Below is my presentation, which attempts go beyond the usual “Social Media” is the new SEO “linkbait” and also talk a little about the DAO (digtial asset optimization) of social media assets for SEO. (Mouthful, I know!).

If you have any questions, don’t hestiate to contact me – email or a comment below.

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Verizon Customer Service: Viral Video of the Day (February 5th)

Today, the FAIL Blog website posted a humorous recording between a Verizon customer and a customer service representatives over a billing issue. As of the the time of this writing (only 8:39 PM of the day of the post), there are over 1,000 comments on the FAIL Blog post, 469k views of the video on YouTube and over 3,900 mentions on other blogs and other websites. And oh, if you type “verizon customer service” on Google, the top 10 search results have two webpages pointing to the video.

The Video is Actually Over Two Years Old

The viral video on Verizon’s customer service has been spreading on the Internet, but rarely is it mentioned when this recording occurred. Indeed, if you see multiple blogs citing this Verizon video you would think the customer service recording was very recent.

George Vaccaro, the man on the Verizon customer service call, actually recorded the call in December 2006!

Lesson for PR, Customer Service and Community Managers: Not only does bad news spread fast, it can have a second or third life spreading around the Internet.

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While there has been much discussion – including here – how “Social Media is a Conversation”, it is clear that marketers need more concrete and less theoretical lens to view Social Media. Basically, “how does this make me and my boss look good?”

This is Social Media. But which is PR? Or Marketing?

First, we need to cast off the idea of Social Media as some hippie “Joining the Conversation” thing. It’s more of like the behavior of users or a characteristic of a website. But to make it concrete let’s call Social Media a Platform, just like how the Internet is a general platforms from which you can conduct advertising. There are lots of channels/tactics within a platform.

Above is a fairly comprehensive chart of Social Media by Brian Solis, which defines all of the various components that make the Social Media Platform. Understanding the “Social Media Platform” is important, but we also need to start thinking about the next stage:

Social Media. I get it. But what does each Social Media channel do? And who should do it? What’s the goal and ROI?

Looking at the graph, there are only many channels but many ways it can correspond to different areas of advertising. For simplicity sake, let’s focus on Marketing, Public Relations, Customer Relations and Community Building – looks pretty limiting.

In the rest of the post, I’ve sketched out a basic model of how to approach 10 of the channels/tactics – document sharing, link baits to microblogging – but ultimately, you should do the following:

Print out a few copies of Brian Solis’s Social Media Prism chart, bring the PR, Customer Service, Marketing, and Evangelist folks. Go through each channel and brainstorm how it could apply to them and their goals.

To help you guys start, I’ve started jotting down a few thoughts below. There are plenty more Social Media channels to explore and more creativity ways to exploit opportunity in a way that gives you ROI and not just “joining the conversation.”

Social Media Channels: Which One? For What and Why?

1. Widgets on Facebook to iPhones to the Google Homepage
Marketing, Public Relations, Community Building

This is an easy one. Widgets are basically mini-applications so they’re capable of being anything. From sweepstakes, to viral marketing, to letting users get in touch with other users and providing instant reviews on services or products.

2. Blogging: Blog Outreach
Public Relations, Customer Relations, Marketing (SEO Focus)

Blog Outreach is connecting with bloggers to understand their feedback on a product or service, as well as, help spread news (usually via seeding viral content) and for my purposes – SEO. Blog Outreach is something I’ve done over at e-Storm for SEO purposes with some great results for the SEO campaign.

3. Document Sharing – Sharing Online Documents, Presentations
Thought Leadership, Branding

Document sharing communities like Slideshare.net (PowerPoint sharing website) is a perfect place to reach the B2B Audience – other business people who are looking for knowledge in specific areas, case studies, industry trends and presentations from conferences. One can find all sorts of material from Social Media/SEO/PPC presentation from yours truely to Morgan Stanley’s annual report on the Technology Industry.

There is also an SEO benefit as you can use leverage SlideShare.net’s authority to get your content ranked well. Your content will be under SlideShare.net, but it will still be your content in front of users in the top 10 search results.

3. Linkbait – Creating & Sharing Content to Encourage Viral Lift
Public Relations, Branding, Link Building for for SEO

Linkbait – creating content that will be virally picked up and discussed – is basically one step above “viral videos”. It is about creating viral content – videos, tools, content, photos etc – that will be talked about, Digged, Blogged about…and hopefully linked to. As you may know, the more links pointing to a website, the better the chances the website will rank well on Google. Heck even Google says Social Media is great for SEO.

4. Blog Community
Customer Relations (Developer Community/Brand Loyalty)

A few companies, such as Ugobe (former client), which creates a sophisticated dinosaur robot called the Pleo, has created a community for Pleo owners which allow them to exchange their Pleo dinosaur experience with each other through their own “Plogs” (basically, Pleo blogs).

A company that provides a product that customers will have a strong connection to (like Pleo owners treating their robot dinosaurs like real pets) would be an ideal environment for allow users to connect and share via an internal blogging community.

5. Blogging on Corporate Blogs
Customer Relations, Public Relations

The United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to Marriot CEO Bill Marriot now have blogs. Blog are officially the mainstream for interactive marketers and public relation folks. They perform as a non-traditional communication tool – SEC recently declared that you can make official financial statements on blogs – that goes beyond the stiffness of a press release. And more interestingly of all, people are generally allowed and encourages to leave comments, provide feedback, and link to them.

6. Microblogging
Customer Relations, Public Relations, Marketing

Microblogging services like Twitter are a fast paced version of a blog and chat room rolled up in one. As I’ve written on previously, Zappos, HR Block, and Downing Street (UK equivalent to the US White House) have effectively used Twitter as a way to not only “microblog” new happenings but interactive with the twitter community.

Payoffs can be measured as real ROI, as Dell made +$1 million in sales via Twitter, or in terms of branding and reputation where disgruntled customers can be readily and transparent addressed (See Comcast example on the New York Times).

7. Social Networks: Advertising
Marketing, Branding, Engagement

Putting display ads on Facebook is not a Social Media plan. And ditto for placing ads on blogs, that’s still just good old fashioned ads.

It is as innovative as putting a banner ad the iWon search engine in 1999 (You guys remember iWon, right?). While Social Networks are known for having horrible CTR, Facebook SocialAds and MySpace Hypertargeting at the best hope for marketers and those with shares in social networks.

However, Facebook’s Social Ads and other new forms of social network advertising do show signs of promise when well executed as part of an integrated campaign.

8. Social Networks: Engagement
Customer Relations, Public Relations, Marketing

This can be anything from having a Facebook Page that you actually make active or something like the Expedia campaign, which had the lovable Expedia Gnome leaving comments on MySpace users’ profiles.

9. Social Networks: Presence (Creating Profile, Fan Page)
Public Relations, Customer Relations

United States Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome have frequently updated Facebook profiles. The Gavin Newsome staff have used Gavin Newsome’s profile active with news on Mayor Newsome’s upcoming events, videos of recent talks and even updates on his status message (to reflect his position on relevant news stories).

10. Wiki Collaboration
Customer Relations (Developer Community)

Wiki can be an interesting way of “crowdsourcing” a company’s help and support page or at the very least augmenting. Central Desktop, a project management SaaS tool, is one company that allows its users to contribute guides on new ways to use Central Desktop.

Related posts:

1. Moving Beyond Asking “What is the ROI of Social Media?” Countless publications and blogs, including this blog, have been dedicated...
2. Fitting in Social Media Marketing within the Agency For the past few months, I’ve been rethinking what it...

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Last Sunday after brunch, I happened upon a sign in Noe Valley in San Francisco which said “Fuck Mormons” in bright pink (fuchsia?) colors that was a response to the recent Prop 8 Gay Marriage ban that was passed in California.

Click to See URL Referrals for photo (24-36 Hours)

I uploaded the photo to Flickr on Monday. That photo made it to SFist.com (a local website covering San Francisco) and quickly sparked an intense discussion of over 100 comments. In a mere 2-3 hours, it made it to Reddit, Facebook, Stumbleupon and other social media websites quickly generating over 800 visits (as of now, over 1,800 people have viewed the photo).

Click to Google Search Results. Achieved in 3-4 Hours.

What’s also interesting is that SFist became ranked within the top 10 Google search results for “Fuck Mormons” within 3-4 hours of the posting going live. But yet as of today, SFist has fallen off the top ten ranking, with SFCitizen and Reddit’s coverage of the sign in the ten instead.

And by Tuesday, the photo caused enough of a stir that the home owner was interviewed by a local news team from CBS 5, which asked him: “You’ve been following the discussion on SFist. While some comments support you, others are saying, ‘this isn’t going to help.’”

And apparently, some people thought it was photoshopped: “CBS 5 walked the neighborhood in search of the home. There have been concerns the photo might have been photo-shopped, but it does not appear to be the case.”

Yes, I’m kinda Internet famous now, but more important this event does have some interesting social media lessons….

Social Media Lesson

• Social Media travels fast. From a Flickr upload on Monday to a news reporter on Tuesday.
• Context is Everything: SFist editor Brock Keeling took a simple photo and turned it into a political question by posting the photo and asking if the sign was an appropriate response to prop 8. If it was uploaded to Flickr without any such questions, I’m sure news wouldn’t spread as fast (or far).
• Don’t underestimate traffic from “second tier” websites like Reddit, which brought more traffic than all other channels.
• Surprisingly, Facebook didn’t carry as that many visits to the photo as I thought it would, considering the size of Facebook.
• Google ranks news pages very fast, putting SFist within #10 for the “fuck mormon” keyword in 3-4 hours of the blog post going live. Yet at the same time, they got quickly outranked by Reddit and other local blogs covering the event.

Personal Feelings about the Photo

I wasn’t trying to be a citizen journalist or even trying to make a political statement. Additionally, I don’t want to make a political statement on this blog and would like to ask any commenter here to not do so either.

