Welcome back to aimClear’s coverage of #SESSF 2011! The ever elusive PPC Quality Score, often regarded as enigmatic a mystery right up there with the ancient sphinx, has attracted, baffled, bewildered, and haunted many a marketer since the dawn of paid search. Day 3 of Search Engine Strategies, San Fran edition brought about the Ads in a Quality Score World session, where moderator Matt Van Wagner led panelists Fred Vallaeys from Google, Paul Corkery from Microsoft, and Craig Danuloff, Founder of Click Equations and author of the bookQuality Score in High Resolution, who dropped some serious Quality Score knowledge. If SES sessions had a Quality Score, this one would certainly be a 10. And I’m thinking of ways to weight those variables Read on for the full recap.

Matt began by conceptualizing quality score at a high-level. Quality Score is meant to give you a hint of where you are doing well in your PPC campaigns and where you could stand to improve. He likened Quality Score to the concept of “nudge economics.” Nudge economics is the idea of giving people clues, positive rewards and/or negative penalties to steer them in the right direction.

A good example of nudge economics can be found in a human behavior study done in an Amsterdam airport a few years back. In the study, images of flies were literally etched into the men’s porcelain urinals. The idea was that by giving these poor aiming gents something to point at, the amount of spillage would be reduced. It worked.

First to the podium was Fred Vallaeys. Fred examined Google Quality Score at a high level.

What is Google Quality Score?Google Quality Score is an approximation of how Google expects a keyword to perform with unique scores for each query on a scale from 1–10.

Why does Quality Score matter? There are a number of reasons:

1. Eligibility – Quality Score really determines eligibility to show up for a particular keyword. You cannot simply expect to show an ad for any given keyword at any given time, it must be relevant to what you are selling.
2. Position – Determines relative position of your ad in relation to other ads. Ad rank is calculated by maximum cost per click multiplied by Quality Score. If you double your Quality Score you double your Ad rank.
3. Ad extensions – Determines if your ad is of high enough quality to use new ad formats. These formats typically show up when your ad is at the top of the page. Ad extensions often time have a higher CTR.
4. Price – A better Quality Score reduces the price you need to bid to maintain a given position. If you double your quality score you only need to pay half the CPC to maintain the same position. You can effectively decrease your cost by increasing your Quality Score.
5. Top slot – Only high quality ads are eligible to appear to above the natural search results. Not every ad is eligible to show at the top of the page. Google wants to show the best link at the top of the SERP no matter if that is an organic listing or a paid ad. For some keywords you will notice an ad at the top of the SERP and others ads remain on the right hand side. This is because Google has determined that a commercial or ad result is not appropriate for that particular search query.
6. DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion) – Only ads with high enough Quality Score can use dynamic keyword insertion.

What goes into Quality Score?
Click-through rate (CTR) = clicks/impressions

• This is by far, the most important factor influencing Quality Score.
• Google does not want to be the one determine if an ad is successful or not. Instead they let searchers be the judge.
• Google looks at CTR at the account, creative and keyword level

Other relevance factors

• Google uses relevancy signals unique to the specific query to help inform our quality predictions.
• Context: java (coffee) vs Java (programming language )vs. Java (travel)
• Time of day: More research driven searches are focused in the morning, more transaction queries in afternoon.

Landing Page Quality
Landing page score started as a Quality Score element algorithmically determined, now it is more on the policy side. Landing page quality is used to police serious offenders of Google’s landing page guidelines.

Affiliate marketing affected this in a big way when they introduced doorway or interstitial landing pages, which essentially put one more step in between the searcher retrieving the information they are after.

At the end of the day, come to terms with your Quality Score. Even if you have done everything right, you might not have a perfect Quality Score, but if it is making you money then it may be in your best interest to keep running it.

Paul Corkery was next up to the podium. Paul is SMB Operations Program Manager at Microsoft. He spoke about the Microsoft AdCenter Quality Score.

AdCenter Quality Score is similar to Google AdWords in that it is on a 1-10 scale with 10 being the best. It is measured at the match type level, so you may see different Quality Scores for different match types of the same keyword or phrase. Underneath there are 3 sub-scores:

1. Keyword relevance (measure of your click-through rate normalized for position relative to the rest of the market place for that keyword and match type combination.)
   
2. Landing page relevance (Looks at your entire query set for a given keyword.  How relevant is your landing page to the query users are searching for.
3. Landing page user experience (Microsoft looks to see if the experience is useful to the searcher. They want to make sure the experience provided is a quality one and not littered with adSense ads and banners)

AdCenter Quality Score is designed to represent how competitive your keyword is in the market place. It is a barometer which determines how much optimization head room you have in order to improve your performance. It is different from Google in that it is not focused on determining what you pay by multiplying maximum CPC by Quality Score. It is more of an indicator of all the other factors that go into Microsoft’s ranking algorithm.

AdCenter Quality Score is accessible through AdCenter Web UI, AdCenter desktop and reporting API.

Optimizing using AdCenter Quality Score

• 7 – 10: No problem zone. You’re doing a good job!
• 6: Market place average. Apply CTR focused optimizations by loading negative keywords and refining ad copy.
• 1-5: Keyword is under-performing the market place which will lead to limited impressions. Look into the sub-scores to understand what is required here.

Sub-score
Keyword relevance

• Good: You’re doing well.
• No problem: no action required, but could use some optimization
• Poor: Performing below the marketplace

Landing page relevance

• No problem: No worries
• Poor: Optimize, optimize, optimize that landing page.

Landing page user experience

• No problem: No worries
• Poor: Look at AdCenter documentation and help regarding policies and guidelines.

Last to the podium was Craig Danuloff. Craig’s presentation focused on the advanced aspects of Quality Score. He examined the surprises he ran into while writing his book. Craig began by admitting Google Quality Score is by far one of the most confusing and confounding aspects of paid search.

Quality Score surprises

1. Visible Quality is not Quality Score
2. Actual Quality Score factors
3. There is no formula

Visible Quality Score is not Quality Score

• Quality Score  reports is not the Quality Score AdWords uses
• It doesn’t consider search queries
• It partially considers geography
• It blends performance of all ads
• It uses a different numeric scale
• Its updated far less frequently
• It’s a clue. It’s all we’ve got.

