We all know SEO has changed dramatically over the years and will continue to change. The way we market, sell, deliver and report on SEO services has not kept pace and needs to catch up. If you ask marketers today what SEO is about they will likely still say things like, "ranking #1 in Google" and unfortunately this is what they are looking for in the SEO sales and service delivery process. (Read: SEO Buying & Selling Tricks that Create Unachievable SEO Results & Expectations)

We know SEO is an on-going, long-term process. More specifically, it is the process of continually discovering highly converting, non-branded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions. It’s about understanding search intent and how keywords used to describe your products and services evolve as a prospect progresses through the buying cycle. It is then about having insight into great data and taking action by including those optimized keywords in your content marketing plan.

This SEO process cannot begin and end in a particular project phase or be completed after just one month of keyword research. It is now a four-step process that requires an SEO culture change, which includes:

• Selling the concept of discovering and optimizing for highly converting keywords
• Discovering non-branded keywords driving traffic and conversions
• Delivering additional SEO services to capitalize on highly converting keywords
• Reporting on the evolution of highly converting keywords and content

Step #1: Sell the Concept

The first place to introduce the concept of discovering and optimizing for highly converting keywords is in your marketing and sales conversations. Many SEO prospects and clients still want to buy the promise of a #1 search position for their keywords. This goal is difficult to obtain and maintain and sets unachievable expectations for you and your client.

Instead, avoid the urge to agree upon a list of keywords with your client that your team is going to "optimize for" - that list of 10, 20, or 30 keywords that your team will go away and "do SEO for." We call this list of keywords the Keyword Gap. Every client will have a list of keywords they think they want to rank for when in reality there’s a more highly converting keyword list that will perform better. That’s what the second step, Discovery, is all about.

You can do some initial keyword discovery in the sales process to demonstrate the Keyword Gap. Show the prospect some data for two keywords, for example:

Which one is the better performing keyword:

• Keyword #1 (condominiums for sale in Richmond) in Position #4 for a particular page with 20 visits and 10 conversions?
• Keyword #2 (condos in Richmond) in Position #3 for a different page with 3 visits and 1 conversion?

Based on the topic of this article, the quick answer is, Keyword #1 in Position #4 (condominiums for sale in Richmond) is a better performing keyword. An alternative answer is: more keyword discovery is required to understand if there are opportunities to optimize the web page that Keyword #2 is positioned for. Or maybe Keyword #1 is one of those highly converting keywords that should be included in all content marketing efforts.

Take away: Build time into your sales proposal and SEO program for on-going discovery to uncover those highly converting keywords prospects are using at different stages of the buying cycle. Base decisions on great SEO data from a variety of sources including SERPs, organic traffic, and conversion data. Always be on the lookout for new opportunities to optimize.

Step #2: The Discovery Process

The discovery process for new non-branded keywords should be practiced as frequently as possible. Uncover the new, non-branded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions and determine whether there is an opportunity to further optimize the web presence for these keywords. The success of this process depends on setting up goals and conversions in your analytics system. One of my favorite sayings about SEO is, "don’t bother even starting the SEO process unless you have website analytics goals and conversions configured."

Goals and conversions in your analytics system do not have to be complicated. Start with simple conversions and as you learn about your web presence increase the sophistication. Think about what you want your website visitors to do. What would you consider a successful visit? Here are a few examples of metrics to measure successful visits (conversions) from organic search:

Time spent on site - If a visitor has stayed on the site for a certain number of minutes (3+) and the bounce rate is low, then perhaps it can be concluded that the visitor read the content. The content was appealing to them.

Number of pages visited - If the visitor reviews two or more pages, then perhaps it can be concluded that they were intrigued with the content enough to read further.

Main product or services page to contact sales page - If the main purpose of the site is to promote the organization’s main product, did the visitor review the product page, then the pricing page then the contact sales page?

Take away: Below is the process for uncovering highly converting keywords.

1. Set up goals and conversions in analytics.
2. As frequently as possible, look for the top non-branded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions.
3. Understand the rank position for the keyword and which page or pages are ranking.
4. Understand the search volume for the keyword (both broad match and exact match).
5. Analyze the ranking pages and look for opportunities to optimize for the keyword in question.
6. Implement changes and watch for changes in position, traffic from organic search, and most importantly conversions. If there are positive changes, create some additional content that includes the keyword and again watch for changes.
7. Report newly identified, non-branded keywords and progress to the client.

Step #3: Deliver Additional SEO Services to Capitalize on Highly Converting Keywords

Once a new non-branded keyword is discovered and reported to the client, discuss the keyword opportunity and the plan for capitalizing on it.

• What was the entry page for that keyword?
• Where in the buying cycle is that keyword likely to be used?
• What kind of content can be created and distributed to further support that keyword and the prospect as they demonstrate their intent to find content?
• Is it worth further investment in SEO?

At this point, there is an opportunity to upsell the client on additional service hours to optimize and create content for the newly discovered and agreed upon keywords. It is also the point where the keyword should be included in the full content marketing strategy and further planning done on the type of content prospects require at this particular stage in the buying cycle. Perhaps it’s a focused case study, with supporting blog content, video, whitepaper or a combination. Think about the distribution points for the content and the possible backlinks and social signals that can be created for the keyword.

Take away: Set aside time each month to discuss newly discovered keywords with the client.

Step #4: Report on the Evolution of Highly Converting Keywords & Content

The approach of identifying and focusing on highly converting keywords then incorporating those keywords into the full content marketing strategy requires a different level of reporting compared to the basic monthly SEO reporting of number of backlinks, number of keywords on Page 1, etc.

Including keyword visits and conversions data alongside position data is a great first step to getting the client thinking about the difference between ranking #1 for any keyword versus ranking for the keywords prospects actually value and associate with your organization.

Once the keyword is incorporated into the full content marketing strategy the reporting requirements should shift to be focused on the performance of the particular piece of content or the content marketing campaign. This is where the disciplines of SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing begin to completely collide. (Read: 10 Reasons Why You Need an Optimized Content Strategy Now)

Take away: With the right tracking and metrics technologies the impact of content on a web presence for the purpose of organic search optimization can be reported, including:

• How the position has been affected for a particular cluster of keywords
• How many backlinks and social signals have been created
• How many keyword visits and conversions are associated with the content campaign
• And most importantly, how many sales are attributed to the content

Conclusion

Google’s algorithm updates have changed the practice of SEO. Search marketing firms have an opportunity to evolve their sales, delivery and reporting practices to differentiate themselves. Focusing on the discovery of highly converting keywords beginning with the sales and marketing conversations through delivery and reporting will produce stronger SEO results over the long term and happier SEO clients.

From an SEO buyer’s perspective, it must be downright confusing and discouraging to obtain multiple quotes from SEO service providers that very clearly have differing price ranges and service methodologies, but not so clearly defined differentiating skill sets and experience.

So sellers attempt to make it easier for buyers to understand SEO proposals in order to ultimately get to a closed deal - a signature on a contract. In the meantime, are they undermining their own profession and setting themselves up for failure by setting unrealistic expectations with clients?

Or are SEO clients being unrealistic in their expectations of SEO results in the short term versus the long term, leading SEO service providers to drastic measures that may ultimately result in the client’s web presence being penalized in organic search? Or even results in the client quitting or not paying?

This blog post is for both buyers and sellers of SEO services in hopes that 2013 will be the year of equilibrium for SEO. The year that SEO is finally regarded for what it is – extremely important in the digital marketing mix; a long-term online strategy that is based on strong, optimized content published and distributed across the entire web presence proving relevance and authority.

The four SEO selling and buying tricks described below produce unachievable expectations and create disequilibrium in the SEO services market. When these tricks are practiced by either the buyer or the seller the economics of SEO fail, because the time and effort required to meet SEO expectations and results will not match.

1. Promises of a #1 Search Position

The trick of selling the promise of a #1 Search Position as well as clients buying the promise has been around for quite a while. It still surprises me, especially with all the algorithm changes that have occurred recently, when I see this assurance in online advertisements or on an SEO agency’s home page.

Buyers, if an SEO agency promises a #1 Search Position for a keyword, exercise caution. Unless you are Wikipedia, a #1 Search Position cannot be guaranteed. Buyers need to understand that organic search positions are produced based on relevancy and authority of content around a keyword. There are numerous, uncontrollable, external factors and competition around a single keyword - no one, not even Google, can guarantee organic search position.

Read: The Five Forces of Keyword Competition Framework.

Sellers of SEO services, if your team is able to consistently deliver a #1 Search Position for a keyword, can that position be maintained over the long run, is it a highly converting organic search term, or is it perhaps not even searched on?

2. Promises of Increased Sales from SEO

The promise of increased sales as a result of SEO efforts is only possible if the SEO agency has complete control over the client’s sales processes (e.g. sales funneling, pipeline structure and reporting, sales team, commissions, etc.) and the SEO agency has sales consulting expertise on staff.

Sellers of SEO services beware… how do you even know there’s a market for what your client is selling? You may be able to improve their web presence for organic search conversions, but how do you even know their products or services are in demand and the processes around selling those products or services are efficient and proven?

Buyers of SEO, if increased sales are a requirement for your business, consider hiring a sales process consultant rather than an SEO professional whose actual task it is to improve your web presence visibility in the search engines for highly converting keywords.

