Session description: Google, Yahoo, Ask, and other search engines have changed the way they present search results, and the changes have major implications for interactive marketers. The still emerging trend, referred to as unified search, integrates vertical content into the main natural search results page. Images, videos, news and blog posts, previously accessible only by clicking between tabs in the results, now appear in the main query results. How can you adjust your search strategy to capitalize on the changes? Learn what types of content have grown in importance and hot to capitalize accordingly.
Moderator: Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing and publisher of the TopRank Online Marketing blog

• Chris Heuer, Partner, The Conversation Group
• Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive
• Bridget Shea, Director of Account Services, SendTec

Lee Odden
Explanation of universal search. Execution is different: Ask 3D—3 columns; disambiguation/results/images & video
Live: harder to prompt video
Yahoo & Google: video mixed in
(examples: Shrek III, Nintendo Wii—integrating Google News, Blog search results (as of yesterday))
1/2-2/3 of the audience executing universal search right now
Pushing site on several different channels: Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Chris Heuer
Search is the beginning of a conversation. Social media is also a conversation—search is the end, social is the beginning. Text, audio, video & stuff by people and for people. You’re people, corporations are people.

Success requires clarity of purpose. The original idea round SEO was to help people find answers (ie your content). Universal search is a natural evolution—provide many different types of info. It’s in the best interest of the searcher. Universal search simply requires search marketing professional to apply keyword optimization to all channels. It’s still about “filling the funnel.”

Put the searcher first. Serving their interest is the purpose, form which you leverage the “because effect.” Interruption isn’t welcome. Roadblocks are . . . blocking.

Serve the market and you serve the marketer.

Making media optimized to engage searcher in the conversation is the optimization of marketing. Universal means thinking about other media in the same way you used to think about landing pages.

Paul Bruemmer

Have you responded to capitalize on the changing face of search engines?

How can you adjust search strategy to capitalize on these changes?

Learn what kinds of content have grown in importance (and how to capitalize on those).

Is Google Backing off from universal search? (15 Oct search insider column, Mark Simon). Very thought provoking

1. Are users confused by natural search?
2. Does universal search make Google money?
3. What about Google’s tabs image/video/etc?
4. Does it erode relevancy?

He’s going to rebut those arguments.

Understand Google’s culture: It was created as a research project; heavily anchored in math. Large amounts of free, relevant info. Successful search & advertising DNA created off the back of organic listings. It’s not about paid search; all about user experience.

Google’s marketing and PR people do a very good job of distracting analysts and journalists from Google’s core activities (it’s all analytical, mathematical—not emmotional)
infolab.standford.edu/~backrub/Google.html — their initial abstract/plan in 1997, got them the grant at Stanford

Is research history?
Google wants to bring DGM, video product reviews, catalogs, books, local, maps, products, web, finance image blogs etc etc etc. Research probably isn’t history.

Do people trust consumers’ opinion? yes—he expects a big growth pattern in video
Video customer reviews
Yideo product demos—videos go viral, videos in conversion
He who hesitates is lost—get to work on universal search

Bridget Shea

She’ll play devil’s advocate. Any shift in the organic listings will have affect on paid listings. We can see that visually the SERP is going to change. For any of you that read the Enquiro research with 2010 SERP, the changes are certainly even more drastic.

It looks like a major shift, but I think this will have a very small impact on the core fundamentals of search campaign management.

We’re always getting back to the fact that it’s nothing new that search has all these dynamic variables. We always have to look at “cost allowable” CPL, etc. Core fundamentals—if you have that intact, you’re ready. It’s just another variable to deal with. Like seasonality—holiday season doesn’t mean you have to scrap everything you’re doing the rest of the year. Like competition—new companies or products don’t mean everything you’ve done is completely irrelevant.

It’s very math-driven, especially in paid side.

The image is most obvious. If you put the image in the middle of the organic listings—it changes the way the users’ eyes go. If you’re getting more consideration on the organic side, you may get less consideration on the paid side.

Another thing that might change is average position. Ask3D—overall average position. We might have 2 average positions—overall and within each individual media category.