Actual Quality Score factors are not hard to see though

• Historic CTR of the account
  • home tab
• CTR of keyword-ad copy pairs
  • ad tab, download report with keyword + pl segment
• Search query CTR
  • dimensions, view search term
• Geographic CTR
  • dimensions, view geographic
• Display URL CTR
  • dimensions, view display URL

There is no formula for Quality Score

• It adapts to  the situation
• It uses the best available information
• It favors one set of factors for new accounts
• It favors another for established accounts
• It treats new keywords differently than old keywords

One thing to note if you are a new account, AdWords will look at how others have performed in that keyword space to determine Quality Score. In some “neighborhoods” it is simply difficult to prove you’re the good guy or the exception. Verticals such as weight loss and pharmaceuticals have been playgrounds for rather unsavory PPC activity which has led to Google creating a rather high barrier to entry.

Quality Score is really a prediction of the future based on the past. Google is trying to estimate how good of an advertiser you’re going to be on a keyword at that moment. Will you be a good advertiser for the end user and for yourself and how much money will you make Google? Google looks at this data and determines who is most likely to do better and places those advertisers at the top. In doing this they have to use the best available data they have access to.

If you open a brand new account today and begin bidding on keywords you have never bid on before you will receive a Quality Score fairly quickly. However, at this point Google doesn’t have very many clues that will assist them in determining how you are likely to perform. At this point they look at how other advertisers do in this space.

Over time as you garner clicks and gather positive performance data that shows AdWords you are doing well, there is a shift in the weighting placed on Quality Score variables. It is important to understand this shift in variable weight over time.

Everything is irrelevant

• The dictionary definition of “relevance” is not applied in Quality Score
• google relies on the ‘wisdom of the crowd’
• If people click on the ad than it is relevant. The keyword doesn’t necessarily drive Quality Score.

There are two kinds of relevance

• Yet relevance still matters, because it drives clicks
• Horizontal relevance (query/keyword/copy/page)
• Vertical relevance % of all searches about that
• You can control vertical, but you can’t control horizontal
• Some keywords aren’t for you

Things to Keep in Mind

• Anything below a six shouldn’t be in your account.
• Just because you want to bid on a keyword, doesn’t mean people will click on it
• Advertisers are insanely stubborn in sticking with keywords that aren’t working, but remember that 70% of the keywords in your account should be 7 and above.
• If something isn’t performing well, turn it off, it is hurting the rest of your account.
• 20% clicks are 4 or 5 it hurts you.

Quality Score Anomaly
When Quality Score goes up, sometimes your cost goes up and your rank goes down. This is an anomaly where you are ranking for a broader number of keywords.

Quality Score myth list

• There are ad group Quality Scores
• There are campaign Quality Scores
• There are account Quality Scores
• Quality Score only calculates when keyword = query
• Keywords in text ads improve Quality Score
• Keywords on landing pages improve Quality Score
• Single keyword ad groups improve Quality Score
• Some (old) accounts always get good Quality Score
• Testing text ads can have negative Quality Score impact
• You can know the cost/savings of a Quality Score change
• There are no keywords with Quality Score of 8 or 9

Quality Score is your friend

• Google has engineered a win-win-win system
• If you treat people well, and satisfy them (clicks), then you will do well
• Answering specific questions in persuasive ways works
• Exceptions exist but should be treated as such
• There is no better metric for summarizing account status

This was an excellent session with great takeaways. These fellows certainly left the audience with things to think about and actionable items to employ in their own endeavors to achieve that sweet spot in that evasive algorithm known as… the Quality Score.

Post image courtesy of tim846.

Those at #SESCHI 2010 witnessed the epic battle of PPC vs. SEO. Queue the Rocky-theme music! In the red corner we’ve got SEO, and in the blue corner is PPC. This session saw the likes of Julie Batten, VP of media strategies with Klick Communications, and Stacie Susens, director of client strategy and development with Resolution Media, square off over which is the best online marketing tactic. aimClear live-tweeted this session (via @lindsaylorraine). Read on for full coverage of the pros and cons of both sides of the SEM debate, & find out which prevailed in the Search Engine Strategies ring…

Jamie Smith, CEO of Engine Ready, refereed the rounds, and threw in a couple punches of his own. Real estate for top organic rankings is getting diluted due to product extensions, local search, and more, he said. In fact, there might only be one organic ranking above the fold once you open those product extensions. He offered the following tip to optimize an integrated paid and organic search engine marketing initiative:

If your page is among the first couple organic positions in the SERP, try aiming for the lower PPC positions on the page. If you are lower in the organic ranking, aim for a higher position in paid search results. That way, when a user scrolls the page, your result (whether organic or paid) is always visible.

Jamie’s company conducted a study of PPC vs. SEO over the course of three years to determine which method was better for e-commerce companies. The results showed a significant increase in conversion rates of paid visitors each year, while organic traffic conversion rates stayed relatively flat. The value-per-visitor has skyrocketed for paid, but again, it remained flat for organic visitors.

“So, PPC all the way, right?” Jamie asked. Not necessarily. Which method to use should be individually decided based on business model, target market and metrics.

Round 1: SEO
Up next was Julie Batten to discuss the merits of SEO. She kicked off her presentation by asking the audience:

• If I only have $1 to spend, should I spend it on PPC or SEO?

The bashful audience was slow to raise their hands (perhaps too busy live-tweeting?)… surely $1 would get them JACK!  One dollar is a different story than $1,000, but nevertheless, Julie offered five reasons why investing in SEO is the better choice across the board:

1. Organic results are clicked more frequently than paid. Organic captures between 85-90% of clicks.
2. SEO is under-invested based on performance.
3. SEO builds long-term incremental value, meaning SEO continues to pay off months later. On the other hand, when a PPC campaign stops, traffic stops.
4. SEO does not require an ongoing media spend, which means higher ROI. You don’t have to spend on both services and media.
5. Not everyone can do SEO and do it well. SEO is difficult and ever-changing, so if your business does it well, you’ll gain a competitive advantage.

Julie then took a look at the considerations one-by-one, and declared a winner for each, for which she showed this nifty slide:

And her conclusion? It’s a draw! While there is a solid case for SEO, we have to be realistic, she said. SEO is too unpredictable to rely on it alone to maximize search visibility. Doing both PPC and SEO keeps costs in check while reducing risk. Right on!

Round 2: PPC
Stacie Susens then took the stage, and like Julie, asked which channel is better at reaching goals and target audience. She says PPC. Paid search is better, she maintains, because it’s easier to “get stuff done and done fast.” PPC produces results in days, as opposed to weeks or months for SEO. Paid search also requires less involvement from other internal teams, such as IT.

