Search Marketing Gurus | Online Marketing Professionals Give Search Marketing Tips, Advice, Strategies & Tactics

Who's In Your Audience or Community?

By Li Evans

Knowing who's in your audience or your community can save a substantial amount of money, time and other resources when planning out your online marketing strategy.  It's rare to find a substantial amount of users on the internet at the same place in their use of the internet whether its search, social communities or word of mouth.  However if you know the types of audiences there are, and can group them, and know by demographics where they generally fall it can save you a lot of sweat and tears in the long run.

Take for example the demographic of a 35-44 year old woman in the United States.  Do you know where she hangs out?  Do you know what types of communities she participates in, or does she even participate at all?  Does she do a ton of research, looking at ratings and review sites before she makes the decision to buy, or make a reservation?  Doe she actively create blogs, or is she more likely to participate and promote news stories, or be a "tagger" in a social bookmarking community?  If you sold shoes, designer purses, interior decorating supplies, electronic gadgets or had a line of luxury cruises you just might want to figure that out before you spend a ton of money starting a community that this demographic just might not readily participate in, or spending thousands on a PPC campaign they won't pay attention to.

In reading the book Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, they identify 6 types of audiences with social communities, but when you take into account that there's also search and there's also word of mouth to deal with in online marketing campaigns, there are a lot of other ways you also need to look at an audience. Charlene and Josh identify the Creator, Critic, Collector, Joiner, Spectator and Inactives. By the names alone you can get a feel for the types of participants these classifications are.

As an online marketer who tries to look at all strategies even beyond social media, trying to include and strategize for, you know a true online marketing strategy doesn't just include social media.  An online marketing strategy includes SEO, PPC, Social Media and even Word of Mouth.  With  that in mind there are more segments of an audience to take into account when you begin to strategize.

• Brand Evangelists: These people LOVE you.  They love your products, your services, they even love the janitor that cleans your desks at night.  To them, you basically walk on water.  They will tell everyone and anyone how great you are, they gush about how you sent them a Christmas card, and will tattoo your logo on their bicep.
  
  
  
  
• Promoters: Almost as loyal as the Brand Evangelist, however, these people promote you and most people listen.  They aren't taken as wild and deranged fans by their friends, when these people talk, their friends listen.  Here's a tip, make your promoters valuable, empower your promoters, by giving them the tools to make their words, more than just words.
  
  
  
  

What a Bon Jovi Concert Can Teach You About Internet Marketing

By Li Evans

This past weekend, I treated myself as well as my sister and my friend to a rather sweet indulgence.  For anyone who grew up loving "hair bands", Bon Jovi was the ultimate hair band.  Now, some 20 years later, the band doesn't quite have that 80's hair (most of you probably are saying Thank God!), but they still put on a great show.  As I explain it, Jon Bon Jovi is the only man above 40 legally allowed to wear leather pants in public.

For some reason, I always find myself looking at things from a marketing perspective where ever I go.  I could be in the grocery store, at Cold Stone (shhh!), or even just driving and see a bill board and I get inspired.  Sunday night was no different.  I came home and jotted a few notes down that have turned into this post.

What a Bon Jovi Concert Can Teach You About Online Marketing:

• Get Your Message Heard and Understood
  Is your message coming through, can your audience really hear what you are saying? 
  
  While we had awesome seats, near the stage, we found it really tough to understand anything that Chris Daughtry (the opening act) was singing, since he didn't use the same sound system as Bon Jovi.  The three of us knew maybe 2 of his songs from hearing them occasionally on the radio, but felt "lost" because we really couldn't understand the words to the songs he was singing, since all of his speakers were facing the front, and we were on the side.
  
  Bon Jovi was a little better, but both acts would have benefited from having another speaker or two facing the crowd that was "behind" the open stage.  Then everyone could have fully enjoyed the songs they sang.
  
  So, stop and think, is your audience understanding your message?  Is something hindering them from truly understanding what you are trying to relate.  If you have a high bounce rate on your website, you might need to "re-tune" that message so your visitors understand what you are trying to convey.

SES London 2008: Linking Strategies

By SEOidiot

Moderator: Mike Grehan, Co-chair, SES London; CEO Searchvisible Limited

Speakers:
Dixon Jones: MD Receptional Limited
Ken McGaffin: Internet Marketing Consultant, LinkingMatters
Brian Turner: Director, Britecorp Limited
Matt Paines: MD, XSEO Limited

Dixon Jones
Proverb: "The bigger they are the harder they fall on you" - Google are huge and if they think you are trying to game them they will fall on you pretty hard.

