After the Click

I wrote an article for the December 2009 issue of SES Magazine entitled After the Click: Using Analytics to Improve. This is a follow up to a presentation I gave at the 2009 Annual MN AMA Conference in Minneapolis. Companies can use free enterprise-level software like Google Analytics to improve the performance of their search marketing campaigns. More importantly, this can be done without spending more on paid search traffic. Rather, they can learn to be more efficient with their existing search traffic. Often companies do not test landing page performance enough to optimize them. In doing so, they are paying for traffic that will not convert. My quick recommendation is to pick your best converting landing page and test an alternative. Even if it does not perform better, you will learn something that will help your website going forward.

CRE8 Conference

I will be speaking at the CRE8 Conference in Orlando, Florida next Wednesday, April 15th. The conference goal is to help attendees improve marketing and creative effectiveness. I will be speaking about SEO and SEM: Getting Found Online. Attendees include Adobe, Apple, Boeing, Disney, and Microsoft. It is taking place at the Disney Coronado Resort. My main thesis is that design and search are both essential, and without either component, the other will suffer. From a strategic standpoint, companies need to invest in a high quality design that supports their business model and use search marketing to drive traffic to their website. The concept is simple, but many companies learn this lesson the hard way. It is important to understand that high-end design and good search marketing can coexist, but there needs to be a plan at the outset. In addition, SEO is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing commitment to usability and content. I look forward to meeting everyone at the conference.

TIMA February Seminar

I will be presenting at the TIMA February Seminar next Wednesday, February 25th in Raleigh, NC. The topic will be How Search Marketing Can Help You Weather the Tough Economy. Advertisers are cutting back spending, and increasingly they are forced to justify every dollar. There is a parallel shift of dollars from offline to online media, as online can be tracked more effectively. My presentation will cover PPC, SEO, and analytics, and I will provide actionable tactics to attendees on ways they can improve their online marketing. There are a number of great free tools available from Google. If you are in the Raleigh area, you can register here.

Search Discovery Signs Atlanta Spirit

I am pleased to announce that Search Discovery has been hired by the Atlanta Spirit, owner of the Atlanta Hawks, Atlanta Thrashers, and Philips Arena, to provide them with SEO and analytics consulting services. We are excited at the opportunity to work with 2 of the 4 major sports teams in Atlanta. With the economic slowdown, it is extremely important for companies to maximize their potential through search marketing and analytics. We will be working with the organization to improve their organic rankings and inbound traffic as well optimizing the site through better measurement. The Atlanta Spirit websites use Omniture analytics software. You can read more about this agreement in our press release.

FAST Forward '09

I will be presenting a case study on our client AutoTrader.com at the FAST Forward '09 conference in Las Vegas next Tuesday, February 10th. The topic of my presentation is how search and analytics data can inform site design and user experience. AutoTrader.com has created new pages on their site with two purposes in mind. First, they want to improve their SEO rankings. Second, they want to improve the user experience. Post-search users, who have already told Google what they want, should not be taken to the home page. Once we know what a user is searching for, we can provide them with a better page that attempts to guess their next steps using analytics data from Omniture. SEO is not about rankings; it's about dollars. This is also a CFO-friendly project because AutoTrader.com did not have to invest in additional content. Rather they're rendering existing content in a new way that provides incremental benefits simultaneously to both the site and to users.

Cyber Monday

I thought it was fitting that I post a message about Cyber Monday, which is one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. People typically shop offline during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and once they get back to the office on the Monday after Thanksgiving, they start placing their online orders. Paid search marketing is a smart and cost effective way to reach a targeted audience. You will get people looking for your product at the time they are asking for it. Many retailers have special Cyber Monday promotions, which you can usually find when you come to their website. Even if you are not currently buying keywords, online search is a great way to see what the competition is up to. You can search for items that you want to rank for and see who the top results are on both the paid and the organic side. More importantly, pay attention to the landing page. Does it make you want to shop there? How can this information help you to compete more effectively? Think about this as you prepare your 2009 online marketing strategy.

Social Status Seminar

Yesterday morning I participated on a panel at the first Social Status Seminar presented by PR firm Trevelino Keller. I represented Search Discovery, and other panelists included The Content Factor, dNeero, Luckyfish, and Vitrue. The goal of the seminar was to educate the audience about the different forms of social media and to provide a roadmap on how to get started. Social media is not a one-time marketing gimmick, but rather an ongoing relationship with your customers. Therefore, if you choose to get involved, you need to make sure that you have a resource to manage it on an ongoing basis. From Search Discovery's perspective, we can help clients optimize their content for the search engines and drive traffic to the page via paid search. Clients can measure the impact of their social media presence through analytics tools, including Google Analytics, which is a free tool. It's free to start your own Facebook page, so it's worth a try. At the very least, you'll get some key learnings about your target audience.