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SEO: Should Search Marketing be a mainstay in your online marketing budget?

Monday Oct 11, 2010

Understanding the history and evolution of SEO, or search engine optimization, is important to all marketers and companies looking to enhance their web marketing efforts to gain greater access to the huge online buying population. In the age of the on-the-go consumer the use of the old medias when read to buy, particularly the Yellow Pages, have seen a huge decline in consumer usage as the information we need is so quickly accessible online or via our PDAs. The rise of Google local and the growing opportunity to source recommendations from our trusted social networks has changed the way we source and buy products forever.

So as we race to try and get on the first page of Google the real question to answer is what value does SEO and search marketing have in the online marketing mix? To look into the future in this regard we need to explore, briefly, the past and what led us to this point.

SEO Beginnings

SEO as Wikipedia defines it, is “the process of improving the visibility of a web site in search engines” through organic means. SEO was not developed overnight. Instead, it took a number of trial and error attempts as well as some changes on the end of the search engine to end up where it is today.

According to the HistoryofSEO.com, SEO had its genesis during the early 90s when website marketers realized the value of search engine result rankings to their website traffic. During the early days of the search engines. optimization was alphabetical. You could obtain the choice position just like you did in the old Yellow Pages by registering alpha URLs such “AAA” or “A#1”. Because of this “AAA” and “A#1” type optimization, trends began. This methodology was simple for the optimizer, but it wasn’t effective since it allowed sites that aren’t relevant to the search keyword to get a top rank.

In 1994 Yahoo! started using Webcrawler, but it was in 1997 when on-page optimization started. Greenlightsearch.com looks at the history further by gauging the importance of on page SEO, page rank, anchor text, domain authority, link context, and user signals over time (by 2009, domain authority is the most important factor out of all the ones mentioned).

SEO today

In order to understand how search engine optimization has changed it’s important to know how page rankings work. Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines use certain algorithms to determine the relevance of a website to the keyword used by a person on a search engine. For instance, if you search the word “notebook” on Google, http://www.google.com/notebook appears on the top slot. There are four main ranking criteria, as often cited in SEOMOZ.org: domain authority, anchor text, on-page SEO, and raw pagerank. As mentioned above, domain authority is the main factor that determines the rank. This is why sites like Wikipedia and many Google pages top the ranks—they have domain trust.

There have been many changes to how search engines determine rankings. In 2002, links were the most important factor in SEO. Some factors, like on-page SEO, hardly change. In this field, it’s important to know the trends in order to stay on top.

When selecting a search engine marketing partner it is important to know how an SEO team keeps abreast of algorithmic changes and on top of trends to ensure that clients’ search marketing program encompasses the best in class approach and results. The team at PCM Interactive has found a way to monitor this and they have seen many changes since 2000 when the decision was made to enter this foray.

Companies who have realized the importance of search engine marketing and SEO as a mainstay in their regular online marketing diet have realized the strategic value of increased quality traffic to their company web sites. SEO, which was once a technical exercise, is evolving rapidly into a marketer’s game and this provides online marketing agencies like PCM Interactive some exciting opportunities to provide some innovative cross-platform solutions geared to enhanced results.

SEO is contantly evolving but there are four things that don’t change (even in the advent of personalized search) these are: make pages accessible, target the right keywords, build content that is useful and earn links from good sources.


Why Google’s new Caffeine index is great for business

Monday Jun 21, 2010

After almost a year of testing-and-talking about a new and improved search technology, Google finally announced the completion of their new Caffeine index earlier this month. As we know, “search” is Google’s core offering and when they first started testing the new technology last August, they promised that the improvement would represent the most significant upgrade to the basic crawl-for-page-rankings technology since 2006.

Here’s a visual that compares the old Google index technology with the new Caffeine index:

To better understand, it’s important to know that when you type in keywords in Google’s search box, you’re not actually searching “the web”; you’re searching Google’s index of the web. Whatever they find, you find.

As illustrated in the diagram above, the old technology was built on layers. Refreshing any one of those layers involved a complete analysis of the web (yes, the entire web). Even the main layer was updated only every couple of weeks so you can imagine the delay between Google finding a page, analyzing its relevance, adding it to their index, and finally ending up in your search results.

The objective of the new indexing technology was speed and comprehensiveness. With Caffeine, Google analyzes the web in smaller portions and updates their search index both continuously and globally. The result is fresher and more inclusive information for searchers.

Google updated their index technology to meet searcher’s expectations. With the advent of images, real-time updates and videos, the internet is becoming a more multifaceted medium and both searchers and publishers expect the latest and most relevant content to appear in search results.

According to Google, Caffeine meets that expectation by providing 50% fresher results than the old technology as it processes hundreds of thousands of pages on a continuous basis. To demonstrate the concentration of this process, if the web pages that go through its “crawl process” were a pile of paper, the pile would grow taller by three miles per second!

Benefitting both searchers and publishers alike, Google’s new Caffeine index processes more web content than ever before. This includes news stories, blog posts and forum comments; providing links to relevant content much sooner after its publication than was possible with the old technology.

According to Carrie Grimes, a Google Software Engineer, “We’ve built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you.”

Google’s new Caffeine index is especially good news for businesses.

“The main difference is that businesses will see searchers arriving faster on their websites because Caffeine can index pages much more quickly than our previous system. The nice thing is that Google users will see fresher results without users (or business owners) needing to do anything special,” stated Google Engineer, Matt Cutts,  in a recent one-one-one post over at Entrepreneur Daily Dose.