Case Studies
Getting indexed was the easy bit, then its all about getting the users to the site.

Google has 90% market share because they understand more about the users intent and they understand the relationship between the two. The differential factor is the reputation of your site online in relation to the sites above and below for that query structure.

In the last 12 months links has gotten absurd due to things like the influence of social media and the change in the way that we use the internet.

Receptional do try to record and differentiate the quality of the links that they get for a client. Recording things like the number of gov or edu links to the site linking in as well as things like references within wikipedia etc.

Build techniques that give people the incentive to link to you rather than going and asking for them.

Some links give quality real people and traffic of value and many others will simply bring junk traffic.

Think up strategies that it will be hard for competitors to simply copy

Dixon showed us the example of when Maxim magazine got the Eva Longoria image on Google earth and how many people have linked to them from that piece of innovative marketing.
Stop dead links using .htaccess to send a 301 for commonly mistyped URLs that may have links pointing at them.
Cleaning your site needs a good understanding of 301 redirects and helps prevent duplicate content.

Use RSS to allow people to have live news etc from your site by building things like widgets to help your link building efforts.

Matt Paines
Matt showed us some of the old techniques that used to be used with his suggestion in brackets: -

Reciprocal (SOME)
Whilst this is a mainly dead practice now there is still some benefits in terms of strategic partnership. Where its a natural thing to do and adds value it can still have a valid reason to be there but its not a good thing to do if the engines can view it as inappropriate.

Blog (SOME)
Blog spam has killed this in many ways. Most blogging providers have exclusions on text links. Seek out blogs that don't exclude with nofollow and engage with the blogs content, don't pollute.

Guest Book (NO)
Now completely dead in Matts opinion

Directories (YES)
Google have developed their view on directories and only the major ones now have real value.

Forums (NO)
Very much like blogs many of these have now nofollowed the links, can also be dangerous from a reputation management point of view due to the nature of the conversations on forums.

Social Media (YES)
Whilst many of these sites don't pass link value they do pass traffic and conversation.

Link Baiting (YES)
Difficult to control the anchor text but a extremely valid way to build incentives to link.

Articles (YES)
Some of the big article sites like PRWeb have had their ability to pass page rank stripped but they do provide a good method for getting the word out about your site quickly.

Paid For (YES)
Valid but avoid networks. We have been paying for advertising on and off line for many years, Yahoo for example charge for the review and addition of your site to their directory.

Ken McGaffin (www.linkingmatters.com)
Ken came into link building through traditional marketing. After writing his report (Linkingmatters) he built sales for the report by getting links and yet even when he stopped asking the links still kept building.

Links without asking is what its about
You have to make content that people want to link to without having to ask them.

Make sure that your Marketing, PR and SEO/Link Building people meet together and develop a common strategy.

Link power
Majority comes into the home page and make sure you are using the link power to highlight the pages you need to.

Find out who links to you now (And who brings you traffic)

Get the most from the sites that link to you already.
When someone links to you it shows the start of a relationship with them.
Encourage deep links
Ask for keyword rich links
Explore relationships - business or otherwise
Consider joint publications

Look at market segments where you are weak
Carry out the keyword research
Find the authority sites
Test markets on and off site
Explore relationships, business or otherwise
Customize product offerings
Use public relations to establish position

Look for emerging markets (And establish your position early)
Microtrends by Mark J Penn is a good example of this technique.
Does the market exists and is it relevant

Plan initiatives for the year ahead

Link building isn't an SEO trick its a way of establishing your position in a market.

Brian Turner
Google is a links driven search engine, instead of looking at what the page said about itself they looked at what other sites said about it.

Link strategies

• Submitted
• Directories
• Articles
• Social media profiles
• Forum signatures

Forum signatures
Benefits
Easy to create and control
Time consuming
Hazards
Duplication
Low impact

Paid
Sitewide links
Footer links
Advertiser / Sponsor links

Benefits
Choice of anchor text
Wide inventory
Traffic potential

Hazards
Usually strong footprint and easy to spot
Budget dependent
Limited control of format

Editorial
Natural blog posts
Media editorials
Natural references
Presell pages (Hosted marketing pages)

Benefits
Keyword association through page
Potential authority / trust
Natural placement
Traffic potential
Linkable content

Hazards
Difficult to acquire
Most expensive form of link

Presell pages
Most powerful tactic
Write an information rich piece of content were perhaps you link to other useful resources within the content as well as to the paid link page, thereby pre-qualifying the traffic.

