Today SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, in conjunction with Econsultancy, released the State of Search Marketing Report 2011. The results weren’t unlike what we had expected, but interesting nonetheless. Below you’ll learn what search engine marketers – both in-house and agencies – predict will happen in Google, Bing and other search engines Q2-Q4 of this year and into 2012. The emphasis, as our experts also predicted, were in mobile search and local/maps search. Keep reading for the juicy data.
Market Valuation
According to the report, it’s estimated that the North American search engine marketing industry will grow by 16% in 2011 to a value of $19.3B, which is up from $16.6B from 2010. After a slowdown to 8% in 2009, market growth increased to 14% last year. This year, it’s believed that the growth rate will increase to 16%, mostly thanks to continued growth from Google and the Microsoft / Yahoo Search Alliance.
Wholly cow – $19.3 billion! That means that there’s almost as much money going into search marketing as there is going into toys, with the toy industry making out with about $2.57 more than search ($21.87 billion). At the current growth rate, search may actually surpass the industry meaning we like spending more money on online marketing than we do buying stuff for our spoiled kids. Our kids better starting believing Santa, but mom and dad’s money is going to Google this Christmas!
Mobile Search
The report claimed that more than three-quarters of companies (79%) deemed mobile internet as ‘highly significant’ or ‘significant’, a 14% jump since 2010′s report. With regards to trend, mobile is apparently regarded as having more of impact than personalization of search results. In other words, we’d rather have mobile search capabilities than have our search results be more tailored to what we actually want to see. Fascinating.
Local Search
According to the findings, 43% of agencies say local search is highly significant and 41% say it’s significant (yes, that’s 84% of all agencies telling us that local search is pretty damn relevant in 2011). Pay attention, it gets better. Apparently 34% of a local business’s search budget is being spent on local PPC advertising, as opposed national PPC advertising, where 54% of the budget is allocated. A measly 12% of PPC advertising is going toward international paid search.
Everything Else
- Behavioral targeting is becoming more important (so get the word “Buy” in your titles if you sell online)
- Social networks continue to grow as a search medium (duh), with a staggering 74% of agencies claiming their clients are bidding on keywords in Facebook. 75% using Twitter as a promotional tool and 52% using LinkedIn
- Thank you for trusting us, your outsourcing vendors with 7% more of the SEO work you in-housed last year (44% outsourced now)
- The dawn of the machine is upon us, with many agencies using bid management software now
- and WOW 95% of search advertisers are paying to advertise with Google AdWords (go Google)
Google Vs. Facebook – Let the Fight Begin!
According to the State of Search Marketing Report, the number of advertisers in Facebook is growing and Google is concerned. To be honest, I’m not concerned. In my experience, Facebook has been effective for B2C impulse products, but it’s not where you’d search to find a new stroller for your baby or replacement batteries. Search engines are for search, social networks are for socializing. B2B ads (in my experience) do not perform well in Facebook. Still the Compete.com stats do raise an eyebrow.
Want to See the Rest of the Report?
Well, you could pay $350 at Econsultancy.com. Or you could give us a call and speak with one of our SEO Experts about your goals for 2011. Our clients know we subscribe to industry data and stay abreast of changes in search algorithms for a reason, and we love to share what we learn. Give us a call today at 800-405-7031. You’ll love what we have to share about SEO.
For most businesses, Internet marketing has become a critical part of day-to-day life. Yes, I said it, “day-to-day” life, not something done once or once in awhile, but something required to be done daily. I dare you to call a locksmith or florist and ask how many man hours are spent in a day on Internet marketing. As such, Google Autocomplete is the newest marketing tool of Google’s “Instant Search” platform that can make or utterly destroy a business’s ability to profit from their visibility online and, as we’ve discovered, can vary based on the browser one uses to surf the web.
How Important is Micro-Optimization?
Considering the depth of search engine optimization by browser for Google Autocomplete ranking, one has to wonder, does it really matter at the end of the day? We say, yes, yes it does.
Let’s say for instance that you are a large organization, such as Disney, and your marketing goal and job function for 2011 is to sell more Disneyland Tickets than in 2010, specifically in Google organic results. Understanding search and user behavior of Disneyland.com patrons, you know that 29% of patrons are now using Google Chrome or Firefox when buying tickets. You also know from web analytics that the phrase “Disneyland Tickets” converts 70% more searchers than the word “Disney” alone and 94% more visitors than “Disney Channel” as it pertains to selling tickets. Does a percentage of traffic matter to big organizations? You tell me.
[if you need help, 1.1M Visits * 1% = 11,000 Visits :: 11,000 Visits * $101 per Adult Hopper = $1.1M in sales]
With this knowledge in mind, you decide that it’s absolutely critical to have Google suggest the phrase “Disneyland Tickets” as a Google searcher begins to punch in the word “Disney”.
