Interflora Visits Search-Marketing-Blog.com

Online brand protection. Important to have a policy, but can be difficult to implement.

The first thing is to be aware of the buzz about your brand online - news, forums, blogs, myspace, etc. If you're not aware of what's being said, you can't counter it in a timely manner.

The guys at Interflora are doing at least the first bit right. My blog is so new it has very limited visitor numbers still, but this morning's stats show a visit from interflorahouse.co.uk. Within 12 hours of my post mentioning Interflora. Probably an automated news-clipping service rather than a real person, but who knows?

On another positive note, it means my blog pinging service is working!

Got A Brand? Why Aren't You Using Pay-Per-Click?

As the only form of advertising spend that allows ROI to be calculated down to the last penny, paid search naturally was first adopted by the ecommerce community. If you sell something off your website, there is no better way to drive new customers to your site and grow revenues. But, what if you don’t sell anything from your site? Your website is not ecommerce, you are a brand?

The answer is actually very clear, but has yet to be fully understood and effectively embraced by many big brand owners. If you have a brand, you should be using paid-search as a significant means to communicate with your customers.

It is cost-effective, immediate and reactive engagement with your customers – at the instant in time they are actively involved in searching for either your brand or terms you would wish your brand to be associated with. The jury is no longer out, the jury has returned and found the big brands ‘guilty’ of not effectively using paid search to support messaging and engagement vital to brand building and protection.

Online Advertising Hits The Big-Time In UK

Very roughly, online advertising accounts for about half the UK national advertising spend. Of the online total of £2bn, paid search is roughly 60%. Historically, paid search has been the ‘tail’ of advertising spend, but with online overtaking national press and showing continued strong growth as other media falters, the tail is now wagging the dog.

Or, it should be. By that I mean it is not a practical strategy to simply leave PPC (pay-per-click) advertising to the procurement department.

The difference between a ‘great’ PPC campaign and a ‘good enough’ PPC campaign can be an order of magnitude in ROI. With paid search grabbing an increasing share of spend, it is even more important to ensure that a paid search campaign

1. is carried out by professionals with proven expertise, preferably able to guarantee ROI, and
2. is carried out in a manner that closely integrates online with offline advertising and other events that stimulate search activity.

Brand Association Online is there for anyone to see

If you don't actually sell anything on your website, or ask for customer sign-ups, applications or subscriptions, there is a question about whether PPC has any value to you. This is a question that major brands are starting to tackle. Underlying the use of PPC for brand building online is the point:is brand association visible online?

Google Trends is more than a toy (but only just)

I wondered, last month in the run-up to Valentine's day, whether there was a connection between 'Roses' as a search term, and the brand 'Interflora'. So I went to Google Trends. This is what I saw.

There appears to be correlation between searches on the two terms, during February of each year. Note that the seasonal fluctuation is required to show the correlation - if both lines were flat or equally curved there would be no evidence of specific causes that connect the two.

The correlation is most evident around peaks about 14th February. Note that correlation does not imply cause and effect - what this chart is showing that about the time of those peaks, the causes of the spike in searches for the term 'roses' are connected to the causes of the spike in searches for 'interflora'.

(Note the interesting reduction in correlation for the second spike in each year, .. demonstrating that people are less interested to buy roses for Mother's day than they are for Valentine's day. Sorry Mum.)

So then I looked at another example. 'Fitness First' is a well-known chain of gyms.

The correlation, or association, between 'gyms' and 'Fitness First' is written large. The drivers that make Joe or Jane Public search for gyms are the same as those making them search for 'Fitness First'

One final example. BSM (British School of Motoring) and 'driving school'.

What does this mean if I have a brand?

What it means is this: brand association exists and is very strong online. If you have invested in a brand, there is absolutely no excuse for not using search marketing to enhance your engagement and messaging with your audience - not just by SEO but by PPC also, even if you don't sell anything off your website, you should be intercepting your customers online activity at the time they are most likely to be receptive - when they are actively searching for terms you wish to be associated with.

tag:cool

Navigation is THE most important thing after content

There are literally hundreds of blogs that I would rate as 'excellent' in terms of content. But the vast majority do not deliver in terms of navigation.

The idea of a 'blog' or weblog started as a kind of online diary, a blog maybe had a theme but mostly was intermittent ramblings of an individual, in chronological order.

If the blog has great content, it can be difficult to find exactly what we need, or to 'discover' something cool, or just browse an area of interest without having to scroll back through pages and pages of historical posts.

