumer, not B2B)
  - YouTube
  - Flickr
  - Rollyo - create your own search engine
  - ZoomInfo (name may exist, but you should claim it)

  B2B strategies:
  LinkedIn: consider making it for the company as well as for key exectives whose names may be searched in association with the company
  Facebook also helps

  Simon talks next about reputation management and what people look at. Some people don't always look for their name and they don't actually see that there are negative results. If you look at the SERPs for reviews, you may not even see everything -- think about reviews for products. Sometimes you may find things in blogs or forums, the latter which may not even be indexed.

  From this, you can learn how people are talking about you and what they are saying. You need to analyze the sentiment and to see whether things are positive or negative. "The biggest disaster since Titanic" - is that positive or negative?

  Who are the influencers? You need to find out where the discussions happen so that you can concentrate your resources. If the sentiment on Facebook, for example, is neutral, and the sentiment on MySpace are positive, you may want to contact MySpace fans to speak to your evangelists.

  Find out what people are saying and where they are saying it. How do you do it?
  1. The ghost of the recent past. Get Google and Yahoo alerts and check your email to find out about specific key phrases.
  - Twitter is similar - do TweetBeeps, for example.
  - RSS feeds are your friends.
  - Digg and other social voting sites are similar.
  - Sites like zevents
  - Wikipedia lets you subscribe to RSS
  - YouTube has RSS
  Most social sites have RSS
  2. The ghost of the actual past
  - Top end - big brands - TNS Media Intelligence and Nielsen BuzzMetrics
  - Open SOurce - Nonprofits - The BuzzMonitor

  When you look at it, RSS feeds only deliver updates and new information.

  Client study with a medical group -
  - getting about 50-75 notifications per day
  - historical buzz monitoring recovered over 150,000 listings, so use old data too!
  Use a tool!

  Monitor your buzz - get a baseline with a deep scan into the past and continually monitor to the recent present.

  Michael Jensen talks about reputation management for local businesses.

  Local is a unique space becasue of ratings and reviews, but beyond that, it's everywhere. It's in the SERPs, social media, there are search engines devoted to the local space (Yahoo), directories (Yelp), and more. There are also mobile apps (GoodRec is an iPhone application). There are also local niche sites (Andy's List for contractors).

  Ratings and reviews; a customer's first impression. If you search for a dentist, who are you going to call and who aren't you going to call? Visual elements really do help with regards to choosing the desired local provider.

  Art of persuasion: do you read reviews before you go somewhere? He asks the room and almost everyone raises their hand. Reviews can be very persuasive, both positive and negative. Enough positive outweighs the occasional negative. You need to push the right button with potential customers.

  Every review helps as a vote of confidence. One negative review can have a huge impact if there are only few reviews.

  In the future, features that are not necessarily check-boxed are in the terms and text of a review. Search engines said that they don't really use the text much for ranking factors and such.

  For monitoring local, there are few things that are available so manual monitoring is helpful. SoloSEO will be working on tools soon!

  Be defensive and proactive in the social space - get constant positive reviews in a lot of local sites. There are 2 main barriers: your customers are not motivated and they aren't technically savvy. You should motivate them with a coupon or free gift and make it easy for them to review - tell them where they can review. Check out leavefeedback.org, a tool that he created.

  Local business should have a system for getting reviews. Have coupons or cards on hand, train employees to give out, get information or other information.

  Be creative - give away free wifi at a local restaurant and when they access it, redirect them to your review site. Have a kiosk. When you're a restaurant, give them a handheld tablet so they can write the review then and there.

  Get "recommended." It boils down to SEO. A link is a recommendation. Use the local chamber of commerce, professional associations, related businesses (realtor + loan officer), local events and sponsorships.

  On the offense side, average out poor ratings with positive reviews. Create a system and get those reviews constantly. If you receive a poor snippet, surround that with positive reviews. Respond to critical reviews. Update your business listing to reflect changes and improvement in response to poor reviews.

  Last up is Jordan Glogau. He talks about the Internet is the Truth Machine - it's a book from 1996 by Jams Halperin. Some invents the perfect lie detector. Once the machine has been invented, it's impossible to tell a lie. Over a period of time, the technology gets shrunken to the size of a wristband. To some extent, the internet has become the truth machine without having a lie detector.

  That's not really accurate but it is part of everyday life. The results are not perfect - it's far from it. The results are fast and maybe too fast. It can effect your business like a heart attack.

  OMG - Don't Google our name!
  - Is it affecting business via sales?
  - Can the root cause be addressed?
  - Can it be fixed and will it stay fixed?

  The first Immortals is another book by Halperin who says that we live forever. The metaphor is that this is like Google and the rest of the Internet.

  Evaluate the problem: is it personal or is it about a business? Is it affecting a person or business? What kind of sites? Who is attacking who and why?

  Types of sites that can be problematic: review sites, news sites, government, anti-whatever, Wikipedia, social media

  How do you counteract and push this down?
  - Link building
  - Counter blog
  - Controversial: link buys
  - Wikipedia - build trust with your editor and don't think about it if not!

  Active antagonists: what if you have a country club, for example, and you have a disgruntled ex-member? You may have to prepare for the long haul and get your staff involved. You may have to counter all the time.

  General tricks and advice:
  - Use unrelated links to move down bad links
  - Interlink between blogs
  - Collect information on links and build a link list on your sites for Google to find
  - If the quality of the links/blogs is a concern, you shouldn't use the paid blogging services.

  Bad for business - if you don't fix your problem it will never go away.
  - Poor customer service will always plague you if you don't address it.

  Rep-port: Simple to run, color coded, email reports, and free of charge.

• 

  Ad Agencies & Search Marketing

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 10:23pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Marketing Expo 2008 East  

  Do Traditional Advertising Agencies "Get Search?"

  It's clear from this panel (and now the feel of SMX East 2008) that we're entering the third age of SEM, which is about the the entire big-agency world folding into search, social, paid and content. Holistic and effective integration, driven from top-down-creative-think, is becoming the norm more and more.

  The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on West 34th Street center is teeming with folks at their first conference and seasoned vets' alike. The "Ad Agencies & Search Marketing" panel was a harbinger of the world to be, the world search already is, the big agency world. Search is taking its rightful place as the 800 LB gorilla at the marketing mix table. Each of the speakers shared lovely insight regarding their experience as search grows up.

  Moderator: Sara Holoubek, Consultant, Columnist and SEMPO Board of Directors began by offering stark insight. Much as traditional search marketers would love to dis' agencies she feels times are changing. Sara pointed out that agencies DO "get it" on a massive scale now. This evolution comes a as a result of mergers, acquisitions and consolidation in the industry. The session comprised of Moderator-Sara interviewing the distinguished panel, with no .ppt presentation slides.

  Her questions were insightful, probing and...you had to be here to totally appreciate the experience in the room. Here are a selection of concept-statements discussed in this rapid fire back and forth exchange amongst industry peers. Much of my impressions during this session embody actual quotes from speakers. Some not. I invite the speakers do climb in this thread and provide input and any notes they had coming in. Wish we had a recorder and transcriptions guys :).

  Jason Clement, Director of Search, Wieden Kennedy
  Do agencies get it? It depends who the agency is. Creative agencies who are holding overall strategy might not get it. However, this notion that agencies can't have successful search departments is completely false. We're hired because we make the best "media neutral decisions" surrounding the media planning process, so as to make best recommendations to serve clients. Unlike traditional SEMs who are "bound to the books" of the business they, do when it comes to how much they can spend, advertising agencies tend to have a broader base and a little bigger stage to grow campaigns financially and creatively.

  One thing missed as agencies picked up search, is the creative. Mapping creative strategy back to search has been difficult, to have creative ideas to launch sites and applications that are truly search driven. You can take search and move it beyond the media buy and really start thinking search as a "communications tool."
  
  Jason dismissed the varying price of similar deliverables, anecdotally proffered by an audience member. The questioner noted that, to his mind, in a stack of redundant estimates and analysis, the agency recommendations tended to be exponentially expensive. Jason basically said that he doubted that any of the agencies charging less,could bring execution, might not know the business they were pitching to and might not bring the overall value of a pitching-agency. Thanks for being cool about the question Jason :) .
  
  Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search, The Americas
  So Chris, do agencies get it? "I think it depends on what it is. "It = paid search = Google" is a known quantity for most agencies. I think they get, it there's a concern, there's attention. Agencies are more problem = solution rather than opportunity = solution." PPC has a cost and ROI association so agencies can relate. When it gets into organic search things "get more questionable for both the agency and their clients." "Let's understand how we ad value to the process and go from there."

  You've got a 10 year industry, search. It's hard to transition client communications, from the perspective of traditional media. It's hard to teach traditional team members that search provides incredible insight into customers' behavior and is no longer a direct response medium. There's a massive change going on and at the end of the day, talk always comes around to Google and their "amazing nimbleness."

  We as an industry have to evolve past gimicky practices and limited knowledge being a basis for a business. If you can deliver the strategic value of search then you can be well paid for it. What do you DO to earn the money? One of the nice things about agencies, is that there are people who have been in the industry and that's cool to have. When providing search services from inside an agency structure, the clients sign on they want an agency of record and everything kind of gets boiled into that. GroupM Search has kept the relationship direct with clients want integration in a different way, direct. Clients like the checks and balances by the search unit being a "watchdog" to keep their other players. He listed other compelling reason.
  
  Aimee Reker, SVP, Global Director of Search, MRM Worldwide
  Do agencies get it Aimee? "We as an agency get it to where our clients they're able to touch all parts of the opportunity." If you've got 250 different brands and products, you've got to really have a relationship with your clients and get them to execute search initiatives. There is "zero problem with senior management not getting search" in her shop. Sites that were not built perfectly are "part of an evolution we're all going through together."

  Aimee says that they embed search specialists on every team, but it starts higher up when briefs are created. The search teams work with the designers as they're building out their comps. They work with the technical team on the requirements. It's a little "microcosm of glue," working across the media teams. This helps the search process be "better, brighter" and more effective at the overall agency level. All channels including social media, coding, PPC, SEO is all available to any project. Everybody's part of the "search" effort. We point out to our clients how does search fits in the big picture for your company in a 5 year plan.

  MRM Worldwide has full transparency with all their clients. In some places they may not have solutions and bring in other partners. "We are an open agency model" and work with other media shops or other outsourcing when something is slightly out of their expertise.

  MRM makes sure to mine compensation for strategic development, as a crucial link in the concept chain. "If you do search well, you spend less, so we have to be paid for strategic development." Also, MRM Worldwide demands relationships with all the other players at the table. "It's just that important."

  Marty Weintraub is President of aimClear, a search focused Minnesota advertising agency.

  
  

   

• 

  The Ten Truths Every CMO Must Know About Search Marketing

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 9:42pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

  Tags:  Search Marketing Expo 2008 East  

  Whether you're a CMO - or someone who needs to educate, advise or influence one - this session will educate you on the 10 critical important concepts surrounding search marketing and its role within the entire marketing mix that CMOs must understand in order to be successful. A panel made up of senior level search marketers across a variety of industries, business models, and sizes will share their experiences, advice and perspective on these 10 critical truths and how understanding them has influenced their CMOs.

  Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

  Panelists:
  Michelle Stern, Client Services Director, iProspect
  Willie Fernandez Director of Marketing, World Travel Holidays
  Jennifer Doss, eCommerce Marketing Manager, Hat World and Lids
  Jill Nortman, SEO and Web Analytics Specialist, Allegis Group
  Jen Miller, Manager, Delta.com Online Content and Marketing

  This session is sponsored by iProspect.

  1. SEO is an ongoing process.
  Why do CMOs need to pay attention? Search marketing should be an integral part of an entire marketing strategy. It's difficult to communicate the right issues. Enable 360 degree communication.
  Jill: SEO is really less of a function and more of a process. It's ongoing - you can't set it and forget it. You need to be involved because the Internet industry is constantly changing. Recently, social media sites are being indexed. Having a presence there is very important, especially to articulating that to your CMO. Blended results are also a new phenomenon - if you aren't keeping up with those changes, you're missing the boat.
  Jen: SEM is an ongoing process. Delta marketing is separate from content production. When she manages paid search, she was working with the content group on how to optimize the website. But then they realized that content and marketing are one so both organizations have been combined. It's been a lot more beneficial for them. It's a front-end process. From an organizational standpoint, it was successful, but it took a long time.

  2. Being #1 isn't everything and sometimes is not even possible.
  Willie: Being in the cruise space today, the #1 term you would want to rank for is the term "cruise." However, from month to month, being #1 not only was causing them to reach their budget quickly but the word wasn't converting well. They decided to scale back and found terms that should have been #1 but weren't. They saw that their budgets were not being stretched out as much and they were finding those other words convert better. In a 4 month exercise, they analyzed 2,000 and scaled back to the point that there was a positive ROI on words that were losing money month to month.
  Michelle: In paid search, revenue is really key. Being #1 is not always where it's at. Analyze your keywords and determine what value your keywords are based on ROI. That will allow you to afford the keywords that ought to be in position #1.
  Jennifer: We have a very extensive keyword list and a dozen of those are the most efficient. We do rank on those keywords, but like cruises, hats is a keyword that can't necessarily be #1. Look at the multi-keyword phrases and you can rank higher. Because they are specific, they convert at a higher rate. 70% of all clicks come from the first page, so concentrate on getting on the first page and then work your way up. Being #1 isn't as profitable, so looking at where you're ranking and your spend and if you're meeting your ROI goals, maybe the lower positions are a better place.
  Jen: You may want to optimize for a one-word phrase but it's too competitive. Think about the top converting/clickthrough keywords instead.

  Chris: How much of a challenge do you find addressing ego - "we have to be #1!"?
  Jen: It's about education, trying to share strategy and saying that it's about integration with other channels and how they play against each other.
  Jill: With PPC, you have to pay to play. Being in position #2 can save you a lot of money. As long as you can remain on page 1 or above the fold, that's something you should also strive for.
  Jennifer: Education is a primary element. Directors in our department will ask why we're not #1, but we have to explain budgets and resources to them.

  3. The long tail is your friend.
  Michelle: Long tail keywords give you more qualified traffic. Also, there's less competition and that increases chances of being visible on those terms. That feeds into the third benefit which is when there's less competition, that equals less costs.
  Jen: Mine through the data to see what people are searching for and bid on them.
  Willie: We expanded our keyword base by about 10,000 keywords, if not more. We saw that people are searching for something but then they've decided what they want. For example, "christmas cruises from New York" or "carnival cruises from miami" has proven to be very successful.
  Michelle: You need to start broad and develop more long tail terms over time based on clickthroughs.
  Jill: The importance of analytics is critical before you start bidding on keywords.

  Chris: So it seems that analytics and tools are really key.

  4. Both paid and natural SEM are crucial.
  Jennifer: For us, we want to have as many listings as possible on the results page. 54% of our search revenue comes from our organic listings and 46% comes from paid. Visibility in both increases our brand awareness. In our paid listings, we can control the ad copy but you can't do that as easily with organic listings. We use that copy to promote special sales and offers. You can also control the landing page for these so you can go to higher-converting pages. She did a test and saw that depending on the destination URL, there were higher conversions. Try to find funds to do tests and how being listed might help your organic listings because of the increased visibility.
  Michelle: In addition to what Jennifer said, you need to be in paid and organic listings. 70% will click on organic listings and 30% click on paid listings, according to research. You should be in both places becasue there are different types of people. If you're in 2 parts of the page, you'll probably get the click.
  Chris: What about a brand lift for being in organic and both?
  Jen: When Delta was not visible for brand in paid search, their visits went down. What does that show? There are different customers for different things, as Michelle said. To her point, we found that paid customers are must more shoppers and they're more ready to convert. It pays to be visible by brand. We knew we had to take the risk even though there is obviously a budget issue with this.
  Jill: We have found that clicks in our paid advertising usually are those who are the first time visitors to our brand.

