These discrepancies clearly prove how important it is to use other resources for keyword research and development. Other great keyword research tools consist of:
• Microsoft Advertising Intelligence
• Microsoft adCenter Lab Keyword Research Tools
• Keyword Discovery

Overall, it is very important to use multiple keyword research tools to identify the right keywords to target for a SEO or SEM campaign. Even Google conflicts with its own self. Make sure you exhaust every resource before you are officially done.

In the partial words of REM, “I…” may be “…losing my religion.” Or at least I feel like I am. I come from a branding heavy background, which I passionately believed in…beginning way back in my undergraduate classes, where I learned about the importance of developing a strong, consistent brand identity for clients…onto graduate classes where I learned that a brand is the promise of an experience…onto a 10+ year career in branding firms and advertising agency environments where I learned from some of them (it’s surprising how some are still focused on colors and photos and miss the picture entirely)…that a brand is how people perceive you and encompasses all aspects of a business from it’s name and identity to its offering to how its employees talk to its customers and everything in between…until one day…I entered the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM) world…and asked what is it all worth—BRANDING?

A few weeks ago, I began my new job at SEER Interactive and ever since I’ve been challenged to question, how important is branding if no one can find you? If your brand mandates that you have to refer to your product as “pre-owned,” but people are out there searching for “used,” how important is it to adhere to your brand? Will changing your web copy comprise your brand? Dare I say, more importantly, will changing your web copy hurt your sales?

Isn’t business about making money?

My belief starts to crack…and I think to myself…it’s kinda like the chicken and the egg. You need a strong offering before you can meet a customer’s need. Is branding just something we force onto the business after we’ve succeeded at generating some revenue? In reality don’t most businesses start as a result of finding a need and meeting it?

At the last agency where I worked a co-worker actually had a cartoon hanging on his door that consisted of two ad execs talking about post-rationalization and something to the effect of it being acceptable and alive. I now start to consider…is it possible that branding really is just post-rationalization? …UNLESS you acknowledge that it’s something that occurs organically at the engagement of your first customer encounter and extends beyond as you grow…in which case…I question, how can these branding firms take thousands and sometimes, millions of dollars from businesses to post-rationalize what already existed and then, fail at showing any impact let alone specific impact?

Again, I ask, at the end of the day…isn’t business about making money?

As I sit at my desk at my new job…I get to wondering…have I been brainwashed? Who really decided all of this branding philosophy and practice anyway? And just because someone decided it way back when doesn’t mean it works or it’s the right approach now…right? It’s kinda like that moment in life where you realize that not everything your parents taught you is actually true or right…remember that?

It’s weird for me to even have these thoughts. I feel like I’m partaking in blasphemy. I’ve heard other people bash branding and marketing many times, but now I’m questioning the importance and validity of it. How did this happen?

And then, I recall sentiment an accomplished, former employer, whom I respect wholeheartedly, used to always share, “If you’re not it business to make money then, you shouldn’t be in business—go start a non-profit!” I remember how much I love that! …So true, right? Even if your business is socially or environmentally conscious, your #1 objective is to make money…it’s always to make money!

So, if business is really about making money…why do so many businesses pay money to agencies to develop branding for them when the agencies can’t really produce any measurable results? I know this happens, because it’s the challenge we faced in all of the agencies where I worked previously—how do we show impact? How do we prove that our branding/marketing efforts are generating leads and beyond that how do we capture how many leads these efforts have generated?

ENTER SEARCH MARKETING!

With search it’s all about impact! It’s all about results—specific quantifiable results! No longer do I have to look at a client in a meeting and offer up some explanation of how we’re going to “Generate Awareness,” an objective impossible to measure, and then, smile in the hopes that that objective would suffice and that they enjoy working with my team and me enough to give it a shot and hope for the best—knowing that we will never really know! If you’re a marketer, I ask you…have you ever felt that way? No, actually I know you’ve felt that way…so instead, I ask you how many times have you felt that way? Too many to count, right?

The good news is that with search marketing it’s all there in black and white, or should I say, green!

I feel free at last! With search marketing I can show my clients exactly how much ROI they are earning.

SEARCH MARKETING allows us to:

• Estimate how many people are searching terms per month (using various tools)
• If our client knows how many leads it takes to close one deal and
• If our client knows the value of that one deal closing,
• We can estimate how much ROI our client should earn.
• And then, we can measure the impact of our campaign!

