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Archive for February, 2009
Google’s SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results at SMX West 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Morning session at the SMX West Expo for the Social Media track: SearchWiki, Google Personalized Results and search customization based on previous queries or geographic location are all ways that Google’s “regular” results seem to be disappearing. This session looks at how “one-size-fits-all” results at Google are continuing to disappear, along with strategies on how to be successful in a more personalized results environment. Session moderated by Danny Sullivan.
SeachWiki
Corey Anderson, Manager of SearchWiki at Google starts us off with definitions and uses of SearchWiki. A tool that lets users add, remove, re-rank and comment on results. These notes, aggregated, can be seen by others. Why did Google create SearchWiki? Large fraction of search is re-finding. In field studies and user studies – users want to bookmark, improving proper name searches, collect information on a task and refind hard to find information.
SearchWiki is being used for both very long tail searches and also more high volume searches. SearchWiki is still in development and some of the main changes include visual treatments. Bottom of every page includes a link to see notes and submissions. Could be huge opportunity for analytics, but still relatively low percentage of people using this. SearchWiki and Personalized don’t directly interact yet. A very confident description from Bryan is “explicit information trumps implicit information.”
Personalized Search
Bryan Horling, Software Engineer at Google gives us the answers to why personalize searches? Many searches are ambiguous. Users want the right information as quickly as possible. Getting the right results sometimes require knowledge of the user or their context. This should be done with privacy-sensitivity in mind.
Search Details list the transparency of your personalized search. Upper right-hand corner of SERP will let users view changes and updates. Click through to modify or see results without personalized ranking. Control is given to users to manage their Web History. Login to your account and visit /history to modify, pause or delete your history tracking.
Regional localization is also part of the search metrics. Disambiguation can help promote like topics for recent searches. Ambiguous queries are ranked uniformly. Making results disambiguous means Google can also learn about your topics over time. If you were just searching for furniture, a search for Jordans would promote the furniture brand vs. the shoe brand for your SERP.
Google is experimenting with Preferred Sites as a choice of your results. This would help bookmark and find hard to find results in future.
What does this mean for SEM?
Harder to collect metrics and Harder to see how your pages rank. But, easier for people looking for your service to find you and easier to retain customers who prefer your business. #1 spot isn’t winner take all anymore. Could level the playing field.
The answer to remain high ranking is continue to provide compelling content and interesting content. Appeal to users and not search engines. You can control personalization for your searches. Ways to view without:
use search details, disable it by appending &pws=0 to searches, sign out, Firefox extensions, edit and/or turnoff web history.
Currently there are no direct connections between Search Wiki and AdWords. The search results and ranking must be really strong to override the standard results. It will always go back to best results for users. If new pages are created, and are valuable, it will be able to climb on those merits. Personalization will not insert or yank things out, possibly only re-rank them.
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
Search and Reputation Management presented at SMX West 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
This session focuses on reputation. What do people find when they search for you by name? Is it negative? If so, what do you do? What can you do? This session explores some of the tactics available.
Noah Elkin from Steak presents the rules for Online Search and managing your reputation at a high level.
Rule # 1 – Be proactive
Setup social media campaigns and communication avenues.
Rule #2 – Be relevant
capture and analyze relevant data. Help your audiences by supplying them with the right information at the right time.
Rule #3 – Be tactical
Leverage blended search to get your story across in alternative formats. YouTube, blogs, forums and social networks help tap intro traditional. Use paid media to gain immediate differentiation
Maximize reach and distribution of our message by tailoring language and tags.
Rule #4 – Be Authentic and honest
Put all opportunities to a “real human personality” test. Comcast cares now has a face in front of a faceless corporate entity. communicate clearly about what you are doing. Avoid marketing-speak and legalese.
Rule #5 – Be accountable and humble
Take responsibility for mistakes – review the JetBlue scandal or Mattel recalling toys. Keep your organization customer-centric. Help employees understand the impact of their interactions on the brand. Remember most interactions turn up on blog posts.
Rule #6 – Be responsive and engaging
Sift through conversations to distill common themes. Make an effort to stimulate dialogue and interaction. Build goodwill by rewarding customers for their attention and participation.
