Register now for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East and you’ll save $150. You have until the end of the day Friday, September 11 to take advantage our early bird rate.
50+ conference sessions for all experience levels on SEO, PPC, social media, local search and more. Check out the agenda.
Ten days ago, we reported that Antonio Gulli left Ask.com after 4 years heading up their technology team in the European R&D center. Gulli announced his new plans are to continue in search, but switch ships and work for Microsoft Bing.
Gulli said he will be “leading all the engineering development for UX and verticals in Europe,” focusing on Microsoft Bing’s search technology and user interface. He will be working at Microsoft’s London site of STC Europe nearby Carnaby Street.
Search activity around the world jumped 41 percent between July 2008 and July 2009, and Google remains the most popular search engine with 67.5% global market share. Those are some of the stats that comScore shared today about the global search market.
According to comScore, Google is not only No. 1 around the world, but it also continues to gain market share — rising 58% between July 2008 and July 2009. Yahoo is second in overall market share, but its growth is stagnant at just 2% in the same period. Chinese search engine Baidu is third overall, but Microsoft/Bing may eventually surpass it; the latter has seen a 41% increase in searches, while Baidu only grew by 8%.
In five weeks, our SMX East search marketing conference arrives in New York City from Oct. 5-7. The show features four to five tracks of sessions spread across three days and covers all aspects of search marketing. Below is a personal tour from me on what attendees can expect.
Our SMX Advanced conference that sells out each year is especially designed for experienced search marketers. In contrast, SMX East is one of the two “big” or “supermarket” events that we run in the United States designed for search marketers of all skill levels (the other is SMX West, which will return to California next March).
There’s a lot of debate around whether social media marketing can be measured. There’s also a cauldron of bubbling issues around exactly what companies should measure when it comes to social media marketing.
Should we measure brand lift? Traffic? Conversions? The number of blog subscribers? Yes, yes, yes, and yes!
Social media can be measured, but measuring isn’t the same for everyone. Just like there’s no cookie-cutter social media marketing strategy for companies to purchase and implement, there’s no simple off-the-shelf answer for measuring your success with your social media strategy. It can be a combination of numerous measurements, both automated and manual.
Over the years, I’ve heard a number of recommendations for SEO given out that I simply don’t understand or find logically flawed. I thought it might be interesting to share some of these and hear more perspectives. It could be that I just don’t comprehend the reasoning or haven’t thought things through, but I personally don’t always recommend these, so it’s worth at least a discussion.
#1 – Succesful SEO Copywriting = Keywords & Content Structure
Here’s an example of two pages upon which different kinds of SEO has been performed:
You can see what those queries are via the Search Query Report, and you can exclude them with negative keywords, but how could you ever exclude every irrelevant search someone might type in after changing their search focus? You can’t.
Created by Microsoft employee, Michael Kordahi, Blind Search is a great way to decide what really works better for you: Google, Yahoo or Bing. It offers you to search once to see results from all the three engines but you won’t know which results belong to which engine: you will have to choose blindly.
Last week we announced new high-end “Elegant” ad templates that can help you build great looking ads in minutes. Today we’re releasing additional “Elegant” templates in the “General” category, as well as templates in a brand new “People” category. This new category enables advertisers to use templates that have professional images featuring people
In addition to these new templates, we also added 13 premium fonts that you can use to make ads with maximum visual appeal. They include: News Gothic, Gill Sans, Futura and Nimbus Sans. Here are some examples of the new ad templates and fonts:
Read the search marketing press today and you’ll find abundant information on the importance of bid management strategies, as well as tools to maximize campaign ROI. However, as anybody who’s managed a search campaign recently knows, bid levels are only part of the equation.
Effective search marketers know that search engines are looking to maximize their yield from advertising&mdashjust as you are—so efforts to align your interests with those of your search partners can reap rich rewards. Search engines (primarily Google) have effectively shifted the onus of finding this balance to the advertiser through the introduction of quality score.
In my last article, “Matching Local Advertising to Consumer Intent,” I encouraged local advertisers to consider the intent of the consumers that they wanted to reach with their advertising distribution sources. The same idea can be applied to mobile, including the types of advertising that best fits your desired action (i.e. an enticement for an in-store visit, such as a coupon; or establishing your business as a brand, associated with other similar content; or a phone call to set-up an appointment). Here are some mobile search options, with observations on when they are most effective at having a meaningful impact on consumers.
Interpreting test results for paid search campaigns can be surprisingly difficult. One reason for this is order latency. The fact today’s clicks don’t all generate orders today, but instead sales trickle in over time means that analyzing new launches and tests can be tricky. Two ways to address this complication are described below.
Problem: Successful tests can look bad initially because of order latency
For example, let’s say the order latency for a particular advertiser with a 14 day cookie window looks like this:
Not long ago “computational engine” Wolfram Alpha struck a deal with Microsoft to license some of its data to Bing. Now, according to the Guardian UK, Wolfram is going wide with that strategy and will soon enable an API that third parties can use to create mashups or enhance their sites.
This may be a step toward monetization and/or an admission that as a “search destination” it’s foundering.
Wolfram today has a defined range of data (see the Wikipedia list), making it unpredictable for those not familiar with its capabilities and limitations. Chris and Danny both wrote positive reviews of the site.
TechCrunch reports Microsoft is continuing with the Bing TV commercials but this time promoting the Cashback program.
Most recently, Bing doubled the Cashback rewards to drive more awareness to the program. That double reward increase was so successful on some sites that Microsoft had to pull the program four days early. Maybe TV commercials end up being cheaper than double rewards? Here is the ad:
The NY Times offers an extensive and flattering profile of the former Yahoo EVP Qi Lu who, in January, 2009 was named president of online services for Microsoft. Lu was deemed an unlikely appointment by some given his background not as a business and advertising executive but rather as an engineer. However, he was apparently instrumental in helping facilitate the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal.
One of the striking things about the article is the uniform praise Lu receives from former Yahoo colleages and Google’s Udi Manber: “He is probably the best competition I can have.” The other is Lu’s devotion to his work:
“Social Media Roundtable” by Paul Colligan. Join Web 2.0 Expert Paul Colligan, as he dives into Media and Web 2.0. He’ll challenge everything that you think you know about media for Web 2.0, while showing you how you can do it the right way- to maximize your profits.
“Create Massive Leverage with Mafia Offers” by Brad Fallon. As CEO of StomperNet and an active member of an elite Mastermind Group of CEOs, Brad takes you to the top of your business, showing you how to successfully fulfill a role in your own company that will allow it to grow rapidly- beyond what you thought possible.
How To Get Super Affiliates To Mail Your Stuff by Jeff Johnson. Who better to explain what motivates affiliates than a super affiliate himself themselves? Watch this presentation, where Jeff Johnson reveals some helpful tips and insights from his own personal experience as an affiliate and shows you how to get better results from yours.
If you want to synchronize iPhone’s calendar and contacts with Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts, Google recommends to use Google Sync, which “uses the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol to synchronize the data on your phone with your Google Account”.
The option works well and it even supports multiple calendar, but there’s an important issue: ActiveSync lets you add a single alarm and Google Calendar converts each alarm to a “pop-up notification”. That means you can’t receive SMS notifications or email notifications when you create events from your phone.
