Our sister site, Search Marketing Now, is hosting its first webcast for 2008: "Paid Search for Big Sites, Big Brands," tomorrow, Thursday, January 10 at 1 PM Eastern Standard Time, sponsored by iProspect. In this webcast, I'll take a look at how large organizations with complex websites and important brands can effectively implement paid search advertising campaigns. I'll cover tactical, technical, & organizational issues involved with running huge sites, as well as marketing issues and considerations unique to big brands. And, I'll explore the elements for success in a large paid search camp [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Marketing: Branding

This summer, the National Hockey League took a cheap shot. No, they didn’t redesign the league’s uniforms or put a team back in Winnipeg. Rather, they took control of overseeing the league’s websites. Since the domains had previously been run by each franchise, naturally the move has some team marketers feeling left out in the cold. As it turns out, a friend of a friend—we’ll call him "Puck"—happens to run the website for one of these teams. Recently, he posted a game recap and included a photo of a fight that occurred during the match-up. Later that evening, he got a c [...]

Related Topics: Brand Aid | Channel: Strategy | Search Marketing: Branding

Are you a marketer looking for additional online sales outlets? If so, you’re probably considering partnering with aggregation sites as they have proven to be a highly effective solution for many marketers. However, keep in mind that partnering with such sites is not risk free. Doing so can both cause overall branding issues, as well as implications for your brand in regard to your search marketing efforts. So what’s a marketer to do? Opting not to partner with an aggregator means you’ll forfeit valuable space that your brand could occupy on the search results page—which is [...]

Related Topics: Brand Aid | Channel: Strategy | Search Marketing: Branding

People often associate brands with money. And lots of it. Generally, if you try to run a branding campaign such as you see from big companies like Target, you certainly will have to fork over a big chunk of change. But we small business owners don't have that kind of money. And from my examples in last week's installment of this column, you might conclude that full-scale SEO or PPC is the only way to brand yourself online. But that's just not true. As you will see, some SEO will come into play, but cheap and easy SEO will get you started on the path to brand recognition in search results. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Marketing: Branding | Small Is Beautiful

Bought that iPhone and now upset over the $200 price drop after it's been out only 60 days? Nokia's guessing plenty are and reaching out to them on Google via search ads. But Apple's not sitting back in the face of the Nokia ad campaign. Apple has put out its own counter ads. The ad actually came from an Apple affiliate. Nokia Marketing Team Reaches Out To Angry iPhone Users from TechCrunch covers how Nokia acted quickly on getting an AdWords ad up for a search on iphone price drop. The ad reads: Sorry, Early Adopters iPhone drops $200. Salvage yours with free content at MOSH. Soon aft [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Search Marketing: Branding

More and more I'm discovering the necessity of helping our customers brand themselves in the search sphere. In the past, we often felt that some clients just didn't need to be branded in the search results. Maybe because they were smaller clients or didn't have a nationally recognized name. But then how do companies become nationally recognized names? You got it. Branding. Branding isn't just for big companies any more. With the internet and search, it's become easier and cheaper to for companies to brand their names in front of their target audience. It's true that good branding effor [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Marketing: Branding | Small Is Beautiful

Have you ever checked out what people are saying about your brand on blogs and on photo-sharing sites such as Yahoo's Flickr or Google's Picasa? Have you also taken the time to monitor what people are saying about your employees? You owe it to your employees to look out for their reputation online when it is associated with your brand, just as much as you ought to look out for your corporate reputation online. In today's Web 2.0 environment, people pour out to the world everything that happened in their day. They went to the car wash on 14th Street and had a great experience, they went to [...]

Related Topics: Brand Aid | Channel: SEO | Search Marketing: Branding | Search Marketing: Public Relations

While a decent percentage of the global business community has become aware of the importance of search engine marketing, very few businesses seem know about the best practices surrounding the purchasing and ownership of web site domain names (e.g. when to purchase, what to purchase, etc.). Unlike SEO problems, where a banned site can get re-included if the webmaster fesses up to bad behavior, mistakes involving domain names are frequently permanent (though sometimes large amounts of cash can be used to overcome problems). Here is an example of a particularly egregious corporate domain name [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Ads: Domaining | Search Marketing: Branding | Search Marketing: General | SEO: Domain Names & URLs

It happens to many companies: their Wikipedia page evolves and starts reporting bad stats, inaccuracies, legal stories you thought were water under the bridge and more. Wikipedia is a web 2.0 success story, and almost always ranks on page one in Google search results for your brand. Anyone can make changes, and there is little you can do to keep the public from adding, expanding and telling your story, their way. While you can’t make it disappear, you there are things you can do to mitigate the visibility of any negative content on your company’s Wikipedia page. Wikipedia is a free-for [...]

Related Topics: Brand Aid | Channel: SEO | Search Engines: Wikipedia | Search Marketing: Branding | Search Marketing: Public Relations

Facing unfavorable content on page one in the search engine result pages (SERPs) for your brand terms can be a challenge. Today's article discusses a strategy that allows you to mobilize all of your company websites to jump to the top of the SERPs so that your company dominates page one for your brand phrases... leaving unfavorable content nowhere to be seen. Which sites to mobilize To start dominating page one in the SERPs with your company-owned websites, consider any company-owned website that is either on a separate domain or a subdomain. Here are a few examples of company micro sites [...]