  5. Customers hear their language, not yours.
  Jill: She reads a quote that says that one of the biggest mistakes is that people campaign with the messaging that the company wants to push rather than what people want to hear. The messaging slogan will tie back into what happens online so don't just speak from the brand. Think about the users. She talks about the automotive industry and how in the past, it was about crash data, but now it's a big issue about going green and gas mileage. Why? That's what the people are looking for.
  Willie: Sometimes we got in touch because we used industry terms in our ad copy. The bounce rate was through the roof. We couldn't understand why, so we ran a focus group and we started to understand that we were talking amongst ourselves and not to our site visitors. We toned it down and translated the industry terms to pain English and consumer friendly terms. We started to focus on some user-centric terms on other pages - e.g. cruise reviews. After a customer has purchased, they would want to review cruises before they purchase. They build up cruise reviews on product pages. The bounce rates dropped and they saw an increase of conversions by 45%.
  Chris: I observed companies using thier own site search tool to identify holes.

  6. Web pages aren't the only assets you need to optimize.
  Jen: We interface with communications with users, so we need to get our content distributed. We launched a blog, and we use press releases and videos (YouTube channels). How do we optimize these areas? This is obviously important.
  Jill: You want to take advantage of content beyond the landing pages, like video. Tag that video, make sure the title is in line with the message, etc. You also want to be there on a paid perspective. But even with branded and nonbranded search, you need to think about social. Those results are showing up. If someone does searches for this, you want to be in the landscape and you want your social ads to show up.

  7. Integration is a must.
  Michelle: It's really critical to share information so that you can benefit from your marketing campaign. Marketers who are responsible for media plans need to communicate to search marketers to capture demand through search. Search marketing should also communicate.
  Jen: We recently had a campaign where we needed to talk to travelers based out of NY. We decided to bid locally and geotarget to NYers. We changed the language for these users. Paid search gives you the opportunity to supplement another campaign to a different audience.
  Chris: we've been talking about search and online, but what about other marketing? Do you do any of that?
  (Silence.... I guess they need to read the coverage I wrote earlier this morning on integration!)
  Jennifer: We don't do much TV/radio, but when we do, it's in conjuction with our vendors. We do special promotions though occasionally.
  Jill: There was another session this morning (yay!) that was basically about integration or die. The disconnect was that your message offline may not be the online for some people. 67% of people were motivated to search online for what they heard offline. Nearly 40% of those searchers ended up converting. Who wants a 39% conversion rate? We all do! (If you are a first time SERoundtable reader, go check my coverage from this morning.)

  8. Tools simplify everything.
  Willie: We have inhouse tools at our disposal that we built that indicated that newspaper ads are a dying breed. We wouldn't have known this without tools. We learn about the long tail keywords, so without those tools, we wouldn't know where to bid.
  Jennifer: We have about 10,000 pages and our content is forever changing. We had to manually manage that beforehand, and it wasn't efficient. With the help of iProspect, we put a few things in place, like a Google sitemap, a template that helped us for dynamically generating site optimization tags, and more. Sometimes creating/building tools can take time and development can suck time, but in the long run, it makes us remain up-to-date and current. We don't necessarily have the resources inhouse but thinking about tools does help you become more efficient.

  Chris: What do you do to demonstrate the value of ROI?
  Jen: We tried to transform our site optimization from the backend to the frontend but transparency of tools and accessibility to those content producers so that people can be evangelists - we don't get guidance from the agency. They can mine the data themselves and find what's relevant. We have analytics tools that are self-service. We all become part of that process and share information.
  Michelle: Case studies of what you've been able to do in the past helps to drive the momentum for going forward.

  Chris: In this economy, is there new money or do you have to take money away from other marketing efforts?
  Jill: Before shutting down offline altogether, in the state of the economy, we're seeing that the budgets are shifting. They're honing in on the return of over campaigns in the past year. There's more efficient spending by shifting funds.
  Michelle: We're not seeing anyone reducing search spend and that's because search is so measurable. You have to keep it in an economy like this.
  Jen: As long as you get rewarded, you should continue. It's easy to justify.

  9. Don't bid solely on branded terms.
  Michelle: I would definitely say this. You run the risk of your competitors benefitting. What I mean is that - think about someone searching on a non-branded term. Most people are still researching, so your competitor will get that customer.
  Jen: At Delta, we talk a lot about incremental tickets. We don't have content on every single destination we're going to -- yet. In order to have a void, we bid on those unbranded terms so that we can capture that researcher who convert into an incremental ticket, a ticket that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Optimize for that unbranded term as much as possible.
  Jennifer: Bidding on the unbranded term will help as much as possible. About half of our revenue comes from the unbranded term search. Sports fans search by their teams, not by the brand name, for example. We pay very close attention to those keywords. I read a retail study that said that 55% of traffic came from nonbranded and 49% of those who purchased clicked on a non-branded term and 12% clicked on both!
  Jen: People usually search initially on nonbranded terms but then they actually search on the branded term when they are close to buying.
  Jennifer: You need to look at your list and revise/develop the terms.

  Chris: There has been in the past during recessions a move away from brands. That would play into this entire thing to have a mix going forward.
  Jill: You can always get paid optimization to complement your organic efforts. Sometimes that offsets the cost.

  10. You must set goals.
  Jill: You need to focus on the goals and then focus on the tactics to get there. Then you need to get creative with your goals - of course everyone can agree on some conversion points but you need to think outside the box, for example, offsite optimization and social. Monitor the number of friends that you acquire each month. The same goes for video. Some videos increase 25% monthly for us even though they've been up for over 12 months. Case studies are another opportunity - keep track of that and make sure you're seeing regular growth. They are really good goals to have.

• 

  What's New With Video Search Marketing

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 9:42pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Marketing Expo 2008 East  

  Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land who showed up late due to a technical issue with what people call "WiFi."

  Michael Benedek, Vice President, AlmondNet is up first. Behavioral advertising is the delivery of ads based on their behavior online. There is lots of opportunity in behavioral ads.

  Bringing in the video component...
  - Linear video ads (prerolls)
  - Non linear (overlays)
  - Companion Ads (text, display, etc.)

  67% of internet users are viewing video ads at least once per month (eMarketer).

  Behavior and Post Search
  - 5% of their time declaring purchase intent on search engines
  - 95% of time browsing ad supported content on "other" sites
  - Most searcher complete their purchase-related research two or more weeks before handing over their credit card

  Implementation Challenges:
  - Standardization is hard (too many video players)
  - Scalability
  - Video content categorization

  IAB's Response:
  - Introduced VAST
  - It is an XML standard
  - Designed to standardize

  Gregory Markel, Founder & President, Infuse Creative is next up.

  He explains why video optimization is important... Let's assume it is important, I wont go through all his valid reasons. Pew Internet released a study on what people are watching.

  He showed that if you search corvette video on Google, up comes three video results.

  Video on mobile is growing with iPhone and all the clones.

  Submission:
  (1) Video on your site
  (2) Upload video
  (3) RSS techniques

  He shows how to upload at YouTube. He said they increased cap size from 100MB to 1GB but do not, there is currently still a 10 minute limit. It is not just about the title or text in the video description. It is not just about views. It is about the community around the video. I.e. ratings, comments, favored, inlinks and embedded videos.

  Soon you can buy higher rankings in YouTube, he said.

  He shows Yahoo Search, media RSS feed submission.

  Tips:
  (1) Define goals
  (2) Analyze competition in YouTube and Google.com
  (3) Research keywords and title/descriptions
  (4) Add/Modify "in video" branding/call to action/URL (watemarks, speak your brand and annotations in YouTube)
  (5) Decide submission strategy/type
  (6) Spread the word, encourage community, remember mobile
  (7) Monitor and track your progress and tune.

  YouTube has search suggestions, so right there, it shows you what is popular. Just start typing. Also, type a search result and sort by view count. Submit beyond YouTube. YouTube by default gives you a mobile friendly channel. He then shows annotations. Piggy back off popular YouTube videos as a response video. Lead in your description of your YouTube video with a live URL to your site.

  What's New?
  - Google.com serving side by side video results
  - YouTube adds quick list and duplicate video link
  - YouTube bulk uploader
  - Paid results in YouTube
  - Paid search user interest targeting
  - Trueveo and vSnax for iPhone video search apps

  Eric Papczun, Director of Natural Search Optimization, Performics is next up.

  The new Google audio indexing tool is being demoed. It basically does speech recognition. Right now, only for the political channel - as a beta. You can search for all videos in the political channel that match a keyword phrase. Plus you can skip to those points in those videos. Google will probably expand this to other videos.

  How Does it Work?
  - Google uses its own speech technology
  - Ranked by spoken keyword relevance, youtube metadata and freshness

  Speech to Text is still not perfect and she shows examples.

