According to SEMPO President Chris Boggs, the organization, which is made up of thousands of marketing professionals across 50 countries, wrote the letter in response to its members’ concerns. SEMPO felt it needed to voice these concerns and explain why its members want an “open, free channel of communication.”

Are you concerned that the government will change the Internet as we know it? Let us know your thoughts.

“Overall, the reason that we felt we needed to send this letter was because we were concerned specifically that the U.S. government is investigating the search operations of Google,” said Boggs.

“It’s not just because we felt we needed to go thank our sponsor, Google,” he added.

The letter calls for a free market approach to the Internet with little or no regulation. It focuses on Google, however, in light of the anticompetitive claims that ShopCity and others have made lately.

Although Boggs does not discredit ShopCity’s claims, he pointed that all businesses are subject to the same rules for both organic search and paid search. In addition, he believes the accusations would have a greater impact if the Google naysayers outnumbered the Google advocates. However, judging from SEMPO’s members, they do not.

“I would want to see a much larger sample of companies saying that it’s unfair, versus the large sample that I’ve seen that have spoken to us and messaged to the board of SEMPO their pro-support of Google and the way they do handle business,” said Boggs.

The letter makes clear that search engines were not intended to be regulated or subject to control from governments or commercial entities, saying:

Search is not a government-run utility, established by law and thus subject to bureaucratic oversight. It is a service provided to consumers and businesses by companies, which have set up their operations using their own principles, proprietary technologies and algorithms. Each company is free to develop its own approach, fulfilling the needs of its customers as it perceives them.”

It makes the case that a free market methodology is what made the Internet what it is today. As Boggs explained, this freedom has allowed the Internet to grow and produce platforms such as social networks.

“If we hadn’t allowed the growth of Facebook and Twitter, and even some of its forbearers like MySpace, we would be nowhere close to where we are now in terms of the ability to communicate and reconnect with old friends on the Internet, for example, and also to perform business,” he said.

In order to further this free market innovation, the SEMPO letter stated that the following 4 requirements were needed:

1. Willingness of legislative and regulatory government entities worldwide to allow the evolution of the Internet in as unfettered a regulatory environment as possible

2. Willingness of publishers and information owners to explore ways of sharing their valuable information with the search engines while not jeopardizing their revenue models

3. Consumers feeling a level of trust with search engines sufficient to allow the search engines to personalize results for them, maintaining privacy settings at a level comfortable to them

4. Understanding by marketers and advertisers that the search engines’ most valuable asset is the user, and therefore the search engines will often place the consumer experience above short-term financial gain

Although SEMPO has not received a response from the FTC, Boggs said that the organization was willing to work with it to help it further understand how the search industry works.

In terms of regulation, Boggs told us that he didn’t see any coming in 2012 but that he could see it happening in 2015 or 2016. If it does happen, Boggs said he hopes that it protects the innocent from potentially harmful content online instead of preventing a free Internet.

Holoubek tell us that they had a record number of respondents this year. "Almost 1,500 people from across the globe in 68 countries answered the survey, she says.

The report estimates that the North American search engine marketing industry will grow 14% from $14.6 billion in 2009 to $16.6 billion by the end of 2010.

The report also indicates that measuring ROI is the biggest challenge facing marketers this year in all three key search tactics covered in the survey – SEO, paid search, and social media marketing. Additional findings include:

- Around half the companies (49%) are reallocating budgets to search engine marketing from print advertising. More than a third (36%) are shifting money away from direct mail, and almost a quarter are moving budgets from conferences and exhibitions (24%) and web display advertising (23%).

- The research highlights Google’s dominance as a search engine, with 97% of companies paying to advertise on Google AdWords. Nearly three quarters of companies (71%) pay to advertise on the Google search network while 56% use the Google content network (keyword targeted).

- More than half of advertisers (56%) and agencies (62%) say that Google keywords have become more expensive over the last year. Meanwhile, only around a third of advertisers noted an increase in Yahoo (32%) and Bing (29%) keyword costs.

- From a range of trends and marketplace developments, company respondents are most likely to say the personalization of search results is having an impact. Just under a third of companies (31%) say this is "highly significant," and a further 44% say it is "significant." Agency respondents felt the "rise of local search" was the most significant emerging trend with 38% saying this was "highly significant" with 47% labeling it as “significant."