3. Selling and Buying SEO Services Without Any Mention of Content Marketing

The outcome of Google’s massive algorithm changes over the past two years is that it takes really great, fresh, optimized content produced on a regular schedule to convince Google that the source is relevant and authoritative and should therefore be returned as a search result. This takes a lot of commitment, work and a strong focus on content marketing.

SEO (including the building of backlinks and the creation of social signals) requires a content marketing strategy. In fact, it is impossible to execute on SEO without one. Buyers’ expectations of SEO services will be better met if they also buy into a content marketing strategy.

SEO will also have a longer-term effect on a web presence in organic search when more quality, optimized content is produced.

The lack of a content marketing strategy will leave the SEO seller with insufficient content to work with to positively impact organic search position and the buyer with unmet expectations about SEO in general.

4. Selling and Buying SEO Services Without Any Mention of Social Media

Similar to #3, SEO agencies that are not yet factoring social networks, social media and social signaling into their SEO services methodology are doing their clients a disservice.

A blatant note to both buyers and sellers of SEO services: a year ago, Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, said, “The social signal, the people you ‘hang with’ is actually a ranking signal.” (December 2011).

In 2011, Matt Cutts was asked by an SEO Agency what three things should be included in your SEO strategy, and one of the three items he suggested was, “think about social media marketing … a lot of people think SEO versus social media marketing, and a lot of the time it makes sense to keep a holistic view.”

SEO results will be better gained and expectations better met when an entire web presence is optimized for organic search. This means distributing optimized content across the web presence to be socialized and shared, thus increasing relevance and authority for your audience.

• The inevitable continuation (and acceleration) of marketing data/analytics providers migrating from offline to online

• The inevitable continued migration of advertising budgets from search-to-display

• Increased demand for data (as we're still in the 2nd or 3rd inning of a long game)

• Consolidation taking place as highest-quality data providers rise to the top

Migration of budgets from offline to online is something that direct marketers have been experimenting with for some time, and this New Year is no different. Marketers, who have leveraged offline data to reach consumers through direct mail and other traditional offline channels, will continue to follow their target customers as they migrate online and onto mobile devices. Offline data companies that stand still will be left behind as marketers test, scale and leverage high-performing online data, sometimes on a stand-alone basis and sometimes integrated with offline data.

Along with this trend is the continued tendency for consumers to spend a significantly greater proportion of their time browsing rather than searching. To capture these audiences, sophisticated marketers will continue to migrate their budgets from search to display in order to mirror consumer media consumption patterns, reduce customer acquisition costs, and leverage scalable media sources as well as integrated and available third party data.

With consumers spending more time online and on mobile devices, demand for high quality, aggregated third party data will continue to increase as test budgets translate into permanent demand for high-performing data.

Finally, as the need for data grows, the Luma chart will become more consolidated as data-providing companies with high-performing, unique data sets rise to the top of the market.

A brand’s local Facebook pages and Foursquare venues are brand assets that ought to be managed accordingly. Locations need to be properly claimed and optimized with consistent branding and accurate metadata (specifically their lat/longs) to maximize the value of these assets.

Two recent developments will significantly increase this value:

First, Facebook just announced a major update to its mobile apps that puts local “search, engagement, and discovery” at the center of the mobile experience – at the center of the most popular mobile app on the planet.

According to Facebook, its updated Nearby tab "helps people discover places near them based on their friends’ recommendations. People can explore by category (ex: restaurants or hotels); connect to businesses directly from their phone (by liking, checking in, calling, or getting directions); rate the places they visit via a five-star system; and share their recommendations with friends."

Of course, in order for this to work, those places need to be claimed and managed with proper branding and accurate metadata including the all-important lat/long (geocode). Naturally, the popular places, i.e. those with the most customer engagement, will rise to the top.

Also on the horizon, according to The Wall Street Journal, is a partnership between Apple and Foursquare for Apple Maps/iOS integration. "The discussions with New York-based Foursquare come as Apple has been talking to a number of companies that collect local data to improve its new mapping product. Foursquare has amassed business listings and collects data about the relative popularity of places as well as user-generated tips about them that could help Apple's mapping service stand out."

Up until now, local optimization on these social platforms may have been a luxury for many brick-and-mortar brands. Now, however, it’s a strategic imperative.

Rob Reed is Founder and CEO of MomentFeed, the first social marketing platform built for mobile. MomentFeed brings together Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, and Instagram as a unified solution for connecting brands and consumers at the point of sale.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how the SEO landscape has changed for the better over the past three years, with Google’s continued and unwavering focus on the concept of relevance. However, three aspects of SEO have not changed at the same pace. The outcome is often a gap in expectations between the team delivering SEO services and the client literally banking on the results. The three aspects of SEO that I feel have not changed at the same pace as the SEO industry include:

1. The way SEO services are marketed and sold.
2. The processes around how SEO is delivered and reported on.
3. The ability for agencies and in-house teams to prove the ROI of SEO efforts.

But the importance of SEO in the digital marketing mix remains unchanged and unchallenged. There are consistently 1 billion Google searches performed every day with 94% of those searchers clicking on organic search results over paid search results. Patience will continue to be a virtue to the marketer who invests in SEO over the long run.

Here are 10 SEO truths I have discover in SEO conversations I have had with agencies, in-house marketing teams and end clients over the past 12 months:

SEO Truth #1: Rank Doesn’t Matter, Conversion Does.

If I had a dime for every time I heard the statement, “Oh, we don’t need SEO, we already rank #1 for [insert keyword here].”

I witness many SEO conversations where improvement in rank or position is the focus without any consideration given to web page visits and conversions. Many prospects, clients and bosses are lost in the infatuation of ‘Ranking #1 in Google’ and unfortunately because that’s what they want to pay for, that’s what they are sold and/or what we attempt to prove to them.

The more important metric is conversion.

So it could be that a client wants to rank #1 for ‘HR Software’, and they currently rank #5 for that keyword with a conversion rate of 5%, while a similar keyword phrase, ‘HR Software for SMBs’, has a conversion rate of 10% and is ranked #9. Clearly the latter should be the focus since it already has a higher conversion rate with a lower rank. Assigning resources to understanding the opportunities throughout the web presence, and optimizing content for the keyword ‘HR Software for SMBs’ is a better investment of time and money.

SEO Truth #2: Great SEO Results Require Great SEO Data.

SEO is the ongoing process of understanding a web presence, how it compares to the competition, which keywords are driving organic search conversion, and optimizing for those keywords by producing fresh, relevant content. This process is impossible without access to accurate, timely data about that web presence including: page-level rank, backlink metrics and social signals data, organic search keyword research, competitive intelligence, analytics conversion data.

Basing SEO decisions on old, inaccurate SEO data will yield corresponding SEO results. SEO data is the starting point to the entire SEO process and outcome. Great insights will lead to great outcomes. SEO data and SEO software should be considered a cost of doing business or executing a campaign just as email marketing campaigns require an email marketing platform.

SEO Truth #3: Report on Social Signals Just Like Backlinks.

Think of social signals as the new backlink. Now don’t get me wrong, backlinks are still important to organic search and should continue to be reported on, but social signals also deserve ongoing focus and integration into an SEO strategy.

It has been two years since Google and Bing announced that social signals are now factored into their organic search algorithms. Agencies and in-house SEO teams need to demonstrate that they are increasing the number of Likes, Shares, +1s, Tweets, Retweets and YouTube Views at both the web page level and the network level. Social signal metrics should be included in the monthly SEO report as well.

SEO Truth #4: SEO Technology is Telling.

Just as a sales consultant hired to improve sales processes and ultimately conversion rates would not attempt to do so without customer relationship management (CRM) software, neither should an SEO agency or in-house team attempt to effectively improve a web presence for SEO without some support and assistance from technology.

There are many SEO software and tool options – from full software systems to stand alone tools. SEO technology is required more today than ever before in order to assist in the ongoing efforts of keyword research, rank checking, competitive analysis, backlink discovery and tracking, content tracking, analytics, social signal monitoring and monthly SEO reporting capabilities. The technology and tools you select can make or break you too.

Going it alone, without the support of a technological foundation to track a web presence on a daily basis for the purpose of ranking higher organically in the search engines is like trying to do email marketing by BCCing your list from MS Outlook – your deliverability rates, open rates and conversion rates will be immeasurable and less than expected.

SEO Truth #5: Daily Insights into SEO Metrics is Essential.

The SEO reporting cycle is still very much a monthly process (although I’m seeing this standard move to weekly with larger agencies and marketing teams). Having daily and weekly insight into all the SEO metrics included in an SEO campaign is important to understand how your efforts are tracking towards the ultimate goal. Having the insight and intelligence to adjust the goal if more or less progress is being made than anticipated can only be accomplished with daily insight into accurate SEO data and metrics.

SEO Truth #6: A Backlink Strategy Without a Content Marketing Strategy is Just Plain Scary.

Even after all the Panda, Penguin and Freshness updates, I’m still amazed to see some agencies providing quotes to clients where the main thrust of the contract is a promise to build ‘x’ number of backlinks per month. SEOs should continue to deliberately build backlinks in directories that are industry or locally specific to the client, but that’s where deliberate backlink building should end.

To build long-term, non-spammy backlinks, an optimized content marketing strategy is required where fresh relevant optimized content is being produced on a consistent basis. Content in the form of blogs, press releases, case studies, and whitepapers wherein the content contains keywords that are driving organic search conversions as well as naturally occurring backlinks to the main corporate website. Not only will this approach to backlink building withstand the test of time, it will also create social signals which will also positively impact the web presence.

