How to Use Social Media to Boost SEO: 5 Strategies

SUMMARY: You’ve adopted SEO best practices for website architecture, content and inbound links. Where do you turn next?
Social media channels can create keyword-rich content and links that boost your search rankings. Here are 5 strategies for generating conversations and links in the Web 2.0 world from a company that has achieved the top organic placement for several industry terms.

Marketers looking for new SEO tactics often focus on the mechanics of search engines. Instead, marketers should examine the kind of sites that increasingly show up in search results, says John Fischer, Owner, Sticker Giant, a site that has achieved the top organic placement for terms like “Stickers” and “Custom Stickers.”
“If you scan the first page of results, more and more sites come up that are social networking sites,” he says. “You find Twitter, Facebook, blogs, videos -- these are not static websites. These are things that have a human being front and center.”
The rise of these social media sites offers marketers a new channel for communicating with customers to create enormous SEO benefits. By reaching out to the members of those communities and encouraging customers to talk about your company and products, you can create keyword-rich content and inbound links that raise your profile with the search-engine spiders.
Fischer and his team use a wide-ranging approach to social media that’s helped their website, Stickergiant.com, dominate their industry’s organic rankings. The site is the number-one result on Google for such broad terms as:
o Stickers
o Custom stickers
o Sticker printing
o Political stickers
o Funny stickers
Top five strategies for using social media channels in SEO efforts:
Strategy #1. Be everywhere your customers are
Fischer’s social media efforts encourage conversations about Sticker Giant all over the Web. For that reason, his team participates in seven major social media channels:
o Blip.tv
o Facebook
o Flickr
o LinkedIn
o MySpace
o Twitter
o YouTube
“When I was in college, I tried to go to all the parties,” says Fischer. “Now you can be at all the parties at the same time.”
The team includes links to each of those accounts on the company’s blog page.
Strategy #2. Choose a real person to interact with social communities
Fischer manages and maintains the accounts personally – although his team uses Sticker Giant for the account name in each of those online communities.
“It’s all me in these communities -- John Fischer, not Sticker Giant,” he says. “It shows customers that I’m a real person who is here to help you. I’m not going to rip you off.”
In each account, Fischer provides his own email address and phone number to encourage interaction with customers.
Strategy #3. Blog about your customers and their passions
Like many marketers, Fischer uses his blog as a cornerstone of his SEO efforts. Blogs create lots of new content and generate links back to your site that help with search engine coverage.
Rather than focus on the company itself, Fischer uses his blog to highlight interesting customers and the stickers they’ve created.
“People are excited about their business, their club, their band -- whatever it is they’re promoting,” says Fischer. “That’s what the sticker is about and that’s what I want to talk about.”
- Fischer’s blog posts feature images of new customers’ stickers, along with:
o Brief stories about the customer
o Description of their business, band, blog, etc.
o Details about the sticker design or printing process.
- He posts a new customer story at least once a day, and often creates several new entries a day.
- By posting about a customer’s sticker project, he increases the chances of that customer linking back to the Sticker Giant blog post, and sharing the link with friends – something he sees often.
- At the bottom of each blog post, Fischer features icons that let readers share the article on community and social bookmarking sites, such as:
o Slashdot
o Reddit
o Digg
o StumbleUpon
The team also allows visitors to bookmark or add images to their social networking profiles of all the stickers sold in the Sticker Giant online store. “That generates links and sales,” he says.
Strategy #4. Create and promote videos
Search engines increasingly incorporate videos onto search results pages. Marketers need to incorporate videos into their outreach strategies.
Fischer’s team uses several approaches for creating videos:
Weekly features on new custom sticker projects
Like Fischer’s blog posts, Sticker Giant’s videos highlight interesting stories about printing projects and the customers who requested them. A Sticker Giant employee hosts these weekly features.
Short promotional videos for new stickers in the retail store
Fischer has a video camera in his office to record short promotional videos for new products. For example, the day after the presidential election, he created a 42-second video describing a line of new Obama victory stickers.
Instructional videos about Sticker Giant
Fischer also creates videos that describe Sticker Giant’s services and product offerings. For example, one video explains the company’s sticker product line for rapid turnaround projects. Another introduces customers to the company’s client services team.
“Thank You” videos for custom orders
Fischer also has recorded three short videos of himself thanking customers for interacting with the company:
o Thank you for requesting information about custom printing
o Thank you for submitting material for a custom printing project
o Thank you for ordering a sticker from a retail store
The team emails the appropriate video to customers. The goal is to get them to tell their friends about the video or post it to their blog or social networking page.
Strategy #5. Talk on Twitter, but listen too
Fischer is a big Twitter fan. It gives him the ability to stay in frequent communication with customers and friends. Sticker Giant’s Twitter account has 484 followers and, as with all the company’s other social media accounts, Fischer handles most of the communication in the channel.
Besides personal conversations with friends, Fischer’s typical posts include:
- Notifications of new blog posts, with a link to the page.
- Random samplings of recent purchases from Sticker Giant’s retail store.
Several times a day, Fischer will tweet the first name and location of a new customer, along with a link to the sticker they bought, such as, “Anna from PA just bought one of these”.
“Most people on Twitter know Sticker Giant as a printing company, so those Tweets are out there to say we have all this other cool stuff, too.”
Fischer also monitors Twitter posts to keep track of discussions related to stickers.
- The team uses RSS feeds from Twitter monitoring services, such as Tweetscan, to update them on any tweets related to stickers.
- An employee monitors those feeds and looks for opportunities to join the conversation with relevant information. For example, if a Twitter user asks the community for advice about a sticker printing project, the team member can offer technical advice to begin a conversation.
All of Sticker Giant’s social media efforts focus on creating links and conversations that help the team maintain their relevance and high organic rankings.
“Our increase in search rankings is because we are interacting with people more,” says Fischer. “When you do that, they’re going to blog about you, Tweet about you, talk about you in their Facebook profiles. However they exchange information with their peers and friends on social networks, they’re going to talk about you.”

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30968&pop=no#

Video’s Role in Your Marketing: 6 Proven Tactics to Support Lead Gen and Search

SUMMARY: The release of our first Video Marketing Benchmark Guide got us thinking about the role marketers see video playing down the road. So, we turned to the past to find tactics with proven results.
TV and online channels are common tactics, but there are other options for incorporating video into your marketing mix. Here are six video tactics that can complement lead generation, email campaigns, and product launches.

When B2B marketers consider using video for a campaign, they tend to think first of TV spots or viral videos. But there is a much broader role for video in marketing strategies.
With careful planning, you can use video to:
o Generate leads
o Support product launches
o Recruit employees
o Raise product and brand awareness
Want to find a new role for video in your marketing campaigns? Here are six ideas from MarketingSherpa Case Studies with proven results.
Six tactics for your video marketing strategy:

Tactic #1. Create “edutainment” videos for lead generation
White papers, webinars and other educational content are key elements of a lead generation campaign. But your prospects may be so overwhelmed with white paper or webinar offers that your content gets lost in the mix.
Grab prospects’ attention with a video that places valuable educational content in an entertaining context. Kristi Kennelly, Director Marketing, Interthinx, created fraud-detection training videos for the mortgage industry that parodied the film “Charlie’s Angels” and the TV franchise “CSI.”
The lighthearted films turned highly technical information into a must-see program for the team’s key prospects in the mortgage industry. A premiere at a trade show generated so much buzz that they received 700 orders even before the DVD set was released, ultimately creating 1,200 qualified leads.
Click here for that Case Study:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30810

Tactic #2. Use streaming video to complement live events
Conferences, seminars or other events don’t have to be done only in person or only online. You can combine a real-world event with a streaming video component to reach a broader audience, generate leads, or support a product launch.
Dan Caron, Product Launch Manager, Strategic Profits, an online training company, did all three with a streaming video campaign. His team invited prospects to watch a webcast of the keynote presentation from a sold-out customer conference. Then, at the end of the presentation, the team made a special offer on a new training program to webcast attendees.
Results:
- Special offer sold out in 6 minutes.
- Product launch generated $2.8 million in sales on the first day.
- 40,000 new names were added to their marketing database through the live-stream event and the archived video on the website.
Click here for their Case Study:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=29940

Tactic #3. Test embedded video in email campaigns
Delivering emails with embedded multimedia files can be a challenge. But marketers who’ve overcome the technical hurdles report strong results.
Barbara Shimaitis, Sr. VP, Ad Council, wanted to use email to reach TV station managers with a request to run the council’s public service announcements. They combined a direct-mail campaign, which sent DVDs of the spots, with a follow-up email that reminded managers of the request to run the PSA. The email contained embedded videos of the PSA, which began playing automatically in the email message, or in a new browser window.
The video-emails achieved:
o 47% higher open rate than that of average ones
o 69% higher clickthrough rate
o $1.9 billion worth of air time for their PSAs
Click here for the Case Study:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=29985