  He then shows off the power of YouTube for Video SEO. Web results show video.

  Tom Wilde, CEO, EveryZing is last up. He gets to go on stage as the down breaks below a - 700 point drop.

  Objectives:
  - Increase consumption of online media
  - Create multimedia advertising inventory
  - Control and protect content distribution

  Challenges:
  - Findable
  - Navigable

  Search engines dont do a good job with indexing videos. Text still drives discovery.

  Publishers need to match supply and demand.

  Publish across the curve from topic pages to landing page (too long tail). Organize your content into topics and publish them in a manner search engine can find it. Then make sure each content piece has a landing page.

  Create a Good Target for Search Engines:
  - Properly formatted page titles and URL structures
  - Related topics link to additional topical pages
  - Multimedia snippets derived from speech processing provide relevant text for GYM crawlers
  - Dynamic media player with "Jump To" functionality
  - Page populated with multimedia and articles relevant to topic/entity

  Challenge #2: Multimedia Site Search & Navigation
  - Goal of site search is to maximize content recall while optimizing precision and relevance.

  The web search experience on your site, needs to be similar to how Google handles it with universal search.

• 

  Social Media Marketing for Newspapers and Magazines

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 7:08pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Marketing Expo 2008 East  

  Continuing on from how newspapers and magazines can tap into search, this session looks at how social media marketing offers some unique opportunities forthese publishers.

  Moderator: Alex Bennert, In House SEO, Wall Street

  Speakers:
  Brent Csutoras, Online Marketing Specialist, BrentCsutoras.com
  Adam Sherk, Search/PR Strategist, Define Search Strategies (The NewYork Times Co.)
  Chris Winfield, President, 10e20

  Chris speaks first. Why would you want to be involved in social media marketing? You can get recognition in a wider audience. You cna create new touch points - so many people can now discover your content. It can enhance your credibility especially with more delivery. You get "first mover" status if you break news soon. You cna get new Public Relations opportunities. Also, you get traffic. Links are really important. He shows some client changes that show increased views. It increased traffic 135% in a 6 month period with close to 3 million visitors from social networks and blogs. It had 12 million ad impressions, and increased natural inbound links by 2,666%.

  How do you get there?
  - Do research - where are your visitors coming from already? Where are they coming from - Facebook, forums, etc?
  - Where are people talking about your stuff?
  - Who is linking to you?
  - What has worked so far?
  - Where is the most potential for our growth?

  Start making decisions. Find out where people are already - talk to your customers and readers and learn the demographics of the social networks that they are using. A lot of social networks have specific audiences and you don't want to force a square peg into a round hole.

  Now make internal changes.
  * Don't alienate your existing audience. You want to make your with pop-ups. You don't want to have all your content like that because it's a turn-off for social media users.
  * You need to look for evergreen content.
  * Make it easy for people to share your content. Don't have 80,000 little social bookmarking buttons. People won't use it.
  * Get key employees and stakeholders on board.
  * You also need to open up. Blogs have fresh content. Stay on top of the curve.
  * Have a good RSS strategy.
  * Microblogs such as Twitter are very useful. Don't just be a "feed." You want to gain new followers and new customers.
  * Outreach - your links mean a lot to bloggers.

  Social news and bookmarking sites are really important for publishers. You've gotten on the homepage and getting traffic is great but it's not the end-all. You have other bloggers that are coming on and looking for content. A lot of people go to social news sites and find content. Some people then share it in other communities. People are IMing it to people and then it gets down to the "mainstream press" and forums.
  - What does this mean? Eyeballs.

  What is good content?
  - Breaking news: everyone knows about the bail-out plan and the BBC was the first publication to get it out there (which is ironic).
  - Lists: they've been around forever. An example is the 10 commandments. They worked then and they work now.
  - How-to's: how to do things.
  - Surveys/Rankings: think about the US News Best Colleges
  - Getting something that is extremely comprehensive. What content would someone want to bookmark or come back to at a later time?
  - Controversial/Opinionated content.
  - Best of's: Best movies ever made, etc.
  - Calculators: life expectancy calculator, etc.
  - Video
  - Widgets etc.

  Final tips:
  - Promote great content
  - Contribute to the communities
  - Make the sites work together
  - Don't have all your employees vote from the same IP ;)

  Adam Sherk is up next.
  Survey of magazine sites: - between Q1 and Q3 is that traffic from social media ranged betwene 0.6 and 18% of total site traffic. Among social media referrers - Digg, 24% average, high 52%, Stumbleupon 24/60, Facebook 4/7, Reddit 4/13, delicious .5/1, and Myspace 3/5.

  He shows the conversation prism by Brian Solis (Google it - it's pretty). You need to interact with people. Discussion of content often happens off your site but it's okay - sure, you want people on your site but you want to get out there and engage in that conversation and those dialogues with them so they can come back to you looking for more information.

  It's not enough: social media strategies are great but it's just a start. When you think about it, it's just one way. With social media marketing, you need to directly engage with your audience and build that up so that they can go back to your site. Active participation and real participation can bring them back.

  Steps to social media success:
  - Monitor and observe - learn the landscape
  - Locate your audience and find opportunities
  - Formulate a strategy
  - Engage and participate
  - Evaluate and adjust

  Adam uses Plurk with me, and I feel good about that. He mentions that Plurk, a competitor to Twitter, has a large community of knitters. As for why, we both don't really know, but it's interesting to know that people leverage communities in such ways.

  Tactics:
  - You need a brand ambassador who drives the strategy and sees where the opportunities are.
  - They officially represent your publication. It's a full-disclosure (corporate level SMM). Give them time and resources to develop strong profiles and relationships. For example, set 50% of their time for 6 months. Get a figure that will let someone specifically put in time towards these activities. In terms of doing this, you can jump into these communities and spam your stuff, but that won't work. This needs to be genuine. Social media experience helpful but personality traits are most important - you need to have a natural networker.
  - Their efforts must be trsnparent. Do not hide company affiliation. Do not engage in activities that could be interpreted as manipulative.
  - Remember: your brand ambassador won't be there forever, so plan for the transition.

  Appropriate participation
  - Be a genuine member of communities
  - Be transparent
  - Look before you leap
  - Regularly and actively participate
  - Build good relationships
  - Engage in dialogues
  - Share interesting, useful, relevant content

  Avoid:
  - Hiding your affiliation
  - Being overly promotional (he has a 90 day moratorium where people can't share their own content until they have shared other content)
  - One-way communication
  - Poor quality content
  - Off-topic content or comments
  - Fake persons or comments
  - Violating community rules/terms of service
  - Spamming "friend" networks
  - Paying for submissions

  The brand ambassador drives it and that's one person but that person may leave too. Plan for that transition. It's not just your brand ambassador; it's your editorial staff too. The brand ambassador is great but you need to get your writers directly engaged as well.

  Employee participatin: your employees are likely already active on their own. Capture that energy and let it work in your favor. You need a corporate social media policy - define clear guidelines for sharing content and discussing the publication, and emphasize etiquette to avoid inappropriate exchanges that can damage your reputation.

  Encourage and empower your employees to represent you indirectly and (when appropriate) directly.

  Don't forget the people who love you! You have fans and fan evangelists. What about taking advantage of current fans and telling them about exclusive features? They are specifically joining the communities because they love them (think Facebook product pages and Friendfeed rooms, among other areas).

  Not everyone is going to like you and you have to remember that.
  - Interactions, feedback, and comments will not always be good. Your comments may get buried.
  - Turn negative situations into an opportunity to build relationships
  - Sometimes you just can't win, but your attempts to reach out will be noticed and documented.

  How do you measure this stuff?
  - Social media traffic
  - Inbound links
  - Pageviews, time on site
  - Actions taken on the site
  You can do this today.

  Also, not as important:
  - Submissions, votes, bookmarks, tweets, etc.
  - Comments
  - Cross pollination, secondary coverage

  - Qualitative, positive, neutral, or negative
  - Speed of viral spread/lifetime of memes
  - Brand visibility vs. competitors

  It's gotta be two way communication and it's gotta be real.

  Up last is Brent. He talks about the platforms that people should participate in.

  Social media is broad. He talks about the sites that you get the most results out of for the time that you spend.