I took the photo because I found it humorous at the time and I’m surprised by the intensity of the discussion stirred by this photo. I hope everyone involved – from the home owners to their neighbors – are doing okay and I hope that photo generated positive discussions on political expression.

In any case, I feel that the photo is not really “mine” per se. Someone, somewhere would have taken the photo eventually and it is likely the same thing that happened to my photo would happen to anyone else’s. Obviously, the “F*ck Mormon” sign was exactly that – a sign – which by definition is made to be noticed by the public. And get noticed by the public it did.

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Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion caused a stir in the SEO community last week by declaring that “SEO Shenanigans Pose a Clear and Present Danger to Social Media“, writing:

“I have recently witnessed a disturbing trend. Some respected experts are advocating launching social media marketing programs solely for the purpose of influencing search engines, rather than with the intent of fostering collaboration and genuine communication.

Having started this blog because I saw the increasingly link between SEO and Social Media, Steve and I are definitely on the opposite sides of the fence here. But, I think we can unite behind three central arguments:

1. We Marketers, Advertisers and PR People don’t make Social Media…
   What makes something viral or social is how involved the people get with the media. There are no such things as “Viral Vidoes” or “Social Networks” unless people use them. What we make has have to be interesting, authentic and worthy of being passed on to friends.
2. …But we can help encourage Social Media to happen easier.
   As PR, Marketers and SEO folks: our role is to only encourage “word of mouth” and social media participation, we cannot create it; that’s what “Social Media Optimization” is about. But to not to inform clients on the benefits of “Add to Del.icio.us links” or “Start a Blog to start a buzz” would be a failure of the part of the Agency. Of course, we must align tactics (Social Media) with goals (Building Community, Links) and the appropriateness (building real content people want to talk about) of the overall strategy.
3. Social Media and ROI: What do you tell the COO & CEO?
   In the end of the day, many clients ask “What’s the ROI on this?”. To say we’re going to use “Social Media to be part of the Community” will not cut it for many C-Level executives. Tell them that going long term on Social Media mans better SEO, Word of Mouth, Brand Awareness and Customer Service will make them listen.

Like Google Says: “The best way to create good links is to have good content”

A Google Ad: From Danny Sullivan’s Flickr Stream

As long as the SEO drive for “linkbait” (creating content to attract people to link back to the site) serves to create relevant and authentic Social Media content people will be interested in, the Community will benefit. The Community will quickly discern what’s worthy of being talked about, and what’s not. That’s the power of Word of Mouth and Social Media.

Read more on other points where I take a differing view from Steve:

1. Social Media Spam: Just from SEO people?
2. The SEO Community has been in Social Media as long as PR has, even Google encourages linkbait and writes on being Diggable
3. Social Media as SEO: Social Media is the Ultimate Search Engine Algorithm

1. Social Media Spam: Just from SEO people?
Steve is worried about how every SEO person will join Del.icio.us, vote on StumbleUpon and start blogs and twitters in some vague hopes of getting more links and getting better SEO. SEO spam is a real danger, but Social Media already has it’s own problems.

Last year, TechCrunch featured an article entitled “The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos“, which basically walked through a process of how to game and spam YouTube for viral video marketing success:

“Every power user on YouTube has a number of different accounts. So do we. A great way to maximize the number of people who watch our videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video.We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this)”

…Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment.”

What this shows is that Social Media has always been targeted by shady Social Media Marketers and has always been under the fear of someone trying to “game” Social Media for publicity, branding, eyeballs on videos and links for SEO. Sony’s fake blog called “All I want for Xmas is a P2P” comes to mind.

I think it is unfair to point a figure directly at SEO alone. This is a Social Media problem.

2. The SEO Community has been in Social Media as long as PR has, even Google encourages linkbait and writes on being Diggable

Far from what Steve calls a “disturbing trend”, SEO’s love of Social Media has existed at least since 2005 (if not earlier). SEOMoz was one of the first companies talking about linkbait back in 2005: “Rand, How do I make Link-Worthy Content?“, “When Money Can’t Buy You Link Love”Even Google has gotten into the act with declaring in a UK ad that : “The more people you have linking to your site, the better. And the bet way to create good links is to have good content”

In the end of 2006, Stefanie at the Google Webmaster Blog, write in “Building Link Based Popularity“:

“Discounting non-earned links by search engines opened a new and wide field of tactics to build link-based popularity: Classically this involves optimizing your content so that thematically-related or trusted websites link to you by choice. A more recent method is link baiting, which typically takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites. One example of this new way of generating links is to submit a handcrafted article to a service such as http://digg.com.”

3. Social Media as SEO: Social Media is the Ultimate Search Engine Algorithm

As I’ve written about in the past, SEO is no longer SEO. It is Website Positioning Strategy. As noted in the Google Webmaster Blog and Google Guidelines, high rankings in Google comes from strong relevancy: building content people want to view and content people want to link to.

The more strategic goal of SEO is then the same as Social Media:

• Building an online presence (website to blog to ecommerce shop) with the Community in mind
• Building relevant content your audience wants
• Understanding how you can participate in that desired community
• Be present where ever your potential customers are: optimize for being on Yelp.com, Flickr.com – not just Google.com
• Making your website “optimized” for conversion: make it as easy as possible for visitors to buy, register etc
• Optimize your site to be portable, linkable, “mash-up able” with Social Media Optimization

Basically, the above asks “Can you build an online presence that is open, relevant and active in the community you want to be belong to”. If you can do the above, you will naturally be a strong leader in building an online brand, brand awareness, customer satisfaction and SEO.

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Below is a mini PowerPoint on integrating PPC & SEO, drawing from several of my posts. I’ll update this PowerPoint this weekend. I’m pushing this out today as part of a Citizen Agency event, otherwise I would of hold it over until tomorrow.

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Move over SEO, Social Media Marketing has the Cash Now?

Talking with clients and those in the marketing industry, there appears to be an increasing interest in Social Media/Word-of-Mouth at the cost of SEO. Search Engine Optimization has been hot from 2004-2006, but we’re now seeing budgets being shifted to Social Media/Word of Mouth.

Is this true over your at agency or marketing/PR team? Leave a comment and let me know.

Some general observations…

Changes in the SEO Industry Landscape

• SEO and PPC resources are being shifted to in-house for corporations, with agencies working more as Search Marketing trainers and consultants
• SEO trends have become increasingly more reliant on Social Media; hence, terms like the “linkerati” coming out from the SEO world
• SES San Jose 2007 was an excellent example on the growing emphasis on WoM/Social Media/PR. SES had a whole track dedicated to Social Media.

Social Media Marketing & the Widget Economy

• Facebook and Widgets have hit the marketing mainstream with the O’Reilly report on Facebook making it officially the year of Facebook and widgets.
• San Francisco Bay Area hosted at least 4 conferences on Facebook and Widgets in the past 3 weeks alone: SNAP, Widget Summit, Graphing Social Patterns, CommunityNext Platform.

How will SEO adapt? Will it finally turn more into a philosophy of website design and positioning rather than a specific marketing discipline?

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Why Companies Are Going UGC: Community, Conversion & SEO

Lee Odden has laid out the reasons for UGC, citing some of the many studies that point to both

• Increasing consumer expectations to create online content
• Improved conversions for online retailers that provided user-based product reviews

Here is Lee’s list of “common benefits of user generated content for web site optimization and better search engine rankings”:

• Leveraging a like-minded, enthusiastic community for the creation and sharing of topically focused content in multiple media formats: text, audio, images and video
• Additional web site content attracts traffic through long tail phrase queries
• UGC increases the breadth of overall content available to consumers, increasing the chance they’ll find what they’re searching for
• The opportunity to contribute content in a meaningful way fosters community and can result in an effective feedback loop – motivating the creation of more content and participation. ”

Image Modified and Borrowed from Avinash. :)

UGC and SEO for Long Tail or the Head?

When doing an integrated SEM Campaign, which at e-Storm we define as doing Organic (SEO) and Paid (PPC), who gets what keywords from the client’s “Keyword Portfolio”? Here’s one scenario:

• PPC gets the Tail: Because it is easy to ensure that you get the tail and the tail is cheap
• SEO gets the Head: Because the keywords are too expensive to buy on the PPC side, and also limited content forces the client to focus on a smaller set of keywords

UGC can help solve this problem of choosing between the “Head” and “Tail” keywords for SEO. But, of course, this is based on getting it right on four assumptions:

• Quality of the Content:
  What kind of quality are you looking for? How will you solicit them?
• Amount of Content:
  Is your audience massive enough to leave substantial feedback? Do you have incentives or a timeline? Building UGC content can be a long term project.
• Internal Linking – Integration:
  Will the UGC content be well integrated to your website or pushed off as a quasi-orphan.
• External Linking – Will People Link to Your UGC Content?
  Will people want to link directly to the UGC content? Great content with no “linklove” may not rank well.

How will you deploy UGC to help take advantage of long tail content? How will be integrated with your current site (link structure) and will people want to link to it?

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If SEO is Multi-Disciplinary: Is In-House Better?

If SEO requires a holistic approach that integrates content development, PR, blog outreach, blog marketing, usability and so on – there is always the looming question of which is better: a well-turned in-house SEO team or the top SEO consultant with a willing client?

With the level of coordination and integration required, I’m leaning towards the in-house team. Although, I think there are currently more creative/top SEO consultants then there are top notch in-house SEO team. However, going in-house has been the trend for the past 1-2 years.

What Do Agencies Need to Do?

For those of us working on the Agency side, we need to ask ourselves: If our client’s competitors are a top-notch in-house SEO team, how can we act like our client’s in-house team rather than as outside consultants? What training is required? What cross-discipinary (PR to conten producing) stakeholder buy-ins is need? What Long Term planning must be done?

See the various Case Studies of a successful in-house Social Media Marketing campaign below:

Docshop (by David Willson)

“Sujan James Sujan Patel is responsible for driving organic and social media traffic to Docshop, a health information portal.

Getting web sites to link to anything health related can be an extremely difficult task, but Sujan has managed to add over 38,000 links this year!”

“Digg, and Stumble Upon are very good sites and can drive a lot of traffic but smaller niche sites can drive good traffic that is more likely to come back to your site. This is something I haven’t seen many marketers take advantage of.”

SEOMoz
SEOMoz built over 1,000,000 links in 33 months through the quality of its content, participation in the SEM community and timeliness. See Rand’s article here.

Link Building success through content:

Web 2.0 Awards – 72K + 30K = 100K+ links
Beginner’s Guide to SEO – 6.5K + 5.6K = 12K+ links
Page Strength – 4K + 3.5K = 7.5K+ links
Search Ranking Factors – 14K + 9K = 23K+ links
SEO Blog – 19K + 34K = 53K+ links

SplashCast (Via Jeremiah Oywang)
Splashcast hired to Social Media folks to active conduct community outreach via: blogging, sending trackbacks, commenting on other blogs, using Twitter, reaching out to bloggers for product launch and other methods.

“As a result of implementing this strategy before, during and after our initial launch, we had more than 1,000 publishers register for an account at launch, we doubled that in our first month to 2,000 and doubled it again in our second month to more than 4,000. SplashCast player loads are now aproaching 5.5 million.”

Of Blog Outreach: “That strategy lead to more than 250 blog mentions within 48 hours of our launch, for example.”

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Google Universal Search, Google Personalization and the push towards appealing to social media (linkbaiting, content strategy) is part of a large push towards finally abandoning emphasis of ranking reports over to more holistic analytics reporting.

To use analytics reporting for better understand SEO & Content, there are three important ideas:

• Analyzing Entry Pages as Landing Pages
• Revenue Participation
• Content Consumption: Content to Visits Ratio

Sure there are more, but let’s focus on those three for now.

All Web Pages are Landing Pages for SEO

Modified Screenshot from Google Analytics
(Zero goal data for this example, sorry)

Just as one checks the search engine keyword referrals for pre- and post- SEO reporting, one should also check what pages contribute to SEO and revenue. What pages are acting like landing pages for SEO – that is, the entry page for visitors from organic search engine listings?

The Google Analytics screenshot above, answers questions like “What are the top landing pages for visitors who came organically from Google? And what Goals/KPI did they perform? What is the conversion value?”

“Revenue Participation”: What Content is Generating Revenue?

From Dennis M., COO IndexTools at VisualVenue

Your SEO Team has pushed forward for the creation of several new content areas, but what is the return on that content?

One metric to look for is “Revenue Participation” (though its called different things by different vendors). Basically, “Revenue Participation” attempts to answer “What content on the website helped generate the largest share of revenue?”

The numbers are usually not exact or exaggerated in assigning value, but it has value in signalling to a marketer what content seems to matter to visitors in deciding a particular action (KPI) or conversion.
Content Consumption: Content to Visits Ratio

Via Avinash Kauksik’s Emetrics EFO Reflections Posting

From Avinash Kauskik:

The blue bar shows the type of content on the site: Education, Research, Collections etc. The red bar shows the percent of Visits to that content.

To put it another way “what are the large chunks of content on the site, what are visitors to our website looking at”.

I am sure the insights will scream out at you. 86% of the content was being consumed by 23% of the visitors. For 25% of the visitors were looking at 4% of the content (Research). You can see how this translates into a richer understanding of 1) where the website was focused at that time and 2) what customers actually wanted.

This graph can help point to what area attracts the most visitors and identifying what content either has no interest or needs to be redone to better appeal to visitors. This information can be used to understand what content needs to be built out for SEO reasons.

Closing Words

The biggest challenge to the reports above is to gauge how much of the data will influence your decisions on conducting the next SEO Campaign and also how to explain to your boss/clients what these reports mean and why it is important to you (the marketing guy) and to your boss/client (the person in charge with proving ROI value of your work to their boss).

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Just recently I wrote:

If you’re search engine optimization campaign is targeting Google, then what are you doing about the “searches” on Del.icio.us, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Yelp, Wikipedia, Oodle and even Digg? Maybe those searches are not for the mainstream (yet), but it maybe where the Linkerati, the savvy “Influencers”, go?

Now, Google Universal Search makes us ask: What other channels do we need to optimize in (YouTube, Google Video, Google News) to get on the Google SERPs? A reverse question.

As state by David Wilson:

What GUS does in short is reduces the number of organic listings available on the home page. No longer is getting to the first page of Google good enough. Now you need to be in the top 5 or 6 positions as the rest will be taken by video and news.

Seems like we’re practically on the same page here.

SEO no longer means optimizing only one’s website, or links…it means being active promoting and staying relevant through a variety of channels and mediums. It means distributing your content on YouTube, Yelp, Wikipedia, Press Releases etc.

Google Universal Search really presents no new known challenges of SEO. It just brings the message home: Old SEO is Dead, New SEO is a form of Multi-Channel Content Optimization and Distribution.

It’s all been said before:

1. SEO as Website Positioning Strategy? – Updated
2. Quick Post: Editorialization of Google Results, And the Change in SEO
3. Google’s Personalized Search: How Much Should We Care?

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SEO is Dead! Well, maybe your Google SEO

Why is SEO important? Because the majority of people search on the Internet to find things…reviews, contact numbers, shopping etc. But what is Search? Google? Yahoo?

If you’re search engine optimization campaign is targeting Google, then what are you doing about the “searches” on Del.icio.us, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Yelp, Wikipedia, Oodle and even Digg? Maybe those searches are not for the mainstream (yet), but it maybe where the Linkerati, the savvy “Influencers”, go?

Is your SEO really just “Google Search Optimization”? Have you brainstormed with your marketing team to see if your company, product and/or service needs to do more?

The Linkerati: Where Are They?

Rand Fishkin has made much about how SEO folks need to make sure their linkbait (and ditto for Viral/WoM campaigns) needs to cater to the Linkerati audience, the savvy online influencers who create and forward content.

But moving beyond finding what appeals to the Linkerati, is the need to find out where are they online, We need to diversify our thinking on 1) how where/how they create content; and 2) how they find content.

Recently, ValleyWag noted that while the number of active blogs tracked by Technorati has stagnated “personal publishing is still growing, but the fastest growth is occurring on social media properties”, such as MySpace, Digg, Yelp, and Twitter. Indeed, a recent study suggests that “40% of all social networkers said they use social networking sites to learn more about brands or products that they like”.

Questions to Ask:

1. Where are my customers? Who are the influencers within those circles?
2. Where do they search?
   (Do they search on Yelp, Technorati, Digg or Del.icio.us?)
3. Have I distributed my content there?
   (E.g. Placement of Yelp, Blog on Technorati, Content on Digg, Bookmarked on Del.icio.us)
4. Is it searchable? Or, simply, Findable? Is it “optimized”?

Counter Point: Who needs the Linkerati? Web-2-What and Big Seed Marketing.

There is the question of how important the Linkerati crowd is in shear physical numbers and how important the Linkerati and influencers are in general.

In May’s Harvard Business review, Duncan Watts and Jonah Pertti proposed the idea of “big-seed marketing” as opposed to “Influencer”-based viral marketing, which:

combines viral-marketing tools with old-fashioned mass media in a way that yields far more predictable results than “purely” viral approaches like word-of-mouth marketing.
…
big-seed marketing harnesses the power of large numbers of ordinary people, its success does not depend on influentials or on any other special individuals; thus, managers can dispense with the probably fruitless exercise of predicting how, or through whom, contagious ideas will spread.

The Tiny Linkerati

According to a Pew Internet May 6 study, 49% of the US audience are those that have “few “tech assets” and limited use of technology”. The survey goes on to show how little of the US audience are among the Web 2.0 Internet savvy. They are so little of them. Is it worth the effort on being on Yelp, Twitter, Digg, MySpace etc to appeal to them?

Of Course, It Depends

It is important to understand that you can create online marketing success without getting caught in the buzz about about “influencers” or the Linkerati. It depends what market your client and your customers are in. Of course, innovation carries risk – but this is not to forsake the long-hanging fruit for risk taking and vice-versa. You need both.

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The past two weeks have been a busy week for me: Ad:Tech, Web 2.0 Expo, attending the Social Medic Club and helping a client ramp up their Blog Outreach program.

Speaking with folks from Ad:Tech and just surveying the marketing blogosphere lately, we are seeing three trends that are affecting the marketing landscape all the way from increasing importance of a CMO to the strategic changes required for SEO.

The Three Trends Affecting Marketing

• Longer Tail of Media Consumption
  Increasing variety of media (mobile, social networks, search blogs, Xbox 360) that people are consuming means more effort required for marketing/brand/PR integration and more requirements for a “grand strategy” vision.
• Marketing increased emphasis as a Revenue Driver
  Increasing Trend Towards Measurement and ROI means that marketing will take high prominence in the C-level space, helping shape product development, internal culture and budgeting
• Social Media as the Disruptor on the Web
  Social affecting all of Interactive Marketing Activities, diversifying the types of media being consumed and making marketers have greater engagement with the customer audience and moving from brand control to brand management.

Changes in the Evolving Marketing Landscape

• Raise of the CMOs (As Opposed to VP of Marketing)
  Elevating Marketing position as part of a revenue generating, rather than cost center; rebalancing the importance of the sales team vis-à-vis the marketing team.
• Evangelist becomes more integral to Marketing-PR
  Going beyond being a spokesperson, writing to the community (writing post, responding to comments) and generally engaging the community be it on Yelp, Amazon.com reviews or blogs or in-real-life (IRL)
• Executing the Social Media Program
  Need for Evangelists and Community Managers to execute Social Media Program to engage, manage and measure Social Media and Communities.
• SEM becomes Strategic Website Positioning
  How SEM (particularly SEO) is shifting from its early days of simple keyword analysis to integrating brand, PR, word-of-mouth, content strategy, usability etc. SEM or Strategic Website Positioning needs to coordinate under the CMO and with the Social Media Program.