Tactic #4. Create recruiting videos to attract top job candidates
Kendall Harrell, Manager, Organizational Development, Life Time Fitness, turned to online video to achieve two important goals in his recruiting efforts:
- Giving job candidates a clear, compelling representation of the company’s work environment.
- Giving details on the ideal candidate for a position, to improve the quality of job applications.
Harrell and his team created recruiting videos using real employees describing their jobs and the working environment at the fitness chain. The 2.5 minute videos were unscripted, but edited to convey important messages about the opportunities at the company. Messages stated that trainers were full-time employees, not independent contractors, for instance, and that managers were able to participate in a high-growth organization.
After placing the videos on their website, the team achieved:
o 7%-30% increase in applications for key positions
o 26%-111% increase in the number of applications passing pre-screening qualification
Click here for the Case Study:http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30106

Tactic #5. Provide video tours of product/services
A short online video often can give prospects a faster understanding of your product or service than written content, such as data sheets, promotional copy, or FAQs.
Steve Johnson, Director Online Media, Total Training, used video product guides to promote the technical training firm’s new series of online programs. He and his team created:
o General introduction to the service, which provided an overview of the features and functionality of the online training program
o Video summary guides for the scope of the training sessions available in each program.
The introductory overview became one of the most viewed links on the company’s site, and helped boost subscriptions 40%.
Click here for the Case Study:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=29842

Tactic #6. Assemble video library on content-sharing sites
You create a piece of video for a specific marketing campaign. Then consider adding that content to a branded channel on a video-sharing site, such as YouTube or Blip.tv.
Third-party sites can act as your video archive, and provide you with a valuable lead generation, brand marketing or search-engine optimization channel. For example Gary Drenik, President & CEO, BIGResearch, offers video newsletters to highlight his team’s research on the retail industry. But they also post that content to video-sharing sites, alongside clips of television appearances by researchers and other video content.
The technique allows them to make the most of their investment in video resources by promoting them on multiple channels.

 

Click here for the Case Study:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30150

Paid Search Tops List of Marketing Tactics for Viral Success

SUMMARY: Take a sneak peek at some data from our first Video Marketing Benchmark Guide. You’ll get an idea of the promotion tactics’ effect on viral success. All tactics get "mixed results" but paid search definitely tops the field.

Effect of Promotion Tactics on Viral Success Rate

Click here to see larger, printable version of this chart
Here’s a sneak peek at information from MarketingSherpa’s first Video Marketing Benchmark Guide – the most recent addition to the series.
Viral marketers need to remember that the point of viral marketing is not the fact that it’s free – it’s its ability to spread buzz inexpensively. While it may seem counterintuitive, the best way to promote free video is to pay for it.
For example, most marketers rated paid-search links “great” as a promotional tactic for spreading buzz. This makes sense; after all, viral advertisers tend to be niche marketers who have trouble reaching their audience with mass media. And, paid search is a proven method for reaching hyper-specific audiences.
Search marketers may cringe at the idea that search is becoming the next big branding medium. But that fact can no longer be denied – it is.
Paid media promotion in ads and blogs, along with traditional PR, are also effective ways of promoting viral media and, if done right, can be inexpensive. The free methods are the most likely ones to be tried, but the least likely ones to succeed.
That’s OK. Failure is an option when the cost is low, and the potential for reward is high. Another takeaway: Don’t bank on one option to spread videos virally. Given the success rate of promotion tactics, we’d recommend making modest investments in all of them.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30953&pop=no

Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites

By RANDALL STROSS

Published: December 13, 2008

FOR some time, Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest advertiser, has been dipping its big toes into the vast pool of Facebook, now the world’s largest social network. I recently knocked on the doors of both companies to hear how the experiment was going. Neither was inclined to say much.

Enlarge This Image

The “America’s Favorite Stains” campaign, offered on Facebook by Procter & Gamble, asks for members’ ideas. It recently displayed 18 submissions.

Independent experts on Web advertising have been watching, however, and what they see is a myriad of difficulties in making brand advertising work on social networking sites. Members of social networks want to spend time with friends, not brands.

When major brands place banner advertisements on the side of a member’s home page, they pay inexpensive prices, but the ads receive little attention. Seth Goldstein, co-founder of SocialMedia Networks, an online advertising company, wrote on his Facebook blog that a banner ad “is universally disregarded as irrelevant if it’s not ignored entirely.”

When advertisers invite members to come to pages dedicated to their products, they can attract visitors only by investing in expensive creative material or old-fashioned promotions like prize contests.

And when they try to take advantage of new “social advertising,” extending their commercial message to a member’s friends, their ads will be noticed, all right, but not necessarily favorably. Members are understandably reluctant to become shills. IDC, the technology research firm, published a study last month that reported that just 3 percent of Internet users in the United States would willingly let publishers use their friends for advertising. The report described social advertising as “stillborn.”

All Web sites that rely on ads struggle to a greater or lesser extent to convert traffic, even high traffic, into meaningful revenue. Ads that run on Google and other search engines are a profitable exception because their visitors are often in a buying mood. Other kinds of sites, however, can’t deliver similar visitors to advertisers. Google’s own YouTube, which relies heavily, like Facebook, on user-generated content, remains a costly experiment in the high-traffic, low-revenue ad business.

Financial data would show the current state of Facebook’s advertising, but none are available. Facebook is privately held and a spokesman told me that it does not disclose revenue or any information about its ad sales.

As for P.& G, the company permits Facebook to talk about the results of only a single P.& G. promotion, presumably its most successful to date: for Crest Whitestrips. The promotion began in fall 2006, when P.& G. invited Facebook members in 20 college campus networks to become Crest Whitestrips “fans” on the product’s Facebook Page. Facebook said it was a great success, attracting 14,000 fans.

One could argue, however, that with the additional enticements that Crest provided — thousands of free movie screenings, as well as sponsored Def Jam concerts — a brand of hemorrhoid cream could have attracted a similar number of nominal “fans.”

Becoming a “fan” required nothing more than a single click. When Facebook talks about its 130 million members worldwide, it’s careful to include only active members, defined as those who have logged on within the past 30 days. But when it shows the total number of “fans” on a sponsor’s page, it treats all fans as active.

Without endless investment, these sorts of promotions sputter out. More than 4,000 of the onetime 14,000 Facebook fans of Crest Whitestrips have left the fan club.

Outside of official brand pages, Facebook offers space on members’ personal pages that are viewed many billions of times monthly. I ran a small-scale test ad myself over two weeks and paid a varying rate that dropped and dropped, and on the last day would have permitted me to place the add on one million pages for only $80. But companies generally do not like the idea of their brand sharing space with unvetted material supplied by users. The IDC report said, “Brand advertisers largely consider user-generated content as low-quality, brand-unsafe inventory.”

At a conference last month sponsored by the Advertising Club of Cincinnati, Ted McConnell, manager of interactive marketing and innovation at P.& G., said, “I really don’t want to buy any more banner ads in Facebook.” His remarks were offered as his personal reflections, not the official position of his employer, and were available on the Web in a podcast of the talk. A spokeswoman for P.& G. later told me that the company “is committed to our strong relationship with Facebook” and had used the site for “roughly a dozen P.& G. brands,” either previously or currently.

Facebook’s ability to aim at particular demographic groups is impressive, Mr. McConnell told the club. As an experiment, he and a colleague set up an ad that would target all Facebook members who were 22- to 27-year old women, who worked for P.& G., were left-leaning and living in Cincinnati, and who liked sex and Cocoa Puffs. Facebook provided one person who perfectly fit the profile. Speaking not as an advertiser but as a prospective recipient of such highly personalized messaging, Mr. McConnell said, “I’m not so sure I want to be targeted like that.”

Brand pages won’t make anyone uncomfortable about privacy issues. But one has to have a compelling reason to seek out these pages. The P.& G. spokeswoman pointed me to its “2X Ultra Tide” page. Here one finds an 11-month-old campaign, “American’s Favorite Stains,” where members can post their “favorite places to enjoy stain-making moments!” When I checked last week, it displayed a grand total of just 18 submissions, including two from P.& G., two from someone at The Onion and one-word posts like “Tidealicious!”

