The Defrag Conference held in Denver, Colorado in the beginning of November, played host all of the top execs in the search industry including Tom Chi of Yahoo!, Bradley Allen of Siderian Software, Derek Murphy of Isys Search Software, Tom Tague of Thomson Reuters and more. So naturally there was some incredibly interesting dialogue regarding the future of search going on there. During Steve Larson’s presentation on “Next-Level Discovery: Open Search, Semantic Search, etc.” the top question on everyone’s mind was this: What will the next-generation of search engines look like?

“The only problem with search is that it’s awful, but other than that it works pretty well.” Tom Chi of Yahoo! Corporation said of current search engines. He was referring to the fact that although search is a wonderful and useful tool, it could also be a little more user friendly and helpful. “People are still doing navigational searches for Ebay.com” he added. This is significant because not only are they getting relevant direct results on their results page, they are also getting lots of other stuff they don’t need – both in direct results and in the ads section. It’s become “flooded with too much noise” as Murphy puts it. People hardly know what to do with the millions of results they get.

As a basic internet instructor for adults I see it everyday. Students look up at the top right hand corner and see that there are millions of results for “Gardening” but I can’t get them past the first page for some reason. If what they are looking for isn’t right there in those first ten results, they just give up. They would actually rather try another keyword than venture deeper in to the website. Occasionally I can get them to page two or three, but that’s as far as they’ll go.

Another problem is unintelligent search results. When users search for “eby.com” they don’t get anywhere, even though what they’re looking for is obvious. Major search engines aren’t compelled to change this because those faulty search results yield the same profits that correct ones do.

Yahoo! has started to take steps to help its search platform evolve through SearchMonkey, which I’ve talked about before. It is essentially a mix between a wiki and a search engine in the sense that it allows website owners, developers and programmers to create applications that enhance the users search experience.

Other search engines like are working on vertical search systems that give more specialized results. Siderean is interested in developing a vertical search for business tools, networking and resources. Both Yahoo! and Siderean are taking a smart step forward since part of the problem, according to Tague, is that search corporations need to solve is how to integrate search with social graphs and networking.

So what’s the future of search? Will change come in an amalgam of search, wiki and social networking? Or in an evolutionary bang in proportion to algorithms? No one seems to really know what the gen-next of search will look like. But don’t worry. Users can rest assured that the experts are on it.

Popularity: 44% [?]

About five months ago Google and Yahoo! announced an agreement that would allow Google to advertise on Yahoo!’s paid search result columns, and in turn allow Yahoo! to utilize Google’s AdSense program in the US and Canada. The deal was made in an attempt to strengthen Yahoo! as a corporation after Microsoft tried to take the company over.

Back in September news started leaking out that Google may throw out its deal with Yahoo!. The two companies combined currently handle 80% of internet searches all over the world. It’s understandable then why the US Justice Department was bringing up issues of possible antitrust violations.

Although the US Justice Department had already hired an antitrust litigator, Yahoo! was steadfast in calling the deal lawful, stating that “We have been informed that the Justice Department… is seeking advice from an outside consultant, but we should read nothing into that fact. We remain confident that the deal is lawful.”

Google may have seemed hopeful at first too. However, early this morning Google’s Senior VP and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond announced that Google would not move forward on the deal.

“…after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners.” Stated Drummond in his blog.

Drummond also expressed his regret for having to pull out of the deal since the company felt that I would have been a win-win situation not only for Google and Yahoo!, but for publishers, advertisers and users as well.

Yahoo! had no comment on their Search Blog as of this posting. I’m sure there’s more to come though.

Popularity: 72% [?]

I recently posted an article about the importance of properly naming your website and webpage headlines as well as adding in the right (and the right amount of) keywords. With the economy being what it is, many people will be starting up new online businesses soon. In order to help with their efforts, I decided to write up a quick entry on the importance of creating an SEO friendly business name.