Natural search does have a few things going for it, namely:

• It’s a long-term marketing strategy and has the highest ROI
• It’s free, meaning there’s no media spend associated with an SEO program
• It has more volume, meaning more people click on organic search results

PPC, on the other hand, also has some great qualities, including:

• More control over things like the keywords to appear on, the message searchers see, website entry point, ranking on the SERP, and the ability to test to optimize performance
• More diversity, meaning many more keywords can be sent to a paid search landing page

Wrapping up the point/counterpoint, Stacie also recommended an integrated approach to PPC and SEO for three reasons:

1. Improved business results
2. Increased efficiency
3. Cross-channel insights

Unlike Jamie’s recommendation to aim for opposite rankings in organic versus paid results, Stacie showed why it’s important to aim for top rankings in both. The results of a study conducted by Google show that having the top organic and paid listings increases unaided awareness by 17 times, and increases purchase intent by 167%. Stacie’s company conducted its own study that showed that not bidding on brand terms led to a whopping 42% overall decrease in traffic on paid and natural search!

Stacie’s advice was four-fold:

• Prioritize increasing natural rankings for keywords that are very expensive in paid search.
• For keywords with natural search rank, test different paid search rankings to find the ideal combination.
• For keywords with a below-the-fold natural ranking, bid high for paid placement.
• Finally, identify top performing paid search terms to prioritize natural search keyword targets.

Stacie wrapped up with a few guiding principals:

• Do your research
• Let your goals guide your tactical decisions
• Don’t over think it

In the end, Jamie, Julie and Stacie agreed that SEO and PPC were both winning strategies. Everyone hugged (not really) and all was good.

So what do you think? If a client only had $1,000 to spend, what would you recommend?

Throughout #SESCHI 2010, citations of search & social marketing case studies have run rampant. “Did you hear about the Old Spice campaign? How about Skittles!?” Um, yeah. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve heard of them, maybe even posted on their branded Facebook page or tweeted at their spokesperson… desperately begging for him to engage you in a hilarious (& steamy-dreamy…) viral YouTube video…

The B2Bers among the Search Engine Strategies crowd were hungry for some hardcore business-facing case studies to bring home and proudly present to their bosses, like a beaming schoolgirl (or boy!) handing momo & dad a straight-A report card. The B2B Marketing panel did not disappoint, with presenters Mischa Stephens, senior optimization specialist at Google, and Chris Long, SVP of e-commerce and marketing at L-com, Inc. delivering the goods.

aimClear live-tweeted this session via (@lindsaylorraine). Read on for top tips shared by this dynamic duo.

Is Online Marketing Worthwhile for B2Bs?
Patricia Hursh, president of SmartSearch Marketing, thoughtfully introduced Mischa Stephens who got things rolling. Right off the bat, Mischa hit the crowd with some awesome take-home-and-show-your-boss stats about the value of search marketing for B2Bs. Business professionals rely on search and social. Feast your eyes on these numbers:

• 84% of C-level executives find search very valuable in making business decisions
• 83% of B2B buyers research online before their next purchase

Business decision makers are also on YouTube, Mischa pointed out. Here’s a couple more killer-awesome stats:

• There are 1.5 million business-oriented queries on YouTube every week
• YouTube reaches 36% of all business decision makers—more than 10 times that of Forbes.com
• YouTube visitors are 11% more likely to be business decision makers than the average Internet user

So, how should a business use YouTube, or create video content for that matter? For the basics, you can check out the hot tactics that were covered in the video content creation session. And for inspiration, look no further than one of Mischa’s favorites, the Cisco Small Business channel on YouTube. With 998 subscribers, 17,162 channel views, and 254,169 total upload views (as of 10/21/2010), this is one company that knows its sh*t…and has set the bar for other B2Bs in this medium.

Some successful nuggets to note…

• The channel’s ‘Innovators Forum.’ In this video series, “Entrepreneurs, experts in small business best practices, and authors of best-selling business books provide insight into how to run a small business better.” Topics range from handling a crisis to igniting innovation—solid stuff that almost any executive would be interested in.
• Very few of these videos actually mention Cisco by name, but by offering valuable information to the community of small business owners the company targets, Cisco is doing wonders for its own branding.
• Cisco encourages viewers to visit its website after viewing the videos to “discuss the topics, post your questions, read our guest bloggers, and hear from others.”

What else can a B2B do on YouTube? Mischa offered several suggestions, including:

• Soliciting user-generated content
• Sharing big ideas
• Promoting an event
• Building a community

Mischa’s final suggestion for B2Bs was to take a good look at mobile. Smartphones are set to surpass feature phones in the U.S. by 2011. As a result, B2B mobile search is a rapidly growing area.

Mobile PPC should be a part of the strategy, if it makes sense for the business, because CPC is lower and CTR is higher. He offered the following rules for optimizing for high-end mobile devices:

• Separate campaigns to better manage mobile
• Having a strong mobile call-to-action will increase performance
• All types of landing pages work with high-end devices, including WAP
• Start with keywords that work for desktop search
  • Search behavior is very similar because people use phones just like desktops nowadays
• Be aggressive when bidding on mobile as there are fewer ad positions (only 5 as opposed to 10 on desktop)
• Use the click-to-call feature if your business takes calls

B2B SEM in Practice
Chris Long took to the stage following Mischa to share his company’s experiences and best practices in B2B online marketing. L-com designs and manufactures cables, antennas, connectors and the like. Very sexy stuff!

“My job in e-commerce,” Chris explained, “is to make as few consumers buy our products as possible…consumers just kill us profit wise.” L-com jumps through a lot of hoops to make sure that only businesses buy stuff like this from them:

Chris and his team have been doing a lot right, evidenced by the company’s progress in SEO and PPC:

• Web traffic up 200% since 1/1/10
• PPC revenue/spend ratio up from 1.0 to 2.2 since 1/1/10
• Triple digit ROI on BOTH

How can B2B companies be successful in search marketing? SEO is not an exact science, Chris preached to the crowd of nodding marketers.

• Successful SEO depends on a large number of small efforts and a large amount of patience.
• PPC success depends on a large number of test campaigns and sharp analytics to refine those campaigns.
• Success in SEO comes from details.
• Success in PPC comes from trial and error.

Before you start any search marketing effort, you need to be clear on what you want to do. As a first step, conduct market segmentation and customer profiling. Chris and his team found out the hard way that it was useless optimizing for the term ‘cables.’ It was a highly competitive category dominated by the likes of Radio Shack and Best Buy, and the traffic the keyword brought to the site was mostly consumer. The team quickly recognized the need for a change, and decided instead to optimize for the key phrase ‘cable assemblies.’ Why? Engineers don’t buy cables; they buy cable assemblies. By optimizing to that phrase, L-com was able to rank #5 on page 1 of the SERPs.