Things that impact consumers can then impact marketing. One idea: price comparison within SERP—you might start to see a shift that could be big. If consumers can find all the info that they need and there’s a corollary B&M—if the SERP has reviews, specs, info, local address and store hours could drive your online sales offline.

Some agencies will be better positioned already, but I don’t think we need to scrap everything we know—make improvements and upgrades to move quickly with it. Agencies and SEOs that have full service are better prepared—already doing paid, SEO, video, etc.

An area where agencies could make up some ground, certainly with video in SERPs—take the same video for a tv campaign, cut it up, get it online and add online CTAs, voila.

Additional data points mean we need to not rely on our old ways of doing analytics—big upgrade there.

You can’t rely on one great high-caliber analytics guru—find systems to make all those analytics replicable and scalable to grow business and not get bogged down in data.

Flexible technology. If we’re gonna throw in other variables, think about all the different parameters in query strings—agencies with proprietary technology and those that can modify and track parameters and conversions will definitely be in a good place.

Lee’s question: What do you think is the low-hanging fruit for the organizations that are already publishing different kinds of content to take advantage of universal search.

Paul: certainly along the lines of what Bridget was saying. Those who have the materials need to just get them up and get it going. That’s very low hanging fruit

Chris: the linking behavior around it—having an index page of your images, give images relevance

Paul: Weather.com did a great job implementing their video for earth forecast. Their video pageviews have increased 400% by essentially creating a site map of their videos with thumbnails, links, text, etc.

They’re doing a great job of organizing that data.

Bridget: It’s kind of the last check on the box is once we go live on their TV campaigns is that we launch is on Google video as well

Chris: there are all these sites where you can put up your content for free (blip, flickr, youtube) and link back to the brand

Lee: promoting those different media types—upload your video to your site and submit it to those free sites.

Chris: it’s about serving your clients’ needs. They need this, they demand it, someone is going to serve those needs. Are you going to find a way to serve those needs or will you partner out?

Paul: you’ve gotta have content, and if you don’t you have to look at all the other media and find a way to provide the content or be lost in the sea of data.

Is there a preference if there’s something appropriate, tagged appropriately, it’s more likely to come up in SERPs (if video or image)?

Paul: Universal search is not where it’s gonna be 12 months from now. They’re throwing a lot of switches. There will no doubt be a mathematical algorithm to find what people want.

Bridget: they’re smart about how they’re testing. There’s a reason why the page isn’t filled with just video and images. You only see maps when doing a local type search.

Lee: Google Blogoscoped posted screen shots of universal paid results. Very much dynamic and in flux.

Paul: it’s embryonic at this point. Not a foregone conclusion about its direction.

Chris: I don’t see a future where you’d see 10 video results. It comes down to individual preferences and learning styles. Some people are number-driven, some story-driven. 5-1 difference in video v. audio downloads. Yeah, they’re going to other tabs and just listening to it play. It’s a matter of individual preference—may set in profiles.

Paul: You hit the nail on the head there. Gord interviewed Marissa Mayer a while ago: people are tired of network television telling them the news. People want the news the way they want the news and they’ll get it from Goolge. Google provides it to you in a vast, universal way. That’s the direction.

Lee: difference between choosing your content and random access content.

Paul, you showed a shot where there was a right-rail video pd search. Was that live?

Paul: That was live and it was gone the next day—one ad, two “videos” results, two “products” results (very like Ask 3D).

Video is easier—like to be entertained. It’s a lot less of recall and retainment. The advent of more advertainment is going to make it harder to get ROI than it is today. The world may be bigger, but I think it would be harder to dive good ROI through video

Paul: Marketers have their centric POV in getting ROI, but that’s not consumers/searchers POV and goal.

Chris: people don’t want to be advertised to. It’s an interruption. Social graph—how do we monetize it? I’m there to be social, not to transact. Same with YouTube. People don’t want marketers in a lot of their conversations because they’re trying to get them to do things they don’t want to do. But helping them do what they want to do? That’ll work.

