Ah, SearchEngineStrategies San Jose- so this is where Summer has been keeping the sun and warm weather?

I knew yesterday’s keynote would be extremely well covered in search industry media, so my boss (Marty) suggested that I spend the evening to  ponder  Clay Shirky’s keynote, “Here Comes Everybody,” prior to my blogging.  He charged me to offer my take on Clay’s social and economic impact theories, from the perspective of a  relatively new marketing professional, entering our industry as an aimClear social media team member.

Social Media has undoubtedly given its users the ease of “organization without organizations.” Shirkey emphasized that never before in history have groups had the ability to be as organized and coordinated as we are today. Finally group conversation and interaction is possible.

There is sweet symmetry in online consumerism- with an online consumer creates the power of an online producer. However, and thankfully, most consumers don’t give a damn about producing, but many do and there is affordable technology for them to do so.

Motivations

Shirkey identified the three most important factors which drive us to be intrinsically motivated- the need to feel autonomous, competent and connected. These three motivations will get people to do things they usually wont and here’s the good news- if you pay them, it KILLS the motivation. So don’t pay people to get them to do something- just make them feel competent about it and that they’re doing it for the team. Try it on your kids- not your employees.

Mass Amaturization

Along with the ease of production comes laymen producers who are, well, amateurs. Shirkey explained though that they are not simply “sloppy pros” or want to be “little versions” of the big shots, they’re just producing content for the hell of it, and why not? The concept and availability of mass amateurization has brought these intrinsic motivations to the forefront- we can see the banal things people write about for themselves, their friends and their niche community.

Yes- I Am A Narcissist But At Least  My Mom Cares…

This point reminds me my friends’ response to Twitter- “How narcissistic!” they said, “People don’t care if you had an awesome sandwich from the Amazing Grace Cafe?” Well, sure, not everybody cares, but my friends do because they want to stay connected and feel a part of my life and the cafe cares because they just got a little shout-out on a very public platform. Shirkey made the point that we are not used to seeing things in the public that aren’t meant for the public. And because the cost of participation is so low, in both a monetary and time sense, the logic “why publish?” morphs into “why NOT publish?”.

Hindsight is 20/20

Clearly hindsight in 20/20 once we realize the consequences of our actions we can then better asses what we should have done. Similairly, Shirkey points out that “only things that are really important are only important in retrospect.” So true. Well, except for the Web, we all knew that’d be huge. Duh. Moral of the story- don’t be afraid to try the new platforms, get your hands dirty, if it doesn’t work out then- whatever man, but if it does you’ll reep the rewards.

In this SES New York session, veterans of  the first online marketing downturn discussed strategies that helped them survive those difficult times and how they intend to continue to survive and thrive. The Moderator is Sara Holoubek, Consultant, Columnist and SEMPO Board of Directors.

Speakers/Panelists: Bryan Eisenberg, SES Advisory Board, Co-Founder, Future Now, Inc., Jason Ciment, CoFounder, LaDezign.com, Bob Myhal, President, MuscleMaster, and Kevin Lee, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Didit

Sara Holoubek facilitated a very spirited panel discussion that centered on the state of the Internet marketing food chain in 2009 and how it compared to 1999. She opened the session by asking the panel, “What were you doing in 1999?

BE: Doing some work in SEO. Went to an incubator and was told to “focus on your core strength”. And merrily down the path of “Conversion” he went.

JS: Was following Brian E like the pied piper. Started down the yellow brick road of “Conversion” and the rest is history.

BM: Was doing everything from building sites to packing boxes. Started building raw html sites.

KL: Transitioned from organic SEO into paid Search. Wrote a book about Best Practices in SEO.

The panel discussed the Economics 2009 vs 1999 and focused on a few key points.

• There are always going to be market fluctuations up and down. It is the people and businesses that act in these hard times that will get ahead and develop.