How to create Great Navigation on a Blog - Start with Structure

To start with, navigation is not the same thing as structure. Structure refers to how the content is stored in a framework. A good example is a directory structure, for storing information on a hard drive. Most of us are familiar with this. Search-Marketing-Blog.com uses exactly that - a directory structure. On the server hard drive is a tree structure of folders, according to subject. Each blog entry is in fact a text file stored within that structure in the correct folder.

Tags are an Excuse for Muddled Thinking

Tags have become very popular as a way to mark a post, so that it can be found easily. They are helpful but certainly not the full story. Tags do not make up for an ordered structure combined with an effective search tool. With information ordered by topic/subject, tags are better deployed to help cross-subject theming and searching - for example the tag 'stats' show posts with statistical content regardless of the subject folder they are in.

• Search tool. Such a fundamental requirement for any website. How come so many blogs don't have them?

• List of recent entries. Seems essential that a visitor landing on your site (any page) can quickly see the most recent entries you have written.

• Related entries. When looking at a post, related entries should be listed. In a folder structure this is easy, just display the titles of the other posts in that folder and its sub-folders. When viewing search results, in addition to full entries displayed upfront, there should be a list of all titles found.

• Calendar. It should be easy to quickly display the posts of a certain month, and move back/forward from year to year.

• Breadcrumbs. These are the Home >> You >> Are >> here type of links so that a visitor can easily identify his location on your site. At any point in the information structure, it should be easy to see the sub-folders from that location so that browsing and discovery is easy.

• Sitemap. At any time, a complete list of all folders and topics is just a click away.

Wouldn't it be cool if a blog had ALL of these navigational devices?

Yep, sure would. You're reading it!

tag:geek

A Beautiful Baby Of A Design

Having chosen Blosxom as the engine for driving this blog, I next needed to think about the template. I had a very clear idea about the navigation structure I wanted, but the design itself and its implementation took quite some thinking about.

Best Tools For Blog Website Design

A couple of years ago, when I built websites for friends or myself as a hobby, I used Microsoft Frontpage. I had no time to learn Dreamweaver. Frontpage was fairly intuitive to use and suited my purposes. But, then I learned about CSS. What a revelation! What a change to the way I build websites.

The ONLY software tools used to build this site:

• NOTEPAD2. A great little text editor, designed as a setp up from the Notepad that comes with windows.

• PAINTSHOPPRO V9. I usually prefer free or open-source software but I hate the Gimp. PSP is great.

• FIREFOX with the WEB DEVELOPER extension. What a fantastic tool. When you switch it on you can directly edit CSS in-browser to see the effect on the live page. So many other features. Sometimes, I will use the FIREBUG extension which has some similar features but is a more complex to use.

• FILEZILLA for FTP. It works perfect and does everything I need. You can set it so that when browsing your remote directory, by clicking on a file it automatically pulls the file into Notepad2; when editing is complete it will automatically re-upload the file back to the remote directory.

• FASTSTONE CAPTURE. A truly great piece of free software. I use it every day. It has a very easy colour-picker tool, as well as being able to capture full-screen, part-of-screen, or even a complete web-page (by automatically scrolling the window).

That's it. No Frontpage. No Dreamweaver. Just Notepad and a few utilities.

The Layout and Design - Online Resources

I wanted the design to be simple, but with enough 'panels' for navigational elements as well as content. Also, I am not a designer and don't have a lot of time to try to do anything fancy... I am not one for re-inventing the wheel.

Here are the online resources I used:

• YUI Reset CSS This code is used at the top of the CSS stylesheet to reset fonts and settings, to make sure the look of the site is consistent across all browsers. In fact, I use the 'Foundation' code which includes Grids as well.

• Grid Builder this is a very useful tool for creating a standard CSS-based framework. For example, it generates the code to make a 3 column CSS template instantly. There's plenty of flexibility as to number of rows, columns, column-widths, etc.

• RoundedCrnr this amazing tool creates the CSS, HTML and images for the rounded panels on this site - both the solid background as well as the rounded borders. Chuck at Roundedcrnr asks for a small donation, but it is well worth it.

• ColorSchemer an easy to use tool for picking colours.

And that's it. A small selection of tools, but powerful.

tag:geek

Can I have my Geek badge please?

In the jungle of platforms available for bloggers, the big beasts of Blogger and Wordpress stand out. I experimented with both.

• The 'old' original Blogger was super-easy to use - taking literally just a few minutes to set up. I wanted to host on my own domain, and old Blogger allowed this. New super-duper Blogger does not, though.

