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Posts Tagged ‘search marketing’
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
This article at WebProNews isn’t really about how offline news affects search rankings, but it made me think about it.
From the article:
“Some trends have continued over the years, for example pop-princess Britney Spears made the list every year, while some trends changed drastically, largely thanks to new technology like mobile devices,” a spokesperson for Yahoo tells WebProNews.
Back in 2001, the top ten list featured things like Napster, NASCAR, the IRS, and of course the World Trade Center. In fact, there had not been another news event to reach a year’s top ten list of Yahoo searches until the infamous BP oil spill of this past year.
The decade in search was largely dominated by entertainment and celebrity queries like Spears, Kim Kardashian, Megan Fox, Miley Cyrus, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Justin Bieber, 50 Cent, etc.
Yahoo! search trends have always been about what is popular offline. Celebrities usually hit the top search lists. Notice that the World Trade Center and the BP oil spill are the only two hard news items in ten years to hit the top search list. That’s not surprising. But those two made the lists because they are super huge news items that affect a lot of people. But you can generally expect the most popular celebrities, books, music, and movies of the day to dominate the Yahoo! search results.
That’s also true of search engine Bing. It’s less true of Google, though it is true to some extent. I believe when local search is as big as general search is today then it will likely be true of local search as well. In other words, when offline news on the local level is popular, you’ll be able to expect that people will search for information on that local news through one of the popular search engines.
So, how can marketers use this information? For starters, pay attention to the news. What is important to people offline? Figure that out and you can predict with some reasonable accuracy what the short-term search trends will be.
Another thing you should do is watch the online search trends. This will clue you in to what is important to people offline. Adjust your marketing aim based on that and conduct your search engine marketing to reflect the reality of the news cycle. Whether it is hard news, business news, celebrity news, or something else, you can target the trends with astonishing success.
Tags: internet marketing, local search, offline marketing, search marketing, SEO
Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
Search Marketing Standard, a recognized news platform for business owners who want to know more about search engine marketing, published an article with a list of article directories to target in 2011. There are 11 of them on the list. It wasn’t a bad article, but it left me wondering why certain article directories were not included on the list.
Let’s review which article directories were on the list:
- Suite 101
- Hub Pages
- Self Growth
- Article Dashboard
- iSnare
- Sooper Articles
- Info Barrel
- Article Trader
- Article City
- Snipsly
- Triond
It’s not a bad list. I agree with most of these, but I finished reading the article and it left me wondering why three other article directories were not on the list:
- Knol Pages (http://knol.google.com/k) – Owned by Google. Unlike most traditional article directories, you can put links in the middle of your articles, which makes it a unique service.
- EzineArticles (http://ezinearticles.com/) – This is probably the most popular article directory online. Perhaps that is why it was left off of Search Marketing Standard’s list.
- Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com/) – The brainchild of veteran online marketer Seth Godin, Squidoo is a great source of links.
When you consider that it is difficult to get accepted into the Triond inner circle of article writers, I wonder why these article directories were left out. I’d consider them good places to publish in 2011 as well.
Tags: article directories, article marketing, search marketing
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Are you wrapped up in tracking a visitors every move on your site and analyzing every scrap of data you can find? Do you remember a time before the Internet, when businesses where either run from a shop-front, or through mail order catalogs? If you can, then you may also remember that the only real form of analytics ever undertaken by small businesses were those that measured how many customers came into the business, and how much they spent.
Now that business is moving online, discussions are about the quality and quantity of traffic coming into a web site; quality and quantity of inbound links; social media marketing; and search engine marketing. You will even come across discussions comparing which is best – quantity or quality, and that is in both links, traffic and social media ‘followers’. I’ll throw another key question into the mix – is your business profitable?
The most important aim for any new business is to reach that profitable stage. Don’t get me wrong here, it is important to measure traffic and it is important to optimize your online activities in order to reach that goal. However, analytics are only part of that process. If you do find a process that delivers traffic in reasonable numbers, take the time to work in your business as well as on your business – and there is an important difference.
A good example is a business that is using search marketing and receiving good traffic flow and good profits. You can spend your time analyzing your statistics and looking for areas that can be tweaked for a few extra percentage points, or you can spend that time sourcing new products, or improving the current range of products and services.