In his remarks to the club, Mr. McConnell said, “All brands want consumers to be their ‘friends.’ Oh, boy, do they!” But speaking for himself, he said he had reservations about the very premise. “I don’t want to be best friends with a brand,” he said. “It’s just stuff.”

TOM ARRIX, a regional vice president for sales at Facebook, said that as a new option, the company began offering “engagement ads” this fall. These ads are accompanied by an invitation for a member to take some action besides just looking at the ad or viewing an embedded video, but without leaving the page. A “Become a Fan” button could be offered, for example. Herbal Essence shampoo, a P.& G. product, has run such ads since September, but neither P.& G. nor Facebook would comment on the results so far.

Mr. Goldstein of SocialMedia Networks describes a self-perpetuating cycle in social networks: “Advertisers distract users; users ignore advertisers; advertisers distract better; users ignore better.”

Brand advertisers on Facebook can try one of two new approaches. They can be more intrusive, but the outcome will not be positive. Or they can create genuinely entertaining commercials, but spend ungodly sums to do so.

When Facebook convinces advertisers to stage Super Bowl-sized entertainment every day, its future will be assured.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/business/media/14digi.html

Snapshot of Media Plans & Budgets For 2009

At the "Masters of Marketing" Conference held recently by the Association of National Advertisers, 1,200 client-side marketers, media and creative agencies and others, were polled via handheld devices about their marketing mix, budgets, plans, and tactics throughout the event. The results are shown here:

Adjustment to current marketing and media plans to account for the recent downturn in the financial markets:

• 33% say spending will be reduced
• 33% say spending will be constant / marketing mix will be reallocated
• 27% expect to spend more
• 8%  will keep everything status quo

CEO view of marketing efforts with respect to growth:

• 56% think of brand-building as an investment
• 21% think it's an unaccountable but necessary expense
• 15% are not sure
• 8% consider it an unnecessary expense

Preferred social media site for driving brand growth:

• 32% say none
• 20% say YouTube
• 18% Facebook
• 12% like them all
• 10% say LinkedIn
• 6% MySpace
• 3% Twitter

Plans for Marketing expense in 2009 vs. 2008:

• 26% plan to increase spending more than 10%
• 13% plan to increase spending less than 10%
• 28% will hold stable
• 14% will decrease spending less than 10%
• 19% will decrease spending more than 10%

The largest branding discipline offering opportunity for growth:

• 17% choose traditional 30-second spots
• 7% like one page advertisements in a newspaper/magazine
• 16% pick web advertising
• 28% choose social media integration
• 7% feel direct Marketing
• 19% think grassroots, viral public relations
• 5% like radio

Company's current measurement method of brand growth:

• 70% say sales and net income
• 15% use third party brand equity valuations
• 9% think shareholder value
• 4% measure by household penetration
• 3% say company culture

Source: Association of National Advertisers, October 2008

TV Viewing and Internet Use Converge

According to the The Nielsen TV/Internet Convergence Panel, the heaviest users of the Internet are also among the heaviest viewers of television: the top fifth of Internet users spend more than 250 minutes per day watching television, compared to 220 minutes of television viewing by people who do not use the Internet at all. Nielsen found that the reverse is true as well - the lowest consumers of television have the lowest usage levels for the Internet.

The study shows that nearly 31% of in-home Internet activity takes place while the user is watching television, demonstrating that there is a significant amount of simultaneous Internet and television usage. Conversely, about 4% of television viewing occurs when the consumer is also using the Internet.

Other findings from Nielsen's TV/Internet Convergence Panel include:

50% of the Convergence Panel panelists had viewed some streaming content online. The demographics of those streaming the most were:

• 82% of female teen panelists viewed streaming content
• 64% of male teens
• 57% or men 18-34
• 55% of men 35-54

Nearly 60% of panelists and more than 80% of people who watched TV and used the Internet that month had simultaneous sessions - watching TV and being online at the same minute. This group tends to be very heavy users of both TV and Internet.

Teens are the most likely demographic to have simultaneous TV/Internet usage, but Adults 35-54 have the most simultaneous usage minutes.

Howard Shimmel, Senior Vice President Client Insights, The Nielsen Company, says "It is too early to draw... firm conclusions about behavior... but... early trends... indicate that online usage is complementing, not substituting for, traditional television viewing... "

For additional information, please visit here.

Click-Through Plus View-Through Completes ROI Measurement

A new comScore Brand Metrix norms database, compiled from nearly 200 brand impact studies conducted across a range of industries and online ad campaigns, finds that the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns in meeting branding objectives such as heightened brand awareness, improved attitudes toward the brand, and increased purchase intent, results ultimately in incremental purchasing.

Evan Neufeld, comScore vice president of advertising solutions, says though "With online display ads yielding click-thru rates of less than 0.1 percent, advertisers can no longer rely on click-throughs to gauge online ad performance. Doing so fails to capture the impact of... view-throughs... on attitude and future behavior... essential metrics in assessing the complete (ROI) in online advertising."

comScore Brand Metrix relies on their panel to parse differences in behavior and attitudes among those consumers exposed to an online ad campaign compared to those who are not exposed, concluding that "... the deleterious impact of cookie deletion... can lead to an understatement of the actual view-thru impact of online ads by a factor of 20 percent or more... "

The report says the data provides compelling empirical support for the belief that there is a quantifiable view-thru impact of online ad exposures on brand value and sales. For the studies in which both retailers' online and offline sales were analyzed, for periods ranging from two weeks to three months after the initial exposure to an online display ad, the incremental online sales lift was 27 percent and offline sales lift was 17 percent

Lift in Retailers' Online and Offline Sales among Internet Users Exposed to Display Ads Total U.S., Home/Work/University Locations

Monthly Sales ($) per Thousand Exposed Consumers

Control

Test

Lift

Online Sales

$994 

$1,263

27%

Offline Sales 

$9,905

$11,550

17%

Source: comScore Brand Metrix, Norms Database, November 2008

The report also says that online ad exposures also yield a lift in various important online behaviors, such as brand site visitation and trademark searches. For example, a substantial lift in visitation to the advertiser's Web sites can be observed in the weeks following an exposure to a display ad, even though click rates are less than 0.1 percent. Specifically, there was a 65 percent increase in lift in the week following the first ad exposure and a 46-percent increase over the four weeks following the first exposure, underscoring the latent branding effect.

Lift in Advertiser Site Visitation Among Internet Users Exposed to Display Ads Total U.S., Home/Work/University Locations

Advertiser Site Reach

Control

Test

Lift

Week Following First Ad Exposure

2.1%

3.5%

65%

Weeks 1-2 After First Exposure

3.1%

4.8%

54%

Weeks 1-3 After First Exposure

3.9%

5.8%

49%

Weeks 1-4 After First Exposure

4.5%

6.6%

46%

Source: comScore Brand Metrix, Norms Database, November 2008

And, the comScore norms data show that online display ads can cause an increase in search queries that involve the advertiser's trademark brand name. Specifically, the average lift in branded trademark searches for the online advertisers studied was 52 percent in the week following the first ad exposure. The norms data also show a substantial continued impact, with a 38-percent lift in trademark searches in the four weeks following the first ad exposure.

Lift in Branded Trademark Search Among Internet Users Exposed to Display Ads Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations

Making a Trademark Search

Control

Test

Lift

Week Following First Ad Exposure

0.2%

0.3%

52%

Weeks 1-2 After First Exposure

0.4%

0.5%

46%

Weeks 1-3 After First Exposure

0.5%

0.7%

40%

Weeks 1-4 After First Exposure

0.6%

0.9%

38%

Source: comScore Brand Metrix, Norms Database, November 2008

Neufeld concluded that "Not only does online marketing have the benefits of more attractive advertising rates and a faster growing retail channel, but it's clear from the results of our studies that Internet marketing also generates incremental sales in retail stores."

The Brand Metrix norms database contains the results across ten vertical industries including top-of mind unaided awareness, total unaided awareness, aided awareness, total advertising awareness, online ad recall, favorability, likelihood to recommend, and likelihood to purchase. And, a subset including behavioral metrics, online and at retail stores, of advertiser trademark searches, site visitation and purchasing.

For more information on comScore Brand Metrix, please visit here

Extinction Threatens Yellow-Pages Publishers

Industry's Web Sites Have Small Audiences, and Economic Downturn Has Eroded Ad Dollars; Hearst Unit Throws In With Google

The yellow-pages industry is running out of lifelines.

In recent years, as its customers migrated to the Web -- flocking to sites like Google -- the telephone-directory business followed, hoping the Internet would be its salvation.

But that strategy hasn't panned out. Now, the economic downturn is sending the already ailing business into a tailspin.

