The Journey to the Top of the SERP

I currently work in the marketing department at my company and focus on our digital brand building efforts.  The part I like best about my role is looking at our results and figuring out what could be tweaked to improve performance.  Should we try a different banner for that audience?  Should we have the rich media ad play automatically?  We can make all those changes and then monitor without having to wait months for the results, which ultimately improves the performance of our overall program.    

Since I like this part of my job so much, I was especially excited to learn more about paid search in my Internet and Interactive Marketing Class.  With digital brand building, we make optimizations and run tests every few months.  With paid search, there are test and learn opportunities almost daily.  A recent article from ClickZ outlines just a few tactics to improving return on investment with paid search.  Many of these tactics can be implemented almost immediately and results follow soon after, which is very appealing for marketers.

Another thought I had after reading the content this week is how a company selects its keywords. A few obvious considerations include knowing your brand strategy as a marketer, choosing keywords that are necessary to compete in your category and buying your brand terms. A few other thoughts I had were using social listening tools to find how consumers describe your brand and your competitors in blogs and on forums. Another way might be to listen to consumers in focus groups and how they describe the brand and its functionality in their lives.  

Also regarding keywords, I found this infographic from WordStream on the most expensive keywords that I thought was extremely interesting.  I was surprised that the top 3 were all financial services industries, although it does make sense that consumers would want to do a lot of research before making a decision on insurance and loans.  I was also surprised that automotive didn't make the top 20 given how much they spend on advertising overall.

I am looking forward to being able to more intelligently discuss paid search in some of my future meetings.  After this week, I am more certain than before that paid search is definitely an area I'd like to learn more about as a digital marketer.   

Top 3 Thoughts on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Working at a .com, I have been involved in many, many conversations about the importance of SEO.  These meetings usually focus on relevant content, the use of keywords and the importance of relevant links.  For the business category I work in, being as high as possible on search engine results pages organically is vital because paid search bidding is very competitive. 

During class this week, three thoughts came to mind for me about SEO:

    1. SEO is critical for almost any business

According to a report from BrightEdge, covered by Search Engine Watch, organic search drove 51% of total traffic across different business segments studied.  Similarly, organic searches had a strong correlation to revenue.  Put simply, SEO needs to be a business priority because it can have a real impact on the bottom line.  The higher the organic result, the better for the brand. 

   2. Keeping SEO in mind from the start helps in the long-run

In  my class this week, our Professor covered three areas to keep in mind when designing a site for SEO.  These areas include Design, Copy and Code.  When I think about SEO, copy or content is what pops immediately to mind, maybe because content is so easily adaptable.   Sites like Google Trends and Wordtracker are useful for optimizing content. 

Updates can also be somewhat easily made to a site’s code to better optimize through use of tags, file names, titles and more.  Design is most difficult to change and designing for SEO should be a major consideration for anyone building a new site or making an update. 

Another consideration should be designing for the mobile user, perhaps using some kind of responsive design.  According to an article from Search Engine Land, mobile is set to overtake PC in local searches by next year.  As more and more users are moving to the mobile platform, it is essential that marketers adjust to meet mobile user’s needs. 

   3. Facebook could change the search game  

Google is currently the undisputed leader in search.  Google is so synonymous with search that often when people say they’re going to search for something, they say they are going to ‘google it.’  However, Facebook wants a piece of the lucrative search business as well. 

An article on Business Insider covers a test Facebook recently ran which allowed users to search for newsfeed content on their mobile devices.  If more broadly rolled out, a Facebook search product would be a very viable Google competitor.  Furthermore, this has real implications for marketers.  At this point, many marketers are familiar with SEO best-practices with content—use of strong keywords, relevance and timeliness all play a role.  Facebook search might yield an additional requirement to make sure that content is also highly sharable. 

For those interested in more regular updates on SEO news, I’d highly recommend the daily newsletter from Search Engine Watch. 

BEHOLD: The Power of the Internet

I've never stopped to think about the history of the Internet or how it really works.  That might not sound surprising, but since I work for a .com and spend my days thinking about ways to reach our target audience on the web, I was surprised this never crossed my mind before.   As a result, I really enjoyed the first week of my Internet and Interactive Marketing course.   

When thinking about the history of the Internet, I did some reflecting on the government’s role in its creation.  The connection made me think of the recent news of the pressure the government put on Yahoo! to turn over information on its users.  45 years ago, did the government know what they were helping to create?  I wonder if they ever foresaw how the Internet would evolve.  Would they have done anything differently?  

I also thought a lot this week about the power of the Internet.  I really liked the quote from Michael Welsh’s video about Web 2.0, The Machine is Us/ing Us:‘Web 2.0 is linking people.’ This seems basic, but I've never really thought about the Web this way before.  I've read some opinion pieces that talk about how the web disconnects from reality and this is maybe true in some cases (ie—Second Life).  However, the web is also a powerful connector: we can find a date, make a new friend and send an old friend a message without having to leave the couch.  In fact, we probably know more about some of our friends than we even want to because of social specifically (Instagram says that Jessica is having wine again tonight!).

When you really, really think about the Internet and what it enables us to do and how much it has changed our lives and culture--it's really pretty amazing.  I'm looking forward to learning more about how the Internet can be used by marketers, specifically within social.  As a consumer, I use social to keep up-to-date on friends’ (and distant acquaintances’) lives and to be entertained. As a marketer, I struggle with how to genuinely reach consumers in social conversations in a way that also communicates our brand message and drives results.  More to share next week!