Social media marketers are much more likely to also use SEO in their marketing efforts than PPC, according to a new survey out today. Social Media Examiner announced the results of its fourth annual survey, which this year had replies from more than 3,800 social media marketers around the world. When asked what other marketing channels they use, search engine optimization (SEO) was the No. 2 response behind e-mail marketing. Paid search -- or "online ads" as the survey called it -- was far down the list at number six. Sixty-five percent of social media marketers say they use SEO, compare [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Search Ads: General | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: Stats | SEO: General | Social Media Marketing | Stats: General | Top News

This article presents a rules-based approach for Keyword Generation using Dictionaries, Grammar, and Feeds. Essentially, Dictionaries define the various groups of words that are relevant to an account. Grammar defines how to combine them. Feeds define the data that may be changing regularly, like e-commerce inventory, store locations, etc. Readers may be able to generalize these terms to apply to existing rules-based tool if one is currently in use. First, a word about where this approach fits in to the broader picture. The Broader Landscape of Managing Keywords & Negatives There are [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Toolbox | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Search Term Research | SEM Tools | SEM Tools: Keyword Research

Annual US retail spending is roughly $4 trillion according to the US Commerce Department. And while e-commerce is growing very rapidly, it remains less than 5 percent of total retail sales. Historically, most search marketers have focused almost exclusively on e-commerce sales. But a new study finds that the real impact of paid search is offline. Six-to-One Impact in Offline Stores Based on two years of research conducted by retail marketing firm RevTrax, the study discovered that "for every $1 of e-commerce revenue generated from paid search, marketers can expect to see approximately anothe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Landing Pages | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Search Marketing: Shopping Search Marketing | Top News

Yesterday Euclid Elements, a relatively new firm founded by some of the people behind the product that became Google Analytics, announced a $5.8 million first round of funding. The company is seeking to enable retailers and business owners with physical locations to measure things like foot traffic by time of day, average customer time in store, loyalty and lift of online promotions, as well as the effectiveness of window displays and other metrics. Conceptually none of this is entirely new. There are a range of "analog" companies and methods that measure retail foot traffic. However Euclid [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | Search Engines: Location / Checkin Services | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Search Marketing: Mobile | Top News

SEO is the number one source of leads for both B2C and B2B marketers, beating out both PPC and social media marketing in a recent survey of online marketers. But more of those surveyed say they plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2012, ahead of SEO and PPC. The numbers come from the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, which was compiled by Webmarketing123, a California-based online marketing agency. The company surveyed more than 500 U.S. online marketers in August and September; about two-thirds of all respondents identified themselves as B2B marketers. Whether [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Stats | Stats: Spend Projections | Top News

Search marketing practitioners get the value of keyword optimization. When it is applied, honed and refined over time, a high-value corporate asset emerges: keyword lists that translate into powerful institutional knowledge. But is there an opportunity to create the same sort of asset beyond search? Absolutely. Search retargeting can provide marketers with a totally transparent, multi-factor means to leveraging keyword expertise. And automation can play a big role in making it happen. Evolution: Search Retargeting Today Search retargeting has come a long way. While early attempts offered [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Search & Display | Search Marketing: General

Walmart is at it again with what seems an unusual purchase for the retailer. The company has just purchased social advertising company OneRiot, it's been announced. It will become part of WalmartLabs. From the OneRiot blog post: We’re delighted to announce that OneRiot has been acquired by Walmart. The OneRiot team will now be joining @Walmartlabs - Walmart’s hub for the creation of new technologies and business models integrating social, mobile and retail for the next-generation of e-commerce. And from the WalmartLabs post: A few weeks ago, a small team from @WalmartLabs visited [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: Acquisitions | Social Media Marketing

The IAB announced this morning that online ad revenues were $7.3 billion in the US in Q1 2011. This is a 23 percent increase over the same period last year. In 2010 total online revenues were $26 billion according to the IAB. For the full year 2010 (graph below) paid search constituted 46 percent of total online ad revenues. If that's still the case it would mean that Q1 2011 search revenues are roughly $3.35 billion. Assuming about 25 percent growth overall this year, 2011 online ad revenues could reach $31 or $32 billion. That would mean 2011 search revenues would be nearly $1 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Search Marketing: General | Stats: General | Stats: Spend Projections

Search ad spending among tech and electronics companies is way up so far in 2011, so much so that Q1 spending surpassed Q4 levels for the first time. That's the word from Covario's Global Search Advertising Spend Analysis, which tracks about $400 million in annual spending around the world. Covario says Q1 spending was up 6% over the traditionally heavier Q4 period, and up 26% over Q1 of 2010. The huge year-over-year increase is mainly due to how weak spending was in Q1 2010. Much of the growth is coming outside the US: Spending in both the Asia-Pacific and Europe-Middle East region [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: General | Search Marketing: General | Stats: Spend Projections

Yesterday SEMPO and Econsultancy released the 2011 "State of Search Marketing Report" featuring attitudes and spending behaviors of 920 survey respondents (agencies, advertisers) from more than 60 countries. The full report is over 130 pages. The report came out on the same day that the IAB released its full-year 2010 online ad revenue figures. Interestingly, there's a $4 billion dollar discrepancy between the IAB paid-search figures ($12 billion) and the SEMPO estimate ($16.6 billion) for 2010. The SEMPO estimate is for "North America" while the IAB numbers are US only. The IAB estimated t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Outsourcing | SEM Industry: Stats

