By Keith Trivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
The Online Marketing Summit has become a perennial favorite for us at MediaWhiz. Often held in a sunny, relaxed city, such as last week’s event in beautiful San Diego, the conference features the best and brightest in online marketing, advertising, search and SEO.
This year was no different. OMS San Diego featured a stellar lineup of speakers, a well-stocked exhibit hall and plenty of attendees to stoke plenty of debates and discussions about the trends shaping online marketing.
And MediaWhiz was right in the thick of it.
Our SEO business TLA exhibited at the conference, holding the coveted first exhibitor spot on the trade show floor. The TLA team spent much of their time discussing on- and off-site SEO strategies with conference attendees, including how to generate and promote content as a means of improving a brand’s SEO.
A packed house greeted Daryl Colwell’s OMS presentation, “Content Marketing Like a Pro”
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By Heather Kraus | Manager, Performance Strategy and Analytics
It has been a few months since Google announced Universal Analytics, which will provide marketers with greater visibility into people’s interactions with a Web site at multiple levels. Universal Analytics will transform how marketers interpret consumer behavior.
Universal Analytics will open doors for more in-depth analysis of brands’ Web sites. It is a complete overhaul of Google Analytics. It requires marketers’ immediate attention in order to stay on top of the data revolution that is reshaping much of our economy and society.
The most exciting change brought about by Universal Analytics is the inclusion of more data. While a vast trove of data can be overwhelming to some, anyone who has worked with Google Analytics is aware of its shortcomings. Its lack of transparency has led some marketers to assume certain things about how consumers interact with their Web sites. Making assumptions with data is a recipe for disaster, whether you’re conducting a simple science experiment or analyzing a multichannel online marketing campaign.
Measuring interactions from different environments changes the very concept of “Web analytics” to “digital analytics.” With Universal Analytics, marketers are finally able to track user activity across multiple devices. This is important as consumers increasingly shift toward a mobile-first, multiple-device shopping experience. The focus is shifting from visits and visitors to sessions and users.
The consumer — not page views — now rules the e-commerce roost. (more…)
By Ori Carmel | VP, Strategy & Performance
Google announced major changes yesterday to AdWords, rolling out what it is calling “enhanced campaigns.” The changes are designed to help marketers “more simply and smartly manager [their] ad campaigns in today’s multi-device world.”
There are two main parts marketers should consider regarding the impact the AdWords changes will have on their work and client campaigns.
First, the changes open up (or rather brings Google up to speed) with a new and improved revenue and ad distribution model, mostly focused around mobile.
Second, the changes bring the advertising and marketing industry one step closer to a comprehensive inter-connected attribution model of consumption. That’s the Holy Grail that marketers have been searching for since the dawn of modems.
Google AdWords Enhanced should help marketers by providing new bid adjustments, customizable ad formatting and simplified reporting. If you have been hesitant to push towards mobile ad distribution, fear no more. Google will help you adjust ads to fit almost all devices, and report back on performance. All of this, of course, should translate to more distribution, more bids, higher budgets and higher revenues (at higher margins) for both marketers and Google. (more…)
By Keith Trivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
The 2013 Online Marketing Summit is next week, and MediaWhiz, along with our SEO team, TLA, will be right in the thick of the show. If you’re in San Diego for the show (Feb. 11-13 at the San Diego Convention Center), be sure to visit booth #305 to chat with us about performance and search marketing, as well as SEO and content marketing. Several of our SEO and search marketing experts will be on site to discuss best practices for improving your SEO and search marketing campaigns.
