Search Marketing Insomniac…The Blog of Adam Henige

Even the casual SEO has historically kept an eye on their rankings.  Using an online service or a program like Web Position Gold to track the successes and failures of their activity.  At the same time, the wise SEO kept an eye out for their usual competitors, and stayed on the lookout for emerging competitors in the marketplace.  As Google continues to innovate, the landscape of the results have changed, and there is now an additional item for the SEO to worry about - Google itself.

Thank you Google.

Two years ago if you did a search for “grocery store” from your home computer you’d get a listing of the most relevant sites for the term grocery store - for the whole country.  You’ve probably noticed that similar searches have begun integrating local results, complete with Google map listings.  You’ll see the same thing when doing searches for product related terms, and for certain informational topics you’ll also see the integration of video results.  This is Google trying to anticipate user needs, which may not always be pleasant for the SEO.

Recently I was working with an online retailer that had achieved a #3 ranking for a popular product related term.  The only page outranking it was the manufacturer.  This led to a steady stream of traffic and consistent month to month sales.  Out of nowhere it seemed, that all stopped.

On a month to month basis we saw the drop in analytics.  I quickly looked back to the organic rankings report - there was no drop.  The next step was to look at the SERP.  That’s when we saw the problem.  Google had integrated both video and product listings.  We had gone from a cozy perch atop the rankings to below the fold and competing with images and videos for the user’s attention and eye share.  I wouldn’t have assumed the loss in traffic would be as drastic as it was (see below).

Can you guess when the SERP changed?

Even with the number one ranking within the Google Product feed listing (essentially maintaining our #3 ranking in terms of visible links) the additional competing items on the SERP wiped out our traffic.  The moral of the story here is that while your competition needs to be monitored, so does the medium itself.  Google will continue to adjust the SERPs to improve user experience, and as SEOs we will need to continue to adjust to the changing landscape.

*This guest post was provided by the good folks at SEMAdvisory.

The old tried-and-true forms of traditional advertising are being shifted to the backburner. Print media such as magazines and newspapers, and broadcast media like radio and television, are seeing fewer and fewer budget dollars from businesses who are finding online marketing more effective, and more cost-effective.

According to a marketing research report co-sponsored by ExactTarget.com and Econsultancy, more money is being allocated to digital forms of advertising by more businesses. The report is based on poll to over 1,000 marketers regarding their 2010 marketing and branding strategies.

Despite economic decline over the last few years, 46% of marketers polled said they are increasing their overall advertising budgets in 2010. And 66% of those polled said they are increasing their digital advertising budgets. Overall, the report says it expects a 17% surge in the total amount of digital advertising spending.

Metrics is the New Rule

For advertising dollars to be worth the expense, it needs to be effective. And though there are ways to trace and measure the conversions of some traditional forms of advertising like sales letters, knowing the exact ROI an advertising campaign reaches per person is nearly impossible.

But not with digital marketing. Marketing via the internet allows an entirely new “scientific” aspect to measuring and tracking advertising efforts. That is one reason many marketers are adjusting their marketing efforts toward digital advertising. The majority of online marketers can effectively measure the advertising results of strategies such as SEO, email, and pay per click. That is why 64% of marketers are plan to increase marketing dollars toward these strategies in 2010.

And while digital marketing is still a growing trend, not everyone is getting on board. However, 28% of marketers polled said they are shifting at least a small portion of their marketing budget to digital channels. And 34% of said that “more science than art” is the reason for shifting some budgetary monies.

Social media is also seeing a spike in allocated funds. 70% of respondents said they will be increasing budgets for off-site social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Additionally, the growing popularity of mobile advertising is spurring on 56% of respondents to increase spending toward mobile searches.

Digital Advertising Challenges

Though more marketers are spending more money than ever on digital advertising, there are still some limitations and barriers that a few have not yet overcome. 48% of respondents said that the biggest barrier to digital advertising growth was the lack of understanding about the media. Additionally, 35% said they have a lack of staff who can implement and track digital advertising.