Related Topics: Brand Aid | Channel: Strategy | Search Engines: Custom Search Engines | Search Marketing: Branding

Whether DNC or RNC, Political Candidates need SEO from SEOmoz takes a look at the current political landscape in the search results. What we learned from this article is that the U.S. political candidates need some serious help with SEO and search marketing. For example, John McCain's web site currently ranks number 68 for a search on "John McCain" in Google. Plus none of the candidates rank in the top fifty at Google for keywords like "candidate," "2008 election," "united states presidential election," and "democratic candidates" or "republican candidates." [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Marketing: Branding | Search Marketing: Public Relations | SEO: General

In the offline world, companies make it a priority to influence the message people see in the media. However, in the search marketing world, very few companies make an effort to influence the message seen in search results pages. Instead, many companies ensure their website(s) are at the top of page one, and leave Google, Yahoo and MSN free to determine what to display in the remaining positions. What many companies and public relations professionals do not realize is that you can employ strategies to influence what the search engines display for your brand. As a search marketer, whether [...]

Related Topics: Brand Aid | Channel: SEO | Search Marketing: Branding | SEO: Writing & Body Copy

Many companies have yet to get involved with search marketing. At Search Engine Strategies New York, panelists on the "Putting Search into the Marketing Mix" offered compelling reasons for including search as a fundamental component of a marketing strategy. The panel was moderated by Gord Hotchkiss, President & CEO of Enquiro, with speakers Curtis Dueck, Account Manager, Epiar, Bill Mungovan, Director of Search Marketing, Carat Fusion and Misty Locke, President & Co-Founder, Range Online Media. The overlying theme of the session focused on why a company should take part of their mark [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Search Marketing: Branding | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: Conferences

Hello! My name is Alan Rimm-Kaufman. I'm honored to be contributing a monthly column on paid search for Search Engine Land. The column will appear the third Tuesday of each month. My focus will be strategy, economics, and multi-channel. About me: I run a paid search agency based in Charlottesville, Virginia. We serve about 100 clients, mostly B2C retailers. 25 employees. We manage bids using proprietary software based on portfolio optimization and statistical clustering theory. Prior, I was Marketing VP at Crutchfield, a $250 million direct retailer of consumer electronics. I did [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search | Search Ads: General | Search Marketing: Branding

Earlier this month, Travelocity's chief marketing officer Jeffrey Glueck generated a bit of a stir in the search marketing world after giving a speech saying his company found only 4 percent of non-branded search terms brought in bookings. Problem is, Glueck now says those figures weren't reported correctly. As it turns out, nearly 25 percent of Travelocity's conversions come from non-branded terms. But the big "assist" that non-branded terms are sometimes said to give to branded terms wasn't happening for Travelocity. It might happen for others, but Glueck's main challenge is for ma [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Marketing: Branding | Stats: Search Behavior

Despite the key role it plays in B2B purchasing, branding seems to move further and further down the list of corporate priorities. In the drive to generate revenue in today's ROI-driven world, don't ignore the influence of corporate branding on B2B sales or focus search marketing solely on product offerings. In B2B, corporate branding drives customer acquisition, and search can be branding's best friend. Despite this, SEMPO's State of Search Marketing, shows direct sales edging out branding as the primary objective of search marketers. In BtoB Magazine's survey, 2007 Marketing Plans and [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: Search | Search Marketing: Branding

Jeffrey Glueck, CMO at Travelocity, offered some controversial, and to some, nearly heretical comments while speaking at the IAB's Performance Marketing Forum this week in Chicago. According to coverage in Advertising Age, Travelocity has found that it's a waste to buy non-branded search terms. Fully 96% of Travelocity's bookings coming from paid search are from ads using branded keywords. And just 2% of paid-search conversions happen when a searcher originally clicked on a nonbranded term only to click and convert on a branded term later. These findings have led Glueck to be dismissive of [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Marketing: Branding | Stats: Search Behavior

I had the honor of being a panelist for the 2nd (now) Annual Yahoo! Searchlight Awards. Also on the panel were Brad Berens, iMedia Communications; Jon Fine, BusinessWeek and Brian Morrissey, AdWeek. The four finalists were: Sprint-Talladega Nights, presented by NeoSearch Special K, presented by Starcom Lexus All-new LS Launch, presented by TeamOne Chase Freedom, presented by Avenue A Razorfish All four agencies presented campaigns that contained elements of traditional media, online display advertising and search. Chase/Avenue A was the winner, mainly because their discussion of search was [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Marketing: Branding | SEM Industry: Awards | Yahoo: Search Ads

The Super Bowl is known by advertisers as one of the biggest marketing events of the year, but do search ads play a part of that? Reprise Media released this years Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard that explains that although there were improvements from last year, this year was still lacking in terms of integrating their offline and online ad efforts. The study also claims that marketers used poor call-to-actions in their ads and lacked in driving users to interact with their brands online. So how did each advertiser rate? The PDF score card puts SalesGenie.com, Snickers and GoDaddy [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Marketing: Branding | Yahoo: Marketing | Yahoo: User Interface