Found a great read about the ongoing battle between Google, and the newspaper industry.

Reports out of the Newspaper Association of America’s annual convention this week focused on the perceived drama between newspaper publishers and Google. Observers have been fixed on the rifts between the search firm and newspaper publishers, which some say suffer because of search engine-facilitated distribution of their content. However, the NAA itself at the San Diego event promoted search engine marketing as a potential revenue stream for its member publishers.

During a presentation Monday, the NAA’s SVP Business Development Randy Bennett, along with VP Advertising Mort Goldstrom, suggested a variety of ways newspaper firms can enhance their digital ad offerings. Among their recommendations: search engine marketing services.

Read the complete article here

Our very own Steve Espinosa had some some interesting thoughts on how Twitter could monetize it’s traffic.

Over the last couple months we have heard many different ideas on how Twitter can successfully monetize their surge in popularity, growing user base, and overall traffic. The ideas range from charging for an account, charging for premium accounts, simply adding AdSense, and the list goes on. What we haven’t heard is how Twitter could add local search into their business model, monetize it successfully, and create more user generated content.
When you think about it almost everything that is on Twitter is inherently local. The simple question “What are you doing?” implies that because, unless you are at home watching TV, you are doing something that is local, whether that is local to you or to someone else. The obvious example of this is when you go out to a restaurant and write about that on Twitter, whether you say “Going out to [insert name here] with @stevemcstud” or “Just had a great dinner with @stevemcstud at [insert name here]“. If you simply perform a search on Twitter for “restaurant in”, the point being to see how many people tweet “I am going to restaurant in [insert city]” or “Anybody know of a good restaurant in [insert city name]?” you can see that with just that one phrasing there are tons of results of people talking about local restaurants.

Read This Article in it’s entirety here

Over at Search Engine Land Greg Sterling has some notes on the Sempo results from the “State of Search Engine Marketing” survey.

SEMPO formally released data on the state of search engine marketing, its annual survey of agencies and marketers. This year’s survey consisted of 800 repsondents from all over the globle. However 68 percent of respondents were from the US, with 20 percent coming from a range of contries. Seven percent of respondents were from Canada and 5 percent from the UK.

The respondents/clients represented a range of industries. The top sectors were “retail, business services, electronics manufacturing and financial services.”

As part of the findings and related report SEMPO forecast that SEM spending would grow from a projected $14.7 billion in 2009 to $26.1 billion in 2013. SEM is defined broadly as all spending on search-related marketing including SEO. Consequently it represents more than the share of online ad revenues that the IAB assigns to search.

For the survey results and complete article click here

I recently came across this article from eMarketer.

New data provided by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), based on research conducted by Radar Research, sheds light on how search marketing dollars are being spent.

In 2008, $13.5 billion was spent on search marketing. The space was mostly made up of paid placement and search engine optimization (SEO), with a sliver going to technology providers whose software assisted in the execution of search campaigns. Paid search ads saw 88% of the total pie, SEO only 11%.

The ratio of paid placement to SEO will change in the future.

To continue reading this article click here

I was struck by this recent SEMPO report which Greg Sterling picked up on the other day. Bottom line is that as the economy suffers and most media is in retreat Search is still projected to post 9% growth. OK it’s not the 20+% growth we have been used to seeing but it does point to Search being perhaps the only bright spot in a bleak landscape.  The fact that search is bucking this trend speaks to the effectiveness of search as a way to reach advertisers, national or local.

You can read the entire report here.

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Mar 10, 2009 at 9:06am ET by Greg Sterling

SEMPO’s new report, due to be released this week, cuts its forecast for search advertising. The results are based on a survey of almost 900 agencies and search marketers. According to the Wall Street Journal, the report scales back previous growth projections considerably:

[SEMPO] says North American search marketing spending will increase only 9% to $14.7 billion in 2009 from $13.5 billion a year ago. Its previous estimates, made in early 2008, called for the industry to grow at more than twice that rate this year, from $15.7 billion in 2008 to $18.8 billion in 2009. The new forecasts call for the industry to reach $19.8 billion in 2011, down from a previous estimate of $25.2 billion for that year.

