Who makes search happen? The latest SEMPO and ClickZ Salary Survey on Search Marketing reveals the answers

This research gives a good summary of how search marketing is managed. Interesting if you're a search specialist or you manage search. The research shows the  growth, availability, and day-to-day operations happening in the search marketing industry in the the SEMPO and ClickZ Salary Survey Results. What are search marketers getting paid? What is the job growth for search? How many search marketers are in agencies? Answers to these questions along with discoveries relating to search marketers’ salaries, job roles and responsibilities, verticals/segments, compensation extras and perks, budgets and more can be found in the 2013 Salary Survey Results.

The survey was conducted to better understand the constantly evolving search marketing industry. The results of the survey provide valuable insights regarding the direction of the industry and what to look for in…

Examples and tips of using ORM to protect your Brand and increase brand loyalty

Online Reputation Management or ORM is a vital part of any online branding strategy. It is the new PR. Word might spread fast in print, but it doesn't come close to the speed in which messages reach the masses on the Internet. Managing your online reputation is not as difficult as you think, Over the past few years, many online reputation management companies have sprung up, but in many cases are a waste of your time and money as I'll explain. A major part of managing your online reputation revolves around heightening the amount of good exposure in the results of various search engines and minimizing the amount of negative exposure. This is particularly the case for brand name related searches. Essentially, you only want positive results showing up on Google's first page, as users do not usually proceed beyond…

Less than 100 days until Google Shopping Campaigns Switch: 6 migration musts for Advertisers

Do you remember 2012 when Google switched Google Shopping over to paid ads, and merchants on Google had a collective pain attack? It's happening again. This month Google announced they are switching the current version of Product Listing Ads (PLAs) over to the newer Google Shopping Campaigns format. Similar to the initial introduction of paid Product Listing Ads from (October 2012) , Google completely changed how Google Product Search functioned, and required merchants to make the switch within a certain timeline (July 2012). This time you can prepare in advance. How is Google changing Google Shopping and how can you get ready? Below are the details of how Google Shopping Campaigns are different from current Product Listing Ads, Google Shopping Campaigns best practices.

Google Shopping Campaigns vs. Current PLAs

Google Shopping Campaigns…

A larger ad format aimed at increasing ad response

Importance: [rating=5] Recommended link: New Facebook Ad Format in the right-hand column Facebook have launched a new sponsored ad design in the coming, with more visual designs, to increase engagement for Advertisers. The ads will appear in the right hand column for more prominence of ads and videos making them consistent with newsfeed ads:

 What's the buzz about the new Facebook changes?

According to Facebook, these are the reasons behind the improvements: Improved clickthrough rates?  Facebook is looking to increase its CPC revenue and increase competition between advertisers with this new format. So Advertisers will have a greater opportunity to get their message across. Some tests have seen…

AdWords data to be shown as “Not Provided” in Google Analytics and other analytics systems from 9th April 2014 - 5 things you need to know

Importance (to search marketers): [rating=5]

Recommended link: Google AdWords advisory

This is big news for companies that invest Google AdWords, particularly if it's a big contributor to their business and they mainly use their analytics system for reviewing effectiveness and ROI. It has less impact if you rely on Google AdWords own reports or a third-party system using their API.

1. It brings paid search data in line with natural search data. Google has been removing SEO keyword data for over 2 years. As we show in this post on not provided for SEO. The proportion of keywords marked “not provided” has risen over the past two years, so it’s now typically over 80% of searches.

2. It’s not unexpected - Google needed to make the privacy of search…

A briefing on the options to improve your visibility with International SEO

For any company that trades overseas, or hopes to expand into foreign markets in the future, International SEO is a big factor in gaining awareness of their brand, products and services. When you need to market your website in multiple locations, there are a number of different options.  However, the SEO implications of each approach are often overlooked by many organisations, leading to underwhelming organic search performance in each locality. It is therefore essential that marketers are aware of the pros and cons that accompany each method of structuring international sites, before making a decision relating to the expansion of their website to target additional locations. In this article I will explain the different options for marketers to gain visibility in different countries and the pros and cons of each.

Targeting audiences in other countries

Often,…

An in-depth tutorial to optimizing your business for localized search

Google’s campaign to deliver more relevant search results to users has led them down the path to personalization and localization. We’re not just talking about their country-specific search engines, we’re talking local cities and municipalities. With the growing number of users on mobile and other portable devices, localized search results are in high demand. There is a group that’s affected by this move towards localization. Brands with multiple locations, that generally rank on Google.com but are not necessarily targeting specific local areas in their campaigns, are at a disadvantage. This has particularly been the case since mid 2012 when Google's Venice update gave prominence to local business in the search results through maps and Google Places listings. So, why is it better for you to target individual local areas even if you’re a brand with multiple locations? Local Branding – At the end of…

New research from the DMA compares the effectiveness of online and offline customer acquisition channels

I recently attended the launch of the DMA Customer Acquisition Barometer commissioned by McDowall. This is set to provide a regular benchmark to help marketers compare their approach to customer acquisition. In this post I will highlight some of the most useful findings from the detailed report.

What does customer acquisition mean in 2014?

The video below summarises some qualitative evaluation from marketers showing their views on customer acquisition. The panel, Chris Bibby, Head of Performance Marketing and Wonga, Michelle de Souza, Head of CRM and Customer Insights at Age UK, and the Business Development Director at HP discussed how for customer acquisition investment to be effective it needs to review the long-term impact in terms of lifetime customer value and churn, showing the importance of having the right measures in place. 

[youtubevideoembedder id="2ooyKbcjQ9A"]

Best customer acquisition sources

The headline…

5 SEO activities that integrate with your content marketing activities

Although SEO and content marketing are often still managed separately, there are many activities that overlap between them and some would even argue that a large part of SEO and content marketing are the same. Although I would consider SEO and content marketing to be different disciplines (at least at this stage in their respective evolutions), the lines between both activities are becoming increasingly blurred and opportunities to integrate SEO and content marketing should always be considered.

When planning content marketing activity, you should always consider the organic search benefits great content can bring if executed correctly. These are give specific techniques you can use to help ensure that SEO is supporting your content marketing efforts and vice-versa:

1. Keyword research

Whilst I firmly believe that great content should not…

A step-by-step Guide to producing Sitemap.xml to help Google crawl your content

An XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) sitemap is a form of markup language and is consisted of tags that define pages that should be indexed by search engines. XML Sitemaps are designed for search engines and not for users. If you're new to the idea, and  want to know how a sitemap looks like, they're typically available to see as a file sitemap.xml on the site, for example http://www.dell.com/sitemap.xml and these may link to other sitemaps for different countries and content categories, for example, http://www.dell.com/content-uk-sitemap.xml. In this simple way we can easily identify if companies have a sitemap.xml and if the values in the tags, for each page, are properly implemented. These are some important tips that you need to consider when deciding whether to use XML Sitemaps. The XML optimisation will help us boost the indexation process of the site amongst search…