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January 31, 2008

Finding The Right Search Engine Marketing Company: Part One

Questions About The Search Engine Marketing Company

Back in the early days of SEO, it was much easier to seek and find a Search Engine Marketing company simply because Intrapromote was one of just a hand full in operation. Interestingly enough, many of the questions you should ask a potential SEM partner company today are still the same. We find that most potential clients ask more questions about our services than about us and I think that’s a mistake. With all the companies now offering SEM services, the ‘who’ is just as important as the ‘how’.

Questions You Should Ask About The SEM Company:

1. Tenure: How long have you been in business? How long have you been offering and performing SEM services?

2. Clientele: What types of clients do you currently work with? Can I talk with some of them? Can you show me examples of improved search engine placement and search traffic performance for a site in the same or similar vertical as mine? What is your client retention rate? How many clients do you have with active current campaigns today that have been with you for more than 1, 3 and 5 years?

3. Specialties: Are you experts in specific industries or vertical niches?

4. The People: Who makes up the team that will work on our SEO campaign and will you provide me with a seasoned, dedicated campaign director that not only directs our campaign, but will also be personally working on it? How often can I consult with my campaign director?

5. Communication: If I have questions, what is the process of getting answers and how long should I expect to wait before I hear back from my campaign director?

6. Is my company a good fit to work with your firm?

7. What are the next steps I need to take to get the process started?

8. Do you offer flexible campaigns for small, medium, or large businesses with varying marketing budgets? Do you have a set-up fee?

Coming soon In Part Two, I'll explore the questions to ask about the SEM company's services.

Posted by doug at 12:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 30, 2008

Til Death Do Us Part…Or Maybe Not…

While I'm sitting here figuring new and creative ways to be a better and more frequent blogger, I came across this post on Mashable concerning how to "Prepare For Your Death Online: 20+ Helpful Tools." I really think that if some people can go to the trouble of ensuring that their blogs, online profiles, etc. are managed after their death, then I think I can do a better job of doing so while I am alive.

In this modern age this is a whole area that merits some consideration. What should a person do with their online imprint after their death? Should it be written into your will that you designate an "online executor" to handle all online related affairs?

No worries, if you don't know where to start on all of this, go over to WikiHow and see their helpful tips on "How to Share Your Obituary with Online Friends." A really good tip that the wikiHow article offers is to not include any log on information or passwords in your will, as wills become a part of the public record.

So heck, all of this inspires me. If people can make plans to maintain their online "lives" after death, I can certainly blog a bit more while I'm alive.

Posted by lisa at 01:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 28, 2008

Barack VS. Hillary Above the Fold

What does first glance show the thousands of searchers looking for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each day?

The first thing a results obsessed searcher might note is the number of results. Hillary has more than twice as many relevant pages to her credit. Perhaps understandable, she has been around much longer than Barack.

The quick clicker might first note Barack's sponsored ad. That searcher would receive a warm welcome video and a call to action from Barack. No such sponsorship from Hillary.

Searchers with a blind eye to ads might first note News Results, which leave both Barack and Hillary at the mercy of Google (and/or their campaign's ability to constantly generate news). Actually, Barack receives some Google Book Search links above the News Results, a bonus opportunity to speak to potential voters In His Own Words.

The searcher only interested in natural results might first note the candiates' sites. If that searcher were a Link Builder, however, he or she might note an internal linking issue manifested in those first results. Hillary must be doing a good job of showing the search engines her most important internal links, as she receives 8 site links within her first result. Barack receives just one.

After that Link Builder regained composure, he or she might note an internal linking/duplicate content issue manifested in the second results. Hillary's second result should be her second most relevant page, not a duplicate version of her first page. As for Barack, he doesn't have a second result.

Wiki-obsessed searchers might first note Wikipedia, which lands just above the fold for both candidates. As for what they would see there, well, that's for another day . . .

I wonder what the chances are that either campaign has completed this exercise.

Posted by tom at 02:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Keyword Research as a Predictor of Sales

Here's a short but important note about relying on keyword demand to predict general industry sales trends or successes.

Sometimes, keyword demand is a fairly accurate reflector (or predictor) of interest and/or sales:

Stats: According to this game industry blog, here are the respective console sales for 2007:
Wii: 6.29M units
Xbox: 4.29M units
PS2: 3.97M units
PS3: 2.56M units

And sometimes it is not:

While this chart might correspond roughly to the sales of player units (578,000 HD DVD and 370,000 Blu-ray machines will be sold by the end of [2007]"), one would be advised against picking a format "winner" from this chart (see this or many other articles like it). Most of the technorati (small "t") realize that a PS3 console also comes with a built-in Blu-ray player, so those searching for [blu-ray] are only a fraction of those searching for Blu-ray. If that makes sense.

Disc sales tell a story different from the sales of hardware units. PC World says "Blu-ray Disc movie titles outsold HD DVD in the United States by a nearly 2-to1 margin last year, according to sales figures from Home Media Research."

Using trending charts to estimate sheer search volume is a pretty sure bet. But be careful about drawing conclusions about popularity and intent out of those raw numbers.

Posted by erik at 12:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 23, 2008

Duplicate Content - Thinking Inside the 'Big Box' Stores

SEOs (myself included) love to preach the Organic Gospel as if knowledge is the barrier, not implementation. "If people only knew this or that," we say, "they'd be saved."

But a lot of times, knowing the right stuff only leads to the next barrier, which is, "How the heck to we DO it?" Various facets of site maintenance -- user experience and tracking, to name only two -- frequently compete with SEO techniques for front-burner attention.