  The first site is Reddit, a social news aggregation site. Reddit does not have the "popular" page like Digg. It's algorithmic throughout - the front page is the top 25 articles based on their algorithm and it updates every 1 minute. You can be promoted to a popular page that can guarantee you exposure (like Digg). You need to be consistent throughout your success.

  He says that politics is a very powerful category on Reddit. Offbeat is also great - funny, WTF, and offbeat. Business/world news are also rather popular. Reddit has an algorithm on every page. You can get onto the Reddit front page within 2 minutes and then be gone right after that. You need to consistently participate to do well on Reddit - if you hit the front page, you can be gone a second later.

  Reddit has an anti-spam/anti-marketers "algorithm" that prevents you from being able to consistently push your own content. If you submit something and it is always followed by your friend, you may be the only one seeing it.

  When you are going to submit content, try to be in the top 10. It's pretty broad. Don't force it if it doesn't fit.

  The most popular site is Digg, at least for marketers. Digg used to be more tech-centric but we're now seeing more business news and offbeat content. Pictures and videos are also very popular. In general, pics/videos are very popular because they don't require a lot of work on behalf of the "reader." Digg has power users and they can help a lot. Domain authority is also important.

  The next site is StumbleUpon. You submit things in categories - people sign up and choose categories that they look. They can see one piece of content one time within that category. It's a wave of visitors (as Adam said previously, it's the gift that keeps on giving) that can occur consistently. StumbleUpon is coming out with a new launch for category popular pages.

  It's very important on SU to know which categories have the most number of subscriptions. You used to be able to sign up for their paid program and on their backend, they will show you the subscription numbers (but you can see from the tag cloud on buzz.stumbleupon.com what the most popular categories are). They also have a very good spam mechanism - if you submit stuff way too often, it will not let you do it consistently anymore. Review other content regularly and submit other content as well.

  Yahoo! Buzz is another social site that came out that has a similar premise. It's category driven that allows you to vote to get to the popular page. There are no power users. The big driving areas are politics, celebrity news, entertainment, and sports. Search trends are part of their algorithm - if you utilize their commonly-searched upon keywords, you're likely to get a boost.

  Propeller is another social sites. If you submit news content and get to the top 5, you're featured on AOL's news page. Big categories include politics, tech, science, and love. Politics are important and groups are critical for value. Comments are a part of their algorithm (but they don't care what the content of the comments are).

  Other sites:
  - Meneame is the Spanish digg.
  - Delicious: howto and resources do very well.
  - Fark is for humor and offbeat.
  - Newsvine is kind of fading but it has a strong userbase.

  Social media tips
  - Have a persona
  - Submit to the right community
  - Mix it up
  - Don't dupe
  - Submit at the right time
  - Use focused titles and descriptions
  - No spelling errors, jargon mistakes, or bad information
  - Watch your stats
  - Do it right or don't do it
  - Be social

• 

  What's New With Local Search Marketing

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 6:53pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Marketing Expo 2008 East  

  Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

  Local is Greg's baby. Greg explains that local is about tying online to offline. Greg will be posting Q&A from Google on Search Engine Land.

  Mike Blumenthal, Partner, blumenthals.com is up first. I really respect this man, so I am excited. He first shows a Hitwise chart showing marketshare between Google, MapQuest, Yahoo and Microsoft.

  Google projects maps info into not just Maps, but also into web search, smartphones, sms, voice, iphone, desktop and so on.

  He analyzed 25 data points in a hundred businesses to determine what factors influenced local search rankings. Here is his presentation from SMX Local. He goes through some of the patent, going through really technical stuff such as:
  - distance from center
  - business name
  - business category
  - content
  - explicit anchor text
  - score of web site
  - # of links referring to business
  - highest score of those links
  - total # of web page citations
  - geo references
  - reviews

  Location Prominence score is the new local PageRank.

  Research contributors:
  - David Mihm
  - Miriam Ellis
  - Tim Coleman
  - Dave ORemland
  - missed the rest of the names

  Here is Mike's presentation.

  Tony Wright, CEO/Founder, WrightIMC is next up.

  Predictions:
  - 26% of small and med sized businesses plan to incorporate video on their web sites in the next 12 months
  - 40% SMB respondents said they intend to add customer reviews to their sites
  - 30% will add links or place ads on social sites or blogs.

  He then showed the search heat map.

  Watching for Source Consolidation:
  - Industry consolidation cannot be at the cost of local relevancy
  - There must be a consolidation in data providers. Implementation is too cumbersome in the current environment.
  - Deal a day industry. The only thing harder than implementing on so many properties is keeping up.

  Neat Things:
  - Sekai Camera "Air Tagging" is very cool

  Google's New e-Fluence Score:
  - Talked about in Business Week
  - Google rates social media users on their influential abilities
  - HUGE impacts for local/mobile search
  - Using manual tools like Trackur and other SEO techniques.

  Review Nation:
  - Everyone is reviewing everyone
  - Reviews influence buying behavior
  - Negative reviews can put you out of business
  - Zillow, ServiceMagic, etc.
  - Monitoring your reputation is more important for local businesses than anything

  Craig Greenfield, Director, Local Search, Performics is next. He said the most significant change in this area is the AdWords policy change with the URL policy change. This impacts businesses with many locations.

  Make sure your lead gen program is in line with your operators marketing abilities.

  FYI, the whole time, his presentation is not being displayed on the projector. Someone should tell him... Or maybe he doesnt have a ppt?

  Make sure your address information is clear on your web site and all up to date on the yellow page sites.

  Steve Espinosa, Director of Product Development, eLocal Listing is next up. You are going to start seeing specific profile pages for each industry, so small businesses wont have to pay big bucks for a web site, they pay for a premade landing page.

  Evolution of the Profile:
  - A/B Testing for you on this site
  - Complete conversion tracking
  - SEO for both local and natural
  - Evolve with current tracking

  Yahoo Local Listing Tips:
  - 5 Star Reviews
  - Yahoo Enhanced Listings
  - Keyword in Business Name

  This will drive 1.8X more calls per month.

  Trusted Sources:
  - Link to your local listings
  - Anchor text the link with key phrase matching the key phrase you placed in business name
  - Google is more like to rank a source like Yahoo Local rather than your web site.

  Video:
  Enquiro showed companies received 2.2X more attention on the results page if they had both adwords and natural listings. They found that 3.34x with click through when a video is on the page.

  Videos can be attributed as a web citation in Google Maps if properly linked and indirectly connected to Google Local.

  Tips:
  - Research your vertical and find out where Google looks for information
  - Google pulls data from trusted sources
  - InsiderPages.com, CitySearch.com and OpenList.com
  - Yahoo Upcoming, Meetup.com and Google Coupon are good web references

  The title tag of the web reference is getting a lot of weight put into it.

  Bonus Tip:
  Free phone tracking via Google. Create an audio campaign, get started and then stop. Then go to "call reporting" and then Google will log everything for you. Create tons of these numbers for free.

  I love that tip! Wonder how long it will take to go bye-bye.

  Eric Stein, Director, Local Markets, Google is last up.

  Google will continue to open up maps. By providing those types of tools, they can help solve problems of search. He said he has to take away that audio trick, but they might open it up another way. Too many small local businesses dont have a web site. It is up to SEMs to help these small businesses market themselves.

• 

  Search Marketing For Newspapers & Magazine

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 5:55pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Marketing Expo 2008 East  

  Results Take TIme, Metrics Saves Jobs. Newspaper and magazine SEO is all about the fundamentals and often like turning a battleship around in bathtub. Achieving buy-in with executives, CMS managers, associating content with keywords, training and "excitement" were reoccurring themes among this storied panel of experts. After Danny Sullivan kicked off SMX East, New York 2008, today's Moderator was Alex Bennert, In House SEO, Wall Street Journal.

  Marshall Simmonds, Chief Search Strategist, The New York Times
  The New York Times is a big family, including About.com Seventeen.com, TV Guide, HP, Time.com and Sports Illustrated. They have extensive experience in China. The New York Times is 100% in house. For other properties they work with, NYT provides services range from consulting, strategy, execution and support.