Followup: but why should I, then, work on my entertaining video when it doesn’t help?

Bridget: It’s not just entertainment. It should have a strong CTA, it needs to be clear what you want the do after they view it.

Lee: it’s the content that gives them value but also has a CTA

Chris: this shift is NOT about selling, it’s about helping people buy. When they’re ready, they need to be able to find it

Search is a textual medium—Ask 3D commercial. I’m just wondering if this is what the searcher wants, I would submit that if someone’s going to a search engine, if they want an image or video (which they often indicate in query). If it’s not indicated in the query, I don’t think it’s what they’re looking for. There are some improvements that universal does great, but are we getting away from the simple elegance that search provided?

Lee: I have to believe that search engines are looking at click stream data—for this type of query, what type or result they go to, and factoring that data in future SERPs.

Bridget: Huge shift on local with maps onebox for local search. It comes down to preferences and local.

Paul: remember the common denominator. Google is anchored in math. As humans, we can’t do Google’s calculations. It’s gonna be very complex, how they arrive at this.

Followup: from the users’ perspective, what do they want? Are they looking for a rich media experience every time?

Paul: that’s what they’re trying to find out. Google has 30 data centers costing $2b/yr, 400k servers—they’re into it.

Chris: people often don’t know what they’re searching for. They think they can search and just find it. See what they want in SERPs. Helping to direct them more specifically to the things they’re looking for. [requiring less query refinement]

From the advertisers’ standpoint, and working with our clients, it’s around what are people doing when they’re at your site. Are they watching your test drive video? Put it in Google video and drive traffic there. A lot of this going around keyword up there. Not every result gives a universal result. It’s back on you—what are people doing on your site?

Chris: Marketing has popularly become associated with selling. The original idea of marketing is matching the value of a product/service with the audience, the people who will drive the most value from it. If we get back to that, it will changes things drastically.

Would you say our low-hanging fruit should be not only including images in Flickr and video on YouTube, but creating a universal LP—include images, video, etc. If you have a product, you want to show everything on that same page—blog, review, text, video, image.

Bridget: you’re gonna want to test that. When you have two product offerings, we do a lot of landing page testing where we give them a very clear decision. You might offer both paths. We don’t know if it’s termite or pest control. If we let them choose. If it’s a broader term that’s a brand term, again it’s going to follow the same principles. More likely: take whether broad or specific query to match to pages like you’re doing now.

Paul: example—Amazon. Long long product pages, everything on there. Do well in organic and paid.

Chris: social media allows you serve a/b markets. Helps you create serendipity—long tail keyword. Those 20 people at the end of the spectrum that call it something else. More content is better!

Yesterday we heard 80% of clicks are on organic. One more tool bar on Ask, no organic results ATF (well, images and video are probably organic results)

Lee: Clicks on search results are on organic side. For folks who aren’t doing SEO, it’s moot. But if you are, and landscape is changing on types of content represented, what’s getting clicks—it’s an opportunity for you

Gord: We understand images much faster than text. It’s a much longer cycle to understand & process text. Spend a little less time with the spreadsheets, spend a little more time looking at what makes your customer tick.

Comments

Moderator:

• Todd Friesen

Speakers:

• Mark Jackson, President / CEO, VIZION Interactive, Inc
• Lyndsay Walker, Web Analytics Coordinator / SEO Specialist, WestJet / Lyndseo
• Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive
• Alan K’necht, Founder & President, K’nechtology Inc

The first speaker of this conference is Mark Jackson, President / CEO, VIZION Interactive, Inc. Just like the man says, he will cover Keyword Research, Creating a SE friendly architecture and Building content.

Keyword Research: Mark feels that most people cannot even do this well.

• Know your audience and target them
• Don’t only stick to popular phrases
• Create a list of target words that matter (Find words from the users not your boss)
• Decide relevancy
• Create a spreadsheet

Next step:

• Find out who is ranking which keyword and why
• Create your own niche
• Determine factors to compete with words
• Develop your content

In terms of competitive analysis for pages, Yahoo! performs the best.