The audience for online yellow pages remains relatively small, and traffic growth is slowing. So many directory services are vying for the ad dollars of local businesses that no single site has an authoritative roster.

Meanwhile, ad dollars are drying up as small businesses -- the industry's bread and butter -- find it harder to pay bills or have cut their spending sharply.

Print and online ad spending on yellow pages will plummet 6.3% next year, more than double the rate of decline expected for broadcast TV, according to forecasts by Wachovia analyst John Janedis. Within the next four years, ad spending will fall 39% in print directories alone -- the steepest projected decline across all local-media categories, according to media-research firm Borrell Associates.

"It's pretty darn hard out there for everybody, and those that have less staying power, it just looks like it's going to be a difficult environment to be able to hang on in the long term," said Dave Swanson, chief executive of R.H. Donnelley, a Cary, N.C., yellow-pages publisher, during a conference call on the company's third-quarter earnings.

Facing the real prospect of extinction, the publishers, many of which have considerable debt, have been slashing jobs, scrapping dividends and exiting unprofitable markets. Shares of two of the biggest publishers, R.H. Donnelley andIdearc, have plummeted 99% in the past year.

"The main pure-play companies do not have capital structures that would enable them to endure perpetual high-single-digit or double-digit declines in cash flow and remain viable entities or solvent entities over time," says Mike Simonton, an analyst with Fitch Ratings.

Yellow-pages publishers have spent the past several years attempting to reinvent themselves, launching a slew of digital offerings for advertisers, and retraining their sales forces to sell digital ads alongside print ads.

But Internet revenues remain anemic. At less than 10%, online-ad dollars make up only a modest portion of total revenues and aren't growing fast enough to offset steep declines on the print side, says Mr. Simonton.

Analysts say yellow-pages sales teams face an inherent conflict. While they are pressured to sell both print and online ads, Internet ads are often a third of the price of the print product. The top priority for the sales teams often is to sell the print book first, then sell the digital products.

Even if online revenues were growing at a faster clip, analysts are cautious about the prospects of online-only directories. Yellow-pages ads are the only form of advertising many small businesses buy, and the online ads are typically sold in conjunction with print listings, Mr. Simonton says. That means that if businesses aren't buying the print ad, then the online ad disappears too.

In a last-ditch attempt to succeed online, some publishers have struck ad-sale partnerships with Internet companies like Google. White Directory Publishers, which publishes directories in 90 small to medium-size markets, says it is often more effective for small businesses to have a presence on Google than on a directory Web site. But many small- to medium-size businesses don't have the expertise or time to create effective Web sites or buy and track search ads, so White Directory is offering to do it for them.

"They all believe they have the URL and the Web site that's going to win," Jeff Folckemer, chief operating officer and chief executive-designate of White Directory, part of Hearst Corp., says of the directory companies. "Our philosophy immediately was to go right to the big guys."

Mr. Simonton cautions, however, that even if publishers survive, any growth they achieved since the last downtown, in 2001, will be short-lived. "That extra growth coming from new businesses are the first to fold in a downturn. You basically give back in one downturn what took seven years to grow."

—Shira Ovide contributed to this article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122688313315132107.html

Search marketing remains strong

By Christopher Hosford

Story posted: November 10, 2008 - 9:30 am EDT

---

Despite the faltering economy, search marketing is holding up well, as marketers focus on tools that promise the strongest return on investment. How long that will last is uncertain, but for now search ad budgets seem relatively sheltered from the global economic woes.
“We believe that search is not immune to macroeconomic forces, but we also believe it will have the least relative decline of the various marketing tools,” said Craig Macdonald, VP-marketing and product management with interactive marketing analytics company Covario Inc.
Why?
“I can tell you precisely the answer to that,” Macdonald said. “There's less risk in spending money on search. It's very measurable and the cheapest form of lead acquisition out there.”
According to a new Covario study, year-over-year growth in paid search in North America stood at 32% in the third quarter, in line with several other analyses and relatively unchanged from earlier in the year.
“Because you can measure pre- cisely your return on different Web marketing activities, you know what you'll get in return and can dial it up or down,” said Dave Alampi, VP-global marketing strategy and services at enterprise software company Infor.
“Because our strongest area of concentration is the small-to-midsize business market, with smaller deal sizes, we feel it's relatively recession-proof,” he said. “We have no intent to reduce our paid-search dollars at all.”
Forrester Research projects that paid search marketing will grow 26% this year, reaching $11.4 billion in the U.S. In addition, the company's “U.S. Search Engine Marketing Executive Survey” (conducted by Jupiter Research prior to its July acquisition by Forrester) forecasts that search budgets will remain stable through much of 2009.
“Because of its inherent accountability, search offers a safe haven for marketers and advertisers who are pushed by the recession to meet some pretty aggressive goals,” said Evan Andrews, interactive marketing analyst with Forrester. “You can track every cent and every click. Search is comfort food for marketers.”
Still, a possible impact looms as fearful customers rein in their purchasing of consumer goods, depressing b-to-b sales of product components and marketers' budgets.
“The economy is ultimately going to have an effect on search,” Andrews said. “There is no way that a once-in-a-century financial meltdown won't spill over. With search, it's just going to be delayed.”
If search budgets remain relatively healthy, it will likely be at the expense of other forms of marketing outreach.
The Direct Marketing Association projected in October that Internet marketing (including search but excluding e-mail) would grow 19.7% this year but also that direct response newspaper advertising spending would fall 7.6%; telephone marketing would decline 1.5%; and radio ad budgets would drop 2.7%. The DMA projected modest growth in direct-response TV spots (4.5%) and direct mail catalog spending (up 3.1%).
“We're seeing that traditional agencies are getting hit before digital agencies,” said Jeffrey Pruitt, president of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). “Some advertisers are increasing spend because search is working.”
Industry watchers say the rapid growth of search marketing is bound to slow as it matures. Covario compared search's current growth rate of 32% with early 2007, when paid search spending was growing by 83% year-over-year.
Macdonald warned that short-term projections may be misleading, because fourth-quarter budgets are already set. When the economy's impact on business becomes more apparent by early 2009, “budgets will roll down based on that,” he said.
While search is inexpensive and highly measurable, there is evidence it's becoming more efficient as well, reinforcing marketers' opinion of the medium. Covario reports reductions in the average cost-per-click being paid to search engines, largely as a result of improved optimization by large advertisers.
In the third quarter, for example, the average cost-per-click was $1.09, down from an average of $1.19 in the year-earlier period. “But I think cost-per-click will actually start to go up, as marketers loosen up the ROI hurdles they set for their search programs based on what they will or will not pay for keywords,” Macdonald said. “Advertisers will begin to tolerate a 5% to 10% inflation rate over the next several months.”
But will users click through on sponsored links? The Covario study indicates the economy may have an impact here as well.
In the third quarter, click-through rates for Google fell to 1.9%, down from 2.4% in the year-earlier period. MSN's rate fell to 2.2% from 3.0%, while Yahoo was relatively unchanged.

http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008311109953

Ad Firm Tracks Consumers Across Media

For years, marketers measured the reach of their ads one medium at a time. For TV, it generally was Nielsen; for radio, Arbitron; newspapers and magazines report circulation figures; while the Internet shows hits and page views and other traffic data.

But there haven't been many ways to measure an ad campaign across all of these media at once.

A small media research company called Integrated Media Measurement is trying to bridge that research gap with a new technology that measures consumers' exposure to the audio in ads on television, radio, computers, mobile phones, DVDs and inside a movie theatre -- using a consumer's cellphone.

NBC Universal

NBC is among the networks using the cellphone-based data to track how people watch shows like 'Saturday Night Live.'

The Internet's ability to produce evidence on the effectiveness of ads -- such as how many people viewed an ad and whether or not they clicked on it -- has led to something of an industry obsession with new forms of measurement. The financial crisis promises to make marketers even more reluctant to risk money on ads, especially if they can't keep score on how effective the spots are. Meanwhile, media fragmentation continues, as big-tent events like the Olympic Games and the Super Bowl are consumed in more and different ways.

"People don't know how to measure the multimedia world we live in, so any piece of the puzzle is helpful," says Brad Bortner, principal analyst at Forrester Research.

IMMI embeds its software into the cellphones of the company's 4,900 panelists. The software picks up audio from an ad or a TV show and converts it into its own digital code that is then uploaded into an IMMI database, which includes codes for media content such as TV shows, commercials, movies and songs.

IMMI's database then figures out what the cellphone was exposed to by matching the code. Cellphone conversations and background noise are filtered out by the software, IMMI says, since there is no "match" in the IMMI database.