But even as the economy hits search spending fairly hard, other media are faring worse. Search, widely regarded as the most efficient form of online advertising, is still benefiting from advertiser and agency budget shifts to online:

Search is continuing to steal from traditional ad budgets, according to the survey. More than a quarter of advertisers reported that they were shifting budgets into search marketing from print magazines. Nineteen percent said they were shifting their budgets into search from print newspaper advertising.

The paradox of these shifts is that they express a simplistic view of consumer behavior, which has become increasingly complex and relies on many sources of information and ad exposures, both online and offline. However, many marketers are starting to see with greater clarity the convoluted consumer path to conversions. Search remains perhaps the critical component of online advertising; however a search-only strategy is somewhat myopic.

Here’s an excerpt from findings from Atlas’s (Microsoft’s) recent “engagement mapping” report entitled The Long Road to Conversion: The Digital Purchase Funnel:

The large number of ad exposures consumed prior to purchase may come as a surprise to marketers who are used to discussions of frequency that revolve around site  or campaign metrics. Measuring only the last ad in a  conversion history conceals the true length of the relationship an advertiser has with each consumer. When we focus our view on individual converters’ histories and apply the funnel concept to their ad consumption, we discover that their histories are much longer and richer than typically assumed. These results confirm other research showing that advertising reaches consumers from multiple advertising campaigns and across channels . . .

Yahoo’s increasingly integrated search and display platforms are consistent with this more sophisticated consumer behavior model. And the SEMPO report apparently does find some interest in search retargeting accordingly.

We’ll explore the findings of the SEMPO report in more detail after we have a chance to review it

According to comScore, Inc., among the audience of 63.2 million people who accessed news and information on their mobile devices in January 2009, 22.4 million (35%) did so daily, more than double the size of the audience last year.

In January, 22.3 million people accessed news and information via a downloaded application. Maps are the most popular downloaded application with 8.2 million users, while search was the overwhelmingly favored use for SMS-based news and information access, with 14.1 million users. Overall, 32.4 million people used SMS to access news and information in January.

Mark Donovan, senior vice president, mobile, comScore, says “…use of mobile Internet (has) evolved from an occasional activity to being a daily part of people’s lives… This underscores the growing importance of the mobile medium… to access time-sensitive and utilitarian information.”

Young males are the most avid users of mobile news and information, says the report, with half of 18 to 34-year-old males engaging in the activity. The mobile Internet is also popular among females in the 18 to 24-year-old demographic, with 40 percent accessing it at least once in January.
Donovan concludes, “…much of the growth in news and information usage is driven by the increased popularity of downloaded applications and by text-based searches… smartphones and high-end feature phones… comprise the Top 10 devices used for news and information access… 70% of those accessing mobile Internet content are using feature phones.”

Concurrently, QuickPlay Media revealed the results of its 2009 independent Market Tools survey focused on mobile TV and video consumption in the US. showing that consumers are confident in the uptake of mobile TV and video, with 78% expecting an increase in usage by 2010. Perceived cost represents the biggest barrier to adoption, with 58% indicating that it is the number one reason they have not viewed TV and video on their mobile phone.

• 55% of respondents stated they are interested in mobile TV and video.
• 46% of respondents are aware that their carrier offers a mobile TV and/or video service,  vs. the 35% percent seen in the 2008
• 49% of respondents have a monthly voice and data plan through their wireless carrier versus 38% who currently use a monthly voice-only plan
• 51% said that they would be willing to accept advertising in return for free TV and video content versus 54% in 2008

Consumers show a preference for snacking on content instead of setting aside dedicated viewing times, says the QuickPlay report. Specific findings include:

• 25% respondents view content in between daily activities, 16% while in transit (i.e. on the bus, etc.) and 11% while waiting in line.
• 66% said they would consider the ability to pause and resume content a deciding factor in whether or not they would watch longer forms of content, such as a full length movie. This number represents an increase from the 57% figure reported in the 2008 survey.
• Of those watching mobile TV and video, 45% have spent 11 to 30 minutes watching a TV show or movie on their mobile phone with 30 % having spent 31 minutes or longer doing so. Additionally, 21% are using mobile TV and video services more than once a week.

For more information from comScore, please visit here, or from QuickPlay Media, go here.