Rule #7 – be responsible
Move beyond crisis management and advance to brand extension and engagement marketing instead of just brand protection. Foster coproarate and “accidental” advocates.
Chris Bennett of 97th Floor begins a presentation on Reputation Management.
Most important aspect is immediacy and be proactive. Respond immediately even if it is at a stage where you may have to provide details at a future time.
Understand your foes. If someone is ranting about you, they mention your name over and over again and this is hard to defeat. Why do they rank will in the search engines for your name? Quality of links? Number of internal links and number of inbound links? How often is it getting cached. Once you understand the page factors, you can develop a formula to rank in front of the competitor.
Generate buzz with relevant social media sites. Create reviews and social media profiles. Link to the profiles and make sure they are active. If they are lightweight or of little authority, then they won’t have the “juice” needed to provide any help. Go ahead and grab any social media real estate associated with your brand. This prevents “poaching” your name and profiles.
Leslie Carruthers of The Search Guru talks about the Ethics of Online Reputation Management.
The next part of the presentation focuses on how to manage negative postings or listings. The tactics and legal ramifications of Online Reputation Management (ORM) can be categorized in the following topics:
- Censorship
- Misinformation
- Vendetta
- Consumer Rights
- Time Sensitivity
- Long term reputation
- $$
Develop a long term strategy with a pre-developed plan. Know who you are going to be in the face of potential trouble. Know your team. Know who is going to manage the reputation of your brand, also know if you can’t do it, then realize it and select a point person ahead of time.
If there is misinformation about your brand on the web, be clear and concise and direct. Ask for removal without being personal. If the complaint is personal, it could start a backlash and negative viral campaign. Don’t send something that would be sent around to share with others or it will feed the fire of ranking higher as a negative review. It’s not about being right or wrong sometimes, since it is often a point of view. Currently, the FTC has not pursued any legal claims against reviews. For example, Cease & Desist orders are legal, but ineffective because websites are protected by First Amendment, Communications Decency Act and SLAPP. The best approaches are transparency and directness.
Review the white paper The Search Guru provided on their website at http://www.thesearchguru.com/reputation
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
Keyword Research is the Bedrock of your SEO Foundation
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Keywords are still the words and text used to query the web. Not using images and video yet on a large scale basis, but keyword research is still the main table stake. One of the first sessions at SMX West is on Keyword Research. The first step to success with any marketing campaign is to know your message. With search marketing, that means knowing the search terms that are being used by your target audience. Understand what they’re searching for, and you can tune-in to their traffic via search engines.
Christine Churchill of www.KeyRelevance.com presented the following topic. Why do Keyword Research? Focus on the fundamental first steps in search marketing:
- Correcting bad keyword choices
- Increase conversion (success) by speaking the customer’s language
- Develop a list of relevant terms to target in SEO, PPC, Blogs, Images, Videos, Press Releases and Social Marketing
- Competitive Intelligence insights
- Keywords give ideas for site design and navigation
- Knowing the traffic potential helps plan budgeting
- Discover new keyword opportunities
The Long Tail Concept helps find now opportunities. “20 to 25% of the queries that Google sees today have never been seen before.” Udi Manber, Google VP of Engineering.
Keyword research is an iterative process and ongoing. Create a keyword list from brainstorming and without judgement to start. This creates a broad list of keywords from existing print jargon, press releases, collateral within company, but beware of insider jargon. Consider using a SiteSearch box that captures keyword data. Do a company and product review to see what others are saying about the product and service. Use keyword generation tools from Google such as Google Trends, Insights or free Google Search based keyword tools.
After you build you list of keywords, Expand it by using comparison terms or reviews. Search reviews of your community, look for misspellings and typos. Can you geolocate the terms? There are also several permutation tools available to help concatenate terms. Finally, it is time to Evaluate your list of expanded terms. Look for relevancy – is this phrase relevant to my sales or goals process? Popularity may lead to refinement. Competing against the most popular keywords can be costly, look for seasonal traffic, more focused phrases further in the goal process that recognizes the “user intent.” User intent recognizes viewers in a research vs. purchase phase and can also related to demographics of the audience.