Important Pointers:

• Incorporate the keyword research
• Incorporate comp analysis then lay out your site
• Use keywords in pages
• assign tags, metas, etc.

SE friendly sites can be aesthetically pleasing too. Just remember the pointers:

• Stay away from JavaScript, Flash intros, Image based navigations.
• Allow space for content
• Use images sparingly
• Include "alt" and "title" in images
• Static URLs are preferred
• Design should be part of the third phase

A great example of this is Trip Advisor.

Building content:

• Content should be engaging to both readers and search engines
• Start internal-linking
• Stay away from marketing fluff
• Use Anchor texts
• Blogs are great for getting out quick content
• Research well

Todd takes the example of Nike, as they rank great for footwear and not running shoes because they never use the word.

Next speaker is Alan K’necht, the founder & president, K’nechtology Inc.

Linear Approach:

• Search engines care about words and positioning of words
• Search engines give more preference to things on top than at bottom
• Use 2-tier design architecture
• Separate content from presentation
• Organize content logically
• Use H1 tag first
• Use CSS to position

Newspaper Approach:

• Headlines first
• Newspapers add links to inner pages. (Make sure these have your targeted keywords)
• Add graphical non-required items lower down
• Stick image/graphics at the end of the page

A great tip is to use the Firefox Webmaster Toolbar. This way you know what the site looks like. Remember content comes first and then navigation etc. Think of what’s important and that should appear first.

All in all, make your site search engine-usable.

Next up is Lyndsay Walker, Web Analytics Coordinator / SEO Specialist, WestJet.

Design for your visitors:

• Clear navigation for both search engines and visitors.
• AVOID FLASH. This serves no purpose. Use CSS or Java instead.
• Pick content over images. Fresh content is best.
• Use Divs
• Use stats. Find out what people are using, learn from it and put it to your advantage
• Design for and test everything in Firefox. Afterwards, tweak it for IE.
• Keep in mind a mobile design too

Must haves:

• Title tags must be unique
• Meta description tag. These should be targeted to the specifics in the page
• Header tags – place emphasis on the most crucial words
• Strong code-to-content ratio
• Use DIVs over tables
• Don’t forget your keywords
• Links. Don’t forget internal linking

It’s finally the turn of Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive.

Organic site structure:

Server configuration: robot.txt, redirects, 404 error codes, internal broken links, duplicate content, dedicated IP address, alias URLs, transfer of keyword page rankings, etc.

Web Site Architecture: Pay attention to:-

• Inclusion ratio
• Directory structure and naming conventions
• Internal linking structure
• Dynamic and persistent URLs
• Site Maps (HTML)
• Privacy statement

Content Generation:

• Keep a watch on your competition. You have to be on par or better
• Textual content types: articles, industry news, etc
• Think about content promotion while you’re generating it- Blogs, RSS feeds etc

Content Optimization:

• Almost the same as Lyndsay’s list of must haves.
• Natural Link Profile:
• Ensure your links are natural-looking
• Imagine you’re in a neighbourhood and you want your links to look good

Deep Link Profile:

• Ratio of your links to subpages in comparison to your homepage’s links.

Additional Considerations:

• Feeds
• Paid search
• Local search/ mobile search (map locations, XHTML for mobile)
• Development and administrative staff etc.

Comments

Tag:

Stacey writes:

“Finally today we announced that Red Hat and Hyperic will be working together on the development of a common systems management platform.

……
As you know, back in 2005 was originally OEMed to create JON before the Red Hat acquisition. At the time, the software licensed was still closed and the software has not been upgraded since, rather JBoss and now Red Hat has been updating the software privately. The new project will update the software contributions from Hyperic to its latest software, contribute the additional code written by the JON team, and work jointly to create a roadmap of future features. And of course make it all open source! (GPL v2)

…….

This new open source project is meant to create a repository of common services to be used in future versions of Red Hat and Hyperic products. Both companies will work to maintain, govern and extend management capabilities within the new open source systems management platform project.”