To get a handle on the effectiveness of a given ad, IMMI's data can show, for example, when a panel member is exposed to a movie trailer on TV and whether that same consumer later goes to see the movie. Similarly, IMMI data can show if a panelist watching a promo for a TV program will later watch the show, either on TV or online. IMMI thinks it can expand that idea from films and TV shows to consumer products like shampoo or toothpaste. It is testing its technology with a national grocery store chain.

NBC Universal

"We follow the same person from end to end," says Tom Zito, IMMI's chief executive.

IMMI isn't the first company to attempt this kind of measurement, but past efforts were stymied by the costs of creating a large-scale panel. IMMI's use of cellphones means that consumers don't have to labor over diaries or push buttons, says Mr. Zito, who worked for years as a journalist and rock critic before launching a number of Silicon Valley start-ups since the mid-1980s.

IMMI is still a tiny company, especially compared with competitors like Nielsen Media Research. The company's 4,900-person panel has teenagers and adults in just six major markets -- New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Houston and Denver. IMMI panelists are paid $50 a month or receive free phone and data service in exchange for making the cellphone their primary phone, and carrying it with them at all times.

But the San Mateo, Calif.-company has managed to attract the attention of movie studios and broadcast networks like General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and Walt Disney Co.'s ABC. NBC has used IMMI data to track how people watch shows like "Heroes" or big sporting events like the Beijing Olympic Games.

While the technology isn't perfect, IMMI is helping NBC answer questions about how viewers watch its programming, says Alan Wurtzel, president of research at NBC. "I'm convinced the handset will be the way we will measure media going forward," he says.

Still, IMMI is unlikely to change the way marketers develop ad campaigns. Mark Loughney, vice president of sales and strategy research at ABC, says that IMMI's panel is still too small to make long term decisions. "For now, it's a supplement, not a replacement to what we use," he says.

IMMI also doesn't measure outdoor or print ads, or Internet ads that don't use audio.

Find television listings at LocateTV.

But the company is already getting the attention of big competitors like Nielsen, which teamed up with IMMI to sell a service that tracks ad exposure in places like bars, health clubs, hotels and the office. Walt Disney's ESPN and Zenith Media have already signed up for the service.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122394454320231201.html?mod=rss_media_and_marketing

Newspapers’ Web Revenue Is Stalling

Newspapers, already facing a grim economic forecast, are digesting another piece of bad news: the growth in online advertising they saw as their salvation has slowed to a crawl.

USAToday.com uses ad networks to fill unsold spots for ads.

In the last few years, newspaper companies have been rapidly expanding their Web presence — adding blogs, photo slide shows and podcasts — in the belief that more features would bring more advertisers. But now, after 17 quarters of ballooning growth, online revenue at newspaper sites is falling. In the second quarter, it was down 2.4 percent compared with last year, to $777 million, according to the Newspaper Association of America. It was the only year-over-year drop since the group began measuring online revenue in 2003.

Overall online advertising, however, is strong. Display advertising, the graphics-rich ads that newspaper sites carry, grew 7.6 percent in the second quarter, TNS Media Intelligence reported.

Newspaper executives say the new features have drawn bigger, more engaged audiences, which they hope will translate to more advertisers. Unique readers in August were 17 percent higher than a year earlier, at 69.3 million, according to a Nielsen Online analysis of newspaper sites for the newspaper association. They also point to other factors for the decline, including the economic downturn and the continued flight of classified advertisers away from papers and their sites.

But the advertising glut, particularly in display advertising, on which companies had based their optimistic projections, has shrunk. As newspapers keep adding pages, they are forced to sell ads at cut-rate prices.

Large papers like The Washington Post or The New York Times can sell premium ad space on, for example, a newspaper’s home page, for $15 to $50 for every thousand impressions. But these and other papers of all sizes have increasingly relied on middlemen — known as ad networks — to sell less desirable space, typically for around $1 for every thousand impressions. The networks usually charge advertisers double that or higher, industry insiders said.

While some publishers rely on ad networks, others are devising strategies to avoid them. With networks, “unwittingly, I think, the publishers commoditize their own inventory,” said Paul Iaffaldano, the general manager of the TWC Media Solutions Group, which sells ads for the Weather Channel and Weather.com.

A recent study from Bain & Company and the Interactive Advertising Bureau examining seven high-end publishers (their names were not disclosed) found that about 53 percent of the ad space on newspaper sites went unsold without networks last year, up from 50 percent in 2006.

Given the choice of showing an ad-free page and making no money, or using an ad network and making a few cents, many publishers choose networks. In 2007, 30 percent of the ad spaces sold on their sites came from networks, up from 5 percent in 2006, according to the Bain study.

“If we sold every scrap of inventory, we wouldn’t use ad networks, but right now it makes some sense for us,” said Jeff Webber, the publisher of USAToday.com. At Gannett, which owns USAToday.com, online revenue in the United States rose a modest 3 percent in the second quarter. Results from other chains have been grimmer. In the second quarter, online revenue dropped about 12 percent at A. H. Belo, 8 percent at E. W. Scrippsnewspapers, 4 percent at the Tribune Company, and 9 percent at Lee Enterprises, all compared with the same period last year.

Denise Warren, the chief advertising officer of The New York Times Media Group, saidNYTimes.com used ad networks despite some concerns. She said they were useful when traffic spiked; this September, for example, the financial crisis spurred lots of page views.

“We couldn’t sell that inventory because we didn’t know it was going to exist, so if we have an ad network we’re able to have all those extra C.P.M.’s,” she said, using the industry term for cost per thousand impressions.

At The New York Times Company, online revenue grew a healthy 13 percent in the second quarter. More recent figures indicate sluggishness at the company’s newspaper sites, however. At The Times’s News Media Group, which includes newspaper sites like The Boston Globe, The New York Times and regional newspapers, online revenue grew only 0.9 percent in July and 7.9 percent in August, well below the usual double-digit growth.

Ms. Warren said that the two months were anomalies, adding that growth in display advertising at NYTimes.com alone had been much higher, though she declined to specify a figure.

As for the new blogs and video, “those investments will definitely add to advertising revenue,” she said, but “those things are just getting started right now.”

Steve Stup, the vice president for sales at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, said he began using networks this year only because the site had unpredictable traffic because of the elections. He said some advertisers might start to see networks as an inexpensive substitute for dealing with papers directly.

“It’s still a situation where if advertisers even perceive they can reach your audience, they might be inclined to go with a network, and that’s a concern I have with networks,” he said.

This has meant a spurt in networks, which are popular with marketers looking for direct response, like eBay and E*Trade. There are now more than 300 networks, most offering custom ads, and they are popular venture-capital investments and acquisition targets. Last year, Microsoft bought the network DRIVEpm, Yahoo bought Blue Lithium, and AOLbought Tacoda.

“The ad networks have actually been using the presence of publisher inventories as part of their selling story to ad buyers,” said John Frelinghuysen, a partner in Bain’s media practice. Many publishers join only the networks that do not disclose what sites they include, but even so, savvy advertisers can guess.

In response to the downturn, some publishers are exploring a larger, counterintuitive strategy: instead of creating more ad space, they are limiting it.

“We’re going to reduce the number of ad sizes we use and the number of units,” said Christian Hendricks, the vice president for interactive media at McClatchy. “It is a case where yeah, you could probably sell another advertiser by creating another ad space,” but that could hurt the revenue over all, he said. Online revenue at McClatchy rose 12.5 percent in the second quarter; a year earlier, revenue dropped 2.2 percent.

McClatchy also tries to avoid ad networks. “We don’t want to get in the habit of filling every little space we have with remnant,” Mr. Hendricks said.

Mr. Frelinghuysen said limiting the ads on a page can be smart. “That high level of unsold inventory often creates a real challenge in terms of sustaining pricing or growing pricing,” he said. “In most media, especially in television, the traditional model has been that you drive sellout, and that gives you the ability to drive pricing over time.”

Some sites unaffiliated with newspapers have also limited inventory and banned ad networks, and many report good results.

Weather.com limits its ad spaces so it can sell out each day, and it does not use ad networks, Mr. Iaffaldano said. Prices there have increased 10 to 15 percent over last year, he said.

Forbes.com stopped using ad networks this year, as did ESPN.com and CNN and other Turner sites. (Turner and Forbes then created their own networks, which they say are different from the remnant networks because they focus on narrow subjects.)

“As more and more sites like ourselves forsake networks and are public about it, the ability for the agency to think for themselves, or even suggest to a client, that they’re going to get quality impressions, will get harder and harder,” said Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive of Forbes.com.