Link sources
Different Class C (/24) IP Ranges
Varied anchor text
On Topic if possible - but not required
Quality, not quantity
Geo-target - UK domains for UK searches
Treat as PPC
Co-Ordinate links

SES London 2008: Balancing Organic & Paid Listings

By SEOidiot

Moderator: Kevin Ryan VP Search Engine Watch
Speakers: Dixon Jones, MD Receptional Limited
Jay Bean: Founder CEO, Orange Soda Inc
Nathan Levi: Head of Search Campaign Marketing Avenue A | Razorfish
Richard Clark: Pureplay Marketing Manager, Dixons.co.uk

Paid and organic has been a debate for a long time and the panel discussed the ways to balance the two strategies for the best results.

Dixon Jones
Lots of peoples clients argue that organic is something that should replace the early spend for PPC. Dixon showed an example of someone who contacted him via the form on his site after clicking on Receptionals Adwords ad attempting to sell him SEO!

You should pay for ppc even when you have placement within the organic serps. Dixon showed a good example of how the organic and paid results are blurred now, the example illustrated how a search can return the one box results that gives news and stock info etc.

Many of the sites linked to within the one box carry advertising as a business model. So traditional organic listings do get pushed down the page, thats why you need a dual approach.

We then looked at an example of how changes in screen resolution / size can almost allow one company with indented results in the serps to dominate the above the fold results.

Dominance in any one serp cannot be achieved without a balanced approach to using both methods.

Affiliates can also provide a way of finding your site pushed from the visible to below the fold for a given vertical.

PPC is part of the mix, SEO is the sum of the mix. You need both tools to be able to ensure you have the ability to respond the changes in circumstances that come with any search engine.

Two listings on a page converts better than just one method and more listings help you dominate more of the space on the page from your competition.

Jay Bean
Smaller local advertisers have some real opportunities today as a growing percentage of searches feature a localization element.

Benefits for the balanced approach: -

• You can turn up and down the ppc spend dependent on business or seasonal factors.
• You don't have any guarantees that the organic wont change and without the paid listing you can find yourself exposed to changes in search engine preference.
• You get greater credibility from appearing both in the paid and organic results and this can benefit conversions significantly.

Where to start ?
Check the current ppc spend and analyze your keywords to give you an indication of terms that you might want to optimize for in natural search or by adding a local market segment.
Set a budget to allow you to allocate your spend between the paid and SEO efforts and in the early days whilst waiting for the seo efforts to kick in paid can take more of the resources.

The case study Jay showed highlighted the benefit of targeting specific terms for SEO and a far broader set for paid.

For the smaller or local companies it may be difficult to compete with the large corporations but there remains good opportunities to compete on the local level.

Nathan Levi
Why should I buy my branded keywords when i rank for the terms in the organic listings often at a high cost per click?
Nathan showed us some case studies to illustrate the effect of the dual strategy over the single.
Its important that you try to get the analytics in one place to allow you to make informed decisions.
You need to be able to drive enough traffic to be able to get robust statistics so keyword choice is key.
They did a test to see what effect turning the paid listings off one day and on the next would have.
When the paid listings were on it pulled traffic away from natural but the click through rate was greatly improved and the overall effect was that both listings benefited from each other.
Conversion rates were static across the test, whilst increasing the incremental cost of having paid listings the overall benefit from the increased conversions made it well worth it.

In conclusion there is a multiplier effect of holding both natural and paid.

Richard Clark
60% of searches now have 3 or more words and 90% have 2 or more.
Dixons.co.uk started by spending all their online budgets on paid listings targeting generic terms but have grown to use a more balanced approach.

Dependent on budgets you need to target the stage on the buying process that you can afford and that makes sense for you, for example if Dixon's target the term 'TV' they  are targeting people in the research phase of the buying cycle but you can also target people in the buying phase by targeting much more focused terms like 'Toshiba 32 inch  lcd TV'.