1. Raise of the CMO (Not VP of Marketing)

It is common knowledge that when a business is adjusting to a difficult economy, R&D slows and marketing is chopped. Marketing is seen as an expenditure, rather than vehicle for sales. The increasing emphasis on measurement and ROI is changing that somewhat.

Marketing’s evolution to a more strategic role (from VP-level to C-level) is boosted by three trends:

• Marketing increased emphasis as a Revenue Driver
  Thanks to better metrics and ROI measurement, Marketing is getting more respect as a revenue generator.
• Longer Tail of Media Consumption:
  Diversifying media consumption means more difficult in marketing integration and greater need for strategic direction in managing multi-channel marketing.
• Social Media as the Disruptor on the Web
  Social Media is helping fuel the long tail of media consumption. It also has been pushing companies to integrate their PR/Word-of-Mouth/Marketing campaigns and change their internal corporate cultures.

Jon Miller writes most succinctly on the definition and greater responsibility of a CMO at the Futurelab Blog:

“To be successful, the CMO must play a role broader than just leading the marketing organization. The role must include driving revenue, leading innovation, and providing strategic vision. These growth champions must lead all four Ps – not just promotion but also product strategy, place (channel and distribution), and pricing.

Like other C-level executives, these CMOs must be rigorous in their financial planning and metrics, making revenue forecasts and justifying their budgets like the investment in the future that marketing spending really is.”

See Jon Miller’s article at:

1. ”Are You a CMO or a VP of Marketing?”, April 30, 2007
   http://blog.futurelab.net/2007/04/are_you_a_cmo_or_a_vp_of_marke.html

2. Evangelist

While we can debate the number of blogs or if MySpace is here to stay, Social Media has changed the Internet landscape just as the Internet in the 90s changed the marketing and business landscape.

Evangelist have been around before Social Media took off as the latest buzzword, but the importance of their role is increasingly clear if corporations are to have plans to thoroughly engage their online audience and communities.

Jeremiah explains that: “An evangelists role is to go beyond understanding and get others to ‘believe’ in your product or service. This is beyond just communication and advertising and gets to the fundamental root of human communications, building trust. “

In Matt McGee’s “Meet Your New Employee: Writer, Marketer, Evangelist”, Matt’s focuses on how even an evangelist can apply to small businesses in:

• To Write: “You need a blog to communicate directly with customers, and good writers make the best bloggers….In this day and age, you need to become a mini-publisher and that demands someone who knows how to write.”
• To Network: “finding customers and joining their communities and conversations. Good “people skills” are imperative to market successfully.”
• Do Public Relations: “This should include traditional media; press releases are still the way to reach out to those folks. But it should also include online influencers: important bloggers and important online discussion forums that cover your industry.”

Read more at:

• “Meet Your New Employee: Writer, Marketer, Evangelist”, April 26, 2007
  http://searchengineland.com/070426-082409.php
• “Understanding the role of an Evangelist at a Web 2.0 Company”, October 07, 2006
  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2006/10/07/understanding-the-role-of-an-evangelist-at-a-web-20-company/

3. Social Media Program

Jeremiah Owyang is on *the* thought leader when it comes to understanding how corporations need to respond to social media opportunities. If you’re not reading his blog, you should.

While he has written about the need for Evangelist and Community Managers, Jeremiah recently wrote on the technical needs of the Social Media Programs the Evangelist and Community Managers would execute, listing some important tactical level thinking:

Recognize the new influencers. Like Media, Press, and Analysts, consider Social Media yet an additional influencer group to reach.

Prepare for all scenarios. Create an internal process or at least discuss how to deal with crises. (such as exploding products, embarrassing situations). Draw from classic PR strategies, but realize that acting quickly in a human way, and not hiding is key.

…

Employees will blog, embrace. In addition to creating the corporate blog(s), be sure to recognize the natural employee bloggers that appear. You may find them in the product groups, support, and marketing departments. Have a discussion on how to include them in your strategy, even if it means to let them continue on their own. When it comes to trust, prospects and customers may trust employee bloggers that don’t have the corporate logo on their blog.

Measurement. You’ll need to measure to prove worth in this new arena, get more budget and even get a raise. I’ve discussed this extensively, see all posts tagged Social Media Measurement.

See more under:

• “Strategies for organizing your Corporate Social Media Program (Starting internally first)“, April 23, 2007
  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/04/23/strategies-for-organizing-your-corporate-social-media-program/
• “10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations”, December 12, 2006
  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2006/12/18/10-social-media-strategies-for-the-corporations/
• “Understanding the Community/Evangelist Role, and profiles of a few of my Favorite Folks”, March 26, 2007
  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/03/26/understanding-the-technology-evangelist-role-a-few-of-my-favorite-folks/

4. SEM becomes Strategic Website Positioning

SEO (and with it PPC) has been steadily evolving away from the traditional SEO methods, with a full embrace of Social Media to usability to content strategy, with changes occurring in:

1) the further integration of PR-ish tactics like “linkbaiting”; 2) the embrace of social media in social media marketing; 3) changing the metrics from rankings and to relevant traffic and conversion; and 4) thinking about usability and conversion optimization, not just search traffic generation.

All of these new changes will be unfamiliar to someone from the early days of SEO, which mostly concerned itself with placing important keyword on the webpages.

We are now at the point of needing to recast SEM (SEO and PPC) as Strategic Website Positioning:

The idea of Strategic Website Positioning is to think of search marketing (organic SEO and PPC), social media marketing and website development as an integrated approach, by asking questions centered around:

• How is your website’s content, structure and usability fit with the intent of your audience?
• How does your website “fit” in how people search (one-box searches on Google/Yahoo, Technorati, Oodle, vertical search engines)?
• How is your website positioned in Social Media Community? How do you want to participate?

See more at:
“SEO as Website Positioning Strategy? – Updated”, February 26, 2007
http://www.emergence-media.com/2007/02/seo-as-website-positioning-strategy/

Closing Thoughts: A Warning on Social Media Fatigue

I still very much remember the irrational exuberance of the Dot-Com (Web 1.0) and know that not every SharkyBuisnessIdeaHere.com will not raise up to become an Amazon.com or an Ebay.

The audience, the social media audience, will suffer from “Social Media Fatigue”. People can only support and pay attention to a limited amount of the ever increasing variety of social media websites, video networks, Pligg (digg) clones and Twitters twittering and Myspace commenting.

At the same time, the Internet was not a fad and has brought about the behemoth that is Google made websites like Wikipedia and YouTube possible.

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1. Fitting in Social Media Marketing within the Agency For the past few months, I’ve been rethinking what it...

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Aaron Wall of SEOBook has a great write-up on the changing face of Google’s Search Results (SERPs). They now include Vertical-Creeps of its various properties and the integration of Google News into the *organic* listings.

Where does this bring SEO?

Going Beyond Vertical Search Creep

We are now seeing Google pulling information beyond its own vertical search engines with the actual integration of editorial information with Google News *inside* the organic listings.

SEO’s purpose is to optimize Search Engine Listings (SERPs), but how people are getting their information is evolving:

• Google/Yahoo’s main Search Page now includes information from Local Search, Real Estate, Maps, Weather, TV Listings, and Google News (inside Google’s SERPs), Yahoo Answers (Bottom of SERPs in Yahoo), etc.
• Than there is the increasing use of specific communities and content where people are also searching: Yahoo! Travel, TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.

So again, what does it mean to do SEO? What is the point of doing Local SEO, if you’re local business (or saw local branches) are not listed on Yelp?

How Google and Yahoo are handling search is changing. How people are now using sites like Yelp is also changing. How will SEO Change?

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Update: Fixed MS Word HTML issue. Thanks to Jake for letting me know.
Search Engine Optimization or Strategic Website Positioning?

Search marketing veterans have seen the shift of SEO tactics moving from keyword density and page title optimization to the leveraging of PR-like tactics to conduct link-building (building rankings by having others link to your website) and to now even more complex strategies. At this point is SEO still SEO or has it outgrown that name? Maybe it is time to look at the idea of “Strategic Website Positioning”?

The maturing of the SEO industry has resulted in many changes. The top four has been 1) the further integration of PR-ish tactics like “linkbaiting”; 2) the embrace of social media in social media marketing; 3) changing the metrics from rankings and to relevant traffic and conversion; and 4) thinking about usability and conversion optimization, not just search traffic generation.

All of these new changes will be unfamiliar to someone from the early days of SEO, which mostly concerned itself with placing important keyword on the webpages.

What Does Strategic Website Positioning Mean?

The Working Definition

The idea behind “Strategic Website Positioning” is not original. Businesses create websites with considerations of what the website should be to their targeted audience.

The idea of Strategic Website Positioning is to think of search marketing (organic SEO and PPC), social media marketing and website development as an integrated approach, by asking questions centered around:

• How is your website’s content, structure and usability fit with the intent of your audience?
• How does your website “fit” in how people search (one-box searches on Google/Yahoo, Technorati, Oodle, vertical search engines)?
• How is your website positioned in Social Media Community? How do you want to participate?

From this we can build further questions…

Community Positioning

• “What are similar people tagging (or perhaps tagging with similar words) – Del.icio.us and Google Search History” (SEOBook)
• “What are similar people reading? (Via My Yahoo! or Google Reader or MyBlogLog) – Graywolf recently highlighted how MyBlogLog can use your readers to show what community your site is in” (SEOBook)
• “What words are associated with your brand or site? What sites are associated with those words? What searcher intent is associated with those words? What else are they searching for?” (SEOBook)
• What Terms Are Your Competitors Using? On their website, on their copy, on their AdWords campaigns?

Content Building based on Community Positioning

Building on the above, but including:

• Content Funneling (See Emergence-Media on “Building Content for Branded and Non-Branded Search“)
  How is your website catering to your target audience in general product research, comparative shopping and purchasing mode? How can you be considered an authoritative source for each?
• What is the approach on new sources on online content like blogs and widgets?