At CNN.com, where display advertising rose 17 percent in the second quarter, the site does not use networks and limits space.

“We want to get as much value for our product as possible, and that means not having an endless supply of inventory,” said Greg D’Alba, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of CNN Advertising Sales.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/business/media/13adco.html?ei=5070&emc=eta-1&pagewanted=all

New Chart: Top Tactics to Boost Online Ad Response Rates

SUMMARY: Different design tactics can boost the response rates to your online advertising. Results for the third chart in this four-part series focus on seven top design tactics.
Click for Sherpa analysis

University of Phoenix Catches 4.7 Billion Web Looks in June

According to the most recent comScore, Inc. ranking of the top online display ad publishers and advertisers, Fox Interactive Media, as the top display ad publisher got 15.9 percent of all display ads viewed, while Microsoft was the top display advertiser with 1.7 percent of total views. Experian gets the most unique visitors with 138 million.

And, Forrester projects that of the $8.2 billion, retailers will spend this year on online marketing, just over a third, $2.78 billion, will be spent on display advertising. Search engine marketing leads the way with $3.63 billion and e-mail marketing is third at $1.25 billion. Forrester projects retailer spending on online display ads will grow at an annual rate of 20% through 2012 when it will reach $4.99 billion.

Fox Interactive Media served 52.3 billion ad views, with MySpace.com accounting for 51 billion of these views. Yahoo! Sites reached 130 million unique individuals with its ads, reaching more people than any other publisher. AOL LLC ranked third, followed by Microsoft Sites, and Google.

 

Microsoft was the top display advertiser with 5.5 billion display ad views, due in large part to its promotional campaign for Windows Live Search, including ads for Windows Live Search Club games and the new Windows Live Search cashback program. The University of Phoenix, an online university, ranked second, followed by Experian which advertises for a variety of sites including LowerMyBills.com and FreeCreditReport.com.

For additional information, please visit comScore here

Top 5 Legitimate SEO Techniques That Will Help Your Business Get Found

by Mike Volpe

Published on August 19, 2008

People have not stopped buying things, so how are they researching and purchasing products since they have made themselves immune to old marketing techniques like banner ads and direct mail?

The answer is with search engines and Google. According to comScore, Americans conducted 11.5 billion searches in June 2008, and Google was used for 61.5% of those searches.

This means it is essential that you make it easy for customers to find you, and one of the most effective ways to do so is search engine optimization (SEO), which focuses on getting your Web site listed in the unpaid, organic search engine results.

Organic listings generate visitors to your site. Moreover, with SEO, you don't pay a per-click "tax" to the search engines, so it usually has a higher ROI than paid-search listings. Finally, if you do SEO right, it can be a competitive advantage, unlike paid search, because anyone can increase their keyword bid to beat you out.

How do you actually get your Web site ranked high in search engines? The answer is quite simple, but getting there can be a bit more difficult.

Search engines use two broad categories of factors to decide which site shows up first in search results:

1. On-page SEO factors are all the things that happen on your Web page. The good part is that you have complete control over these things. The bad part is they are only about 25% of the reason you will rank for a search term.
2. Off-page SEO factors are things that happen outside your direct control but are roughly 75% of the reason you rank for a given search. The most important off-Page SEO factor is the number and quality of links into your Web site. Search engines use links as a measure of how interesting your content is, since more interesting content tends to get more links. Search engines also regard links from more-established Web sites as more important than links from less-trustworthy Web sites.

With those basics in mind, here are five useful tips to help guide you through your SEO strategy.

1. Pick good page titles

The page title of each Web page is the most important on-page SEO factor. The page title is the text that appears in the top bar of your browser window and is the first thing a search engine looks at to determine what the page is about.

For instance, the page title of the MarketingProfs home page is "MarketingProfs - Marketing Resources for Marketing Professionals." It does a good job telling search engines about that page, using keywords relevant to the target audience.

The other smart thing Marketing Profs does is that the page title is different on each page of the Web site. Just as in the case of a lottery, you don't bet the same number over and over for the same drawing; you want to use each page of your Web site as a different entry into the SEO lottery, and a unique page title is how to do that.

2. Be smart about URLs

Your URL is how search engines track and manage your company's reputation online. Using a free URL that actually belongs to another company is a bad idea in the world of SEO because you can never change or forward that URL. Using URLs like yourcompany.blogspot.com make it possible for you to build SEO power for blogspot.com, but if you ever want to move or rename your Web site, you have to leave all that power back at the old Web site.

If you have your own domain, like yourcompany.com, then you can always move to a new address and forward all the SEO power you have built up.

3. Start a blog

Blogging does two great things that are a huge help with SEO.

First, if you run a blog correctly, you are updating content on a frequent basis. Search engines love fresh content on Web sites. Web pages or articles that have been published recently on an established Web site get an extra boost in the rankings. The second benefit of blogging is that blogs are a magnet for links. The people who do the most linking online are bloggers and writers. They are much more likely to link to an interesting blog article with a unique perspective on an issue than a typical corporate Web site.

If you start a blog and regularly post content that is appealing to your market, you will help your SEO efforts a lot.

4. Leverage your PR program

If you have a public relations program at your company, there are two things you need to do for SEO. First, you should optimize all of your press releases. This basically means adding links into your press releases that lead back to your Web site. Second, as you get coverage of your company in online publications, make sure that there is link within the article back to your company. You would be surprised how many journalists do not automatically link to companies they write about.

For bonus points, for your links in press releases and media coverage, use hyperlinked text with keywords relevant to your business as the link, not just the URL. The search engines key off of these keywords for added clues about the topic of your Web site. For example: you want a link like marketing resources, not http://www.marketingprofs.com.

5. Use social media to build links

Many marketers are scared of social media. The trick is to think of it just as an online version of all the business cocktail parties you have attended over the years. And just like at a cocktail party, with social media you should never enter the conversation with a sales pitch. But social media is an excellent way to promote your interesting blog articles or other content, because other bloggers and writers might write about your company and link back to your content. Find online communities, groups, blogs, and networks where your audience hangs out, and start listening and asking questions.

 

http://www.marketingprofs.com/8/five-legitimate-seo-tactics-that-help-businesses-get-found-volpe.asp?sp=1

The Latest SEO Trends and Metrics: What's Hot, What's Not

by Stephan Spencer

Published on August 19, 2008

If you're not "living and breathing" search engine optimization, it can be easy to latch onto old SEO trends and metrics and focus obsessively on them, especially those few hot-button issues that get the most attention from the press or from your CEO.

It takes time and experience to stay on the cutting edge of SEO, and more than likely you don't have that kind of time, considering your other marketing efforts. So here's a quick update on what's hot and what's not in the world of search engine optimization.

What's hot:

• Becoming a trusted contributor on social news/content sites like Digg, Propeller, Reddit, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia, and Knol
• Building your personal and professional network in online communities like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Bebo, MyBlogRoll, and the blogosphere in general, and then taking advantage of the residual network effect
• Link baiting—posting humorous/fascinating/contentious/controversial content that is a magnet for links
• Truly understanding and leveraging the power of "Long Tail" dynamics

What's not:

• Obsessively watching search engine indexation numbers and rankings on trophy keywords (like the one you know the CEO always checks first thing in the morning)
• Worrying yourself sick over duplicate-content penalties
• Relying on XML sitemaps to fix your indexation problems
• The old-fashioned link exchange

Speaking of what's hot, a new generation of SEO metrics exists so you can keep track of your progress once you've abandoned the old thinking and adopted more modern strategies. Gauging your success solely on your positions in the search engine results is old hat.

New SEO paradigms, such as the "Long Tail," universal search, and personalized search, call for new key performance indicators (KPIs).

In addressing "Long Tail SEO," consider the following KPIs:

Brand-to-Nonbrand Ratio

This is the percentage of your natural search traffic that comes from brand keywords versus nonbrand keywords. If the ratio is high and most of your traffic is coming from searches for your brand name, this means that your SEO efforts are fundamentally broken. The lower the ratio, the more of the long tail of natural search you are likely capturing. This metric is an excellent gauge of the success of your optimization initiatives.

Unique Pages

This is the number of unique (non-duplicate) Web pages crawled by search engine spiders such as Googlebot. Your Web site is your virtual sales force, bringing in prospects from search engines, and each unique page is one of your virtual salespeople. The more unique pages you have, the more virtual salespeople you have out there in the engines selling on your behalf.