Now you should have a fairly extensive list of keywords and phrases. Build your strategy around this list and then began the circular process of analyzing traffic, adding new iterations and monitoring success along with the important culling of non-performing keyphrases.
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
Danny Sullivan Keynote at SMX West
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Search in 2009 is the opening keynote at this year’s SMX Conference. Danny Sullivan is conference co-chair and Search Engine Land’s editor-in-chief.
The crowd at SMX West ranges from in-house search marketers to agency driven professionals. Danny has done a great job of promoting and educating the industry. The largest search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN Live are the players that we both love and sometimes are disappointed, just like children you love, but sometimes hope for them to be a bit better. Google still owns nearly 70% of the market. Yahoo reaches about 20% of the market and MSN hovers near the 15% market based on Comscore and other research. Google is obviously the older kid in the family.
Danny lets the crowd know Google is much like a habit, sometimes a good habit, but probably won’t kill you. No particular need for people to “kick it” or switch. The competitors are in disarray and stronger than before. They are the powerful blip on the radar screen. Some Google wishes include:
Show real-time CPC for ads, Tell publishers what AdSense split is, Solve map spam issues, and think carefully before moving into further Google-hosted content (Google Book Search, Time-Life @ Goggle Images, Knol).
Yahoo is the Little Engine That Should’ve. Trying to compete with the largest competitor. They are currently in a bit of a leadership dissarray with a new CEO. They have suffered a loss of talent and part of their “mojo” factor. Danny wishes they would restore faith if possible. Keep innovating for products like Search Monkey, but enough with the “open” solution. Please don’t do things like angering you advertisers. It’s in their Terms, but they have reserved the right to make changes to your campaigns and have started making updates in campaigns on their client’s behalf.
Google’s main business is Search, Ads and apps. Microsoft is split between Software and Services. Search is saying they want to compete, but they don’t show us they love search. The search engine industry would love to see a competitor to Google, their rooting for Microsoft and that just is amazing, right? Microsoft MSN Windows Live – is that your brand? Really? Do the hard things too and you can compete. If everyone’s the same, no one will leave Google. Competition is good.
Danny tells us what we already know, Google is the 300 pound gorilla, but the things taking bites out of the market share include “killerettes.” These are the tools that grab market share, provide a value and can compete at a different level. Summmize / Twitter search is real-time. Why don’t Google and Yahoo offer Twitter search? A really powerful tool and it may prevent Google from having this type of data. Loves Urbanspoon as a huge database of reviews. Google has nothing like this. Can you imagine trying to choose a restaurant and reviews based on a Google search? Nearly impossible. Location based events are mobile based answers to immediate questions. Eventful, Upcoming and Yelp are all “killerette” apps that can provide value, but it is sometimes hard to remember all the search applications available. One of the new jobs as a search marketer is to find them and use them when appropriate. Googlettes may even offer further market reach such as YouTube, Google Blog Search.
Search 4.0 will be personalized and focus on social search. It will reshape what you do personally and tailor your search results based on location, previous query, and web history. Google SearchWiki allows anyone to customize the order of results they see. Search Results continue to diversify and shotgun approaches to SEO are likely to hit fewer targets. It is harder and harder to see the same results for two individuals. Good content will continue to be rewarded.
Danny gives is a bit of a wake up call. SEO often gets a bad rep as Snake Oil salesmen. Maybe time for a name change such as “Technical SEO” and focus on things you can do to on-page content and architecture. No more black hat or white hat debate, stop using “Crap Hat” stuff like off-topic link drop, automated link insertion, comment spamming, etc. If it’s crap, even if you can get away with it, stop it. Like your kids, you often have to tell them you don’t care if everyone else is doing it, you should say no and tell others to say no.
There seems to be a rise on In-House search marketing. Agencies should think about how to support them. The market is probably changing and outsourcing will not go away. There are conflicting reports on how financial crisis and search are reacting. There are spend pull-backs, but continued support. Still hard to say how hard it will hit, but analytics will become even more crucial. You probably have plenty of people coming to your site, but converting them will be critical. Analytics will help focus this effort.
Watch here for future developments and coverage of the SMX conference.
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