StumbleUpon has just launched a new ad platform that it's targeting toward brand advertisers. It's called StumbleUpon Paid Discovery and it offers additional features and analytics, along with a higher cost than the existing StumbleUpon ad program. Paid Discovery has two price options: 10 cents or 25 cents per visitor, compared to five cents under the existing ad offering. But the extra cost includes priority ad serving -- campaigns at the higher price levels that have deadlines will be served before other sponsored content. Another difference with Paid Discovery is the ability to show ads [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Marketing: General | StumbleUpon

Interesting new data about searcher behavior from a recent User Centric eye-tracking study: Whether using Google or Bing, all 24 participants looked at the organic search results for their queries, but between 70% and 80% ignored the paid ads on the right side of the page. User Centric studied the search behavior of 24 "experienced users" of both Google and Bing, all between 18 and 54 years old. They were asked to do eight searches -- four on Google (with Google Instant turned off) and the other four on Bing. The results? Here's a table version of the diagram above. Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: General | Search Marketing: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

Once campaigns reach a certain size, successful paid search marketing becomes less about generating traffic and more about identifying and driving the highest value visitors. At the same time, however, scale makes creative testing and ad group refinement difficult to implement across hundreds of thousands or even millions of keywords. In a high-volume world, actively managing negatives is possibly the single most impactful opportunity you have for increasing conversions and decreasing costs. Keyword building is a continuous process for both positive and negative keywords. If you have not [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Industrial Strength | Search Ads: General | Search Marketing: General

You've had a week to put 2010 in the past and start unpacking 2011. If you're the type to do so, you've probably already made your own marketing resolutions for the new year, or thought about the trends and predictions that might make a difference as the year goes along. You have? Good. So has just about everyone else you know in the search and online marketing industry, and dozens of people you've probably never heard of, too. Fear not, we've got all their collected thoughts about marketing in 2011 wrapped up in this year's Big List of Trends, Predictions and Resolutions. And I mean "big" [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: General | SEO: General | Social Media Marketing | Top News

As you shift your focus from frantically optimizing holiday campaigns to methodically (hah!) executing 2011 plans, here are ten areas worth thinking about: 1. Local. With all the buzz over Google's near-acquisition of Groupon, it's clear the Big G is ready to make a big move in the local space. While it may not be a pure SEM play, finding ways to customize offers to niche audiences and tap the long tail should be on every marketer's to-do list. 2. Social ads. As Facebook beefs up its Marketplace Ads offering and ads API, social advertising campaigns will begin to look an awful lot like [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Features: General | Search Marketing: General | Top News

This past Monday Vurve launched. The CEO is Amit Kumar, who built SearchMonkey at Yahoo and then was at Dapper, which was recently acquired by Yahoo. The company's tagline is "advertising on autopilot for your online store." Vurve is targeting small businesses (SMBs) with e-commerce stores that spend up to $10,000 per month. The minimum monthly spend is $200. Traditional "offline" SMBs (service businesses) aren't part of the program right now. The company says it can entirely automate online advertising across a range of media types including search. The platforms and media types Vurve a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Shopping Search Marketing

I can virtually guarantee that you aren't satisfying at least one major segment of your customers. Did you know that it took until 1989 for chunky tomato pasta sauce to come out? A guy by the name of Howard Moskowitz cracked this code for the Prego brand while they were trying desperately to defeat Ragu, the champion of pasta sauce at the time. Until then, companies were looking for the "perfect" pasta sauce, much like we seek the "perfect" architecture, interface, product photography, shopping cart, landing page, etc. It was Howard who pointed out that they shouldn't be looking for the per [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Search Term Research

While many news organizations chase traffic by matching their news coverage to what's listed as "hot" on Google Trends, Twitter, and elsewhere, a new report says hard news coverage actually makes the most money for major news publishers. Perfect Market, a company that works with publishers to help them make more money from search engine visitors, has just released its Vault Index, a list of the most valuable online news topics. The bottom line? Hot topics (like Tiger Woods' troubles and other celebrity news) may bring in search traffic, but hard news brings in the most money. Below is a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Marketing: General | SEO: General | Stats: General | Top News

Billing itself as one of the "best kept secrets in Silicon Valley," Adchemy is a technology provider that promises to help search marketers "dynamically" create more relevant ad copy and landing pages at scale. The company recently released its WordMap application, which is intended for very large campaigns with millions of keywords but where the ad copy and landing pages are more general and thus unable to reflect the variety and nuance of the more specific associated keywords. Adchemy says that it can "dynamically generate tens of thousands of paid-search ads directly related to intent [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Landing Pages | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Search Marketing: Search Term Research | SEM Tools: Keyword Research

Google's press conference about Google Instant hadn't even ended yesterday when the question of "is SEO dead" started coming up on Twitter, in blog posts and was even asked about formally during the event's Q&A (the answer was no, twice over, by the way). No, Google Instant isn't killing SEO. In fact, nothing's going to kill SEO. I know there are a lot of SEO haters out there who wish this were so, but that hate comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what SEO is about. If you misunderstand something so much as to hate it, you surely have no understanding about its future. No, S [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Search Marketing: General | SEO: General | Top News