Posts Tagged ‘Marketing Methods & Providers’

Below is a recap of the commercials that aired in the first half of the Superbowl. I have scored the commercials on a 1-5 system (five being the best and one being the worst) with an occasional zero for total failure.

Commercial: Bud Light
Aired: 3:35 PM (Pacific Standard Time)
Summary: Two guys reach into the ice bucket at the same time, reaching for a bud light. They decide to play rock, paper, scissors for it. On three one of the guys throws a rock at the other guys head, which knocks him out. He takes the bud light and walks away.

Score: 4 – I don’t drink beer but I often enjoy the commercials. This one was well executed and original.

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Local search is one of the most attentions worthy aspects of SEM today.

63% of US Internet users (or approximately 109 mln people) performed a local search online in July 2006, a 43% increase versus July of 2005. – ZDNet Research

It is amazing to me just how slow the general search marketing community was to embrace what has proven to be a very profitable area of focus.

Successful Local Search Marketing

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I’m tired of the arrogance within the SEO community, specifically with those that claim themselves to be the keepers of all true and correct SEO knowledge. It’s pitiful, undignified, disheartening, and annoying, and I’ve had enough! Maybe other industries have their own similar issues that I don’t know about, but I do know what I see within the SEO community and I’m fed up.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am an avid watcher of the Apprentice. I like that show specifically because I like to see how the tasks are performed each week. From a business standpoint I like to see what the teams do to succeed; from generating the idea all the way to execution, and the personality issues in between. Unlike other reality shows, like Survivor, where outwitting your opponents is first and foremost, even to the point of being dishonest in your relationships, is just part of the game, the Apprentices is more about business acumen. Those candidates that go on and act as if it is a game like Survivor never become Trump’s Apprentice. Those that learn how to work with personalities they may conflict or disagree with often last the longest.

The SEO community seems to have a Survivor mentality rather than an Apprentice mentality. Many claim moral superiority in their own tactics while working hard to discredit or badmouthing anybody that does things differently. This isn’t a black hat/white hat thing, it’s a “my ways are the right ways and your ways are everything that’s wrong with the industry” thing. That’s actually what is wrong with the industry. To be fair, there are a lot of things that constitute good (ethical) and bad (unethical) business practices. In SEO, however, that word “ethical” has taken on a whole new identity to mean anything that company X says it should be. Last year I read a very prominent SEOer’s book which stated that submitting anything but your actual business name in the “title” field to an online directory, such as Yahoo, is “unethical”.

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We decided to optimize our website only for keywords that bring up our competitors when searched. So, what I have to do is to take every keyword that is in your research and to run a search on Google to see if our competitors are there. You’ll hear back from me early next week.

The above is part of an email I received from a client as we began the keyword research process for their optimization campaign. I can’t help but think of something my (and probably everybody else’s) mother used to say, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?”

There is nothing wrong with a desire to be everywhere your competitors are, but don’t let this form the only basis for your optimization campaign. Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s Restaurant, said that he wanted to place a Wendy’s across the street from every McDonald’s in America. I subscribe to this philosophy wholeheartedly, and not just because I love a good Wendy’s hamburger! One thing Dave new about this “locate-near-McDonald’s” strategy is that McDonald’s did significant research before entering a given region. He realized that McDonald’s only entered areas where they knew their restaurants would thrive. As Dave saw it, what was lucrative for Ronald would also be profitable for Wendy!

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I received a letter from Google AdWords the other day looking for AdWords Seminar Leaders. We’ve got a Google Qualified Individual on our team and it looks like they are either sending these letters out to all or maybe selected individuals in various regions.

Now that you’ve proven your expertise with the AdWords system, we’d like your help in teaching other advertisers to effectively use Adwords.

As an AdWords Seminar Leader, you’ll help others learn the ins and outs of AdWords while further establishing yourself as an AdWords expert and industry leader.

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I love blogs and blogging, but with all good things, especially those online, it comes with a whole new host of problems. Search engines love blogs and therefore so do spammers. Spammers love blogs only because blog spamming techniques work, thanks to the search engines and bloggers themselves.

Last year Google introduced the “nofollow” attribute for links. Using this attribute on a link is supposed to inoculate the linking site from any negative association to the site being linked to. It’s to be used when you are not in control of the link being posted (as in blog comments) or when you don’t want your link to a site to be considered as you “vouching” for that site in the eyes of the search engines. I think the most accurate description of the “nofollow” attribute is that it’s a link condom.

The nofollow was merely a band aid fix to one kind of blog spam, but not a solution to the real problem. But since there is not just one kind of blog spam there is no single solution either.

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What’s more important, conversion or rankings? On one side you’ll get the argument that if you achieve top rankings (which drives traffic) but you cannot convert your visitors substantially, your rankings are then wasted. On the other side you’ll hear that if you build your site and are able to generate a substantial conversion rate, but don’t attain top positions in the rankings (and therefore obtain less traffic), then you won’t have anybody to convert.

It’s the modern chicken or the egg question as it pertains to marketing online. Assuming even for a second that you had to sacrifice one for the other, which should you choose?

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The Candidates

Synergy: Allie, Andrea, Brent, Michael, Pepi, Roxanne, Sean, Stacy, Tammy

Gold Rush: Bryce, Charmaine, Dan, Lee, Lenny, Leslie, Summer, Tarek, Theresa

The Task:

The teams work to put together a marketing campaign for the “Gillette Fusion razor system”. Whichever team gets the most cell phone customers to text message a key word to Gillette, wins.

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Stanford has published their top 10 guidelines to establishing web credibility. Since I like doing things in a series I thought it would be fun to take these one at a time to discuss.

Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.

You can build web site credibility by providing third-party support (citations, references, source material) for information you present, especially if you link to this evidence. Even if people don’t follow these links, you’ve shown confidence in your material.

Nothing bothers me more when people make factual statements that they don’t back up with facts or by citing their resources. Aside from typical marketing jargon such as “We offer the most effective” or “We provide the highest quality…”, which are often subjective, citing references and resources is extremely important to your credibility. Of course if you can back up your marketing jargon with a third party source that confirms what you claim, all the better. But if you’re going to cite a statistic or quote an authority, you’ll sound much more credible if you can link to what you are referring to.

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A recent study published by SEMPO shows that a scant 11% of all SEM advertising is spent on SEO, with the bulk, 83%, spent on PPC advertising.

While PPC advertising definitely has it’s benefits, I’m surprised at how much advertising dollars that PPC consumes when effective SEO can produce a significantly higher return on investment. In fact, I think that most businesses understand this considering the number of phone calls we get from people looking for optimization because they are spending “too much” on their PPC campaigns.

I know I have previously said that SEO is Dead, which some have taken out of context. Yeah, that headline is meant to grab attention, but the point of that post was that SEO-only providers need to adapt their optimization strategies into more marketing oriented SEO services such as usability, conversion tracking, etc., in order to continue to be effective at SEO.

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