Welcome to the Fathom Blog
News & analysis on digital marketing & analytics
Search Engine Optimization and ROI on Radio Show
Interested in how to improve your return on investment from a search engine optimization perspective?
The topic will be the focus on a radio show today featuring Mike Murray, Fathom SEO’s vice president of search engine marketing.
It’s the LifeTips segment on WebasterRadio.
Tune in here at 5 p.m for the whole show. Mike is scheduled around 5:30.
How Will Google Dominate?
Search Engine Journal references an interesting Business Week Online feature on what the future may hold for aspects of commerce and even national defense given Google’s growing power and influence.
Paid Links are Paid Links for a Reason
Matt Cutts created quite a stir by asking people to report paid links to Google.He has generated nearly 170 comments in less than two days.
He tried to offer an explanation for those that managed to get through all of the comments. Google is already looking at paid links and wants as much information as it can get. No one has to be in the position of pointing out links they like and don’t like. But it is tough for Matt to couch this as merely information gathering when he’s asking people to use a spam report to share their perspectives and examples.
At any rate, paid links should drive traffic. If they somehow bypass scrutiny and influence organic rankings, all the better. But let’s call paid links for what they are. Why pay if they’re not doing their job?
Viral Marketing Agency Releases Tool To Track Online Buzz
Viral marketing tool released by Webbed
Marketing allows marketers to measure the social networking strength of
any website. This tool is free and available to everyone.
Webbed Marketing, an agency specializing in viral marketing, has announced the release of the Webbed-O-Meter.
This viral marketing tool will measure the amount of buzz surrounding
any website. A website's buzz consists of all the online references
made to that site by Internet consumers, bloggers, analysts, reviewers
and reporters.
Webbed Marketing's eMarketing Manager, Cate Craine, explains,
"Traditional marketing campaigns do not permeate as quickly as
consumer-generated buzz.
Buzz is produced and distributed in such a viral fashion that marketers
need to watch their site's online buzz. That is why the Webbed-O-Meter
is such a unique tool- it may be producing the first social networking
metric of its kind."
Webbed Marketing's Webbed-O-Meter utilizes a scale of 1-100. A higher
score represents a more significant buzz factor. Algorithms calculate a
site's online buzz by utilizing ten authoritative sources such as:
Yahoo!, Digg, Del.icio.us and Wikipedia. The Webbed-O-Meter is free and
available to anyone at http://www.webbedmarketing.com/webbedometer.
Craine adds, "Why should your company care about its buzz? Google your
company or product name and you'll find a large number of blogger
posts, discussion board comments and Wikipedia pages. Just think- these
consumer generated pages, not your company site, are the first
impression your company is making online as your customers, vendors,
partners, investors and employees are buzzing about your organization."
Along with the Webbed-O-Meter, Webbed Marketing also plans on
developing additional viral marketing tracking and management tools
that will remain free to the public.
About Webbed Marketing
Webbed Marketing consists of a team of viral marketing experts who have
over a decade of Internet marketing experience. The firm's objective is
to help businesses grow by utilizing the Internet and reaching online
influencers. Webbed Marketing offers its clients full Internet
marketing services including viral marketing programs, paid search
management, onsite search engine optimization training, and affiliate
program management. Clients include Cardinal Health, Bostech Corporation and Dominion Homes. To learn more about Webbed Marketing visit http://www.webbedmarketing.com/.
Category: Fathom Company News
PPC and SEO: Get Your Priorities Straight
A new Internet Retailer survey has tons of great data about how web retailers regard search marketing (paid and organic). But the stats are somewhat amusing. They’ll spend more on PPC, but they say search engine optimization provides a better value (higher conversions).
Paid search has an easier entry point. Google’s hype about its ad option is true. You can be up and running in no time. The problem is, you need to know what you’re doing. Throwing money out the window is not supposed to be an art form.
You use PPC as a supplement to SEO when you need to get traffic. And you use both when the numbers make sense. If you get the sales and the margins and you can afford to pay for both, then do so (for some keyword phrases).
The survey says merchants spend more on paid search (39.2%) than SEO compared to 34.7% who say they devote more cash to SEO than PPC. In terms of conversion rates, SEO wins – 46.1% vs. 37.3% for PPC.
Regardless of the funny spending/ROI numbers, the survey article reveals a lot about how retail marketers have matured in their thinking and practices. It’s well worth a look.
SEO and ROI: Friends or Foes?
Marketers should work harder to ensure that search engine optimization and ROI go hand in hand.
To that end, Michael Murray, Fathom’s vice president, has prepared a detailed article about the problems involved with SEO and ROI (and why the seem to be in opposing corners rather than on the same team).
Look for his 10 key suggestions in “New Archenemies? SEO and ROI – Say It Ain’t So, Joe.”It’s available at Marketing Pilgrim.
