By: Erin Payer  

Financial services marketing during a recessionary period is a challenging concept. Gas and energy prices continue to skyrocket, the housing market continues to collapse and the credit crunch continues to spread beyond mortgage loans. The already complex landscape of the financial services sector is now further complicated by diminishing consumer confidence and the threat of budgets cuts or reallocation of funds. However, the old adage, “don’t rob Peter to pay Paul” is especially true during times of economic uncertainty when a budget cut could mean losing market share.

In addition to recessionary challenges, financial marketers are now finding themselves forgoing some of their traditional marketing efforts in order to cater to current consumer behaviors, which are increasingly moving online. All news is not negative, however. According to a recent ForeSee survey, customer satisfaction with online banking sites has risen significantly over the past five years, which is partially attributed to the increase in security which allows for more types of transactions. The survey also showed that highly satisfied online banking customers are 31 percent more likely to buy additional services from the bank and 54 percent more likely to recommend the bank to others.1

So as more and more customers are moving online for their banking needs (and are becoming increasingly familiar and satisfied with the experience), so must marketing efforts in order to boost customer acquisition and retention. By focusing on marketing strategies that provide customer data and analytics, finance marketers can glean an understanding of their customer behaviors, enabling them to more effectively deliver targeted rewards at the point of sale.  

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By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist 

The number of video search engines has grown exponentially over the past 3 years. On one panel at SES San Jose, two of the four speakers had ran their own video search engines. How people are using video has been a common theme here, and an interesting one.

According to one panelist, most video searchers only refine their search about 1/3 of the time, opting instead to browse “related” videos that appear on the search results page. For example, a search for “Pepsi and Mentos” may bring up 25 videos, and if the user doesn’t find the video they’re searching for, they may get distracted by another video on the page and play that one instead. The tendency of search and browse rather than search and refine is separate from what we see occurring on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

It’s literally changing the ad model associated with video search, making it more efficient to use pre-rolls or interlays.

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Let’s face it; the basic press release has lost its luster with the rise of the optimized and most recently the social media press release. While traditional releases may work well when pitched directly to the media, an optimized press release takes it a step further by being search engine friendly. So what differentiates the Social Media Press Release you might ask?

This type of release targets not only the press and search engines but also consumers. It is meant to be a supplement to the more traditional formats. Let’s take a look at an example…

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By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist  

Cuil (pronounced “cool”) is the latest in a string of dozens of search engines that once seemed poised to displace Google as the dominant search engine. For all the print and hype that the likes of Mahalo, Snap, SearchWiki and SpaceTime have gotten, none have come close to displacing even MSN’s portion of the search landscape, and they have less than 10% of it.

What makes Cuil slightly different is that they’re not trying to re-invent the wheel of search. Mahalo sought to compare several search engines results at once, Ask.com had their run at universal search (incorporating images and video into search results) and SpaceTime attempted to replace link based results with visual representations of each page. Cuil is concentrating at beating Google at their game, by indexing billions of pages and displaying the most relevant results. In doing so, Cuil claims to have the largest index, an astounding 120 billion pages. One has to wonder how relevant and quality results can come from such a large database of Web sites. Their algorithm is purportedly based on site content, rather than Google’s preference to lean heavily on in-bound links, which would seemingly complicate their attempts to surpass Google’s relevancy.

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Many marketers are familiar with using Paid Search as a direct response medium, but not many discuss using Search Engine Optimization for direct response marketing. Watch the video of Richard Hagerty, CEO of IMPAQT and Matt Naeger, Executive Vice President of Operations to learn more about how companies can determine how best to present themselves and their Web site to their ideal audience over the long-term using SEO as a direct response medium. Find out why it is best to test different messages and use an analytics tracking packages to learn what works and what doesn’t on a case-by-case basis. Using a Web site’s referring keywords and psychographic/demographic profiling tools can help companies analyze how their Web site visitors respond to different messages, allowing companies to target their ideal audience online using a proven key message.

By: Jamie Sterling

Video search optimization is fascinating. Why? Because it allows search marketers to relive the early days of search engine optimization (SEO). And, because Video SEO presents a unique challenge for search engines, who must address the problem of indexing rich media content which resides on most Web sites today and is not very search engine spider-friendly.

With the rising popularity of video hosting and sharing sites (like YouTube), as well as the advent of Universal Search, which includes the placement of videos, photos, blog entries, news stories, and other search verticals on the main search engine results page (SERP), video has an increasing chance of being found and seen online – and optimization is an advertiser’s answer to HOW. With the large amount of video online, it is important for companies to understand the things they can do to help get their videos get noticed now – and in the future.

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Industry Focus: Retail

How can I track in-store retail sales that were influenced by my company’s search engine optimization efforts?