SEO Truth #7: Spend Less Time on Reporting, More Time on SEO.

A typical SEO contract consists of analysis, recommendations, implementation and reporting. The most painful of which is reporting - mashing together end-of-month reports from multiple data sources to demonstrate progress to the end client, never mind trying to make it look pretty. Laborious, repetitive reporting takes away too much time from what will really pay off – the doing of SEO.

This reinforces truth #4: SEO Technology is Telling. Making use of technology for weekly or monthly automated reporting will allow for more time being spent on the task of SEO which will yield better results for the client and will allow you to scale your business.

SEO Truth #8: Think Outside the Google Search Box.

Yes, Google continues to be the entity that SEOs attempt to please, and rightfully so. I can’t see this focus changing in the near or distant future either. With the continual convergence of social media and SEO, we also need to think about the prospect of searchers starting their searches directly on social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. A web presence should be represented for its branded keyword phrases within these sites as well. Test your branded keywords and test your clients’ branded keywords to see if they return the expected search results on these social networks. If not, optimize!

SEO Truth #9: Communicate the CTR Opportunity Gap by Keyword.

Once there is an understanding of the high-converting keywords, it is worth the exercise of applying paid search volume data with organic clickthrough rates (CTRs) to communicate the opportunity gap between ranking #9 versus #3.

Let’s use the keyword “HR Software” as an example. The total Google search volume (U.S., Canada, and Australia) is 2,120 searches per month, combined with the fact that 94 percent of searchers click through on organic search results (GroupM UK and Nielsen, August 2012). Given Optify’s CTR data for positions #1 through #20, the opportunity gap can be communicated to the client.

2120 monthly searches * 94 percent = 1992 * 3.0 percent /30 days = 2 daily click-
throughs for position #9 in Google.com for the keyword "HR Software"

Position #9 will yield 60 clicks per month (2 clicks per day * 30 days) while increasing the position to #3 will yield 180 clicks per month (6 clicks per day * 30 days) presenting an opportunity gap of 180-60 = 120 clickthroughs per month. What value does this translate into for the client?

SEO Truth #10: It’s about the Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is now more about Web Presence Optimization. As the ways we sell and deliver SEO services continue to evolve, the hierarchy of web presence optimization is a model that may help structure sales contracts and service delivery tasks while ensuring that keyword metrics are focused on conversion, backlinks are built out effectively, and social signals are integrated into the overall SEO strategy.

As a quick recap, the research concludes that 94% of searchers click through on organic search results, and that the top three positions in Google earn 61% of the clicks. These numbers are not far off the numbers I’ve used for years when describing the importance of SEO in a marketing budget as well as ranking on Page One for the keywords prospects are searching on to find your organization. The GroupM and Nielsen numbers simply (and strongly) validate the importance of an on-going SEO strategy.

A significant disconnect, however, continues to exist between the impact that SEO can have on impressions, clickthroughs and lead generation compared to PPC and the representation each receives in a typical marketing budget. Take Forrester’s U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, for the years 2011 to 2016. Marketers are spending and will continue to spend, on average, 88% of their search marketing budget on paid search campaigns to access just 6% of the available clickthroughs, and 12% on organic search in attempts to reach an astounding 94% of the available clickthroughs.

I’m not the first person to point out this imbalance, nor will I be the last.

I find it useful for marketers to visualize the difference in available CTRs from SEO versus PPC. Before the GroupM and Nielsen CTRs were published, I used Optify’s CTR data to apply to monthly search volume for a given keyword. The chart below depicts the daily estimated number of clickthroughs for the keyword phrase “HR Software” in Google.com, Google.ca and Google.au across Page One and Page Two of the SERPs.

Based on the research, data available and assumptions below, an HR software company attempting to rank for this keyword should expect, if they were occupying position one in Google for the term “HR Software”, 24 clickthroughs per day from SEO and just two from PPC; three clickthroughs from SEO if they were in position six or seven for the same term and nothing from PPC.

Think of this more as a model for comparison rather than an exact answer since there are so many uncontrollable factors surrounding a keyword. (Read: Five Forces of Keyword Competition)

In this model, one must also consider the difference is resources (time and money) required to increase positions in SEO versus PPC. With SEO, the input of time and money is uncertain, however, the results are longer lasting. With PPC, one can instantaneously gain a top position, but it can disappear just as quickly without a trace of ever being there.

2120 monthly searches * 94% = 1992 * 36.4% /30 days = 24 daily click-
throughs for position #1 in Google.com for the keyword "HR Software"

The purpose of this blog is not to convince marketers to shift their marketing spend, nor is it intended to discount one marketing tactic over the other. (I believe there is a time and a place for all marketing tactics within a given strategy). The purpose is simply to take a closer look at SEO as a line item in a marketing budget and other marketing tactics that affect SEO.

SEO as a Line Item in your Marketing Budget

Marketers are spending more on SEO than they realize when they also have the following line items in their budget:

• Content Marketing
• Social Media
• Video Production
• Public Relations

These marketing tactics affect a web presence and organic search rankings and can have a significant positive impact on SEO including: rank, backlinking, social signal generation and fresh content, but are often not included in the traditional SEO budget.

Content Marketing

SEO cannot be done without content creation in the form of on-site content optimization and off-site optimization (i.e., blogs, press releases, case studies, how-to guides, videos, etc.), yet content marketing is often a separate line item from SEO, and unfortunately a lot of off-site content is not optimized for SEO.

A client case study, for example, can have a significant impact on SEO rankings if it is deliberately optimized for keywords driving traffic and socialized for the purpose of organic search ranking.

It is worth noting that according to the Custom Content Council, marketers spent $16.6 billion on electronic content marketing in 2011 and the trend is continuing.

Social Media

Social media and SEO are very much separate line items in a marketing budget, but content socialized at the page level through Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube generates social signals which can positively impact SEO and an organic search ranking.

The most direct link between SEO and social media is Google+ and Search plus Your World. If you have not yet started to build out your personal and business Circles, please do. A piece of content shared through your Circles has an opportunity to be found by your followers through Search plus Your World – before your competitors’ content is found.

Video Production

Video can be a secret weapon in an SEO strategy given that YouTube is the second busiest search engine and your prospects want to consume your content in video format. Many organizations are specifically itemizing video creation in their marketing budget. If the video content is optimally tagged, it can dominate in both YouTube and Google proper for the keywords the video has been optimized for.

Public Relations

Many organizations have a PR budget that does not factor into their SEO budget. So although PR efforts may be impacting SEO, they could be positively impacting it even further if the PR content was optimized for keywords driving traffic.

Press releases that are written specifically for a keyword that is converting targeted traffic will be more impactful on lead generation efforts given that Google gives priority to fresh, relevant content and will likely list the press release in its News section if it is distributed through the proper channels (e.g., Marketwire, Businesswire, PRWeb, etc.).

Stop Underestimating SEO in Your Marketing Budget

SEO today consists of more than just backlink building and on-site optimization. Content marketing, PR, social media and SEO go hand-in-hand, and the investment in one tactic can positively influence the outcome of another.

If you are an SEO professional, but not yet involved in your clients’ social media, PR and video production efforts, talk with them about the importance of bringing these tactics together for the overall benefit of SEO. If you are a marketer and are working with different professionals or employees on each of these tactics, it is worth your time to bring the different disciplines together in attempts to optimize all content across your web presence for keywords that are driving targeted traffic and conversions.

SEO as a line item in marketing budgets is typically underestimated. The gap between what marketers spend on SEO versus PPC is not as significant as Forrester indicates. Those marketers and SEO professionals who attempt to execute SEO in a silo will never get the results they expect (especially not overnight).

My marketing budget has a line item called “Optimized Content Marketing Strategy” with sub categories that include:

• Content Marketing
• SEO
• Social Media
• PR
• Video
• Email Marketing
• Paid Search

This approach will give you a better chance at reaching the top of Google for your converting keywords and the opportunity to enjoy awesome organic clickthrough rates!

It’s about time that digital marketers learn how to be more real.  Well, more real-time. Just like Darwin said, it’s not about being the biggest, or the smartest, it’s about responding fast.

Digital marketers are clamoring to leverage social media data and real-time marketing technologies to understand consumer attitudes and interests, but listening and responding on a traditional media cycle is too slow. A four-week reaction time is too late to leverage anything that happens. Listening and media buying need to happen together, in real time.

How many times have you noticed the same exact video or funny picture (most likely of a cat or wedding proposal) being shared by a few of your friends on Facebook? Then at dinner when you wanted to share this funny piece of content, alas, you realize that everyone around the table already saw it? That’s how fast content moves around the web, Pinterest “pins” are being shared on Facebook, Tumblr posts are being retweeted on Twitter and many pieces of content get their 15 minutes of fame. Internet fame is temporary; people flock from one meme or trend to another within hours and from one social network to another within minutes.

But it’s not only memes that spread like wildfire across the web; it’s also news, opinions, and other worldly topics and discussions. Everyone has their own micro-community they live in – tech, sports, cars, cooking, motherhood. News spreads. And fast. 24/7. Those who care about it will know about it. In this environment, brands need to be agile. How can they connect with their audience in the moment they care the most (or at least just care)?