Social Media Assessment

• How Visible are You in Social Media Websites?
  How “popular” are you online? Do reputation management? See how communities, blogs, reviews and del.icio.us describe your website?
• How do you want to Participate in Social Media Websites?
  Do video promotions? Community building? Virals? Podcasting?

Search Engine Positioning

• Getting on One-Box Search (See Google on Travel searches, Website Searches)
  Are you using Google Base to get listed on Google’s Real-Estate Seach?
• Getting on Vertical Search like Technorati, Oodle, Kayak, *Shopping Search Engines*
  Beyond the big search engines Google/Yahoo/MSN/Ask, what about the specialized vertical search engines?

Greater Marketing/MarComm/PR Integration

• Sharing “Keywords” Knowledge:
  Does some department have consumer studies on what words people use to describe your product?
• Integrating Offline Ads with Search:
  What’s your slogan, hook, that song playing in the background of your commercial. Is that integrated into your search strategy?

Conclusion: SEO Needs a Conceptual Reset and Reboot

I could go on and on, on the list above. They are not hard and fast categories, but they are the type of questions that need to be asked. They maybe best laid out in a mindmap (see Emergence Media’s SEO Mindmap from last year).

There are many folks trying to tackle what the new SEO exactly is. Todd Mailcoat has placed it forward as “New School SEO”, pointing to various other tactics that beyond traditional SEO: Social Media Marketing, Video Promotion, Community Participation et cetera. Aaron Wall has looked at the community (a more precise type of link authority and PageRank) as the next possible area where more search engines will determine relevancy.

Whatever it is, conceptual we need to rethink how we think of SEO. It’s not just about using WordTracker to do keyword research anymore, so our frame of thought has to change too. “Strategic Website Positioning” is an attempt to reset that thought. Once we figure what exactly SEO will be, there comes the next step: How do we explain it to our clients?

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Last week, it was announced that Google will automatically sign-up Google Account users to additional services by default, including “Personalized Search”, which will gives users unique Search Results (SERPs), basing rankings of websites on past search history and other behavioral data.

So now, what ranks on Google will depend on each Google user, ending the notion of different people being able to see the same search results. While people are asking “How will SEO change because of this?”, another question also needs to be asked is “How much will this effect the average Google Search?”

For example, Nick Wilson puts heavy emphasis on using leveraging Social Media to optimize for Google’s Personalized Services, but how many Google users are actually using social media with Google (E.G. Google Reader)? This is a question that needs to be considered before making changes to how you do SEO.

The Google Personalized Ranking Variables and the SEO Tactics

Here’s a quick recap on the new variables that will effect organic rankings and what SEO needs to do to address them. See Nick Wilson’s SEL article for more.

• Google Search History:
  What it is: Keeps a log of all search queries were conducted and what links on the results page (SERPs) were clicked on
  How it effects SEO: Page titles need to not only help a webpage rank high, but be attractive to be clicked on
  SEO Tactics: Page titles need to concentrate on CTR as much as getting the ranking.
• Google Personalized Homepage
  What it Is: Like Yahoo’s “Personal Homepage”, but with the ability to add various widgets and RSS Feeds
  How it may effect SEO: 1) What widgets are being used; 2) What RSS feeds are being subscribed to and clicked on
  SEO Tactic: 1) Create helpful Widgets; 2) Do Blogging; 3) Engage in promoting Widgets and Blogs via linkbait, WoM etc
• Google Reader
  What it is: Google’s fast raising web-based RSS Reader
  How it may effect SEO: What RSS feeds are being subscribed to, which one’s are being read and to what frequency
  SEO Tactic: 1) Do Blogging; 2) Engage in promoting Blog via linkbait, WoM etc
• Google Bookmarks:
  What it is: Bookmarking tool, like Del.icio.us etc
  How it may effect SEO: What pages are being bookmarked by the user
  SEO Tactic: 1) Create “Bookmark worthy” content and tools; 2) SMO with “Add to Google” Links; 3) Do WoM, Viral, Linkbait etc.

How much will this change Ranking for Google?
From everything I gathered, Google’s new move will only effect those logged into a Google Accounts when doing a search, so…

1. What percentage of users is this?
2. How many of these users use the advance services like Google Reader, Bookmarks, or Personalized Homepage with widgets and RSS feeds? The features that are now used in ranking?

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any readily available satisfying answers for Question #1, other than there are ~51 million Gmail users (so at least that many accounts) and there are ~103m US searchers per day on Google. Unfortunately, these statistics doesnt bring us any closer to how many searches were done under a Google Account. And we can’t even deduce users did all 103 million searches per day.

However on Question #2, the use of Google services, even popular services like Google Reader, while fastly growing, are not market leaders (in traffic terms) as of yet. And Google Bookmarks is a virtual unknown, while I would assume Google Personalized Homepage’s more advance features are only slightly more used.

So what about and who should be worried about the new system?

• Search History is one service that is guaranteed to be used, so attractive titles and descriptions are a must to increase CTR.
• If your website is targeting tech-savvy, early adopters (who are likely to use Google Accounts) than you should worry about Google Reader, Google Personalized Homepage Widgets and so on.

Of course, as part of SEO, one must think about blog marketing, widget creation and social media marketing (all what Nick Wilson emphasized), but right now for Google, it doesnt seem to be necessarily needed until services like Google Reader are more popularly used.

What are your thoughts on this?

___________________________________

UPDATE from February 14, 2007:

I just remember I’ve previously written about this topic in “Google Co-Op, Custom Search and the impact on SEO”, which declared:

“In short, if a website is badly position with the audience, has little content, not crawlable by search engines, not attractive enough to be linked to – than you have a problem with search engines, coop or no coop, personalized or not. If, however, the websites has all this issues addressed, than generally it will be well positioned not only on traditional Yahoo, Google search engines but also in personalized searches as well.”

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Recently my co-worker, Kevin Reyes, and I had discussions on the differences between SEO Linkbaiting and Online Word-of-Mouth Campaigns. Credit goes to Kevin Reyes for bringing this up as a blog post.

So what is the difference between SEO Linkbait and an Online WoM Campaign? True, they are not mutually exclusive to each other. But, how do we explain the differences that define WoM and Linkbait to a client?

Let’s start with definition and examples with SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards” versus  Microsoft’s Clearification campaign.

• Linkbait: SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards“

Definition of Link Bait
Online activities, usually placed on a single website, used to “bait” its viewers to generate buzz and links from other websites. The main goal is generate a large number of links to the website to increase organic rankings.

Example: SEOMoz’s Web 2.0 Awards
Starting last year, SEOMoz has conducted a best of web 2.0 awards, judging a dozens (100s?) of web 2.0 sites in various categories from web 2.0 bookmarks to games.

SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards” has helped propel SEOMoz to the top #5 ranking for “Web 2.0″ in Google. It has over 1,300 links to it at http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0.

• Online Word of Mouth: Microsoft’s “Clearification.com“

Definition of Online Word of Mouth
Activities used to generate personal online recommendations and/or referrals regarding a company’s brand, products and/or services.

Example: Micorsoft’s “Clearficiation”
Leading up to the launch of Microsoft Vista, Microsoft’s ad agency, McCann Erickson, along with Mekanism worked with the comedian Demetri Martin to create Clearification, a website that offers a series of webisodes featuring Demetri Martin.

Clearification is interesting in that there is no direct pitch or branding of Microsoft on the website and it entirely focused on Demetri Martin’s hipster (for the lack of a better term) sense of humor. News of Clearification filtered through blogs

So what’s the difference between Web 2.0 Awards and Clearification.com

• Difference on the Strategic Level:
  Linkbait’s main goal is to use buzz to generate links to a website that one wants to rank well, where as, online Word of Mouth is more about generally generating online buzz about the company and its products and/or services. Linkbait finds success when it lands on Digg’s frontpage, but word-of-mouth needs more than that. 

  Commentary:
  Sure both strategies, done properly, generate links. But there is an important difference of degree: linkbaiting can be as simple as offering a free tool, informative article etc whereas “Word of Mouth campaign” usually implies a far larger production, involving mini-sites, savvy creative…the works.

• Difference on the Tactical Level:
  Website Location:
  Microsoft’s Clearification is located on Clearification.com, not Microsoft.com. So any links generated due to buzz will mostly point to Clearification, not Microsoft.   

  Does this mean if Clearification could be linkbait if it was hosted at http://Microsoft.com/Clearification, not http://clearification.com/?

  Relevancy of the Link Building:
  Propelled by links to its “Web 2.0 Awards” webpage, SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards” campaign has helped search engines associate “Web 2.0″ with SEOMoz.org. Indeed, the term “Web 2.0″ places SEOMoz in the #5 in Google. What benefit would Microsoft be if Microsoft.com showed up as #5 for a search for Clearification?

  Microsoft is happy with any buzz and links to Clearification. They are probably more interested in traffic numbers than what ranks how well for what.

Conclusion
All in all, the differences seem subtle, especially at the strategic level. At the strategic level there is a large difference in perception (right or wrong) on what it takes to get a word-of-mouth campaign going versus linkbaiting. Additionally, these strategic differences are more visibly shapened when followed through on to the tactical level.

However, this is not to say that Linkbaiting and Word-of-Mouth campaign are mutually exclusive. Indeed, a properly executed and well-positioned WoM campaign can easily fulfill the requirements of a linkbait campaign.

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We all known that branded search visitors translate to high conversions than non-branded. But adding to the complexity, recent research conclude that the conversion process often involves the user first arriving under non-branded term (”hd dvd player”), to return later to purchase with a branded term (”toshiba HD-A2 hd dvd player”).

Acting on this information for PPC and keyword bid management is easy, but this user behavior applies to SEO as well, especially in the need for positioning content for each “step” of the conversion process (from non-branded to branded).

Branded v. Non-Branded Search and Conversion Rates

Back in May, 360i and SearchIgnite released a study (PDF) focusing on the relationship between branded and non-branded search terms in conversation rates.

