Influential Marketing Blog

SEO: A Business Model Worth Copying

Amidst the gloom surrounding media and even online advertising, there is one category that has steadily been growing year after year and shows few signs of slowing down. Search marketing groups that offer search engine optimization (SEO) are still the darling of the interactive world (along with social media groups, of course) and in many cases this is justified. After all, search marketing and SEO specifically is highly measurable, impacts the bottom line and for many businesses it is a necessity. What makes their business model so strong - and more importantly, what could any business learn from it? Here are a few thoughts:

1. Everyone knows it matters. If you are on the Internet, you realize the power of Google. If you're not listed, you may as well be invisible.  SEO is the cure for that invisibility.
   
2. It has an easy sales pitch. Most SEO firms could have a two word pitch for their services: "rank higher." Getting there may be more complex, but at least describing it is relatively straightforward.
3. Not everyone can do it. For some it may seem easy, but good SEO takes time and attention. Keeping up to date on changes and continual monitoring as well as advanced techniques to impact Google's algorithm make this a specialty skill most people need help with.
4. Little infrastructure or hard costs. Technically, you don't even need an office space - just a computer, an Internet connection and enough knowledge to succeed.
5. Your clients spend money to avoid spending more money. The alternative to good SEO is paying for search ads. Based on Google's sliding scale auction model, this can add up pretty fast. If you rank highly for the right searches, you can avoid paying the hefty advertising fees to Google.
6. You need to keep it up, you can't cancel. Anyone who has purchased SEO services know that it's a bit like a drug - once you're on it and it's working, you can't go off it. If you do, you'll lose much of the benefit you received while using it.
7. Results are highly visible. The last and perhaps most important reason for SEO's success is that anyone can very quickly see the results. You either rank highly, or you don't.

I'm a believe in the power of SEO services and think they are a necessity for most businesses. Aside from the benefits of doing SEO, it turns out you may be able to learn something from their business model as well.

Addictomatic Offers The Ultimate Ego Search

If you're among the social media initiated, chances are you are Googling yourself more than once a day. In fact, you probably have Google alerts set up with your own name to notify you (and your ego) whenever anyone mentions you. It's ok, you can admit it. As many of us build our digital profiles and publish content online, seeing who else is talking about us has become more than a voyeuristic thrill ... there is a personal ROI that is rapidly emerging, and it relates to your personal brand.  I have lots of thoughts about personal branding, including something that I'm planning to share very soon which will hopefully be quite useful for any of you trying to build your personal brand.

In the meantime, you might want to check out a site called Addictomatic that I was just referred to by Dave at Rollyo - a site from several years ago that offered the then-unique ability to "roll your own search engine" based on offering search within a selected subset of sites that you could create. Addictomatic is a relatively simple meta search that returns results on a set query from multiple online services. It essentially pulls lots of services through widgets together on the same page - and is not a technically difficult solution ... but I like the way they have positioned it as sort of the super charged personal search. If you want to see what the real buzz is about you, visit the site and type in your name to see who's talking about you on Twitter, videos and photos tagged with your name, who's bookmarked your content on del.icio.us and lots more.  It's ultimate ego search for the ultimate egomaniacs ... bloggers.

Example search for "rohit bhargava":

Influential Marketing Blog Featured in Wall Street Journal

Many of you may have already caught this yesterday, but this blog was cited in the Recommended Reading  section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article by Keith Huang.  As Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules shares on his team blog, my blog was one of 60 resources that they recommended to the journalist as part of their reading list and was selected from that list as a recommended resource for companies looking to "optimize their online presence."  Here's the writeup:

Influential Marketing Blog, rohitbhargava.typepad.com
Rohit Bhargava's blog is intellectual and educational. In a recent post, he discusses the art of stamp collection and how, even today, many smaller countries use stamps as a key marketing tool. He writes, 'Next time you pass a post office in any country, pay attention to how they are using their philately to promote the country, cater to tourists, or commemorate moments of significance.'

It is a great media hit and to be selected from a list of what I am guessing were 60 stellar resources is flattering.  I'm in awe at being included among the other bloggers and authors mentioned in the article - including Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Matt Cutts, John Battelle, Chris Anderson, Joseph Jaffe, and Danny Sullivan. Thanks to Jay for including me in this great list, and to Keith for selecting to include my blog!