The best formula for success in B2B SEO, as L-com discovered, is niche keywords and targeting the DMU (decision-making unit). Even though the purchaser pulls the trigger on the purchase, the engineer tells purchasing “this is the product you need to buy.” The B2B buyer has specific criteria in mind for the purchase. Knowing that criteria is gold, Chris said.

Chris then explained the three broad sections of SEO:

• Off-page (links, directories, social media, etc.)
• On-page (optimized keyword-rich fresh content; linking structure; proper file, title, meta, image and alt names, etc.)
• Behind the page (fast page loads, xml/html pages, adhere to latest standard, no broken links, good page structure, etc.)

Off-page tends to be the most costly, but the most valuable.

As for best practices in PPC, Chris recommended the following:

• Don’t start without a serious commitment to automated analytics
• Focus and dedicated resources are required
• Always be testing (and refining)
• Try anything
• Good authors borrow; great authors steal (look at what other people are doing well and do that!)

And with that, the panel wrapped up a highly informative and timely session on search marketing tips for B2Bs. Look out for more coverage of #SESCHI on aimClear blog and via Twitter from Lauren (@beebow), Alyssa (@Aengleson) and me (@lindsaylorraine).

Egregiously incompetent, cutthroat, reckless or outright dishonest? No matter how you slither it, the latest generation of predatory SEO creeps proffer blatantly false information camouflaged by pretty reports. Deceptively branded reports aside, buyer beware when the snakes come to call. Here’s some hard facts to dispel this week’s crap-ass haze of myths and misinformation.  [Author's Note: This post is not aimed at any specific SEO firm, rather the amalgamate of experiences we've had over many years.]

Background
The subject of our indignation today is an SEO “audit” one of our brand-clients received.

No worries. We don’t have any reason to be defensive, as our work has helped move the client’s website from a single PR2 property to (4) PR5 properties in a little over 18 months. I was invited to the conference call to receive a personal presentation of this audit, but could not make it. It’s probably better that I didn’t participate. We received a copy of of the “free SEO report card” a little later.

To Be Fair
There are some issues revealed in the audit, that any mechanized site-grader tool would catch. Life happens in the day to day evolution of a CMS as a result of new application development in between quarterly audits. However any good information in this business-grubbing ploy, is vastly obscured by dangerous hyperbole and lies.

Here’s just a few scary highlights as a warning for future report card recipients.

Free SEO Report Card writes: “Also know that only 1 page is indexed in Google and only 24 pages are indexed in Yahoo.” Fact: Oops! The site has hundreds of pages crawled and indexed by Google and Yahoo. So far as we’re concerned this egregious error tells everything that needs to be told about the quality of the reporting company’s work. Here’s a snapshot of Google WebmasterCentral’s crawl stats relating to Googlebot’s activity in the last 90 days.

Of course, Googlebot crawling the site does not mean that pages are indexed. We tested the site using the following SEO 101 pages-indexed queries (aimClear Blog substituted for client’s site): Google, Yahoo, Bing. Had the audit technician run these basic tests they would have seen that site-grader program misfiring. Bing, Yahoo and Google all show over 700+ pages indexed. Fail!

Speaking of the big crawl, Free SEO Report Card writes: “H1/Header Tags (The H1 text is a vital area for spiders (crawlers that “crawl” your page for information) to find vital information to improve your rankings.)”

Ooooh Noooo Mr. Bill! Fact: H1 tags are important for structure & usability, not for stuffing your “Hey Google, look at me!” keywords. At SMX Advanced last month (on a panel I was on) Rand Fishkin showed correlation data revealing H1, H2, H3 etc. tags are just a sliver of the important on-page features. “Vital for spiders?” FAIL! Better sign up for some training or at least read a bit more before you spew incorrect data from last year.

Let’s talk about W3C Validation. Free SEO Report Card writes: “Strong W3C validation: NO (58 errors and 10 warnings) Facts: Let’s begin with the report card-toting interactive company’s homepage. It’s got W3C CSS validation errors.

The good news is that while it’s optimal for site visitors, using interpretive devices, to have access to validated code, Search engines do not penalize (some say devalue) unless the site literally can’t be crawled, far from reality in this case.

Adam Lasnik of Google said “Rewarding validation & accessibility of documents would be a slippery slope.” Our client’s validation errors have no noticeable effect on usability or search engine performance. The site was coded for users and then search engine spiders, not for a web standards body. It happens to work in my BlackBerry too. The only reward you get for the time spent chasing these errors is a little W3C badge you can put on your site. Guess what? FAIL!

Free SEO Report Card reads: “Overall grade: D.” WTF! Advanced SEOs debate how to assess the progress and success of websites. Search engine algorithms are complex amalgamates of raw power distribution, trust and semantic clues.

What is the continuum of this grading scale? How are these criteria ranked, equalized and correlated to some f_ucked up grading scheme? You have not seen analytics, progress over time or WebMasterCentral. Heck, you don’t even know how to value the most basic SEO attributes. What the hell are you doing telling a company that their site has ANY grade.

The best is saved for last, perhaps the most irresponsible assertion of all. Free SEO Report Card writes:

Fact: Free SEO Report Card has no clue what keywords are targeted and the client’s objective for the site. Every word on an HTML page is technically a keyword. In this case the research that went into defending our client’s brand and products considered many sources including analytics, traditional KW research tools and social media chatter.

The keyword strategy resulted in hundreds of thousands of new visitors on keywords that were targeted. It’s an incredibly deceptive practice to flip out such damning rhetoric to get business. Shame on you.

Conclusion: Forwarned is Forarmed
Fact: This is not kindergarten Mr. SEO report card. This is a beloved national corporation’s online presence and livelihood. There are other marketing firms involved in its interactive products, which (though not perfect) we’re all plenty proud of. There were other silly assertions in the “audit,” but we don’t have time or inclination to address them all.

We take note that searching for your company and it’s visible personal results in a great big ZERO in the thought-leadership department. It’s easy to see why. The brag-sites you’ve posted on your online brochure look one step ahead of payday loan sites. Here’s our SEO report card for you. FAIL!

photo credit: RC_Fotos
Welcome to SearchEngineStrategies Toronto 2009. Today we took a glance back a decade to 1999, when parties had a reputation to live up to and some families were preparing for an all out cataclysmic technological failure come the new year. For the most part, times were swell.

Family Guy began its first season, Britney Spears’ hit “…Baby One More Time” climbed the billboard charts & Lawrence Fishburne took curious Keanu down the rabbit hole in The Matrix. In the realm of SEO, effective optimization was all about keyword, title & description meta tags and reciprocal link building. Life was good!

