Archive for May, 2009
May 14th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
“Search Engine Marketing” means different things to different people, so it is very important to get a specific definition when you’re choosing an agency. Some agencies will consider SEM to be Pay-Per-Click or ad placement, while others will be more geared to search engine optimization (SEO). Depending on who you ask, SEO does not fall under the umbrella of SEM, but the fallacy in this idea is the fact that people pay for SEO in order to market their products and services on search engines.
At Web.com Search Agency, we have comprehensive search engine optimization and Pay-Per-Click management services, and this allows us to create customized proposals for individual clients. Clients who need fast traffic generally start with an aggressive PPC campaign, which can be very expensive if not executed properly. (It can also be very expensive when properly executed, but it can be very profitable as well.) Many of our clients have existing PPC campaigns and want to supplement or eliminate them by ramping up their SEO efforts.
One of the reasons that SEM has such a hazy definition is that its capabilities have expanded beyond search engines and into social media. For instance, much of the advertising on Facebook and Myspace is done through SEM channels, even though the casual user isn’t searching for anything. Google ads show up next to articles on sites all over the web, but a qualified SEM firm can manage a campaign that only shows ads on relevant sites that create conversions. Some of the latest channel matching features in Google PPC make it possible for you to show up in specific sections of popular websites, and set your ads to show up for specific demographic groups.
Transparency is another factor in Search Engine Marketing. There shouldn’t be any proprietary or “secret” features of you SEM campaign. Any agency should be able to let you see the actual account, campaign, keywords, ad variations, negative keywords, conversion data, and (most important) cost per click. Several of our customers have dealt with “black box” SEM companies that take a fixed fee and deliver a certain number of clicks in a month. By knowing exactly how much you’re spending on a click, and what keywords are delivering the best results, you can become an active partner in your own success, and ensure that the agency is not marking up “cheap” clicks to make more money.
No matter what your approach, your goal should be to get exposure in the search engines at a sustainable ROI. When choosing an agency, you should be looking for an established business with experience in multiple techniques, with a diverse range of customer types. This is because a specialist in only one field may not have the experience necessary to create compelling advertisements or find groups of relevant keywords that can create new business. Although it may seem counterintuitive, experience in your particular niche may be a handicap. A marketer with experience managing multiple campaigns is usually better able to see what approaches are unlikely to be effective, and the cost savings in this area alone can justify hiring an SEM firm.
Qualified SEM experts start by finding search volume for basic phrases around what you sell, and then present you with a list of keywords and their monthly search volume. This kind of competitive intelligence allows you to change your site (or product offerings) in order to match the actual demand. Additionally, SEM professionals will advise you on how to direct search traffic for specific campaigns. A well-built landing page is essential for conversion, and larger search engine marketing campaigns will involve testing of many different versions of the same landing page, until the best possible conversion rate is achieved. If you can’t afford this kind of testing (known as A/B testing or multivariate testing) then your SEM contact should be able to advise you on best practices for landing pages and your shopping process.
Because the definition of SEM is still somewhat unsettled, your agency should be able to present options that best match your own vision of online marketing. Web.com Search Agency crafts individualized solutions to each customer based on the marketplace, competition, and potential ROI of the products and services being sold. The vast size of the online world means that there is no “one size fits all” approach to SEM. Therefore, your agency should be able to outline all of the available offerings for marketing online, while you (as a customer) may want to occasionally check on what other SEM services are available. At our agency, we routinely answer questions about new fads and trends in SEM, and we use customer questions to help us develop products that contribute to the reinvention of the online marketing world.
Tags: search engine marketing, SEM, sem agency
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May 13th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
Winston Churchill was quoted as saying that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” This statement has become even more accurate in the era of instant media. Today’s public relations and marketing professionals have to be ready for attacks on brand equity that can come at a moment’s notice, then stick in search engine results for years.
In many cases, a single bad review of your product or service can end up at the top of Google when people search on your company name, or your personal name. Search engines tend to give more weight to sites like Ripoffreport.com, which will publish customer complaints and leave them on the site even when an issue is resolved, or even if the claim is completely false.
Any small business owner who has had customers knows that there are a few people who are never satisfied with their experience. Consumer forums and online postings give these people the power to become your worst enemy, even when you’ve gone out of your way to make things right. You may even have motivated competitiors who practice internet defamation as a way of cutting into your customer base.
Therefore, there is no better time than the present to manage your brand reputation online. With the rise of social media and the approach of real-time search engine rankings, it is imperative for anyone with a good brand name to defend it against defamation. The “free for all” nature of internet publishing means that competitors, unsatisfied customers, and random individuals can create negative publicity for your company based on rumors, bad experiences, or smear campaigns.
How can you proactively defend your reputation? First of all, you can accentuate the positive. Search engine optimization techniques make it possible for you to improve the rankings of sites that are positive about you, your brand, and your business. If you can’t remove negative press or false claims, you can push it down to the second and third pages of search results. Most internet searchers do not go beyond the first page before finding what they’re looking for. If you don’t have good references on other sites already, Web.com Search Agency has reputation management services that are custom made to help you show people what you want them to see.
