Growing Status of Search Engine Marketing

Being working as a search engine marketer, what I have observed is that Search Engine Marketing industry if growing at double rate even when operational budgets are slicing. According to the professional organization of SEM's, the survey stats say that SEM industry will grow by 14% in the year 2010. It was $14.6 billion in 2009 and for the year 2010 it is projected to be $16.6 billion by the end of the year.


As per this survey conducted, measuring the ROI is the major challenge that marketers will face in all the three key search plan of actions in marketing and advertising industry i.e. paid search, search engine optimization and social media marketing. It is also highlighted that most of the companies (more than 95%) advertise on Google; out of which nearly 70% are paying Google for advertising, and around 50% are broadcasting their advertisements via Google grid. In contrast to Google, usage of Yahoo network is just 50% and merely 45% for Microsoft's Bing in 2009.

With time, marketers have seen keyword inflation on Google; also Google keywords are getting expensive each day when compared to last year.

Impact of advancement in Social Media
Today, social media is being given attention by most of the companies but the budgets these companies set for social media marketing are still seen insignificant when compared with SEO and paid search campaigns. But the expansion interests as mentioned on budget for social media is projected to increase this year. More than 50% of the companies are planning to have increase in budgets in the year 2010. In spite of this insignificant budget plans on social media, more than 60% of the companies promote their brand on renowned social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Along with the advancement in Social Media Marketing, there is little positive impact on paid search campaigns which was just 70% in 2007, increased to 78% in 2009 and to nearly 80% as of now. But the participation in Search Engine Optimization is stable since 2007 i.e. 90%.

The tendency for in-house SEM has increased when compared with last year. Whereas for SEO it has diminished very minutely (nearly negligible) but for paid search, there is spectacular decrease of around 10%; from 86% last year to 76% this year.

As per the projections made out of survey, companies are expected to increase their budgets for SEO and paid search in 2010. Nearly 50% are divvying up budgets into SEM, propelling their expense on print advertising. Some of them are moving spends from direct mail and significant moves are seen from conferences and web based advertising.

This is as per the survey conducted by the professional organization working for Search Engine Marketing industry, which is widely known as SEMPO. The estimated spend for 2010 is $16.6 billion growing to $18.6 billion by 2011 according to the projections.

How to Increase and Improve Search Engine Visibility

Since long, we had seen and even tested various techniques and guidelines for generating search engine traffic. A decade back, SEO became a full time career for a few years. Since then so many methods have been evolving to control and manipulate the engines to get front page search results. As on date, scenarios have been changed.

Many of these earlier followed practices and techniques are still very much relevant as they were then, so here I am collating the key ones.

(a)Commence with your Domain Name
Select the domain name, relatively short and easy to spell. Avoid hyphens and or unusual characters for branding purposes, than SEO. Search visibility remains there even with perplex, long character riddled domain, but such domain names are hard to remember without the assistance of a search engine.

(b)Build Quality Inbound and Outbound Links
Your site is ranked by search engines based on the amount of inbound links it has from other sites. Spend some time and get authenticated sites linking back to you called inbound links; it influences the search engine ranking.

(c)Google Page Rank
Websites are ranked with higher Page Rank if Google conceives them to be important and influential. Higher Page Rank gives better search results and rankings. Authoritative sites usually have high Page Rank. You should take care of it but do not focus completely on it.

(d)Relevant Keywords on Web Address
Publish content on your site with relevant keywords with headline formatted in the permalink/web URL. For instance, if your site has a page with images on wild animals, format the URL like: http://www.yoursite.com/images/wild-animals.html or http://www.yoursite.com/wild-animals.html Mention the sub-directory with target keyword of the subject matter.

(e)Headlines and Page Titles with Target Keywords
Along with relevant keywords in your URL, place the keywords in your headlines and page titles as well. It would help even if no other optimization is worked out otherwise it would be hard for search engine to spot your existence.

(f)Include Blogs
Blogs are considered to be the major source information for everybody. Search engines give preference to blogs for fresh and timely content. If tweaked correctly it can be a powerful tool for search engine traffic generation. Configure your permalink structure immediately after installing your blog. Install plug-ins like "All in One SEO Pack" available for WordPress. You may also leverage RSS to convert search engine clicks into a return visitor.