• A lot of competitors are falling by the wayside and so there are interesting opportunities to consider. Acquisition of competitors is one of the key opportunities that arise during tough economic times. Acquire (competitors) and leverage( market position and product value).

• Lifetime values (long term results) used to work but now you need to show immediate results to validate ROI.

• You must consistently look for new avenues. “Every time you transform your company your competitor set changes”. With the evolution of your business the market dynamics constantly shift and realign.

When in doubt, Think about the client. Showing your customers that you care for them and will go to the ends of the earth is great strategy and will go a long ways towards success.

• Your most valuable source for business growth is your existing client base and finding new ways to serve them.  Be innovative, creative and nimble.
• Million dollar a month spenders share a philosophy of “Real success comes from constant execution.” “Measure and prove, measure and prove.”

The economy is Broken. Consumer confidence is at an all time low. What can we do?

• Keep customers happy. Communicate often with your client base.
• Become experts in particular industry niches. Focused disciplines.
• Get back to basics. The fundamentals of marketing and consumerism do not change. They evolve but they don’t change.

Key differences between 1999 and 2009
• Data is plentiful and immediate. Use it to your client’s advantage. Americans tend to be numerically illiterate and marketers need to invest in educating their client base to become Data smart.
• There has been a seismic shift in speed. Everything from bidding landscapes to execution of marketing plans relies on greater efficiency speed and nimbleness. The velocity of business today quickly weeds out those businesses that cannot react quickly enough. “You must learn to eliminate the losers faster.” KL

Looking ahead:
• Kill the crap in your campaigns. Don’t waste. “Verbosity kills velocity “(mine)
• Be ruthless. Eliminate Lazy money and make sure that you can measure, and target to support your ROI. Optimize your opportunities.
• Listen to your Customers. “Miles Davis was famous and admired not only for what he played, but how he used the silence between the notes.” JC

Brian Eisenberg then asked the audience “How many of you have set programs in place to improve your conversion rates?”
• 90% of all online traffic does not result in a conversion. It is critical to optimize the traffic you already have and look for improvements.
• Conversion enhancement does not stop at the Thank you page, It can occur at every single touch point (offline/online). You really need to target your sites and focus your messaging.
• Casting a broad net is becoming less and less effective.

Holy Content Batman!
The holy grail of SEO is getting content that is topical, valuable and relevant.

• The consumers post click experience is vital. How well do you engage them? Do you have the right content and experience in place to meet their demands and needs? Remember that it’s a 2 way street.

• Great content is king. It is getting much harder to compete through the “content noise” that currently gums up the web. The nature of content has shifted. If you value your customers you will provide valuable content.

• There is 40 times more competition for content than before and web traffic has increased a mere 3%. It is becoming tougher and tougher to successfully execute content rich sites.

• The whole search system has not changed much from 1999 except for one big change…Universal search (google). You need 5 times as much content to compete today as was required just 10 years ago.

Ultimatley is comes down to Basic Marketing principals. Satisfy the customer. They have more control in the buying continuum than ever before. Give them value and they will convert with you. Provide quality and engaging content and a valuable experience. Product reviews, blogs, some form of deeper engagement. This will help move customers forward in the buying process. In a nutshell:

• Be good to your customers
• Be innovative for your customers
• React to what your customers tell you
• Measure all of your actions and results
• Reapeat, repeat repeat.

The entire panel agreed across the board to get back to basics and remember that one size does not fit all. As true in 2009 as it was in 1999.

Searching for a Solution: Impact of Today’s Economy on the Search Landscape Moderator: Introduction by: Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board, Principal, Page Zero Media, Speakers/Panelists:  Solo Presentation by: Jack Flanagan, Executive Vice President, comScore Inc.

Jack Flanagan EVP of comScore analyzed the current state of the U.S. online economy, with a particular focus on the search landscape. The presentation included an in-depth analysis of consumers’ online behavior as well as insights from recent comScore research, helping Search Marketers to gain a better understanding of what they can do to maximize their business during these challenging times.

