Search Matters + Social Influences
The top search engines are on Twitter. Are you following their tweets?
And one of my personal favorites:
Google is the most represented of the companies, with many more accounts set up for various products: news, apps, etc. Here is a link that lists all Twitter accounts with Google in the name; just beware of immitators!
Two weeks ago I posted an article urging you to vote for the top search engine marketing posts of 2008 — the SEMMYS. The votes are now tallied and the winners have been posted on the SEMMYS website. Congratulations to all the finalists and of course, to the winners.
If you are interested in learning more about search engine marketing, I urge you to read the winning articles, as well as those of the finalists. And be sure to subscribe to their RSS feed because all are thought leaders in the industry and share valuable insight on a regular basis.
Without further ado, here are the winning SEMMYS for 2008:
With 4-5+ million users, and new accounts added at an estimated 5-10,000 daily, and mentions on traditional media, Twitter (website) seems to have become mainstream. It’s one of those simple internet ideas that has taken on a life of its own. And spawned countless complementary applications.
One such application, Summize, was purchased by Twitter last year and, apparently is soon to be integrated into the Twitter user’s interface. Appropriately renamed Twitter Search, this app is available at http://search.twitter.com.
Twitter Search enables a search of all tweets–not just those of people you follow–in real time based on a keyword or keyword phrase. Unlike Google, Yahoo! or other search engines, Twitter Search returns relevant tweets based on recency. There is also an advanced search to filter your Twitter search results by names, locations, hashtags (info), attitude, or the inclusion of links.
At any given time, there is bound to be someone tweeting about whatever is going on in the world–whether it’s a sporting event, a television show, an earthquake, or a conference. People are also tweeting opinions, reviews, interesting articles, new product announcements, events, and much, much more. I searched for “twitter search” and found this tweeted 22 minutes prior to my search:
From the searcher’s perspective, the great value of tweets is that they are 100% user generated–it’s the equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing. And since each post is limited to 140 characters, a Twitter Search results page is a very quick read.
I can’t tell you how many searches are conducted on Twitter Search each month because I couldn’t find the data anywhere. But my assumption is that it is growing…and fast. ComScore (website) tracks search engine volume each month, but does not include Twitter Search data. It is unclear if this is due to a low volume on Twitter Search or just a lack of tracking on the part of ComScore.
What we do know is the websites on the low end of the December search volumes were:
Time will tell whether Twitter Search will become as mainstream as Twitter itself–or even the traditional search engines. Integration with the user’s Twitter interface should help increase its use exponentially. In the meantime, I’ll continue to add to it’s search volume. How about you?
Twitter Officially Goes Mainstream
HubSpot’s “State of the Twittersphere” Report
Does Twitter Represent the Future of Search? Or is it The Other Way Around?
Cast your vote online until Feb. 2, 2009
What the heck’s a SEMMY? To quote the website, “It’s an annual awards event honoring some of the best articles and blog posts from the search marketing industry, as voted by the industry. We have 200 authors nominated, representing 157 blogs/sites.”
The SEMMYS was developed by Matt McGee (blog), David Mihm (website) and LogoWorks (website).
Don’t delay. Head on over to the SEMMYS website now and cast your votes because public voting ends February 2nd. Here’s the timeline:
Nominations are included in each of the following categories.
I’ m sure we will see a lot of SAMMYS chatter online over the next week. Be sure to Digg, StumbleUpon, Tweet, Blog or whatever it is you do to encourage voting. And congratulations to all of the nominees.
Your client wants to be on page one of Google’s organic search results. But you and your agency have not yet entered the wonderful world of search. What should you do? Here are 5 options for obtaining top organic search results.
Optimize the client’s website for search engines – Otherwise known as search engine optimization or SEO. Requires making changes to a website’s code, design and content to follow the search engines’ recommendations for SEO best practices. The good news is that search engine optimization done well usually delivers long-term organic results. And you own the site, you have complete control over it and the content is exclusive to the company. However, the cons with search engine optimization are that you must make changes to your website, which is not necessarily inexpensive or painless. And SEO can take six to 12 months to see the organic results. But perhaps the biggest barrier for an agency is that SEO requires specific expertise and experience. Agencies without experience with website SEO should find an SEO consultant to hire or to bring in as a partner. To learn more about optimizing a website, read this article.
Launch a company blog — There are plenty of blogging platforms, even free ones like the one used for Search Matters from WordPress. Most are extremely easy to use for the non-technical and have many search engine optimization features built in. However, be prepared to write and publish often, and to invest time to market your blog. It takes about six to nine months at the least to build the authority of the blog to the point of realizing seo benefits. But the long-term benefits of a blog are great. Here’s an article to help you get started with a blog.
Add the company to online directory listings – There are countless online directories for companies. These range from online yellow pages, business listings, and map listings to industry, product or geography specific directories, and more. Advantages for directories are that they do not require special expertise, many listings are free, and most only require a one-time submission. But, the challenge with directory listings is that you are usually along side your competition fighting for attention. And, you are limited to just the company name. To get rid of ads on the page or to get above your competition, you will have to pay for a premium listing. Although it is a good idea to make sure your client is listed in the major online directories and targeted directories, it is not necessarily a long-term strategy to get your client to the top of organic search – with the exception perhaps of the company name. You may read more about directory submission here.