Hell Hath No Fury ... Like A Pissed Search Engine Marketer

There are only two guiding principles for engaging in social media and blogging.  You don't need to memorize a book or have years of experience.  All you need is to never forget the following two things:

1. Never pretend to be someone you are not
2. Never piss off a Search Engine Marketer

Most people know the first, but not so many know the second. Earlier this week, Robert Scoble unfortunately countered the second and posted a video which he soon admitted contained several inaccuracies and was ill-advised.  A part of the video carried on a bit of dialogue that Jason Calacanis once notoriously started with his post back in February of this year calling SEO and SMO "bullshit."  Calacanis' post sparked a flurry of angry conversation in the search marketing industry, which is now coming back up again due to Scoble's video about Mahalo (Jason Calacanis' new venture) and dismissal of SEO.  Scoble's most significant criticism came from Danny Sullivan (a legend in the search marketing industry) and Rand Fishkin (another very influential search marketer) - as well as from Adario Strange on the Wired magazine blog.

I am not a search marketer, though I did get deep into this world through my ideas and writing about social media optimization and have attended and spoken at several search marketing events like SES in the past.  I know that the power of the search marketers mirrors the power of Google.  If you are going to say something against them, you better know what you're doing (and have a defensible position) - because when they go against you, it's a high profile smackdown.  Combine that with the public nature of being an "A-list" blogger and the challenge of producing good and accurate content quickly and you have the recipe for the storm Scoble finds himself in now.  We can't all be right all the time.  But trust me on those guiding principles.

Why Everyone Hates To Love Technorati (But Does Anyway)

For all of the criticism about Technorati's inconsistent ranking figures or recent team changes, the one thing the site has intuitively understood from the beginning is the inherent desire for bloggers to be ranked.  Though there are lots of industry based lists (such as the Power150, Viral Garden Top25, and Peter Kim's newly launched M20) for marketing and advertising bloggers, Technorati still holds a unique place as the main blog directory for the worldwide blogosphere in every category.  They now index over 100 million blogs, and even if you believe that 99% of these are abandoned blogs or spam blogs, that still leaves more than 1 million blogs that are being authored by people passionate about something and actively creating content about their passion.  For those people, the Technorati Authority ranking is likely something that they watch on a consistent basis.  It's a guilty pleasure for most bloggers - who know that there are other things that probably matter more, but watching that Authority figure grow day by day is irresistible.  The only problem is when you reach the hump.

The hump is the moment when you have had a number of good posts that were highly popular and resulted in lots of Technorati links, that are now getting to the end of their 6 month window - after which, Technorati no longer counts them as part of their overall authority ranking.  As a result, there are some days, where you might drop 40 or 50 points in Technorati rankings (and even more for higher ranking blogs with more links).  Watch the Technorati rankings of high traffic blogs like PostSecret or Gawker and you will see this phenomenon in effect.  This is the hump, where you have great content ranked, but expiring according to the way Technorati indexes and are faced with the challenge of continuing to create linkworthy content so you can keep your Technorati number up. 

There are really two ways to deal with the hump.  The first is to worry about it, get frustrated about Technorati's shortcomings and performance problems (not to mention their instant dismissal of all your content older than 6 months), and do everything you can to pump your numbers up again by getting links from everywhere and anywhere you can.  The other is to think beyond links as a currency for how to rank your blog and think more in terms of engagement.  RSS subscribers, email subscribers, people bookmarking your posts or commenting on them ... all are more valid measures of engagement than just links.  If only someone would find a way of putting that into a satisfying little single ranking like Technorati.  Until that happens, hump or not ... Technorati will continue to be irresistable for most bloggers.

Tapping Dayparting For More Than Online Ads

Last week I took the Metro at 7am to get to work for an early meeting.  Looking around at the crowd on the train at a time more than an hour earlier than I usually get on - two things were apparent.  First, the people looked sleepier.  And second, the crowd was clearly older on average than those who took the train at my usual hour of about 8:30.  The experience got me thinking about the role that dayparting could have in the future of targeted marketing.  For those unfamiliar with the term, dayparting essentially refers to a method which I believe was first pioneered by search marketers began with broadcast television and radio to describe their practice of changing the rotation of ads depending on the time of day that they ran.  So in the morning, you might get served a different ad than if you are browsing at lunchtime.

