ATTRACT, CONNECT AND BOOST YOUR SALES

Web Design, SEO Services & Internet Marketing
by Deon Designs

Last week, SMX London graduated to SMX Advanced status. We in the UK eagerly anticipated the fresh new tips and tricks which are usually left until several beers later in the networking bars!

And we certainly weren’t disappointed. I thought it would be useful to share with Search Engine Land readers the top ten advanced search marketing tips which I gleaned from the show.

Link building: Offer a student discount. Among Kelvin Newman’s excellent 17 ways to build university and government links, the one I found most thought-provoking was for e-commerce sites to offer a student discount. This means that the generous offer instantly encourages university sites to link and may also generate further student blog and online coverage too.

A couple of weeks ago I had the deal with Mike Clough, who manages The Blog Zone group at LinkedIn. As the result of the deal, I became manager of his subgroup Guest Blogger and announced this subgroup as MyBlogGuest official home at LinkedIn.

I am pretty much new to managing an active LinkedIn group like this, so I decided to do some research. In this post I am sharing my findings (that seem to be working for me!):

1. Start a Discussion

If that’s a new group, you will need to create a couple of relevant threads to encourage discussion (in my case, that was about joining the existent ones).

Fluent in search marketing? SMX Advanced Seattle is for you. This year’s agenda packed with expert-level tips to drive traffic and increase conversions using SEO, paid search, social media marketing and vertical search tactics. Programed by the editors of Search Engine Land, session topics include:

- SEO for Google Vs. Bing: How Different Are They?
- How’s Your QSO? Quality Score Optimization For Pros
- Twitter, Real Time Search & Real Time SEO
- Pump Up Those Conversions
- Search Marketing In The Facebook Zone
- The Mad Scientists of Paid Search
- Location Services: The New Local Search?

It’s probably no surprise to anyone working as a search marketer, but the industry is chugging along at double-digit growth rates, even as budgets for other forms of marketing and advertising continue to be slashed. According to SEMPO’s sixth annual State of Search Engine Marketing Report, the North American search engine marketing industry will grow 14% this year from $14.6 billion in 2009 to $16.6 billion by the end of 2010.

The report, based on a global online survey of nearly 1,500 client-side marketers and agency respondents, also found that measuring the return on investment (ROI) is the biggest challenge facing marketers this year in all three key search tactics covered in the survey—search engine optimization, paid search and social media marketing.

It’s day three of SMX West 2010, and we’re going to kick off with a group keynote conversation called “The State Of The Search Union.” The description hints that we’ll be talking about where the industry is today, and where it’s going in the future. No doubt the Microsoft-Yahoo deal will be a big discussion item.

Chris Sherman will moderate, and scheduled speakers include:

• Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
• Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist, Google Inc.
• Misty Locke, President, Range Online Media & Chief Strategy Officer, iProspect, Range Online Media / iProspect

Day three of SMX West 2010 is in the books, and that wraps up the main conference portion this year’s event. (There are in-depth training sessions on Friday.) We live-blogged today’s keynote, and a variety of bloggers and webmasters covered the rest of the day’s sessions and news. Here’s a recap of the SMX West coverage we’ve found; feel free to leave a comment if there’s something we missed.

• Analytics Action Plans For PPC, BruceClay.com
• Ask The Search Engines, Outspoken Media
• Ask The SEOs, Outspoken Media
• Blended SERPs Presentation SMX West 2010, www.dreamsystemsmedia.com

The second day of SMX West 2010 is in the books, and here are links to our own coverage of the day’s keynote:

• Liveblog: SMX West 2010 Keynote – An Insider’s Look At Google Research
• Google’s Norvig: PageRank Is Overhyped

But there was much more going on during the individual sessions. Here’s a recap of the SMX West coverage we’ve found; feel free to leave a comment if there’s something we missed.

• 60 Minutes Per Day For Social Media Success, Outspoken Media
• Adwords Grows Up! Formats, Sitelinks & Universal, AIM Clear Blog

Given the consumerism mentality that is so pervasive in society today, people regularly throw good money after bad, chasing more of what they already have. But this behavior isn’t limited to consumers. Time and again, I see B2B marketers doing the very same thing.

The situation

B2B marketers work hard to target the right keywords, create compelling ad copy, and drive potential customers to click on their ads, all with the hopes of capturing them as a lead. But unfortunately, conversion rates often fall short of what they could be. Desperate to make up ground, many B2B marketers ramp up their paid search spend to drive more traffic, and in doing so, end up maintaining their dismal conversion rate.

Last week or so I was approached by Danny Wong asking me to publish his post on why he thinks link building via guest posting is a bad strategy. I replied to him saying that this largely depends on each person’s approach to guest blogging.

I did agree to publish the post (because I think we should discuss various points of view here) but promised to share my own opinion on it in the upcoming weeks (for this same reason I didn’t comment on the original post).

