Ideas, insights and inspirations.

Founded in 1998 by two Ph.D. students at Stanford University, Google has risen to become more than just a household name. Today, Google stands strong as an empire, armed with a vast arsenal of products and devices. In 2006, we published an infographic showcasing the three most popular search engines in America. It comes as no surprise that even in 2006 Google came out on top as the clear winner. But what you may find surprising is how this data has shifted further in Google’s favor over the last decade. Below is our original infographic from 2006. The data shows that Google held 46% of the search engine market share, with only Yahoo and MSN proving to be real competitors. One might argue that in search it was still anyone’s game. But that’s not the case today… In 2016, Google held a whopping 77.43% of the global search engine market share. And their only American competitors, Bing and Yahoo (who’s … Continue reading

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I joined Elliance 6 months ago, and am learning something new every day. The one big thing I’ve learned, which sets us apart from anywhere I’ve worked in the past, is that marketing is no longer just about persuading human beings. It’s also about persuading Google Bots. The differences in what appeals to humans and robots are obvious, but what I find fascinating are the similarities. Here are 3 important ones for marketers: A Shared Vocabulary People often group together around mutual interests and beliefs. At the core of their interests and beliefs is a common language. So it’s only natural that Google Bots are built to recognize keywords and key phrases. Once you really know your audience, you can develop a SEO-informed lexicon and bake it into all your digital marketing, so the robots bring the people you want to your door. Credibility People rarely respond to a persuasive story they only hear once. It’s only after we see … Continue reading

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Most people draw a clear line between conventional marketing of products and services, and social marketing, which broadly defined applies marketing principles to change human behavior in order to improve health or benefit society. But what happens when you bring a social issue forward that almost nobody knows even exists — one that goes to the very heart of an American ideal as old as the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. True in countless respects, but not when it comes to gauging a child’s future academic success. Some children simply are born “gifted” or “talented” — and that wealth of talent spreads equally across all segments of the American population, regardless of race, religion, geography or family income. Researchers count about 3.4 million academically gifted American school children in grades K-12 who happen also to be poor. Here is where the story gets interesting. Year after year, grade after … Continue reading

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Google recently introduced a secure search protocol – meaning that every search performed on Google is now secure. Any keyword typed in as a Google search will be listed as “not provided” to the website owners using analytics software. This means that website owners will not have access to the keywords that directed readers to a website through organic search. But the good news is that some keyword data is still available in Google Webmaster Tools. Let’s look at some implications of the secure search protocol and how they can be overcome using data from Webmaster Tools. #1: Branded and non-branded traffic We often see a correlation between branded and non-branded traffic where an increase in non-branded traffic over time provides a lift to branded traffic as well. This data will become more obscure as a result of secure search. In a 100% not provided world, this trend becomes harder to prove. But as searcher habits don’t change over time, … Continue reading

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Comparing last four months of pre-launch and post-launch analytics data of recently launched responsive website for a client, revealed some interesting insights. Website traffic remained unchanged Share of Mobile traffic increased Share of Direct traffic increased Shift in Desktop traffic to Mobile Overall, for the new website, traffic visit numbers remained relatively unchanged. However, the share of desktop users dropped giving a huge boost to visits from mobile users — increasing their share from 7% to 25% of total site traffic. As shown in the chart below, the old site was not friendly to small mobile device users as majority of the mobile visits were from tablets. With the new responsive website, non-tablet mobile traffic growth was significant and for the first time it was almost twice of the tablet users.  It is evident from the following chart that the new responsive website is a huge success. Now with significant traffic coming from Mobile devices, it was natural to compare … Continue reading

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There are multiple approaches to building a successful brand for a college or university. I work with brand specialists, designers, writers and content marketers who all have different opinions on what is important to a higher education brand. But from a search marketing perspective, some of the things I consider most important include brand awareness and reputation. An institution that’s not covering these bases is missing some opportunities. For each institution, individual goals may be very different: to train leaders or to increase global understanding, for example. But the common link for every college and university is enrollment: filling the seats with engaged students. In order to continue enrolling students, it is essential that the brand is as familiar to their target audience as possible. Let’s take University of Phoenix as an example. In the for-profit higher education space, Phoenix is the best known brand name. As they have marketed themselves as a for-profit school, they continue to attract the … Continue reading

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If done right, SEO will literally outlive your website. On the internet, we don’t often think of our media as having any intrinsic permanent value. News headlines are expired within minutes; tweets are gone in a flash. Blogs squabble and compete for our momentary attention before disappearing again into obscurity. Even websites rarely stand the test of time: In a survey of over 160 companies, more than one third said they had redesigned their website within the last three months. In recent years, marketers have played along. They’ve taken to social media and “#hashtag” campaigns, with performance measured in durations of days or hours. They’ve pushed press releases onto the digital wires, to watch traffic spike for a day or two at best. An occasional campaign may outlast expectations — a viral video might last a few weeks before falling out of fashion — but then it’s back to the drawing board for another short-lived campaign push. Search engine optimization … Continue reading

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Let’s talk for a minute about the word “online” in the world of SEO. Online education isn’t what it used to be. Students, parents and educators alike are embracing the benefits of taking classes online, at a distance, as scheduling allows. More and more universities are offering the very same courses at a distance, with the same paper diploma at the end. As a result, millions of working adults are able to pursue a quality higher education. Enrollment is booming, profits are up. Even employers are shifting towards indifferent acceptance when it comes to what method a person used to receive his/her degree, according to a recent study. With this sea change toward legitimacy in online learning, I pose a very simple question: how has search behavior changed for the search term “online“? Let’s look at Google Trends: Take a search like “online criminal justice degrees”. This is a term similar to one we optimized a couple years ago for … Continue reading

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We’ve received many calls this year from colleges and universities looking for help in enrollment marketing efforts for traditional undergraduate students. The things that worked in the past just aren’t working.  When I ask them about their current enrollment marketing efforts, I often hear the same things. Many institutions continue to use search services like College Board, ACT, NRCCUA and CBSS to market to potential students for their outbound efforts through mail and email. Others pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to companies like RuffaloCody and Royall & Company who apply sophisticated predictive modeling to efforts for which they will charge ten of thousands of dollars. So I ask… Why continue to funds these efforts at the same level with decreasing results? The answer is always the same: “We’ve done it this way for years and it has been our highest yielding effort.”  My response is always the same… “It was your highest yielding effort!” So what has changed in … Continue reading

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A typical Google results page includes ten organic results along with sponsored ads on the top and right hand side of the page. Out of millions of webpages out there, Google selects the top ten pages for page one results for any given query. The listings include a title, URL and short description, called a snippet, which provides an introduction to the website that you are being invited to visit. Imagine standing on a street with multiple storefronts all selling similar things. If there are five candy stores adjacent to each other which one do you choose? Probably the one that looks most attractive from outside. The case is similar on a search results page. The title, URL and description all act as a storefront for your website. They need to be catchy and attractive to stand out from the other results and draw searchers’ attention to encourage them click through to your website. A search result snippet is usually … Continue reading

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