  Marshall asks, "What stage in the life cycle" is this site, in terms of SEO. To begin there is no one size fits all approach to SEO. The New York Times had a registration wall. It all began with "sitting people in a room and teaching them about SEO, helping them understand what their role is. "Establish a knowledge and expertise base for success. Achieve buy in, which happens at the executive level. Ask , who are you, what is your core strength. Find any kind of success that they've had in the past. Case studies of competitors success is a very useful tactic.

  Create An SEO Culture
  Research, Google Trends, Insights, Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, Site stats, successful and unsuccessful searches. Know the CMS quirks and languages. "Best practices may not apply. Best practices apply as in any facet of SEO. "What we're trying to do is extend beyond the confines of the New York Times" CMS. "We like to ask the questions that readers should be asking." Marshall says to give everybody the tools including analytics. He likes to create "ah ha" moments in teaching SEO.

  If you're not diagnosing what the CMS does or does not do, it's going to fail. If you don't give the team fields (SEO attributes like HTML Title Tag) that need to be adjusted then you won't be able to pick off the hanging fruit. Look for the small wins to where you can turn the tide in your favor so far as getting by at the basic levels. Where you have executive buy in, you may not have the ears of the CMS folks for technical integration.

  Ad networks and commerce are great places to get data to achieve systemic buy in. Branding and popularity are also benefits. Remember that the results take time and metrics saves job. Customize analytics reports for the receiver. Ultimately every CEO is going to do ego searches on Sunday over coffee. Ranking is OK to talk about but not the "be all and end all" because users might not be digging in that place.
  
  Julie Rutherford, Marketing Director, Washington Post posed the question: "SEO Evangelists vs. Formalized Project, which delivers better bag for the buck?" Julie helps with brands such as Budget Travel, Newsweek, Slate, Sprig and other brands. They have lots of opportunities to practices SEO. They first stared SEO back in 2003. They had done some basic testing, started link building with major directories, brought in consultant to do cross-company training and started regular meetings and updates. In 05' they moved to harder projects including topics index, site maps and site structure.

  Then they had to move towards a business reality of justifying SEO as a "cross disciplinary" project that required departmental evangelists. SEO requires "executive/C-level buy-in to unlock resources for heavy duty projects. She stressed that SEO is not an exact science and good business justification is required to fully move SEO through your organization. Metrics and tracking are, as always, key.

  "On the ground evangelism and formalized project processes, gaining evangelists among the design, editorial, production, marketing, technology, PR and product managers are roots for SEO Success. "Marketing in our case was really the central" part of SEO success for the Washington Post team. "We had a lot of success by "really really" working with our product management groups, as regard CMS and other aspects.

  Establish council or SWAT Team, get a project manager, insist on accurate reporting, enable and empower evangelists to uncover their own metrics, regular company updates with winds and metrics and reward performers. Follow up on business justification with executive buy in and provide tools/incentives for self management.

  Ulli Muenker, Search Marketing Manager, BusinessWeek, spoke about launching a new SEO program and winning over editorial. She spoke of empowering and "winning" the editors and content creation folks after achieving executive buy in. from the business perspective, this is about marketing and product development, which spawns SEO efforts. The variables are product management, analytics, user experience, partnerships, marketing, technology and web design.

  The first step is to get the high level buy in from editorial. Show potential traffic increase compared with competitors' and search traffic. Comparing to competitors is usually a great way to achieve buy in. Then find an SEO champion with influence over various groups/departments in editorial.

  Take the time to demonstrate "the importance" and effects os SEO before and after page optimization." Look for the eye opening "wow" (second wow in this post). Step 3 is to speak the "SEO excitement" in all editorial's groups and departments. This demonstrates how their individual articles get more exposure. Show them "what's in it for them." She kept referring to word of mouth SEO buy in as "SEO fungus," LOL.

  Conduct training by running regular individual and small group sessions. Use metrics to illustrate competitors' rankings and traffic. Create peer relationships to overcome skepticism and make writers knowledgeable about SEO so they become evangelists.

  SEO Techniques For Editorial
  Priority #1 is headlines. Editorial doesn't always know that the article headline is the title tag and therefore the listing in Google. Online headlines are different than print headlines. Main points to edit include being straightforward: no puns, sarcasm, jokes, and abbreviations. Include keywords that you want to rank for and create headlines that are fully understood on their own, without sub-headline or image.

  The second priority is creating a keyword rich sub headline and copy beginning. This can also be used as the meta description. Step 3 and 4 are about creating a good internal linking structure and keyword rich copy without making it "sound dumb." Gain the editorial teams trust. You can help them get more explore in Google. Try to understand their mindset, especially a print mindset. Build relationships, set up regular training session and create excitement and buzz around SEO.
  
  Eric Papczun, Director of Natural Search Optimization. Erik preaches a "Two-Pronged SEO Approach for Publishers"
  Static Optimization Strategy means long term optimization around static local keywords. Specific audience profiles are developer for users who interact with each of the site's landing pages.

  Profiles if readers and their interests drive the content mapping process, which mates each page to a targeted query. Keywords are then categorized by audience interests For instance a "sports junkie profiles," uses phrases like Cleveland Indians and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A restaurant Seeker profiles uses "Cleveland dining and finds their property, "Cleveland.com"Ask, "what keywords do my audience profiles use on the engines?"Then drill down into the subcategories like, fine dining or other niche.

  Let this drive your decisions on the type of content you'll like to have out there. Think of these as "Content Magnets," which can be created to attract a specially targeted profile. Think about your sweet-spot. "Make editorial decisions on what to write, research-based and without being "too clever." Optimize headlines and tags. Use search data to validate your keyword decision and increase the "search shelf-life" of the story. Use Google trends to show the ebb and flow of cultural news interest. If the keywords remain hot, write separate stories under different URLs optimized for those keywords. This can extend your shelf-life.

  Get into Google News by having original content. Keyword optimize the URL, be literal with your headlines using H tags and write balanced copy. Optimize your images and captions and keep them near the articles. Supply a frequently updated Google news feed and monitor it. (Google. prefers inline HTML 4:3 images above 12K). Keep fresh, keep constant, separate your stories into new news, breaking news and other divisions. Finally he suggested that we "own our stories."

  Marty Weintraub is President of aimClear, a Duluth, Minnesota Search Marketing agency.

  Quick correction, the NYT does not own "Seventeen.com, TV Guide, HP, Time.com and Sports Illustrated" those are client of our consulting group, Define Search Strategies. The New York Times does own About.com.

• 

  Search & The iPhone

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 4:56pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Marketing Expo 2008 East  

  Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

  The room is pretty empty, but I guess that is because this is an extremely specific session. Maybe 50 people? If I had to guess.

  Cindy Krum, Director of New Media Strategy, Blue Moon Works, Inc. is first up. She will explain the "death of the dot mobi."

  Mobile is Important:
  - Mass Mobile Convergence (it can do so much more)
  - Most personal marketing medium ever
  - More interactive marketing possibilities
  - Bridges the gap between online and offline

  Mobile is Different:
  - Mobile bots
  - Mobile algorithms
  - Smaller screens
  - Simplified Rendering (on non iphones)
  - More sophisticated searchers (they search differently, more long tail)
  - Immediate intent

  Why Now?
  - Real mobile web browsing because of devices like the iPhone. It is easier and works well. Other devices are coming out that work like the iPhone.
  - Flat rate data pricing
  - Faster download speeds
  - More processing power

  dotMobi = Bad for SEO
  - Bad for SEO
  -- Splits traffic
  -- Splits links
  -- Splits index size
  -- Doesnt benefit from history
  -- Risks duplicate content
  -- Confusing for users
  - Not preferred in mobile search (the dot mobi ext)
  - Limited useful life time span

  Mobile Best Practices
  - Basic SEO Best Practices
  -- Blended search best practices
  -- Local search best practices
  - Avoid heavy code, flash and JavaScript (iPhone does support JS)
  - Mobile search engine submission
  - W3C Mobile compliance standards
  -- XHTML & Accessibility Standards
  -- External CSS
  - Browser Detection or Self Selection
  - Redirect the dot Mobi to your main site

  3 Mobile Site Architecture Options

  (1) Do nothing
  - Look at mobile demand and traffic. Do people really need a mobile version of your site?
  - Test Existing Site with transcoding, without transcoding, on true browsing phone and on mobile browsing phone.