When trademark isn't protected you should always bid on the brand.
Over 20% uplift in revenue when bid on branded terms when you are also top of the organic.

Being top of ppc and organic increases brand awareness and recall.

Q & A Session:
Will buying paid listings affect your organic listings?
Nathan Levi - Throughout there many thousands of listings where they have organic and paid results they don't see any effect that would indicate the engines (MSN specifically in this case) do not alter any organic results based on paid ads for the same.

SES London 08: The Changing World of Search, Keynote Roundtable

By Li Evans

Moderator: Kevin Ryan,  Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch

            

Introduction by: Nick Carr, Author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google

 

Speakers:

• Mike Grehan, SES London Co-Chair and Founder and CEO, Searchvisible Ltd.
• Steven Kaufman, SVP Media Director, Digitas
• Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder, Future Now Inc.
• Erica Schmidt, Global Director of Search, Isobar
• Paul Doleman, CTO & Head of PPC, iCrossing and SEMPO UK & Europe

Nick actually isn't here, but recorded a video for the audience.  Nick fell and broke his ribs and has a collapsed lung and was advised not to fly.

Kevin is showing a couple of headlines - "Microsoft vs. Google".  "Google weighs in against Microsoft".  "Microsoft to Target Yahoo! Investors".  "News Corp Joins the Yahoo! Battle".  "Yahoo Tells Shareholders They are Better Off With Current Managers".

Video from Nick Carr: 
It is a very important time in computing and history of communication.  Everyone in Search Marketing is playing a crucial role in this change.  He thinks one of the clearest indications something is going on is MS's bid to purchase Yahoo!

On one hand MS's motivation is tactical because of its lack of success in Search, and Yahoo! offers a quick fix.  Bigger story though is the change in the way computing and content is being delivered to our homes.  It use to be decentralized mode of supply, where we produced ourselves to centralized where there's a central place its made and supplied from. 

Up until the end of the 19th century, if you wanted to run a machine, you had to build your own electricity generator.  As soon as the electric grid was made, suddenly we had a new option, efficient supply at great distances.  We are seeing a similar thing happening in computing.  The world wide web is turning into the world wide computer. 

We are seeing this change quite quickly in the home and small business area.  Young people are running most of their software online, they aren't buying their own software in the store and installing it on their computers.  They are going to sites like Wikipedia, Flickr, MySpace - everything is happening online.

The software industry is starting to look like the media.  They don't make money from directly selling the software, they make it indirectly.  They have to figure out how to act like media companies, by supplying advertising to support the software development. 

On the business side, things move more slowly because of the investment into the data centers.  Also no one knows if this data model will work there or not.  However we will likely see it rise on a subscription model rather than what happens on home side.

Microsoft is still making money on the "old" side, however they are seeing this switch happening and if it wants to keep making money, they have to move to this new model.  Yahoo! gives to MS the ability to support this model.  It doesn't say it's going to happen (the merger), it says MS sees this and recognizes this and it's a world that Google is dominating this arena.

This is going to change a great deal about economics and society.  We've seen the rise of effecient companies such as Craig's List, Skype - these employ a small work forces, but serve more people than big companies that aren't on the web right now such as British Telecom. 

Search Marketers play a crucial role in privacy.  As more and more comes online by people and their personal data, the danger comes from data mining and SEO techniques.  It will eventually bring about the ability to monitor people and what they are doing online.  The challenge to Search Marketers is to figure out the standards and the ethics of what we offer up information wise while still giving people all the information they need. 

Panel Discussion:
Kevin points out Google is the clear leader, Microsoft is clearly behind.  Yahoo! dominates email and news.  Now asks the panel to introduce themselves.

Paul: He's spent 8 years at MS, 20 years in technology management.  He's currently CTO of iCrossing.  When he first heard the news he thought "at last", he doesn't think its competition for Google.  When Yahoo! and Microsoft work together, amazing things happen, he points to Flickr.  Its a small incremental growth, nothing of significance.

Erica: Global Director of Search for Isobar.  Her first reaction was "excellent". In the US its a "search game"  MS has not been able to get their game together on search.  Yahoo! has missed out too.  These two can align and maybe give Google a run for their money.  Who knows if they can actually merge these two distinct companies together.  As consumers it's good as well.

Bryan:  Co-Founder of Future Now, Inc.  His view is different.  MS has come to the realization of duality.  They know they are loosing it to Yahoo!, with Yahoo! they could be a solid "2" instead of "3".  It will be fun to watch if they can come together

Steve:  His first reaction was "wow".  How is this going to affect the search world.  Much bigger deal than search.  There's a lot of moving pieces to what each brings to the table.  It's not an easy thing to make this happen if it does because both companies are about culture.

Mike:  He thinks it would be best for humanity if he ran search so he's going to buy them both - crowd laughs.  What does it mean to the consume.  Google's like a utility, they are a technology company that can provide this easily.  Yahoo! and MS are more like media company.  If you think about Yahoo went on a spending spreee bought AltaVista,etc.  Pulling these two together culture wise is tough, but if its about search, its easy they did it before.

Kevin:  Do you think that Yahoo!'s has conceded Defeat?
Bryan:  Defeat no, that they ever will regain dominance, yes.  Their focus is on everything else but search.
Steve:  I agree, and Jerry came and spoke to us when we were there.  Yahoo! has the largest display advertising server on the planet. 
Bryan:  They are a media company not a search company
Mike:  If you take a look at Yahoo! land they are focising on social media and media, its not just about search.

Kevin:  Analyst are so ill informed.  As we look at search, Yahoo! should just outsouce search and call it a day do you agree?
Paul:  No, they should focus on giving the consumer the best experience they can.  Things can grow and form very quickly.  They can't really do it with search, maybe more with social, "web 3.0"
Erica:  Google doesn't have this ability.  If Yahoo! and MS can come together on this, they can give Google a run for their money
Bryan:  There's never been a business that has the scale like Yahoo!  There's been other leaders in the past that have come and gone.   What we're going to see in search in the future is getting on the phone and "saying" i want this and getting it.  That's an open ball game no one has captured yet.

Quetions from Audience:
Yahoo! seems like the unwilling prom date.  What about the other potential partners?
Paul:  The Fox move is interesting.  Appears to be a good fit.  But I get nervous about Murdoch.  But it's a very good fit between them
Bryan:  Interesting, but a so-so combination.  They are talking about swapping Myspace - that's a waste.
Kevin: Why?
Bryan:  Its like the old Geocities, its dying a slow death.

Erica:  Privacy issues that Nick pointed out in the video, people are hesitant to give to Google, but Yahoo! is more trusting.  People are bashing Google for privacy.
Mike:  But Google isn't evil - I saw it on their homepage!   Google can crawl a lot of different types of documents types.  Do a search for "business plan" find type .xls.  We're feeding all of this to Google.
Steve:  There's a lot of education that needs to take place.  Data isn't being used for "evil" it is fore relevancy
Bryan:  At the end of the day people just want good content
Paul:  I want to control my information, and be able to release it to the right people.  My medical records, my personal information, my shopping behavior etc.  Yahoo! has been looking at this.
Bryan:  Its all about transparency.  Lets not just focus on search, old media is looking at this too. Its across everything that touches you every day.

Greg Jarboe:  Stock market has weighed in.  MS's shareprice when down.  If MS would have taken that money and bought different companies rather than all their eggs in the Yahoo basket, what would you ahve advised?

Bryan:  Market is very reactive.  As far as buying 44 different companies you still have that culture issue of combining.  But investing it into the companies, yes.
Kevin:  Erica you are integrating companies very well.  Do you think these companies will have the wear with all to put a series of teams in place to orchestrate a change like this.
Erica:  Could they do it?  MS is the dinasour when compared to Yahoo!, AOL, they are very young companies.  My concern there's a culture class.  Management style - Balmer vs. Yang - completely opposite.  Yang is "one of the guys" they are pioneers of the web.  MS is an old company when you compare it to Google and Yahoo!.  They seem to try, but just can't "get" it.  They respond it's a 10 year game, but they aren't moving quickly enough and that's the issue.  That's the nice thing about Google, they buy companies and integrate them quite rapidly.  MS & Yahoo! trememdous amount of issues to get their.
Mike:  Neither one is a stranger to acquisition.  Depends on what you want to integrate first.  But going back to Greg's question, that would be a good idea.

Kevin:  Google is delving into media acquisitions.  What happens when the ad exchanges are open.  How much of the money for advertising is going to Google?
Steve:  I think the offline media doesn't have a lot of scale yet.  Its a tough sell to our clients. You get some early market learning.  No scale, but it will continue to grow.  Advertisers want to know where their brands are going to show up.  Clients aren't willing to put ads and logos where they don't have control.

Does the panel have any thoughts on if the deal went through, what would happen over the next year, would the engines remain separte?
Mike:  One of the strongest points of the deal.  Yahoo! has the bigger subscriber data - Google has users base that is higher.  Yahoo! and MS could do a good job of integrating
Paul:  MS and Yahoo! are doing it alrady with the messenger clients.

Can Search be Too Personal?
Paul:  I'm with you.  I like to search and discover new things.  But why should just one company own that shopping data?  Why can't I own it and give it to who I want too.
Bryan:  If you think there is such a thing as privacy, think again.  Credit bureaus know everything.  There are disadvantages.  They'll sacrifice convenience to not give up some privacy.  Its all about a balance.

If not Yahoo! who?
Mike:  It's just another change the industry is just evolving
Steve:  Google's not conceding any time soon
Bryan:  Who know what will be in 10 years, we don't know, roll with the punches today.
Erica:  Baidu.  We need to keep their eyes on Baidu.  They can move quickly and cheaply.
Paul:  Obama, Hillary or ... everyone just laughs now.  :)

SES London 08: Impact of Universal Search, Orion Panel

By Li Evans

Kevin Ryan opens up the panel showing how universal search is affecting the way the world searches.  Value propositions of search improving, re-trained on how to view search.  All of us on the web search at least 1 time during a month but most on average search 74 times.

From a marketers perspective universal search is doing some pretty interesting things.  Users are now clicking on the ads more in universal search.  Search results pages as destinations how do you measure success.  More creative options in search marketing, more view-thru value to search marketing, today's engines raising barriers to entry.  Consumers are warming up to universal search.

Mike Grehan showing how maps were integrated with a search for "Seattle airport".  Local results are being blended in.  Then show "dove beauty workshop", shows the video and how everything else is also commercial.  If there's video, and other interesting things, less click the paid.  Now shows Bourne ultimatum videos.  This is a really exciting time for us as marketers.

Jeff Revoy from Yahoo, Mike Grehan, Andrew Goodman from Page Zero, and Adam Lasnik from Google are on this panel. 

Kevin asks Adam what a search evangelist does.  His focus is on webmaster communications.  He takes what he learns from all of us back to the engineers.

Kevin:  Where are we headed with universal search?

Mike:  Ten blue links have to go, there's so much more you can do.  The world of web 2.0 the broadband era, there's so much more going on.  You can produce richer content.  There is all this interactivity going on.

Adam:    How do we decide what videos to show and from what sites.  It's primarily a technical consideration.  We can trust YouTube because we own it.  They chose MetaCafe because they know they could support it.  It's got to work so the experience is good for the user.

Jeff:  First off we know our own properties can handle it and its a starting point.  We're trying put relevant results out there for the user.

Mike:  More people are paying attention that they can provide this interactive material for their customers.

Andrew:  You are lucky if you find a company who already have this content readily available.  But most of the sites are still broken.  The challenge is to be visible in search.  There's 8 or 10 places now, not just 1 or 2.

Kevin:What percentage of results are universal/blended?

Adam:  All queries are going through universal.  It's still a small percentage that are showing universal, and it depends.  Esoteric concepts are much less likely to show universal results.

Jeff:  Yahoo is trying to understand intent.  They want to get where there destination is.  Giving users the information they need/want, and varies with query class.

Kevin:  What are the top considerations when it comes to considering what countries this should be rolled out to?

Adam:  It has been rolled out over globally.  One good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that as the indexes for each country get larger, more universal search results will appear.

Mike:  I see a lot more of it in the U.S.

Jeff:  Search assist is global.  Varies by market and language but it is all about relevance, markets & experience.

Kevin:  Mike what do you expect to see by 2010?

Mike:  If your listed in the results as just a "blue link" and your competitor is listed with rich media, everyone is going to want the rich media.

Andrew:  Advertisers want rich media results

Adam:  I can imagine the folks who work on adwords want to make their results to be most relevant.  Just as the natural search folks want theirs to be relevant, so these efforts will definitely remain separate.  Also, for clarification, no one pays for google local listing (natural ones that appear in the top 5 or 10 listed next to a map)

Jeff:  No doubt advertisers want it.  It comes down to relevance for the user.

Kevin:  Lets talk about social components and how they affect search?

Mike:  Has created a new breed of spam.  However, these social components are now becoming more relevant.

Andrew:  How do you measure converstaion? It can be taken to far, but it needs to be managed.  Its discounted until you can find a measurement.  It's fuzz but companies need to be on top of it, especially to respond to issues.

Kevin:  How do you filter out the garbage?

Jeff:  Social search adds tremendous value.  Yahoo! uses FUSE (Fine, Use, Share, Expand) to help w/ filtering out the garbage.

Adam:  When you give people the opportunity to contribute you get a lot of junk.  However, you also get diamonds and nuggets of gold.  There's a lot to be said about the wisdom of crowds, what are they most interested in?   Google will use any means necessary to protect the quality of search results.  They also send out experiments to understand what users say is "good".

Jeff:  There's no secret sauce, but they put a lot of value on the "reputation" of the user.

Kevin:  Still a lot of testing going on, what do you see with the next generation of how to filter these results?

Mike:  Search Engines have to provide the most relevant results.  Google and Yahoo! will need to support showing results that use multiple platforms.

Andrew:  I hope they don't become too internal (i.e. Google only displaying Google Video and YouTube videos)

Adam:  We are going to do what we can to keep the results relevant, however they want to be open to multiple platforms.

Jeff:  Yahoo! is all about openness.

The session then opened up to questions from the audience.  Overall this was a great discussion hearing from both sides of the industry, people doing the work and the search engines.

Google, That NoFollow Thing? Could You Explain How To Use It, Officially?

By Li Evans

Can anyone from Google explain to me (and the rest of the search industry) why on earth you have no documentation on how you want website owners using the "rel = nofollow" attribute on links?  Honestly, I'm really frustrated and quite frankly annoyed about "speculation" and "theory" about what nofollow should be used for and not used for.

While I respect Matt Cutts, a lot of time Matt treads a very thin line between giving too much information that can be totally misconstrued, and yet not enough information.... which again, can be totally misconstrued.  See the little predicament here!? 

I would like to request that Google - OFFICIALLY, put a page in your FAQ's on the webmaster central area, about NoFollow and a link to that FAQ page in its Webmaster Guidelines.  Please explain what Google views it as, how it should be used and how it shouldn't be used.  Give examples, give webmasters something concrete to work with rather than summations from people within the search industry, who don't work at Google.  You see, by not having something official, you confuse webmasters or website owners who have no clue about optimizing their site.  It creates confusion, rumors and misinformation, all things that are BAD for your search engine.

I've searched, and I've wrote about this before, throughout the Google Terms of Service, the Webmaster Guidelines, the FAQ pages, the About Us section, and I can find nothing that states what nofollow is, nor how Google wants webmasters to use it.  I do find that Google wants you to Report Paid Links and to use nofollow stop spiders from falling into Calendars that create spider traps.  I've found a posting in Google Groups about nofollow (btw, no one from Google's posted to this thread yet), but beyond these drips and drabs of small information - there is nothing official.  I don't understand why Google hasn't done this already.  Maybe they like to see the search engine industry run around and try and figure it out? (I have an inkling they do LOL)

Take a look at all the interesting theories, mentions in drafts and even comments from your lead Spam Engineer all within the last couple of months:

• Why Rand Fishkin's NoFollow Post was Wrong
• Matt Cutts Interviewed by Eric Enge
• Discussion on Sphinn
• I Disagree with Danny Sullivan & Google Engineers about Link Buying Practices
• NoFollow Makes it Into HTML 5 Specifications
• Matt Cutts Clarifies Proper Use of the NoFollow Tag

See that last one in the list?  Why does it have to be Matt Cutts on someone else's blog (not on Google's site, and not on Webmaster Central Blog) clarifying what the "proper use" of NoFollow is?  How does someone who doesn't really know the ins and outs of this particular industry find this information when it's not on your site?

Even on the Webmaster Central Blog, I have found advice on lots of things but nothing about NoFollow.  I found FAQ's on Sitemaps, best practices given to the audience at Pubcon,  and how to remove my content from Google.  Where's the stuff on NoFollow?  Come on guys and gals - it's really not that difficult to produce a page that can be easily understood by not just the search community but by any webmaster whether they have SEO experience or not.

