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 7, 2010
As you know, Microsoft and Yahoo were recently granted regulatory approval on their search and advertising deal, and we've discussed what this might mean for search engine optimization. WebProNews stopped by the Yahoo Headquarters in Sunnyvale before heading to SMX West in Santa Clara this week, and talked with Shashi Seth, Sr. VP of Yahoo Search Products about the deal, how it will be integrated, and timing, among other things. Seth says that the integration of Bing results into Yahoo Search will take somewhere in the range of 18 to 24 months for it to happen worldwide, and they'll start with the U.S. first. He says the core thing users will find is a compelling set of experiences that go on top of just the algorithmic and paid results that come from Microsoft. In other words, Yahoo users will still find the Yahoo experience.
Shashi says he feels like Yahoo can surface a lot of things better on its own, simply because of the content its properties provides (local, sports, finance, etc.). That stuff won't be going away, and it will be weaved into the experience. One thing that Shashi stressed was that the integration of Bing frees up a lot of Yahoo's own resources, so they can improve on other aspects of the user experience. Comments from Yahoo's Director of Search Marketing David Roth at the State of the Search Union keynote suggested that some amount of those resources will be moved over to work with Microsoft as well, with others staying at Yahoo:
WebProNews actually spoke with Roth himself after the event as well. He thinks he has something of a unique viewpoint about the integration, as he comes from search marketing himself. He will also likely be one of the first to be able to use the integration, given his position within the company. You can hear more of what he has to say in this interview:
Reactions from marketers are still mixed about how this integration is going to play out. This point was made clear in the keynote. Misty Locke of iProspect said a lot of her clients are excited about it, while former Googler Vanessa Fox is reserving judgment, hoping Yahoo doesn't lose "all the Yahooness." From the way Yahoo has described the coming integration, particularly Shahi Seth, it doesn't sound like it will be losing much Yahooness at all, but the extent of integration of things like Yahoo's BOSS and SearchMonkey features is still largely unknown.
Filed Under Review and Story · Leave a Comment
January 27, 2010
Social networks may become home to a lot more marketers this year. The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) surveyed a number of senior marketing execs, and found that many of them have made social networks and applications their top priority in 2010. Indeed, a whopping 45.4 percent of the people involved in SoDA's Digital Marketing Outlook study indicated that they consider social networks and applications to be a top priority, and although this isn't quite a majority, significantly fewer people said the same thing about digital infrastructure, search optimization, and everything else.
Extremely few marketers consider social networks and applications to be irrelevant, too. These are likely to be good signs for Facebook, MySpace, and perhaps Twitter in particular (since it's still in search of a steady source of revenue). Even users shouldn't mind the corporate participation, since an ad from a mainstream company is likely to be better received than something promoting a random dating site. And social media campaigns can be better still. Of course, SoDA's information is a bit odd in light of the fact that people speaking for both Facebook and Twitter have said the companies won't IPO this year.
Have You Read This?
> Facebook Investor Promises "No Near Term IPO"
> Twitter COO Effectively Rules Out 2010 IPO
> Facebook Page Owners Getting More Stats
August 28, 2009
In a previous article, we discussed why and how to rank in image searches. The article was based on discussion from the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose. Bing's Todd Schwartz was part of that discussion, and he has now shared additional insight into Bing's image search. Sidenote: WebProNews has just uploaded an interview with Google's R.J. Pittman, who discusses Google Image Search optimiziation. "Behavioral data shows that consumers engage deeply in Image Search tasks, with nearly double the page views per query on average as we see in the more text-centric core search experience," says Schwartz. "Looking at the consumer research, our analyses show that images on a traditional search results page are a big driver of consumer satisfaction, especially for task related queries like buying products, catching up on celebrity gossip, or planning a trip." "This is one reason why we are seeing images both on the main search results page and within the Image Search verticals," he adds. A study from Microsoft found that consumers can process results with images 30% faster than results with text only. This data highlights why image search optimization should be of concern to webmasters. In theory, the more you can control your presence in relevant image results, the more traffic you are likely to get. Schwartz shared some recommendations for image search optimization from Bing's top image developer:
- Name image files appropriately – For improved relevance, make sure that the file name describes the image appropriately. - Alternative image text (alt text) matters – For increased optimization, make sure photos are properly described with alternative text tags, and ensure that test within any images is also - Watch frame breaking – Sites that attempt to break frames make it more difficult for the image to display correctly within search. Make sure you’re testing your site against the search engines.
Of course Bing is just one piece of the search market puzzle, and not the biggest piece by any stretch of the imagination, but the search engine's presence is being felt, and it is growing. If that Micosoft Yahoo deal goes through, it will grow very significantly, when Bing results start appearing in Yahoo searches. It still won't be getting Google's share, but it will be much more significant. For more tips on being found in image searches (on both Bing and Google) read this article. For more on being found in Google's Image search as well as various other Google search engines, check this one out.
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