A substantial amount of searches performed online are direct brand searches. In other words, people are searching for companies by name. In order to make sure that your business name isn’t drowned out in the rankings, be sure to follow some simple rules:

Get some hired help. I highly recommend hiring a SEO agency, marketing firm or SEO consultant to think of something for you. But if you insist on doing it yourself…

Make sure that your business name does NOT contain any popular or highly competitive keywords. A name like “Jill’s Discount Toys” is more likely to get ranked poorly if “discount toys” is a hot keyword, even if a potential consumer searches for Jill’s company by name. The reason: Because if “discount toys” is a competitive keyword then everyone is going to use it.

Think about acronyms. Can your business name easily be shortened into initials? Think IBM, MRI, AIG or UNH. All of these are businesses with names that the general public thought would be easier to shorten to a set of initials, and therefore search for them that way. The problem is that there’s always more than one business out there with the same acronym and the likelihood of not being drowned out (especially as a small and brand new business) by those other guys is pretty slim. I’ll give an example: Let’s say your business name is the “Salvatore Engineering Operation”. It’s very easy for the general population to search for your business as SEO… well we all know what that is going to bring up and it’s not Salvatore Engineering Operation. So be careful when advertising and putting your name out there.

Be memorable. Easier said than done, I know. Using a clever name, logo or tagline can help people remember your name better. People also remember colorful marketing, unusual color schemes and well organized and branded company logos/names. When people can make an association between your name and something clever, it is easier for them to retrieve that information from the back of their minds. This will also help to prevent people from turning your business name into an acronym.

A common scenario: “Uh, I know it started with an “S”… “S-S-Something” Engineering Operation… oh well, I’ll just Google SEO.) They may also decide to search for the only words they remember: “Engineering Operation.” These two very general keywords will bring up all kinds of companies, none of which are probably yours.

Don’t forget to think locally. If you think your name may be turned into a set of initials, (and you’re absolutely stuck on naming yourself that) then think about putting your state, providence, country or whatever place you feel necessary into your name. “SEO of Maine” or “Napa Valley SEO” may get your business name a little closer to the first page of search results – although it’s still unlikely in the case of “SEO”.

Don’t spend your SEO budget unwisely. You need a place in the rankings, but your new company name just isn’t raking in the hits. So you start to think about PPC and Sponsored Ads. The problem with PPC ads when your company name consists of competitive keywords or ellipses, is that you are going to illicit a lot of poor quality clicks. In other words, anyone searching for an SEO company may click on your PPC ad, but they won’t help to generate an income since your SEO is an engineering company. Without the right name those PPC ads are just costing you money.

Do your research. Get a list of ideas together for your company name and start searching for them online. Also do some searches for abbreviations, possible misspellings, partial names and any other possible ways that a searcher can screw up those business names you’ve thought up. You can even try “reverse engineering” the process by looking up the least popular keywords you can find and building your company name from those. Above all be flexible. Don’t get stuck on one name and be stubborn about it. If it won’t work, then it won’t work – end of story.

Popularity: 29% [?]

According to SEO Guru, Chris Sherman, two thirds of individuals perform online searches based on offline marketing efforts. As a direct result of their online search efforts, 40% of them will end up buying a product or service from that store. In this age of internet marketing, it is still hard for small and medium sized businesses to measure the effectiveness of integrating online marketing efforts into their mix. However, the overall numbers should certainly make it worth a try.

Currently, online retail sales only represent about 4-8% of all purchases made in the USA. That means that the majority of all purchases are still being made from traditional brick and mortar stores. So why should offline retailers focus on online marketing and SEO? Because according to BIGResearch, 89% of offline purchases in 2007 were largely influenced by online research conducted by the consumer. Not only that, but TMP Directional Marketing released research data suggesting that approximately 82% of individuals who use local search engines followed up with some sort of offline action such as an in store visit or a phone call.

Marketing managers are calling this the ROBO effect (Research Online, Buy Offline). And it seems to be more than just a trend. These numbers have been going strong since the inception of search engines and are headed up. In 2007, over $500 billion of offline purchases were influenced by online research. (eMarketer) Jupiter Research estimates that that number will reach $1 trillion in just two short years.

