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Depending on what part of the world you call home, you probably have a different reaction to the name, “Debby.” It’s a perfectly beautiful name, and we even have a few hard-working Debbies here at Elliance. But, when a storm by the same name rolled through the Gulf of Mexico last weekend, my perspective changed. I’m from Pittsburgh. And, when I moved to Florida in 2008, the humidity and gigantic bugs were the only bad parts, really, besides missing my friends and family. Weathering my first serious tropical storm, though, made the bugs seem (almost) tolerable. The Bay area, where I live, was hit particularly hard by Tropical Storm Debby. St. Petersburg, Tampa, and Clearwater endured between 10 and 16 inches of rain over a two-day period. There was (and still is in some places) massive flooding. Winds and surf were high enough to shut down three of our four major bridges. Numerous tornadoes left millions of dollars in damage. … Continue reading
Posted in: Social Media, Twitter, Twitter Best Practices
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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
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
It’s the age-old question: if you’re ranked organically for a particular search term, is targeting that same term with PPC a waste of money? New research from Google suggests that it’s not. The original study that Google released back in 2011 was a bit shocking. Within real advertiser accounts, Google observed that when PPC ads were paused for certain search terms, only 15% of those PPC clicks were recovered by the advertiser’s organic listing. 85% of those PPC clicks were lost. That’s a significant observation. However, Google didn’t account for organic rankings in this study, which left the door open for plenty of skepticism about the numbers. Naturally, if an advertiser were bidding on a search term for which it isn’t ranked organically, it would be impossible to make up for the clicks lost through PPC with organic results. Recently, though, Google released an update. Their team re-analyzed a subset of results, which included data for search queries where both … Continue reading
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