Some of the key findings include (see graph):

• 25% of conversions are from users who clicked on multiple ads
• Highest conversion rate (9.30%) from when the first and last click were from branded terms
• High conversion rate (8.73%) from those that first clicked from non-branded terms and the last click on branded terms
  

How this applies to SEO and Content

While the 360i/SearchIgnite study was geared towards the intelligent allocation of branded vs. non-branded PPC terms, the research applies to SEO as well.

The study demonstrates that many users go from “general research” to “purchaser”, so while a user may find a website intially under “HD DVD Player guides” , the user may return later to purchase using the branded term “Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player”.

“Content is King” is the old Maxim. And for “SEOing” e-commerce websites, it is about ensuring that the e-commerce website has the type of content the user is looking for for each step of the buying process: 1) General Research (”Why are HD DVD Players different?” Page); 2) Targeted Research (”HD DVD Player Review & Guide” Page); and 3) Purchasers (Product Page for the Specific Item).

Thus, there is not only the “long tail” of search that has the opportunity to be captured, but also the process a user takes from general research to buying. An e-commerce website should be positioned to lead the user through each step of the process, helping influence the buying making process.

Does your e-commerce website have this range of content?

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Introduction: Oodle Rolls out Personal Search

Last week, Oodle launched its personals search service, extending its role as a classifieds listings vertical search tool which currently covers everything from job to real estate listing.

Personals is a booming industry, a recent Pew Study notes that “31 percent of all American adults (63 million people) know someone who has used a dating Web site, while 26 percent (53 million people) know someone who has gone out with a person he or she met through a dating Web site.”(1)

With such a large market available, Oodle Personals has found a useful niche:

• With over 800 dating sites on the web, it will be difficult for a person to necessarily find a niche dating website catering the to the person’s criteria.(2) Oodle helps a person discover these websites.
• Relating to above, Oodle can help smaller niche online personal websites with greater exposure, with a person finding a website they would not other wise meet if they stick to the majors like Match.com. As in its classifieds sections (or search engines for that matter), listings returned based on a user’s query links directly back to the original websites.
• Oodle seems to allow for more flexible keyword-based queries on personal listings than would be currently possible on some of the sites it indexes.
• Oodle crawls beyond strictly dating sites to include social networks like Friendster to increase the pool of profiles to view.

Vertical Search: Expending the Definition of Search Engine Optimization

Oodle, and others like Vast.com, are the type of sites that are helping shape a broader image of what is search engine is, going beyond the general search tools of the Big Three.

Indeed, as mentioned in “Organic Traffic Optimization? Doing Agnostic SEO“, the growing lists of vertical search engines places emphasis on the need at ensuring a website’s content is indexed beyond Google, Yahoo and MSN. Content should also be looked at how competitively positioned it is on vertical search tools. For example, people doing online dating search can be very picky – on ethnicity, religion, age, interests – does the profile easily lists all of such data? Is the data listed in a way people would search for? Available on feeds to engines like Oodle? Publicly (like LinkedIn does now)? Note that there are also privacy issues like “What control does the user has to be indexed by a third-party?”

Disclaimer: I know several Oodlers quite well and have even attended a Oodle sponsored event (To SMCers: and not, I didnt get a free drink out of it).

Sources:

1. Gottlieb, Lori, “How Do I Love Thee”, The Atlantic, March 2006
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_dating_service

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But alas, the “New SEO” wont last forever, and this is where Aaron Wall steps in to remind us all, from “Finding the Most Powerful Links“:

Given that many large brands and mainstream media sites are trying to leverage their brand strength by adding interactive content to their sites and every SEO blog in the world (and some from distant universes) have posts about leveraging social media and buidling trust with link baiting, it is probably a pretty safe bet to think that Google is going to be forced away from trusting core domain related trust…and it is going to have to get even better at filtering link quality as well.

Indeed, Google, Yahoo and MSN must find ways to tighten and be more selective on how links are weighted. Eventually, they will find ways to filter the obvious “Social Media” spam from the real deal, or find other signals for weighing websites and webpages. In short, Leveraging Social Media for SEO won’t stay as the Magic Bullet for long.

However, there are a few variables that should be noted:

• Ideally, Leveraging of Social Media (Linkbaiting, PR, WoM) should generate links and traffic because there’s something cool about a brand, product/service or company. Not a short-term gimmick. Not
• Yet, this will get harder and harder to do as every company wants its own viral video, blog, widget – you name it. So does Google, Yahoo and MSN need such filtering or will linkbaiting equal itself out as every major websites begins to adopt it?
• And even if there filters, links of some must remain as a source of some authority for ranking algorithms due to lack of any clear alternatives. There can be filters, some de-emphasis but there are no viability zero-sum replacements.
• And finally, linkbaiting will still be in effective in general as it will still play a large role in effective full-scale SEO, while also generating traffic and awareness from its PR Value.

All in all, I believe that while specific tactics change, the general rules of SEO will be steadfast:

• Ensure Accessibility by Search Engines (be it mobile, local, or general search engines and who knows what else)
• Optimize Content through making sure your website has content people want and search for
• Establish Authoritativeness by ensuring the appropriate websites link to you in the appropriate way

Your Thoughts?

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I’ve been involved in SEO for nearly 7-8 years and have seen SEO when it was a task done on the side by webmaster techies and by web designers. It was as easy as meta tag stuffing, but now has since turned into a full time job. Today, SEO is more and more leveraging and being influenced by online WoM/PR activities (linkbaiting comes to mind).

Aaron Wall and the Active Web

In “SEO & the Static vs Active Web“, Aaron Wall calls attention to the idea of the “Active Web” (the dynamic side of social media) and how it will effect SEO as a whole. There are two important pieces Aaron brings into attention: 1) The need Engage the Active Web; and 2) How smart SEO/marketers are engaging the web now.

On Engaging the Active Web

Aaron Wall Outlines three areas of engagement in the Active Web:

• Blog & Forums:
  Basically, doing market research and PR (by way of Blog Outreach)
• Feedbacks:
  Doing market research, understanding what the audience wants and how to leverage them as evangelists.
• Social News & Social Bookmarking:
  Now only does social news/bookmarking allow on to listen the “beat” of the community, but it also creates fodder for potential linkbait for writing/creating content the targeted audience wants.Emergence Media Response:
  

On How SEO/Marketers are Engaging the Active Web now:

In many markets it is getting cheaper and easier to manipulate the engines indirectly by participating in the active web, by dong things like

• creating ideas and content people like and want (even if those ideas do not have a direct monetization model)
• being willing to go exceptionally niche or exceptionally broad with some content to create an idea which people would be likely to vote for
• not caring about anchor text
• not caring about what page they link at (realizing that authoritative links to any page on your site will boost your site’s authority and the rankings for all pages on your site, and thus will allow you to monetize your commercial pages from the authority of the linkworthy pages)

Emergence Media Response:
The points here echo what many like Rand Fishkin have been saying on SEO: focus on creating great content that attracts the right audience and soon enough you’ll get “link love” from your audience.

Conclusion: This All Sounds Like PR and Marketing to Me?

This is very high level of course, but what it all boils down is two things: “Engage, Be Present, Join the Community” and “Give People What They Want”. The days when SEO was a debate over “how many characters can I have on my meta tag keywords?” or “What should my keyword density per page be?” are over.

Instead we have the following:

• Engage, Be Present, Join the Community
  Defined as the industry/audience you need to reach to help understand the community, generate buzz, awareness and links
• Give People What They Want
  This is said of the product and service, but its applies to the content of the website as well, to garner better rankings on search engines and well-positioned linkbait (to create more links, bringing greater awareness and rankings)

Just from quick glance, this does not sound like the SEO I learned doing 7 years ago. This sounds like smart PR and smart marketing in an Internet where Word-Of-Mouth (brought on by the maturing social media aspect of the Web) is becoming increasingly important.

Welcome to the New SEO. And SEO that’s changing from an actual search engine marketing service to general philosophy when doing PR/marketing on the web.

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“The decision makers in my company are afraid that the introduction of a ‘custom’ search engine is going to bring the world of natural SEO to a screeching halt. Do you guys have any feedback on google coop, and give me your opinions on whether you think this new tool will have an influence, if any, on the way that google ranks the sites that it indexes?”

Personalized searches (like those that Google does) and custom search engines (from Eurekster to Google Coop) have been cited as the silver bullet that will kill SEO for some time. However, there are two issues with this:

• On Custom Search Engines: While there are uses for custom search engines (from Eurekster to Yahoo), it appears that user adoption is very low and such engines are usually offered by a minority of publishers, more specifically niche bloggers.
• On Personalized Searches: I do notice that when I’m signed in on Google Accounts, my Google searches have notable differences compared to “unsigned” normal Google, but again adoption rate is an issue.

Yet even with higher adoption rates applied, the strategy and aims of a SEO campaign still applies, despite the different search engine environment custom search engines and personalized search would provide:

• Ensure website is crawlable by search engines
• Having content the audience wants and searches for
• Long term link building strategy (from directories to virals and from word of mouth campaigns to blog outreach)
• Leverage social media to distribute content and encourage link building
• Integrate SEO strategy with PPC, Branding and Awareness (Word of Mouth Campaigns etc)

In short, if a website is badly position with the audience, has little content, not crawlable by search engines, not attractive enough to be linked to – than you have a problem with search engines, coop or no coop, personalized or not. If, however, the websites has all this issues addressed, than generally it will be well positioned not only on traditional Yahoo, Google search engines but also in personalized searches as well.

Of course, a bad website can still get ranked well, but in the long run, a more nimble competitor can move in and displace it. Such a tactic is similar to “security through obscurity“, just because you haven’t been targeted yet by your competitors doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels.

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Jack Humphrey’s “Static Sites And SEO Are Dead: Please Make A Note Of It” has been making its rounds on online marketing blogs recently. Here’s an excerpt:

[On] SEO being dead. The context in which this declaration was made was when we were recently discussing the new results we’d gotten from heavy testing and the fact that what used to work for us no longer worked.