For search marketing, this is easily possible because it's a self service way of placing ads.  Most other online advertising is purchased based on site demographics, however what many fewer online networks and websites seem to be accounting for is how site demographics might change depending on the time of day.  When you think about other forms of advertising like outdoor billboards, you can't realistically change most billboards to suit whomever is driving by.  But you could change them by time of day (for the right price).  Dayparting is possible offline as well as online - for the right publisher to come along and offer it to advertisers. 

What If Consumers Could Generate Ads They Want To See?

Last week I sent myself an email to generate a Google text ad.  As any Gmail user knows, Google serves ads based on the text content of your email.  So corresponding back and forth with a good friend of mine whose wedding I will be attending in Peru next month results in several offers for Peru travel advisors.  Those ads are relevant, so I am likely to click on them.  Of course, the saavier among you is probably reading this thinking it's not so different from text ads on any search engine.  After all, if I typed in "lima, peru" into any search engine, I would get lots of ads.  The problem is intent.  When I am just learning about Lima, all I want is background information.  At the point when I am ready to purchase, I want to see offers.  Keyword advertisers are getting smarter about targeting intent, but it sometimes seems like banner ads are getting left behind. 

Often they are still purchased based on the demographics of a site overall and simply served in random order.  Most would agree this doesn't work.  But think about how a printed copy of the yellow pages works.  These are essentially filled with banner ads and organized by category.  What if there was a site where banner ads were organized the same way?  As a consumer I could enter by region, category or even individual product.  Going to the site would give me a list of banners with the current promotional offer that the vendor has on right now for whatever I am seeking.  The ads, in effect, could be generated by page based on a user's search terms.  This is consumer generated advertising - but where they are calling up the ads that they want to see rather than creating ads themselves.  Thinking even more broadly - what if you could also call up television ads from an archive to watch based on what you were interested in buying?  Would someone in the market for laundry detergent watch three ads back to back from three different companies before making a decision?  Maybe not.  But if I'm looking for a hotel in Lima, or a new car, or a digital camera, or a new kitchen appliance ... you bet I would.

How To Find Sites Faster Online Without Using Google

Google is great when you are searching for a single webpage or source of information.  Many of my searches still fit that category - so I'm a big Google user.  The problem is, more and more often I find myself searching not for a single page, but for a web site.  A lot of times that may be a new website or a popular website that many people have found useful.  When it comes to a search like this, Google is not so helpful.  Here are a few reasons Google doesn't work so well in these situations:

• Newer websites seldom appear highly because they have not been out long enough to get ranked and assessed in Google's algorithm
• The most useful content is sometimes not optimized and therefore appears too low in results to ever be found
• Crawler brings back any page, and not just the homepage of sites, not useful if you want to find a site instead of a page
• There is no popularity index to see what sites or pages people recently found useful (pagerank is based on links and clicks)
• Using keywords and algorithms is sometimes not as powerful as using tags and keywords other people have assigned to content online

Instead, I use del.icio.us. Rather than using an algorithm, you can use del.icio.us to "search" using the tags that people have assigned to links.  Each link has a rating based on the number of others who have also saved that link. The difference is, you are finding sites instead of individual web pages.  For an example of the difference, here's an experience I recently had when seeking new online food communities to check out:

Google search for "online food community web2.0"
(Useful sites returned in first page: Tablefinder - if only I could read Swedish)

del.icio.us tag search for "food+community+web2.0"
(Useful sites returned in first page: foodio54, OpenBottles, Cork'd, Tastefora, GroupRecipies, OpenSourceFood, Imcooked, Chowhounds, TheDailyPlate)

Just this week I have already used del.icio.us to find usage statistics for women online, popular new online food and cooking communities (example above), and a list of green blogs.  Each search was much faster on del.icio.us and yielded useful results much more easily.  This is the power of using tagging and social bookmarking to find information online.  It is also the reason why the next time you seek information online you might want to start on a site like del.icio.us instead of with Google.

Rebranding And Announcing A New Book Deal

This blog quietly turned two years old about two weeks ago - and though it was tempting to do a post just about that, there was a good reason for waiting.  Today I have two announcements - one relatively small and one relatively big.  The first small one, is that I have rebranded this blog to drop the "Interactive" from the title.  Over the course of two years I have realized that my passion is writing about marketing ideas in all forms, not just marketing that happens online or fits into a category people might consider "interactive."  Those of you who have seen my business cards or email signature already know that the promotional URL I started using for the blog is www.influentialmarketingblog.com anyway (though I am still using http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com as the primary link due to all the Technorati links that URL has now).  Rebranding to simplify also makes it a lot easier to include the blog in your blogroll without running over two lines - which I have had several complaints about!  If you are already linking to this blog and it's not too much effort, I would appreciate if you could change your link to read "Influential Marketing" or "Influential Marketing Blog."  No need to update the URL.