Google, since you've been the most vocal and the search engine who's change the meaning and use of nofollow the most since it was introduced at a SES Conference so long ago, could you please, pretty please, pretty please with whipped cream and a cherry on top - produce an FAQ page on the use of NoFollow!  It probably wouldn't be a bad idea either for Matt to post about it on Webmaster Central since you do have over 25k in a subscriber base!

Video Interview with Simon Heseltine of RedBoots at SES Chicago

By Li Evans

After the "Dealing with Difficult Clients" panel at SES search marketing event here in Chicago, I got the opportunity to sit down and speak with Simon Heseltine of RedBoots about the topic he covered on this very interesting panel.

Simon pointed out 6 different types of difficult clients, and talks with me in a little more detail about 2 of those types in this video interview.

For the coverage on all 6 types, plus the other two panelists, check out the full coverage on the Dealing with Difficult Clients session.

Video Interview With David Wallace of SearchRank at SES Chicago

By Li Evans

After the "So You Want To Be a Search Marketer" panel here at the Search Engine Strategies search marketing event here in Chicago, I got the chance to sit down and talk with panelist David Wallace.

David is also a long time friend and colleague of mine, who has a lot of valuable insight into the whole industry of search marketing.  David and his wife Irma Wallace started SearchRank, a Phoenix, AZ search marketing firm, after doing search optimization for themselves.

For the entire coverage of David's panel and more of his advice check out the full coverage of "So You Want to Be a Search Marketer"

Dealing With Difficult Clients Session at SES Chicago

By Li Evans

Jeffery Rhors (Moderator)
This panel discusses the types of difficult clients search marketing agencies will encounter and strategies for having to deal with them. 

Mike Murray (Fathom SEO)
Difficult clients might seem like they are angry, busy bodies, etc., but really what they want to know what's happening and what you are doing to fix it.

Try to avoid problems to begin with.  Frame expectations, convey consistent message

•     Website
•     Collateral
•     proposals
•     Conversations  - from Bus. Dev. Executive to Project Manag. Teams

Additional Measures

•     24/y Reporting center
•     Power Pints/videos
•     Regular meetings/conference calls
•     Keep notes on client

Requirements
  Signed agreements with terms

•     commitment
•     control
•     collaboration

  Establish friendly partnerships, cite shared responsibilities
  Immediate access to website analytics

Objections - handle them internally first by identifying the issues

•     What is the problem?
•     What caused the problem?
•     What are the possible solutions?
•     What is the best solution based on facts

Handling Concerns
Don't repspond to objectsion via emails because they are impersonal, prone to miscommunication, time consuming, not necessarily productive.  Better to know how you're going to repond and then call within one business day.

Early responsive is crucial.  In the event a client doesn't respong in a timely manner, have triggers in place to  alert differenct levels of management.

Simon Heseltine  (Red Boots Consulting/Serengeti)
Identified 6 types of difficult clients that companies have to deal with
1.  I want it yesterday clients
    They own you body and soul, they think when they snap you should jump.
2.  Denyer
    They just can't get it done, or project forced on them, they constantly have excuses
3.  The Invisible Man/Sneak Attacker
    They don't respond to your communication, then all of a sudden they turn into the "I want it yesterday client"
4.  The Scope Creeper
    They want information beyond what has been agreed to, "hey look at this other website for us"... etc.
5.  The Spy
    They want to see and know what you are doing.  In reality they are trying to train their inside staff while working with you.
6.  The Lack of Internal Process
    They have no control, too many fingers in the pot, things change without their knowledge or yours

So what do you do?
Be Proactive, set expectations up from (use a contract for scope issues), provide regular updates on a mutually agreed schedule, and identify issues ASAP and resolve them.  Emails can be taken out of context, so use the phone and get things sorted out.

If all else fails - FIRE THEM.  If someone is an absolute drag, it's time to evaluate the relationship.

Kendall Allen (Incognito Digital)
They are doing branding and conversions, so there are a lot of challenges with the client relationships.  They are focused on long term engagements.  They insinuate themselves into the budget process, and planning.

New clients are challenging, especially when they are new to search.  Educating them is a challenge as well. However when you establish the client relationship solidly even the most difficult clients can become your best clients if you handle them in a professional manner.