Based on our browser test (logged out of Google accounts, with cleared cookies, cache and history), we decide to fully wig out when we see that Chrome and Firefox do not render our phrase in the suggestion box, and decide to be mildly concerned that our partners at Disney Channel are ranking higher than us and may be consuming some of the ecommerce traffic we’re trying to get from searchers on the West Coast. I suppose it’s important to point out that East Coast searchers actually see “Disney World” appear in suggested search and completely different sequencing. Thank you Google for adding location to that piece of your Autocomplete algorithm – at least that’s easy to understand.
How to Optimize for Google Autocomplete for Firefox or Chrome
This part is easy. Just grab a phone book from each city on the West Coast, and then start calling all people marked as Chrome or Firefox users. Ask those people who know what the heck you’re talking about to search for “Disneyland tickets” at least once per week and only choose the suggestion “Disneyland tickets” and randomly choose a result from the actual search results page, and then share the result they chose in Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, their blog, and on other websites.
Simple right? Okay, maybe not. If I lost you in the last paragraph, imagine what the people you ask to help will think of our idea.
$1.1 million dollars is on the line, you need that suggestion to appear as close to the top for Chrome users as possible – your job is counting on it, so what do you do? I mean, really? You can’t just send Clu into the Disney Channel website to take it out, that’d just be, well, Goofy (boo). Google doesn’t provide much of a road map either, so I suppose we pack our bags and go find a job in PPC account management, or see if Six Flags has any openings.
There are no settings in either browser to adjust search results to be like a different browser, though you can adjust your browser to crawl a website as Googlebot.
What are Your Thoughts on Browser SEO for Google Autocomplete?
Got data? Share your feedback, but please (please, please, please) back it up with something tangible. Though a lot of SEO is theory and best practice, we want quantifiable solutions we can take the bank. Think you got what it takes?
It’s funny and perplexing at the same time, how strange people can be.
I received a call from a chiropractor who was caught overcharging
Medicare. Who caught him? The Government. As I’ve discussed in
previous posts moving government documents off page one of Google is no easy feat.
This chiropractor insisted he did nothing wrong, and he was ready to
commit to what it takes to push back negative information in search
engine results. Something seemed a bit fishy to me in our
conversation so I Googled his name myself. It turns out he was part
of a group of chiropractors that had been arrested and charged with
overcharging Medicare. There was an elaborate sting operation that
exposed their fraud.
I found it odd that after a sting operation and federal fraud charges
that he still had a license to practice. He told me that he could not
get new patients because of the negative posting. I then explained to
him that Government documents were the most challenging to push down.
He requested a price for IBG’s services, and I quoted him our normal
down payment and monthly payment schedule and explained this would
take at least four to six months to move. His response? He wanted to
bargain with me. “Can you cut me a deal,” he said. “Have a heart, I’d
really like to use your services but you are $X more expensive than
your competition and they have said they can do the work faster.”
I am sure the look on my face while I was listening to this guy
wheedle and connive was priceless. He was trying to do to IBG what he
and his partners in his former chiropractic practice did to Medicare.
I could not believe this guy. There are several types of cases that
IBG will not take. Defrauding the government is defrauding you and me
and all tax payers and is one of the areas we absolutely stay away
from. As I listened to this guy go on and on about how he deserved a
break, I shook my head in disbelief. He clearly felt no remorse for
defrauding Medicare and chances were big that he’d do all over again
if given the chance.
I told him to go ahead and sign with our competition.
Hello. I hope you all had a lovely weekend free of any issues that
could turn around and hurt your reputation both online and offline. I
wanted to share another story of reputation woes with you in the hopes
that it helps clarify the myriad of ways in which your day to day
activities of just going about life can haunt you online and cause
grief for years to come.
I received a call from a small business owner recently. He wanted us
to remove an article about him from a local newspaper that was coming
up on page one of Google search results for his name. It seems this
man met his “date” at a local hotel and it turned out to be a sting
set up by the local police to curb the frequency of soliciting
prostitution. The local newspaper posted not just his mug shot, but
that of his “date” with a description of the prostitution sting. He
thought being arrested for soliciting prostitution (whether he was
aware of it at the time or not) was embarrassing enough, but that was
nothing compared to seeing the article with his mug shot appear right
under his name when you performed a Google search on his name or his
company’s name.
Now for all the embarrassment he claimed to feel over this incident,
and how vociferously he wanted the article removed; he did not want to
pay our fee. Our fee was very reasonable considering he wanted to have
a newspaper article moved off page one of Google. Some things are
easier to move than others. Government Documents, newspaper articles
and court documents are the most challenging to move because of the
strength of the links and the age of the sites where the links
originate from.
This man, for all his embarrassment over the arrest, was only willing
to pay $200 per month for our services. I asked him if that was what
he thought his reputation was worth. I told him that you can’t fix a
car for $200, yet you want us to help you with your reputation? I
wished him good luck and I sincerely hope he learned his lesson.
