If your company has a focus on improving its search engine optimization, then you should speak with us about SEOtool and the unmatched intelligence and SEO metrics it can uncover for your website(s). We’re biased, but we strongly believe there is not a single web-based platform that can deliver the amount of insight and depth that SEOtool provides to both in-house SEO teams, agencies and web development firms.
Channel Advisor just released its bi-annual study titled “How Consumers Shop Online”. As an industry leader in shopping comparison engines & product feeds, CA knows a thing or two about consumer shopping trends for the advertiser’s they serve. The study comprised 850+ individuals in nearly 30 states, ages 18-65 years old. To access the full report, click here.
Here are some key takeaways for online retailers to strongly consider as they plan for the Holiday Shopping season and into the future:
“81 percent of consumers begin their product searches with Google and 11 percent begin with Yahoo”
“Consumers are using more sophisticated, specific searches to seek out the exact products and deals they want. As a sign of this trend, Google recently reported an eight percent increase in searches comprised of three words or more.“
“Free shipping, peer reviews/ratings, free returns and the ability to view products from multiple angles are the most influential purchase drivers on
a retailer’s storefront”
Advertisers are using a diversified mix of shopping comparison engines to help promote their brands and other primary traffic sources such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Email marketing, etc. Below is a breakdown of where CA customers are investing in comparison engines:
As this study indicates, search engines continue to lead the way for online retailers as a source of traffic, product research & comparison, finding deals and finding new brands. Of that source, search optimization should continue to be a focal point for retailers as it’s the greatest area for improvement, yields the best ROI and provides the longest term impact. It is important that eTailers consider ways to sell more through a multi-channel approach such as shopping comparison engines, affiliate marketing, email marketing, etc. Use some of this proven information as outlined above to plan your efforts for the holidays & going into 2010.
A recent study by PPC management firm EngineReady presents alot of great data for retailers to consider regarding order sizes, conversions & other purchase metrics important to eCommerce. The study was summarized by InternetRetailer, which can be found here.
The problem with this study, as many studies & surveys in the online marketing industry, is that it is SKEWED to the target audience. Below are some reasons why the study is wrong in its claim that PPC is more likely to bring buyers than SEO.
Key findings from the study included:
The conversion rate from paid search is 2.03% versus 1.26% from organic search, according to the study, which is based on traffic to 26 e-retail sites in the 12-month period that ended June 30.
Paid search visitors bought the most, with an average order value of $117.06 versus $109.27 for those coming from other sites, $106.64 for visitors from organic search and $95.29 from direct referrals, such as from a bookmark or direct entry of a URL.
The known trends (SEO vs PPC) from many other industry studies that have been overlooked in this study, thus skewing the claim that PPC can bring more buyers, include:
MORE visitors are reached through SEO as consumers are significantly more likely to click on organic listings over PPC listings (recent Hubspot researched showed 75% of clicks are to SEO listings, 25% to PPC ads)
Due to the sheer volume of traffic delivered through organic search, odds are the conversion rate will decrease. SEO delivers the masses (3-4X reach of PPC) — so conversion rates logically would be somewhat less.
PPC will have a higher conversion rate due to the sophistication of landing pages purely for PPC. As a holistic strategy, SEO can’t really operate with depth of landing page refinement that PPC can.
In aggregate, SEO typically has higher ROI due to rising PPC costs and the fact that SEO clicks are “free”. Granted, you do pay a retainer fee for SEO services to get you & keep you ranked. (SEOMoz study found that 88% of budgets go to PPC, while 12% go to SEO). Net-net, what’s the better ROI?
PPC is the equivalent of renting a house. SEO is like owning a house. The investments in SEO have significantly stronger long-term benefit than PPC.
At the end of the day, PPC has tremendous value for advertisers, and is a powerful mechanism when combined with successful SEO. The study discussed here does have useful findings, but it’s missing important data for eCommerce decision makers. When one looks at the complete reach of SEO, cost-analysis and long-term value —- the benefits of a well run SEO campaign outperform PPC and in sum, bring more buyers.
Microsoft & Yahoo have announced a 10-year partnership to take on Google and its search engine market share dominance. For those companies keenly interested in successes in organic search, this announcement states that Bing’s search engine will power results for Yahoo Sites. How is your website ranking in Bing for your most important keywords, themes & topics? It’s about to be reflected in Yahoo.com organic listings, so plan accordingly!
While Google is still king of the mountain in terms of search engine market share (65%), one can reasonably conclude that Bing’s search engine will now reach approximately 28% of US search engine users! This is derived from June 2009 comScore numbers where Yahoo garnered 19.6% and MSFT 8.4%, of the US search engine market. With the continued advertising push by MSFT for Bing.com on prime-time television and other media outlets, these numbers could keep rising as most feedback has been solid for the Bing ‘experience’. It’s obvious Yahoo likes their advancements!