Sherman states that this offline/online research/purchasing pattern is a “vicious circle.” Effective offline marketing campaigns will drive people to the web to do more research. In turn, 39% of people who did an online search based on offline information purchased a product from the same company whose ad prompted the search in the first place. Again, individual stores have a hard time measuring the effects of their offline ads in correlation to their online presence. But it’s undeniable that having some sort of searchable online presence will induce sales that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred, or may have occurred somewhere else.

It seems that mostly large businesses are the ones who are desegregating their online and offline marketing efforts. Even so, only 55% of online marketing managers are integrating their SEO efforts with offline channels. For instance, television ads are by far the most effective way to prompt consumers to do a search. However, only 12% of all companies use television as a means of driving people to their website or a search engine. SEO and SEM managers don’t intentionally ignore the obvious channels for driving internet searches and traffic. Most search marketers work for small firms that can’t afford television ads. But don’t worry, there’s hope for the little guys.

Get a web address if for no other reason that to blog, draw in consumer participation and offer more information about products. If marketers want to take it one step further, they can offer an 800 number for consumers to make their order. Another option that many businesses like Cabella’s and Payless Shoe Stores offer is the ability to order online and pick up their order in the store that is closest to them. This is a great way to create an online presence while driving traffic to your store.

Use the same branding online as you do offline. Colors, logos, tag lines, etc. should all be integrated into your website and online advertisements. Many businesses are using videos, articles and blogs to drive traffic to their website as well. This enables your website address to show up in integrated searches. And lastly, make sure that there is keyword synchronicity between offline and online content. This will allow users to find you more easily.

Before and during your website’s construction make sure your target audience knows its coming. Buying your web address and then setting up something aesthetically pleasing or interesting that says “website under construction. You will be able to learn more about XYZ company’s products on January 01, 2009.” Give a date. You’ll be surprised how many people will remember.

This of course, brings us to advertising. Although television is the most effective way to prompt people about using a product, businesses can use newspapers, magazines, radio shows, email blasts and even direct mail to get their business name and web address out there. What’s important is that they know who you are, they have some keywords they can use to find information about you online, and they have a web address. The point is to think holistically and use a consistent design and message everywhere so that they will remember who you are and ultimately have you in mind when they go to make their purchase offline.

When people search online 36% are looking for news, 31% are looking for images and 17% are looking for videos. Sherman states that “Search marketers should put a priority on optimizing press releases. Optimizing other types of digital assets is important, but should be secondary.” He also states that it is important to know who your target audience is and don’t be afraid to assign them “personas” so that marketing campaigns and in-store customer service efforts can be tailored to them. For instance Best Buy has discovered and named four customer profiles: “Buzz” the techie, “Barry” the wealthy professional, “Ray” the family man and “Jill” the soccer mom. Each one of these identified personalities will receive different kinds of information and product offers in-store and out.

Another way to drive up sales in your brick and mortar institution is through the use of social networking. Social networking is essentially online buzz marketing. By creating your own blogs and participating in other companies/peoples blogs and chats you can build up your own image, improve a negative misconception that the public may have had about your business or a product, and offer the kind of information that people need to feel comfortable making a purchase from you. It essentially plays on the power of word of mouth and reviews. Social marketing needs to be done right though. The focus should be on sincerity, responsiveness, and a casual non-sales approach. Social networking (marketing) is especially useful because it involves direct communication with the consumer when they feel least inhibited. They are more likely to give honest opinions and tell you exactly what they think, want and need. It’s like having your own focus group, but better.

Here’s a few more online facts that may shock and surprise you. According to the Universal McCann’s Comparative Study on Social Media Trends, April 2008:

• 73% of active online users have read a blog
• 45% have started their own blog
• 39% subscribe to an RSS feeds
• 57% have joined a social network
• 55% have uploaded photos
• 83% have watched video clips

Many search marketers face organizational challenges when attempting to integrate SEO/SEM into their marketing mix. Stakeholders may see the internet as unknown territory, and therefore are threatened or intimidated by it. They may also have some sort of “vested interest” in keeping with traditional offline marketing techniques. However, by sharing best practice techniques and case studies proving the success that offline and online integration can bring, they may slowly change their mind about it.