Now, this is very cool news, and a great endorsement for Hyperic technology. The deal appears to position Hyperic as the de facto systems management provider for Red Hat customers. Choice is great, but it can sometimes work against OSS in the CIO’s mind.

The deal is also an endorsement of Red Hat’s community. Long-time readers may remember that I questioned the “endorsement of the JBoss community” when Exadel decided to move their development into the JBoss community. I questioned the endorsement because there had been funds exchanged, making this an acquisition rather than an endorsement of community A vs. community B.

This agreement, may lead to an acquisition in the future, but today, it’s about one independent company agreeing to join forces and communities with another independent company.

Kudos to Hyperic & Red Hat for making this happen.

Comments

PR/Marketing folks have been busy doing more than playing with social media. Here’s a quick, incomplete and unofficial list of pointers.

Chris Thilk’s passion for film has landed him a semi-regular column at BrandWeek.

David Armano is redefining conference attendance with his Always in Beta site. Armano is attending Forrester’s Consumer Forum where they announced their Groundswell Awards. Plenty of award-winning projects to check out.

Jeremy Pepper and Luke Armour have left agency life and now work at social media startups.

Geoff Livingston and Rohit Bhargava are writing books on social media.

Colin McKay launched a blog for his employer, Canada’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

C.C. Chapman offers the latest example of the social media news release while Todd Defren’s team continues to do so on behalf of their clients.

Ike Piggot has been quietly working on several initiatives for the American Red Cross.

The above projects follow many others and this list is by no means exhaustive. If you do not see your latest work here, please add it in the comments. I know these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social media case studies.

Needless to say there will be plenty of fodder for Constantin Basturea’s recently announced PR Blog Week 3.

So what’s my story? I’ve been working on a few things, but nothing worth linking to just yet. Our team here is small and plenty busy on all things marketing…not just social media. That said my firm does have a blog. I’m pretty proud of it, but I had nothing to do with it. It was created by a passionate co-worker who needed a better way to get product info and inspiration out to her clients. Mission accomplished.

Comments

Tag:

“Sales came in slightly higher than expected, with Red Hat reporting revenues of $127.3 compared to revenues of $99.7 million during the year-ago period. Analysts had expected sales of $125.7 million.

…

Over the past year, Red Hat’s shares have fallen more than 25% as the company has toiled to transform from a Linux vendor into a peddler of a broader array of software.

One big reason: Sales of the so-called application server software Red Hat acquired with its purchase of JBoss last year have disappointed. “The rate of JBoss bookings and revenue growth has not met my expectations,” said Szulik in a conference call with investors. “We know we can do much better.” “

Red Hat Linux is definitely firing on all cylinders. JBoss, in the words of Red Hat’s CEO “could do much better”.

Further comments via CNet:

“However, not all believe the JBoss deal is going swimmingly. Credit Suisse analyst Jason Maynard downgraded Red Hat from “outperform” to “neutral” Monday. “We believe our thesis of improved field execution and meaningful JBoss acceleration won’t materialize and deliver the anticipated upside to our forecast,” he said. “Our checks indicate that the organization continues to be in a state of flux as the company struggles through its transition to a multi-product company.”"

Here’s something I found funny via Reuters:

” Chowdhry of Global Equities Research said the prospects for JBoss were dim because its software was designed to work with the Java programming language. He said Java was losing market share as businesses embrace Ruby, a programming language that is easier to use and works with an open-source rival to JBoss known as Ruby on Rails.”

LOL. RoR is going to kill JBoss…Seriously?!?! If RoR is such a threat, why are other Java app server vendors “doing okay“? Is there something more here? (Hint: yes – I’ll get into it tomorrow).

Comments

Tag:

That’s basically what Scott Friend, a partner at Bain, hinted at, though Friend employed some much more elegant phrasing.  “Our extensive diligence on this investment and our past industry experience helped us conclude that TheFind.com is leading its category in developing the best consumer shopping experience for lifestyle goods,” he stated on TheFind Blog.

And there were no other signs in the post that TheFind has any revolutionary changes in store.  That’s not a bad thing, though.

