Before I read the comments on Tom’s blog (which I have summarized and compiled below) I thought about it. These are my thoughts:  

User Generated Content

I am a huge proponent of user generated content (UGC), and its impact on search results, conversions, and online transparency which contributes to the accessibility and exposure of product or service related feedback and reviews. It has also resulted in a significant contribution to site usability, information accessibility and more where it has been effectively and applicable incorporated on official company sites and blogs.

While UGC is by no means a new concept (it entered mainstream use in 2005 according to Wikipedia), it might be considered to have gained enormous traction and exposure, and thus interest over the past 12-18 months due to new studies from big name research corporations including Rubicon, Forrester, Juniper, AdAge and others (see this great list of UGC stats and their compilers). The studies revealed, reiterated and supported each other entirely in their data to the (summary) effect that:

·         Users are actively seeking input from other ‘people’ online via reviews and feedback

·         Usability in the form of ‘satisfaction’ increased with the inclusion of reviews on a site

·         Sites with reviews had higher conversion rates

·         Sites with reviews had higher ‘recall’ rates

·         More than 60% of potential purchasers research online regardless of whether they purchase on or offline and look for both positive and negative reviews

·         Negative reviews are unlikely to detract from positive reviews as long as there are positive reviews, and the negative review is deemed ‘constructive’.

·         Brands appreciate the ability to include reviews as it enhances transparency, and enables the publication of information on the site that they would normally, due to brand legal or marketing constraints, be unable to publish.

The 1to1 Media Survey of the 1to1 Xchange panel in April of this year summarized overall trend based predications on the findings of the studies very concisely in my opinion:

·         By 2020, 84% of marketers agree that building customer trust will become marketing’s primary objective, and 82% agree that collaboration with customers will prevail over marketing.

Reputation Management

The same type of scenario (not new, but ‘newly realized’) is true for the discipline of monitoring one’s, or one’s competitors, reputation online. Despite the fact that Google Alerts has been around for quite some time (2006 I think) reputation management really got a kick in the rear this year with the publication of Andy Beal’s book Radically Transparent, and the advent of TrackUR and numerous other reputation management tools.

I think the boost of interest in UGC and the need to implement it while watching for on-site spam intersected very nicely with the desire to monitor both positive and negative commentary around the web. Finding out what brand evangelists are saying can be a great way to build out a social media campaign, or any other form of online marketing initiative. Knowing who the brand evangelists are enables a company to ‘recruit’ them via empowering them with early news tid-bits, free stuff (like screen savers… no, I don’t mean a new Lamborghini – though that would be nice…), special offers for their readers and other similar free tools or offerings of gratuity and incentive. There is a fine line between empowering brand evangelists and bribing them. My heart-felt advice is;  ‘don’t cross the invisible line’.

Monitoring what is being said about you on the net and in the blogosphere also enables a business to find out what people don’t like about their company, a brand, a product line, a specific product, customer service, an affiliate, a brick and mortar store, and so on. It is a great way to be knowledgeable while at the same time proactive, assuming you develop a strategy to deal quickly, diplomatically, carefully, and positively with brand detractors. Answer them on their own site/blog or wherever they have posted the review or comment, and copy the issue raised along with your responding solution or answer onto your official site.

Not only can you answer your detractors quickly and effectively, you are also likely to gather some great insights for R&D (research and development) and I&P (insight and planning). 

In closing – my thoughts are that…

…the potential impact of effective integration and management of UGC via effective use of a well-thought strategy and a great reputation management tool  is what I think we have really come to see as a ‘significant advance’ in SMM this year.

Other comments from Tom’s readers:

Please do read his post and comment there first as I have unashamedly lifted this whole blog-post-idea-thingey from him via LinkedIn.

Tom’s readers feel that the following are the ‘significant advances in SMM during 2008’ – in no particular order:

·         Microblogging

·         Reconsidering the social dynamic

·         Adoption and consolidation

·         Mobile and iPhone use and effect

·         Leveraging online and offline more holistically

·         Personalized platforms (like Ning)

·         Mobile microblogging facilitation

·         Aggregation of multiple profiles and streamlining enabled

·         Simply the enormous boost in interest as the idea of social networking has grown, matured and solidified as ‘something to stay’ as opposed to a ‘fad’.

