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Depending on how closely you inspect Google search result pages, you may have noticed a recent change in the way some results are displayed. For a certain set of popular search queries – mostly recognizable people and objects like authors, actors, movies, landmarks, etc. – Google is now giving us a peek inside its Knowledge Graph, a complex map of “more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects.” What does Knowledge Graph provide for the average searcher? It offers a one-stop shop for the most popular pieces of information about queries. The facts, images, lists, maps, etc. are presented inside a box on the right-hand side of the search results, which shows off Google’s intelligence about how people typically search. What do people want to know? What are related searches? What are similar results? Instead of having to click through to a destination site to find the answers … Continue reading
Posted in: Search Marketing
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Search results have gone social. There’s no doubt about it. Earlier this year, I wrote about Google releasing its own social network, Google+, and quickly integrating that content into regular search results for those visitors who are logged into a Google account. Bing is now taking a similar leap, re-vamping its entire search interface to include a social sidebar on the right-hand side of the results page. Where Bing had previously integrated some social information directly into search results, it’s now mainly pulling it off to the side in order to assist in the search experience instead of compete with it. Image via Microsoft News Center. Bing’s rolled out a lot of new features as part of the “New Bing.” I won’t go into all of them here since other experts have done such a thorough job explaining them in detail. I will pull out a couple of the elements that I feel are especially significant, as both a searcher … Continue reading
Posted in: Search Marketing, Social Media
During these times when consumers tend to ignore billboard ads, block telemarketing calls, and fast forward through television commercials, inbound marketing is a hot topic. Tactics typically categorized as inbound marketing are ones that encourage interested prospective customers to come to you, as opposed to simply purchasing their attention through advertising and other methods of pushing out marketing and sales communication. Inbound marketing tactics include activities like blogging, search marketing, social media, and content marketing (producing videos, creating infographics, writing articles, etc.). While both inbound and outbound marketing certainly have their merits, the benefits of incorporating inbound marketing strategies into your long-term plan are unmistakable. According to a 2012 Hubspot report, “inbound marketing-dominated organizations experience a 61% lower cost per lead than outbound marketing-dominated organizations.” While a lower-cost outcome might not be surprising for organizations that don’t spend as much on traditional, costly tactics like advertising and direct mail, what is interesting is how strong the leads turn out to … Continue reading
Posted in: Marketing Strategy, Search Marketing, Social Media
At Elliance, we are extremely proud of the work we do on behalf of our search clients on a daily basis. We help improve their rankings, visibility, and brand awareness through a customized variety of search marketing services. But, it’s sometimes very difficult to value that visibility we’re providing, both for our clients and for our own internal marketing efforts. Even at its most basic level, valuation of search has been lacking. Most conversion reports of the past attributed new prospects or customers to either the first or last touch point. However, we’ve learned over the years that as searchers progress through the decision funnel, they tend to move from more general, non-branded terms like “digital marketing agency” to branded phrases like “Elliance Pittsburgh.” It’s unlikely someone would search on a very general term, navigate to our website, and immediately convert. Similarly, we’ve seen that once a brand or website is found in search results and becomes a part of … Continue reading
Posted in: Analytics and Metrics, Search Marketing
Press releases have traditionally been relied upon for distributing current news stories and promoting announcements to targeted media contacts within a given industry and, often, a given locality. They’re great for raising a company’s profile and brand awareness in the marketplace. But, if you’re not optimizing these releases in support of your search marketing campaign, you’re missing out on some big opportunities. Effectively optimized press releases, crafted strategically with your most important key terms in mind, can often appear at the top of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing news results. With just under 9 million unique visitors (according to Compete’s February 2012 numbers) arriving at Google News each month from the U.S. alone, there’s probably a healthy slice of traffic available there for your top-priority search terms. In addition to the visibility that’s available on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing News, as the engines continue to feature timely news stories more prominently within regular search results pages, the odds of well-crafted releases … Continue reading
Posted in: Press, Search Marketing
In January, Google search results received a major overhaul. The dominant US search engine debuted “Search Plus Your World,” a new results format that takes personalization – and visibility of Google+ content – to new heights. What is Google+? Google+ is Google’s social network. It offers many of the same features as Facebook (building connections, sharing news, photo, and video content), with a few fresh elements (like group video chat, or “hangouts”) mixed in. It launched early last summer and, within two weeks, had recruited 10 million users, the same size user base it took both Facebook and Twitter more than two years to reach. Although its users tend to be less active than Facebook’s (according to December comScore data, Facebook accounted for 1 in 7 minutes spent online around the world), Google+ has now skyrocketed to 100 million users. And, as of January, it boasts content visibility in a portion of Google’s 400 million daily search queries. And, it’s … Continue reading
Posted in: Search Marketing, Social Media
Not long ago, we were doing a search engine marketing project for Walmart. They were wondering why Amazon shows up above them in almost all the product categories, even though they are bigger than Amazon. I explained how the rules of physical world don’t apply online. In the physical world, Walmart is an elephant and Amazon is a tiny mouse. Online, the situation is reverse: Amazon is the real elephant, and Walmart is just a mouse. Let me explain. Online, search engines like Google, will rank your website higher if it has a larger number of other websites linking to it. Search engines simply don’t care how big your corporation is. Amazon, right after it was formed, created its brilliant Affiliate program, which works by a simple rule: you put a “Buy From Amazon” link on your website, register yourself with Amazon, and Amazon will send you a small check if someone follows the link from your website and buys … Continue reading
Posted in: Search Marketing
Just finished this poignant book by David Meerman Scott. The fundamental premise of this book is that the you should be creating interesting and valuable content that your target audience wants to ‘rave’ about to their friends. The content could be served up in the shape of blogs, e-books, tools, contests, videos, etc. The important thing is that ‘buzz’ factor should be built into the content; that automatically excludes happy talk about your products and services. Interestingly, a couple of years ago, we came at this very concept from a different angle as part of our Search Engine Marketing Practice. To get top rankings on search engines, a website needs to win on three clusters of factors: on-page factors, URL factors, and off-page factors – with the latter being the most important, and comprising of in-bound links from especially social media websites. Here is how we had captured this thought in an infographic. In fact, we too created a ‘World … Continue reading
Posted in: Search Marketing
Google crawlers love fresh content. For instance, blog posts and news items surface on Google search results within a couple of days. And can dislodge well ranked websites from search engine results pages. However, once a piece of content makes it to the top of search engines, it is hard to dislodge it. For instance, we had optimized a press release in our newsroom over six years ago. To this day, the press release is ranked #1 for the optimized keyword. Every year that keyword generates almost 10% of our total revenues.
Posted in: Search Marketing
A new addition to ‘University Business’ magazine article titled ‘College Search Gone Bad’ outlining the top 10 search marketing mistakes made by colleges and universities.