The second announcement is somewhat larger.  I am going to be writing a book focused on marketing authenticity and social media and am thrilled to announce that McGraw-Hill has acquired the book and Herb Schaffner (Publisher in the Business Group at McGraw-Hill Professional) will be editing.  Aside from the chance to take my writing to the next level with a more ambitious project, there are a number of other things that excite me about this partnership.  McGraw-Hill is well known and respected as the company behind publishing BusinessWeek magazine as well as a large number of books for education, business, and many other categories.  They have a huge global operation and have marketing and sales people on the ground in more than 30 countries around the world.  In short, they are the perfect publisher for this project with a large distribution network and plenty of ability to promote the book in the market. 

I plan to solicit plenty of feedback over the next few months and hope to count on many of you who read this blog consistently for candid opinions (positive and negative) to help improve the final product.  Of course, I'll be giving you full credit for any contributions you make (I believe blog karma extends to book karma).  Incidentally, if you are interested in the process behind getting a deal like this together, I would suggest checking out Tim Ferriss' post about it on Noah's blog.  Though I didn't follow exactly the same road as Tim, I certainly hope to duplicate his success and he was a great help to me in getting this project together (also, we are both with the same smart agent - Steve Hanselman).  Over the next few months, I will be rolling out several other online companion efforts around the book.  Stay tuned for more details to come ...

Newsflash for Ask.com: The Algorithm is Dying

In case you hadn't heard - Ask.com has a new advertising campaign through their new partnership with Crispin, Porter & Bogusky (CP+B) focused on making a hero out of the algorithm.  The idea behind the marketing strategy is described on their blog:

If you get great search results, you don’t care why or how you got them.  But for more than 80% of searches, there can be more than one right answer. And even when there is one right answer, there’s more than one way of getting you there, understanding those results, or getting ideas for alternative searches. For these searches, the editorial voice of your search engine matters. Search isn’t the commodity it may, at times, seem to be.

You might know CPB for their superfun and standout ad campaigns for Volkswagen and Burger King (including my favorite, the Subservient Chicken viral).We've been working with them to create a campaign that champions "The Algorithm" and how it brings good search to life--from plain old “ten blue links” to popular, algorithm-driven features such as Smart Answers and Zoom related search.  ... So ready or not world, here comes the Algorithm, soon to take its rightful place as a household word, once and for all.

Um, ok.  Obviously they are excited to be working with the "cool kids" at CP+B, which is great.  And the campaigns that are mentioned were wonderfully creative campaigns that defined a new positioning for each client and offered something new and viral.  Unfortunately, there are three pretty obvious flaws in this marketing strategy for Ask:

1. No one cares about the algorithm - This is a fact which they already note above, stating that consumers don't care how they get search results as long as they work.  Everyone in the tech industry is trying to be more "human" with their advertising - but Ask inexplicably decides to go the other way and focus on the algorithm.   
2. The algorithm is declining in importance - As anyone following the search industry knows, the rise of social networks and human filtered search mean the algorithm is not what is used to be.  Even Ask notes above that "the editorial voice of your search engine matters."  Seriously, does the editorial voice of Ask come from an algorithm?  Not so much.
3. The core brand value or positioning for Ask is not about the algorithm - This is perhaps the largest strategic issue of this campaign, that it misses the mark in focus.  Ask happens to be a search engine, but the core value proposition is not about the power of the algorithm.   For years the company focused on user friendliness and having Jeeves as a personal assistant to navigate results.  Quite simply, the algorithm is not what makes Ask unique.

Strategically, the campaign misses the mark pretty widely - and the only explanation for how it launched that I can think of is a marketing team getting blinded to strategy by a creative concept that they fall in love with (probably because of a great sales job from the CP+B team).  Unlike most of CP+B's work, this is definitely not a winning idea.  As Techcrunch recently shared, the execution doesn't seem too much smarter with their Unabomber billboards and incomprehensible microsite.  Even Valleywag was confused.  Am I missing something?  This doesn't inspire too much confidence in Ask.