So while digital advertising is still growing, and many more marketers are increasing digital marketing budgets, it seems there is still much to learn about the opportunities of online marketing. The digital channels of marketing present a vast frontier for marketers to spend quality advertising dollars in the future when it is better understood and the staff is available to conduct digital advertising in earnest.

Author Bio:

SEMAdvisory assists Dallas SEO clients in reaching their online goals. We pride ourselves in delivering effective Dallas search engine optimization to all small to mid-sized business owners.

Much has been made of Google’s move to personalized results.  Whether you’re logged in or not logged in, Google has been personalizing results based on your activities.  This is news to the innocent bystander, but certainly not to SEOs.  So I won’t go too far into that.  If you want to learn more about the technicalities and ramifications of personalized search, I would recommend that you try this: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html

But let’s talk about something bigger here.  As an SEO you might be running some rank checking software and seeing that your site is pulling down some top rankings in Google for a certain keyword, but it doesn’t seem to be turning into traffic from an analytics standpoint.  Traditionally, you’d think that you should change your page title, or possibly adjust your description to give you a more attractive SERP.  That type of thinking was in line with the idea that results were universal (non-personalized results, which will STILL be the vast majority of searches in the near future) from sea to shining sea.  Turns out, there’s more customizations going on than you know.

Let’s take the case of Dave Kahle for example.  Dave Kahle is a sales training professional based in Comstock Park, Michigan.  Taking a look through some of the SERPs, I find that his site is currently ranked 3rd for the terms sales workshops and sales seminars.

I'm not making this stuff up.

So you’d naturally think that based on the Google keyword tool’s information, and AOL’s SERP data you would think that the site would be getting about 40 clicks for sales workshops and about 200 for sales seminars based on its third place standing.  I, however would wager it doesn’t quite reach that level.  Why?

Well, I’m searching in Lansing, Michigan and Google knows that.  Trying a little experiment using SEOMoz’s rank tracker tool I found last week that Dave Kahle’s site was ranking 6th and 9th for these terms.  Why would that be?  Well, SEOMoz’s tool displays a West Coast bias, as their physical location is in Seattle.  So their tool displays rankings as they would from that location.  Apparently Google has made a bit of a distinction between the relevance of these services to a West Coast audience.

So next time you start wondering why traffic doesn’t seem to be accompanying your rankings, here’s another tool in the toolbox to help explain why.  Try to find a surrogate rank checking tool based in a different geography to test the consistency of your rankings.

Update: I began writing this blog last week, but it appears the West Coast rankings have nearly caught up.  Good for Dave, but bad for my example.  Try this yourself and let me know what types of drastically different results you can find.

As I sit in my recliner with the Olympics glowing in the periphery, I can’t help but think how few people have the motivation to devote four years at a time for their shot at glory.  I’m fairly certain a lot of these athletes forgo making a decent living to pursue their passion.  As I mull over all of that dedication to hard work, I realize just how much I like being lazy.  So in this edition of SEO on a Nickel, I’ll offer up a quick and easy way to continuously build links - blog commenting.

Now, let me say this first.  I do not condone spamming blogs for links. If you read this blog and use its contents as ammunition to spam other blogs, there is a good chance you will be eaten by polar bears…but I digress.  Let’s get down to business.  Here’s the tools we’ll be using today:

1. Google Reader
2. Google Alerts

Short list, eh?  I said this was going to be a testament laziness, didn’t I?  Okay, so here’s the idea.  If you don’t have much time, a great way to find links is to set up a handful of relevant searches in Google Alerts and spend a few minutes each week looking for relevant blogs to post on in Google Reader.