• Wordpress takes a while to come to grips with, and many hosting companies have a simple-install option to get Wordpress running on your site in no time. I really liked it and spent several happy evenings playing with all manner of plugins. But then, I got scared.. scared by the simple blank and empty screen staring back at me when the Wordpress database failed. Luckily, there was nothing of value lost. Of course, there are plugins to assist with back-up and restoration of Wordpress databases, but it was still scary stuff for me so I decided to look for other options.

A Hit-List Of Must-Have Blog Features

I thought about what was important for a blogging platform.

• Good navigation facilities
• Hosted on my own domain
• No database to maintain
• Excellent navigation capabilities
• Easy to customise template
• Simple to write and edit articles
• Great tools for navigation
• No licence fee
• Flexible structure

Powered By Blosxom

I think over a two-week period I must have looked at every blog platform available. There are some really wonderful systems out there. In the course of my investigations I found something called 'Blosxom'. This is about 500 lines of Perl code (runs as a CGI), and not much else. The project dates back to 2003, is open source, and there are quite a few plugins available for additional features. The Yahoo-based support forum is full of spam, and the SourceForge forum is quiet. I didn't know Perl, but felt adventurous enough to try to install Blosxom. It was actually pretty simple (or maybe I was lucky). I was struck by it's minimalist philosophy, drawn to it, moth-to-light like.

So, this blog is powered by Blosxom. In the last month I have done quite a lot of tweaking and customising (having learnt Perl), but at the core is the Blosxom code.

Watch for these future posts:

• Template design of this blog
• Navigation design of this blog

tag:geek

Google gains but still not as dominant as in UK

Comscore has released the latest data on share of search in the US:

"In February 2007, Google Sites captured 48.1 percent of the U.S. search market, gaining 0.6 share points from the previous month. Yahoo! Sites maintained its second place ranking with 28.1 percent of U.S. searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (10.5 percent), Ask Network (5.0 percent) and Time Warner Network (4.9 percent)."

tag:stats

Neilsen Market Share Rankings For Search Engines

Top 10 Search Providers for December 2006, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)

Source.

tag:stats

PPC May Lose Out On Share Of Spend

Research from Outsell shows that click fraud concerns are driving a drop in PPC’s share of advertising spend.

Forty-nine percent of advertisers have reduced or plan to reduce their PPC spending because of click fraud, up from 37 percent when Outsell first surveyed advertisers on this issue in the Spring of 2006. Advertisers also rate their own Web sites and e-mail marketing more effective than search engine ads, additional drivers in PPC’s slowdown.

tag:stats

Online Advertising Very Effective For Branding

New research from Outsell shows some interesting things. A survery of over 1000 advertisers shows that advertisers rate online advertising very effective for branding, contrary to common wisdom that online shines at leads but is weak for branding.

tag:stats

Gmail Goes Public - Now Anyone Can Sign Up

Gmail - the free email service from Google - has changed it's sign-up policy. Until now, you needed an 'invitation' from an existing user if you wanted to get a Gmail account.

Now, you don't need an invite. To get a Gmail account, go here.

I am big Gmail fan, in fact a Gmail 'power user'. Sometime I'll do a post on Gmail tips and tricks...

tag:cool

Ecommerce Results Announced By Ford

Direct Magazine today carries a small piece that FordDirect sold one million vehicles in 2006.

Dealer sales generated through Internet referrals accounted for 15% of total sales for the Ford and Lincoln Mercury divisions of the automaker.

"The Internet plays a huge role in how people shop for and ultimately select their next vehicle," said in statement Cisco Codina, group vice president of Ford Motor Co.

FordDirect is a dealer-controlled joint venture with Ford Motor Co. It was launched in 2000.

A big figure. But I'd be really impressed if they could fix cars over the net too...

Google Pen Runs Out

Hot news from the ASK Blog. A failure of some Google-provided equipment led to consequential down-time and presumably substantial operator stress.

To understand the significance, the following chart displays the full impact of the failure.

It is not made clear the original outlay for the appliance...

tag:fun

Mobile Giants Plot Secret Rival To Google

... reads the headline on this article at the online site of the London Telegraph newspaper.

A 'secret rival' - hmm... they won't get many users if they keep it secret... ;-)

Europe's biggest telecoms groups are aiming to create a mobile phone search engine that could challenge Yahoo! and Google, the US giants.

Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and one American network, Cingular, are among the companies that will come together for secret, high-level talks at the mobile industry's biggest annual trade show in Barcelona next week.

It seems to me the article is somewhat speculative.. claiming the operators are 'faced with declining revenues' when the same newspaper only a few days earlier reported Vodafone growth hits 6pc in quarter.