It’s a decade later and still some of those characteristics remain. Family Guy is still running strong, Britney Spears’ hair has returned and Keanu still manages to carry his signature phrase, ‘whoa’ in each film. The SEO playing field however, isn’t the same ball game. The same tactics that worked in 1999 simply won’t cut it anymore. What tactics have stood the test of time, which have become obsolete? How has SEO evolved over the past decade and what can we expect for the future?

The session SEO Then & Now: What’s the Same? What’s changed? at SES Toronto took a look at exactly that. Moderating the session was Amanda Watlington (Searching for Profit). On the panel was Shari Thurow (Omni Marketing Interactive), Anne Kennedy(Beyond Ink) & Jeff Quipp (Search Engine People).

First to speak was Anne Kennedy. She began by giving an overview of what was going on  in the world of search in 1999 in comparison to now. Less than 50% of the US population were internet users and Yahoo maintained dominant market share for online media. At this time there were a lot of different online media companies and various ways of optimizing them. One preeminent tactic or developer’s nightmare was to develop different landing pages for each search engine (panelists cringe).

At this time the amount of server space it took to power Google’s inventory was located in Larry Page’s apartment. There were no meaningful analytics to lend insight on search volume, bounce rates, top referring pages, etc. Adwords was just around the corner which would also usher in quality score. Prior to 1999 it was all about on-page factors (alt attributes, keywords in content, title tags, etc.). It was pivotal when off-page factors such as links were an added variable to the algorithm.

A great deal hasn’t changed since then, but now there are so many more ways to build and drive traffic. Much more advanced technical “spam” has filtered in today compared to ten years ago. Anne lays out what she believes to be the top 3 areas search is evolving:

1 – Stronger Focus on User Intent

Click data – Search engines are now able to predict how people navigate to their destination. The ability to see an individual clicked through 2 different sites to land on the page they spend the most time on is lends insight. It becomes obvious to search engines to deliver results that will bring users to their desired page and skip the intermediary sites.

2 – Universal Search

Digital asset optimization – Marketers have a huge opportunity to optimize digital assets as search engines are seamlessly incorporating these verticals into the SERPs.

3 – Social Networks

Global & real-time – What social networks have shown us is the ease with which buzz can propagate from one network generation to the next. Twitter has given users the ability to search for answers in real-time instead of viewing a dated file from a database.

Next to take the podium was Shari Thurow. She begins by taking a poll to see who had attended the very first SES conference 10 years ago (one hand poked up from the crowd). Shari continues by quoting a comment made by Sergey Brin in the second SES conference, “You can’t spam Google” (the crowd laughs).

Her presentation focused primarily on what has remained the same with SEO over the past decade. She shows a slide from her very first conference presentation 14 years ago that still holds true to SEO. The slide depicts the primary functions of a search engine:

- Index text

- Follow links

…all search engine spiders are like this and will continue to be like this.

Its important to organize a site using words and phrases that people type into the search query, focus the content around those keywords and  give search engines access to these files.

Back then – On-page criteria (mid to late 90s)

1. Text component (index text), keyword density, title, alt, and H1 tags

- Words at the top of the page are still more relevant than text at the bottom of the page as well as keyword proximity.

2 Link component (follow links)

- It was important to get links in the Yahoo directory, Dmoz and Looksmart with pertinent keyword rich anchor text.

Nowadays, off and on-page need to work in tandem.

1. Text component

- Still need to use keywords and phrases that your target audience is searching for.

2. Link component

- Links are still a way to give search engine spiders easy, user friendly access to content through site and page architecture.

3. Popularity component

- The amount and authority of links pointing at a site is a strong off-page indicator to search engines of how popular a site is.

4. Searcher behavior

- 3 types of search queries

1. Navigational intent (2nd most searched) – Searchers with navigational intent rarely go past the first 3 results.

2. Informational intent (1st ) – Answer to question, quick fact, read reviews, quick list

3. Transactional intent (3rd) – Not only add to cart items, music, downloads and pictures

Shari parted with emphasizing the importance of optimizing not for search engines but for people that use search engines.

Last up was Jeff Quipp. Jeff begins by taking a look back at the past when there were roughly 5000 search engines. Many services would offer to submit your site t0 each of these search engines for $50. This is no longer the case. These days Google dominates with 80%+ so its critical to play by Google’s rules. Trying to cheat Google may result in a ban, and with that big of a market share can any company afford not to be found in Google SERPs?

Keywords

What’s the same?

- Proper keyword selection is still at the foundation of search whether it by organic or paid.

What’s changed?

- Google external keyword tool – Gives you a relative idea of search volume, advertiser competition, local search volume and estimated cost per click.

- Google suggest – the drop down menu that appears below the search query field can lend insight as to what people are searching for.

- 25% of terms per month have never been seen before!

Who cares?

- Choose keywords carefully

- Ranking probability – What are the chances you can rank for a certain term? Assess you strengths, weaknesses and competition in the space.

Build out your Content. The shorter the keyword the earlier in the buying process a consumer is. Its nearly impossible to know what the searcher’s intentions are, you have to build out content for the longer tail as well.

Algorithm complexity - What’s changed?

1. Now more than double the number of variables … 200+ and possibly 300+

- Many of their new variables are based on the question, who is trying to spam Google?

2. Many more filters to identify artificial linking – Google can tell the quality of a site’s link inventory. If a site has 99% reciprocal links, it’s a good sign of artificial linking.

3. Introduction of 3^rd group of variables… based on user behavior/personalization – Google Analytics and various other tools are used to determine how relevant their search results are to the query

So what? You need to build out great content, and use that to build links!

Figuring out great ways to attract authority links is a must.

Local/regional search – What’s changed?

1. Search results catered to each country based on:

- Host IP address

- .ca vs. com

2. Google is beginning to serve local results to generic queries (eg. Pizza)

- Regardless if you type your location or not Google sees the IP address and will serve up results based on your location.

What Does This Mean?

1. Companies operating in more than 1 country, have decisions to make.

2. Optimize for Google Local, Yahoo Local, and local directories

3. Implement strategies to encourage online reviews! These can help to get people to click through on links.

Content – What’s the same?

1. Text content is still very important – likened a search engine to a child, its comprehension is very literal.

2. Creating content that others find valuable

What’s changed?

1. New types of search engines including video and image

2. Universal search – many other types of content pulled in to SERPs

So What?

1. More opportunities to rank for a given keyword

2. Companies need to think of a great strategy to attack this

Social Media – What’s the same?