Try calculating your SEO ROI yourself…

Let’s get back to the reason why a business is started to begin with—to make money!

I fought for branding for the past ten years of my life and yes, it exists and has importance, but I ask you…how important is adhering to branding requirements if no one can find you? How important is a well-branded business if no one knows it exists?

What does this mean for you?
There’s an old saying I repeat to others often:

“Locks are not to keep criminals out, but to keep honest people honest.”

Let’s relate this to search.
If a site has no business ranking well for “b2b lead generation” – i.e., no one is talking about this site, no one is linking to them, other sites are better candidates, and they’re obviously not a “leader in the industry” – then Google’s going to keep you honest by keeping the site out of the results.

So you’re not appearing in Google everywhere you’d like to be…
If you deserve to be in front of those visitors then ensure you’re focused. Your business will grow if you’re a good businessperson and hard worker. To stand out online one needs to innovate now more than ever. So this means some businesses will do better online, and some will do poorly. The laws of competition say those who fail in a business area will try something else. And that’s okay too, everyone’s good at something. Let’s not fool ourselves into imagining we can rank well for everything that is high volume and remotely related to the business. If we want traffic as site owners, we need to argue with ourselves as to why we deserve it!

The algorithms are getting pretty good in my opinion. I hope they can help to keep us honest (at least online) about what we claim to do as business people.

To a novice, these techniques and tips may seem legitimate, and maybe a few years ago they were. The truth is that the landscape has changed and will continue to change. A client said to me the other day, “The party is over,” and he was correct. So what these “Adwords Killers” should be selling us on is what to do now. I know how to write ad copy, how to set up campaigns, and optimize bids – So do the majority of the advertisers bidding for position on the same terms that I am. We all know the same best practices and it’s becoming more and more difficult to compete in the space.

The truth is that there are so many varying opinions and experts giving advice on this topic that has become difficult to weed out the truly helpful information. I read articles on subjects that are too basic, too old, or from these so-called gurus who can save me millions a year by buying their eBook. There are a few honest and thought-provoking sites out there that I read on a daily basis to stay on top of the industry, but as far as the day-to-day management of my campaigns, there is not a lot of help out there. So where can someone like me, who has mastered the basics and even knows some “advanced tactics,” go for advice?

Paid Search Marketers guard their “intellectual property” very closely and I am guilty of this possessiveness, too – I don’t want to show someone my strategy for developing, managing and growing my campaigns. Perhaps the real secret is that there isn’t a secret. It’s Marketing 101, only with more Math involved. What if there aren’t any true Paid Search experts out there anymore or individuals who hold the key like there were five years ago and it’s now about learning how to survive in this over-saturated rapidly growing competitive market? I would hate to think that there is nothing more to learn.

I have decided to post questions to the experts out there on a frequent basis. I am hoping that I will see new tips and ideas as a result. Hopefully we can collectively save another soul from buying “Adwords Secrets Revealed” for $19.95.

]]> http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/will-the-real-paid-search-expert-please-stand-up/2007/09/04/feed/ 3 http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/what-do-you-call-those-water-filled-backpacks-that-runners-bikers-have/2007/06/27/ http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/what-do-you-call-those-water-filled-backpacks-that-runners-bikers-have/2007/06/27/#comments Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:47:37 +0000 SEER http://www.thinkseer.com/blog/what-do-you-call-those-water-filled-backpacks-that-runners-bikers-have/2007/06/27/ Camelbak! That’s the correct answer. Well, it’s the brand I was seeking, and at first I didn’t know the proper name. I knew there was a “camel” in it, so I tried “camel pack.” Here’s what came back:

This was a first search, and you can guess a user may then recognize “Camelbak” as a brand based on these results. But where is Camelbak.com?! If they’re not on page one, the user has already been educated and they have the opportunity to click any of these paid links to purchase.

What has Camelbak lost in this transaction? Because Camelbak does not sell directly through their site, a sale would have to occur through such an online store anyway. Even though their goods were sold, there was a missed opportunity. So I wonder…

• Was there an opportunity to upsell a customer on Camelbak’s own site? After all, their site probably has the most extensive product list anywhere.
• Which stores sell goods at the most profitable rate for Camelbak? If a visitor came through Camelbak.com, there’s a chance for Camelbak to send that customer to a more profitable reseller.
• What about their brand?! Of course customers will recognize the product and logo when arriving at any of these stores listed in PPC, but are these stores portraying Camelbak to their best efforts? The only way to guarantee the message is to protect one’s own brand by making sure searchers are getting the chance to hit your own site first.

