Search marketing stats round up
Here's a selection of recent social media stats, taken from a range of sources, including Econsultancy's Search Marketing Statistics document, which forms part of the Internet Statistics Compendium, and other reports...
Ignore the top of the funnel at your own risk
It's easy to see why search advertising is so popular online. Many brands focus on search because it has proven ROI — according to the IAB, 62% of all online revenue came from paid search in the first six months of this year. Meanwhile 8% of all internet users account for 85% of clicks on display advertising. Numbers like that often keep advertisers pouring money into search and holding onto dollars that might have gone toward brand advertising online.
But while search advertising may have the most proven business model in online advertising, businesses that ignore other areas and methods of increasing sales online do so at their own peril.
That was a recurring theme at Econsultancy's Masterclass in London yesterday, where Ian Dowds, vice president of Specific Media, put it like this:
"At the top of the funnel, there are a host of big brand advertisers standing like nervous tourists, dipping their toe in the online sea, debating the temperature and then turnng and running away every time the water laps above their ankles."
How SEO complements your PR
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is part of your public relations (PR), not just some geeky addition to your website.
When I’m discussing SEO with a new client, understanding their wider PR campaign is essential to my planning. So why do so many firms see SEO as some website add-on, rather than a developing, often creative enhancement of their PR work?
I think it’s because SEO execs tend to be technology fiends, while PR
staff tend to be arts graduates with a passion for creativity – there
doesn’t seem to be much middle ground.
Yet it’s essential that
PR works closely with an SEO team to make sure both budgets are working
as hard as they possibly can and complementing each others’ work.
I've previously talked about how social media marketing should be looked at from both an SEO and PR perspective, but here are a few key ways in which PR and SEO working together can enhance a company’s online presence dramatically.
3am site goes from swearing off SEO to keyword stuffing in 3 months
The Daily Mirror's 3am.co.uk gossip site has gone from disavowing SEO and promising to concentrate on building a loyal audience - to stuffing its HTML titles with as many keywords as it can think of. And then adding some more. Before finally making sure Britney is in there.
Five reasons your content is damaging your brand
Although many businesses now recognise the importance of regularly updated content to their search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts, not enough of them understand the importance of quality content.
This is apparent from many of the badly-penned blogs, rubbishy ‘news’
stories and plagiarised or simply stolen articles that the web is
gradually filling up with.
Many companies fill their sites with
scraped posts, barely literate articles and keyword-stuffed nonsense in
the hope of attracting Google’s attention, so I wanted to take
a look at just what this sort of behaviour is doing to your brand; how
it’s affecting the customer experience.
Load time: coming soon as a Google ranking factor?
Google's algorithm looks at a significant number of ranking factors when it decides where a site should be in the SERPs. These ranking factors, and the weight they're each given, change over time.
Last week at PubCon, Google's Matt Cutts revealed a new ranking factor that may debut in 2010: page load time.
Google: expect a Caffeine jolt after the holidays
Google's Caffeine update is coming. Billed by Google as "the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions", Caffeine is not your regular Google update.
When Caffeine was announced, Google did something it had never done before: it offered up a sandbox so that the public could preview search results with Caffeine and provide Google with feedback. While that sandbox is no longer available, you won't have to wait long for your Caffeine jolt: according to Google's Matt Cutts, Caffeine is coming after the holidays.
Business blogging FAQs
Last week, Blogware's Chris Baggott and I participated in a webinar about business blogging. As is so often the case with these things, we received more questions from the participants than we were able to respond to. Moreover, many of the questions are ones I've frequently heard over the years when presenting on business blogging at conferences and from readers.
So herewith, the FAQs on business blogging I hear most often...along with answers that will, hopefully, help move things along at organizations that want to blog, but are stymied by confusion, doubt and uncertainty around issues both technical and content-oriented.
Q&A: Julian Sambles on the Telegraph's social media strategy
Julian Sambles is Head of Audience Development at the Telegraph, responsible for digital audience growth, engagement and page yield.
He is speaking at our Online Marketing Masterclasses event next week to discuss how the newspaper uses search engines to acquire traffic, so I thought I'd ask him a few questions in advance about the Telegraph's social media strategy.
Murdoch: Google? We don't need no stinkin' Google
Rupert Murdoch is a media mogul who hasn't shied away from revealing his true feelings towards Google. The best way to sum them up? If Google didn't exist, he would be all the happier.
Earlier this year, Murdoch asked cable industry execs "Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?" His response: media execs should be saying "Thanks, but no thanks" to Google.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