To understand just how fast a topic can emerge and recede online, take the recent example of the release of a new trailer for the hit game Call of Duty [see graph below].  The Trailer's announcement on May 1st was greeted with an immediate surge of interest and discussion on Twitter.  Within less than 24 hours, the conversation shifted from Twitter to a high level of comment activity on YouTube.  In real time, users shifted their behavior from a discovery platform in Twitter, to a viewing and discussion platform in YouTube.  Even more compelling is the fact that the topic almost entirely receded in less than 48 hours.  In a total arc of just 72 hours, a compelling piece of content was discovered, consumed, and discarded.

So what tools are available to help marketers crack the real-time nut?  Technology companies like Baynote and SocialFlow, for example, help marketers make decisions about what content to release and when based on their followers’ real-time conversations.  Companies like Motista and WiseWindow gather social media data to analyze real-time trends around brands and products.

Although, often, it takes more than available tools and technologies, digital marketers need to shift their way of thinking and campaign strategies to reflect how quickly interests shift online. They need to listen and move in real-time.

To paraphrase Darwin, it’s about being responsive. And fast. Really, really fast.

Surprisingly it seems even more business owners debate the value of having a second site when their traditional site can open up on a smartphone browser “just fine” and may be reluctant to spend the extra money on something they don't deem as "broken." Well, with over 100 million smartphone users in the US alone and half of all search being performed on a mobile device, the value and necessity for a mobile web site is higher than ever.

Simply put: Search, social and mobile all go hand-in-hand (pun, intended).

Below are The Top Four Reasons You Need to Launch a Mobile Site:

1. Content Prioritization

- Mobile browsing is all about an easy, accessible experience. In comparison to desktop web sites (which usually contain a wide range of content and information) mobile sites include only the most crucial time- and location-specific functions and features. Traditional websites are too content-heavy, complicated and usually not relevant for practical mobile use.

- Traditional websites simply can’t give mobile users what they need. They are designed to be viewed on a computer screen instead of a mobile device. This means that regular websites, while still serve a purpose, are not effective for a mobile user with broken links and cluttered information. Too much chaos on a little screen equals high bounce rates and a negative response to your company.

2. Rank Higher in Search

- Because of their simplicity in nature, mobile websites have higher speed, making the visitor experience more pleasurable and this means increased relevancy to search engines.

- Mobile allows you to have the advantage of coming up higher in search engine results for local searches performed on mobile devices. This means that when people search for your type of product or service using their mobile device, you can show up higher in the results just because you have a mobile website.

3. Increased Conversions

- A mobile site makes it easier for on the go visitors to easily access information. Conversions increase as users can contact you with one-click calling, one-click email, and instant directions. This eliminates the need for your customers to take “extra steps” in order to contact or visit your business. In the age of instant information, an extra click could mean missed opportunities.

- Integrating social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube with your mobile website is simple and will help retain your visitors and increase customer base and lead generation.

- Fact: Mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons.

4. Friendly User Experience = Repeat Interaction

- Mobile sites help you attract both new and repeat customers by giving your business instant appeal when visitors land on your clean mobile site with all of the important information clearly and easily accessible.

- When users are successful in finding what they need while visiting a mobile website, they’re more likely to come back. When mobile users land on a website that is distorted, they quickly exit and make a mental note never to return.

Bottom-Line:

Your customers and potential customers are utilizing mobile for almost every aspect of their daily lives. To stay relevant and accessible you must adapt your web strategy to align with current mobile trends, which are only going to increase in use. Mobile gives you the advantage over your competitors; most of which are not yet leveraging the powerful benefits of mobile marketing.

Want to know how you can improve interaction with a mobile site? Let's connect! You deserve a new, sleek, very mobile interface.
@amykauffman

But the digital landscape is chaotic. It’s a highly fragmented universe that includes online video, display, search, mobile apps, social commerce, interactive TV, gaming and more. These new channels have disrupted the traditional path to purchase… but they’ve also created new opportunities to connect. Consumers today are always connected via mobile devices — at home, on-the-go, and in shopping environments.

But with so many moving pieces, how do you keep your brand’s digital mix straight in your head? Has your boss ever asked what your brand was doing in digital? Imagine the horror of having to explain such complexity!

To simplify that explanation, create a digital ecosystem.

What is a digital ecosystem?

Simply stated, an ecosystem is a set of relationships. A digital ecosystem visually clarifies how your mix of digital channels works together relative to your consumer’s journey.

A digital ecosystem is categorized by drivers, hubs and outcomes. It connects all the content experiences that your brand delivers and shows how your consumer gets from one place to another. Most importantly, a digital ecosystem highlights an end game for each digital investment.

Download the Digital Ecosystem Planning Template

Start with business goals, KPIs and your consumer!

Your consumer should define the elements of your digital ecosystem. Take the time to understand and chart their persona and expectations along their entire journey. Understand which media connections are most relevant (and why) during each phase of their decision-making process and articulate the type of content that gets them engaged.

From there, map out media options based on these value factors:

• Trust of source
• Scale of source
• Value of connection/engagement
• Cost to buy/cost to produce
• Time-to-market

Create the digital ecosystem

STEP 1: Identify your drivers

Digital drivers provide reach to your consumer. These media might be paid (video, display, search), earned (user reviews, online conversation) or shared (where brands invite public participation in content creation).

STEP 2: Determine where your drivers should drive.

Hubs deliver the goods. They may be transactional, informational, educational or entertaining, but they’re typically owned (controlled entirely by the brand, like an ecommerce site) or shared (social media sites like Facebook or retail partnerships).

STEP 3: Specify the outcomes you expect in your ecosystem.

Outcomes are the actions you want consumers to take. They close the loop. It could be to watch a video, download an app, play a game, buy a shirt or rate a restaurant. Outcomes provide the data you’ll need to understand which digital channels are working, which should be optimized and which should be dropped from the mix entirely.

Understand that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Brands today have an enormous amount of digital activity in their mix. Many are driving business results while others are still being tested.  A digital ecosystem simply clarifies everything you have going on, so that everyone on your team can see the big picture, become aware of all the available assets and understand how success is being measured.

Download the Digital Ecosystem Planning Template

Shaun Quigley is VP, Digital Practice Director for Brunner. Follow Shaun @squigster.

Pinterest is a social photo sharing website that has also been described as an online pin board. Its more than 10 million registered users, over 2 million of whom log in every day, “pin” photos, graphics, and videos into categories they create based on their own personal interests. Pinterest users also share their pins on Facebook and Tweet them.

“Their own interests” may indeed include images that represent your brand. Pinning images is how your visitors, prospects, clients and fans want to visually socialize your organization.

The likes of GE and IBM are using Pinterest, proving that it is relevant to both B2C and B2B.

Here are eight SEO reasons to add Pinterest to your web presence and how to get started.

1. Google

Pinterest content is being crawled and indexed by Google, therefore it will impact your SEO rankings. Think of it as an opportunity to outrank a competitor for a keyword. If you are pinning on behalf of your organization, take the time to optimize Pinterest photo comments with important keyword phrases. If you have control over image file names when originally published, take the time to optimize photo descriptions for keywords as well.

2. Backlinks & Referrals

Every image pinned to a Board has a link back to its original published source. These are valuable backlinks and can provide referral traffic as well. Capitalize on this. Posting your product and service images and videos is a great place to start. However, keep in mind that it’s important to avoid being blatantly self-promotional - remember to provide value to your audience by sharing quality content that is relevant to their interests and worth liking, commenting on, and re-pinning.

3. The Pinterest Search Box

With millions of visitors to Pinterest every day, people are looking for brands via the Pinterest search box. Is your brand available? Does your Pinterest presence represent and reinforce your brand to a prospect who might be searching?

4. Web Presence

Pinterest is yet another web presence point. Simple as that. Just like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, Pinterest has gained enough momentum and significance that excluding it any longer may negatively impact your web presence compared to your competitors.

5. Content

Pinterest is unique because it is the only social networking site focused solely on sharing images. You likely do not have to go far to find an inventory of photos, graphics and videos in your organization. For example, design and architecture firms have projects, real estate agents have listings, product companies have products, services companies such as vacation and leisure have snap shots of places, artists have art, sports-related companies have action shots, non-profits have people and places and event pictures, technology companies have conferences and infographics, and so on.

Get creative and start thinking about how to build your inventory of photos.

6. Social Signals

We know that social signals are factored into Google’s and Bing’s organic search algorithms. Pinterest provides yet another opportunity for your visitors, prospects and customers to generate social signals (Tweets, Likes, Shares, Google +1’s, and now Pins). Social signals indicate to Google that people want to socialize your content with people they have relationships with, which signals that your content is relevant.

7. Competitors

Your competitors are likely using Pinterest already. This is a grand enough reason to get started. But better yet, if they are not, you can take advantage of the situation and start building out your Pinterest presence before they do.

8. Pinterest is not going away in the near future.

In December 2011, the site became one of the top 10 largest social networking sites, according to Hitwise data, with 11 million total visits per week – this number increased to 21.5 million visits for the week ending January 28, 2012. According to Experian’s 2012 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report, Pinterest is now the third most popular social network in the U.S. behind Facebook and Twitter, having surpassed LinkedIn.

And the Pinterest team is serious about their business. Recently they raised an additional $100 million from some noteworthy investors.

Getting Started

 
Getting started is rather straight-forward:

1. Request an account by going to http://pinterest.com/. If you know someone who already has an account, ask for an invitation.
2. Set up a Pinterest account for your business and reserve your main brand name.
3. Be sure to connect your business account with your Twitter and Facebook accounts so you can share content across the social sites. When you pin an image you can also tweet it and share it.
4. Add the Pinterest social icon to all your corporate web pages and blog pages.
5. Add a Board and get busy pinning!