Good marketing means working smart and knowing your customers habits. Right now all consumers believe that knowledge is power and the internet is a source for both. This makes online search engines a powerful tool for offline businesses if they decide to use it. Remember to think holistically, remain consistent in branding efforts and use it as a part of a larger online/offline marketing campaign.

Popularity: 79% [?]

Day-Parting, or the act of targeting your internet advertising (like banners, ads and pay-per-clicks) to audiences at certain times of the day, can be difficult to set up and evaluate efficiently. Conversion values can range from 5% to 25% or more for a single retail company according to George Michie of the Rimm-Kaufman Group. Being able to measure and act on the daily, or even hourly differences in data is essential and requires careful analysis and execution. Luckily, I’m about to give you some tips to help you and your small business get day-parting done right.

Quality, Not Quantity
Just because you get more clicks at a certain time of day or week, doesn’t mean your conversion rates (sales per click ratio,) are going to go up too. Besides, you have a budget to think about. You may get 100 clicks a minute between 9:00 a.m. and Noon, but can you afford it? Finding times where

Analyze Your Non-Brand PPC Traffic
Making sure that you are analyzing the right kind of traffic is essential. Brand, Direct load and non-brand (competitive) pay-per-clicks behave very differently. You should be isolating your competitive pay-per-clicks and analyzing them separately. Your job should focus mostly on analyzing the PPC that your software program controls – basically your direct and brand PPC. Also, avoid the common mistake of discounting time zones when looking at what day or time a click came in.

Give Credit Where it’s Due
When tracking click to sales conversion rates, keep in mind that most companies don’t reap the benefits of a banner ad right away. People often surf around the web at one time of day, then make their purchases later on, or the next day. This means that you can’t make a correlation between how many clicks you receive in an hour and how many sales were completed at the same time. Use your cookie tracking tools to give you an idea of when people are looking at your ads versus when they actually make a purchase.

Another thing to keep in mind: People may do much of their web surfing at night while they are home, then return to your website from their work computer the next day to make their purchases. There also may be a time of day when people click on your ads, yet choose to call the 800 number to order instead of make their purchase online. This can make tracking difficult, but it’s worth taking into consideration when looking at clicks and sales in a given time period. One way to offset this phenomenon is to slowly beef up your day-parting one segment at a time and keep an eye out for any unexpected results.

Stay Current, Reasonable and Balanced
You should be using data that isn’t too old, but you also want enough time to gather a sufficient sample. Six to Twelve weeks worth of data is probably perfect depending on your business type. Be sure to exclude things like holidays and special sale events since those numbers can throw off your regular data. Also, be sure that every time-bucket has at least 100 click-to-sale conversions. Any less is too small of a sample to read.

Consolidate and Segregate
Instead of analyzing every bucket independently or a full 12 weeks at once, you can consolidate a day, part of a day, or week. For instance, you can group all the hourly buckets in a day into four groups of eight buckets. This would also help to consolidate sparse data from those hours of the day or night when you don’t get as many conversions.

Day-parting is not always a priority for SEO/M managers, and it shouldn’t be. But the steps above can certainly help you make better decisions regarding where you advertise on the web, what data to collect and discard, and how you should spend your time analyzing that data.

Popularity: 54% [?]

Google’s retail insights team made a great post here regarding taking advantage of the seasonal ‘back to school’ trends. I think they have done a fantastic job of going through the process of understanding the user behavior, what they are looking for and how to contextually target those users.

We mentioned this type of thinking a few days ago in ‘Seasonality and search campaigns‘ and our Google hot trends post. We always recommend that clients take advantage of these opportunities, whether they are month long trends or single day bursts. It’s just one way to stay ahead of your competition and get better value for your advertising dollar!

Think outside the square and try to expand into areas which aren’t your primary focus audience by targeting these kinds of opportunities. Write creative that will appeal to the users looking within these kinds of secondary and topical search markets, never use your standard, generic creative.

Later this week as part of our search education series, we will go through some basic steps to help identify seasonal trends and how to leverage them.

Happy hunting!

Popularity: 28% [?]

Quite often, we get asked questions like “How much should i spend per month on paid search?” – This one is a fantastic question, however, there is really only one person who can answer that and that is you!