Yes, we have a habit of picking on big brands at Seer, but it’s a shame to see that ebags.com might know a little more about Camelbak’s customers than they do. If you’re with a company that commands a product brand in the way Camelbak does, don’t let it slip away! Protect it through buying PPC real estate that is going to help portray the company positively and funnel the visitors as best dictated by your bottom line.

After leaving the site –having learned what I needed– I contemplated the business implications of taking portions or all of a resource and making it available freely on the web.

Old thinking:
Giving away critical information for free will make customers less likely to purchase. Freely available information creates less demand for information that otherwise must be purchased.

1980’s – The home stereo double cassette deck will destroy the music industry!
1990’s – The CD burner and peer to peer programs will destroy the music and film industries!

New thinking:
People expect a certain amount of resources to be free in our age. Forget right and wrong when it comes to piracy and millions of internet users for a moment; it is time to trust that the market will balance itself.

Did double cassette decks slow music sales considerably? If sales were not affected negatively they were unchanged or even increased. Previewing is a great way to entice interest. Many people still wanted original quality cassette tapes rather than a dubbed copy. Yesterday people still wanted to own an official DVD (which includes a non-violated FBI warning.) Today I believe the same is true for books and printed materials – there is a considerable body of consumers that still want to hold the product.

Think about your business model and if sharing information is an applicable idea. Let down your guard and look at your own usage experience when you exercise demand for information.

Truthfully, I do still plan on purchasing the book that the author gracefully let me preview.

I’d like to write about one tool that has changed how we produce work at SEER. SEO audience beware, this has less to do with search and more to do with common problems we all deal with when sharing files between people in an office setting.

If you have more than two authors on your word, excel, or PDF documents, you know how troublesome it can be to control efforts between people. Which is the newest version? Did I remember to email Jane my newest copy?

I almost cannot remember dealing with those problems after using subversion–also known as SVN–for the past few months.

SVN does a few things all on its own:

• It coordinates file use between multiple parties. All users get their own copy the file. When someone has made changes to their copy, they “commit” them to the server. Everyone else can perform an “update” at any time to get the newest copy of the file. This is the means for preventing work from being overwritten and it also facilitates a means for keeping everyone’s copy up to date.
• It adds extra management information to each file, independent of the file type. Some of these fields include last author, last modified time, and version number. Version number 100 is newer than version 99.
• It saves revision history. If someone wants to see a file any number of versions ago, they can download it at any time. SVN is not meant to serve as a backup solution; however, you can use it to peer into the past and watch file progression or go back to a time when your file was correct. For example, if you accidentally delete a paragraph and save, just revert back to the previous version from the repository. No harm is done. Even if you save and commit your changes, you still have the opportunity to revert to any previous copy.
• It offers detailed documentation. The version numbering is only one aspect of the usefulness of the history; the custom notes that can be added to each commit make it even easier to understand what each version number represents. Imagine searching through a document’s history seeking the version you sent to the client last month when you discover the comment stating, “final copy-sent to client.”

There are necessary ingredients for using SVN as I describe it in terms of solving an inter-office file-sharing problem. Fortunately, I believe just about anyone can use an SVN front end to manage files. Unfortunately, setting it up is definitely not for everyone.

• A server or some hosted facility to hold repositories for your files. These will probably be accessible over the Internet.
• A front end software package that makes using SVN as easy as using a Windows Explorer or Finder window. Try rapidsvn or smartsvn.
• An IT person to put it all together. It might be a good idea to have the IT help conduct training and be available for any problems that may arise.

For those who have used CVS (a more dated version control system):
You’re welcome to stop now. There are programs for converting CVS to SVN repositories. SVN has functionality for moving and renaming directories, where CVS doesn’t. CVS users know how troublesome directory management can be.

Talk about subversion with your IT staff or geeky cousin–I’m under the impression it’s a solution to many problems we all have experienced.

• Display name
• Personal pictures
• Existing blogs
• Existing comments
• A list of friends exempt of being solicited personally

An agreement between a buyer and seller can be structured in any way. The possibilities are really up to the parties’ imaginations. Here are some other facts and ideas to be kept in mind when arriving at an agreement.