P.S. Please take a moment to follow gShift Labs on Pinterest. Thanks!

If your prospects can’t find you at the Google search box, then it is well worth your time to optimize your content, keywords and entire web presence for organic search. And you want to because more than 1 billion Google searches are performed every day; 85% of those searchers are most likely to click on the organic side (left-hand side) of the search results.

Getting to the top of Google’s search results requires ongoing commitment to optimizing your entire web presence.

Here are five SEO tips and tactics that will help you improve your search engine rankings, increase eyeballs to your online store and impact sales.

1. How do you rank now?

Before investing any time in SEO it’s best to understand how you currently rank for the keywords that you want to be found for. Accurate SEO rankings are challenging to obtain because
Google personalizes search results for everyone.

If you go to the Google search box and search on your own product, it may appear as though you are #1 because you’ve likely searched on the keyword before and Google is personalizing the search for you. However, a prospect searching for your product for the first time might see your website or product page ranked #7.

SEO ranking results are also different by country. So if you’re located in France but trying to be found in Google.com, it is almost impossible to understand your actual SEO ranking.

Gaining insight into your true, unskewed, non-personalized SEO ranking for a particular keyword phrase requires access to an SEO ranking tool.

2. Closing the keyword gap.

The keyword gap is a concept I use to describe the fact that your prospects are most likely using a different keyword to find your products and services compared to the keyword you would use. For example, if you are selling “gizmos” your prospects may actually refer to them as “gadgets” in the Google search box.

Closing your keyword gap is about understanding how your prospects and customers are searching and adjusting your keyword strategy to match their intentions.

The only way to close your keyword gap is through keyword research. Studying your website analytics as well as talking to your customers are two great ways to get started. (Download: Getting Your Keywords Right Workbook)

3. Continuous content.

A strong SEO strategy starts with a continuous commitment to content. Content is at the heart of SEO. Without content, you’ll never be found in Google. Keep in mind that Google loves fresh, relevant content.

Start with evaluating your website and deciding if you think the content throughout your site could be improved. How do you take what you learned in #2 above and work those keywords into your content?

A regular blogging strategy will also boost and help maintain high SEO rankings when the content is optimized for the keyword phrases you are attempting to rank for. Brainstorm blog topics in advance. Think about stories about your products, the clients that love them, how they use them, etc. Post your blog content on your blog site and also Tweet it, Facebook it, YouTube It and Google+ it.

4. YouTube; YouBeFound.

YouTube is the second busiest search engine only after its parent, Google. Once you close your keyword gap and have great content, putting in the extra effort to publish video content on YouTube and optimizing it for search will really pay off.

Not only will you be found when a prospect searches directly from the YouTube search box, but YouTube results can also be embedded in the Google search results page. This increases the likelihood of you occupying multiple rank positions in Google for your product. Who doesn’t want that?

Ensure you have sufficient links back to your website from the video page and reference the keyword in your voice over. And remember, your videos don’t have to be fancy or expensive.

5. Socialize your online store.

According to both Google and Bing, social signals now account for 8% to 10% of their organic search algorithms. Your social media presence now matters to SEO! This means that Google is evaluating the volume of social signals that are being produced by your web presence.

A social signal can be a Twitter tweet or retweet, a Facebook Like or Share, or a Google +1. Here are a few tips to help increase your social signals:

• Ensure you have the social sharing icons on every page of your website. Not just the home page, but every shopping cart page. It is about providing your shoppers with endless opportunities to click the Like or Share or Tweet button.
• Incorporate Facebook into your site wherever possible. For example, add a Facebook Fan Box to your web pages as well as the Facebook Comments App to your blog.
• If possible, add your customers to your Google+ Circles and follow them on Twitter. They may reciprocate and retweet your product tweets or share your content in their circles.
• SEO Your Business Facebook Page. There are even more tips and tricks available in this SEO Your Business Facebook Page How-To Guide.

All this “SEO stuff” may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Take it one step at a time, spend an hour per day figuring it out and it will pay off. SEO results do not happen overnight, but they do happen. It is a never-ending process but one worth investing in.

For those of you that track analytics or keyword reports, either on your own or through your agency, (not provided) should be old news. The not-so-recent search encryption update from Google has had a larger impact on analytics than expected, as (not provided) is polluting top keyword reports regardless of your industry. The update allows users that are logged into Google to encrypt their searches so that the keyword they used to find your site is not revealed in analytics and is instead (not provided). While this is a step forward for privacy – in theory (see below) – it has made the job of the Data Analysts and SEOs a bit harder. After all, if you don’t know which words your consumers are using to find your site, how can you properly target them online?

Now Firefox is getting in on the search encryption fun, if something like search encryption can really be considered fun. Their most recent browser update defaults to a private search, regardless of the search engine you’re using. In other words, if you’ve recently updated Firefox and have not changed your default settings, your search keyword is (not set) for Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Search marketers are not seeing which keyword search led you to their site when they check their Google Analytics.

Alone, these two updates may not have amounted to much, but together they are hiding a fairly large portion of data, enough to force consideration of what analytics does for you and how you can replace the lost information. While some articles are providing specific examples of the damage (not provided) can do, even anecdotally it is clear that marketers needed to take notice of this update. However, having less than 10% of your data affected is not usually enough to cause real damage or a change in approach. But what if over 20%, or up to 40% of your data is hidden? With (not set) being triggered by Firefox in addition to Google’s (not provided), that is just what is happening to some site owners. Needless to say, if you have full data for 1,000 keyword searches you’re going to be more effective targeting users than if you have the data for just 600 such searches.

Why isn’t (not provided) Showing Up in AdWords Data?

I have no quarrel with Firefox offering an update that could appeal to users and help to differentiate itself from other browsers (read: Explorer), but here is where I pick a bone with the change. Those paying for ad placement within the Google search network can see which keywords led to a user clicking on their ad. So if you’re paying Google, they are providing you with the keyword search of their logged in users; it is just for organic search, the type for which marketers can’t pay for top placement, that the privacy implementation is coming into play.

It is worth repeating that if you click on an ad, and Google gets money for that ad, they will “unblock” your private search. That is because it has already been sold to marketers at an arranged cost – the cost of the ad placement. But if you click on a natural result, and Google gets no money, you can keep your privacy. So that begs the question: Why update privacy now? While I can’t get inside Google’s head (if I could, I’d be rich) and say for sure “why now,” I can say that marketers should be looking at other ways to collect data if they want the complete picture.

What this all means is that SEOs and other online search marketers for small business, the types that can’t afford an Omniture or a Webtrends analytics platform, must ponder a day when Google’s free analytics goes away or is diluted. While Google Analytics is currently the most cost-effective option for site performance measurement for most businesses, the day when Google makes you pay for the best, most actionable data seems a bit closer now than it had been a few months ago.

Given that, it might be time to consider your options for replacing the lost information, though there is no impetus act on those ideas immediately (or as long as GA remains free). While solutions will vary with site data needs, some options include more in up-front data collection such as User Experience studies, or perhaps generating an e-mail database and CRM campaign to collect user information. There are a lot of ways to collect data, and if Google has any additional plans to shift the access to data, you need to be ready with other solutions.

If you are a marketer you must be thinking, “How do I know if we are maximizing our SEO investment given all the changes Google has introduced?” If you are an SEO or marketing consultant you are probably asking yourself, “How do I sell my services and prove value to my clients?”

Although a lot has changed, two aspects of SEO remain certain:

1. SEO is not dead, nor will it die in the foreseeable future. Billions of marketing dollars are invested every year into “being found” organically in the search engines and this trend will continue. With more than a billion Google searches performed worldwide every day SEO is not going away.
2. The way we perform and measure organic search optimization has to change and is changing. Blatantly building out backlinks and optimizing on-site content is not enough. Measuring only rank and position is not enough either. Today organic search is about fresh, relevant, findable, optimized content that generates leads.

A New Theory: The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization

The idea of building out a hierarchy of web presence optimization (WPO) comes from the belief that basic fundamentals are required before organic search success can be achieved. The purpose is to visualize how the execution of SEO and the services required to perform SEO have evolved due to Google’s algorithm enhancements, and to maximize your SEO efforts and investment.

There are five different tiers in The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization:

1) Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation

If you are serious about being found in Google and optimizing your entire web presence, it is important to start with a strong baseline or foundation. We call this first tier Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation. A strong base layer will accelerate your efforts in the higher tiers by ensuring your web presence has a strong infrastructure, can be effectively indexed and is identifiable.

Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation accounts for approximately 10% of the SEO efforts often consisting of one-time tasks such as:

• Setting up Robots.txt, 301 redirects, sitemap, title tags, etc.
• Configuration and cross referencing of a blog presence and social accounts including: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+ and any other industry-specific social media or sharing sites.
• Implementation of social sharing icons throughout the main web and blog sites.
• Backlinking from respected industry and local directories.
• Setting up Google Places listings.
• Understanding web page load time and server details that may affect rankings.

This is not an exhaustive list and is bound to change as Google continues to tweak its algorithm to serve up the most relevant search results.

2) Keyword & Competitive Research

At the core of every organic search strategy are keywords. Coincidentally, at the core of Google’s organic search algorithm is relevance for keywords. There will be constant competition for every keyword you are trying to rank for – guaranteed.