Have a wonderful festive season and a blessed New year if I don’t get around to stealing blogging again in the next 2 weeks J !!!

The middle web is that new playground between highly limited mobile phone internet use and full blown computer internet use via high speed access; and is made possible by a range of new hand held facilitators including the iPhone. Not that new admittedly, but in terms of time in the US 2 years is not long (release of Blackberry), and the iPhone was first released in the US in June ’07.

According to mobile advertising company AdMob, traffic from Apple’s iPhone on their advertising network almost doubled in August, and the iPhone saw the fastest growth of all smartphones worldwide, closely followed by the Samsung Instinct (some dispute the ‘smartphone’ status of the Instinct – I’m just not that smart, no pun intended.) In fact, users of the iPhone ended August with more than 2.9 million mobile Web page requests per day.

SO… what’s with mobile search marketing then? In terms of pure numbers very few companies are embracing mobile search as a legitimate advertising platform. I can’t help but wonder why – especially considering predictions of in excess of $3BN this year in mobile ad spend, and more than 14 million phones sold – very confusing…

·         It’s not hard to design a corporate branded .mobi site – or even easier – dedicated single landing pages for mobile PPC initiatives.

·         It’s not hard to make sensible mobile PPC ads with 18 characters per line.

·         It’s not hard to cost effectively alter an existing banner ad for mobile ad display through AdWords (or other platforms)

·         Analytics are pretty good, and getting better

·         Historic data indicates that even then more than 46 million mobile users used mobile search functions in Q3 last year according to Nielsen, that figure has nearly doubled.

Perhaps search behavior is different on mobiles, perhaps not so much. There are numerous studies underway and the data gives every indication of being both ground-breaking and very interesting.

I honestly believe that if your client is even remotely geotargeted in their offering, and if they provide any form of local service, including entertainment, home services, hospitality, health, pet care, or are involved in the sale of products from geographically limited locations, they should get involved in mobile PPC geo-targeting to an appropriate level, and give it a test drive. It is possible to use multipliers or other statistical formulae to run comparative tests on traditional PPC vs mobile PPC campaigns, bearing in mind the fact that your markets may or may not overlap – but you should be able to compare ROI and other KPI.

I actually think that anyone participating in PPC should run a trial PPC initiative on mobile PPC, even if it is simply based on a highly geo-targeted test market. If it works, the mobile world becomes a whole new oyster of its own… Why miss it? Run it on AdWords with strict constraints on spend and display. You can turn it off any time, you can check data whenever you like. Just make sure you allow for a reasonable period of time to make an informed decision without running scared.

Some iPhone wireless networks are free, enabling iPhone users to connect at no charge – don’t be frightened. Find out more about the medium, the advertising options, free connection areas, the set up costs and resources required to initiate a trial campaign, and give it a try that provides you with statistically significant data. Run it over 3 separate periods of time, A/B test your ads and landing pages… go to it with enthusiasm assuming you will be pleasantly surprised. If it doesn’t work, you won’t have lost much, but you will have gained enormous insights into another new market and medium, hopefully for the better.

Mobile phones are here to stay in the world as we know it, mobile use is increasing; the middle web is exhibiting a very fast growth rate, outpacing growth of traditional internet adoption (which is not surprising). People are using mobile search functionality, especially on the new generation of smartphones…

The Point?

Adapt. Adopt. Be proactive. Investigate, explore and seriously consider

mobile search marketing as a potential addition to your marketing mix!

This post will try to demystify the issue.

Why Spying on the Online Competition Can Benefit SEM (SEO & PPC) Efforts

Competitive intelligence can tell what phrases your competition is effectively ranking on, and what they aren’t, providing you with additional guidance as you plan your organic and paid search strategies.

How to Spy on the Online Competition

SEO – First;

·    Check out your top online competitors.

·    Check their title tags, META data, headers and primary targeted terms. Make a list of terms for which they appear to be optimizing.

·    Run the terms they are ‘optimized’ for through Google and see if they rank in the top 10 (or 30). Make a note of the terms they actually rank for.