Some things to consider when developing a budget for your paid search campaign:

1. Determine some solid campaign goals. These can be branding, traffic, conversions or whatever other metric you find is most relevant to your business.
2. How much each click is going to cost you – Do some keyword research, try to get an idea of what each click is going to cost you.
3. Workout how many clicks you need to make a difference to your bottom line and at what point you make a profit. I would recommend analyzing your current conversion data and starting with that to workout your ROI.

Now that you have some basic figures around what goals you need to hit to make you profitable, you should be able to work backwards and then workout how much money you can spend on your paid search campaign.

If you are running a CPA based campaign and you are making profit directly from the clicks, then its an easy argument to say that your budget should be unlimited. The more clicks, the more profit. Simple, so as long as you keep hitting your average conversion goals and your CPC stays within your target range, let it spend!

If you are after click volume and your revenue is based on lets say page views through an advertising network, the equation isn’t much different. Take your average CPM and work backwards, taking into account things such as the average number of times each user returns to the site etc to see how much you can afford to pay per click and still remain profitable.

The tough decision with budgets comes on purely brand based campaigns as the flow on effect from this is sometimes hard to directly attribute to paid search. So i guess, without knowing specifics about the brand, the tracking or anything else this is more of a “What can i afford to spend” kind of dilemma where you bite the bullet and allocate X$ per month and then re-evaluate.

This isn’t intended to be an in depth article about defining budgets, simply some thoughts around ways of allocating budgets and getting clients thinking about some more fundamental questions which factor into their search budget allocation.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Google recently updated the way in which it communicates adwords quality scores to its advertisers. These fundamental changes, give a more insightful and meaningful metric to advertisers which is “first page bid” instead of “minimum bid”. Basically, a minimum bid is a pretty useless idea of how well your ad is going to be seen, especially in a competitive category because a minimum bid usually will be somewhere deep in page number 3 or 4 of results pages.

Here is how Google explained the way in which the new formula will work in their latest inside adwords post

Here’s an example to illustrate how per-query Quality Score works:

Nancy’s Dairy advertises on the keyword ‘milk.’ Nancy’s ads perform better on the keyword ‘milk’ in the U.S. than in Canada. Her ads also perform better on the query ‘milk delivery’ than on ‘milk,’ and better on certain search network sites than on others. Instead of one static Quality Score and minimum bid that determines whether the keyword ‘milk’ is eligible to trigger an ad for all search queries, we will now determine eligibility dynamically, based on factors such as location, the specific query, and other relevance factors. For that reason, Nancy’s keyword ‘milk’ will be able to trigger an ad for search queries where it’s likely to perform better, i.e., in the U.S., on ‘milk delivery’ and on certain search network sites.

Now, the biggest problem i see with this is that Google STILL DOESN’T give advertisers the ability to run bulk, campaign wide quality score reports. That however is a whole different issue that i will address shortly.

Google also states that quality scores will now update in real time which is a massive improvement because until now, quality score sweeps could happen several days or even weeks after making a change to an ad. Which is of course a bad thing when it comes to paying too much for clicks.

One of the other big changes is that keywords will no longer be deactivated. I’m sure we have all come across dozens of keywords in large accounts which will quite often become deactivated due to low quality scores. In fact, i’ve always found it quite useful to look at accounts in adwords editor and sort by keyword status, the inactive keywords are always the first ones to be optimized!

Google the ever evolving beast is doing a fantastic job across almost all areas of adwords and is still lightyears ahead of Yahoo, Keep up the good work guys!

Popularity: 53% [?]

Recently, Google decided to do some more experimenting with the search results pages and started serving a new set of search boxes, below the first organic listing, which allows users to refine their search further before going to your website.

I know I’ve already witnessed some very heated debates between Google and website owners, worried about losing valuable traffic and page views to their sites. Rightly so, Google’s experiments quite often cause website owners sleepless nights, their “tweaking” can mean a 50% drop in traffic overnight. Bigger brands, this could mean an even larger drop in traffic when the majority of their current traffic, comes from simple, brand based searches, simply because, they have spent years building that brand.