One might think “bummer, man!” Actually it is a blessing in disguise. With the right system for publishing, the right technology, tools and tactics, the web is easier to market on than it ever has been before.

…

It was a leap of faith, but we started publishing solely to please our markets without aggressively optimizing. Just like Google asked us to do. No hardcore late night sessions doing endless keyword research or inflating our keyword densities to cheat the system.

…

Guess what? My sites now enjoy a plethora of top 10 rankings in Google for scores of keyword phrases. Keywords people are actually using to find my site, not just “vanity” keywords no one searches on.

In short, the article states: “Traditional SEO is Ineffective, Time Consuming and Dead, Blog is the New SEO“.

Commentary

[This section updated: Late night blogging is not recommended!] It should be noted that Jack Humpery’s entire site almost exclusively focuses on blog marketing as an effecting method of SEO and the site appears to be selling it as a service.

Unfortunately however, not every company can blog – be it for legal reasons, company culture, “boring” subject of the company’s industry, lack of “bloggers-types” at the company etc.

Blogs are however elegant in that they do tackle the three main aspects of SEO:

• Build Content: A blog is an excellent tool for easily writing current, relevant content – of course, quality is dependent on the writer.
• Build Crawlable Content: Wordpress blogs are usually readily crawlable and can be further optimized with tags, etc.
• Link Building: Assuming you write great content, people will find you, like you, and link to you.

More traditional SEO – keyword research, title/content optimization, link building – will always be needed. It is the baseline foundation of SEO. For example, for ecommerce websites areas like product URLs and product descriptions must be optimized at the very least.

Blogging is simply taking it to the next level. But like other past SEO techniques, blogs will eventually reach its saturation point nor is it appropriate for many websites.

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I cant review the whole report tonight, but here’s some excerpts followed by commentary:

SEM Industry Overview

This year, expert staffing sizes have roughly doubled, client accounts have risen by roughly 50%, and there are now six firms reporting more than $10 million in SEM revenues, plus two more reporting more than $20 million in SEM revenues. (Note: these revenues do *not* include costs of actual media buys paid to search engines. These are solely services fees, which is where all the profit for agencies comes from.)

In 2006, the SEM services industry is at last coming of age, turning into a more stable, corporate group of firms. Most have been in business for years — the majority more than four years.

However, along with growth, there are some significant warning signs about the industry’s future. New client growth is not what it should be — especially for SEO firms — given the economy and marketers’ appreciation of the importance of search traffic for their companies. (emphasis mine)

Commentary: I dont think its a warning sign rather than a sign of a maturing industry. Eventually, there will be a saturation point and eventually something more hip and cool will come along. Maybe it’ll be word-of-mouth/viral or true behavioral/demographic targeting.

Hitting an SEO Saturation Point?

year-over-year growth in terms of total client accounts for 104 surveyed firms is slowing considerably. The number of clients who are willing to pay for top-of-the-line services is still increasing, but smaller clients are not increasing.

We suspect smaller clients may not be educated enough to realize SEO exists or that it’s as important (if not more so) than PPC ads for their sites. The SEO industry is not investing in educational efforts the way the Googles of the world are.

Commentary: As mentioned, I feel that we are simply reaching an SEO saturation point. PPC is scalable, flexible to budgets and can be broken up to multiple campaigns. In contrast, SEO tradtionally has its limits: 1 website = 1 SEO campaign with an SEO campaign taking usually 4-12 months.
Clients’ view of Agencies’ Expertise

Many clients told us anecdotally that most SEM firms provide about the same level of expertise. The key differentiator is no longer secret tactics, extra-training or unusual analytics, but rather the amount of man hours and service-level provided.

Commentary: I think there’s still differences between agencies of the type of PPC and SEO services offered, though it coming closer to being on-par across the board. This too is a sign of maturity. More than anything I think its just very difficult for clients to decipher between them. What clients can tell is good, attentive and helpful service from an agency. Relationships is one of the biggest part of the consulting business, so I’m not surprised by this.

Shifting Towards Greater Specialization

Another tremendous shift was the focus on specialization. Last year nearly every single firm we profiled offered both SEO and PPC services. This year, the majority have reversed this position, choosing to offer one or the other.

We’re heartily in favor of this change because it’s always been MarketingSherpa’s contention that SEO and paid search advertising require, for the most part, extremely different skill sets. Unless a firm is willing to staff up to offer fulltime specialists for each, they should not offer both.

Commentary: This is something I’m confused by. As MarketingSherpa notes, clients prefer a one-stop shop and I’d venture to say clients better appreciate agencies that take an integrated and strategic approach across all online marketing activities, not just search, viral, banners etc. Additionally, being pigeon-holed into just PPC and SEO leaves the firm vulnerable to shifts in the online landscape. Budgets and priorities will shift and so will it be for PPC and SEO.

SEO Firms Training In-House Marketers

In recognition of how tough it is for client-side marketers to hire search marketers, a full 76% of profiled SEO firms reported to MarketingSherpa that they offer training services for marketers’ in-house staff. Very smart move we say.

Commentary: This is a smart move by many SEO Firms: 1) Make a quick buck to do 1-2 week training sessions; and 2) “up sell” the client on additional SEO services and additionally consulting fees later on. Win-Win all around.

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Recently, Lee Odden posted a unique perspective towards Social Media Optimization (SMO) on “UnGoogle Your Marketing with Social Media“:

I think one of the ways you can sum up the idea of social media optimization and marketing is: “traffic alternatives to Google”. As great as Google is, marketers are increasingly looking for alternative and/or additional channels for content distribution and marketing and consumers for sources of information and interaction.

…

What’s interesting is that more and more of our clients are asking for what amounts to alternatives to Google traffic. They’re doing great on Google and the other major search engines, but want other sources of “free” traffic. SMO/SMM provides that augmentation. These include MySpace, Digg, YouTube and other viral tactics. For an excellent list of such opportunities, check out Rand’s list.

Organic Traffic Optimization – An Agnostic Approach to SEO?

Lee hits on a thought I had exactly this morning when waking up (yes, I think about search marketing in the mornings). I believe that eventually search engine optimization (SEO) will be succeeded by simply “Organic Traffic Optimization” – optimization that is agnostic to where the traffic comes from, but is limited to the organic (natural and unpaid) side of things.

This touches on what Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro mentioned in “SEM Has No Future“:

Search engines, and the form of marketing we’re currently familiar with, will disappear in the next 5 to 10 years. But here’s the good part. The act of a user requesting information through a query, either implicit or explicit, will pervade everything online.

Here, Gord is hitting at the fact that SEM will evolve to focusing on marketing on query done online no matter if its in a search engine or its on any other online tool.

SEO may follow the same path. Optimization for increased organic traffic no matter if its from social networkings/media sites (SMO) or search engines (SEO).

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Social Media Optimization: Emergence Media’s 5 Themes to SMO:
Or “How to Win Friends and Influence People” on the Internet

Sometimes, there’s an idea so simple you kick yourself for not thinking it first. Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations is doing that to me with his new term: “Social Media Optimization (SMO)”

“While I believe in the power of SEO, there is a new offering we have started providing to clients which we call Social Media Optimization (SMO). The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs”

The Term “SMO”: Simple. Brilliant. Sexy. I’m Jealous. I’m not sure if SMO is the best term for what we are all experiencing in the area of Social Networks, Search, WoM, SEO etc, but it sure is a darn sexy one.
The Rules: From 5 to 16

Rohit initially posted 5 rules towards SMO, but others have contributed to the list and as of time of this writting, we have 16 Rules for a successful Social Media Optimization. Here they are in total (read the full post of each contributor):

1. Increase your linkability (Rohit’s Rules 1-5)
   
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel – Content Diverification Beyond Web Pages
5. Encourage the mashup – E.g. Portability of YouTube Videos on MySpace
6. Be a User Resource, even if it doesn’t help you (By Jeremiah Owyang)
7. Reward helpful and valuable users (By Jeremiah Owyang)
8. Participate (By Cameron Olthuis)
9. Know how to target your audience (By Cameron Olthuis)
10. Create content (By Cameron Olthuis)
11. Be real (By Cameron Olthuis)
12. Don’t forget your roots, be humble (By Loren Baker)
13. Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh (By Loren Baker)
14. Develop a SMO strategy (By Lee Odden)
15. Choose your SMO tactics wisely (By Lee Odden)
16. Make SMO part of your process and best practices (By Lee Odden)

Emergence Media’s Thematic Approach to Social Media Optimization

Loren Baker, Lee Odden, and Cameron Olthuis have well contributed to Rohit’s original Top 5 list, but now at a total of 16 Rules, its getting a bit unruly. Taking in everyone’s contribution, I’m going to jump into the fray and give “5 Main Themes of SMO”, as opposed to specific rules.

I think my approach to SMO Success falls under two underlying assumptions:

1. The New Ruleset: If the Social Media is about “Engaging People” and “Conversation” why are we reading still reading just the Cluetrain Manifesto? We should be reading “How to Win Friends and Influence People” as well. Read up on it. Can you see how it applies online?
2. The Equation: “engagement + authenticity x audience reach”. Logic+Marketing has covered this and so has Scott Meyer at SES San Jose.

The 5 Themes of Search Media Optimization (SMO)

1. Understand, Cater, and Help Your Audience
   What is your audience like? Who are the influencers? How can you cater to them while still “keeping real” to both your audience and to what your website is about? And yes “keeping real” may even mean linking to your competitor in your resource guide.
2. The Internet is Alive, Make Your Web Site Alive Too
   Is your website static? Is is it fresh and engaging? Are you putting forward new content – be it published by you or UGC? How is it dynamic?
3. Treat the Audience Like People!
   Treat your audience as you would you would your acquaintances and friends. Be friendly, be real. For those that heckle at you, engage them in an honest conversation and find common ground. With those that love you, empower them – make them Evengelizers with “digg this” links to letting them borrow your stuff (”portable content” like YouTube).
4. Social Media is Not a Tool, It’s Today’s Internet Culture (and the Future’s?)
   Beyond SMO as a Strategic Plan, we see from blogs to MySpace to Digg that the Internet is become more social, interactive, and open than ever before. So “Social Media” is not just a term du jour, Social Media is becoming a part of the Internet Culture. If you’re on the Internet, it should be yours too.
5. The Internet is More than a Webpage on a Computer, What about You?
   Do you have useful and engaging content beyond the pages on your website? Video, Audio, Mobile-Accessibility, Widgets, downloadable PDF Whitepapers etc. Expand your network of influencers (bloggers, digg etc) and expand your network of content (PDFs, Video, allowing others to “port” your content elsewhere ala YouTube).