The Kelsey Group gathering has just finished in LA and our team there had what sounds like all together too much fun hanging out with the great and the good at the show. It was apparently well attended and given how hot the whole local online space is nowadays that’s hardy surprising.

There were many sessions of note but I though this post about the local session given by Chris LaSala from Google was particularly interesting. The ideas he addresses are fascinating and exciting. He outline a world where you will be able to search for local information and not only find basic information like addresses and phone numbers, but local content even down to information about availability of inventory in your local shops. It’s a great idea and one that has been tried by several companies in recent years. The problem that those folks ran into and Google discusses here is that small business don’t have the time in there day to get this stuff done and do the million other things they have to do. The information that Google wants is out there but it’s not online and getting it online is going to take time.

This is a problem that we have been working with for a couple of years now. We make sure that as much information about our customers as we can manage get put in the right places online and we work to ensure that information gets found by people searching for the goods and services offered by our customers. We don’t as yet have a way to publish what the current stock levels but we are looking at adding more and more of this kind of information.

The ideal world Google is discussing in this article isn’t here quite yet…but we are helping to build it one local business at a time

Google Cozies Up To SMBs For Digital Content

by Laurie Sullivan,

Imagine searching on Google for rare coins or Topps baseball cards. Aside from listing the brick-and-mortar address, directions and phone number, the search query might return the suggested retail price and the quantity in stock at each local store.

That’s the picture Chris LaSala painted this week at The Kelsey Group conference in Los Angeles. The Google director of local marketers and strategic partner development said the biggest problem the search engine faces in reaching that goal is the lack of digital content serving local markets. “There’s a vast array of content specific to local markets, but the majority isn’t available in digital form, so getting access to it isn’t easy,” he said.

Small and medium businesses (SMB) have been reluctant to give Google access to digital content that is specific to local markets. Basically, it’s because they don’t have the time to turn hard copies into bits and bytes. “Getting the SMB to give us access is something we need to get better at,” he said. “We aren’t even close to where we need to be.”

LaSala estimates that Google has indexed about 10% of the available digital content geared toward local markets. “If you look at Main Street USA–the barber, the church, the synagogue and the sports shop–you might get the hours of service and address,” he said. “But wouldn’t it be great if you find out if you could get an Alex Rodriguez rookie card? If you knew it was in the shop and the costs, you could go down to the store and buy it. This is just an example of where we are today.”

LaSala admits that Google hasn’t done as good a job in serving the SMB market as it would like. Many of Google’s products don’t meet their needs. Citing a Webvisibility study, he said 40% of SMBs go to the Internet first when they look for local data, yet less than half spend less than 10% for online ads.

Aside from getting SMBs to provide more content in digital format, the biggest challenge has been to support them as advertisers. He suspects that while the features in AdWords drive success, they also hinder success, too.

While the AdWords’ platform lets businesses choose a host of advertising options, SMBs don’t have time to pick keywords, design ads, decide on budgets for cost-per-click (CPC) campaigns, and pick sites they want to advertise on. “It’s all these things the SMB doesn’t have time to do,” LaSala said.

LaSala admits there’s a gap between the design of the platform and the ability for them to carry out the campaign. Improving the gap might mean making Google Maps more intuitive or offering bundled services.

There are plans to roll out new bundled services and APIs for SMBs that should align better with the philosophies of smaller companies, LaSala said. The sales force has seen a makeover, too, because Google has learned that selling into the SMB requires specific talents to understand the market.

“We’ve retrenched with a smaller group of partners,” LaSala said. “Google’s not immune to pressures of effectively using the resources on our team, so we narrowed the scope to the partners that we think log the highest opportunities.”

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=102383

I have just read a very well thought through article about how to measure SEO performance. It’s written with traditional SEO done to large sites by SEO specialists but the metrics it speaks about are also relevant for the kind of large/small business SEO that we specialize in. To condense the article to it’s essentials it asks the following questions:

· Are your pages indexed by the large search engines? Ours are submitted and indexed every day

· Do you have back links pointing to your pages? We have an enormous number deployed

· Do you rank well for query term that you care about? We test and adjust to maximize this all the time

· Does your site make money? In our world that means do your marketing dollars make your phone ring….our testing indicates a resounding yes to this metric.