Labels: news, ROI, search engine optimization, seo, training, tutorial
Keyword Development: Broaden Your Mind
If you need keywords for a search engine optimization endeavor, don’t skimp and don’t get lazy.
Here are some tips to make the most of your research and selection:
WordTracker or Keyword Discovery Laziness
Entering keywords and deriving permutations isn’t enough. You have to know what to enter in order to get reasonable results. Savvy marketers don’t settle for what the databases throw at them the first few times. They know to take the KEI and competing pages with a grain of salt – that nature and frequency of page updates, domain and site longevity and many other factors should be weighed.
Competitor Analysis Mistakes
Unseasoned marketers can end of grabbing lousy keywords, either broad keywords that don’t work or keywords from aspects of a competitor that really don’t match the products/services of their client or company (often businesses have competing offerings but they don’t compete head to head in every sense).
Web Analytics Oversights
I’m all for checking the web analytics to see what keywords are used, but some data can be overlooked. If a keyword has a lot of searches, a marketer may think they have that covered when they don’t; maybe searches are for Yahoo! but not Google. If a search term has few searches, a young SEO professional may dismiss the keyword. But the keyword may be low simply because it’s not optimized.
Shallow Product/Service Analysis
Marketers who review products and services – even with the client – may not look deeply enough at the myriad ways people may search, the end user/applications/industries associated with the product names, etc.
Brand Names
Some people assume that brand/product names will rank well because of their unique nature. But they should be part of the keyword mix. If they include some portion of generic keywords in their names, any page optimization related to them may help the overall themes. Either way, if their rankings are low, they need to be included.
Vision Beyond Top 30
Marketers still look at the top 30 too much. As they weigh keywords for a program (even in-house), they check top 30 ranking results. What if the keyword ranks #35 or #56? A deeper check will reveal how close the term already is – even BEFORE optimization.Site
(Internal) Search
An evaluation of terms recorded by site search may validate other research or uncover potential keywords and phrases. This – like all keyword research – isn’t about finding just the perfect phrase. Any research activity should inspire other notions and ideas.
Broadening Keyword Research Scope
To generate ideas for keywords, marketers have access to a wealth of sources that may overlook, including terminology found in vertical directories, news releases, blogs, popular social search engines and websites, printed collateral, studies, white papers, forums, magazines and online newsletters.
Wisdom Beyond Keywords
Before committing to a keyword, a wise marketer will weigh many other factors, including whether the home page has an clear calls to action (the odds are high that a home page will rank for a powerful marquee keyword). They’ll look at the domain name, folder names, page names, ability to modify page titles, text navigation, headers, age of the site, number of pages, amount of content, ability to modify content, cache trends and how often the target pages can be updated.
Long Tail for Consumers, Fat Tail for Influencers
Smart e-tailers and direct marketers are optimizing well for the long tail. For those not familiar with the term, the long tail are those very specific keywords that are indicative of a qualified buyer. When I search on “lawn tractor” I could have a million intentions. When I search on “part #3443234 tubeless front tire MTD” I’m ready to buy. “Lawn tractor” is a fat tail term… very high search volume but ambiguous intent. A part number is a long tail term….low search volume, but it drives qualified visitors.
But reaching influencers is different. When launching a Word of Mouth campaign, I almost always start by launching a piece of content SEO’d for a fat tail term. Here’s why:
I’ve found that bloggers, moderators, web masters and other online influencers start their days by searching news engines for their fat term words, or by subscribing to RSS feed and alerts that hunt out fat tail terms. I optimize WOM seed content on terms like “Real Estate”, “Management Training”, “Google AdWords” and other terms that I would never compete on when it comes to drawing targeted buyers. This gets our client’s story, release, whitepaper or other content in front of influencers when they are hunting for content.
The result is that usually hundreds, sometimes thousands, of influencers get talking about our clients’ announcements.
IT Pros Favor Search
Search engines continue to be a popular reference source for IT professionals before they buy a product.
TechTarget and the CMO Council just released the IT Media Consumption Trends and IT Buyer Purchase intention study. Search engines came up #1 (62.4%) ahead of vendor websites, trade shows, newsletters and other sources of research.
Marketing (and online marketing in particular) offers an array of options for anyone. Clearly, search engines appear to be a reliable source of information.
Much of the report focuses on downloading activity. Learn more.
Yahoo! Makes Paid Inclusion Attractive Again
Over the last few years, paid inclusion lost its luster. Yahoo! confused the marketplace by charging per URL to ensure rapid indexing every couple of days. But it tacked on a per click fee as well. Nasty.
A new option, Search Submit Basic, is available. For an annual fee of $49 per URL, you can have the page indexed every 7 days – apparently without the extra click charges. It might be worthwhile for a few pages you want to target.
Here is the basic info (check out the guidelines too).