Thoughts? Let me know.

Related Links

1. 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)
   By Rohit Hargava
2. Rules of Social Media Optimization
   By Jeremiah Owyang
3. Introduction to Social Media Optimization
   Cameron Olthuis
4. New Rules for Social Media Optimization
   Lee Odden
5. Social Media Optimization : 13 Rules of SMO
   Loren Baker

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Between Closed Content Creation and CGM
Traditional link building is broken down to 1) link request; 2) reciprocal link building; and 3) link buying. While still important, this type of link building is essentially pre-CGM, which I’ll call “Closed Content Creation” (CCC). With the advent of CGM, the amount of content and links available have driven upwards astronomically.

How has CGM changed the Internet and Search Landscape (Collected at SES-SJ2006)?

• 44% of Internet users are “content creators” (Pew)
• 12% of top SERPs for Business Week 100 is CGM (Converseon Research)
• Then consider that “56% of Consumers say best source of information on products and services is other consumers” (McKinsey).

In this sort of situation, soliciting bloggers – every consumer content creators – to link to your website is neither a practical nor a scalable effort.

Enter the need of PR, WoM and Virals…

FareCast – PR Success for Link Building
FareCast, a travel site that predicts when its best to buy airfare, launched recently in public beta launch in June 26. FareCast is an example of a website that has greatly harnassed the power of online PR, climbing up tremendously in brand awareness, traffic and search engine presence

Appearing on heavy hitting blogs like TechCrunch.com and BattelleMedia.com has resulted in:

• First two weeks of public beta launch > 40% of traffic are from Blogs
• Traffic led by TechCrunch, BattelleMedia.com, Koktte.org, Del.icio.us, Consumerist and others
• 200 Blogs Post on FareCast in 3 weeks
• Has had seen their inbound links increase from ~368 to 1160 (June 06 to June 3), 1925 in July 25 and ~2600 today.
• del.icio.us links increase from ~600 to 1141 in 10 days (June 27 to July 05). This has slowed down to ~1500 today
• Google ranking between 18-22 for “cheap airline tickets”

(Source: Data gathered internally and from Farecast Blog)

From Blogs to the New York Times to Time Magazine
From the major influencers (TechCrunch and BattelleMedia), FareCast has built momentum to myriad of blogs and eventually to New York Times and most recently the Time Magazine’s top 50 websites. FareCast has credited the blogs for driving coverage in the New York Times.

Conclusion
With no emarketing or PPC campaign I am aware of, Farecast’s PR efforts has create a link building that is helping drive their awareness, traffic and search engine visibility. Traditionaly link building would not have resulted in 200 blog post (and one can assume links) in 3 weeks as easily as a well placed review on TechCrunch or Digg could.

However, it should also be mentioned that Farecast has a very interesting and unique service offering, something that not every travel website can say. Indeed, CGM and WoM efforts only succeed if the value proposition to the consumers is there. You can’t try to force the product or service like you can by buying-up all the TV commercial runnings you want.

Traditional link building will always be the baseline level of effort needed. But, if you are confident that your service/product is great enough that it will make you audience evangelizers (talk, link, blog about it), then pushing online PR efforts will produce great results.

Other Links

• SEOBook – “101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006” (August 15)
• SEOMOz – “SEO Strategies: Combining non-search optimization with search optimization” (August 15)

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1. Yahoo and Social Media:
   User Profile Building, Social Media CTR rates, Cultural Differences, Yahoo! Answers Opportunities for Marketers
2. On-site Analytics Vendors:
   Future of On-Site Analytics – Integrating Competitive Analytics?

Please Note: If anyone feels they or their company are misrepresented by this post, please feel free to email me or comment on the posting and let me know. I’m always open to constructive feedback and fair evaluations.

Yahoo and Social Media

Speakers:

• Kakul Srivastava, Senior Product Manager, Flickr, Yahoo! Inc.
• Yumio Saneyoshi, Senior Product Manager, Answers, Yahoo! Inc.
• Ashish Baldua, Senior Engineering Manager, TripPlanner, Yahoo! Inc.
• Tim Mayer, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Inc.
• Kakul Srivastava, Senior Product Manager, Flickr, Yahoo! Inc.
• Joshua Schachter, Director of Engineering, creator of del.icio.us

On Social Search, User Profiles and Advertisement
Responding to a question by yours truly, Tim Mayer answered that they have no current plans for user profiles and stressed the privacy issues associated with that. At least in the mid-term to long-term, Mayer said their goals were to grow the userbase for different social media properties. I was not sure if that included database integretion across the multiple properties as well.
Social Search/Media and Lower CTR Rates?
An attendee asked Tim Mayer if Yahoo finds that social media websites have lower CTR rates, which Tim said he could not answer. The argument that social media websites have lower CTR rates seem to make sense: Social Media websites have great stickiness and promote browsing behavior, behavior that may decrease “bailout” rate to other sites via ads.

Cultural Differences between Flickr, Del.icio.us and the rest
Hearing each speaker, the different Yahoo properties all seemed to come from very different cultures and perspective – most likely result of these properties like del.icio.us and flickr being bought by Yahoo rather developed in-house. Flickr and del.icio.us sounded very much like Internet purist of the dot-com era, focusing on the power of the Internet to change culture with flickr focusing on the “Culture of Sharing”. The Yahoo! Answers and TripPlanner folks seemed more focused on monetization in addition to growing their user base.

Yahoo! Answers on Monetization
The speaker for Yahoo Answers mentioned two experiments on monetization: branded Answer channels and sponsored experts. The idea of sponsored experts answering questions, say on behalf of Black & Decker, should sound very interesting to marketers and PR folks.

Vendor Chat on Measuring Success

Speakers: John Marshall (ClickTracks), Akin Arikan (Unica/NetTracker), Brett Crosby (Google Analytics), Chris Knoch (Omniture), Warren Raisch (WebSideStory) and Barry Parshall (WebTrends)

On the Future of Analytics: Adding Competitive Analytics?
All of the speakers stressed integration with bid management, A/B Testing, and email marketing tools. John Marshall of ClickTracks pointed out that analytics is helping to drive marketing, but there’s no links yet between analytics and CRM/Sales teams.

When I asked the speakres about the integration of on-site analytics (like comScore, HitWise) and competitive analytics, Chris Knoch (?) immediately jumped in and said it was coming soon and that there are partnerships and discussions occurring between on-site analytics tools and competitive analytics reports. Such a move would follow Hitwise quisition of HitDynamics, a search bid-management analytics company.

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The study found more than 60 percent of conversions were completed with one click on a marketer’s natural or paid listings. The other 37.3 percent of transactions were completed with at least one “assist” click on a marketer’s search listings. These multi-click conversions accounted for two-thirds of the total clicks measured in this study, according to David Berkowitz, director of strategic planning at 360i.

SEM and SEO Interplay
While the study is the first one I’ve seen covering conversion “assists” with hard statistics, the study itself is not news. For example, its been known that many search marketers have been tempted to kill bids on “unbranded” search terms because the ROI was on “branded” organic terms, only to find their ROI on “branded” search terms tank as a result. What’s happening is that searchers click from unbranded terms then coming back days, weeks later using branded terms and converting.

Indeed, the study finds:

[The second] most common progression led from a click on a paid result of a non-branded search to a click on a natural result of a branded search, which took place 22.4 percent of the time.

This study finally adds hard data that will better help recognize the interplay between SEO and SEM and also demonstrates theneed for a strong analytics tool that recognizes that conversion is a multi-step process, not based on a single point of entry (ads, organic listings, emails etc).

How to Measure SEO Success?
The report found that the most common path were “clicks on a natural result for a non-branded search [that] led to clicks on a natural result of a branded search”, which occurs 32.5% of the time.

There are two issues brought up by this statistics:

1. A user first coming to a site via “Unbranded Search” and comes back via a “Branded Search” means Branding is Happening via being present in the SERPs(organic listings)
2. Can you still define SEO success by the “quality” of the organic traffic?

The first part is a no brainer, but the second issue is more difficult.

Previously, high rankings were the metrics for SEO success and now its traffic quality and ROI converisons.

But what is traffic quality? If its about attracting new customers who have not heard of your company, it seems practical that measuring unbranded visitor traffic seems key. But, these visitors are most likely to convert when then switch from becoming “unbranded” visitors to “branded” visitors. Is your analytics tool tracking that?

For Google Analytics at least, the answer seems to be no:

[A] visitor may initially reach your site through a CPC ad and not make a purchase. Later, this visitor may return to your site via a tagged link in an email to make their purchase. In this case, Google Analytics will attribute the more recent campaign information to the resulting sale – the tagged link in the email.

Any comments for analytics folks?

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Yahoo! Answers creeping into Y! Serps

I’ve noticed that for question type queries “what is the…where can i…” not only is Yahoo! Answers mentioned on the bottom or top of Yahoo queries, but it is actually in the SERPs themselves, very often in the top 10 position.

Should SEO campaigns start thinking about including “social media building” – starting Yahoo Answer discussions or answering them – to appear in Yahoo Serps? This crosses the line of PR, WOM, brand reputation and possibly the now disfavored online guerilla marketing. What are the ethics? How can SEO consultants/team leaders work with so many different departments (PR, brand, etc)?

And of course, if this Yahoo trend keeps up, this brings me to a larger question:
What is a SERP?

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