The first thing you need to do is recognize what linkable assets you have on your site.  Is your home page a valuable asset?  Is it a site that has particular value for a product category or a niche interest?  Perhaps you have an article section with valuable information, or some tools on your site that make it easier to find the right product or calculate an important equation.  Regardless, most sites have some specific linkable assets, and if not, start by making some unique content that relevant sites in your industry would want to link to.

Secondly, do a couple of searches in Google blog search to identify some searches that provide a healthy amount of returns.  If you sell blue widgets, you may just want to do a search for “blue widgets” or if you want something more specific to blue widgets, you might want to search  intitle:”blue widgets” which will return only blog posts with the phrase blue widgets in the title.  Handy, eh?  If you want to take it a step further, you can add some additional elements to your search to find blogs that are more likely to be dofollow - or as some of the industry insiders call them, “footprints”.  An example of this would be blue widget “allowed html tags:” which is a footprint in the comment section used on many blogs that tend to allow dofollowed links within the comments.  The link query tool from Ontolo can be used to show you a whole bunch of ideas for this (use your keyword and then select conversation from the linkable opportunity type drop down).

With some queries in place, get into Google Alerts and set up your search:

Keep up on your blue widgets.

Once you create your alert, you can choose to edit your alerts where you can select the option to view in Google Reader.  Otherwise, I suppose you can have them sent to your inbox (but that’s sooooooooooo 2008).  Now, you can set up a time each week to find appropriate blog posts where your comment can add value through providing a link to your site.

Once again, I recommend that you don’t bombard every blog you come across.  Chances are you’ll find some blogs that are good communities to participate in aside from building links, so if you’re a good citizen, you can make some worthwhile connections that may lead to a bevy of other opportunities.  So keep that in mind before you start angering people…or the polar bears.

The SEO polar bear hates blog spammers! Image courtesy of www.freeimagedepot.com

And I would be remiss not to point out that I fleshed this post out from Navin Poeran’s suggestion on Search Engine Land a while back.  That post will open your eyes to the immense number of ways you can use search queries to identify linking opportunities.  Until next time, I wish you lazy but successful link building.

Life isn’t a beauty contest.  Plenty of ugly people can be successful (even *I* earn a living), and I’ve seen some horrific websites make money for companies.  One thing that I’ve learned in the SEO business over the last few years is that sometimes it pays to say no to a hideous website when someone asks you to market it.

The nice thing about being your own boss is that you don’t have to say yes all the time, but at the same time, you don’t want to turn down business when you’re still relatively young.  Thus the conundrum of being an SEO that needs to eat.  But if you’re in this situation, and you can financially say no, sometimes it’s the right thing to do when someone offers you a website that’s just downright wretched.

Paddles without holes = good.

Sadly, when people think of the negative impact of a poorly constructed/butt ugly website they usually just think of higher bounce rates and lower conversion.  But if you’re an SEO/link builder, you’ve essentially been handed an oar with a hole in it.  You can still paddle, but you do twice the work for half the results.  What do I mean?

Link building is a sales job.  At the end of the day as a link builder you’re out networking and selling others on the value of your content and why they should link to it.  If you’ve ever worked in sales at all, you’ll know that selling an inferior product is a nightmare, and you genuinely don’t feel confident in pushing it.  That not only leads to poor outcomes, but it leads to a defeatist attitude.  Now, even if the site functions well, but is just ugly, you’re still left pitching a brown Zune.

This guy chose to rock the brown Zune. Did anyone else?

Don’t know the Zune?  It’s Microsoft’s foray into the mp3 player realm…they launched a brown version of it when they first rolled them out.  Seriously.  I own a Zune, it’s a pretty nice player, but there’s no way I would buy a brown one (and this is coming from a guy who owns a pink iPod mini).  I wouldn’t want to be seen with something that ugly…which is the same scenario you’ll run into when requesting links.

“Well…uh…yeah, your site has some good info, but I don’t think I want my super expensive, uber-sexy website being associated with your…umm…ugly one.”

That’s a conversation you don’t want to be on the receiving end of.

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