The Keyword & Competitive Research tier is an on-going process that will expand and evolve as you venture deeper into your organic search optimization strategy. It is important to understand that the keyword phrases your prospects use will change as they progress through the buying cycle.

Approximately 25% of your organic search optimization efforts should be focused on continually understanding the keyword phrases that drive targeted traffic and conversions.

Before advancing any further up the WPO pyramid, become very focused on your keywords and your competition for those keywords. To get started, determine a shortlist of (two to four) unbranded keyword phrases your prospects are actually searching for to find the products and services you are selling. Only after you develop a keyword list should you scale your efforts into the next tier – The Optimized Content Marketing Plan.

3) The Optimized Content Marketing Plan

Content marketing is experiencing a lot of buzz lately, and it should be! Content marketing is not new, but “optimized content marketing” is. Optimized content marketing is at the intersection of organic search optimization, social media, all the recent Google algorithm changes, and content marketing. Planning and creating your optimized content accounts for the majority of your SEO efforts - approximately 55%.

The Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs interviewed 1,092 B2B marketers in August 2011 and found that 60% plan to increase their content marketing budgets in 2012. Also, 40% are using SEO rankings as a measurement of the success of their content marketing campaigns.

So what would the impact be to your organic search rankings, impressions and clickthroughs if you optimized your next major piece of content for the keyword discovered in the previous tier?

An optimized content marketing plan addresses four major Google algorithm changes from the past year:

a) Freshness Updates – Google favors fresh, relevant content in the form of press releases, blogs, case studies, news and events.

b) Panda Updates – Optimized content distributed to valid, reliable sources will assist in building strong backlinks that are less likely to be penalized.

c) Google+ – Social networks and social media are about relationships and relationships prove relevance. Google’s social network, Google+, is indeed factored into its search algorithm. Build your Google+ presence and circles and start sharing your content today.

d) Search plus Your World – Most importantly, when you share your content publicly in Google+ it has a broader reach and a longer life than any other social network including Facebook and Twitter.

Additionally, an optimized content marketing plan will provide you with sustenance for other lead generation techniques such as paid search campaigns (i.e. Google AdWords and banner ads) and email marketing. And you need content to be successful at generating social signals, which is the fourth tier.

4) Publishing, Socializing & Sharing Content

Now that you have effective, optimized content that your prospects want, you need to tell them about it. Distributing your content effectively and frequently should occupy about 5% of your SEO effort. Here’s where to publish your content:

• Corporate website and blog site
• If a blog post, then to industry specific blog sites that your prospects will visit
• If a press release, then through a newswire such as PRWeb or Marketwire
• Social channels including: LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Facebook (with Twitter the content should be tweeted multiple times over a specified period of time)
• Subscribers and client base via email marketing

The distribution of your optimized content marketing is key because it accomplishes the following goals for your SEO campaign:

• Backlink building
• Indexing by Google so it can ultimately be found
• Social signals creation (Tweets, Retweets, Likes, Shares, Views)
• Beginnings of a sales conversation with prospects

5) Measurement & Improvement

In order to improve a content marketing campaign for further execution, not only must you master the previous tiers, but you must measure, benchmark, tweak and repeat. This is the final and ultimate tier - the remaining 5% of your SEO effort.

But how do you measure the success of an SEO campaign? Compare the following SEO metrics to other marketing campaigns (i.e. Google AdWords, email marketing, banner ads):

• Impressions
• Clickthroughs
• Conversions
• Social signals
• Backlinks
• Keyword Rank

Conclusion

As organic search optimization and the services required to “get found” evolve, so too must our tools, techniques and tactics. The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization can be used by marketers to guide their in-house SEO efforts, as well as by agencies in their sales conversations and implementation processes.

Your SEO efforts are worth paying attention to on a regular basis because everyone looks at the organic side of search, and over 85% of searchers click on organic search results over paid results.

The following 10 SEO metrics are useful for tracking the progress of a web presence in organic search. Each metric provides signals as to what is working and what is not so your SEO efforts can be constantly tweaked and results improved.

1. SEO Rankings

Track your online organic search visibility for the keywords your organization wants to be found for in the search results. Following your SEO ranking metric every day, week or month will allow you to understand if your organization is expanding its web presence.

2. Unique Keywords (Discovery Index)

How many unique keywords are being used to find your organization on a monthly basis? If that number is trending upwards that means more and more unique keywords are being used in the search engines to discover your organization’s web presence. This is called the discovery index. Look at these terms and add a few to your content strategy each month to capture even more qualified traffic.

3. Backlinks

Are you growing the quantity and quality of the websites linking to your web presence over time? The number of backlinks should increase as you build out your optimized content strategy of blog posts, press releases and case studies. The associated anchor text as well as the domain authority of the websites linking to your content affect the quality of your backlinks.

4. Indexed Pages

Is the number of web pages from your web presence increasing or decreasing in the Google index? The more pages indexed in Google, the more opportunity you have to be found. For example, it would be difficult to rank for 100 keywords if you only have five web pages indexed in Google. As you build out your optimized content strategy adding new blog posts, web pages and press releases on a regular basis, your index count will grow.

5. Social Signals

Google and Bing factor social signals into their search algorithm to determine relevancy and rank. Social signals are metrics such as: Facebook comments, likes and shares, tweets and retweets, LinkedIn shares, and Google +1’s and shares – all of which include a backlink to a web page. gShift tracks the number of social signals during a specified time period to all your web content including web pages, blog posts, and press releases.

6. Website Traffic Breakdown

Tracking your topline website traffic on a regular basis is important. Are you growing your organic traffic? Or are you getting most of it from direct traffic? Is your referral traffic increasing? What traffic is converting better - organic, referral or social? Tracking these website traffic metrics can help you understand both your SEO and content marketing strategies.

7. Organic Conversions

It is also important to understand what percentage of your organic search traffic takes action on your website. Which keywords are driving the most conversions? Which keywords are leading to a high bounce rate (only visiting one web page)? Are your conversions increasing based on your optimized content marketing strategy?

8. Organic Market Share

Your organic market share is calculated based on the number of keyword phrases that your organization is following or wants to rank for organically. Calculate the volume of searches for those terms, how you rank, and then apply a “potential” click-through metric to determine the number of potential visitors you would get if you were ranking in the top three organic positions.

9. Organic Search Value

What is the dollar value of your organic search traffic as compared to what you would have paid for the same traffic via a paid marketing program such as Google AdWords? This metric can help set your budget for organic search and content marketing.

10. Branded versus Non-Branded Keywords

Out of the discovery index, how many keywords are branded? If 95% of your organic traffic comes from branded keywords, then your organization has an issue with your online visibility. A goal would be to increase your non-branded keyword phrases by building out your content marketing strategy.

SEO is one of the most difficult marketing tactics to measure and manage – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. And once you’ve mastered SEO for your organization the increase in leads and conversions will be worth the effort. Our recommendation is to pick a few SEO metrics to get started, measure them on a consistent basis and take action from the data.

The mobile space encompasses all users who view the internet either through their mobile smartphone device or through a tablet.  Shortly, we will be heading into a post PC world where total usage of smartphones, tablets and upcoming products will eclipse total usage of the desktop/laptop. What's amazing is the speed at which this transformation is taking place.  In 2011, there were a total of 117.9 million smartphones in the US and that number will continue to rise to 155.6 million in 2012, a 32% increase. Tablet usage is growing even faster, with the US tablet user base reaching 33.7 million in 2011, and expected to nearly double to 54.8 million in 2012, a 62.8% increase (eMarketer).

From the presentations at the summit and from speaking with other executives in the mobile business, it is clear that larger brands are taking steps to address the radical shifts in web usage taking place. Design wise, brands are encouraged to have responsive web designed pages, crafted with fluid proportion-based grids which adapt the layout to the viewing environment so users across a broad range of devices and browsers will have access to a single source of content.  A good example of this is JetBlue's newly redesigned home pages; larger buttons and simple navigation were purposely incorporated into the site to account for the increase in users accessing the site with their tablets.

The reality is that if they haven't already, brands need to also address mobile in their overall marketing mix and acquisition strategies.  A good starting point is to define what problem you are trying to solve with mobile marketing and then look to develop a campaign strategy that will address that issue.  Until now, many brands have looked at mobile as purely a tool to build stronger ties with existing customers.   However, with the growth of mobile usage, combined with the familiarity and comfort that consumers have with their devices, new customer acquisition and lead generation through mobile is increasingly becoming a reality.   When executed correctly, there is no reason why a lead generation and acquisition campaign cannot take place through a mobile experience.

Another area of interest during the summit was the growth of mobile applications in the marketing mix and the strategies being used to promote installations.   Again, with the incredible growth of the mobile app ecosystem, brands know they need to have a presence and a dedicated app strategy.  Mobile applications have greatly increased the number of innovative ways that brands can interact and attract consumers,  however, like building a great website, it is simply not enough to build an app and wait for users.  Brands are employing a number of tactics for driving installs, from viral campaigns to paid mobile media, but it is clear that a strong strategy on how you plan to promote your app is a key component even before building it.

Overall, it is an exciting time to be a part of the mobile advertising marketplace.  Successful digital marketing strategies such as lead generation, search and display have been adapted, customized and optimized for mobile devices and new strategies such as mobile application installs have been developed in order to address this new medium.  With a full range of mobile marketing solutions, it is great to see advertisers embrace the mobile industry as we enter the post PC age.