Tracking and analytics are important in any busy, but they are only tools and they should be used to help you improve your business. Instead of being a slave to these statistics, make them your slave.
Tags: link building, search marketing, social marketing
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | 1 Comment »
Sunday, September 5th, 2010
There is a mad scramble among the big players of the Internet to control both search and social. Facebook has the highest traffic at present and a good hold on social media marketing. However, Twitter is still popular, though nowhere near as popular as Facebook. Google has the lion’s share of search in the bag with inroads into social media and Bing at its back door trying to knock it down. What would happen if one company controlled the flow of both search and social?
That would obviously not be good for anyone but that company. But how about a two-player field with one big player controlling search (Google) and one big player controlling social (Facebook). Which would be more important?
I don’t know that we could narrow that down just so. Both are important. Without SEO, a company would not have much chance to be found in the search engines. Even post-social, SEO is still important. Yet, social media marketing has increasingly become more and more important and it looks like it will continue to grow in importance.
One of the benefits to search marketing is you can measure nearly everything you do. That’s also one of the drawbacks to social media. There is so much that you cannot measure. Search puts more control in the hands of the marketer. Social puts more control in the hands of the consumer, or those being marketed to. Does that matter?
I think it does. In this age, consumers prefer to have control. And that could very well play into the hands of marketers. It certainly wouldn’t hurt your marketing any to give the nod to consumers and let them tell you what they want. You should have your ear to the ground anyway.
In the end, search and social compliment each other well. Both are important and you shouldn’t ignore either.
Tags: facebook, google, search marketing, Social Media
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 2 Comments »
Thursday, July 8th, 2010
What do you do if you see you business in decline and your customer base is leaving in droves to pursue another avenue of advertising? If you’re the Chicago Tribune then you set up a business center offering services in the area of avenue to which you are losing your customers.
The obvious question is, What does The Tribune Company know about search engine marketing?
Well, probably not much and it probably doesn’t need to. It knows about small business advertising and that may be enough. So many other newspapers think since this seems to be the direction that traditional print newspapers are moving. But is that a good thing?
I think there may be some good come of it for some small business owners. But wouldn’t you rather do business with someone who knows about search engine marketing? Say, a search engine marketing company? Maybe it’s just me.
Tags: newspapers, search marketing
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
Yahoo! provided an update on its transition to and integration with MSN adCenter on the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog. The back up plan is to push the transition back to early 2011 “If we determine that we cannot transition with quality before the holiday period.”
I’m still trying to imagine what it’s going to be like to have two major search marketing providers. Google is still the dominant player in the search marketing space, but Bing taking over Yahoo!s search marketing initiatives could make it a rival. Then, there’s Facebook. So maybe we’ll be back to a Big Three.
But I think it will be a couple of years at least before Facebook springs into some real serious competition.
If you have been using Yahoo! as your primary search marketing vehicle because you didn’t want to pay the higher click prices at Google then MSNs adCenter is probably going to be your best shot. You better start now and become familiar with the adCenter tools.
Tags: search marketing, yahoo
Posted in PPC for Small Business | 2 Comments »
Friday, February 19th, 2010
If you’ve been on the Web since the beginning then you likely remember a lot about Yahoo!’s history. You know how it started as a Web directory and was one of the first really prominent websites that allowed users to find websites they like. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin tried to sell Yahoo! their back link technology, called BackRub back then, but Yahoo! refused to buy it. So Page and Brin started Google instead.
Yahoo! was late to the search game, but purchased important technology including Alta Vista, Overture and others, that would get them into the search engine game early in the 21st century. The company branched out into other areas as well.
But, as you know, Yahoo! just couldn’t keep up with Google. Then they started experiencing internal problems. Since the new CEO, Carol Bartz, has taken the helm, Yahoo! has been selling assets left and right. And they accepted an offer from Microsoft to enter an agreement that many people think is going to be bad for consumers. One of those people is Michael Martinez.
Martinez sounds a rather grim death knell for Yahoo! I tend to agree. I think this could be the beginning of the end for Yahoo! The question is, if he’s right then what does that really mean for small businesses who want to make the most of their online marketing efforts?
Tags: google, search marketing, yahoo
Posted in search engines | 1 Comment »
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