Page Yield

This is the percentage of unique pages that yield search-delivered traffic in a given month. This ratio essentially is a key driver of the length of your Long Tail of natural search. The more pages that yield traffic from search engines, the healthier your SEO program. If you have only a small portion of your Web site delivering searchers to your door, then most of your pages—your virtual salespeople—are standing around the water cooler instead of working hard for you.

Keyword Yield

This is the average number of keywords each page (minus the ones that don't get you any traffic) yields in a given month. Put another way, it's the ratio of keywords to pages yielding search traffic. The higher your keyword yield, the greater the part of the Long Tail of natural search your site will capture.

In other words, the more keywords each yielding page attracts or targets, the longer your tail. So an average of eight search terms per page indicates pages with much broader appeal to the engines than, say, three search terms per page.

In a research study done by my company (Netconcepts) called Chasing the Long Tail of Natural Search, the average merchant had a keyword yield of 2.4 keywords per page.

Visitors per Keyword

This is the ratio of search engine-delivered visitors to search terms. This metric indicates how much traffic each keyword drives and is a function of your rankings in the search engine result pages. Put another way, this metric determines the height or thickness of your Long Tail. The average merchant in the aforementioned study obtained 1.9 visitors per keyword.

Index-to-Crawl Ratio

This is the ratio of pages indexed to unique crawled pages. If a page gets crawled by Googlebot, that doesn't guarantee it will show up in Google's index. A low ratio can mean your site doesn't carry much weight in Google's eyes.

Engine Yield

Calculated for each search engine separately, this is how much traffic the engine delivers for every page it crawls. Each search engine has a different audience size. This metric helps you fairly compare the referral traffic you get from each engine. The Netconcepts study found that Live Search and Yahoo tended to crawl significantly more pages, but the yield per crawled page from Google was typically higher by a significant margin.

Summary

Hopefully you're now more up-to-date on your SEO tactics, but keep in mind that any of these trends can change at the drop of a hat. Search engine optimization is a process, not a project, so as you optimize your site through multiple iterations, watch the above-mentioned KPIs to ensure you're heading in the right direction. Marketers who are not privy to these metrics will have a much harder time reaching qualified prospects.

If you'd like to hear more about these search trends and metrics, attend the Marketing Profs Digital Mixer, a multi-channel online marketing conference coming up in October. Stephan is program chair for the search marketing track. Check out the full program.

 

http://www.marketingprofs.com/8/latest-seo-trends-tactics-spencer.asp?sp=1

Online Behavior of Older Americans Mirroring Younger Users’, Even Teens’

Some 76% of Americans over age 50 say the internet is an important source of information for them - up from just 51% five years earlier - according to findings from AARP and the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

The research, which is part of the larger Digital Future Project, also finds that Older Americans have embraced Web 2.0 and often use the web and several forms of social media as much or more than their younger, more tech-savvy counterparts.

Though instant messaging and video downloading still remain more popular with a younger crowd, older Americans check the internet for news more frequently than younger users and are logging onto online communities, researching purchases becoming socially active and playing games in increasing numbers.

Key findings:

• Users 50+ go online more frequently to check for news than those under 20. Some 42% of consumers over 50 check the web for news daily or several times a day, compared with just 18% of users under 20:

• Among internet users 50+ who are members of online communities, 58% log in to their online community daily or several times a day, compared with 47% of members under 20:

• 36% of members 50 and older say their social activism has increased since they began participating in online communities for social causes, compared with 29% of members under 20.
• 18% of users 50+ say they go online daily or several times a day to play games, compared with 22 % of users under 50:

• 68% of users 50+ say they sometimes or often browse in retail stores and then buy online, compared with 72% of users under 50. Users in both the 50+ and the under-50 groups have similar online shopping habits:

• 46% of users under 50 say the internet is important or very important in maintaining their social relationships - identical to the percentage for those over 70 (though that’s not the case for cell phones):

• More users under 20 than those over 50 (85% vs. 76%) say the internet is an important or very important source of information. However, the percentage of those over 50 who say so has grown substantially from 2002 to 2007 - up from slightly more than half (51%).
• Only 9% of users 50+ said instant messaging was important or very important, compared with 48% of users under 20.

“The perception is that Americans over 50 only dabble on the internet, but we are finding that they are increasingly spending time online becoming involved in robust internet activities, such as online communities,” said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. “In specific areas, there is often little difference in use of online technology between older users and some of the youngest users.”

About the research: The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication created and manages the World Internet Project, including the Digital Future Project, which produces a broad year-to-year exploration of the influence of the internet and online technology on Americans. Since 2000, the project has examined and compared the behavior and views of internet users and non-users.

http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/online-behavior-of-older-americans-mirroring-younger-users-even-teens-5175/?camp=newsletter&src=mc&type=textlink

Lazy Eyes - How we read online.

By Michael Agger
Posted Friday, June 13, 2008, at 1:00 PM ET

 

You're probably going to read this.

It's a short paragraph at the top of the page. It's surrounded by white space. It's in small type.

To really get your attention, I should write like this:

• Bulleted list
• Occasional use of bold to prevent skimming
• Short sentence fragments
• Explanatory subheads
• No puns
• Did I mention lists?

What Is This Article About?
For the past month, I've been away from the computer screen. Now I'm back reading on it many hours a day. Which got me thinking: How do we read online?

It's a Jungle Out There
That's Jakob Nielsen's theory. He's a usability expert who writes an influential biweekly column on such topics as eye-tracking research, Web design errors, and banner blindness. (Links, btw, give a text more authority, making you more likely to stick around.)

Nielsen champions the idea of information foraging. Humans are informavores. On the Internet, we hunt for facts. In earlier days, when switching between sites was time-consuming, we tended to stay in one place and dig. Now we assess a site quickly, looking for an "information scent." We move on if there doesn't seem to be any food around.

Sorry about the long paragraph. (Eye-tracking studies show that online readers tend to skip large blocks of text.)

Also, I'm probably forcing you to scroll at this point. Losing some incredible percentage of readers. Bye. Have fun on Facebook.

Screens vs. Paper
What about the physical process of reading on a screen? How does that compare to paper?

When you look at early research, it's fascinating to see that even in the days of green phosphorus monitors, studies found that there wasn't a huge difference in speed and comprehension between reading on-screen and reading on paper. Paper was the clear winner only when test subjects were asked to skim the text.

The studies are not definitive, however, given all the factors that can affect online reading, such as scrolling, font size, user expertise, etc. Nielsen holds that on-screen reading is 25 percent slower than reading on paper. Even so, experts agree on what you can do to make screen reading more comfortable:

• Choose a default font designed for screen reading; e.g., Verdana, Trebuchet, Georgia.
• Rest your eyes for 10 minutes every 30 minutes.
• Get a good monitor. Don't make it too bright or have it too close to your eyes.
• Minimize reflections.
• Skip long lines of text, which promote fatigue.
• Avoid MySpace.

Back to the Jungle
Nielsen's apt description of the online reader: "[U]sers are selfish, lazy, and ruthless." You, my dear user, pluck the low-hanging fruit. When you arrive on a page, you don't actually deign to read it. You scan. If you don't see what you need, you're gone.

And it's not you who has to change. It's me, the writer:

• One idea per paragraph
• Half the word count of "conventional writing"! (Ouch!)
• Other stuff along these lines

Nielsen often sounds like a cross between E.B. White and the Terminator. Here's his advice in a column titled "Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy": "A good editor should be able to cut 40 percent of the word count while removing only 30 percent of an article's value. After all, the cuts should target the least valuable information."

[Ed. Note: Fascinating asides about the writer's voice, idiosyncrasies, and fragile ego were cut here.]

He's Right
I kid about Nielsen, but he's very sensible. We're active participants on the Web, looking for information and diversion. It's natural that people prefer short articles. As Nielsen states, motivated readers who want to know everything about a subject (i.e., parents trying to get their kid into a New York preschool) will read long treatises with semicolons, but the rest of us are snacking. His advice: Embrace hypertext. Keep things short for the masses, but offer links for the Type A's.

No Blogs, Though
Nielsen may be ruthless about brevity, but he doesn't advocate blogging. Here's his logic: "Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easier to write. But they don't build sustainable value."

That's a debatable point. My experience has been that a thoughtful blogger who tags his posts can cover a subject well. But Nielsen's idea is that people will read (and maybe even pay) for expertise that they can't find anywhere else. If you want to beat the Internet, you're not going to do it by blogging (since even OK thinkers occasionally write a great blog post) but by offering a comprehensive take on a subject (thus saving the reader time from searching many sites) and supplying original thinking (offering trusted insight that cannot be easily duplicated by the nonexpert).

Like a lot of what Nielsen says, this is both obvious and thoughtful.