Whenever possible, it is best to try and get negative information removed from offending sites and forums. In many cases a webmaster will do this to prevent accusations of libel, despite the broad protection given to forum postings. A large share of sites on the internet operate on a shoestring, so it costs less to delete bad information than to retain counsel. Some sites (notably Ripoffreport.com) do not delete information but will allow you to defend yourself on the site. This is not always the best course of action, because your defense actually adds keywords to the original complaint, and may move it up on the search engines. Similarly, defending your brand in forums usually gives new life to the negative post that preceded your defense.
So then, how can a brand manager become more vigilant? First, monitor your company name online. You can sign up for Google Alerts that will send you an email every time your company name (or any other keyword) is mentioned in a news source. There are also tools that monitor Twitter , so you can head off potential problems in real time, and use the experience to create quick strategies for dealing with publicity issues.
Brand reputation management also works as a form of damage control for companies and individuals who have had problems in the past. In many cases, companies that have settled lawsuits to avoid the expense of a trial have found that state and federal court filings are still listed prominently in search engine results. Because Google, MSN, and Yahoo tend to place a great deal of trust in government websites, this kind of publicity is hard to beat, and can result in distrust among potential clients. For clients who are able to make a substantial investment in online publicity, it is possible to get information like this moved to lower results in the search engine, assuming that highly relevant web content is created that reflects your brand, business, or name.
Tags: brand reputation, internet defamation, online defamation, online reputation, reputation management
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May 8th, 2009 by Patrick Hare
Yahoo didn’t exactly make a big deal out of the fact that it is cancelling everyone’s Geocities account, which is unfortunate for everyone with a museum of animated GIFs, multicolored text on a black background, and broken image links. Considering that Yahoo bought Geocities for 2.8 billion dollars, they probably did not want to admit that their purchase turned into something of a white elephant. From an SEO perspective, there is the potential for a seismic shift in how SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Positions) are presented when all of these homemade sites vanish from the fabric of the internet, and all their links go the same way.
If you look at a list of some of the worst Geocities sites and have your Google Toolbar running, you may notice that several of these sites have pretty good PageRank. On the whole, there are quite a few Geocities sites with a PR of 3, 4, and 5, many of which power other sites by way of links. Even though many Geocities sites were last updated sometime in 2001, their links (and their age) have been giving a boost to any site that has been in continuous operation since then.
Here are some of the things that could be significantly affected by the sudden loss of an old, trusted batch of links:
• Legacy Sites and 301s – Many of today’s big players are getting their link popularity from old links and older legacy sites that have been 301 redirected into the main site. If these sites are getting any Geocities links, then their collective link power will shrink. For instance, in the Golden Age of Geocities, Network Solutions was about the only provider of domain names, so every old (or non-updated) site that referenced buying domain names would be linking to Network Solutions as the recognized source. It will be interesting to see how their authority as a registrar changes without references from Geocities.
• Sites That Link To Your Site – If you’re like most SEOs in the world today, you got your links either by buying them, convincing other site owners to link to you, or submitting yourself to directories. No matter what your link building strategy, one or more of your link sources could be affected by a loss of direct or indirect links.
• PageRank – Believe it or not, PageRank is sometimes the only measurement that SEO company customers and their executives care about. Even if all your rankings are moving upward, there are still people with the mindset that if your PR went from a 6 to a 5, then something must have gone wrong, despite the fact that you can’t control the value of the sites linking to yours. Given the universe of Geocities sites passing PR to “the links that link to you,” there may be a wholesale adjustment in this “metric.” On the other hand, if the whole PageRank cosmos shrinks at the same time, PR could be largely unaffected, since the relative value of all sites on the internet has deflated at the same time. For people who have done most of their link building in the last few years, they could see rankings go up if their links aren’t wholly derived from older sites. In this case, the “new growth” sites would see improved PR while “old growth” sites lose relevance. Naturally, people who sell text links based on PR are going to have their hands full.
• DMOZ – If you have a DMOZ link, and they link to Geocities site in your category, and if DMOZ eliminates dead links periodically, then your DMOZ link should be more valuable given the reduction of outbound links on the page. Then again, DMOZ is not exactly known for fast editing or being up to date, but DMOZ itself may feel the pinch of losing lots of links from Geocities as well, and pass the downgrade on to you.
• Broken Links – Consider the number of sites that linked to Geocities resources over the past 15 years. Now consider that every one of these sites needs to remove a broken link. If they remove the Geocities link, the on-site factor (freshness) changes and outbound link profile changes. If they don’t remove the link, there is a broken link which may affect how the individual page gets ranked in Google, unless Google has not factored “pages with broken outbound links” into their algorithm.
So then, what will happen when the big day arrives? Will Google have a fix in place so it knows not to spider all Geocities pages, or will it keep sending out spiders over several weeks to “discover” that the cached page is now gone? This is an important question, because the timing of everything else depends on whether rankings shifts are gradual or sudden. Given that the PageRank bar is updated on an irregular basis, this may be the only place where everything changes at the same time.
The real question, however, is whether some of the most tenacious established sites on the SERPS are going to hold their positions. Given that some people never really had to “do” SEO to get their rankings and hold them, they may be rudely awakened to the fact that their top spots were built on links from sites that no longer exist.
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