Nathan Safran
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Nathan Safran

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About Nathan Safran

Nathan Safran is the CEO and founder of Blue Nile Research, a market research/thought leadership firm. Nathan helps firms of all sizes create industry leading research studies and thought leadership.

Nathan Safran's latest articles

SEO

It’s Time For Marketers To Attend To The Branding Benefits Of Search

Google recently released a study that concluded, “Search Ads Lift Brand Awareness.” The study tested brand recall for searchers who had seen the target brand in paid search ads against a control group who had not been exposed to the brand. The study concluded that brand-exposed searchers had a 6.6% increase (80% lift) over the […]

SEO

Competitive Analysis: The Most Valuable SEO Tactic You Ignore [Data]

When it comes to getting ahead in search, experts agree that competitive analysis is critical. International search engine optimization (SEO) consultant Aleyda Solis observes: One of the most important activities for any SEO process is the initial competitive analysis. In a nod to how important she thinks it is, she created a sophisticated workflow to […]

SEO

4 Intangible Benefits Of Content You Shouldn’t Overlook

The benefits of the ever-increasing intersection of digital marketing and technology are clear: we can measure the impact of our online efforts like never before. But, along with tracking valuable content metrics like traffic, downloads and bounce rate, we should remember that content has intangible benefits that should be part of any ROI discussion. The […]

SEO

Why It’s Good To Compete With Google

If you talk to a room full of veteran digital marketers, a topic that eventually comes up is competition — specifically, the fact that our competition in search is often not immediately obvious. You can miss out on understanding your online competition for a few different reasons. For example, marketers sometimes erroneously assume that brick-and-mortar […]

Ecommerce

4 Revealing Facts About How Consumers Search And Buy Online

A recently released study by retail engagement firm Parago examined how consumers research and buy across several product categories. The research is chock full of insight about how people buy, with broad implications for digital marketers. I want to focus on one aspect of the research: insight into consumer behavior when the buyer is in […]

PPC

If Online Ad Targeting Works, Does More Targeting Work Better?

A former colleague at Forrester Research recently published a study that described his view of the future of online marketing. The study is available to Forrester clients only, but the crux of the argument is laid out in a blog post: Why Google – Not Facebook – Will Build The Database Of Affinity. The author, […]

Apple

The Bing Dilemma: What To Do With The Little Search Engine That Can’t

The challenge that Microsoft faces in the online search landscape could be a business school case study: how to capture market share from a competitor whose very brand (“Google”) has become synonymous with the act of searching online. Imagine that you are the person at Microsoft responsible for Bing’s success and are tasked with moving […]

Google

4 Recent Changes To SEO That Are Vital To Holiday Retail Strategy

It’s the holiday season again, and while certain sectors may be winding down for a relaxing month of festivities, online sellers are revving up their retail strategy. It’s a crucial, make-or-break time of year for retailers to excel in customer service, gift-wrapping services, and, of course, search. A lot has happened in digital marketing in […]

Google

Google Seeks Searcher Satisfaction: How Marketers Can Keep Up

In late September, Google announced it had been gradually rolling out Hummingbird, a completely new search algorithm. The algorithm emphasizes semantic search and focuses on understanding the meaning behind the user query rather than simply trying to match instances of words in its Web index. Take a look at Danny Sullivan’s great FAQ for more […]

SEO

The End Of One-Size-Fits-All SEO Reporting

If your organization is like most, the process of establishing KPIs to track natural search probably looks something like this: “Put together high-level KPIs such as X and Y, and run it by a few key stakeholders.” At first glance, that process likely seems to have worked pretty well — after all, few stakeholders make […]

Analytics & conversion

“Big Data” Is Not “Big Data” Unless It Gives You Actionable Insight

Occasionally, marketers want something because the media attention around it demands it.  There was a time, not too long ago, when CMOs sent urgent, late-night emails to their teams asking about their “link-shortening strategy.” In some ways, “big data” technology falls into that category. Mainstream tech media and even traditional media outlets write about it […]

PPC

Content Creation & Organizational Empowerment Key To Search Success

The SEO industry has undergone significant changes in the last 12+ months. Search has gained greater legitimacy as a marketing channel as budget holders increase head count and invest in advanced technology. And, the SERPs themselves have undergone changes that have had many implications, including adjustments to the underlying algorithms that surface content. Here at […]