·    Then run their URL through SEODigger.com. For example; if you are a Sushi restaurant in Chicago, SushiWabi.com is a direct online competitor.  SEODigger.com will show you (depending on data centers and other impacting factors, but it’s not a bad guide) what positions this site holds in Google, and for what terms.

·    Then run their URL through SpyFu.com. If you are a subscriber, their results are more comprehensive. The free tool is not a bad quick check on SEODigger for organic results, but is more useful for seeing their Paid Search terms. Which we look at in the Paid search step below.

·    Run the list of ranking terms through Wordtracker, Google Keywords, KeyWord Discovery, Suggest tools on the various search engines.

·    Make a list of the top 20-50 terms on each keyword research resource you use (use at least 2 or 3 to take into account variations and discrepancies).

·    Make this list for each primary term you are investigating, noting which competitor is advertising for which primary term, and what the search volume and competition for each term is. Apply information in Third step below…

SEO – Second;

·    Check out your top offline competitors, especially if your business is offline based or has a strong offline market. If your offline competitors are the same as your online competitors it makes life a smidge easier, but it is not always the case.

·    For example: In the town of Calgary in Alberta, a search on plumbers yields a results listing ‘grouped’ plumbers with a list of ‘top plumbers’

·    BUT If I look in the YellowPages (offline) I get:

o        Knight Plumbing

o        Roto-Rooters

o        Action Auger

o        Abacus

·    none of the plumbers mentioned in my online list from my first selection are mentioned. Incidentally the iYP search yields nearly the same results. This is indicating that the top offline listings with their big YP ads are hitting the iYP advertising as well… Anyone ever tell them about SEO? I reckon iYP is keeping it close. They can’t really take to SEO can they… way too much conflict of interest.

·    Take these top offline competitors and run them through Google looking to see if they have websites, and if they have, what they are optimized for. If you are not optimized, you may see some strong relationships between their site and yours in terms of what is being missed. It’s a nice way to view a poorly optimized site and figure out why they are not working when compared to competitors that are – almost a DIY audit on the competition. You can request that your SEO Consultant do that for you as extra data for future development.

SEO – Third;

Take all the terms you have seen, even if they are not ranking a site but are relevant to your business. Pass them to your IA team, and get a decent site plan drawn up utilizing the primary keywords. Check, refine, review and then continue as per best practice SEO redevelopment. (I reccommend reading the post on Keyword Research, and Search Query vs Search Intent as well)

Paid Search

·    Take the data gleaned from SEODigger.

·    Look at the PPC data from SpyFu.com. For a better example I’ll look at a restaurant that is advertising via PPC (I can only see those advertising across North America and including Canada in their geo-target). Let’s look at OliveGarden.com.

o     This site has a lot more traffic, and the image shows organic data on competitors as well as search terms. Paid subscription yields more data, but for this exercise this is sufficient.

o     PPC data from the Olive Garden tells us whose advertising on prime terms *click a term in the ‘advertisements’* section as above and you’ll see the top list of 10 PPC competitors ranking for the phrase you clicked in Google. Again, subscription gives much more info. The list you chose from is the list of PPC terms people are using to rank for your business. You can check that data for any URL, assuming they are advertisinig via PPC on Google. From image above, you can see that OliveGarden appears to be targeting the term ‘chilis gift card’

·    SpyFu is super easy to use, and free as you figure it out. I highly recommend it.

·    Take all the keywords you have, from organic research as per steps 1&2.

·    Take the terms you have gathered in excess left over from your IA and copy team for SEO site plan.

·    Take the terms you found from PPC competitive insights and run them through the keyword research tools to get variations.

·    Make a final trim and split the keywords into a usable, adgroup and keyword targeted PPC campaign.

Note on brands targeting other brands… Some brands have ‘gentleman deals’ not to target other competitor brand names in the PPC results to keep PPC costs down. If they work, it is of enormous benefit to all brands concerned.

In most cases this is not the case. HOWEVER, my advice is to type your brand and variations of it into Google and see who’s advertising in the paid results via SpyFu (or more advanced AdGooroo – there are a huge number of software solutions out there, I personally know these two and recommend them both).