Mobile phone operators make their money from, er, operating the network. The more you use the phone, the more traffic, the more you pay. They dream about so called 'killer applications' that become super-popular, driving usage and revenues through the roof. Some placed their bets with video; but so far technology, services and handsets have still to catch up with the promise of 3G in this arena.

Has there been a 'killer application' in the past? Perhaps, called SMS - Short Messaging Service - that little technological afterthought that found it's way into the GSM specifications - certainly fulfills the killer app criteria.

But wait, SMS is a 'thin' application - not a lot of bandwidth is needed to deliver the value to the customer. SMS is much much thinner than Voice. In the same way, Search is much thinner than Video. And looking at the usage stats of search, we for sure know that people value - and will use - mobile search. A killer app can be a massively used application - not necessaily a high-bandwidth one.

Mobile operators are not in the business of competing with the applications that drive network traffic. They may want a team huddle to work out how to maximise revenues from the clear opportunity presented by mobile search, but that is a different thing. These guys need Google and Yahoo and MSN.

A prediction for another killer application? True MMORPG on mobile handsets; this one will need some bandwidth.

tag:whatever

Quality Score Now Counts For Ad Position

The big deal is this. Now, your ad quality score counts towards your ad position - it's not just about your bid per click.

This is Yahoo following the philosophy of Google. But one difference is that Yahoo doesn't expect you to guess about your quality score (or 'quality index' in Yahoo-speak)... you get a clue!

Kinda nice. But 'marks-out-of-five' is a rather coarse measure...

Google Financial Results 2006Q4

Income for 12 months to December 31, 2006: $10.6 billion.
This week Google released quarterly results reporting revenues of $3.21 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2006, an increase of 67% compared to the fourth quarter of 2005 and an increase of 19% compared to the third quarter of 2006.

Google Sites Revenues - Google-owned sites generated revenues of $1.98 billion, or 62% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2006. This represents an 80% increase over fourth quarter 2005 revenues of $1.10 billion and a 22% increase over third quarter 2006 revenues of $1.63 billion.

Google Network Revenues - Google's partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $1.20 billion, or 37% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2006. This is a 50% increase over network revenues of $799 million generated in the fourth quarter of 2005 and a 16% increase over third quarter 2006 revenues of $1.04 billion.

International Revenues - Revenues from outside of the United States contributed 44% of total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2006, compared to 44% in the third quarter of 2006 and 38% in the fourth quarter of 2005. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the third quarter through the fourth quarter of 2006, our revenues in the fourth quarter of 2006 would have been $18 million lower. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the fourth quarter of 2005 through the fourth quarter of 2006, our revenues in the fourth quarter of 2006 would have been $81 million lower.

Paid Clicks - Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and our AdSense partners, increased approximately 61% over the fourth quarter of 2005 and approximately 22% over the third quarter of 2006.

Online Google Tool - Keyword Phrase Suggestions

An interesting tool, not specifically created for generating suggestions for keyword phrase.. but nonetheless useful is at http://labs.google.com/sets .

Related Keyword Phrases Online

Check out www.l3xicon.com for a neat keyword research tool. For example, related keyword phrases generated for the input 'search engine marketing' are in two sections:

First section is 'related' - search engine optimization, internet marketing, search engine positioning, search engine placement, search engine ranking, website design, web marketing, web design, ecommerce, marketing, website promotion, search engine promotion, web site promotion, online marketing, website marketing, search engine submission, email marketing, web site marketing, web hosting, search engine, e-commerce.

Second section is 'variations' - search engine marketing services, search engine marketing strategy, search engine marketing new zealand, search engine marketing in florida, spain search engine marketing, search engine marketing workshops, search engine marketing training, search engine marketing strategies, search engine marketing specialist, search engine marketing san diego, search engine marketing program, search engine marketing optimization, search engine marketing firm, search engine marketing books, san diego search engine marketing, new zealand search engine marketing, mexico search engine marketing, free search engine marketing, ultimate search engine marketing course, tiburon search engine marketing.

A bit cool. Could be useful too.

tag:cool

Analysis Paralysis

..is what you get when you think about something so much you never actually get around to performing an action. I spent a long time deciding which blogging platform to use for Search-Marketing-Blog.com. I tried many.

Having selected one, I started to analyse the gazillion options for blog customisation. So many options, in fact, that I realised I could spend months getting the perfect mix - and never actually write a blog post. Analysis paralysis - something to avoid at all costs.

Those months will span plenty of juicy stuff I'll want to blog about.. so what the hell, I think to myself. Start writing the blog anyway, and experiment with the customisation over time.

Job done. This is my first official post on Search-marketing-blog.com (rather than an admin post or a test post that I will delete sometime soon...).

tag:boring