(g)Keywords as Anchor text
Generally, anchor text is weighted highly in search engine algorithms and its results since it gives descriptive information to search engines about the content of a hyperlinks destination. Avoid using "click here", it would hamper search engine visibility.

(h)Web Analytics
In order to measure and understand your traffic patterns and behaviors do set up Google Analytics at the very start.

(i)Use Sitemap
Sitemaps list down all the pages pertaining to a particular site that helps to notify search engine about URLs on your website available for crawling and indexing, which might be left undiscovered by Google's normal crawling process.

(j)Google Webmaster Tools
Google's Webmaster Tools helps to see your website the way Googlebot looks at it. It finds out which sites link to yours, also looks for search queries that list your site and which of your site's pages are indexed, and also shows up certain errors (if any) Google encountered while crawling your website. Make your site as Google friendly as possible. This gives higher visibility in search results.

(k)Publish Quality Content Frequently
Publish quality content on a regular basis so as to be frequently seen as more reliable than sites that seldom produce content. Keep on increasing content on your website to yield more indexed pages, in turn more visibility, increasing the quantity of search clicks to your pages.

(l)Headline Tags
Use headline tags (h1, h2, etc.) for targeted keywords and phrases. Search engines recognizes and assigns greater value to keywords found within headline tags.

(m)Do not Forget Other Search Engines
Do not overlook other search engines like Yahoo, MSN while you keep considering Google, the gorilla, that produces the biggest quantity of search traffic. Yahoo has a resource for web publishers, as does Microsoft to help you better optimize your pages for their engines.

(n)Consistency
Keep on testing different permutations and combinations to understand the criteria the search engines looks for when indexing your pages. Focus on what works and run with it.

(o)Last but not the least
If you have active participation in social media, you are already ahead of the game. To have profiles at Social Networking Websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter helps in getting indexed, and always rank on the top of the search results. This is even great if your objective is personal branding. You have to be active and maintain consistency to own your name in Google. Social media is the most invaluable tool for traffic generation, if executed correctly. User generated content and the applications that power them such as, blogs, wikis, videos, social networking sites, bookmarking, microblogging, etc are the leading mechanisms for search engine traffic, and keeps on increasing with time.

To optimize a website to be ranked higher in search engines is not very complex. Use of techniques suggested above will definitely pay off. You must not expect instant results. It takes time to build up content, establish inbound links, tweak and re-tweak.

Internet Marketing Professionals Perception for Twitter

Today companies consider usage of social media as a nuisance or mere time wastage. Marketing professionals should consider Twitter as another social media tool just like LinkedIn and Facebook, with strong potential for generating good business ROI.

Twitter is really beneficial social medium for IT as well as marketing professionals and other businesspeople too.

1. It has got a real business use. Businesspeople use Twitter to engage over professional topics. It is not like people are just update about their routine activities, meaningful discourse happens on Twitter mostly every hour of every day.

2. Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, on Twitter you follow people according to the interesting things they share in their tweets; even people you don't know at all. You can follow anyone unless and until someone has protected his tweets. To spread your message or viewpoint, follow like minded people on Twitter and can be benefited by listening others.

3. Its key advantages include news, unique perspectives and stellar information. It is the most excellent environment to follow trends, gathering information, gauging buzz and researching your topics of interest. Spend good time to search smart and like minded people on Twitter, and you'll learn things you might not learn any other way.

4. Twitter could be used to build your personal as well as company brand, so as to enhance business relationships, interactions with customers, do market research or selling too. This powerful one-to-many tool reaches very influential, engaged audience.

5. It gives you an option to "unfollow" someone if you no longer find his tweets beneficial for you, without even letting him know about this.

You must also do what is called "Smart Tweeting" Follow only people you're genuinely interested in. With tools like TweetDeck, create multiple groups for people who are generally focused on a specific topic. You may use hash tags or Twitter searches to see tweets on specific topics.