1. Keeping a seller’s pictures up can help to ensure that friends don’t delete the account after the transfer. It is common behavior to aggregate existing friends and not pay much attention to minor profile changes when the potential “deleter” has a long friend list and only interacts with a few people with regularity. As a buyer, don’t raise any flags by putting up an unlikely photo or doing anything else that might be suspect behavior, like bulletin spam.

2. The seller can change their account email address. They’ll no longer be found if someone searches based on email. It may, however, take weeks for the email to be removed from the search results.

3. One can enable an away message thus disabling new incoming messages if desired.

4. One can require a last name to add you as a friend (which can be changed to something not obviously guessable) if the seller does not want new real life friends finding this profile and becoming a friend.

5. A buyer may want to require comment approval. If the account purchase is publicized, it should not be made known on your page. If people know that a profile is being used for marketing purposes they’re less likely to keep it as a friend.

Finally, I have listed some scenarios where a buyer and seller may have their biggest concerns.

Selling scenarios:
1. The seller agrees to maintain the account with links / ad space and retains the password.

2. The seller gives up the password and the profile retains the seller’s identity. The seller agrees to give free reign to the buyer to solicit any of their friends and pose as them to any extent.

3. The seller gives up the password and the profile retains the seller’s identity. The buyer agrees to restrictions on what photos will remain, what type of new photos are acceptable, and limitations in blog posts, etc.; after all, the profile will be played as if it were still the seller. Of course the seller may have some interest in keeping their name clean!

4. The seller changes their identity completely and then sells with the password. This may not be as attractive to the buyer because there is a greater chance that profile friends will delete this mysterious new person they are friends with, but the seller can rest assured that the marketing efforts are not coming from their face & name directly. Remember, my hypothesis that people with tons of friends don’t regularly interact with them, thus keeping the friend retention of this type of purchased profile higher than what may be expected.

When is this going to hit?
By now, we should all be aware of pay-per-post bloggers that receive compensation for reviewing or mentioning products or services. I will agree that selling a myspace account is very similar in concept, but there are clearly some great advantages to myspace over a blog in this case – you can see your target audience.

I really think that the sellers need to create the online marketplace for these transactions to take place. No one would be happy knowing Wawa is seeking to purchase myspace accounts openly. It would all work better if there were some type of brokerage or means for a buyer to purchase privately.

So… does anyone want to buy a relatively small profile with a friend id in the 50,000 range?

A myspace account is a valuable web resource for online marketers
From a marketer’s perspective, by identifying a single person that falls within your target demographic you can market to their network of online friends with the assumption that they are like-minded people.
Take a sample profile as an example:

• 23 year old female
• Philadelphia resident
• Interested in independent music
• Aspiring vocal artist
• Strong interest in health & diet

Who do you think this person is friends with online? Her friends click on links in her bulletins and messages all the time, just like any other profile. They probably click on links on her page too. Now, as a marketer, if you are targeting other young people interested in independent music, or people interested in health foods in the Philadelphia area, enlisting this young woman as an ad conduit could be instrumental to a campaign. To be more clear, what I am describing here, is how myspace is a vehicle for marketing with a more transparent audience. All you need is a good definition of what your target demographic is, and the users will tell you who and where they are. There are clues, or more obvious facts about the people volunteered in their profiles. I hope the new market frontier I’m describing is giving you some ideas.

Is this really a new frontier?
Wawa already has a myspace profile. There’s even a profile for Wawa iced tea. Yes, lots of people add these nonsensical profiles as their friends, and if Wawa employees are the profile owners and maintainers, kudos to them. I would be more impressed if Wawa had purchased a few choice myspace profiles belonging to real users, and began putting iced tea coupons into bulletins.

Assigning Account Value
Here are some initial myspace account value metrics:

1. Age of account

Myspace profiles that are older appear higher on people’s friend lists. This means that when a user is browsing the friend list of a myspace user, older accounts are shown higher up than newer ones. This is like having a higher ranking on google. Users browsing other users’ friend lists are not as likely to find you on page 6 as they are on page 1. Thus an older profile shows closer to 1 in a list of friends, and provides greater visibility.

2. Quantity & Quality of friends

Address the interactivity of the friends someone has. Are they really friends with everyone or is this person just collecting profiles? A good profile will have frequent comments posted to it, or better yet frequent comments to blogs. This would indicate that not only are people interacting with this page by posting on it, but they’re reading the content that is posted by this user as well.