1. Word of mouth is the 1^st form of social media

Word of mouth has been put on steroids! Companies no longer control their brand messages, social media users do! It has become much more apparent the flaws of various businesses with the ease with which people can spread their opinions through their networks.

If you can create buzz, you can generate 100s if not 1000s of links. Businesses need to learn to offer good value to the community. It’s imperative to facilitate two-way communication and not just to talk, but to listen up. Develop an online reputation monitoring system and keep your ear to the street. Lastly, promote.

Its been proven time and again, what works today just might not work tomorrow. It will be interesting to see the evolution of SEO a decade from now. Chances are we’ll realize how easy we had it in 2009.

Considered a founding “search engine guru,” Danny has been demystifying search engines for marketers, webmasters and users for well over a decade. His insight and expertise are regularly sought by mainstream media outlets including USA Today, The New Yorker, Forbes, The Wall St. Journal, The Los Angeles Times, ABC’s Nightline, Newsweek.

He’s Partner and Chief Content Officer for  Third Door Media, which also operates the highly regarded global  search marketing conference series SMX,  Search Marketing Now educational webcasts and  Sphinn.com, SEM mainstay social community.

Recently I had the opportunity to pose questions regarding  SMX Advanced, a brilliant 2 day SEM event he (and industry luminary Chris Sherman) sequence annually in Seattle.  ‘Advanced sold out in 2007, 2008 and is on track to do so again this year. Earlybird rates expire May 2 so register now to guarantee your attendance June 2 & 3, 2009.

We also discussed Danny’s passion for search, suggestions for Twitter, “tough love” for Microsoft Search and his recent move back to the United States after living in England.

Marty: Thanks for taking time to be with our readers Danny. You have been a search writer for a very long time — basically from the earliest days. What makes you so incredibly passionate about our industry?

Danny: I don’t know that there’s a single answer. Perhaps it’s because I have been involved in chronicling it from the beginning. It’s kind of like seeing your kid grow up, I suppose – you really care about how they’re developing. Not that search marketing is my kid, or that I’m its parent. Probably more like anyone who has watched a child grow up – you want to see it do well, regardless of your parental relationship.

While the industry has matured, there’s still so much growing for it to do. We constantly have a new stream of tactics and opportunities that arise which need to be explained. I love doing that type of writing, trying to explain and simplify things for people. And given that it is still so young, there’s also the opportunity to help influence and shape the industry.

The industry still retains a lot of community spirit, as well. Old timers help newcomers; newcomers have interesting ideas and takes on the space that help revitalize old timers.

Marty: You’ll be moderating a Twitter & Search session at SMX Advanced. Twitter conversations (Micro-blogging) move at a much different speed than GoogleBot. How will users’ ability, to search transient conversational waves, impact the world of search? In your wildest dreams, how would you like to see Twitter evolve?

Danny: I’d like to see paid search ads come to Twitter Search. I think there’s a place for people to place persistent messages in front of those seeking real time help. If your cable goes down, and lots of people are suffering the same outage, there’s a huge opportunity for alternative providers to step forward. Or there’s opportunity for the company having issues (ahem, looking at you, Time Warner) to say they’re aware of the problem and link over to status updates.

I suppose better tracking tools would be nice. The ability to have keyword-based tweets flow into your profile would be nice. I wish I could say I have a huge laundry list of other suggested improvements, but I think the service is still evolving. And where it lacks features, there’s a huge ecosystem around it adding enhancements.

Marty: How is the Search Marketing Expo conference series different from other marketing conferences? How “advanced” is the content at SMX Advanced?

Danny: I’ve been producing search marketing conferences literally since we first had search marketing conferences. So I guess SMX is different in that between Chris Sherman and myself, I don’t know of any other series with that much experience, with that many shows under their belts. I’d like to think experience makes for an outstanding event.

We’ve had years of figuring out what people want, things they want improved, how to help craft great sessions. That’s what we’re delivering with SMX – outstanding content, along with a great conference experience. Yes, we feed you well at the shows – but it’s both feeding your belly and your mind.

As for SMX Advanced, I think the content is pretty advanced. We’re really specific with those who speak – you’ve got to wow your peers. The same-old, same-old won’t work. You’ve got an audience that expects great content, and no one wants to disappoint.

The atmosphere also helps. The show is designed for vets. While we love welcoming in beginners, our SMX West and East shows have content more designed for them (as well as people of all skill levels). SMX Advanced is all advanced, all the time.

No one’s going to ask if you know what a meta tag is, what PageRank is or what nofollow means. We assume you’ve graduated from all that – and not having to slow down with the fundamentals means the conversations start at a high level

Marty: Microsoft’s President of Online Services, Qi Lu, is keynoting at SMX Advanced. Do you have any advice for him about Microsoft Live Search?

Danny: Well, my Tough Love For Microsoft Search piece had plenty of advice that I hope the folks there are considering. It really was meant with an emphasis on the love part, because I do want Microsoft to succeed. We’re better with healthy competition in search.

Probably the biggest advice is managing expectations. We’re expecting Microsoft to rollout a new brand and a new search interface this year – rumor is, in conjunction with SMX Advanced. That would be pretty cool. And you’ll want people pumped up about the new challenge to Google.

But you have to help ensure that people don’t expect the changes are going to leapfrog Microsoft ahead of Google or result in sudden massive gains. It’s yet another step in what’s a long process. That’s a difficult marketing balancing act to do. I know Microsoft understands that challenge. I don’t envy them having to walk it!

Marty: You’ve recently moved back to California from England. What’s the best part about being back in California? Do you miss anything about the UK?

Danny: The best part is just being back “home,” to a place that feels like home. England’s great in many ways, but it’s not where I was raised. Certainly the weather is welcome. Lots of sun, and I can get out and do an end-of-the-day rollerblade along the beach.

Like most SEM shops, our business is an amalgamation of flat rate products and hourly work. It’s generally been our focus to procure longer contracts, usually 6 month to 1-year agreements.

We thought it prudent to evolve our model in preemptive reaction to these brutal economic times.  Little did we know the unexpected gems of perspective we discovered.

Q1 2009, in the teeth of a recession, we actually accelerated growth by increasing the mix of short-term retainer & audit-and-plan deals we cut. These short-term “intake” agreements are converting to long-term relationships at a high rate, making it the best of all worlds.

Dependent on time tracking methods and using a software adapted (hacked) from law firms, in November 2008 we re-tooled aimClear to increase the mix of precision planning, traffic, time tracking (1/10th of an hour increments) and decreasing the term of initial client engagements from 1 year to 3 month retainers. The hard work was well worth it.