You should ask the same question about your website, enjoy..

March 17, 2009 · by Jill Kocher

Measuring success in search engine optimization can typically be done in four ways. “Indexation” measurements will determine if a search engine has properly identified all of your site’s pages. “Backlink” measurements will show the number of internal and external links that point to your site as a whole. “Rankings” measurements will show where in the natural search results your site appears for given search words or phrases. And “traffic and revenue” measurements will show the keywords used to find your site, revenue generated per keyword, the percentage of visitors that purchased products and so forth. This article will explore each of the measurements, which we refer to here as “metrics.”

Indexation Metrics

Indexation is the first critical step to natural search performance. Pages that aren’t indexed have zero chance of ranking in the search engines. However, more indexation isn’t necessarily better because that could indicate that identical pages in your site are duplicated in a search engine’s index, which will decrease a site’s ability to rank because the pages are, essentially, competing against themselves.

What is the “right” indexation number? Most ecommerce sites can only guesstimate based on the number of products they offer. For example, if a site offers 50,000 products but only has 5,000 pages indexed, there’s likely a barrier preventing a search engine from fully “crawling” a site. Conversely, if that same site has 500,000 pages indexed, there’s likely a duplication issue. The site will then have issues with self-competition and split-link popularity, both of which hinder a site’s ability to rank strongly.

Indexation is measured by performing a “site:” query in the major engines. For example, type [site:www.yourdomain.com] into the Google and MSN Live search boxes, without the [brackets]. For Yahoo!, just enter the URL into Yahoo! Site Explorer. These site queries measure how many URLs are indexed in each engine. Compare that number to the number of pages that should exist to determine actions required and progress made.

A complete list of the queries available in Google, some of which are also available on Yahoo! and MSN Live, can be found at http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html.

Backlink Metrics

Measuring “backlinks” will show the number of links pointing to various pages across a site. Generally, the more external links that point to your site, the higher your site will rank in natural search results. However, measuring backlinks varies among the search engines.

For Google, enter a “link:” query such as [link:www.yourdomain.com] in the search box. This is a measure of how many backlinks are coming into the entire domain. However, Google only gives the true measure of backlinks in its Webmaster Tools, which anyone can access once they have a Google account.

For Yahoo!, enter the domain into Yahoo! Site Explorer. Click on the “InLinks” tab and filter the results to show four different data sets: (1) all backlinks (internal & external), (2) only external backlinks, (3) only to the home page and (4) to the whole site.

For MSN, the “link:” query is currently disabled in MSN Live, so backlinks cannot be measured there.

How many backlinks should a site have? There is no way to estimate in the way we can for indexation, and the engines aren’t known for giving accurate, specific or detailed backlink data, unfortunately. The best advice for measuring backlinks is to watch the trend rather than be concerned about individual numbers. And more high quality links are always better.

Advanced Link Manager is a tool for scanning and reporting on backlink trends, including number and diversity of domains linking in, anchor text diversity, and a number of other reports.

Ranking Metrics

Rankings are a tricky metric to report on. Rankings (i.e. where your site appears in natural search listings) vary greatly between singular and plural versions of the same term. Moreover, personalized and blended search affect individual rankings so that no two people are likely to get the same ranking result. However, I suggest a couple of ways to attack this issue.

· Targeted. Choose a select set of keyword terms that you’ll target based on keyword research. These will probably include the trophy terms for which management aspires to rank. Use a subscription rank checker such as WebCEO or a free tool such as the Rank Checker plug in for Firefox to check the rankings for the terms you’re targeting. These tools will give you only the rankings for the terms you specify, for the domains you specify.

· Aggregate. Subscription tools like Enquisite offer the ability to track the page on which a term ranks for every keyword that drives natural search to your site. So, say that [widgets] drove 10 visits to mydomain.com. Enquisite would report which URLs on my site drove those 10 visits, and what page in the search results the rankings were on. The information can be sliced and sorted by keyword, URL, IP, date, engine, and more.