As an example, I want to look at Circuit City's site and show a couple examples of things they're doing that aren't optimal from an organic SEO perspective, but that are probably necessary for other reasons. (I should note that I LOVE the CC site from a user's perspective. They -- and a lot of the Big Box stores, to be fair -- have a great way to narrow and expand the choices to help you find exactly the product(s) you're looking for.)

The first example, however, is one I'm fairly critical of, because I feel like whatever benefit they're gaining probably isn't worth it. The CC home page has two links to the main "TV & Home Entertainment" page -- one in the top nav, and one in the lower set of links. You can see the links in the following screen shot, and I've listed them afterward:

Here are the respective links. I've bolded the points at which the dynamic strings diverge:

http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/categorySpecial.do?catOid=-12866&N=20012866&c=1

http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/categorySpecial.do?catOid=-12866&N=20012866
&SESSIONLINK&cm_re=011308%20HOME%20PAGE%20A-_-navboxes%20
TV-_-TV%20and%20Home%20Entertainment

The content of the pages is identical, so you know where this is going. They're diluting the potential power of each by having a similarly named mirror.

Let's look at a more complicated example. Consider two more URLs on the Circuit City site, and I'll contrast the query strings and the page contents. I've stripped out the "http://www.circuitcity.com" portion of the URL for brevity, but I've linked to them so you can see for yourself if you want. In addition, after each URL, I've shown the breadcrumb navigation from each page so you can see the subtle difference.

Page 1: TVs that cost $500-$999 that are Sony:
URL: /ssm/Televisions/sem/rpsm/c/1/catOid/-12867/Ns/net_price
|0||accm_grs_mgn_dllr|1/link/ref/N/20012866+20012867+312867003+40000229
/link/ref/rpem/ccd/categorylist.do

Breadcrumb trail:

Page 2: TVs that are Sony that cost $500-$999:
URL: /ssm/Televisions/sem/rpsm/c/1/catOid/-12867/Ns/net_price
|0||accm_grs_mgn_dllr|1/link/ref/N/20012866+20012867+40000229+312867003
/link/ref/rpem/ccd/categorylist.do
Breadcrumb trail:

The on-page content from these two URLs is identical. After all, no matter in what order you query the database, it should theoretically produce the same products (in this case, three specific TVs). But notice (in bold) how the order of two parameters is swapped in the two URLs, in effect causing a duplication. The content (and breadcrumb navigation) is generated based on the order in which the user selects search criteria. This makes a fantastic user experience -- no doubt about it. But it's hurting them subtly because engines either crawl too many pages and dilute each one's unique potential for ranking well, or, more likely, the bots hit a nav scheme like this, turn a few corners and crawl a handful of pages, then bail because they can recognize what a sinkhole it is.

About a month ago, a WebmasterWorld thread ($upport required) discussed a topic similar to this. Member PageOneResults discussed a client's site, which offers multiple paths and entry points to specific product URLs, with the final product URL varying based on the entry point used and the path taken to that product. Following is a response to his original post, followed by his reaction:

>>If the URL depends on the route taken through the site, then you have a major problem to figure out and fix.

Yes, we have a major challenge ahead of us in regards to the one example provided where there were 10 access points for one product. That takes into consideration 5 under www and 5 under non www which is what is happening.

I'm all for as many access points as can be possibly provided as to not hamper the visitor experience. And, as pointed out, as long as that product leads to the same URI from all access points, life is sweet. But, that is not the case...

One important note is that PageOneResults is aka Edward Lewis, who runs SEO Consultants (of which Intrapromote is a proud member). Edward has probably forgotten more about SEO in the last 12 hours than I have ever known, so when he asks for input, it's not due to lack of knowledge. The bottom line is, this stuff can get extremely complicated regardless of your SEO knowledge level.

Posted by erik at 11:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 16, 2008

Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?

One of my favorite clients of all time, with us now going on 8 years and powered mightily by the rare, dual client-side SEO strengths of search understanding and inter-departmental implementation influence, recently noticed the same thing Mark Jackson saw in Google's most recent round of Universal Search peekaboo:

Notice the incredibly disappearing PPC Ads? My immediate explication was that surely this must be to prove, in a small test sample, that someone's bad idea from above would be a disaster, indeed.

Mark, though, has made me think again:

Google may succeed in encouraging companies to bid more ferociously for the top two positions. If universal search leads to more searches because it's fun, this could be a win for Google (higher revenues) and users (better experience).

Sometimes it's hard for us to imagine that there is a finite set of clicks on any given day. The business model in a closed set like this, then, must discover what to do to increase the value of the average click within the set on a given day. Mark's point about less ads likelier driving up value per is on target, I believe, but thanks to him getting me to think again I think the test layout in question has less to do about increasing searches "because it's fun" and much ado about that map, an image mind you, kissing the PPC ads at the right corner of the screen and making your eye immediately jump there to focus.

Take a look yourself and see where your eye is drawn, and then check out what eye tracking heat maps are telling us about how pictures affect focus on a search page.

Posted by john at 04:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 07, 2008

All Eyes on Wikia Search Launch

After more than a year since the initial news, Wikia Search officially launched this morning. I won't bore you with the reviews, which are mixed (although seldom neutral).

Probably the funniest line came from Matt Cutts, whose

...reaction is pretty simple: congrats to the Wikia crew on your public launch, and welcome to the search industry! I’m glad that you’re jumping into the search space.

This seems a little like Tom Brady welcoming his grandmother to the pickup scrimmage at the family reunion.

Posted by erik at 07:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 02, 2008

What was that about Google Host Crowding?

Matt Cutts talked a while back about algorithmic changes to heighten Google's host crowding capabilities. Now he said they would not apply this across the board, but the below serp for [google adsense] shows some kinks.

And further down on the first page, a couple more results from the secure connection and a subdomain.

Posted by tom at 03:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack