Online Branding Blog – reactorr.com

Search Marketing for Small Business

There’s no doubt that it takes a little while for an SEO campaign to get off the ground. Which is why Search Marketing is a great way to get lead generation working for your business. Using Google Adwords, a business can be online and accepting leads in a matter of minutes.

Search marketing is what’s also known as Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing, where you pay only for the ads clicks on, not how often its displayed. This Cost Per Action type of marketing is popular as it allows you to better control your marketing budget.  If you’re new to this type of advertising, you’ll be glad to know that you can cap your daily spend.

It should be noted that while Search Marketing with programs like Google Adwords or similar options can bring in leads fast, the Cost Per Click quickly adds up depending on what business you’re in. Also, the paid search listing typically get 20 percent of the clicks from search results, while the natural search listings tend to get the other 80 percent of the clicks. The thing with the natural listings is SEO can be it take 6 months or more to start ranking due to the cycles of link crawling and indexing. But on the other hand, SEO tends to be a better return long term strategy, despite the initial up front investment.

An interesting introduction to Adwords can be found at NY Times.

Personal Search Revisits

The future of search is personal. I remember hearing that from a Claria guy at Adtech. They had released PersonalWeb (now defunct). You may remember Claria from their previous brand name Gator. They had created what they called a “personalization engine” that served both Web surfers and advertisers.

Then hakia came along, but it was a short lived battle when Powerset, its main competitor, was sold off to Microsoft.

Now there is Jinni, the new video search engine. Jinni has labeled itself as the first “Taste Engine”. This based on algorithms semantic search technology and personal recommendations.

Possibly most  interesting about Jinni is their vision of the future where a search engine becomes personal and results are served based on personalized recommendations. Think how powerful that could be once tapped into social networks.

Ongoing monitoring of social networks like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc is in the works, with Jinni wanting to be part of the conversation, without actually becoming a social network itself.

SEO Primer

For anyone with an online presence, SEO is not a question of whether you do it, its more of a question of when you begin. Even if you’re just starting out online, its imperative that you begin creating links to your website.

SEO boils down to on-page and off-page optimization. While neither can be covered in a single post, the one thing business owners can do is build links.

There are 2 simple thoughts for off-page optimization as the topic begins to get more complex than you’d initially imagine. The first thing to remember is keep your links relevant. It’s important to stay within your link neighborhood, and the temptation of free or easy links are sometimes hard to resist. Remember that crap links can damage your link profile and usually can’t be undone. The second thing to remember is, when available, link with keywords instead of your URL. And a combination of both is more natural.

Usually you would pick 3 to 5 phrases of 2 or 3 keywords like “SEO Winnipeg” and stick with those if you’re keeping the link building light and in house. Keep at it while monitoring your rank and you should see your site position climb slowly. As all links are not created equal, that’s another discussion. Keep track with a simple spreadsheet containing the phrases and dates last checked, and update it every week or two. And a reminder – keep it relevant.

Tags: link building

Online Branding – The Value of SEO

At first glance, it might appear that branding online is strikingly similar to branding in the world of brick and mortars, but while there are many similarities, online branding requires a richer knowledge and skill set. Specifically, online branding requires an in-depth knowledge of search engine ranking and other forms of search marketing.

 

Online Branding and SEO

Offline, branding involves a myriad of techniques to increase visibility and stay present in the minds of consumers, primarily though repetitive advertising. Ads of every kind increase visibility. If this were to be translated to the internet, you’d build a brand through website and blog advertisements. There is certainly credence to this method, but the online marketplace is more vastly segmented than markets offline and without well placed advertisements and results, you’ll miss your market entirely regardless of how much money you’re throwing into an advertising campaign.

 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) fills the largest void created when offline branding techniques move online. Instead of constancy of ads, you must now also focus on reaching your specific target audience through popular search terms as well as strategic ads on relevant websites. Internet branding is a combination of techniques, but SEO is essentially the foundation of connecting a company with a term or phrase. Ranking number one for a particular keyword phrase essentially is your brand online. With branding, becominging synonymous with a phrase is a holy grail of sorts, and can be accomplished online.

 

Using SEO for Internet Branding

SEO builds brand awareness online by targeting specific keyword terms in the search engines. SEO takes time to work, and once effective, it requires constant dedication to stay at the top of the results. Your goal through SEO and online branding is to have consumers search for a phrase representing your brand. When the results appear, your company should be one of the first sites that appear in the search results. If you’re ranked in the top five for your search term that is also your brand, you’re extremely well positioned for both conversions and online reputation management.

 

PPC ads can replicate these results, but not to the degree of authentic search result listings. Advertisements are not as trusted by visitors as search results, and text links only receive 20% of the clicks on the results page – a far cry from the solid internet presence you’re seeking.

 

Building an Online Brand by Other Means

PPC is a lesser alternative to SEO, but there are other elements of online branding that can have tremendous results. Foremost of these is social marketing. By taking advantage of the increasingly social nature of the internet, your brand can be easily established and constantly replicated within your market.