Moderator Andrew Goodman welcomed everyone to the sounds of classic rock (Boston) and quickly got any corporate and personal plugs out of the way.  He set the tone for the session by asking the audience : How gloomy should we be? What are the real numbers beyond economic statistics? Where are we headed in 2009 and beyond?

And with that he introduced Jack Flanagan, EVP comScore Inc.. Jack’s presentation tackled 3 areas

1.Window into the mind of the consumer

2.A year in review of eCommerce trends

3.The Role of Search in todays economic environment
All of the data presented was compiled by comScore and provided a 360 degree view of how people use search worldwide.
1.Window into the mind of the consumer

• A new year a new outlook: Consumer confidence is at an historic low point. The pessimism of 2008 has definitely carried over into 2009
• 80% of consumers are afraid of their economic future.
• Unemployment and job security has become the top consumer search concern in 2009.
• Concern over Financial markets and prices has declined year over year (08/09).
•More consumers are cutting back on overall spending. Especially dramatic in the income bracket of $50,000 and under.

As the economy worsened in 2008 there was a dramatic increase of people conducting financial/economic related searches across the Web. The largest growth categories were related to unemployment and coupons.All income segments have seen an increase in the use of coupons. 46% increase year to year (09/08)

• 50% of consumers are using Coupons on a consistent basis
• 40% of consumers consistently utilize the weekly Sunday coupon Fliers.
• 29% regularly use online coupons.
• 40% of the US population are now using Comparative Shopping sites as a regular part of their purchase cycle.

Interesting tidbit:
Approximately 52% of US consumers are utilizing the internet as a way to reduce and deal with stress. Slightly more than those who utilize television for the same purpose (50%).

2. The Year in review

• eCommerce growth was substantially lower in 2008 than in the preceding years.
• Online sales growth decelerated throughout 2008 while retail sales were held up by inflation until the 4Q.
• Q4 2008 online spending was especially dramatic (down 17%) in the mid to low income ($50,000 and under) consumer bracket.
• eCommerce has grown by 2% in Jan 2009 (yr over yr 08).
• Spending growth has slowed significantly in the upper income bracket, but has subsequently stabilized in the mid to low ($50,000 and under) consumer group.

3. The role of search in today’s economy

• The internet is important to at least 60% of all US consumers. With 50% citing an increase in use yr over yr.
• Jack identified 3 key components to current online conversion trends (based on a 60 day purchase continuum)
1. Direct online effect (conversion/sales) – 16%
2. Latent online effect (subsequent action upon return to site) – 21%
3. Latent offline effect (People purchase at Bricks and mortar) – 63%

Interesting tidbit #2:
Only 7% of retail purchases currently take place online.

Jack’s advice  to retailers going forward:
• Online sales can fuel in store sales.  Retailers should focus on targeting those consumers who are more inclined to look online as part of there purchasing regimen.
• There is a appreciable impact of online advertising/marketing to boost instore (Bricks and Mortar) sales.
• There is a dramatic conversion lift (online) when both online display ads and search ads are used in conjunction to drive sales. It is clearly advantageous to use both.

The presentation then shifted gears with a case study of DSW (shoe retailer).

These shoes were made for Clicking

Jack Flanagan explained that even in a soft economy the online Apparel/Accessories category had grown traffic by 2% Jan yr over yr (08/09). DSW experienced a traffic growth of 238% Jan yr over yr (08/09)

How was this possible? What was the strategy?

• They migrated their online approach from SEO to SEM in 2009. in 2008 virtually none of their clicks were paid. In 2009 52% of their clicks were paid.
• They centered there 2009 bidding on a mix of both branded and non branded terms. 2008 100% of their bidding was for branded clicks. 2009  they achieved a balance of 71% branded and 29% non branded clicks.
• In January 2009 DSW had 1.8million paid ad impressions that netted over 270,000 paid clicks and resulted in a 14.9% click through rate (skewed heavily by the DSW branded click strategy).