Contact them and request a mutual cease and desist on brand name terms. If they are amenable, get a document from both/all parties listing the brand name terms they want kept ‘free’. Review all terms individually and then collectively and form a ‘brand exclusive’ partnership. As soon as you can get something off the ground, the collective is likely to have the combined power to absorb new *brand stealers*, or negate their opportunity to capitalize on your grouped name terms.

Reputation Management Spying

·    If you know what initiatives your online competition is engaging in, or what issues are befalling them you can combat them immediately via PPC initiatives, and long term via SEO.

·    For example; if a competitors is having financial issues, or board in-fighting, if they are closing stores or opening new ones, you can be among the first to know via reputation monitoring and management.

·    You can use the information to create targeted PPC campaigns, and create long term competitive, combative, or superior pages. You can use the information to create a new niche, extend a niche, or as an idea for your own product or service development. The possibilities are virtually limitless.

·    A great free tool is Google Alerts. Easy to set up, and easy to monitor. Whatever ‘term’ or ‘brand’ you enter will be monitored and emailed to you if you choose it to be an ‘alert’ any time that ‘term’ is included in a Google news, web, blog or other result.

·    Two superb paid for tools include TruCast  (a social media and blog monitoring solution from VisibleTechnologies) and TrakUr (Google Alert on steroids according to it’s creators).

Conclusion:

Monitor your competition online and off. See what they are doing and strategize reactively, and proactively depending on what you find!

At the risk of putting myself in the firing line, I’m going to try to put my point across in defense of rankings reports. I’m blogging it here as it will take somewhat more than my 140 character tweet allowance…. Before you nail me in the comments, please read the full post J

Ranking Reports

These are reports provided by software programs like WebCEO which send automatic queries to Google and the other search engines to determine rankings on a range of keywords or phrases. They show increases or decreases in rankings of selected phrases, as well as total number of selected keywords ranking from a submitted universe.

My defense of ranking reports – a rebuttal of anti-ranking-report arguments over the past few days

Ranking reports are an easy sell. SMB clients (in general) have no understanding of log-files or analytics, let alone what a SERP is. They do however want to know that there will be reporting they can understand regarding the efficacy of the SEO efforts they are paying for.

Hang-on… Read me out

1. I am not saying that ranking reports are what you should focus your actual reporting on
2. I am not saying that ranking reports are always accurate, though in my experience they are not that far off despite different data centers
3. I am saying that it is counter-productive to baffle clients new to SEO with a long-winded attempt at education on the wonders of log-files, keyword analytics, keyword to conversion rates, relative estimated SERP position CTR rates, eye tracking heat maps, affect of images and news results in the blended search results on CTR and so on and so forth. I am going to expand on this point below…

New to SEO? Can I confound you and take your money please?

I know that’s an exaggeration, but SEO’s who live and breathe the subject tend to forget that there is a whole world out there who does not know what a META description is, why keyword research is important, or who Danny Sullivan is.

In many cases, though not all, the longer you have been in the industry, the less tolerant you are with practices you know to be old-hat, incomplete, or inaccurate in any way. That’s a good thing. But it’s important not to forget about the great multitudes of potential clients with sites who really have no clue.

No, they are not stupid. No, they are not ‘uniformed’. No, they are not gullible. But they are, in many cases uneducated, and they need their fears to be assuaged. The whole SEO, SEM, SMM, internet band-wagon in general seems to be a massive juggernaut out of control. They want to understand that they will have something tangible to show for ‘it’ that they understand even though at this stage they don’t really ‘get it’. It’s their hard-earned dollars designated for marketing for which they fight to get approval… Their spend options are pretty big.

They may have heard of search engine optimization. What they probably have heard is that people who ‘do’ SEO can make them rank number 1 in Google for their brand name and lots of other ‘important words’. What they have not been told is that ranking on ‘fake Nike trainers’ if you sell real Nike trainers is not a good idea, and they probably haven’t thought that far yet as the whole concept of ranking in the search engines without paying for it per-click (if they have even heard of that) is new to them.