My conclusion to the audience was this:

Success in social media and organic search is only possible with an optimized content marketing strategy. If you don’t have the latter, you may as well forget about being remotely successful with the former.

I’m even going so far as to say, don’t even worry about your SEO and social media strategies. Worry only about your optimized content marketing strategy and you will win at both search and social in the long run.

Optimized Content Marketing Strategy: Definition

First off, let’s define an “optimized content marketing strategy”. I’ve borrowed the base of the definition (content marketing) from our friends at the Content Marketing Institute and adapted it to take into consideration the concept of “optimized”. My adaptations are bolded below.

“Optimized Content Marketing is the art of understanding exactly what your prospects and customers need to know and deliberately producing optimized content based on keyword phrases that are driving organic search traffic and conversions. Then delivering that optimized content to them in a relevant and compelling way to grow your business by socializing the content through your organization’s social networks.”

This leads to the definition of “content”. In this context, content can consist of: website content, blogs, press releases, case studies, white papers, how-to guides, news and events – whatever it is your prospects and customers want to consume.

Why an Optimized Content Marketing Strategy is Crucial:
5 Google Algorithm Changes over the Past 400 Days

Here are five major Google algorithm changes that have occurred over the past 400 days proving an optimized content marketing strategy is key to ranking in organic search and being relevant in the social networks. It also confirms that you will not be penalized by Google’s organic search algorithm for producing and distributing fresh, relevant, optimized content.

1. Social Signals

About 400 days ago (December 2010), both Google and Bing announced that they factor social signals into their organic search algorithms. Why? Because according to Google, social media and social networking are about relationships and relationships prove relevance and relevance is at the core of organic search.

Simple as that. Social signals are not going away. In fact, many industry people (including myself) believe social signals are the new backlinks. I think backlinks will always help prove the relevance of content and therefore always play a role in organic search results, but I predict social signals will continue to weigh-in more heavily as the lines between social media and search continue to thin.

I like how Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, said it in December 2011, “The social signal, the people you ‘hang with’ is actually a ranking signal.” Period.

The Optimized Content Marketing Strategy Approach: Distribute your optimized content strategy to your social networks and give your website visitors and content consumers every opportunity to socialize and amplify your content including: tweets, re-tweets, Google +1’s, Facebook Likes and Shares, YouTube views and LinkedIn Shares. (Read: What is your SEO Social Signals Strategy?)

Of course, you need to build out your social networks too – more followers, Friends, Circles, etc. This is a massively important topic, however, one that is too huge to be part of this blog post.

2. The Panda Updates

Approximately 365 days ago (March 2011), Google officially started clamping down on bogus backlinks. That is, backlink farms and web spam backlinking strategies used to get sites ranked higher. If your web presence was employing these tactics it may have actually disappeared from organic search results overnight (I hope yours wasn’t one of them).

If you were executing on an optimized content marketing strategy and building out backlinks naturally, your web presence was not affected. In fact, you probably got some lift.

The Optimized Content Marketing Strategy Approach: For long-term success with your SEO and social media strategies, build out your backlinks by producing and distributing relevant fresh content such as optimized press releases and blog posts.

Optimize your content for the keywords you know your prospects are using to find you and that they are converting on. Point backlinks in the press release, blog post or case study to your website, or better yet, a conversion page. Then socialize the content through your social networks including: Google+, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. If it is a press release, distribute it though PRWeb, Marketwire or Business Wire.

3. Google +1 Button is Introduced

Approximately 330 days ago (March 2011), Google launched the +1 button allowing Google searchers to specify content they recommend. Clicking the +1 button on a piece of content is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” and, you guessed it, another social signal that affects organic search rankings.

The Optimized Content Marketing Strategy Approach: When your content is optimized for the keywords that your prospects are using to find you, it obviously stands a better chance of being found and gaining social signals.

4. The Freshness Updates

About 100 days ago (November 2011), Google launched a major algorithm change called the Freshness Update that gives priority to fresh, timely content such as press releases, blogs, news and events. Why? Because fresh content is more relevant.

The Optimized Content Marketing Strategy Approach: Give Google what it wants – fresh, relevant, timely optimized content.

5. Search plus Your World (SpYW)

About 50 days ago (January 2012), Google launched Search plus Your World. Now your published content in Google+ (Google’s social network) is findable by other people in your Circles.

In my opinion, SpYW is a full out assault on Facebook and Twitter as they do not have the combined search + relationship networks that Google has.

For example, when you publish content in Twitter or Facebook, how findable is that content after 24 hours, 48 hours, one week, one month? With Google+ and SpYW your content has further reach and a longer life than in any other social network. That is powerful.

The Optimized Content Marketing Strategy Approach: If you have one minute remaining in your day to publish one piece of optimized content, publish it in Google+. (Read: 6 Reasons Why Adding Google+ to Your Web Presence & SEO Strategy is a Good Idea)

5 Benefits & Reasons Why You Need Content Now

Search, social and content marketing aside, here are five additional benefits and reasons why you need content now:

1. You have more content than you think and your prospects want to consume it. Content within an organization is everywhere. If you put your mind to it I bet you can find case studies and blog content about great things that are happening with your clients as well as how-to guides or best practice check lists. All of this is content, it can be optimized and your prospects want it.
2. Content is measurable. Content can be used for lead generation and can be easily measured. There are web presence optimization software systems on the market that can help you with this. So for any published content you can understand if it is impacting your organic search rank, visitors, conversions, backlinks, and social presence.
3. Thought leadership. The consistent production of content can position your organization as a thought leader in your industry.
4. Content can become a competitive advantage. If you implement a content strategy today and begin producing and publishing optimized content on a regular basis, your competitors will have to out-content you in order to out-social signal and outrank you. So start today!
5. The future social network. I can’t foretell the future, but I’m confident that a strong content strategy will withstand any new social network the market might throw at us.

Conclusion

So while the fundamentals of organic search optimization remain important - such as ensuring you have a strong technical website that the search engine robots can crawl, and addressing local search and industry-specific directories for backlinking purposes - a real shift is taking place in the on-going approach to traditional SEO. That shift is the creation, publishing and distribution of an optimized content marketing strategy.

Focus on strong, consistent and optimized content distributed effectively through the social networks and you will crush your competitors in organic search. Plus you will likely never be penalized by Google.

Shift your thinking of SEO to simply being an outcome of an optimized content marketing strategy.

After we witnessed the biggest television spectacle of the year, the talk around the office was not surprisingly similar to what people were searching for on Google.

The pre-game trends were focused on the players and teams…with much more attention on the Patriots and their star players than on the Giants. But the post-game focus shifted dramatically to the halftime show and the commercials. The only exception was searches for the Super Bowl MVP, Eli Manning, who came in at the #10 spot.

The two trends that were on both lists? Tom Brady and Giselle Bundchen. Apparently Giselle did not want to be overshadowed by her husband and decided to throw his teammates under the bus after the game. Go figure…

Google also tells us that the most-searched for commercials were for the Acura NSX, featuring Jerry Seinfeld and the Chrysler halftime ad, featuring Clint Eastwood. I don't know about your office, but these were definitely topics of conversations around my water cooler, and apparently those around the country as well.

It takes quick thinking and execution to win…Are you setting your strategy and then letting it run down the field, or are you adapting to changes on the fly?

But are backlinking strategies starting to take a back seat to social signals as they relate to SEO? Is your time better spent investing in a “social signals strategy”?

In this blog post discover:

1. How Google’s algorithm changes impact both backlinking and social signaling.
2. How to build an SEO social signals strategy.
3. How your SEO backlinking and social signals strategies come together in your content strategy.
4. How to measure it all.

Google’s Recent Algorithm Changes Impact both Backlinking and Social Signaling

First off, yes backlinking is still important and yes you still need to build backlinks. Remember a backlink works similar to an academic citation. In academia, the more frequently a piece of work is cited, the more relevant it must be. Apply this to the web – the more frequently your website is linked to from authoritative sources (Forbes, The Wall Street Journal), the more relevant it must be.

So here are the academic Coles Notes on SEO backlinking strategies in 2012:

1. Be familiar with Google’s Panda updates. The Google algorithm will become suspicious and penalize you for being involved in link farms.
2. Be familiar with Google’s Freshness update. Fresh, relevant content with fresh, relevant backlinks will win.
3. Don’t buy backlinks. Don’t even think about it.
4. Don’t focus just on backlinks in your SEO strategy. Ignoring the fundamentals of SEO, social signals and fresh content is an opportunity for your competitors to outrank you.
5. Increase the number of backlinks to your site at a steady rate. Slow and steady will win the race.
6. Ensure your anchor text includes non-branded keyword phrases that are part of your keyword strategy.
7. Understand the quantity and quality of backlinks your competitors are producing on a weekly and monthly basis.

But more interesting are the Coles Notes on SEO social signaling strategies in 2012:

1. Social signals now account for 8 to 10% of both Google and Bing’s search algorithms. This will only increase over time.
2. Social signals include: Facebook Likes and Shares; Twitter activity such as number of followers, tweets, retweets; and now Google+.
3. Whether or not your organization has embraced social media and social networking, it emits social signals to Google. If there was a social signal scale from 0 to 10, think about the volume of social signals you produce in a month.
4. Imagine if your organization published content (blogs, case studies, etc.) in Twitter and Google+, and the New York Times or Forbes retweeted it or +1’d it. That would send massive social signals to Google indicating that significant, trusted and authoritative sources believe your content is relevant. This one retweet or +1 would improve your overall web presence.
5. Understand the volume of social signals your competitors are producing. What will it take to out signal them?