What if your homepage, is the page you WAN’T surfers to land on, regardless of their query?

If the content on a specific page is already highly relevant to the users query, shouldn’t that page be served up instead of the search within a site box?

Google’s position with this experiment is an interesting one, they claim they are trying to deliver users, directly to the most relevant page within any given website by allowing users to further refine their search, while still on Google and then clicking through, only when they find the organic listing they desire.

I give Google credit, for transactional based searches, where a user is searching for a specific product, I can really see the advantage to a system like this, delivering users directly to the most relevant page possible, but for broad, brand based searches, I think this is getting a little cheeky.

For those of you who don’t know what “search within a site” is, click on the thumbnail to see a preview image or preview HSBC results in Google here

Ok, now for the most contentious part of Google’s search within a site. Normally, advertisers can choose to block their competitors from buying their brand terms, if they have a registered trademark, so with my example above, say you are HSBC and you have blocked competitors from triggering ads on your famous trademark. Great, so you now own the space, paid and organic, when a user searches for your brand.

What happens next is the topic of most of the debate around search within a site, when you do choose to refine your search, using the search within a site box, Google all of a sudden decides that triggering ads, while searching within your site is fine and will display competitor’s ads prominently both above and beside your organic results. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger picture)

Is Google going too far with this? Or is this just simply allowing users to compare your search results with those of your competitors? – Studies have shown, that people have a built in need to compare between at least 3 major brands that they expect to see when they search. (Gord Hotchkiss has done some interesting research on this)

An example would be searching for rack servers, consumers would expect to find Dell, HP and Sun for instance, if the users only found the one brand, dominating all the top organic and paid positions, they aren’t as likely to purchase the product or to feel secure in their decision. I won’t go into depth about this in this article, but it is one thing to keep in mind.

In my opinion, search within a site is just another way that Google is trying to improve their users experience, helping them to reach the most relevant content, with the least hassle, however, Google are stepping on some toes with this one and if it rolls out and becomes more than an experiment, you can be sure that there will be plenty more people complaining about the feature.

For those of you who are worried about what search within a site is doing to your traffic, there is some hope, Google will listen to your requests to have this feature removed (at least they do if you are a big PPC advertiser), so contact your local Google rep and ask whether they can remove it, before you go and get too excited!

In the meantime, Loveclients will as always keep our clients (and everybody else via the blog) if our research gives any definitive answers.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Ok, so everybody on earth has used Google or Yahoo or some kind of search engine. So chances are, you have come across paid search campaigns before! Did you recognize the ads as paid?.. Chances are if you have been around the internet for long enough you would be used to these ads and they probably blend into your everyday searching without causing a stir.

Did you know that quite often people are paying $1,5 or even $50 per click to get traffic via these paid links??! You may think, why the hell would somebody pay $50 per click? Well the truth is, that if you were making $100 per click, paying $50 isnt that bad! – It’s sort of like poker, you are never going to be 100% sure that spending $50 on a click is going to pay off every time, but by making the educated decision and the “right play” more often than not that click is going to deliver a good return on investment!

Paid search is a science and the basics premise behind it is to buy clicks that are valuable to your website and get a good ROI from the campaign as a whole. Lots of individual elements come together across the whole campaign to deliver the end results. Paid search combines elements of marketing, advertising, copywriting, analytics, accounting and many other smaller elements together.

The main differences between paid search and organic search is that paid search can deliver instant traffic on demand which is highly accountable and can be constantly optimised towards many different end goals including a lower cost per click, higher traffic volumes, more conversions or any other metric which you desire.

Paid search isnt going to do everything for your business, it wont make your site convert better if it sucks. It wont do the ironing for you or cook you dinner It CAN however deliver real value to your business by getting your brand in front of consumers when they are in the right frame of mind to purchase your products or become a loyal follower of your message. The difference between an average search marketing campaign and a good one can be the difference between buying a ferrari or a fiat!!

I haven’t gone into too much detail in thos post about the inner workings of SEM but stay tuned for some far more detailed insights into the world of paid search!

Popularity: 13% [?]