DSW also implemented a clear display advertising strategy to work in conjunction with the bidding strategy. Jack Flanagan called this their “Move from nothing to everything”.

• In January of 2008 DSW utilized a nominal amount of online display advertising.
• With the application of a strong display advertising program in 2009 they experienced 57 million ad impressions.
• They deployed strong Call to actions (“Free Shipping” ,“Shop now”) and adhered to a system of consistent messaging throughout their search copy and content.
• The result is that DSW has doubled its search traffic yr over yr.
• The impact of the aggressive display advertising strategy has had a dramatic affect on their overall business.

Mr. Flanagan’s Closing thoughts, “It’s a tough market out there.”

• Know your customer
• Know your marketplace
• Don’t underestimate the power of paid search
• Paid search and online display advertising are a powerful combo.
• Be consistent
• Be patient
The session was followed by a quick Q & A. Overall a high quality presentation by an excellent presenter. .

Same As It Ever Was
In reality participating in an online social community is not very different from the physical human experience as we make our way though life. If you’ve ever recommended a restaurant to an associate, taken your kids to a local community center swimming pool, read a theater review, offered your opinion at a social gathering, or set up a buddy for a blind date you’re already a social media expert. The point of divergence is that online tools make the art of relationships easier.

While there is certainly a lot of misunderstanding out there regarding what social media is and how it works, corporate America (as evidenced by the deer-in-the-headlight look we sometimes see in new clients’ faces) has figured out that user generated media can blow the hell out of your Brand. Our children communicate and participate with their peers using modern online networking tools. More and more traditional “search” functions are moderated by user reviews and other input from humans.

Actually, nothing much has really changed. Though the tools social media bring to the festival of human interactions have streamlined the process and made global personal networking a reality, all social media sites share some or all of the following common attributes:

Voting on, sharing, and bookmarking content
Voting on, sharing, and bookmarking people
Searching for content
Searching for people
Making friends
Rejecting people
Gaining personal authority

This is no different than the physical world. We vote, share, bookmark, search, make friends, and gain authority in our physical lives every day. Rotary Club members elect leaders. Friends gossip about other friends and recommend music. We call each other on our cell phones and send text messages to our mother to say “hello I love you.”.

Finding Wings
That said what makes social media sites so alluring for many is that voting and bookmarking site mechinisms provide varying degrees of enticing anonymity and socially acceptable voyeurism. This can help folks get over inhibitions and amplify those who aren’t shy to begin with.

Whereas in life it’s not good behavior to lurk outside a prospective soulmates window and observe the content and people THEY bookmark and vote on, in some sites polite and respectful versions of this behavior is encouraged. It’s possible to be shy, deep, and become an authority figure on the strength of valuable content, commentary, friends, and insight you bring to an online community.

Social media is really a logical extension of the natural life we lead in the physical world. Ask any married couple who met on the Internet if social media tools are plastic or somehow less personal than the physical world and they’ll debunk your misperception in a hurry.

Interesting Social Media Links:
Smogger Social Media Blog

The Social Media Marketing Blog

SEOmoz | Social Media Marketing, eh? Let’s See What’s in Our Bag of Goodies.

Social Media: Social media adopted by big business

5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Graywolf’s SEO Blog

Social Media / Social Networking – Lisa Whelan’s Blog on Vox

The survey, which is fascinating, classified ten specific user-types that fit into three more general categories: Elite Users (31%), Middle of the road (20%), and those with limited “tech assets” who don’t use technology (a gigantic 49%). Here is a verbatim rendering of Pew’s classification data:

Technology Elites
Omnivores (8%): They have the most information gadgets and services, which they use voraciously to participate in cyberspace, express themselves online, and do a range of Web 2.0 activities. Most in this group are men in their mid- to late twenties.

Connectors (7%): Between featured-packed cell phones and frequent online use, they connect to people and manage digital content using ICTs (information and
communications technology) – with high levels of satisfaction about how ICTs let them work with community groups and pursue hobbies.