3. Type of friends / Friend demographics

Think about who people are friends with in general. The rule of locality of reference applies to people’s social interactions—person X will interact with person Y more often if they are closer geographically. Also think about who their friends are as consumers. Are they affluent post-grad professionals with spending money and defined interests or are they destitute college kids? You also want to consider this as a measure of value for your product. If you’re selling a weight loss product, you do not want to target a pocket of triathletes; they have no use for a such an item.

4. Page rank & Myspace URL quality.

Myspace gives a user the ability to have a short URL, e.g. www.myspace.com/johndoe19. If this has not been chosen already, the profile is definitely worth more to the buyer, as they still have an opportunity for placing keywords in the URL for search optimization.

Additionally, older profiles sometimes carry some page importance in search engines which makes them valuable to search engine optimizers for linking.

5. Activity levels in blogs, bulletins, etc.

A profile can also be more active, which is likely to make it more influential. Someone who is a very active user will have a more camouflaged guise after the account is sold, whereas if someone who posts bulletins very infrequently starts posting on a daily basis, it could raise some red flags indicating to their friend network that something is up with their profile.

Some examples

1. People are members of small social groups with similar interests giving direct access into specific markets. E.g. buy some indie rock kid’s profile and blog a list of new album suggestions.

2. Using myspace gives the ability to post bulletins to all friends, and to message people directly. This is a push medium, and you can target your demographic more specifically with less work!

3. Buy a 100,000 friend profile that gets a lot of views and slap some banners or well placed links on it.

Later this week I will continue these ideas and expand more specifically on how myspace deals in this marketplace might work.

Let’s examine the first statement. Imagine being a major retailer and one morning you wake up to hear that posting a billboard of your most prized product in Times Square is now free and that the duration of that ad campaign could be indefinite as long as you correctly setup your billboard. Do you think Steve Jobs would pass on a opportunity to put up a massive animated billboard of his new IPhone in Times Square for free? Oh yeah and he could keep it up for as long as 2 to 3 years. Your damn right he wouldn’t. I bet you most CEO’s or CMO’s of major corporations wouldn’t either. That is exactly what a company can achieve when they do their due diligence in setting up their SEO strategy. When done right a company that attains the top results on Google for their major products or services receives priceless exposure. Google’s traffic is similar to the mass audience that strolls through Times Square except they are targeted. Now tell Steve Jobs that not only will he get his billboard up in Times Square for free and for roughly 2 to 3 years, but that the city of New York will also be replacing the thousands of visitors who come through with visitors that are in the market for a smart phone. Currently on Google there are 146 million advertisers for the keyword for “smart phone.” Imagine telling that 146 million they could have that billboard.

Let’s examine the second statement. “That kind of traffic is intense and the exposure is priceless! We can say the same about a great ranking on a PPC campaign, but remember one thing — you will always have to pay for it. Free clicks in sponsored search? Never.” Coincidently, I recently read two articles about two major retailers pulling their marketing from PPC. Ice.com in Internet Retailer and BabyAge.com in Business Week both were pulling their PPC budgets due to poor conversion. The ever increasing CPC and diminishing returns on investment has advertisers thinking twice about where they place their budgets. Making it ever more important to reexamine their strategy on SEO.

My previous 4 years in the interactive space has taught me that most internal marketing departments of companies do not have an SEO strategy. Although that’s a rather small sample size of companies I would imagine that most major retailers do not have a plan for SEO. The year of 2007 appears to be the time when E-Retailers will be forced to recognize that PPC isn’t the only search solution. For a good example of a company that didn’t consider SEO when setting up their site check out Wil’s post on Nike.

Companies who invest some of their online budget for SEO now, can reap benefits far beyond the first year. When done right a good SEO firm can get a client results to stick for at least 2 years after their contract has ended. SEO firms who try to subvert the search engines algorithms for instant results later see their rankings fall off after a big algorithm change like Google dance.

Let’s discuss one of our clients recent experiences. Upon doing a year long review, we found that the cost per visitor for PPC (The total cost divided by the total visitors) was 12.24 times higher than the cost per visitor for SEO. Our PPC click spending increased 65% from April – October with a 29% increase in visits. Meanwhile, the SEO spending did not increase while visits increased 148%.

Having seen a client have this PPC experience, and simultaneously reading the succession of articles of companies pulling PPC, we realize this is happening to a lot of folks. The question is whether or not the CPC rates are worth the return. If your company is doing PPC, maybe it is time to start thinking about where your nearest Time Square is and how you may get your free billboard.