March 9, 2010
At SES Chicago last year, Yahoo VP of Consumer Products, Larry Cornett suggested that blended search results bring businesses a broader range of SEO opportunities, a chance to take control of their brand, and a potential increase in qualified clicks. While these blended results can tend to divert users away from organic listings, as SEO Dave Naylor pointed out at that same conference, Cornett does have a point. Blended search results offer ways to get to the front page of search results beyond just the highly more competitive organic rankings. Sites have opportunities to show up for:
- real-time results - news results - image results - video results - shopping results - local results (customers don't even need to go to your site in some cases)
At the recent Online Marketing Summit in San Diego, WebProNews spoke with Conductor CEO Seth Besmertnik, who says companies should still build a foundation in organic rankings before trying to conquer other areas:
Filed Under Review and Story, SEO · Leave a Comment
March 6, 2010
When businesses think about search and social media, a great deal of the time, they are thinking about traffic, customer engagement, and brand awareness. While these are all good things to consider, there may be more to that last one that you have spent much time thinking about. Brand awareness goes beyond just having a random customer find your site in a set of search results or through a link from their Facebook news feed. Have you considered how channels like search and social media are used by media outlets and journalists? The fact of the matter is that journalists and bloggers alike utilize both to a great extent while covering their beats. Do you take press coverage into consideration? Comment here. Search and social both play significant roles in PR. This is a topic that WebProNews recently discussed with TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden. Odden calls journalists customers, and in many ways they should be treated as such when it comes to getting your product or site in front of their eyeballs.
Odden says to look at what it is you can do as a marketer to make it easier for the journalist to do their job. Optimize your content for what a journalist is looking for. This is one way you can potentially increase your media coverage, which can obviously increase brand awareness. Odden makes a great point online journalists often having tighter deadlines, and turning to blogs and social networks for sources and quotes. For example, the real-time nature of a Twitter search might be just what a journalist or blogger need to find someone who's talking about the subject they're writing about, at nearly the moment they're looking for it. For that matter, Google's real-time search can help for the same reason, and most journalists and bloggers frequently use Google to search for what they're looking for. If what they're looking for happens to be related to a newsy topic, they just might see Google's real-time results literally before anything else. If that topic happens to be related to something you're talking about, you just might end up in those results too. Google is also indexing updates from Facebook Pages here now, by the way. The point is, if you are looking for increased media coverage, there are ways to increase your chances of getting in front of the right people, and it is certainly not limited to real-time search. Sometimes journalists/bloggers will simply tap their contacts within their social networks (or email of course) to find sources. This is as good a reason as any to engage in social media on a regular basis and network with lots of relevant people. If attracting media attention is what you're after, consider these five tips I offered in a SmallBusinessNewz article last year:
1. Do something that's different - Simply do something that makes you stand out: something that gets people talking. If it creates enough buzz, the media coverage will likely follow. 2. Look for niche publications - the more niche the publication, the more likely they probably are to cover you. 3. Personalize your message - When you're writing an email to a publication to talk about your business, for example, personalize the message for the specific person you're contacting, so they know it's not just a manufactured piece that you're sending all over the web. Journalists like exclusivity. 4. Find multiple contacts - If you can find more than one contact for a particular publication, it may be wise to send your story pitch to them. This will increase the potential visibility among the publication's staff. 5. Provide plenty of details - When sending such a pitch, it's a good idea to include as many details about the product/story as possible. The more details available, the less research is required, and time is more valuable than ever, especially for a journalist.
Another piece of advice I would give is to not let your press center hold back your marketing opportunities. I've seen a lot of companies fail to keep their own press centers up to date with the latest news, even as big announcements are made, and even if they have issued press releases. Often times, these releases won't even be available on the site until later. If you want to increase your chances of more media coverage, you should always have your latest news readily available in your press center, or via your blog - wherever you make announcements. And always provide contact info. Share your tips for increasing press coverage.
March 2, 2010
Google announced via Twitter this week, that public status updates from Facebook are now included in the search engine's real-time search feature. That means the largest social network in the world is getting play in Google's real-time search alongside Twitter, MySpace, and others, and these real-time results are often featured prominently on the first page of search results for the hottest queries. Apparently only updates from Facebook PAGES are indexed, and according to Danny Sullivan, that includes links, status updates, photos, videos shared by page owners (not comments made by the fans). Any Facebook update (from regular user profiles) can be shared publicly, so I wonder why these aren't being pulled. Results from Twitter and other places aren't only from branded sources.
This seems to indicate that brands should be getting a good amount of play for Facebook appearances in Google's real-time search results, and possibly in the real-time search results in general (due to Facebook's huge user-base). Right now, Facebook isn't dominating the results, but that is bound to change with it being the largest (by far) social network on the web. A lot of brands who don't have Facebook pages in place are likely going to consider this a new reason to create one. Here are some tips for making a good one and promoting it. This should also lead to Facebook Pages getting more fans, due to the increased exposure. Beware, however, that running a promotion on your Facebook Page may cost you ten thousand dollars, because Facebook's policy guidelines indicate that you must get written approval from a Facebook account rep. In order to get one of those, you must spend that much in advertising, according to Eric Eldon of Inside Facebook. Now Google's real-time search results include (as listed by Sullivan) Facebook, MySpace, Twiter, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca, TwitArmy, Google News links, Google Blog Search links, new web pages, and freshly updated pages. At this point, Google generally only shows the real-time results for newsy/trending topics. Note: At the Online Marketing Summit out in San Diego, WebProNews talked about a different kind of real-time search that involves local businesses, with RateItAll president Lawrence Coburn. It's not local search as you would traditionally think of it, but it involves location, which one might consider a new kind of query.
Filed Under Review and Story · Leave a Comment
February 24, 2010
As the web quickly becomes more mobile and social than ever, we see apps filling voids that were mostly left empty throughout the history of search and social media. People are increasingly sharing their locations with their friends, certain apps, certain sites, and even the world. While sharing one's location can present its own set of dangers, as PleaseRobMe bluntly reminded everybody last week, people continue to share their locations and businesses have been, and will continue to take advantage of this. In fact, you might even say that this is becoming a major part of search marketing, and we're not just talking about Google (which of course has its own location-sharing/obtaining capabilities). Simply sharing your location has simply become a way of sending out a generic query, and local businesses have some tremendous new opportunities as a result. WebProNews just spoke with RateItAll president Lawrence Coburn on this very topic out at the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego.
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