In the environment of these tough economic times, the last thing any small business needs is to find that someone has writing a Rip off Report about them. There are over 20 + complaint sites on the internet… Most of them are opened sourced code, and Google rewards the posting by placing them # 1 under the link of the company that had the complaints. The worst part of this is most of the complaints are not true, written by disgruntle employees, competitors or just plan nut jobs.
We are IBG are working hard for American business to push down all these negative positing while flooding page one with positive information about the firms that have been attacked. Contact us at www.InternetBusinessGroup.com to get a free quote.
If you know someone or you have been attacked by the Thugs at Rip Off report.
Send us an e-mail and we will help you!
info@internetbusinessgroup.com
As the saying goes, in today’s market it takes more than being better than your competition to succeed, it takes completely standing out. Your competitors are lurking around on the Web right now as you read this post, trying to find ways to push you down in Google Maps, search engine results, and other online destinations. Soon they will figure out where you are listed online, which keywords you are bidding on, and where you are getting links to your website. Before long, they’ll be listening to the Internet and active customers who might have complained about you; possibly to sway them away from using your services.
So What are You Going to Do?
I’ll tell you what you’re going to do: You’re going to completely stand out from your competition by having a better brand, interacting with your community, building relationships and partnerships, overloading your customers with tips, discounts, downloads, offers, events, promotions, and appreciation. Your site will packed with ways to communicate, including chat, contact forms, a very obvious phone number, Twitter and Facebook links, and the ability to leave comments in blog posts, which you’ll be writing in as I am this very moment.
If local maps ranking is important to your business, you’ll have a monitor right on your counter with tabs open for Yahoo! Local, Google Maps, Yelp and possibly another rating/review service, so that your customers can share their great experience before they even leave the store. If your customers don’t come in, you’ll have a flyer stapled to your receipts incentivizing your customer to write, print and bring their business review. You’ll spend two full days scoping out where your competitors are getting listed in business directories by analyzing their Google Places page and positioning yourself higher by submitting more content, offers, details, keywords, and value proposition. You may even use tools like the Link Acquisition Assistant to find even more citation opportunities.
But Most of All…
….you are going to create the most attractive, linkable, sharable, tweetable, Facebook likeable, stumbleable, bookmarkable content in your industry. Your content is going to be so good in fact, that your competitors will have to link to it because you pioneered an idea, a philosophy, or an innovation that set you so far apart from your competition that they may even decide to hire you to come do training for their little company over time.
The search engines rank websites based on three important factors: relevancy to the keyword search performed, popularity (citations, links, mentions), and decisions by searchers which can be influenced by great titles, descriptions, page load time and pure awesomeness of your brand.
Being the best in your industry is why you went into business to begin with isn’t it? Be an online marketing rockstar in your field and reflect your authority online with creativity. The search engines will love and rank you, your competitors will be baffled at the volume of reviews you get and the endless stream of links and mentions your website earns.
Need a Starting Point?
Internet Business Group (IBG) is here to help. Our experts dominate in every online marketing niche you can imagine. We attend conferences, summits, expos, workshops and receive training from industry leaders to insure we are at the top of our game so that we can help you get to the top of your game online.
AVAILABLE 24 HOURS/7 DAYS A WEEK! | Toll Free: (800) 405-7031 | Email: info@internetbusinessgroup.com
If you have a business that operates in a limited geographic area, it’s important to make sure your customers can find you when searching for your products or services online. If your website is not listed on the 1st page of the search engine results when customers search for keywords related to you ..
See the original post here:
The Importance of SEO for Local Marketing
If you travel around the circle of internet marketing blogs, you most likely have come across Google Instant blog posts that claim “SEO is dead”. Humans are uncomfortable with change and Google Instant changes the way SEO & PPC specialists need to work for their clients. Of course, we are going to see a demographic that chooses to shun the change opposed to embrace it. As Matt Cutts says in his latest blog post about Google Instant, “The best SEOs recognize, adapt, and even flourish when changes happen.”
Go here to read the rest:
Google Instant Search SEO and PPC Thoughts
Nevada a home to amazing deserts, beautiful mountains, impressive lights, amazing stage shows and the always-available one-arm bandit. In recent years gambling has been an export product of the state of Nevada, but Las Vegas will long be remembered as the king of casino gambling, which is one of the reasons visitors make Nevada a prime vacation spot.
Read more:
Nevada Extends an Internet Marketing Invitation, SEO Search Engine …
With the launch of Google Instant this week, the internet marketing world is abuzz with talk regarding the future of search engine optimization. Here is what Matt Cutts, software engineer at Google and SEO blogger, has to say: Pittsburgh Web Design
Continued here:
Will SEO still exist in five years?