SEMPOs findings suggest tha the rise of social media budgets, while still modest in comparison to EO and paid search, represent the "biggest opportunity" for search marketers in 2010.

Retargeting is basically when you market your product from a different angle or to a different market altogether. There’s a good explanation of it at answers.com: Marketing efforts to spur demand for a product that is experiencing declining demand by marketing it as though it were a new product.

Almost half (46.3%) of respondents said that remarketing (also known as retargeting) is the online marketing technology they feel is most under-utilized. Other technologies respondents feel are under utilized include:

- Geo-targeting – 18.3%
- Traffic source optimization – 15.9%
- Keyword targeting – 13.4%
- Other – 3.7%
- Category targeting – 2.4%

69.5% said they have never utilized display remarketing in their online advertising. Only 30.5% said that they had or do. Out of the ones that have, most (53.1%) said that display remarketing made their advertising more impactful.

"As online advertising continues to grow, newer technologies are recognized and evaluated against the more traditional approaches," said Daniel Yomtobian, founder and CEO of Advertise.com. "We’re interested in taking a closer look at why Remarketing is underutilized. We know that retargeting can boost ad response up to 400 percent so it’s definitely something online advertisers need to stay informed about and use more strategically."

"As the industry matures, SEMPO recognizes that new technologies and tactics, such as retargeting, will become increasingly important to the search marketer," said SEMPO President Sara Holoubek. "We look forward to a fruitful industry discussion on how search and Remarketing can best be married for maximum ROI."

81.7% of participants said they implement local search advertising campaigns and that the following forms of online advertising provide the best ROI:

- Search – 70.7%
- Cost-per-action (CPA) – 14.6%
- Email – 6.1%
- Social – 3.7%
- Other – 2.4%

52.4% utilize CPA to drive sales leads, 13.4% use it to drive traffic, 6.1% use it to drive brand awareness, and 26.8% do not utilize CPA at all. (1.2% said "other").

Related Articles:

> If You Care About Search, You Must Care About Social Media

> Google and Heineken Study Search for Branding

> Email Marketing Driving Purchases

The event is pretty heavily weighted toward SEM and I asked what turned out, to those in attendance, to be a bit of a dopey question. I asked "How many here are interested purely in SEM?" then when only a couple of hands were raised, I was encouraged to think it may be more of an SEO crowd, so I asked "How many are interested purely in SEO?" and saw only another sprinkling of raised hands.

So, based on one of my previous experiences at a major company where the team was half SEM and half SEO, and my current position, which is entirely SEO team with no SEM – I assumed a similar situation would be true of most in-house teams at substantially sized companies.

My assumption was apparently skewed. It seems that most do double-duty on in-house teams. When I asked "What’s the balance here?" a few people said, (a few with emotion) "Both!"

That surprised me, based on what I knew before asking that question. But now I know that, at least among the crowd attending Search Insider Summit, that the oft joined SEM/SEO label applies to most. Well I suppose that was a gaff then, but…

Later in the day, I overheard a conversation on a shuttle bus which makes me wonder if SEO is being best served by in-house SEM/SEO’s. After two strangers from the conference exchanged greetings & pleasantries, the inevitable "What do you do?" came up from one.

The answer, "SEM and I’ve been tasked with learning SEO for our team." (emphasis mine) Then the response from an ill-informed questioner was short-sighted and probably simplistic thinking from those who THINK they understand SEO – "So you’re learning about meta tags and H1′s?"

I’d like to argue that the two disciplines should be divided and I’d wager that many SEM’s who love what they do will agree. The skill-set is completely different. Both SEM’s and SEO’s deal with keywords, and target search engine results pages, but that is where the similarity ends.

Having recently worked day-to-day with an SEM team in-house and being separated only by a cubicle wall for 18 months. I recall the SEO team only dealing with the SEM team during our bi-weekly online marketing group meetings.

So if someone who loves SEM is "tasked with learning SEO," (like that overheard conversation I mentioned above) they are not likely to understand or fully invest themselves in truly learning an important aspect of the Search Marketing business. They’ll learn a couple of things and not all aspects of the work. They’ll continue to do a great job of SEM and start doing a poor job of SEO.