Submit articles to online sites – Also known as article submission or article marketing. You write articles around the topics of your business integrating targeted keywords and submit them for publishing on various article sites. It is important to publish articles with quality content, providing educational information. The biggest sin of article marketing is just writing a sales pitch. Article submission allows you to extend your message across the internet as well as search engines without making changes to the company website. It helps the company build itself as an authority in the industry. However, some of the article sites review articles prior to publishing and deny those deemed to not meet their article standards. And like blogging, there is time involved in writing the articles as well as the submission process. Here is an article that further discusses the benefits of article submission.
Become an Ecordia Reseller Partner – Ecordia is the proverbial “all of the above” option for agencies because it combines the search engine optimization best practices and advantages of websites, blogs, directories and articles. At its core it is a super-charged directory of landing pages. It is a non-technical way for agencies to publish content for its clients onto pages custom styled according to the client’s brand identity. Ecordia integrates a keyword research tool and an automatic SEO analysis for the content. So you’ll know prior to publishing how optimized the content is, and what you can do to improve the findability of the page. Simply put, Google loves Ecordia pages. To learn more about Ecordia, visit the website.
These are just a few of the ideas for search engine optimization. It really is becoming easier than ever before for the non-technical to conquer the top of mount Google.
comScore (website) tracks the volume of searches in the United States each month. Following are their findings for December 2008, compared to November 2008.
December 2008 U.S. Core Search Rankings
Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in December with 63.5 percent of the searches conducted, unchanged from November, followed by Yahoo! Sites (20.5 percent), Microsoft Sites (8.3 percent), Ask Network (3.9 percent), and AOL LLC (3.8 percent). Visit the comScore website to see their full findings.
|
comScore Core Search Report* |
|||
|
Core Search Entity |
Share of Searches (%) |
||
|
Nov-08 |
Dec-08 |
Point Change Dec-08 vs. Nov-08 |
|
|
Total Core Search |
100.0 |
100.0 |
N/A |
|
Google Sites |
63.5 |
63.5 |
0.0 |
|
Yahoo! Sites |
20.4 |
20.5 |
0.1 |
|
Microsoft Sites |
8.3 |
8.3 |
0.0 |
|
Ask Network |
4.0 |
3.9 |
-0.1 |
|
AOL LLC |
3.8 |
3.8 |
0.0 |
* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.
You can’t turn on the news these days without hearing at least one story about the economic conditions ─ bail outs, bankruptcies, cutbacks, layoffs and more. Marketing and advertising dollars are usually the first slashes made in the budget so it’s no surprise that industry analysts are projecting advertising spending in all categories to be down in 2009 ─ all areas except one: online advertising.
Online ad spending is expected to grow between 6 – 10% in 2009. The largest category of online advertising is search, which is expected to comprise more than 47% of the ad spend online. Clearly, this creates an opportunity for agencies, but many advertising, public relations and interactive agencies have not yet jumped into organic search.
If you are one of those agencies, you’ll want to read the white paper titled“How to Grow Your Agency in the Downturn: SEO Answers the SOS.” Written specifically for owners and managers of advertising, public relations, interactive and marketing communications agencies, this white paper addresses the current market conditions for the advertising industry and shines the light on the opportunities with search engine optimization (SEO).
Topics covered include:
“How to Grow Your Agency in the Downturn: SEO Answers the SOS” is freely available for download on the Ecordia website at www.ecordia.com/soswhitepaper. It’s a must read for all agency professionals who are considering adding organic search to their service offerings. The reasons to do so are growing and with Ecordia, the barriers are shrinking.
Don’t miss the next meeting of the Dallas Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association (website) this Thursday, January 15. Featured speaker is Brett Tabke, CEO and Founder of WebmasterWorld (website) and chair of PubCon Conferences (website). Immediately following Brett’s presentation, several websites will be selected for an on-the-spot SEO review by DFW SEM members. It’s a great opportunity to gain valuable insight from DFW’s leading SEO professionals.
The meeting will be held at the Renaissance Hotel (map) in Richardson from 6:15 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Price is $10 for DFW SEM members and $30 for non-members.
The January DFW SEM meeting is sponsored by SEMPO (website) and Lead Maverick (website).
SEO White Hat
In movies set in the wild west, the good guys always wore white and the bad guys donned black. The same is true in the world of search engine optimization (SEO).
“Black hat SEO” is a term referring to unethical techniques employed to “trick” the search engines to rank a web page in a top spot of its organic search, despite its true relevance – or lack thereof. Examples of black hat techniques include:
Although black hat SEO techniques may deliver top rankings in the short run, sites employing these run the risk of being penalized — or even banned — from the search engines.
“White hat SEO” refers to techniques used to aid search engines in understanding and ranking content based on adhering to SEO best practices. There are numerous things a website owner may do to improve a site’s SEO, but it all amounts to one thing: build a site that is very rich with quality content and people and the search engines will find the site. Google provides a lot of information about SEO best practices. Give it a read for an even better understanding of white hat SEO and you’ll be sure to have happy trails.
Happy Trails for the White Hat SEO