TheFind has been pretty successful up ‘til now – judging by an interview with the Red Herring, Bain considers Google to be its biggest competitor, and still says, “[T]hey do not do the browsing as well.  The pictures are very small.  It hasn’t been clear that Google has made it a priority… That’s good for TheFind.”

Also good for TheFind is Loren Baker’s description: “TheFind.com focuses on delivering accurate and comprehensive search results for lifestyle goods,” he notes, and later writing that the site has “has an efficient and visually-engaging format that fuels product discovery.”

The name and the concept both sound a bit strange, and since it’s quicker to explain the former, I’ll start there.  Lughenjo is a “Tuvetan word meaning gift,” according to Tom Shelley, Red Stripe’s main blogger.

Ludwig Siegele, another member of the team, addresses the whole money thing.  “You can be sure that we have had more than one heated debate about this question,” he writes.  “Initially, we wanted Lughenjo to be not-for-profit, with revenues to finance the programme coming from The Economist Group as well as long-term sponsors and grants.”

Siegele then continues, “Yet this would have been an all too easy way out, not very innovative – and would likely have led us into a dead end.  A business model mainly based on the financial support of others has serious drawbacks that would limit Lughenjo’s growth and sustainability.”

The Red Stripe team’s self-proclaimed Methusaleh then names one other well-known, for-profit, charity: Google.org.

So, that’s the “what” and the “why.”  The “when” has yet to be nailed down.  As for the “how,” Lughenjo fancies itself a version of “Yahoo! Answers for good,” and will put deserving groups’ questions in front of people who can help solve their problems.  Lughenjo will also “do what media companies do best and put ads in front of eyeballs.” 

It remains to be seen how this will all work, but Marketing Pilgrim’s Kelvin Newman – to whom I owe a hat tip – seems to feel there’s a lot of potential.

Joost has taken an ultra-legal approach to Internet TV – no user-generated or unauthorized copyrighted content here – and it has been extremely successful thus far.  Still in beta, Joost nonetheless “features more than 150 channels with programming across all genres, including: cartoons and animation; entertainment and film; sports; comedy; lifestyle and documentaries,” according to the company.

The CAA should be able to help Joost expand even more.  Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, Joost’s executive vice president of content strategy and acquisition, said in a statement, “Through our partnership with CAA, we are able to bring more high-quality, professionally-produced programming to audiences around the world.”

That’s not bad.  And the Red Herring’s Alexandra Berzon also notes that Joost “recently announced a $45 million investment from a group that includes Silicon Valley heavyweight Sequoia Capital and Hollywood bigwigs CBS and Viacom.”  But it would be really interesting – and give everyone a much better idea of Joost’s potential – if the company would break out of its invitation-only shell.

In the meantime, most of the world is left to wonder what this Joost thing is all about.  That’s okay, though – knowing that the company is now rubbing shoulders with the likes of Tom Hanks and Michael J. Fox may be quite enough.

“The site has installed a ring tone search engine and lists scores of cell phone ring tones atop its highly trafficked page,” reports Red Herring’s Scott Martin.  “People can find Shakira and Britney Spears ring tones along with links for gambling, concerts, and dating.”  Not to mention Nissan cars, Tai Chi, and Louis Vuitton.

That’s a pretty far cry from the aforementioned rollformers (although I’ve heard the 8 Stand x 2 x 10” Dahlstrom #550-8 is popular with some young people).  But Red Herring quoted Baris Karadogan, who wrote, “[F]rom what I hear, that is generating them north of $1000/day.  That’s $360K straight to the bottom line, at 10% pretax that’s like finding $4M of revenue all of a sudden.  That’s luck.”

Mr. Girkins may not entirely agree – he’s apparently still pursuing a lawsuit filed against YouTube when this all first started.  It almost seems as if the problem has taken on a life of its own, as Mr. Girkins said the new search engine “more than covers costs for hosting.  But we have a lot of attorney costs, too.”

Still, among the Web’s many lemonade-from-lemons situations, uTube’s reversal has to be among the most impressive.