MediaWhiz Vice President Daryl Colwell will take that discussion a step further during his Feb. 12 presentation, “Content Marketing Like a Pro: Tactics and Techniques to Increase Search Engine Visibility.” Here is a brief overview of Daryl’s presentation:
Time/Date: 3-3:45 p.m. PST, Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Location: Room 29D, San Diego Convention Center
Session Description
It’s no longer enough to have great SEO for your website. In today’s Google-controlled era of search engine marketing, brands need great content that is engaging, informative and shareable to rank well and
generate leads. Join Daryl Colwell to learn about his best practices and techniques to increase your brand’s search engine visibility through content marketing. Session attendees will be given several examples and case studies of brands that have gone from ranking on page three to page one purely from professional-quality content marketing that they produce. You’ll come away from this session with a top-10 list of content marketing best practices that the pros use.
Must-Have Information
MediaWhiz will be exhibiting at OMS San Diego, Feb. 11-13.
Meet us at booth #305.
Contact Keith Trivitt for more information or to schedule a meeting with us at the show.
What to Do in San Diego
San Diego is one of America’s most beautiful cities. It’s perfect mix of Pacific Ocean breezes, sunny days and laid-back atmosphere make it a perennial contender as one of America’s top tourist destinations. And there is plenty to do for free. Here are some resources for great activities you can take part in while you’re visiting San Diego during OMS:
By Marc Purtell | Director, SEO
SEO can be challenging for small businesses. They must compete for the same market share against larger brands that often have more prestige, brand recognition, and consumer affinity.
That doesn’t mean that organic search is out of reach for small businesses as a powerful inbound marketing channel with high potential for return. In order to compete with large brands, small business owners must have an SEO strategy that offsets the often large difference in marketing budget. Because small businesses will not be able to outspend their larger counterparts on media acquisition, they must take a much more targeted and refined approach.
When it comes to short-tail SEO — general phrases with a high amount of search volume — the search engine results pages are dominated by big brands. There is little that a small business marketer with limited budget can do to change these results.
Despite various limitations, small businesses can gain meaningful search engine result real estate with a focus on areas of lowered competition. When geography is taken into account, there is often a much smaller big-brand presence in search results. That opens a window of opportunity for small businesses to gain useful organic search visibility.
Focusing on consumers looking for products and services in specific locales is a great way to limit the competition and give small businesses the ability to gain valuable real estate on search engine results pages. If the business also has an offline presence in a specific locale, there is even more opportunity in targeting these consumers. Consumers trust of a business they can visit in person, which will lead to higher conversion rates. (more…)
By Marc Purtell | Director, SEO
Content marketing isn’t a new or cutting-edge digital marketing practice. But it has evolved into a vital piece of the online marketing puzzle and is capable of impacting other marketing channels, especially SEO.
In today’s arena of social influence on both humans and search engines, developing and promoting content with real value is paramount to success of any digital strategy. For content to generate revenue, it must provide a value to consumer and engage them in conversations.
There are several best practices you should use when creating new content to leverage its potential as a driver of customer acquisition and a catalyst to organic search success.
Step 1: Define the Target Audience
In order to effectively communicate with consumers, it’s important to understand what they are looking for and what is compelling to them. The first step in content development is to perform some consumer research to identify the customer segment the content is targeted to and how it will best be engaged based on its buying patterns. Sites such as MarketResearch.com are a great resource for defining your target audience.
By Marc Purtell | Director, SEO
Search engine optimization continues to evolve in a variety of ways. 2012 was one of the most significant years for SEO in recent history. A multitude of search engine algorithm updates dramatically altered the manner in which search engine optimization is conducted. Those changes are detailed in a new MediaWhiz report, “SEO in 2013: The Year of the Consumer.”
The search and SEO landscape in 2013 is already witnessing similar important changes. As the recent announcement of Facebook Graph Search shows, the era of basic SEO tactics is over. Strategies that were once considered sacrosanct among SEO professionals, such as optimizing content for top Google rankings, are now outdated at best, or completely irrelevant. They may even hurt your brand’s search rankings.
As the below infographic details, SEO success in 2013 comes down to one thing: content. Lots of high-quality, relevant content. In order to have true, long-term SEO success, you must optimize for users first and search engines second. The future of SEO is content.