Online marketers who are experiencing success in Bing.com, with mediocre results in Yahoo, should have an added level of excitement and anticipation with these latest announcements. In contrast, if you’re “off the grid” in Bing.com, you might want to get your act together sooner than later as Yahoo results are about to experience quite the makeover —- which sounds best, “BingHoo” or “YaBing”? ;-) Stay tuned for more to come on this partnership or contact TDM’s new media marketing staff with any questions and how this affects your website’s future.
For the past few months, there have been strong signals that a company’s “brand” is becoming an indicator to Google’s algorithms in determining organic rankings. There was a great deal of chatter back in late-February about this topic within the SEO industry. If this concept is news to you and your company, then you need to take some time to consider how your website is impacted. There is a solid article over at SEW about this very topic and how businesses (small & large) are successfully “branding” themselves online and gaining benefit in higher search engine rankings.
A couple of points web-driven businesses should recognize with SEO-driven branding:
Offline Branding, as a marketing strategy, is a concept many companies shy away from because it lacks immediate results, is very difficult to measure, and often falls far down the priority list as a “want” and not a “need”
Online Branding, as it relates to search engine rankings, is a much more justifiable approach when one considers costs, time investment, resources, measurement, and channels to proliferate a brand.
Practical and proven methods to conduct “Online Branding” include but are not limited to:
+ Blogging
+ Community & Industry Participation
+ Press Release Marketing & Optimization
+ Social Media Content Creation
+ Link Building through Strategic Outreach
“All of these help you gain reach and frequency. Most importantly, you’ll reach those who are interested in (and searching for) your products and services.”
Create great content (on-site & off-site) that educates your audience and strategically links back to your most relevant website pages and you’ll see positive progress. As this content is syndicated and viewed by engaged audiences, you will naturally build “votes” through mentions and natural backlinks.
As we commonly say, Social Media Marketing is converging with Search Engine Optimization. This is proof positive in the Branding component that continues to influence some of the organic search results. We are clearly seeing this in the movement of our client’s rankings, campaigns and success. Those small, mid-size and large brands who embrace the shifting landscape (as is always the case in organic search) and stay ahead of curve, will continue to thrive in ultra-competitive environments.
CollegeHumor.com has a funny video on the new advancements with Bing.com and how it is revolutionizing search for consumers!
Actually Bing does have some nice usability features and is quite an improvement over it’s predecessor, Live.com. Will be interesting to see if MSFT’s advertising and branding campaigns can keep Bing more top-of-mind for searchers in an attempt to swipe some marketshare from Google & Yahoo! Surprising that they have not added in a sound component when you “Bing!” — like a bell at a front desk.
When blogging, every person, company or entity wants to establish and preserve it’s own “voice”. There are obviously many blog writing, blog marketing and branding strategies for a myriad of reasons personal & business reasons. When it comes to writing posts that hit the heart of a topic and may be critically important for increased exposure and SE friendliness, bloggers rarely think about keyword research and search engines.
Well, Wordtracker put its hat in the firefox plug ins game — and it’s fantastic! You can quickly build a keyword list of important terms to include in your post. It’s simply a blog writing “insurance policy” and valuable tool for those posts you really want to optimize for search engines. Based on the topic you want to cover, simply enter some important keywords and start “adding” chosen keywords to your line-up of keywords. This can become a great tool in a bloggers aresenal and regular daily practices. If you have any thoughts or early experiences to share, please feel free to! Hat-tip to SEOBook.
Then just start blogging. When you’re finished with your post, then go back and spot check the # of times you’ve used these keywords. To show this in action, I’ve screenshot how this tool is tracking this current blog post as I type. Here comes a Before & After.
BEFORE
Now just start adding keywords into your blog post once it’s finished — here’s a simple bullet point list to show the tool in action:
keyword research
seo services
free wordtracker tool, free wordtracker tool
keyword reserach
seo services
AFTER screenshot on keyword mentions is below. We’re not suggesting you just bullet point keywords to get them in a post, but for the sake of this example, you can see the increase real-time as you add important keywords (that get search traffic) into your blog posts (and at your own discretion).
A recent study conducted by Forbes called the “2009 Advertising Effectivness Survey” has proclaimed that both Viral Marketing and Search Engine Optimization will experience the fastest growth and highest percentage spend increase in company budgets throughout 2009. The study surveyed more than 100 key CMO’s and Marketing Executives who hold roles in advertising, marketing and media.
Key findings from the report include:
In the coming six months, respondents expect that ad networks will see the biggest declines in allocation of marketing spend; viral marketing and SEO will likely see the biggest increases.