Although difficult, tracking in-store retail sales influenced by Organic Search can be accomplished. Due to the nature of search engine optimization, there will be limitations in any data model or hypothesis. For example, a company would not be able to limit or test SEO data by geographic region or create “pulse” (turn marketing channel off/on) tests. In order to accomplish this, a company would need to tackle a couple tasks. First, they should create a model which estimates the impact of SEO on online visits/orders. This requires gathering as much data as possible, including: media activity, Paid Search data, chain wide promotions, etc. They should also create a similar offline model; this could be chain-wide or for select stores. Additional information, such as market area competitiveness, in-store promotions, or even weather, could be utilized to create the most accurate data model. Tracking offline sales that were influenced by SEO is a difficult task. Retailers should look to outsource this type of measurement to a qualified/experience SEO vendor.

Social Media: A Marketing Movement Gaining Serious Momentum

Hello. I’m Vanessa Cooper, Senior Manager of Social Media at IMPAQT and I’d like to discuss the topic of Social Media and Search. So, what exactly is Social Media? As defined on Wikipedia, “Social Media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves. Social Media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. The Social Media sites typically use tools like message boards, forums, podcasts, bookmarks, communities, blogs, and more.” In fact, Wikipedia.org is a Social Media site itself as Wikipedia’s articles are the result of collaboration from human volunteer editors around the world.

The social media marketplace is exploding right now. You can hardly turn on the news, pick up a marketing trade publication, or even newspapers like The Wall Street Journal without seeing a reference to YouTube, MySpace or Facebook, some of the largest online social media vehicles out there today. (Continue reading…)

 By: Pat Stroh, VP Analytics and Decision Support, IMPAQT

How should my paid search budget be allocated and how much should go towards paid versus organic? This is the question that Search firms hear time and time again with so many clients. Best practices say that in order to truly see a significant ROI, use both PPC and SEO as a complement to each other. However, conventional wisdom also says that if you have strong organic results you don’t necessarily need to do paid and conversely, if you don’t have fairly strong organic results, you must do paid. But for the majority of marketers the question really revolves around once you start getting good organic results: should you still invest in paid?

While conventional wisdom says no – paid search will unnecessarily cannibalize “free” organic traffic — there are merits in favor of maintaining your paid campaign, such as more control over messaging through ad text and landing pages. While these reasons may be true, how marketers should really be evaluating their need for both (once good organic results are achieved) is in terms of the incremental value of paid alongside organic. Thus, you can’t consider organic and paid in their own separate silos. What you have to do is measure the extent to which paid and organic either complement or cannibalize each other. This leads us to the crux of the question – if you are running both paid and organic campaigns, are you generating more clicks and conversions than you would have otherwise, and if so, are you seeing a significant ROI as a result of those extra or incremental clicks and conversions? (Continue reading…)

How to Avoid Common Keyword Research Pitfalls

I would like to discuss the difficulties that many large companies can face when conducting keyword research for their online search marketing campaigns. While keyword research for both Paid and Organic Search campaigns is one of the fundamental practices used to increase a company’s Web visibility, it is still one that (when not conducted properly) could veer any campaign severely off-track from its goals.

Before beginning keyword research for a search engine optimization program, a business should be aware of the difficulties and misconceptions that can arise during this process in order to effectively use all time and resources devoted to the project. (Continue reading…)

The Unknown Optimizer: Removing a URL from Google Easily

There have been times when clients have said to me: “We have pages in the Google index and we need them removed immediately. How do we do this? Is there anyone you can contact at Google?” Well the answer is that I have no magical fairy friend to contact at Google that can wave a wand over the index and cause your old Web page to magically disappear. And, the likelihood of attempting to contact the right person at Google is like a shot in the dark.

So, what can you do when one of your Web pages no longer exists and you would like it removed from the Google index? The following process will show you how to remove a URL from the Google index fairly quickly. You may ask me, “How quickly is quick?” My answer to that is that there isn’t anything that is really precise at Google, so I can only give you estimates. So far, I have seen it take less than 12 hours to approximately 2 days. I believe it depends on how many requests are in the system and the size of the request being made. When I say size of request, I am referring to the number of URLs that need to be removed. In the 12 hour example, there was one URL being removed. In the 2 day example, there was a complete subdomain with approximately 2,000 indexed URLs that needed to be removed. So, does size matter in this case? It would seem so, but once again, as with all things relating to Google and their processes, we can only draw assumptions. (Continue reading…)

What is “Paid Inclusion,” and why would a company want or need to use it?