PPC

How to Counter Your Ignorant Boss’ Misconceptions About SEO

Any in-house SEO professional (or consultant) who has been in the industry for even a short time has likely had to dispel misconceptions and inaccuracies about SEO to a senior manager, budget holder or client.  These misconceptions can often be so embedded that they result in an underfunded, under-resourced and under “mind-shared” SEO program. To […]

Apple

The Search Engine We REALLY Want To See Google (Or Microsoft) Build

When you sit down and think about it, search engines today have not changed all that dramatically in terms of depth-of-insight compared to their early days. Google recently added the Knowledge Graph for a subset of queries; but at its core, the level of insight available to the searcher remains primarily the Web links on […]

Apple

The New SEO Professional: Master Of Both Left & Right Brain

Compared to its ultimate impact, the beginnings of an earthquake are actually quite small.   Likewise, in terms of scope, the Penguin algorithm update was relatively miniscule, affecting only 3.1% of queries. Its impact on the industry, however, was far greater, as the de-emphasis of thin content in the SERPs drove SEO professionals to place […]

Google algorithm updates

Hot & Cold Trends In Search Going Into 2013

The end of the year in any industry marks a good opportunity to look back on the year and reflect on changes. This is particularly true in the SEO industry, given the volume and intensity of changes that have occurred in 2012 — from algorithmic changes to how SEO is perceived in the organization to […]

SEO

Overcoming The Catch 22 Of Investing In Search Without Proof Of Success

Some readers may be surprised to discover that despite the opportunity organic search offers — a recent Shareholic study showed organic search drives nearly half of all traffic, 5 times more than social networks combined — many executive budget holders are still reluctant to make an initial substantial investment in SEO. Other, battle-scarred veterans will […]

SEO

Google Searchers 3x More Likely To Be Logged-in Than Bing

A study we recently did at Conductor found that search engines still have work to do when it comes to integrating social search results in the SERPs: 62% of respondents reported they do not want or gain benefit from social results mixed in with search results. In the same survey, we asked the 150 respondents […]

Content

How To Leverage PPC To Discover High-Converting Keywords For SEO

When starting out with a new search effort or performing a keyword refresh for an existing website, the options for discovering new keywords are limited only by the SEO’s imagination. From the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, to digging through analytics, to leveraging sites like Soovle that discover ‘suggest’ keywords across multiple search engines, keyword discovery […]

Analytics & conversion

3 Ways To Advance Maturity In Your SEO Metrics

The sophistication with which companies analyze their natural search visibility and the metrics they use to do so can vary widely up and down the spectrum. There is often little correlation between how sophisticated a company is in other areas of their online business and their level of sophistication when it comes to their natural […]

Analytics & conversion

Making The Case For Adding Keyword Segmentation To Your SEO Repertoire

Last month in The Forgotten SEO Strategy: Targeting Striking Distance Keywords we talked about how search professionals could approach their keyword strategy by targeting keywords based on their ranking position. Specifically, we showed how they can target striking distance keywords—keywords ranking on page 2—to obtain some quick traffic wins while simultaneously building link equity for […]

SEO

The Forgotten SEO Strategy: Targeting Striking Distance Keywords

How you strategically approach your own unique search marketing landscape may be the first of many decisions you make on your search marketing journey, but it is also the most important.  A difference of inches when aiming the arrow can translate to feet downrange. SEOs can often approach selecting target keywords with a strict “I’m-going-to-focus-on-the-keywords-with-the-highest-search-volume” […]

Analytics & conversion

How Big Data Changed Crime Fighting & Is Changing The Practice Of SEO

In the mid 1990’s, New York city Mayor Rudolph Giuliani introduced a technology-based crime measurement system called CompStat. The system enabled Police leadership, for the first time, to discern crime trends and respond to crime fluctuations on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis rather than the limited incident-by-incident view they previously had. The system is credited with a […]

DuckDuckGo

Could DuckDuckGo Be The Biggest Long-Term Threat To Google?

Robin Wauters at The Next Web recently wrote about an interesting trend taking place at upstart search engine DuckDuckGo. DDG (DuckDuckGo) is self-described as: We are a search engine with:  Way more instant answers.  Way less spam and clutter.  Lots and lots of goodies.  Real privacy. Wauters reports that DuckDuckGo’s daily search traffic has grown by […]

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