After achieving buy-in from staff and overcoming traditional obstacles, we noted some intriguing (if not revolutionary) advantages to focusing on a short term retainer agency-intake model which, though counterintuitive on the face, transcends recessionary stopgap measures. That said, there are both pros and cons.

Advantage to Short Retainer Intake

• Clients perceive agency as highly confident, not trying to lock them up long term. Since most SEM firms seek longer-term deals, it’s a competitive advantage in a space which is getting more crowded. The client gets a chance to evaluate us and vice versa. It’s a very powerful approach to take with a new client and comes off as seriously holistic. You get the long term deal anyway.
• Small initial budgets force the agency to increase efficiency, needing to do more for less which makes for happy customers and a better agency.
• Jobs are much easier to close, the higher hourly rate is much better tolerated in light of lower overall cost.
• Effectually, the agency gets paid to develop the larger job and deepen potential partnerships moving forward.
• Retainers to plan/begin projects lead to even more profitable flat rate & hourly jobs. Incremental tracking against projected sharpens the agency’s predictive instincts.
• Collection is less of an issue because we don’t start work until getting paid. Retainers are invoiced with an initial deposit against a maximum budget, absent client authorization for further expenditures. We re-invoice when retainer has 20% left, net 7. We return unexpended funds if a surplus remains at the end of term and/or job complete. It’s a very tidy model.
• Builds trust with client quickly by completing initial projects as promised.
• Builds shop confidence and fosters a can-do environment of completed projects and success.
• It’s an opportunity to showcase the shop’s technical business prowess. It takes a very organized advertising agency to render weekly statements against retainers sorted by job, employee, task, materials and travel–all against a budget. The message is in the method for the client who quickly comprehends how capable a business unit we are.
• There’s time to handle more clients, more case studies for internal training, more friends, more referrals, leads to more short term retainers, rinse and repeat.
• Client and agency have opportunity vet each other in short term crucible. Since there are fewer long deals with bad-fit clients, less friends are lost.
• Provides better opportunity to measure employee productivity.
• Diversifies client base to better insulate from effects of losing any single client.
• In this model, the agency essentially gets paid to audit-and-recommend, as opposed to spending unpaid time responding to RFPs. Back in the day, the agency needed to mock up creative, outline proposed campaigns and give away lots of work to get the gig. This is no longer the case. It’s hard to come by a search focused agency to trust. The ones that are good don’t plan projects for free.
• Agency experiences same or better revenue predictability, as with the “fewer clients / longer deals” model. Really can feel just as safe or safer.

Inherent Challenges

• Timecards can suck. aimClear needed to create a Twitter style front end for QuickBooks and find a way to have fun with it. It can be done with the right attitude.
• Achieving buy-in from staff is crucial. Attaining company-wide buy-in takes quite a bit of work.
• The “confidence” of a short term intake model can be intense. An agency has to have the chops to back up the confidence. A strategy based on more clients does not work if you can’t get more clients because all the short term intake deals fail. “Confidence” must be based on actually having the goods to deliver.
• In my experience, waiting until the end of the week to compile timecards just doesn’t work. It must be done real-time with an always-open control panel. Finding or building the right software takes work. Expect growing pains.
• Growth is required in how an agency segments SEM (SEO, PPC SMO & ORM) services. If anyone is interested in seeing how aimClear segments service skews for time tracking/invoicing, ping me.
• Live and die by time tracking. Take a week and send 5 team members to a conference in New York, forget each employee’s need to clock billables, and the month could be gutted. Besides, it’s not just about getting hours in. Client’s jobs need attention to be successful, so the traffic manager-function needs to be a comprehensive process.
• Bookkeeping needs to take place closer to the surface, which sucks up bandwidth. The agency needs to have apparatus to pull daily time against budget, which requires employees to stay tuned in to the budget. Lack of attention leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to unbudgeted time expenditures. Soon the short job is long, etc…The agency must be highly adept at nipping scope creep in the bud before it gets creepy.
• Hourly consulting is less scalable for building a business model you can sell. If cashing out your SEM agency is the end-game, hourly consulting businesses often don’t command the same valuation as those that proffer “products” or residual cash flow.
• Easy to take your eye off the ball. Mixing short-term, hourly, flat rat and residual based “products,” needs to be intentional and always scrutinized.
• Creates additional layer of administrative duties, all parties must be incredibly precise.
• Some clients want longer term relationships. It’s important to have the “wisdom to know the difference,” early in the sales cycle and be willing to commit to the right client.
• Did I say timecards can suck?
• If an agency gets paid to audit-and-recommend, as opposed to spending unpaid time responding to RFPs, the front end advice sure as hell better be great.

Most advertising agencies depend on some kind of hourly/flat rate mix. Whereas it’s always been our objective to knock down longer term deals, we’ve had success by focusing our attention on short term evaluator service, as a prelude to taking on longer term assignment. While there are challenges, we believe that the advantages far outweigh the natural obstacles.

While aimClear has a healthy mix of short & long term lengths, the longer relationships now come by way mutual vetting and there’s way less wasted and unpaid time up-front.

We’ve observed interesting advantages to diving in whole-heartedly on a short term retainer agency-intake model which, though counterintuitive on the face, transcends recessionary triage measures.

Those lucky enough to be sporting the cliche’ orange wristbands are going enjoy lovely camaraderie, frightening anecdotes, “forgettable finger food” and an enjoy (yet another) awesome upstairs Times SQ Schmooze Fest NYC experience. Of course, we’ll be giving away SearchWiki Lamesauce T-Shirts. Life is grand.

Watch for more posts from today’s SES sessions later tonight. For now, heading to the shindig.

This 4th Edition SchmoozeFest threatens to solidify its reputation as an all out BLAST of new and old friends. Really over the last couple of years there have been some priceless previous installments- Seatttle, New York and Santa Clara.

If you’ve recieved an invitation, you allready know it and we’ll see ya’ there. If you have not, then it’s not too late to ping me via Facebook, Twitter (@aimclear). Also you can grab Matt, Manny, Nam or Peter. They’re probably out of wristbands-but ask them to call me. Later…Everyone be responsable, safe & healthy tonight.

The bandwidth involved working with my SEM colleagues, twittering, staying in touch with Facebook peeps and processing clients is delightfully staggering. Sometimes an innocuous written exchange blasts across my desk amidst the noise,  strikes a nerve and leaves me in thought.