How to deal with this and where ranking reports raise their ugly/helpful heads depending on your point of view:

1. It is important to set expectations. This does not take a half hour lesson in SEO basics. Assuming the SEO has checked out the site, knows there is no redesign budget, and hasn’t found anything totally dire with the coding, and assuming there are no analytics, it’s relatively easy to simply give the client an elevator speech that will not confound them entirely in the early stages; something along the lines of:

“In order to figure out how best to position your site in the search engines, we need to determine what keywords we want to optimize your site for. To do this we need to conduct online keyword research to determine what your target market is actually searching for online.

We do this by utilizing a number of specifically developed keyword research tools that provide us with the keyword use of your target market when they are looking online for the service you provide. These keywords are the actual keyword terms or phrases that people like you or I would type into the search box on the search engines when we are researching or looking for a product or service online (show them an example on your laptop).

We then figure out which keywords are going to provide your site with the greatest effective exposure in terms of potential ROI when we target them by applying SEO best practice. The Recommendations Document we provide will explain everything in detail, and we’ll follow up with consultation time to explain terms and concepts that are new to you prior to integrating the recommendations, based ofcourse on your approval.

We cannot guarantee or promise you the number one position in Google or any major search engine for any term or terms, though there is a very strong likelihood that your brand name will rank very well. What we can begin to show you once the optimization recommendations are implemented is how your rankings on key identified and selected terms for optimization are improving by utilizing what is called ‘ranking software’.

This software will show you how your rankings on the key terms identified for the purpose of increasing your exposure in the engines have improved once the SEO process has begun. These rankings may take from a few days to weeks to months to show any significant improvements due to a number of factors. This will also be explained in full in the recommendations.

The recommendations document will also contain information on a vital element of SEO called ‘web analytics’. This section will explain what your real key performance indicators (KPI) should be, how we measure them, and how we will report those to you.

We also need to make very clear at this juncture that if all of our recommendations are not implemented, either by ourselves, or by your in-house team in close consultation with your provided lead SEO consultant, that any results will be negatively affected, and possibly entirely disaffected.

Note to SEO experts reading this post. Yes, I know there is a lot more to SEO. You know that too. The average SMB contact is probably already crossing their eyes. This is all new to many of them. But they probably need to be convinced of some kind of immediate ‘reporting’ structure that they can understand and feed on to other members of their team or corporate board. Ranking reports provide that initial toe-hold for them to get excited, involved, interested in learning more, and most vitally, which will convince them to proceed with the initiative.

2. Follow up this conversation will a full Recommendations Document, explaining everything; from definitions to visual examples of what a title tag is (for example) how the title tag is viewed in the SERPs, where it is seen in the browser, and so on and so forth. SnagIt is great for these grabs. Make this document usable  on a page-by-page basis showing what ‘is’ and what ‘should be’; e.g. current title vs. recommended; current META  description vs. recommended; etc, and if you do SEO copywriting, which I personally think is important, then show them old vs. recommended utilizing highlights to show difference and changes. Reassure them that their brand message is not being lost, and explain why each element you are recommending is included.

Attach a full keyword research document based on all keywords gathered in alphabetical order including search volume, KEI (with definition and explanation), and competing sites. I know KEI is not the be-all and end-all, but it does give guidance and support to your argument on review that perhaps trying to rank on ‘used cars’ will be a lot harder for them to realistically achieve when compared to ranking on ‘used dodge caravans orlando’. Don’t ‘prune’ the keyword document too much apart from totally irrelevant terms; e.g. a cancer foundation will not be interested in words around ‘cancer horoscope’ or ‘tropic of cancer’.

Through your client’s eyes…

At this stage the search engines are your new-to-seo-client’s ‘oyster’. None of their competitors, friends or business acquaintances has heard of it or implemented it, so they must really be ahead of the curve! This is the time to gently explain that SEO has been around for over a decade, and is a highly competitive and sometimes combative practice. Show them some examples without terrifying them and losing their will to continue. Support your initial statement that we can ‘improve your exposure, but not guarantee your rankings’. Assuming you’re white-hat. I probably should have started this post by saying ‘black-hats-ignore’ .