Lackluster Veterans (8%): They are frequent users of the internet and less avid about cell phones. They are not thrilled with ICT-enabled connectivity and don’t see them as tools for additional productivity. They were among the internet’s early adopters.

Productivity Enhancers (8%): They have strongly positive views about how technology lets them keep up with others, do their jobs, and learn new things. They are frequent and happy ICT users whose main focus is personal and professional communication.

Middle-of-the-Road Users
Mobile Centrics (10%): They fully embrace the functionality of their cell phones. They use the internet, but not often, and like how ICTs connect them to others. 37% have high-speed internet connections at home. The group contains a large share of African Americans.

Connected but Hassled (10%): They have invested in a lot of technology (80% have broadband at home), but they find the connectivity intrusive and information something of a burden.

Low Tech and Non Users
Inexperienced Experimenters (8%): They occasionally take advantage of interactivity, but if they had more experience and connectivity, they might do more with ICTs. They are late adopters of the internet. Few have high-speed connections at home.Pew-Research-Categorizes-Web-2-point-0-

Light but Satisfied (15%): They have some technology, but it does not play a central role in their daily lives. They are satisfied with what ICTs do for them. They like how information technology makes them more available to others and helps them learn new things.

Indifferents (11%): Despite having either cell phones or online access, these users use ICTs only intermittently and find connectivity annoying. Few would miss a beat if they had to give these things up.
Off the Network (15%): Those with neither cell phones nor internet connectivity tend to be older adults. A few of them have computers or digital cameras, but they are content with old media.

Real like a Heart Attack
Like it or not YouTube users create commercials for brand products every day in droves. The commercials, which are sometimes negative, bastardize and segment brands into little pieces that will keep you up late at night as 450,000 potential customers download the latest pro or con rant about your product.

Take this YouTube search for Chevy Truck which returns pages upon pages of user generated media about any twisted aspect of the brand. I like the video where an emotional male shares the experience of shepherding his truck over the 250K mile mark. Ask yourself how this ad might affect a potential Chevy customer.

Compare this how Honda might feel about this video of a Honda Odyssey burning on the freeway. 

 

The irony is that, in the anarchistic simplicity of user generated content, video in this context can still inspire an emotional response from the audience-hence the content’s viral nature. To the accomplished brand marketer this is either the best thing that every happened or the worst nightmare possible.

How to Handle YouTube
So now what should brand managers do about YouTube. Well, the first thing is to monitor it. Assign an employee to do daily or weekly direct brand searches of YouTube to see if anyone out there is expressing themselves in video regarding your brand.

If you find anything, either ugly or great, don’t be afraid to join into the debate in a respectful way. YouTube is a social community where people contact each other and interact. Corporate comments can be viral in nature too and everyone loves it when “corporate” weighs in.  As a word of caution, take the high road in the comments thread, check with your legal department, and think your reaction through before you hit the submit button. You can never get it back.

To close, consider creating your own homemade videos to post on YouTube regarding your brand. Brainstorm ways to communicate the equity of your brand in clever offbeat ways. Blendtec’s famous “Will it blend?” series is one of my favorites.

Squidoo’s founder Seth Goodin knows that the wrong thing to do is try to trick a search engine  into sending traffic you don’t deserve. He saw a huge need in the marketplace a for human beings to act as a necessary step in-between the SERPs and the searcher’s final destination. Squidoo’s results have attained significant organic prominence on Google and Yahoo in some highly contested keyword spaces. [Get full SES coverage @ SES Roundtable]
This social media channel is worth checking out. Squidoo’s methodology is based on the premise that the best way to gain organic prominence is to “open deep content up to the search engines in a highly organized structure where the fans of your product give thoughtful hand-built explanations of what they know.”  If you do that you are doing exactly what the search engines want you do, putting relevant and meaningful results on the SERP.
 

