Search Strategies That Eventually Fail

One of the New York Times' most e-mailed articles today is The Dirty Little Secrets of Search. JC Penney (JCP) had been showing up for several search results, due to thousands of back links to its site.

Of course, JCP denies knowledge of any black-hat search engine optimization techniques. What's amazing to me is how long they got away with this before Google was aware of it. The good news is Google adjusted the organic results for them rather quickly.

This begs the question - is black hat SEO worth it? It seems like it worked for JCP for the last holiday season. Yet, we don't know the bounce rates from their site. They may have generated traffic, but they may not have converted to leads.

I've seen many campaigns that drive traffic to a site, but fail to convert to sales and/or leads.

Google's goal is relevance. Relevance is what consumers are looking for.

At the end of the day, an increase in unique visitors to a site is nice, but more sales and/or leads is always better.

Apps versus Ads on Your iPad

Advertising Age posted interesting results on iPad user survey regarding advertising. A significant majority (86%) said they'd watch ads to receive free content like TV shows and magazines.

Users actually prefer to watch the advertising instead of downloading app's. I would have to agree. We're used to seeing ads on TV and in magazines. What benefit would an application have to the experience?

I find it's actually easier to view some sites on the web browser (Safari) than the publication's application. The Chicago Tribune is a perfect example. The New York Times app is nice for an abbreviated read of headlines and most e-mailed articles.

It's easy to get caught up in the hype about app's, but basic marketing strategy still applies. What's in it for the customer?

That is what separates the experienced marketers from the tech "wanna-be" marketers. Technology continues to change the face of marketing, but you cannot forget about strategy.

(As a note to last week's post, AdWeek reports that half of Super Bowl watchers watch for the ads. I'm not alone!)

Applying Skills to A New Industry

A friend of mine is getting into dog breeding and asked me to set up her website this week. As you know, my background is automotive advertising. Not German Shepherd advertising. But, hey, the same skills apply. Don't they?

Actually, they do. And I'm having fun learning about a new industry. The first obstacle was spelling Shepherd correctly. After checking the Google keyword tool, "german shepard" is searched a lot. And so is "german sheperd." Too bad neither of those is accurate.

As usually, the third time was the charm and I was able to secure Michigan German Shepherd dot com for her.

I just set up the site and am working on adding more pages. I should have an SEM campaign in place shortly.

My friend has promised to blog weekly updates and I'm excited about adding testimonials once her (the dog's) first litter is sold. Then we'll work on a Facebook page.

Of course, I'll continue to work on SEO with directory listings and backlinks. This is going to be a fun project in a new industry.

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Actually, I'm not old, but I couldn't resist the pun.

Why Block Google?

I'm very curious about Murdoch's business model of having readers pay for online content. The New York Times tried this a few years ago with their Time Select product. They decided to open their entire site for free to generate more search engine traffic. Now, Murdoch is threatening to not make pages available to Google, so they won't get search engine traffic. Really??

I understand that their visitors would then have more value to advertisers. It's like comparing a cost-per-point from a news program to Springer. The type of audience matters.

Yet search is one of the ways the Internet is interactive. An inactive reader is great for branding... maybe. Right now, it's still difficult the measure the results of branded display campaigns.

The good news about half in the US would pay for content, according to the NYTimes. That's a much higher number than I would expect. Yet, people only want to pay $3 per month.

We're in for an interesting road ahead, as the business models for newspapers evolves. It reminds me of the early days of cable TV, when the mindset was customers did not want to pay for TV.

The Power of Teaching

A former colleague asked me to look at his website a few weeks ago and I gave him a few suggestions for improvement. We then went through his ad budget and I recommended a small pay-per-click campaign. He was concerned that it would be expensive, but I showed him how can you start small and manage a budget on Google's Ad Words tool.

After some tweaking to his Google campaign, his website traffic doubled in two weeks and his business improved. We can never be sure it was entirely the changes, as the market has been getting better, but it had to help.

What's really exciting is he asked me to check the campaigns to see if they needed adjusting and told me he created his own campaign for a different product. The campaign has already paid for itself in specific results.

It goes back conventional wisdom - you can give someone fish or teach him how to fish. He now has ownership and can generate traffic/revenue as opportunities arise.

Southern Comfort Goes 100% Digital

Southern Comfort has changed its entire media budget to digital, per AdAge. Due to network restrictions, liquor can only be advertised during evening cable shows on TV. Because the space is so crowded with competitors, SoCo could not garner pod exclusivity. The funds they spent on cable and magazines is now going online.

What's fascinating is they are able to partner with the national TV network sites with some of their key prime programming. Why do the networks accept these ads and not broadcast versions?

This strategy also speaks to the trends of the recession. A lot of twenty-somethings are cancelling their cable/satellite subscriptions to watch TV online. And they're drinking at home more often. When the economy recovers, SoCo may have gained share, but also may need to rethink this. Or not. It will be interesting to watch.

Online Privacy Bill

A new online privacy bill could change the way advertisers use behavior targeting. (http://tinyurl.com/km39pz)

Basically, advertisers can buy ad space to target you based on other sites you've visited. The "cookies" in your browser provide this information. For example, if you look up information about a car at kbb.com, car ads might start showing up as you browse online. This bill will require you to "opt-in" as you browse.

The obvious benefit to advertisers is better targeted ads reaching the right consumers.

This will then shift the focus of online advertising to paid search. The consumer controls the topic, so no "cookies" are involved.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Research is only a guide

In Mediapost.com, eMarketer issued a report of online measurements not accurately taking branding into consideration. http://tinyurl.com/mg8ft7.

With any results, it's important to evaluate your results versus your original objectives. When measuring branding, you don't use a retail-type measurement to evaluate your results. As the report states, targeting and relevance is much more important the the number of impressions.

One of the beautiful strengths of Internet advertising is quantifiable results. It's also a disadvantage if you use measurements that don't coincide with your communication goals.