3. Run an initial benchmark (horrors!) ranking report along with ensuring that the chosen analytics program snippets are coded in.

Apply the recommended SEO changes to the site, start the backlink campaign, and run monthly ranking reports to support and supplement your real KPI analytics reporting.

As soon as your client ‘gets’ your real analytics reports with KPI data based on conversions, returns, interaction, registrations, whatever, you can wean them off the rankings reports in favor of the more detailed, accurate and insightful web-analytics.

In Closing

Ranking Reports are not perfect, not infallible, and not what you should by any means focus on in terms of reporting standards for your clients, but they do have their place. I think it would be a sad day for the industry if the possibility of utilizing them became defunct.

(Final comment; a friend ran a report for a client using WebCeo on the 7^th after speaking with the team at WebCEO, and it worked fine.)

Trends From an Investors Perspective

• Microsoft bid for Yahoo!, then withdrew the offer and Yahoo!’s shares dropped nearly 20%
• Google and Yahoo! are still skirting around a search advertising partnership
• Ask withdrew from main stream search to focus on women searchers
• Google’s search share has increased slightly
• Yahoo! search share has remained stagnant in aggregate
• Microsoft’s share has fallen

What to do from an Investors Perspective

Yahoo! (Nasdaq) is not dead by a long shot. While the 2 year trend has been a decline, there is much positive speculation about the future of company and thus the stock.

Google’s share price saw a sharp decline in the first quarter (roughly 45%), but has increased approximately 43% on March values in the last 6-7 weeks. Google’s not going anywhere, and I’m not convinced the share price will experience a similar drop in the near future.

Microsoft’s general trend over the last 2 years has been strongly positive. The share value decrease from February to May 5th can be almost entirely attributed to the Yahoo! bid. Prior to that, many technology shares were hit by poor estimates, the oil price and general instability in the market – all of which fuelled concerns of a general recession.

Off on a mini-tangent, it may be worth looking a little more closely at Apple shares…

[DISCLAIMER – I am not suggesting that anyone who reads this blog pay the slightest bit of notice to my investor ramblings. I have no idea what is going to happen with any of these shares. I thought it might be nice for our readers to see what’s been going on in summary in one place all nice and easy like . If you choose to buy or sell any of the shares I have mentioned, please do so at your own risk. Neither I, nor this blog, take any responsibility for your actions - or the results and consequences of those actions in any way - should you choose to buy or sell any of the shares discussed above.]

Trends From a Marketers Perspective

If we look at trends from the perspective of consumer behavior we see:

• Continued growth in the use of image and video search
• An astronomical increase in the influence of social media marketing in the form of consumer feedback and reviews
• Impact on the traditional F-shaped heat maps generated by eye-tracking studies due to Google’s Universal search results as ‘eyes’ are drawn to image and video search results
• Increased local awareness and power due to the inclusion of the OneBox ten-pack
• Increased SERP interaction due to the roll-out of more Sitelinks and ‘Search Within a Site’ search box features

User interaction is facilitated by these features and the probability is that the trend in click-throughs will skew towards increased searcher interaction with more ‘visible’, usable, graphic listings – assuming the relevancy factor is retained.

If we look at paid search changes in Google alone we see that:

• Google has also recently revised its display URL protocol in AdWords, and
• Google has been experimenting with the inclusion of video results in the paid search listings.

What to do from a Marketer’s Perspective

• Marketers should seriously consider budgeting for continued SEO initiatives, particularly regarding internet market research on consumer search behavior.
• Assigning marketing dollars to image and video production and optimization is imperative as is integrating with relevant social communities.
• Brands need to aggressively begin to empower brand proponents and embrace reputation management (RM) tools. RM has only recently gained the recognition it should have attained years ago.
• With the astronomical growth in both social influence and social media marketing, and the impact of reviews and consumer feedback on online purchase decisions, the need for brand transparency is becoming ever more important.
• Consequently, the need to facilitate consumer feedback and interaction is key to future success in the search and ecommerce space.

Future trends…

If you know – please let me know…

• Laura can be found here and on Twitter.
• Come to the SEMCanada Conference September 2008!