Ludic Reading
Nielsen focuses on how to hold people's attention to convey information. He's not overly concerned with pleasure reading.

Pleasure reading is also known as "ludic reading." Victor Nell has studied pleasure reading (PDF). Two fascinating notions:

• When we like a text, we read more slowly.
• When we're really engaged in a text, it's like being in an effortless trance.

Ludic reading can be achieved on the Web, but the environment works against you. Read a nice sentence, get dinged by IM, never return to the story again.

I suppose ludic readers would be the little sloths hiding in the jungle while everyone else is out rampaging around for fresh meat.

Final Unnecessary Thought
We'll do more and more reading on screens, but they won't replace paper—never mind what your friend with a Kindle tells you. Rather, paper seems to be the new Prozac. A balm for the distracted mind. It's contained, offline, tactile. William Powers writes about this elegantly in his essay "Hamlet's BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal." He describes the white stuff as "a still point, an anchor for the consciousness."

Source: Slate.com

Embedded Video Lifts Conversion Rate 50%: 5 Steps to Test Deliverability & Subject Line

SUMMARY: Videos embedded in email can grab attention or cause deliverability problems and rendering nightmares. Most marketers believe the latter, but a few say their data speak otherwise.
See how a marketer increased conversions more than 50% by embedding video in emails. Includes deliverability and subject line test data. Plus, what’s the best video length to use.

 

CHALLENGE
Conversion rates on email campaigns for a UK entertainment brand hit a plateau late last year. Carolyn Jacquest, Online Marketing Executive, Haven Holidays, and her team didn’t take the news lightly.
“We wanted something new and exciting that would bring the Haven experience to life,” Jacquest says of the amusement park and family resort. “We wanted to show what we had to offer visually.”
They particularly wanted to shake things up before the all-important summer season began. Enter the idea of stimulating conversion rates with videos embedded in the email message body – considered a no-no by some email experts.
CAMPAIGN
Jacquest and her team’s concept was emboldened by data found in MarketingSherpa’s Email Benchmark Guide 2008. It indicates that online consumers react positively to video, with in-stream video ads getting clickthrough rates nearly twice those of static images.
Haven’s email service provider also convinced Jacquest that, with the right preparation, an embedded video can be delivered successfully and catch people’s attention. Here are the five steps they took:
-> Step #1. Improve reputation
The first thing Jacquest and her team did was work to improve their sender reputation. Indeed, the idea of sending videos in emails almost begins and ends with deliverability concerns.
This boiled down to *regularly* observing one best practice – routinely scrubbing their list to get rid of addresses that were bouncing in the months leading up to the test.
-> Step #2. Produce video
The creative process began with Jacquest and her team deciding to produce a 5-minute video that could be edited down to the most appropriate size for an email. Then, they focused on the content, which revolved around the parks’ amenities.
“We focused on entertainment and the varied activities that can be experienced. Things like our indoor and outdoor pools, our live bands, pantomimes for the children, etc.”
-> Step #3. Test video clip size
Working with the promo video, Jacquest and her team tested the length to eliminate two problems:
o File size that email systems wouldn’t bounce
o Download that wouldn’t take forever for recipients to receive
To discover the optimal length, they sent clip sizes to the in-house accounts for their UK-based audience’s 10 most-popular Web mail providers or receivers. “We did weeks of testing before sending the campaign.”
The receivers they tested:
- Outlook 2003
- Outlook 2000
- Outlook Explorer
- Hotmail
- Yahoo!
- AOL Webmail
- Virgin
- NTL World
- Tiscali
- Gmail
From the test results, they learned that clips at 20 seconds were optimal for deliverability. That also gave their audience something to chew on. The 5-minute clip was edited to 20 seconds – or 1 megabyte in file size.
“The length had to do with how much the email could hold. A longer clip would have affected deliverability. Additionally, we wanted to be informative and snappy in the marketing message.”
-> Step #4. Create test design
They picked an Easter holiday email for the test. At the top of the HTML design appeared the copy in blue type: “Fun Filled Easter at Haven!” Just below this was a four-buttoned navigation bar. The copy, “Come and enjoy the Best Easter Holiday ever,” appeared in a white font.
A 320x180-pixel video box appeared when the video automatically started rolling inside the preview pane when the message was opened.
They knew that the video was going to go unseen for some users no matter what they did in testing. For instance, Gmail users who didn’t have HTML images turned on simply did not see the video automatically roll in the message.
Jacquest accounted for those types of situations by including a link to a microsite where a 60-second version of the clip could be seen. The email copy for the link read: “If you can’t see our video … Click here.”
-> Step #5. A/B test subject lines
Jacquest and her team also tested the word “video” in the subject line – even if the copy got a bit long. “I normally try to keep subject lines’ characters under 45,” she says.
Here are the two subject lines they tested:
#1. “Picture yourself at Haven this Easter, watch our video now” (58 characters with spaces)
#2. “Come and enjoy the Best Easter Holiday ever!” (45 characters with spaces)

RESULTS
Plain and simple – embedding a video in emails worked. The Easter campaign become a smash hit with a 3.38% conversion rate – 50.2% higher than previous non-video campaigns. “Our average conversion rates were ranging between 2% to 2.5%,” Jacquest says. “So, the 3.38% was great, exceeded our expectations and was an ROI winner.”
Although Jacquest and her team weren’t able to track how many of those ticket buyers viewed the email in the body vs. on the microsite, they were thrilled to see conversions rise significantly.
Another point of great importance was the fact that the 20-second clip got through to inboxes with a deliverability rate of 96%. It showed that, if done correctly with attention placed upon sender reputation and thorough testing, video can work in the body of the message. Clickthroughs also were a healthy 27%.
Jacquest’s hunch on subject lines was dead-on as well. Including the word “video” had a big impact – a 14.6% boost for opens. “I think people are interested in video, and it’s not something you see very often in an email. It’s become more common at websites, but to have it open within your email message can have a strong impact on the recipient.”
In the subject line test, the word video didn’t trip email filters. Both subject lines produced the same deliverability rate: 96%.
Another key lesson learned from their test: Even if the video doesn’t roll in the email body, it appears to create enough intrigue to induce clickthroughs to the clip.

Useful links related to this article
Creative samples from Haven Holiday’s email campaign:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/havenholidays/study.h
ml
Red Eye International - Haven Holiday’s ESP and video technology provider:
http://redeye.com/
Haven Holidays:
http://www.havenholidays.com/

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30655&pop=no#

Five Ways to Make SEO Work for You

How much attention do you pay to search engine optimization? Many marketers give it short shrift, not understanding that it can be the difference between success and failure.

Here are five tips that will help you put SEO to work for you.

1. Develop good, high-quality content. Before you pull visitors into your site through SEO, you should first have a foundation of first-rate content that has relevant benefit to your visitors. Implementing SEO practices before making your site a useful stop for consumers means they will likely leave just as quickly as they came.

2. Use searchable, rational keywords. Now that the foundation is laid, you need to have the right amount of keyword density. First of all, remember to not put too many keywords onto your Web pages, as some search engines will label your site as spam for having too many. Five% or less keyword density is a good amount.

To build up your keyword density, replace generic terms with keywords specific to your industry. For example, Avidian’s homepage contains the header “Compare CRM Software” rather than a more generic phrase such as “Compare Competitors.” This helps get the right message to customers and search engines alike.

3. Build relevant external links. Getting other influential Web sites to link back to you can equate to as much as 70% of your SEO efforts.

Here are a few current best practices when building external links:

· Relevant content: Develop articles and other content that others will want to display and link to on their sites.

· Pay for it: Serve as a sponsor on an applicable site.

· Say please: Ask nicely and hopefully they will link to your site because they want to support you.

4. Build relevant internal links. Building relevant internal links is a much easier process yet it is still important. Including numerous internal links on all of your Web pages to other places on your site is essentially giving search engines suggestions of the most important pages on your site.

When building internal links you should keep these tips in mind:

· Use HTML for inbound links: Search engines don’t like Flash and Java, stick with HTML links.

· Link from your most important pages: Search engines give more credence to links on home pages.

· Link to pages using relevant keywords: Consider what you are using for your anchor text. For example, rather than saying, “For more information, click here,” place the link within a sentence containing the name of the product.

5. Track and review your data to continuously improve. In order to continually improve your SEO processes, you need to understand the consumer behavior on your site. At Avidian, we’re constantly looking at what keywords are bringing people to us, where the traffic is coming from, what pages they are visiting and what actions they are taking. This helps us determine how we can further improve our SEO efforts.

http://chiefmarketer.com/online_marketing/search/seo_0617/