To drive this home they shared some brand-related keywords turning up in “normal” Google SERPs within view of consumers. Given the investment most large companies make in branding, it’s a no longer optional  as the whether a company monitors and defends the SERPs video results. I have some large clients who would would fall over dead to discover such an uncontrollable subversion of the brand.

Below I show the keyword, search frequency annually (Trellian Global Database), how many documents were returned, and how many documents contained all of the keywords in their title tag.  Take a careful look. Some of the keyword spaces are relativly uncontested (with  different scales of search volume). Other keyword spaces could be a more serious undertaking to increase your rank for.

I would like to note that in nearly every search I undertook in orginizing this post, I found wikipedia.com results ranking higher than video. If any of you bloggers would be interested in sharing faciniating links, feel free to comment with SERPs for video in normal search engines. youTube is not the only game in town so it would be fun to hear about long tail results from smaller video sites.

Beyoncé
Annual searches: 1,168,180 (Trellian Global DB annual searches)
23,800,000 documents for beyonce
636,000 for allintitle
Google page 2

CSI Miami
Annual searches: searches 79,787
1,870,000 dcuments for csi miami.
allintitle:”csi miami”
Google page 1Mentos
Annual searches: 8,338
5,830,000 documents for mentos
77,700 for allintitle:mentos
Google page 1

Altoids
Annual searches: 14,022
1,030,000 documents for altoids
20,600 for allintitle:altoids
Google page 2

Gatorade
Annual searches: 69,751
3,430,000 for gatorade
132 for allintitle:gaterade
Google page 2

Michael Richards
Annual searches: 4,926
27,000 documents for allintitle:michael Richards
8,030,000 for michael richards
Google page 1

Kramer
Annual searches: 21,633 (these were some smart viral thinkers)
29,600,000 documents for kramer
639,000 for allintitle:kramer
Google page 2

Predicting Future Keywords
Both wordTracker (12/06 – 3/07) and Trellian (2/06-2/07) were reporting that no searches were queried for “yahoo small business hosting bug” and other keywords which might be associated with the outage. Still, since lots of people host .php applications on Yahoo Small Business Hosting servers. We wanted to experiment with attaining ranking on the search engine results page (SERP) for what we believed would be a future pocket of searches that were easy to attain rankings for now while the phrases were uncontested. Here’s the thinking in 6 steps.

First We Identified our Target Demographic
The search for “yahoo small business hosting bug” returns about 1,220,000 documents. It was easy to attain the #1 ranking because there are only 2 pages on the Internet with the literal keyword in the title tag (the article on aimClear and the post of it on Digg.com).

Getting the #1 was not that big a deal. (Sometimes SEO firms attain easy prominence and boast about #1’s that anyone could easily attain-that’s not what we’re doing). In this case the concept of predicting keyword space and attaining easy #1 rankings in advance is an interesting study. The concept of this experiment could be scaled.

Predicting the Future
It was reasonable to believe that there would be a new micro-niche revealed in upcoming keyword research data, the community of those experiencing these Yahoo Small Business Hosting errors…mostly technical web development people around the world…people aimClear care about communicating with. In other words we wanted to experiment with predicting a future keyword universe that targets a demographic that matters to us while it was easy.

Yahoo’s tech support guys called it a “bug” to us on the phone 4 times across 3 different reps and 2 calls. It is therefore likely that these particular Yahoo reps “spun” the problem (a nasty recurrent HTTP 500 Error Internal Server Error) by using the word “bug”. It was an interesting theory to speculate that Yahoo tech reps were using the term bug to describe the problem with other customers.

To Start: In spite of the non-existent literal searches for Yahoo Small Business Hosting server 500 error keywords:

1) The spectrum of people who searched last year withYahoo Small Business questions in general last year was 7412. Here are the top searches and according to Keyword Discovery (Trellian).