$1MM+ respondents are significantly more likely than total respondents to point to viral marketing (54% vs. 42%), SEO (50% vs. 40%) and pay-per-impression ads on digital publications (36% vs. 26%) as areas where investment is expected to increase over the next six months.
As a leader in innovative SEO, viral marketing and social media marketing services, TDM is well prepared to work with clients seeking to leverage and exploit the benefits of these highly-efficient online marketing channels. Feel free to contact us for a free new media marketing consultation and to learn how your company can take its online marketing to new levels of success!
Due to the downturn in the economy, budgets for PPC advertising are shrinking with more attention and budgets shifting towards SEO. The costs, potential for results, and long-term benefits of a well-planned and executed SEO campaign cannot be denied. But how exactly do you ensure that your site’s long-term SEO plans are effective and well founded? An article at Search Engine Land effectively addresses this important question. You will want to ensure that you have reliable web analytics software. This software will ideally track SEO referrals, or simply put, reporting what search engines your site’s traffic is coming from and the keywords used to find your site. Make sure the analytics software that you choose can segment paid and non-paid search engine traffic. Google Analytics is the best value on the market, considering it’s free! There are other more robust, paid analytics packages that can shed granular insight (such as Omniture and WebTrends).
By analyzing analytics reports, you will be able to use these findings to determine the best areas to invest time, money and resources. When tracking performance, remember to make note of site re-launches, shifts in the market and other events when measuring at long-term results, as these will cause a change in your SEO metrics. By comparing these metrics, you can then prioritize efforts for optimizing your site based on market opportunities, ranking gaps and potential ROI.
There continues to be a groundswell of attention towards Social Media in mainstream media and other circles, but let’s examine Social Media’s relevance to SEO.The majority of industry experts, including those in-house here at TDM, would argue that a well crafted, well executed social media marketing strategy WILL have positive benefit on a brand’s natural search rankings.An in-depth discussion is currently taking place at the popular UK-based site eConsultancy on just how much social media influences rank order (positively, neutrally, and negatively).
Below are a couple of key reasons why we at Triangle Direct Media believe social media can and will continue to impact the organic rankings of a website:
Search engines, like Google, examine thequality & diversity of backlinks along with the “buzz” of a brand through Trust & Authority variables.Social Media is becoming mainstream so a brand’s participation in these channels helps it become an even stronger “subject matter expert” and informational resource.
Social Media reaches a very large and diverse audience of content creators, discussion participants and sideline observers.Social Media“content creators” serve as a very likely source for natural link building should a brand’s content or network participation move these content creators to post on their own sites or blogs about the brand.
While most major social networks allow for back links, such links almost always include thenofollow attribute which do not count in most search engine algorithms. In contrast, a number of social media outlets do provide brands the ability to secure and create “follow” links as part of the content creation life cycle.These pages get indexed and cached, serving as a credible link building channel.It’s important that brands actively participate to boost in-network visibility or the strength of a given set of social profiles or social content pages.
Blogs have proven to be a very strong platform for ranking well in major search engines through the practice of developing solid, unique content on a consistent basis while participating in a ecosystem of industry-related and/or peer blog publishers.Not only do blog posts rank well, they also serve as a strong source for link building particularly when posts go viral and secure active comment discussions.
Universal search has opened new ranking opportunities for online brands that effectively create content through video, images, news, blogs and other Social Media oriented vehicles.Many community sites provide great opportunities for instructional or informational content creation that incorporates text, video, images and discussions — these typically rank pretty well and can be a good source for ‘followed’ back links.
For anyone that has been an active member of SEO community for the past 5-10 years, determining the most productive and cost-effective ways to help clients rank on the first page is how we’re measured. Leveraging social media is a positive and the next evolutionary step in organic search.The above reasons are what standout as an argument to brand advertisers to engage social media from a natural search ranking perspective.There are obviously many other benefits social media marketing can deliver brands such as consumer-engagement, product testing, brand discussions, contests, etc.
Do you have any other primary reasons why companies interested in organic rankings in Google, Yahoo & MSN/Live should leverage Social Media Marketing?
A recent study by PPC management firm EngineReady presents alot of great data for retailers to consider regarding order sizes, conversions & other purchase metrics important to eCommerce. The study was summarized by InternetRetailer, which can be found 
Microsoft & Yahoo have 
For the past few months, there have been strong signals that a company’s “brand” is becoming an indicator to Google’s algorithms in determining organic rankings. There was a great deal of chatter back in late-
Due to the downturn in the economy, budgets for PPC advertising are shrinking with more attention and budgets shifting towards 
For anyone that has been an active member of SEO community for the past 5-10 years, determining the most productive and cost-effective ways to help clients rank on the first page is how we’re measured. Leveraging social media is a positive and the next evolutionary step in organic search.