  Advantages:
  - Easy,
  - Cheap
  - Forward Thinking cause phones will get better

  Disadvantages:
  - Transcoding only works through search
  - Page urls and links are transcoded
  - Mobile user experience hard to control
  - Risky for the brand
  - Gives your competitors an advantage

  (2) Mobile Only Pages

  - Create a mobile site on sub domain or sub folder

  Advantages
  - Just update existing code
  - Adjust level of content

  Disadvantages:
  - Traditional home page must work on mobile
  - Extra click from home page
  - Duplicate effort
  - Duplicate content risk
  - Confusing if significantly different

  Mobile Traditional Hybrid Pages:
  - Multiple CSS sheets one for mobile one for normal
  - Same content but different rendering instructions
  - Rearrange content
  - Display = none if you dont want to show it

  Advantages:
  - Just add a new stylesheet
  - Same content
  - No dup content
  - CSS only has to download once

  Disadvantages:
  - Not 100% reliable
  - iPhone wont always pull mobile version
  - Hard if CSS not already in place
  - Display none ...

  Gregory Markel, Founder & President, Infuse Creative is next up. He will be focused on iPhone strategy.

  He shows the Google Phone, new Blackberry and new Nokia all with touch screens, all GPS enabled and all "true web" enabled. This is why it is important. Location is also a reason, be the first to be there. He explains that iPhone GPS uses cell towers, GPS etc to get your location.

  He said, keyword searching is dying on mobile. There are apps that replace this need, he said. He shows that there are a lot more searches on the iPhone then a normal mobile device.

  iPhone App sales are growing twice the rate as iTunes music.

  The browser experience on the iPhone is vastly superior than a traditional mobile browser.

  iPhone users consume 6 times more data than the average mobile user.

  Mobile Search has increased 68% in the US.

  US consumers are more interested in the iPhone than any other phone, according to Google Trends.

  The major search engines are detecting and offering iPhone specific experiencing. Google and Yahoo both have apps as well.

  Apple is aggressively pursing business customers.

  He then demos Google on the iPhone:
  - Google detects your on the iPhone and knows where you are, and may serve up location specific results
  - The search results are pretty much the same as a desktop experience, he said.
  - iPhone browser will make phone numbers clickable (not google specific, but keep that in mind).
  - Paid results are not the same, because on the iPhone they only show results at the top of the page, none on the right. So you better have top AdWords listings to show up.
  - Google provides a free Google Search app. It offers search suggestions, pulls from your contacts, location specific by default.

  It is important to note, the Google App uses the built in localization feature of the iPhone. While Google search, in Safari on iPhone, does not. Markel does not specifically say this, but Google is only showing localized results based on your IP information, but Google.com cannot do this by getting your GPS location (as far as I know). The Google App can and does do this, but not Google.com.

  He then shows the UrbanSpoon app from the iTunes App store.

  He mentions that Google does index iTunes links. I covered this a bit back, under the title Is Apple Cloaking Their iTunes Content, With Google Looking The Other Way? When Markel reads this, he will learn that this is really not an "SMX Exclusive." But this has been going on for a while now, even before the App Store. In fact, Matt Cutts of Google commented on it.

  Tips:
  - Check your clients web analytics to gauge current daily iPhone usage
  - Remember the location specific nature of iPhone

  Alex Muller, CEO, Slifter is last up. He will focus mostly on the App environment.

  - Wide distribution
  - Built in audience
  - No specific iPhone web index
  - Lower quality leads
  - SEO and SEM Costs are higher
  - Development cost to detect and display for iPhones

  iPhone App Store:
  - Advertisement
  - Wide distribution
  - Eager audience
  - Consumer utility may be a detriment (depends)
  - Longevity (how long will this last)
  - Build, test, approve...
  - It is expensive to build

  Vertical Search
  - Such as fandango
  - Highly targeting
  - Narrow audience

  Downloadable Apps
  - Loopt
  - Highly engaged to end user
  - More committed user
  - How do you participate
  - Major cost to developers

  - 80% iPhone users use data
  - iPhone users consist of about 7% of US market

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  Search Integration: Are We There Yet?

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 4:54pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

  Tags:  Search Marketing Expo 2008 East  

  People have been talking about search being integrated with other types of marketing for ages. How's it going? Is search now second nature when creating an advertising campaign? If not, why not? Thoughts and examples of integration challenges will be shared in this panel.

  Moderator: Sara Holoubek, Consultant, Columnist and SEMPO Board of Directors

  Speakers:
  Peter Hershberg, Managing Partner, Reprise Media
  James Lamberti, Senior Vice PResident, Search and Media, comScore, Inc.
  Robert Murray, President, iProspect
  Don Steele, Vice President Digital Marketing, MTV Networks

  Robert Murray is up first. He asks if we're soccer fans and if we've been to soccer games. In the game of soccer, integration is key. When you have 11 players on the field and they're all united for one common purpose, the results can be inspiring. He equates this with marketing online and offline.

  Some background: search marketing does not exist in the backend. Unless you've been living under a rock, you have heard to "integrate or die." However it's packaged, the message is simple - integration matters. But what are marketers doing about that? What techniques are they using? If they're not, why not?

  He found research from JupiterResearch in August 2007 where he pulled data from consumers - offline marketing on online behavior. 67% of polled individuals were driven to perform a search after they were exposed to some sort of offline messaging. Further, 39% of those people actually made a purchase of a product or service and not just from any company they found in the search results but from the initial company that exposed them to the offline messaging.

  This year, they did more marketing between April and June of this year - 289 qualified search marketers completed the survey for 3 objectives:
  - to uncover extent to which search efforts are integrated with offline marketing channels
  - to reveal techniques used
  - if there were any obstacles faced

  The concept of integrating search with offline marketing channels is not new. Only 55% of the search marketers polled, however, did this. 34% of these actually integrated with direct mail, 29% integrated with newspaper or magazine ads. 12% integrate with television. However, that's odd - TV is one of the biggest influencers in online search behavior.

  If people aren't integrating, why not? 19% said a lack of budget, 15% said lack of human resources, 13% didn't consider it, 11% lacked the senior management buyout. Others said that the offline marketing was separate from online marketing. Some also said that they just didn't do offline marketing.

  What techniques are people using when you're integrating? 84% said that they're integrating a web address prominently in offline messaging. 66% said adding the company name. Robert says that this isn't integration - it's coordination. That should be a given. Only 26% are using the same keywords offline that they were using online, which he finds shocking.

  What does this mean for you? Some people are put at a competitive disadvantage.

  Like a soccer coach, the CMO is someone who works to build a strategic plan that drives towards coordination. CMO needs to make sure that data is shared continuously. You want to reward this behavior in your organization.

  If you're a search marketer with a lot of great information, you should share that with your offline counterparts. The offline people should come to the table as well.

  Testing is also important: this can save time and money.

  The bottom line: we're all in this game to win but the marketers doing the best job integrating search with all other forms of offline marketing will most likely take the cup home.

  James Lamberti of comScore is up next.

  Are we there yet? He's going to talk about 3 things that are still missing - the all important consumer (and how they're left out of the conversation), measuring the full value of search (most people aren't), and search-driven planning and strategy.

  Advertising a la "madman" - 1950-2001 RIP - you give them awareness, they go through the funnel, and they buy. Not anymore, he says. The world is complex - there's eyeballs, then offline media, online media, social media, and friends and family. In the center of this is search. All of this stuff that happens to the consumer and is simple for the marketers is search. comScore pulled up data to show that 17.1 billion US searches occurred. 194 million searchers searched about 8 times. Search is growing double digit numbers off the base of billions of billions of queries.

  Most people search based on the brand trademark and brand communication, even graphically, he displays in a slide. As a desired outcome, you're getting people to search. How can I make sure my search marketing catches that activity?

  He shows data that says that 55% of generic queries are undermeasured and undervalued. 45% are branded. Therefore, you need to think about the more generic searching. If you're just hanging on your trademarked terms and ignoring generic, you're missing a huge part of your addressible market.

  Why are people searching? It's not seeking coupons, it's not navigational - they really want help and information for a purchase decision. Nonsearchers are often looking for promotions versus searchers. They're at a point of influence.

  Measuring the full value -
  It's not dead. We need data that's familiar to us to get the conversation going. He shows real data that was aggregated across 6 month and 9 million people hit a specific campaign with a reach of 6 million reach. He explains a computer search had a 69% reach because 6 million people were buying computers a month.

