SEO & SEM

During part of my daily routine, I commonly browse the web and search for popular keywords for clients and my own organic SEO efforts. Many times my search efforts lead to a directory of sorts. Usually multiple directories.

Today I happened upon the hugely popular website citysearch.com. How I got here is irrelevant to this rant and doesnt really matter anyways. I was looking for my business or competitors to see how the business were listed and during my few moments on the site I came across a page that, had it been on any other lesser known domain, I would have thought was clearly spam for keyword stuffing.

The page in reference was this: http://fortlauderdale.citysearch.com/site_guide Just looking at the page made my head spin and I quickly realized that this page is intended for a robot to view and not a human. A quick word count gave me 67  instances of the term "Fort Lauderdale" in the body of the page, many of them links, H1, H2, and title tags. I instantly thought this was keyword stuffing and auto-generated content created by a robot. A quick swap of the city in the URL (from fortlauderdale to miami) and my hunch was confirmed.

Last week, Google announced Personalized Search for everyone. Personalized search has been previously available, but only to individuals signed in with a Google account. They are now making it available to anyone via an anonymous cookie.

Privacy concerns aside, is this really necessary for relevance? Or is this just another way of aggregating data and producing a more focused demographic profile to advertisers.

When I am searching on Google I want the most relevant results, not based on my previous searches, just the most relevant results. Period! Now the option to turn this off is available but I assume the majority of users wont know or care.

Establishing a successful search engine that isnt named Google may seem impossible, but Microsoft is digging deep into their pockets and resources in an attempt to dethrone the search engine king. How deep? Microsoft has spent a reported 80 to 100 million in advertising dollars for Bing. That's a pretty hefty budget considering Google only spent 25 million throughout the course of last year. I know Microsoft is trying to establish Bing as a viable search alternative to Google, but will they succeed?

Flash has been around for years. At the beginning it was an easy way to add animation to your web pages. As the technology evolved, the functionality of Flash became much greater to allow for full programming and applications to be created using Flash and not just simple tweens and morphing text.  But indexing the content of Flash files has always been a problem for the Search Engines (Google). Google recently announced that they are improving the way that they index Flash files. They are now able to read and index the content linked to an external resource of an SWF file. This is very valuable in that the most powerful Flash applications utilize this technology to distribute dynamic content. Unfortunately up to now, that content was blind to Google.

With the emergence of Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and all of the hype that accompanies these forms of social media, there have been some rumblings that corporations no longer need their websites. While that is a pretty bold statement, there are some truths to it. Social media marketing allows for business to reach their consumers freely and frequently. Constant contact with your consumer as well as response and feedback from them can be very lucrative for business. Venues such as Facebook and Twitter allow companies to post brief, "soft-selling" techniques that slyly inform consumers of their newest product or their hottest line. Companies such as Volkswagen are evening running T.V. commercials with their Facebook URL instead of their corporate website (not that VW.com is that hard to remember). But does this mean that social media sites such as Facebook are replacing corporate websites?

Could google have discovered swine flu in Mexico before the outbreak started to spread? Possibly. The Data is there, they may just need to be looking in the right place. Check out their Flu Trends Tracking for the United States. And the experimental tracking for Mexico. You can easily see the local search trends here because the data is older. Give the US a little time and we will see the trends show up. Hopefully we are looking in the right areas.

The recent outbreak of swine flu has kept the US Center for Disease Control on their toes posting updates to twitter. Even Google is helping out with tracking the spread of the flu. Sites like http://www.healthmap.org can track health concerns throughout the world and pinpoint geographical locations of events using google maps API.

However, a recent article by HealthCare IT News suggest that there is yet another trend in search that can be analyzed and harnessed for the good of all.

We have long known that longer search terms (those key phrases with at least 3 or more words) are the key to targeted search traffic and also the way to optimize your budget on PPC campaigns. The reasons for this are varied and the different approachs to capitlize on are just as diverse. One of the main points which generally rings true is that someone searching using a longer keyword string will be looking for something more specific than a single word search. Recent trends seem to indicated that the "long tail" is actually getting longer. A recent report from Hitwise shows that search terms with 4 to 5 words are actually gaining ground and becoming more common. It may be that people are just learning how to use search more effectively but whatever the reason is, marketers must take advantage of this targeted audience.  This report just  helps to reinforce the strategy of targeted long tail phrases in your PPC campaigns. We have known for some time that a longer keyword string can produce more targeted results that convert more frequently and cost less. Its now good to know that this is a growing segment.

Online Marketing growth is still happening. You just have to look harder to find it. We continue to be optimistic about 2009 (regardless of what mainstream media is trying to sell us). And we are constantly looking for signs of opportunity. Surround yourself with positive and look for that silver lining. It is still there, just a little harder to see. A recent email from Jim Brody, Sales Manager at tripadvisor.com, indicated some good news for their website. "Comscore (the company that tells us all how many people visit our websites) reports that US traffic on TripAdvisor for December 2008 is up 8.8% from the US traffic in December 2007." wrote Brody. We have experienced similar upward trends for many of our clients also. Some of them with increases in the triple digits. While the economy as a whole is definitely under heavy stress, many online businesses, especially well designed and managed websites, have a great opportunity to come out of this recession unscathed. Perception truly is reality.

With all of the economic doom and gloom going on these days, its good to know that one form of advertising is still working... Online! Google recent 4th Quarter results were a glimmer of hope for online marketers that there is still business to be had online. Actually online appears to be the place to be. While many marketers are going to be rearranging their budgets for 2009 (compared to 2008), it looks as the good amount of marketing dollars have already been moved online. According to a survey, conducted jointly by Hearst Electronics Group and Goldstein Group Communications (GGC) , nearly half (47%) of all marketing spending is going to online strategies.