I’ll also argue that if that role is reversed and an SEO is "tasked with learning SEM for the team" then they will learn a few things, but not all of the elements of good SEM and not do a complete and thorough job of SEM but will continue to do a good job of SEO.

I recall a couple of job interviews about 5 years ago where in both cases, I was talking with an SEM manager who had convinced their boss that they needed a full-time SEO on staff to handle things they weren’t able to continue doing as the company grew. Rather than evenly split SEM and SEO tasks among two staffers, they were dividing the two. That’s the smart way to go.

I didn’t take either of those jobs, and I’m quite happy about that now. I also walked away from a job that would have required me to significantly sharpen my SEM skills so that I could handle both. I didn’t doubt that I could do it, but love SEO and very likely wouldn’t have done as well with the SEM piece.

So I’d like to ask the question of those SEM/SEO dual purpose people – are you doing both because you love both or are you doing both because you were "tasked to learn" one of those pieces because your company won’t increase the budget enough for a new head on the payroll? Would you rather focus on one or continue doing both?

Comments

There are many options for companies and agencies to train digital marketing teams and to keep tenured employees up to date including conferences such as: this week’s WebmasterWorld Pubcon, Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, numerous regional and niche events and an increasing number of web based offerings including SEMPO Institute and the DMA Search Engine Marketing Certification program. I would be remiss not to mention the upcoming "Social Media Smarts" workshop in NYC covering all aspects of social media marketing including a strategy exercise and tips on building a business case for a social media effort in your organization.

Attending conferences is not cheap when you factor the increasing price of travel and hotels as well as pre/post and conference training fees, meals and taxi. Attendees and their companies are paying $2500 – $5000 per person per conference as well as the cost of time away from the office performing billable work. It’s easy to see why webinars are on the increase and why those who are fortunate to attend these events need to get the most out of them.

The most important thing that conference attendees can do to get the most out of their time at events is to set goals. Managers sending individuals to conferences should be clear about expectations. Company staff should be sure to talk with others within the organization or team that have attended the same or similar events to gain their insight.

Depending on the purpose for attending a conference, goals may vary. Here are some common goals based on the various reasons for attending any kind of marketing conference:

• Knowledge - How many sessions will you attend and how will you capture the information? Notes, photos, video (where allowed) When meeting new people, discuss the sessions with them. Compare notes with other attendees, it’s a great way to network and to get other opinions. Before the conference, make a grid or a plan for which specific sessions you’ll be attending. Often times, there is not much time between sessions and the difference between getting a good seat and standing room only can be a matter of minutes.

• Networking - How many qualified prospects, marketing partners, vendors to outsource to and job candidates will you meeting? Each day, tally them up and plan how you will follow up.

• Content - how will you leverage your conference experience to create new content for your company blog, articles, or process documentation? Set goals for how many you’ll create each day. The content you capture and create can supply a company blog with numerous posts and show clients, staff and prospective clients that you are on top of what’s happening in the industry. At TopRank, our staff are required to publish at least 3 blog posts for each day of conference attended. Set goals for how many blog posts, articles or other types of content will be created each day of the conference. It doesn’t have to be all text, you can take photos of people, and presentation slides. Take videos where allowed.

• Knowledge transfer - How will you pass on the information youâ’ve acquired to the rest of the team? At TopRank Online Marketing, our staff take the highlights and any specific tactics of use and create presentations which they share with the rest of the TopRank team. Knowing you will be required to present the information you are gaining with the team back at the office helps focus on takeaways and practical interpretations of the new information.

• Socialize – Where there’s a conference, there’s a party. After hours events are exceptional opportunities for conference attendees to relax, network and share information. Make no mistake, post session networking can be an art form. Make a point to relax and have fun, but be clear about objectives and make a goal of attending a dinner each night of the event if possible. Some dinners are a tradition amongst long time friends, some are sponsored by vendors and some are at hoc events that occur as a result of like minded individuals wanting to continue the day’s discussion.