 

Internet marketing is also an option, but with click through rates being a half percent on average, it takes a decent budget and call to action for anyone to click. And with the web being as fragmented as it is, reaching your audience with banner advertising can be challenging.

 

Search marketing is another element of online branding. Paid positions through banners and search results can contribute strongly to the overall reputation and presence of your company online. Again search terms, target markets and the overlap between keywords and brand will be one of the foremost criteria for positioning yourself properly on websites relevant to your branding efforts.  

 

Tags: online branding

How Long Does SEO Take?

This is asked often, so I’m placing the answer here and will refer others to this post in the future.

SEO goes in cycles. Links are built, then they are crawled by SE’s and indexed. But when the Search Engine crawls and indexes content it doesn’t necessarily reoganize its index and find your new rank. With Google, the search engine will update its entire index about every four months. And since Google has well over half the market share we’ll just focus on that one Search Engine for this post.

Let’s suppose that we started a campaign in January, and Google just updated its index. You would be starting at square one. The exceptions being things like the age of the domain, age of existing links, strength and relevance of those existing links, and whether the links were anchor text or simply URL’s.

If your hypothetical website called widgetworldusa dot com only had links pointing at it with the URL, it’s link profile needs work. But if you widget site had anchor text linking to it for phrases you’re pursuing, like “industrial strength widgets”, then you’re off to a good start.

Now about 3 months later you’ve built more  “industrial strength widgets” links, but not all of them were crawled and included in the index yet. So on the first update you can hope for 25-50% of your links to have been picked up. These will go into consideration on the next update that’s another 3 months away.

Now it’s 6 months later and you’re still hard at work on link building. This is the second Google update, with probably half or more of those links in the first update now included. But between update one and two you can again hope for 25-50% of your links to have been picked up.

Factors that generally play into how long does seo take can include the age of your domain, the relevance, the age of the link, the age of the link the domain is on, the age of the domain that the link is on, the authority of the domain your link is on, and much more.

Hopefully this provides a little insight about why SEO takes so long, and why many people offering SEO services usually require a commitment of 6 to 12 months to start a project.

For those wanting instantaneous results, Search Marketing and PPC is probably more suitable. But you should note that it accounts for less than 20% of the clickthroughs for search engine results pages (SERPs) and that the natural listings and SEO boast 80% of the clicks.

The best strategy is a mix of both, with Search Marketing to get you started until your SEO campaign catches up. It’s also worth noting that your cost per customer and SEO ROI will decrease as time goes on. Because SEO provides a long term strategy for increased consumer presence, it has added value as compared to paid search marketing.

Search Marketing for Brands

Search marketing is a great way for brands to gain quick exposure, and if you including contextual advertising you can have a campaign running in 5 or 10 minutes. It’s easy to see its appeal but what advertisers don’t realize is they’re overlooking huge opportunities.

 

While paid search marketing can be one of the most cost-effective forms of digital marketing, it captures a small portion of the potential customers. When you compare paid listings versus natural listings, the Pay per Click (PPC) ads tend to get a little under 20% of the search traffic. That leaves a whopping 80% left to natural search results.

 

In a report called ‘Search Attitude’ by UK search agency Tamar, it’s noted that only 5% of Internet users are likely to follow a paid search result over natural listings.

 

One of the downsides of search engine optimization (SEO) is the time and investment required to get a campaign working. But when you consider the potential SEO ROI it soon becomes obvious.

When you perform keyword research and see the potential that SEO can provide as a sales channel, its obviously worthwhile.

How Much Is Ranking Worth?

While most clients agree that SEO is something they should invest in, there are times when understanding SEO’s worth in terms of dollars and cents are difficult.

Reactorr has created SEO ROI calculator to determine the potential value of ranking between positions one and ten, depending on the value of a sale, and the conversion.

Tags: roi, SEO

How Can Smart Marketers Include SEO?

Marketing budgets are including the web a lot more these days, but what is there to consider if you want to include SEO in the marketing mix?

• If you’re building a website or planning to build a quick-response PR strategy in place, SEO should be part of the plan from day one.
• By understanding search behaviour and assessing what people are searching for, where they’re searching for it, they will enable brands to reach the biggest potential customer base
• Use SEO to increase the efficiency of other media touchpoints – 80 percent of internet journeys start with a search
• Use SEO to make your Pay Per Click campaigns work harder – take a holistic view of search activity across the board
• Make sure your paid search campaigns are working effectively with your SEO
• Cultivating online brand advocates, and then identify and include them in press and communications schedules. Having your brand advocates synched with your communications will prove invaluable if bad news were to strike

Google Profile Pages

A new feature from Google are profile pages, which have been around a bit, but now you can get a more legible url like http://www.google.com/profiles/marknic

You can also add links to your profile page, so if you already have an account (and who doesn’t) you might as well make good use of it.