Search Term Searches Words Ads (Google) Ads (Yahoo)
yahoo small business web hosting 3493 5 9 8
business hosting small web yahoo 1361 5 9 0
sbc yahoo small business web hosting 702 6 9 0
yahoo small business hosting 399 4 8 7
small business web hosting yahoo 322 5 8 8
business hosting small yahoo 281 4 7 7
yahoo small business e mail hosting 239 6 10 0
discover yahoo small business hosting 45 5
yahoo small business web hosting 20 42 6
business free hosting small web yahoo 40 6
ecommerce hosting solutions from yahoo small business 35 7
yahoo small business web hosting domain name hosting 30 8
yahoo small business mail hosting 27 5
business hosting sbc small web yahoo 26 6
small business web yahoo hosting paypal 23 6
hosting yahoo small business hosting articles hosting 13 8
yahoo small business website hosting 13 5

2) As you can see in the Trellian analysis, a number of advertisers are interested the SERP.

3) In fact there are 3 advertisers for the long tail (previously statistically irrelevant) search Yahoo Small Business Hosting Bug…all ads from Register.com and Yahoo.com (probably content match ads because they target ALL related searches including the broad words). YAHOO cares about these search results because they know they are having problems with hosting and “bug” is the word the Yahoo tech support reps sometimes use.

4) As a result one could reasonably predict that a long tail niche’ of words related to “error,” “bug,” “issue” etc…would show in the next keyword reporting period.

5) In our Google Analytics report for www.aimClear.com last week the micro-niche did in fact appear-a number of organic searches which resulted in traffic to the page from Google alone. The phrases driving organic search traffic to aimClear included Yahoo Small Business Hosting Bug, Problems with Yahoo Small Business and other keywords related to the outage. The commonality among the associated keywords resulting in traffic is that none of the keywords were searched for AT ALL in both wordTracker and Keyword Discovery’s recent reporting period.

6) Google Analytics revealed that we recieved noticable traffic to our article about the hosting issues at Yahoo category from organic search regarding the Yahoo issue. All of the search keywords which resulted in organic traffic were not searched for at all last year. We predicted the future keyword space. If the problem at Yahoo Small Business Hosting had continued past the 3 days of trouble, other bloggers would write about might have discovered out article and written about it. It turns out that the issue was only an ugly 3-day blip. Therefore, at the end of the day-all that happened was an easy win us for a contested keyword hardly anyone searches for.

What We Learned
The good news is that the concept of predicting statistically relevant areas of search from current events was validated. The people who DO search for related issues are the kind of people we care about. If there had been a prolonged problem at Yahoo, aimClear might have received even more traffic from the prescient approach in predicting keyword spaces. We still received hundreds of unique visitors from the experiement.

A Contextual Revolution
Search Marketing is arguably the most relevant development in the history of communication since the spoken word. Customers’ interests, behaviors, and inclination to congregate in communities are now measurable and can be targeted. The ROI of marketing, advertising, and PR tactics on the Internet is measurable. Search Metrics data is immediately transferable to traditional “brick” channels. Meanwhile those channels are being rolled into the Internet, the origin of search marketing values.

This is SO Much More Important than the Internet. Understanding the interests and behaviors of target audiences is crucial when crafting any message disseminated in any channel whether Internet, broadcast media, print, or other traditional channels.

The SEO Ethic
The underlying ethics of search marketing are essential to assimilate as all channels fold into Internet and mobile search. Communications professionals must adapt thier methods or risk becoming irrelevant over time for lack of understanding of emerging channels.

Top 6 Reasons to Engage a Search Marketing Firm

To facilitate your team in making your website discoverable for keywords that matter to your customers relating to your services

To advise your marketing and PR campaigns in “traditional” communication channels with customer interest and behavior metrics

To assist your strategic and tactical processes by informing your team regarding rapidly evolving “brick and click” hybrid communication paradigms.

To inform your team regarding essential developments in Internet channels

To augment your multi-channel communications campaigns by offering additional channels and tactics to cast a wider net
To support building systems to track ROI for paid Internet marketing expenditures.