As you can see, there are many more opportunities to get value from marketing conference participation than keeping up to date with an industry. Pre conference goal setting and planning, well defined processes as well as follow up and post event knowledge sharing can all multiple the value organizations realize by sending employees to educational events.

Not all organizations are positioned to take full advantage of these insights, but through simple analysis, it can become clear pretty quickly how much is being left on the table or to competitors who are sending the same numbers of people and incurring the same costs.

Understand the conference offerings, set goals and make the time to pre-plan conference involvement. Leverage content creation, networking, recruiting, competitive intelligence as well as prospecting opportunities and industry conferences can move pretty quickly from an expense with an uncertain effect to an investment with multiples of return.

Comments

SEMPO began teaching online courses in search marketing in January 2007. after opening with a course on SEM fundamentals, SEMPO added advanced classes to the mix.

“The Institute certification process will provide interactive agencies that participate in our program with a means of showing they are up to speed on current SEM strategy,” SEMPO Chairman Dana Todd said in a statement.

Agencies will qualify for certification after at least 20 percent of the staff completes at least one course through the SEMPO Institute, with a 75 percent passing grade or better. SEMPO said there will be two levels of certification, based on the percentage of staffers completing courses.

“In doing market research and talking to agencies we found a real desire to have an ‘instant differentiator,’ a seal of excellence that would help an agency distinguish itself against the competition by showing that a significant number of its employees are highly trained and skilled in search engine marketing,” Katie Donovan, SEMPO Institute Business Development Manager, said.

“Agencies told us they liked the idea of certification, given the strong reputation the Institute and SEMPO as a whole have in the marketplace.”

We see a greater need for search marketing now that universal search figures more prominently with the major search engines. Since one can no longer rely on a list of ten blue links being the only options coming up in search results, advertisers will want to know their agency has the acumen to deal with this new search environment.

The biggest problem with SEO standards is we’ll get some half baked, half assed, implementation that’s just as bad as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). As a concept it’s seems like a wonderful idea, everyone agrees to a set of established teachings and has to meet a minimum set of standards. Should enable customers to do apples to apples comparisons and eliminate con artists and shiesters, right? Wrong my naive and misguided friends, what we end up with is a big fat goopy mess.

One of the problems with NCLB is teachers have a very small amount of time they are allowed to use to explore off curriculum material. If an SEO wants to retain certification do you think they’ll be encouraged to try new things or contemplate outside of the four sided parallelogram?

Did you know that part of NCLB requires the name and address of every student be sent to the US Government who passes it along to the military recruiting offices? Do you think it’s a stretch to imagine registration of name, address, email, and websites will required to be shared with all the search engines?

Do you think that NCLB fosters an atmosphere of exceptional teachers teaching to students who want to grow and learn? Or do you think it encourages “teaching for the test” and students who learn to sit in their place and adhere to the lowest common denominator thinking? Do you think SEO standards are about creating superstars who challenge and force the industry to grow? Or do you think it’s about handicapping everyone and striving for a level playing field where third rate hacks get to play with the big dogs?

Who do you think is going to set these standards? Heck SEMPO hasn’t done a damn thing for me, and I have a hard time finding anything meaningful they’ve done to educate the outside world about search. Don’t believe me? Take an informal survey of your clients and ask how many have heard of SEMPO, I’d be shocked to learn you had to use your second hand to count them.

Have you ever been part of large committee? Do the words innovative and leadership leap to mind, or does your head fill with nightmares of bureaucratic red tape, internal politics, and watered down compromises?

Do I think we need some form of certification to prove that you are an SEO, sure. Every client should say show me something more competitive than [fuzzy pink sock puppets in Los Angeles] that you rank for. Yes I believe that every consulting agency should have their own in house sites to show clients, for R&D, testing, and experimentation. I also think everyone should prove they can get a website banned every few years. If you’re a race car driver and you don’t smack into the wall or another car now and again, you aren’t pushing yourself and your machinery, all you’re doing is playing it safe.

Don’t get in line and support industry standards …

Don’t get in line and support mediocrity …

Don’t volunteer to go on the leash and accept “the man” as your master …

Comments

You can read the reviews of SEMPO Institute’s “Insider’s Guide to Search Marketing” formerly known as the “Fundamentals of Search Marketing” and the Advanced SEO Course Review by TopRank’s Dana Larson.

