So Paul Christoforo and Ocean Marketing have gone viral. But even though they say bad marketing is good marketing, I think this particular instance is an example of bad marketing being bad marketing.
In the effort to get links and spread word of your business online, many people can get a bit overzealous. Ryan Sammy put together an excellent list detailing the 7 deadly sins of content promotion. I’ve summarized them here, with my own input on it.
In the past, most local businesses never thought they could compete with major companies. The marketing budget needed to really make a similar impact was usually way out of their capabilities. However, with Google’s latest updates, it’s looking like the smaller business has a much better chance of staying within the public’s eyes.
This was something that had been coming, but it was unknown exactly when the date would be. Yahoo and Microsoft have made an alliance. It’s called the “Search Alliance”. Originally it was intended as a unification for paid advertisements, but it’s clear now that the unification is for both paid and organic listings; do a search on both Yahoo and Bing for a keyword phrase, and the results are now identical.
I’ve been taking a look at some of my competition lately and seeing their bragging about achieving first page ranking for keywords, and in some cases top position ranking for keywords. Well, for people who are looking to get SEO services from a company or an individual, be sure to keep some things in mind before being impressed by achievements such as these.
There’s a good list of things to double check (or to ask) when you see rankings like this in a portfolio:
- How many results do you get for that keyword in the search engine? If you do a search in Google and get under 200,000 listings, there’s a good chance it’s very easy to rank for that keyword. There are exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, if no one’s competing for the keyword, it’s easy to rank for. But again – if no one’s competing for the keyword, chances are it’s not worth ranking for. We’ve got a few clients with keywords that are ranked on the first page that have search results numbering over 6,000,000.
- What kind of traffic does that keyword get? There are different ways to learn about this, but you should see if the keywords that are being ranked highly actually get good traffic. You may have a number one position, but if it only gets two searches a month – is it really something that’s worth it? As always, there are exceptions to this rule (if you can close on one of those two searches and it’s worth six figures, that’d be worth it), but usually getting no traffic means the keyword is not worth as much.
- What other keywords are ranked for that site? So they have shown a single keyword phrase for their SEO’d site. Is it the only one that’s ranked? A good SEO should be able to rank highly for multiple keywords. Ideally, multiple targeted keywords.
- Is the SEO company’s site ranking for keywords? If the company claims to do SEO, it would make sense that they would rank for keywords themselves, correct? If you ask and they can show no good results for their own site in the search engines, be very cautious about trusting them with your own site.
When you hire someone for SEO work, they should be able to provide information on what keywords they are targeting and show you the results that it’s bringing. Having a particular ranking is worth nothing if you don’t see results from that position in the search engine listings. Check this list to see what those results are really worth, and if it’s good SEO or just easy SEO to put something into a portfolio.
Apple has recently revealed news on the iPhone OS 4 update. The more interesting part of this news for marketers is the new development of iAd – an advertisement opportunity to allow ads to be created and used within apps on the iPhone. Read more
I got an email from Microsoft adCenter promoting the new alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft. They’re calling it “Search Alliance“. The aim is to have their online paid advertising fully unified before the 2010 holiday season, although they did say that they’ll wait until 2011 if they “determine this will be more effective”.
Microsoft bought out Yahoo, so now the primary tool behind both search engines will be Bing, and behind the pay per click (and other paid online advertisements) will be adCenter. The Search Alliance has stated that each company will “continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences”. Not sure exactly how they’ll pull that off with the same search engine for both, but they may just mean the search interface.
The support will be broken apart, Yahoo supporting the bigger advertisers, and Microsoft will provide support to “self-service” advertisers. They are combining their platforms for the advertising audience, so ads put together under this new alliance will reach consumers using either search engine. The Search Alliance brags that advertisers of all sizes will now be able to have access to a combined audience of nearly 577 million worldwide searchers.
At any rate, this is pretty big news – Yahoo and MS pulling together to battle the mighty Google. I expect this may be an epic battle.
Google just upped their record from the 4th quarter of 2008 by 17%. So how much is that, exactly? Revenues in the 2008 4th quarter: $5.70 billion. And they’re only improving. Revenues in the 2009 4th quarter: $6.67 billion.
The fact that this is only for one fourth of the year blows my mind. If that stays consistent, then that’s in the neighborhood of $25 billion a year. They’re doing okay.
If you want to get more of the details on these numbers, check out this article from Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land.
Google’s made a little tweak to AdWords, so now you can put an ad that will show on cell phones that lists a business number. If the owner of the phone calls that number, that counts as the click that is paid for.
The benefit of this is that it’s a very quick hot lead for anyone who advertises on the mobile network. And it’s easy to do, since it defaults to all devices in AdWords, anyway. To make sure you’re listed, check to see that mobile devices are checked in your settings in the campaign settings in AdWords.
Also, to have your phone number listed, you can either have the business information synched up with your business account or enter it manually, both done inside of the AdWords campaign settings. Make sure whichever you do that you include your phone number.
Then to see the results, just choose the “Filters and Views” drop-down list and choose “Segment by”->”Click Type”. This will show which clicks were URL clicks, and which were calls, from either the Ad Group or Keywords tabs.
It’s just an addition Google’s made to AdWords, and sent out an announcement through email to Google advertisers. This could be a good change for people who use AdWords for markets that actively use their cell phones.
It looks like holiday shopping this year has moved even more heavily online. As companies are realizing that more people are actively searching online for their commercial searches, they’re starting to see the value of search engine optimization.
Because of this, the IT industry is starting to anticipate a high demand for SEO skills in 2010. (Yay for us professional SEOs!) In Great Britain alone, demand for SEO and online marketing skills went up by 40% last year.
The skills of SEO, pay per click management, social media marketing and web design are all being looked for, ideally in a combined package. SourceWire has all the details in an article based on this story in the UK. (And I have to add a little something something here – Tulsa Marketing Online does in fact do SEO, PPC, social media and web design. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)
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