Building your Content Strategy & Social Signals Strategy

Ok, so now you’re asking, “How do I build a social signal strategy?” The answer is, you start by building a content strategy and consistently publish the content into the social channels (Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook). Remember, an overall SEO strategy is only as strong as the content, and without the content you cannot execute on either a backlinking or social signal strategy.

Content in your content strategy can consist of:

• Press releases
• Customer case studies
• White papers
• Research
• Blogs
• Guest blog posts
• News items
• Videos
• Webinars

Think about the types of content your organization already publishes over a month or a quarter (you may have a content strategy and not even know it). How do you socialize this content now? How could you more effectively socialize the content?

Here are 10 steps to generating both backlinks and social signals from your content:

1. Start with a newsworthy story and issue a press release about it. For example: a new product offering, a client success story, expansion into new markets, etc.
2. Within the content of the press release add sufficient backlinks to your website.
3. Issue that press release through PRWeb, Marketwire, Businesswire, etc. When done properly, your press release will get picked up by online news sources multiplying the number of backlinks to your website.
4. Ensure there are social icons on the press release for people to socialize with.
5. Publish that content on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
6. Ask employees and other trusted partners to help get the ball rolling by +1, Sharing, Liking, retweeting, etc.
7. A couple of days later publish a video blog or written blog that is an excerpt of the content. Again, provide ample opportunity for your viewers and readers to socialize the content. In the case of the blog content, ensure there are backlinks in the blog post.

Measuring the Performance of your Content in the Social Channels

The report below indicates how a particular piece of content (in this case, a press release) performed in the social channels. The press release can be tied to the number of tweets, likes and shares that were generated. (Note: when this press release was published Google+ was not in use.)

Summary

If you haven’t already, I recommend asking your SEO professional or in-house SEO team what their plans are for your SEO social signals strategy across your web presence. Start to think about how a content strategy drives a strong web presence. When we see organizations base their SEO on content, they win. They win on backlinking, social signals, and ultimately organic search rankings.

Just recently, Google announced Search, plus Your World, which is Google+ content appearing with traditional organic search results. This is proof that the lines between social networking, social media and SEO are indeed thinning and that social networking and social signals are becoming more important to the practice of SEO.

Google+ is a social networking force to be reckoned with and it is forcing marketers’ hands. I guarantee you that Google+ is not a fad. It is here to stay.

So why is it important to incorporate Google+ into your web presence, how do you do it, and how will it positively impact your organic search strategy?

With the introduction of Search, plus Your World, when your prospects search in Google for the keywords you want to be found for, relevant results will be returned in that searcher’s “Personal Results” from their “Google+ Circles”, as well as related “People and Pages from Google+”. Think about how this impacts your findability and the Page One search results for everything.

Here’s an example - when I was logged in to Google+ and searched for "community management tips", the #8 ranking was a blog post by Acquisio because they are in my Google+ circles:

When I logged out of Google+, and all other Google properties, Acquisio did not appear in my top 50 Google search results for the same keyword phrase.

Moral of the story: start building your circles and sharing your business content via a Google+ Page.

Search, plus Your World makes a lot of sense. Let’s revisit three facts about organic search and Google search that support the concepts of Google+:

1. A lot of people use and trust Google’s search results. Really. The proof – according to comScore.com, in December 2011 there were 12 billion Google searches performed (up 3% over November 2011). Compare this to the second busiest search engine, Bing, with just 2.7 billion searches in December. #bigdifference
2. Everybody looks at the organic side of search, and 80% to 90% of searchers will click on organic search results (the left-hand side) over paid search results (AdWords, PPC). Your web presence needs to be found on the organic side of search through your SEO efforts or you’re missing out on a lot of eye balls, prospects and business.
3. Google is fanatical about search relevance. That is, fanatical about providing relevant search results to every searcher for every search. Since Google+ is a social network and social networks are about relationships it only makes sense that search results include relevant content from your relationships (your circles) in Google+.

6 Reasons to Add Google+ to Your Web Presence & SEO Strategy

1. Let them socialize.

Your prospects, customers and employees want to socialize with your organization. So let them - on the most visited search engine on the planet.

By embracing Google+ you have one more presence point to socialize your content, control your message for SEO and get found. It’s also one more presence point to initiate social engagement.

Since Google+ allows your content to be socialized with those who are interested in your brand, it helps prove relevance to Google and therefore impacts your organic search rank. As you grow your circles, social engagement with your organization will increase as well. This all leads to higher organic search results through Search, plus Your World.

So let the socializing and findability begin: Set up a Google+ Page for your business (http://www.google.com/+/business) and start publishing content, building circles, and getting +1 recommendations.

SEO Impact: The broader and stronger your web presence is, the better you will perform organically in the search engines. Adopting Google+ will broaden and strengthen your web presence.

2. Fresh content.

Fresh content is the key to dominating in organic search. This is true now more than ever before. Yes, the fundamentals of SEO are still valid – build a technically great website and have a strong backlinking strategy - but sharing excellent, fresh, consistent and optimized content via social networks is also key.

Google+ is just one more place to publish your press releases, blogs, testimonials, case studies and news. The difference with Google+ is that your content, if found, will be listed at the top of Google personal results mixed in with traditional search results (so long as it has been shared in the searcher’s circles).

Getting serious about producing fresh, optimized content and having it socialized in Google+ will really pay off.

SEO Impact: Publishing fresh content produces backlinks, social signals and authority. This increases the likelihood of being found. Google+ is just one more presence point to accomplish this.

3. Google+ produces social signals.

Social signals are now factored into Google’s organic search algorithm. A social signal can come from a Facebook Like, Share or a Google +1. Social signals prove that a piece of content is relevant. The more people who like, share or +1 it, the more relevant it is.

Now more than ever it’s important to integrate page-level social icons on your website, email marketing, press releases and blogs. Give any visitor to your web presence, at any time, the ability to provide your content with a social signal.

If you haven’t already done so, add the Google +1 button to all pages on your website.

SEO Impact: Social signals will continue to weigh into Google’s search algorithm. Social signals are like the “new age backlink.” Start building your social signals strategy today.

4. Your competitors.

If your competitors have not already rolled out a Google+ strategy then look at this as a stroke of good luck to capitalize on. This could be your chance to shine and dominate in organic search results.

But get moving and get paranoid about executing on a Google+ strategy. It will impact your organic search rankings, findability and traffic to your website.

SEO Impact: Just like you have an SEO backlink strategy to out-backlink your competitors, now you need to think about your social signals strategy to out-signal your competitors.

5. Google, Google+ and Search plus Your World aren’t going away.

My recommendation to marketers is to not ignore Google+. It isn’t going away any time soon and I predict traction throughout 2012.

According to Google, “We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.” And, “[Google+] is a platform which allows us to bring social elements into all the services and products that we offer.” (Source: The Telegraph)

(Note: Google has changed its compensation system so that all Google employees think about Google+ opportunities every day.)

Google will continue to incorporate Google+ into more and more Google properties including their Android efforts. According to Google, “Most importantly, 700,000 Android devices are activated daily and this will become a very significant source of new users for Google+. That number will also grow next year.”

Think seriously about how your organization is going to incorporate Google+ into its web presence. It’s one more presence point through which your prospects are expecting to engage with you, and it provides your business with one more opportunity to produce and publish controlled content for your circles to consume.

SEO Impact: Google Search, plus Your World will be everywhere.

6. The Social Network War: Google versus Facebook.

Who will win? Up until now, Facebook has been the dominant force in terms of social networking and having marketers leverage social networking to reach prospects and customers. But what will transpire over the next 12 months? Will Facebook continue its dominance and keep marching along or will Google+ surpass their progress?

Which social network will dominate for business and marketing purposes?

Which social network will dominate for SEO?

The answer to all of these questions is, “no one knows.” Because of this, organizations should hedge their bets, fire bullets at both and grow their web presence to include both Google+ and Facebook.

P.S. Please take a moment to add gShift Labs to your Google+ circles. Thanks!
 
 

Google presents and spins these changes as a consumer benefit. Google transforms “into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships,”  they claim. The three new features are: personal results, profiles in search and people and pages. The so-called benefit is that your Google search results will be even more personalized, thanks to information shared on Google+.

Predictably Microsoft is crying foul, arguing that Google unfairly weights its own stuff above everyone else’s and in so doing skews the real value of search engine results. They have begun to aggressively use this move to switch pitch users and advertisers.

Google streaked to success by offering a different way to categorize and rank search engine results based on inferred popularity and usefulness. They’ve used this mantra to cloak every subsequent move. At the same time, they’ve taught us all how to search. Google is both a verb and an deeply embedded part of our online behavior and muscle memory, so to speak.

The likelihood of BING, newly ascendant over Yahoo, creating enough negative buzz over a sustained time period to prompt mass defections is low. Though Google’s own behavior may help Microsoft’s cause depending on the extent to which they favor themselves in SERPs and the reach, depth or intensity of the perception that Google has conned all of us for the last decade.

It’s a very interesting turn of events, though it’s hard to predict how things will shake out. But its gonna be fun to watch.

Stay informed. Looking for the latest digital strategies for iconic branding? Attend the iMedia Brand Summit, Feb. 5-8. Request your invitation today.