Comments

Here are key findings from SEMPO’s State of the Market Survey:

- The North American SEM industry grew from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.2 billion in 2007, exceeding earlier projections of $11.5 billion for 2007

- North American SEM spending is now projected to grow to $25.2 billion in 2011, up significantly from the $18.6 billion forecast a year ago.

- Marketers are finding more search dollars by poaching budget from print magazine spending, web site development, direct mail and other marketing programs.

- Paid placement captures 87.4% of 2007 spending; organic SEO, 10.5%; paid inclusion, .07%, and technology investment, 1.4%.

- Google AdWords remains the most popular search advertising program, but both Google and Yahoo sponsored search spending has decreased from a year ago.

Google, Yahoo Most Popular Search Media Companies

SEM Is Poaching Budget From Both Online and Off-line Marketing Programs North American SEM Expenditures to Reach $25.2B in 2011

Comments

As this article will demonstrate, clearly the answer is "yes" to both questions.  However, as this article will also demonstrate, getting the types of results that an expert at search engine optimization can provide will cost you – often more than outsourcing.

For the purpose of this article, I’m ignoring the multitudes of companies that decide to dump the job on somebody already in their organization (usually an IT person who already has too much to do) rather than hiring a search engine optimization company.  It has been my experience that while some of these people eventually provide decent results, they are the exception.  More often than not, the project never leaves the ground, or the effort is halfhearted at best.  In a worst case scenario, your internal person may embrace tactics that no expert search engine optimization company would ever use because they can put your site at risk of penalization or outright removal from the engine indexes.

My company often works with firms after they have used non-expert internal talent to optimize their website, and most of the time we are actually doing more work because much of what has been done is ineffective or dangerous. We have to take everything apart and put it all back together, often while making requests to the search engines to have penalties lifted.

The real goal of this article, however, is to assume that a business has decided to embark on a search engine optimization campaign, and that it is also committed to using a proven expert in search engine optimization.  The choice then is simple – does the business hire an experienced resource to work in-house or should it instead go with an outsourced search engine optimization company?

A recent study by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, published in the January 2008 edition of DM News ("Healthy SEM Salaries Rule: SEMPO Survey"), points out that experience in search engine marketing carries a high price tag.  For instance, if you were looking to hire someone with more than five years of experience in search engine marketing, you could expect to pay between $100,000 and $200,000 per year.  For somebody with experience but not five or more years, you can expect to pay anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 per year.

If nothing else, these real world figures should convince discerning companies that expert search engine optimization and marketing is not something that you should dump off on an existing employee without any experience in the field.  The free market has determined that expert search engine optimization and marketing is worth at least $60,000 per year for a full time position, and up to $200,000 per year.

On the other hand, most reputable search agencies have many more than five years of collective experience in the search engine marketing industry.  In addition, a high percentage of these agencies offer SEO services that cost considerably less than $60,000 per year, to say nothing of $200,000 per year.  It should also be noted that this figure neglects to include any of the additional costs associated with hiring – benefits, training, and so on.  In addition, an expert search engine optimization company will have a broad range of sites from which to draw knowledge, while your in-house expert will likely only have one, or a handful at best.

To be fair, there are certain advantages to hiring an in-house expert.  First of all, experts will have their feet to the fire, so to speak.  A search engine optimization company isn’t likely to go out of business if it underperforms on your site, but an in-house expert in search engine optimization is likely to lose his or her job.  It’s also much easier to get the whole team together to discuss your SEO initiatives at any time you choose when you are working with someone in-house. And hey, when you’re paying someone $200,000 per year, you can be pretty certain that you’re going to get top-notch work. But can an expert search engine optimization company give you that same level of work for a lot less money? Probably.

Conclusion

There are many compelling reasons why your business should hire an expert search engine optimization company rather than bring in an SEO expert internally or simply give the SEO project to an existing team member. Financially, it makes sense. But more so, you’re more likely to get the results over the short and long term with an outsourced company for all of the reasons noted above. I’m not saying you have to hire an SEO company – at first. I’m saying eventually you’ll probably want to.