Paid Inclusion (PI) is a hotly debated topic in Search. Yahoo! is currently the only major search engine that allows advertisers the ability to pay to have their URLs included in their database; however, basic SEO practices and principles still win out when determining ranking as all URLs are passed through the same algorithm on the engine. To date, Google and MSN have not monetized their organic listings, and have vehemently taken the stance that money will not impact the credibility of their natural results. A good practice is to find technical workarounds to this that can improve spidering by ALL major search engines. (Continue reading…)

Video SEO: What You Need to Know

I’d like to introduce you to the topic of Video Search. A new era of search engine optimization is emerging, and a focus is shifting towards optimization for video content. Searchers that currently use Google and other standard search engines are increasingly turning to video results for information and entertainment.

Any marketer familiar with the Search RSS feeds and, simply, the Web, has to agree that it is impossible to miss the ever-increasing prominence of online video. In fact, at the 2006 Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conference in Chicago, one of the presenters noted that online “there are now more people searching for video than news, love or religion.”

Despite the obvious prominence of video, video optimization itself is in the newest stages, similar to the early days of Organic Search, which means that any company that has the opportunity to keep an eye on early online video trends and test a range of video SEO tactics will have a leg up on their competitors. (Continue reading…)

By: Matt Naeger, Executive Vice President, Operations 

As the evolution of the Internet continues, marketers are reaching a crossroads between what tactics have worked in the past to attract traffic to their sites versus what approaches will work in the future. According to Internet World Stats, over 2/3 of global Internet users are non-English speakers. This growing volume of search activity means that marketing opportunities will continue to span on both a regional and global level. So how can marketers capitalize on this trend? Is the answer as simple as translating all Web pages to the targeted country’s language? (Continue reading…)

Social News Sites as Web Traffic Generator

 

Let’s discuss the use of Social News Web sites for your company’s Enterprise SEO strategy. One of the newest emerging channels online is that of Social Media and it is important to learn how to engage your companies in the many interactive ways Social Media offers.

Social News sites are Web sites such as Digg, Reddit, and Newsvine that are categorized as a part of the growing Social Media, or Web 2.0, community. These Social News sites allow amateur and professional users to submit news, images, or videos they find interesting for others to read, rate, and comment on. Each of these submissions can usually be categorized, which enables site users to find the information and topics they are interested in more quickly. Just like social bookmarking sites, Social News sites usually have a “Friend” mechanism that allows users with similar interests to be more closely associated, or form a community. (Continue reading…)

Optimizing a Press Release can have a Multi-fold Return

 

I’d like to discuss how press release optimization should be a fundamental process for every company. We will get to the HOW of press release optimization in just a minute, but first, let’s address the WHY.

If you’re wondering why you should optimize your company’s press releases, you should wonder no longer. Here are just a few good reasons:

1. News Web sites like Google News, Yahoo News, and MSNBC receive millions of Web visitors per day, so if your company regularly contributes press releases to the media, your chances of increasing Web visibility are great.
2. The advent of Universal, or blended, Search means that news results will no longer be segregated in Google, ASK, and MSN, but will rather be returned with the regular search results, giving your company a great opportunity to serve content often to the major search engines.
3. Journalists, bloggers, and industry readers often use RSS feeds and news tickers to keep updated on the Web’s news. Press releases are easily picked up if they are optimized and distributed accordingly.

Let’s skip from the WHY to the HOW now. There are really only a few major topics that need to be addressed when discussing press release optimization and these are Keyword Selection, Content and Meta Optimization, Linking, and the actual Submission and Distribution of the press release. Today, we will be focusing on the keyword selection, but for more information on content optimization, linking and online press release submission and distribution, please view our follow up videos on Press Release Optimization. (Continue reading…)

If a company decides to expand their marketing to the world of search and they begin the process of prospecting vendors, what are some of the questions that should be asked of the vendor? And a follow up question; what types of answers would indicate the quality or lack thereof in that search firm?

In choosing a search vendor, it’s all about establishing trust that the vendor you’re talking to is looking to position themselves as a true partner. A key differentiator to look for in a Search vendor is one that has the ability to grow with your business and the flexibility to meet your current needs and what your needs could be down the road. A rule of thumb is if you don’t want to be oversold, don’t overbuy. A company should only buy what they are willing to risk.

The company should be asking questions to determine if the Search vendor is looking to only focus on tactics that will generate the highest revenue for themselves, or are focused on best practices that will generate the highest revenue for their client. So some questions to consider asking potential vendors to determine the above would be: (Continue reading…)

SearchEngineOptimization.com’s Own Unknown Optimizer

The Unknown Optimizer is a really smart guy with a bag on his head. Why does he remain unknown? Watch his video biography and find out! Learn all about this Search Engine Optimization guru and find out how you can ask him your own question and/or submit your company’s Web site for his SEO review!

Email the Unknown Optimizer at: UnknownOptimizer@SearchEngineOptimization.com

Watch the progression of SearchEngineOptimization.com