  If you calculate your ROI compared to competition and you're getting less, you're at a huge disadvantage. Your competitor will have more paid impressions, more clicks, and they will gain share.

  He shows multi-channels retailer actual results - multi-channeling - market mixed models. He says that you should provide the right data and the results will show that the organization will need to be spending more money on earch.

  4 pieces of advice
  1. Establish common ground. SEO marketers want to be talking to offline folks and the CEO - get the types of data that will get them interested.
  2. Measuring full value is key. Know what the offline multiplier impact is.
  3. Measure search as a desired outcome.
  4. Treat organic and trademark as unique efforts: most organizations ignore generic through inappropriate comparisons to trademark. If you under emphasize generic, you ignore a huge part of the market.

  Up next is Peter Hershberg about Microsoft as an enterprise brand. Microsoft is in dozens of businesses from Zune to Office to Live to XBOX to Small Business Servers. He is focusing on Vista and the work done with Vista. There are a lot of products associated with the Vista brand and there are also stakeholders. There are also a lot of goals that are conflicting.

  How do you approach this problem and how do you deal with it? The first way to do that is through education - there are challenges because there are 5000 marketers with individual search budgets. Therefore, you need to create universal processes for budgeting, management, and reporting to measure success on an apples to apples basis. You also need to compaign metrics to marketing goals.

  How do you do this? The strategy is to contribute to a Search Center of Excellence to sehare best practices and processes in search. It's like a forum for all the policies with campaign data and other information. There are training sessions (Search 101) tailored to the needs of each Microsoft department and its line managers. They are recorded and archived online. They also established a uniform 3-phased approach for taking fully integrated campaigns from concept to launch over a 5 week period.

  Offline absolutely drives online behavior specifically in the area of search. As high as 80% of all internet sessions begin at a search engine, according to data. Something piqued their interest to perform that search.

  Here's a Microsoft and their consumer campaign: some people are seeing the commercials with Seinfield, for example. People are going to start searching if they see the commercials. They need advanced knowledge about campaigns so it makes it possible to predict the unpredictable. They had access to the script so they bought the most obvious keywords including random (shoe circus, worm churro, etc.) If someone was searching for those, it was because they had seen the ad and wanted to know more about it. Keywords that are disconnected from Windows and Vista but resonated from the commercials were included in the campaign. Sometimes the least obvious things drive those searches.

  Microsoft and Corporate Communications: active keywords that include Vista as part of a phrase. Close coordination of paid efforts and PR improved Vista caomapgin results - selected related keywords, aligned creative to increase response rates and conversion rates, and coordinated landing pages that linked to articles.

  The whole idea of aligning goals with the channel has been mentioned, but the goals for Microsoft were related to reach and frequency to drive to site engagement. Where reach is concerned - how many of my customers saw my message? How often did they see it? For engagement, what did my customers do once they visited the site? This all ties into optimization.

  The most interesting thing is that search is driving marketing intelligence. When we think of search, we're aggregating tons of data which is being used in the interest of improving results in the campaign. Search is a realtime focus group and you can analyzizesearch traffic and behavior to gain insite that can influence the entire mix: marketing messaging (emails, banners, onsite), media selection, communications strategy, and more.

  How are we able to do this with Microsoft in Japan? Print was the biggest driver of traffic there. They found that this can optimize the banner campaign. The result was a 3x rise in the conversion rate.

  The lessons learned
  - Educate all stakeholders and understand their roles
  - Repeatable rocesses for effectively shaping assets
  - Measure success in the search channel - recalibrate goals to match strengths of the channel
  - Repurpose search learnings to inform the overall marketing program

  Last up is Don Steele of MTV.

  Why we market: Branding, Awareness, Target, Interaction/Sampling.

  How we market - there are some billboards that he shows that do brnading and targeting and awareness.

  They use search for marketing.
  * Branding: Search engine space is the new billboard for branding.
  * Awareness: Search is awareness for visibility for shows.
  * Target: Search also targets as it delivers a timely and fluid message to users who are expressing an interest in it.
  * Interaction/sampling: Smart search campaigns should encourage interactive behavior whree a brand is delivering upon a user's expectation

  He shows a search for "bill cosby" and how there's a paid ad that shows the Cosby Show on TV Land. It's the only paid link there.

  He shows other examples with other related brands. When the Elliot Spitzer scandal came out, a big search was for spitzer jokes. They were able to do very well there.

  How can you sell this internally? Well they are a media company and if they're not advertising, they're making a big mistake.
  - Core audience
  - Reporting
  - Self selection
  - Evangelism
  
  The biggest challenge is that we can do billboards and search, but these tactics are not equal. You need to talk to people who are self-selectedness - giving people what they're looking for.

  
  Sara asks a question about frequency reach.
  Peter says that search is more measurable. But we only pay on a cost per click basis. We're dismissing the value of all the impressions. Back to his Microsoft example, in the Vista campaign, he served 5 billion impressions on MS's behalf. There is no meaningful way to show the reach of impressions.
  Sara admits that it's a relatively new phenomenon.

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  Google Local Business Center Access Issues

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 2:44pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Other Google Topics  

  A Google Groups thread reports many business owners having difficulty accessing the Google Local Business Center.

  The error people are getting is:

  System Error

  We're sorry, but we are unable to serve your request at this time.

  Please try back in a few minutes.

  Personally, I have no problem accessing it, but it seems like many are having issues.

  The issue has been reported back on September 24th and it still is an issue for many, even today. On October 1st, Google Maps Guide Jen said, "Thanks for bringing this to our attention; we're looking in to it right now." But even since then, many still are reporting issues accessing the Google Local Business Center.

  There is no ETA on when the issue will be resolved for these users. Nor did Google explain what the issue may be.

  Forum discussion at Google Groups.

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  Google Scholar Citations Cannot Be Removed

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 2:38pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Other Google Topics  

  Google Scholar has citations for many the results it provides. Those citations are hyperlinked under the search result, and list out sources across the web the cite the resource.

  A Google Groups thread asked how he can get his site removed as a link from a Google Scholar citation. This particular webmaster removed the page but the citation is still listed in Google Scholar.

  Googler, Susan Moskwa explained that citations cannot be removed. Why? Susan explains:

  In Google Scholar, a citation is generated basically whenever we learn that a particular item (book, article, etc.) exists. As soon as we learn that "Book A" exists--and we may learn of it because we find a link to it, because some other work cites it, or through some other means--we generate a citation for it. The citation doesn't necessarily link to Book A, or provide anything more than a title and author name (although it may); it just indicates that Book A exists, or existed, somewhere in the world. It also doesn't necessarily link to works that reference Book A, or provide any web results, because just because we know a work exists doesn't mean we have any references or web results for it.

  This is why you see some citations in Google Scholar that are not hyperlinked.

  Forum discussion at Google Groups.

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  Which Google Penalties Require a Reinclusion Request?

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 2:29pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Google Optimization  

  A WebmasterWorld thread asks a very good question. Which penalties require a reinclusion request in Google?

  Yes, this is a tough question to answer. But it would be great to come up with a list of items that might require and no require a reinclusion request.

  WebmasterWorld administration, tedster, really sums up the issue with this question.

  (1) Not all "penalties" are really penalties. In fact, a nice percentage of posts that say, "I have been penalized," are really not penalized.

  (2) Some penalties are manual, while some are automated. Manual penalties probably require a reinclusion request, while automated ones do not necessarily require one but likely can be expedited by one.

  Now, outside of that, coming up with a list of how to spam search engines and then describe which penalties are automatically applied and which are manual, can be daunting. In addition, making assumptions on which webmaster guidelines violations are worse than others, may also be a hard thing to do.

  In any event, the discussion around this topic, I thought, would have been larger.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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  Microsoft Plans adCenter Upgrade in Fall 2008

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 2:24pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  MSN Microsoft adCenter  

  The adCenter blog announced that they will be releasing an update prior to the holiday season. The update will include the following features to their search ad product, adCenter:

  • Expanded your billing and payment options
  • Simplified your campaign management experience
  • Improved the way you create and analyze reports
  • Updated your keyword research capabilities.

  If you want a sneak peak at these features, you can apply to the adCenter beta program over here.

  Forum discussion at adCenter Community but there was a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums that was removed.