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As search marketing and SEO continue to evolve, it’s important that marketers go back to their roots. Increasingly, that involves developing content that appeals first to the consumer and second to the search engines. After all, it’s the consumer that purchases your products or services, not an inanimate search engine.
By Marc Purtell | Director, SEO
Yesterday’s announcement by Facebook of its revolutionary new form of search — called Graph Search — has set the online marketing world abuzz with chatter about its impact on search. More specifically, whether Facebook will finally become the Google killer that so many have predicted it will.
While it’s unlikely that Graph Search will ever become a Google killer, the reality is that Facebook has just become a major player in the multi-billion-dollar search business. More importantly to brands and marketers, Facebook offers a bevy of new search and online advertising options that simply aren’t available with Google’s robust but often rudimentary search platform.
In short, Facebook’s Graph Search is just the latest milestone in an ongoing trend of the Web becoming more social. It’s the first true iteration of the social-search era that we at MediaWhiz colleagues previously predicted would come to fruition.
Let’s examine what the news means for the three parties most significantly impacted by the launch of Graph Search: marketers, brands and Facebook itself. (more…)
By Marc Purtell | Director, SEO
Knowledge is power, as the old saying goes. So what do marketers need to know about Google’s Knowledge Graph to power their SEO and search strategies?
There has been a lot of commentary around the semantic Web. The theory is that search results are becoming smarter by distinguishing between words with different meanings. Whether that is true or not largely depends on who you believe and how much stock you place in search engines’ ability to “learn” the wants and needs of their users.
The inception of Google’s Knowledge Graph, which began rolling out in May 2012, has been the driving force behind the rise of the semantic Web.
Understanding the Knowledge Graph
The Knowledge Graph is basically a knowledge base consisting of more than 570 million objects and 18 billion facts. Since its inception, search result pages have gone through noticeable changes. These include the ability to distinguish between words with different meanings and a new sidebar feature that provides a snippet of related facts.
Through semantic integration, or the process of matching related information from diverse sources, Google has been able to serve narrower, more refined search results based on what people are searching.
Before the Knowledge Graph, if someone searched for “Kansas,” the results would split between information about the state of Kansas and the band Kansas. The Knowledge Graph allows Google to better associate specific results to the most relevant “Kansas.” (more…)
By Keith Trivitt | @KeithTrivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
An article written by Marc Purtell, director of SEO at MediaWhiz, and published Nov. 20, 2012, in Search Engine Journal, has been honored with a “Best of SEJ” award for 2012. Titled, “SEO in 2013: The Rising Influence of AuthorRank,” it was the most-read article on Search Engine Journal in November, according to the publication’s editors.
In honoring Purtell with the “Best of SEJ” distinction, former Search Engine Journal Editor-in-Chief Phil Butler described the article as an “insightful look at the emerging value of authors in search [that] from one of the industry’s most knowledgeable authors, or a super digitally influential company, MediaWhiz.”
Below is an excerpt of the article.
SEO in 2013: The Rising Influence of AuthorRank
By Marc Purtell | Director, SEO | @MarcPurtell
When considering major trends that will impact SEO in 2013 it’s clear that AuthorRank will play an increasingly important role in marketers’ search and SEO strategies.
PageRank has long been the standard high-level metric used to identify the relative quality of a Web page. There is arguably limited value in using PageRank as a quality metric over the last few years, but it can still be meaningful in conjunction with other quality metrics (i.e. domain authority, page authority, etc.)
In 2013 a new quality metric will take the spotlight when it comes to page quality and search engine ranking. This metric is affectionately known as AuthorRank (or Agent Rank, according to Google’s patent).
Here’s why AuthorRank will help reshape SEO in 2013:
AuthorRank: A Brief Overview
Content quality, as measured by search engines, is no longer based solely on the authority of a domain or Web page. It is increasingly based on the reputation and authority of the individual that authored the content. This reputational score grades authors on the Web and used that grade when ordering natural search engine results.
Read the full piece at Search Engine Journal.