Traffic and Revenue Metrics

Natural search-referred traffic is a common measurement in most analytics programs. The “holy grail” for measuring SEO effectiveness is frequently a report combining URL, keyword, traffic, orders, and revenue. Such a report tells you which URLs are effective, and by omission, which are not. It tells you which keywords and keyword phrases drive traffic, and by omission which don’t. And it tells you which URLs and terms drive sales through natural search and which don’t.

Consider which pages were optimized and how, for which keywords. Those pages and keywords are the ones where you should expect to see growth. Only by performing large-scale programmatic optimizations, like title tags across the entire site, would you expect to see a site-wide increase in traffic. Most optimization efforts will improve performance for individual pages and keywords. Knowing which pages and keywords are most valuable to your business will guide those optimization efforts.

You can see the full article here

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1014-Measuring-SEO-Performance

In this economy it’s tough to see really great companies having such a horrible time of it. Google is down to 325, newspapers with storied histories are dropping like flies (the mighty Seattle Post Intelligencer published its last print edition this morning) and media innovators in the local space like SpotRunner have just announced another large round of layoffs. Given this desolate landscape there is clearly a move towards value.

We work with thousands of local companies making sure they are clearly incredibly focused on maximizing their limited marketing budgets. Our typical customers are very sensitive to both the cost of marketing and the value they get from it. As the yellow pages collect dust at the back of closets local businesses still need to reach out to people looking for all over the nation our low cost high impact package which gets our customers new business through search. We do one thing really well. We get small business to the top of the search results for search terms they care about for a low monthly fee. It may not be as cool as TV advertising and it certainly doesn’t have the tradition that print advertising has, but it works and it’s affordable for most businesses.

How important is it that local businesses get to the front of search?….well there are several things driving this issue. First is behavior, people online search in a particular way. In search they go to the front page and typically select from the results displayed on that page. Very few ever look further than the first page…if you aren’t on that page then the chances are that online is not going to generate many customers for you. How big is the opportunity? Let’s look at the numbers: There is certainly a lot of search traffic going on. Reports differ but typically US search volume is in the 15-20 billion per month range and depending on whose numbers you believe anything up to 40% of those have some level of local interest. That’s a lot of search, lots of people looking for goods and services.

However if you take the number of people looking for things and divide that huge number by the number of locations and activities people are searching there may only be a few hundred people searching for any service or product in any location in any month. The good news is that those people are highly focused on finding what they are looking for and typically close to a buying decision and those intensely valuable searches are going to be spread between the companies on the front page of search.

In an economy headed for nuclear winter with local businesses looking to squeeze the last drop of value out of their marketing dollars our low cost high impact search visibility package is a great fit. We will focus on making our product the richest deepest most effective way for local businesses to get customers, it’s all we do and it’s what we do best.

According to the U.S. Local Media Annual Forecast, 2008-2013, by BIA Advisory Services and its Kelsey Group, current and foreseeable economic conditions will reduce overall local advertising spending through 2013. BIA/Kelsey forecasts U.S. local advertising revenues to decline from $155.3 billion in 2008 to $144.4 billion in 2013, representing a negative 1.4 percent compound annual growth rate.

Only the local interactive segment will show growth throughout the forecast period. All other local media will experience marginal to rapid declines in the next 18 to 36 months, says the report. A small number of traditional media will rebound with a revived economy beginning in 2011, though most traditional media will continue to decline at a slower pace.

According to the forecast, the interactive segment (mobile, Internet Yellow Pages, local search, online verticals and classifieds, voice search, e-mail marketing and other interactive revenues generated by traditional media players) will grow from $14 billion in 2008 to $32.1 billion in 2013. The traditional segment (newspapers, direct mail, television, radio, print Yellow Pages, non-digital out of home, cable TV and magazines) will decrease from $141.3 billion in 2008 to $112.4 billion in 2013.

Tom Buono, president and CEO, BIA Advisory Services, says…

“As the shift to online accelerates, and the demand for accountability metrics grows, there is an increased urgency for traditional media companies to develop and embrace new business models that incorporate digital strategies… to drive business…”

Neal Polachek, CEO, The Kelsey Group, concludes …

“the share shift… could actually be more pronounced… successful integration will require considerable attention to business models, product innovation and sales channel evolution.”