Over the years, I’ve gone through many iterations of focus as a search marketer.  In my first years in SEO, traffic seemed to be the primary focus all of online marketing. Increasing the client’s online visits was the number one goal. That thinking evolved into a multi-pronged approach to looking at data – from lowering bounce rate, to comparing visits versus unique visits.

With the evolution of tracking software – what we know, and what we can track has become much more sophisticated. With that ability,comes the onset of confusion.

• What should you be looking at in your analytics dashboard?

This post was written by Feras Alhlou, SMX West presenter and workshop leader for “Using Google Analytics to Improve Your Online Marketing & Business.”

Not everything that can be counted counts, and, not everything that counts can be counted.
- Albert Einstein

Einstein’s observation wasn’t intended to describe internet marketing, but it certainly applies! Truth is, many of us are bombarded with numbers and reports but can’t seem to get the actionable insights we need.

Search Marketing Expo – SMX West kicks off in 2 weeks at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Are you ready to experience the 100% search focused agenda, presented by the most qualified search experts, and network with the search community?

Register for your All Access pass and get 3 days of exceptional content and invaluable industry connections for only $1395 ($200 off the on-site rate). For a description for alternative pass options click here.

SMX West is created by the editors of Search Engine Land, who have been reporting on and analyzing the search industry since its inception. This year’s opening keynote is a conversation with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in his first presentation to the search marketing community at an industry event.

For SEM pros, a search management tool is one of the most important pieces of technologies they own, so it’s obviously critical to have the best tool for the job. I’ve referenced Bonnie Jo Davis’s list of the ten capabilities a PPC management tool must have before in this column, but let’s review again.

Paid search management tool basics

1. Allows you to manage your campaigns from anywhere in the world at any time.
2. A simple and intuitive interface that does not require a degree in engineering.
3. The ability to manage the most popular PPC advertising vehicles: Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.

paidContent.org reports Yahoo’s founders will be selling up to 5 million shares of Yahoo stock. The SEC filing shows that Jerry Yang, the former CEO, will be selling 3 million shares and David Filo will sell up to 2 million shares.

Overall, in the scheme of how many shares both own, 5 million shares of Yahoo is small. Both owned 133 million shares, so reducing the number by 5 million is not much. At the current value, 5 million shares is worth about $75 million.

Credits to: Barry Schwartz

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We’ve already highlighted the exceptional content and highly qualified presenters at SMX West. But there’s another aspect of the show that is just as important and valuable – networking. And with hundreds of companies sending delegates (so far), there are lots of people to network with!

Keep reading to learn more about the networking opportunities and then register for your All Access pass to Search Marketing Expo – SMX West, March 2-4 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara CA.

SMX Online Networking

Networking begins before the conference on SMX Connect, the SMX West social networking site. You can:

The Google AdWords blog announced they will be making a policy change to allow certain kinds of pharmaceutical ads to be shown on Google search results. The policy change will go into affect towards the end of this month.

Here are some of the conditions:

(1) Only VIPPS and CIPA certified pharmacies will be allowed to advertise:

We’ve made the decision to further restrict the ads we accept for online pharmacy sites in the U.S. and Canada. Starting at the end of this month, Google AdWords will only accept ads from online pharmacies in the U.S. that are accredited by the National Association Boards of Pharmacy VIPPS program, and from online pharmacies in Canada that are accredited by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA.)

You probably already know that search marketing is all about keywords. For paid search, it’s the keywords you bid on and the match types you associate them with that determine when your ads are shown.

The basics of paid search marketing are keyword selection and match types. Once you’ve selected your keyword list you move on to match types.

Today, we’re going to go under the hood and take a quick look at a search engine platform where advertisers can upload keywords and ads to start buying paid search. For the sake of practicality, we’ll be specifically looking at just the Google interface, AdWords, as it is the most widely adopted paid search platform in the industry. It wasn’t the first, but it has become the standard for paid search buying and offers the most robust options for reporting, optimizing and managing accounts. And, because upwards of 70% of all paid search is bought through Google, it is almost imperative to learn for anyone involved with paid search. Not every feature in AdWords will be available in other platforms, but many of the basics are customary functions you will find in all paid search interfaces.

Econsultancy and ExactTarget released a new report today that says digital marketing will account for 24% of overall marketing spend this year, and 28% of firms are shifting at least some of their overall marketing budgets from traditional to digital channels.

The research was based on a survey of more than 1,000 companies around the world, though the majority were based in the US (45%) or UK (33%). Some key findings include:

• Just under half (46%) of companies say they are planning to increase their overall marketing budget, and a further 42% say they are planning to keep this budget the same as it was in 2009. Only 13% say they are planning to decrease overall marketing budget.

SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, has launched its sixth annual “State of Search Engine Marketing” survey. Search marketing professionals — either in-house or at an agency — are welcome to participate, and you don’t need to be a SEMPO member.

The study will project planned spending across the industry for search, advertising, and social media campaigns in 2010. Its goal is “to assess the economy’s effect on year-to-year online marketing spending and investigate new trends.”

The survey is open until February 22nd. All participants will get a free copy of the final report (a $249 value) when it’s released in March.