This is how Marketing Professionals should consider Twitter for promoting their brand name as well as their personal professional brand.
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How Social Media is Conceived by Online Marketing Professionals

It is well said "Content is king but marketing is queen, and the queen rules the household". Or we can say "Great Content Markets Itself". This is very true for Social Media. It is all about Word of Mouth. You have to be very communicative and interactive with your networks to keep them engaged with you. They will stay tuned and remain hooked with you unless and until they will find value in the engagements with you.

Its presence in a business today is increasing day by day. According to Forrester Research, it will be rising exponentially by 2014. Here is how "Social Media" being quoted by some of the professionals in Online Media industry. It is the future of everything on Web. There will be social networking sites for everything you could imagine. Instead of this, stumble upon mentality, it will focus and more demographically delineated. It will still be wide open but it will have an organized chaos mentality to it.

Where Time, Network, and Trust (TNT) intersects.

The Wild, Wild West... it's certainly evolving by the minute though. Refinement is coming and several players will emerge as leaders of their particular genres; genre being social, and professional. It's here to stay, no doubt. Jump on board or get run over! To individuals, it is friendship and communication. To groups with a message, it is a way to get the message out. To businesses is it a way to obtain exposure and establish credibility. All together, this is so powerful that it will continue to grow and become major use of the internet.

At times remarkable because of its ease of use and ability to connect to a single person or masses, and at times scary because of its immenseness. It is not really a new concept. Today we see many different forums and communities for virtually any human need, personality and interest. The one common trait for all of the successful communities (past to present) are that they built value to sustain and then monetize their members.

SM is marketing nirvana for those that are truly invested in managing customer relationships. The long term focus on Relationship Marketing is back in vogue and illustrates that corporate focus needs to be on a 12-36 month timeline, not a 3 month ROI on tactical ad campaigns. Really depends if the organization has the appetite to go that long.

It is a tool for broadening conversation and creating community that, if used intelligently, can be valuable for sharing of knowledge and building relationships. It is easy, enjoyable, effective and economical. It seems like a day will come when social networking tools will become fee-based.

SM is Business. It's the direction that all media is moving. It's not a fad or a temporary thing. In 2008 we called it Web 2.0; early 2009 we called it Social Media. Now, in late 2009 people are referring to it as Media and Advertising. It's a platform for having a (meaningful) conversation, in my opinion, through which one may be able to build the authority and influence.

LinkedIn is the business meeting, FB is the hallway conversation, and Twitter is the cocktail party. It's a big honking' volume. Customers share recommendations (good and bad) with their friends. Humans have always wanted to be heard and to connect. It is taking over as the best way to get the word out and target your message. I've found it very productive already. Work is flying in!

Social Media is an Opportunity and a Blessing too, a tool for sharing, collaborating and marketing.

It is a communication channel to converse and engage directly with your customers, friends, fans, opponents, decision-makers, and thought-leaders. It is literally changing the way individuals, businesses, governments, etc communicate. The one to one marketing model is over. It is now many to many, there is no turning back.

Some neural or negative quotes are as:
Social media is expanding our ability to connect and share corporate as well as personal information in ways that weren't available in the past. This presents new challenges and opportunities, but we cannot forget that authenticity and quality are still much more important than quantity when it comes to true and viable business relationships.

It will ultimately fail since the number of "people" who want to know you for selfish reasons far out-weighs the number of people you know or will ever want to know you for "personal" reasons. This ratio dictates the security platforms that surround all SM's, thus draining their lifeblood (connectivity) before they even get started!

When you put thoughts or ads in newspaper, it might reach 1 Lac people and might interest 5K people (5%). But on FB, it will reach approx. 5 crores and will interest only 5 Lac (1%). SM may give reach to mass audience but it makes difficult for business to pull right kind of people to turn them into customers compare to other media.

Other media allow you to reach targeted audience, whereas it lets you to connect with the entire pool of users in any network. Finding customers through SM is like finding water in desert. It is a try to filter the 10% valuable information vs. 90% waffle. Just like a black hole that sucks you in.

Last but not the least:
The problem is that so many people still operate in a Web 2.0 mindset! Those days are gone. The two worlds are no longer independent of each other. The relationships we make in real life carry over into the virtual realm, and vice-versa. It's a marriage and the strength of each will sustain the other. Social Media isn't going anywhere. In fact, there is only growth in the future.