To expand on Cutts acknowledgment of the new technology’s efficiency, Google’s new Caffeine provides businesses with a powerful springboard for increasing awareness, engaging customers and ultimately boosting revenue. The opportunity for implementing successful web stratagems has also increased by an equivalent 50%.

That’s good news indeed!


The ROI Challenge:Importance of Web Analytics firepower

Wednesday Apr 28, 2010

Technological change has irrevocably altered the behavior of customers. Today people are approaching the tasks of planning a vacation, buying a car, shopping for clothes or choosing a restaurant in ways where they can have instantaneous access to service information – online.  They are also powerful influencers of others as they are embracing the use of social media technologies at an astounding rate.

For marketers the challenge is to capture the hearts and minds of the new feisty, in-control consumer. Apart from finding new ways to participate with them in their online world, web analytics has jumped to the forefront putting a focus on the importance of segmentation and the business intelligence gathering of actionable insights. The old measurement tools of the past have gone by way of the buffalo. Today its about real-time metrics that meet the need for marketing efficiency, accountability and profitability.

In fact Marketing is all about ROI. It can be determined. It is the engine of organic growth if aligned with corporate objectives. (Though, it is important to note that creative experimentation will always lie at the heart of the discipline).

We are living in a new frontier that is ever-changing and the race is on as I type. Impression metrics, message metrics, attitudinal metrics, behavioral metrics, transactional metrics…if your head is spinning it is perfectly normal. Determining what metrics are right for you is not an easy task. However, the best way to cut through the clutter is to reduce the noise by focusing on well-defined marketing objectives and the measurement of ROI. The interactive nature of new media offers a perfect environment to calculate ROI because customer’s actions can be tracked along the funnel. ROI is transforming the effectiveness of the marketing cycle.

Determining the journey down the ROI funnel is not an exact science. Gathering the correct data at the onset is a challenge and requires continuous testing. But, the good news is that in the digital environment testing is real-time so determining “insights” is possible. From there you can develop the creative, communicate to the target, and measure success. While there is no black box that spits out answers, the journey to collect and fine-tune data is worthwhile as it in turn fuels sophisticated analytic models that can ultimately predict ROI results.

The new Marketing Mindset is here. The discipline is no longer based solely on “intuition, art and what may stick” but in turn is based on data, analytics and factors that deliver profitable growth.


Google TV: The strategy and where to put the set-top box

Monday Apr 5, 2010

Google has recently partnered with Intel, Sony and now Logitech to create an Android-based platform that will bring the internet right into your living room.

This means that you will be able to stream online YouTube videos and search capabilities and keep up to date with all your social networking friends from yet another device – your television. The question is though, since the internet is a text-heavy medium, will reading Tweets and your favourite blogs while sitting ten feet away from the screen be comfortable?

And, do we need another set-top box to add to our growing collection of cable, DVD players and gaming consoles?

Then there’s the whole Google ads issue. Google just wouldn’t be Google without Google ads.

According to a New York Times report, the motivation behind Google TV stems from ensuring that its “. . . search and advertising systems play a central role.”

Could it be that Google is trying to create a more “user-friendly” environment; as in use Google TV welcomes more ads into your home?

Another opinion states that the real driving force behind Google TV is not ads but Smartphone-inspired applications. According to the New York Times, Google TV-related products could be on the market as early as this summer.

We cannot ignore the fact that bringing the internet to living room televisions has been attempted before; albeit unsuccessfully. Now Google is up at bat. Will they be a game changer? One only has to look at Google’s track record to be both curious and optimistic.

With so few details available on exactly what Google has in mind, there’s at least one question we can answer in anticipation: where to put that new set-top box!


Real-time search and the next generation engine of “relevance”

Friday Feb 5, 2010

In December, Google launched an updated version of their page-ranking technology to incorporate Twitter feeds and real-time search results. Once again, the search giant ended the year (not to mention the decade!) with an important breakthrough in the world of search engine optimization.

Search engines used to be an information seeker’s haven providing  “instant-access education”. But now Google’s algorithm update has turned the search engine into a valuable resource and means to simplifying life. The combination of algorithm tricks and filters, GPS technology, mobile use and real-time search results has resulted in a truly powerful next generation search engine. Suddenly the frustration of the daily commute to work can be reduced with the help of up-to-the-minute Tweets on traffic jams.

Next generation search has also become more intuitive.  According to an article by Technology Review, if you’re in Boston and you begin your search with the letters “R” and “E”, the results will suggest various “Red Sox” outcomes. Yet if you’re in San Francisco and type in the same two letters, the suggested results will give you the REI retailer.

Real-time search has also brought new geo-location marketing opportunities. For example a restaurant now has the opportunity to capitalize on time-specific, talk-to-the-tummy promotions just before lunch.

A study by the  Society for New Communications Research revealed that 74% of consumers choose companies and/or brands based on other customer’s experiences shared online.

Up-to-the-minute information on what the trend of the moment is through instant access to social media “talk” has become an interesting marketing opportunity. According to Bing, one of the hottest topics on Twitter at the end of January was Haiti. This is valuable information. Some companies capitalized on this “Buzz” by jumping “into the conversation” with an update on what they were doing as a company to help.

Real-time search marketing opportunities will continue to grow.  We are moving more and more towards an integrated world where everything is indexed and can be queried in any number of ways; and from a myriad of portable devices. From this perspective real-time search in the future will be about query “relevance”.