In this case a state-level branch of a well known national brand, pinged me by email to ask common SEO shopping questions, including classic misunderstandings: personalized search and “site submissions.”  The inquiry was a bit of a “Dear John” letter, so other firms likely received a similar inquiry. We don’t respond to RFPs but make it our practice to answer polity to reasonable questions time-allowing, with the corporate mantra being to support potential clients.

I’m memorializing my answers to that inquiry in this post, for the benefit of future clients and our Account Managers.  I’ve fictionalized names to protect anonymity.

——————
Cold Call: SEO Shopping Letter To aimClear, 2/23/2009 3:33:30 PM
Angela Winter
www.BigNameBrand.com
Saint Louis, MO
xxx-xxx-xxxx
a.winter@BigNameBrand . com

Dear Marty,
One of the states that we operate in is interested in Search Engine Optimization for their _______ division. This would certainly bear a possible opportunity in other states, but for now we are specifically looking for this one state (CA). I have a couple questions about your company and how you do SEO:

• Do you have materials about what your business has to offer in terms of Search Engine Optimization?
• How do your fees break down (cost per click, overall project cost etc.)?
• How do you ensure that you get your companies at the top of search lists?
• How many times per day to you feed this information to the search
  engines?
• Do you have an example of a company that you do SEO for?

Thanks for your time, I look forward to hearing from you!
Angela Winter
BigBrand Marketing Specialist
xxx.xxx.xxxx

——————
Our Response: Angela, My answers are in-line below.

The SEO audit is a flat fee and results in our recommendations to modify the CMS, usually to eliminate fragmentation of the site’s authority by way of duplicate content and other issues. We also “hand” optimize 10-30 pages along with making formulaic recommendations to squeeze as many semantic clues for Google out of the existing CMS database.

We evaluate the internal/external linking structure, competitiveness of the SERPs to evaluate objectives in light of what is immediately attainable and what might be in the future. This is the step where the “SEO” you think of takes place, including keyword research, buzz pocket mining and an evaluation of the social media landscape.

Because SEO is so inbound-link-dependent, SMO bears scrutiny in many SEO deployments because it can be an excellent source of links along with traffic and “making friends” with your customers. We usually build out content feeds if the site does not already have them.

SMO can be a great way to “take up” more of page one in the SERPs with friendly controlled content. Also, in an age of Universal Search, videos, pictures and other sharing index beautifully–again social.  As part of the audit, we do an SMO (social media optimization) eval’ and recommendations.

At the end of the day, you want as high a percentage of folks that search for a keyword cluster to show up on your site and do something. We measure “percentage of available search traffic” and goal conversion.  As a rule, your personal perception of where a site “ranks” is probably seriously skewed by your own or others’ surfing history.

That said, here’s some of what we do:

• Rigorous publishing best practices
• Support client’s technical team in attaining technical SEO health for CMS
• Appropriate attention to Google’s Terms of Services
• Foster an editorial ethic in our clients’ shops to always publish content informed by research and tagged properly.
• Unique Title Tags and meta description pages on every page, by hand or formulaic CMS alteration
• Aggressive goal setting and the best analytics in the world, with organic conversion tracking
• Engage additional vendors if needed to facilitate client’s link-building, beginning with understanding of existing inbound links, contact existing linkers to change anchor text,  low hanging fruit, etc…
• We stay tuned into a number of great tools, beginning with Google WebMasterCentral. We use a number of third party tools along with a proprietary SEO Toolkit. You would be astounded what we can see .
• Ongoing analysis and reporting

Do you have an example of a company that you do SEO for?
Of course. If you become more serious about working with us, we’ll share part of our current client list which includes, what can only be described as, treasured American publications, well-known brands and cool boutique operations. We show prospective clients case studies once both sides are under NDA.

Do you have more materials about what your business has to offer in terms of Search Engine Optimization?
Yes, please visit aimClear Blog. You can find specific writings regarding our SEO practice and philosophy there as well. We are widely considered an excellent choice for identifying demographics and marketing to segments by “attainable” SEO.”

Sincerely,
Marty Weintraub
www.aimclearblog.com

There was a palpable hush in our aimClear rotunda office yesterday afternoon as, *gasp,* I finally caved personally to incorrect usage of of the initials “SEM” to humor our PPC client. Sadly in this wacky world of nearly indistinguishable acronyms, abbreviations and cryptic terms there’s a colloquial tragedy afoot. Even the New York Times got SEM wrong.

Noted industry journalist Danny Sullivan proposed the term “Search Engine Marketing” in 2001 to encompass the universe of activities associated with performing SEO, managing search engines’ paid listings, site submission to directories and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals. The moniker stuck and we’ve been using the label for years to describe the full spectrum of Internet marketing.

However over time, SEM has become synonymous with paid search. Bunk! It’s just not true! SEM stands for “Search Engine Marketing,” of which paid search is but one channel. I’m a purist and don’t take kindly to the dilution of our SEM industry terms. We’ve been teaching clients that SEM includes both SEO and PPC for years.  At least Wikipedia’s got it under control. Whatever the outcome, maybe we can all agree on definitions and start anew.

SEM Stands for “search engine marketing.” In the old days when search engine marketing was nascent, SEM meant “all things search engine” and later evolved to imply “all things Internet marketing.” Obviously Internet marketing has grown to include many channels other than search engines. Nobody would argue against the premise that Search engine marketing includes SEO.

Unfortunately, even salty-dog pros now commonly misuse “SEM” to mean paid search. SEM does not mean only PPC, content network Facebook ads and other paid search. SEM includes PPC as one of many Internet marketing channels. SEM also, to my mind, includes social media optimization (SMO) and other Internet marketing channels.

SEO means “search engine optimization.” SEO is the process of research and tactics to improve “the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results (Wikipedia). No longer just about “engines,” the term “SEO” does somewhat of a disservice because the practice of SEO is now applied to any any Internet channel. For instance, we do keyword research to optimize social media profiles and online press releases.

Last spring at the Microsoft SES New York party, I had a chance conversation with Danny Sullivan over Thai pizza and dark beer. I was impressed by his reverence for our industry’s vernacular while discussing whether Facebook PPC belongs at search marketing conferences. Danny asked “where’s the search box?” “Where are people typing in queries?” “Search is different than contextual interrupt marketing Marty!”  He wanted to make sure  essential concepts did not get jumbled.

To to our staff’s disappointment I’ve personally caved and started to use the term “SEM” to define paid search, my heart’s not in it. Somehow the misuse of traditional vernacular makes me feel dirty and disrespectful. Call me romantic but, to me, SEM stands for search engine marketing, not PPC.