In Focus

Andrew Rodrigues
Search Posted on April 28, 2008

Expanding and experts

Search engine optimization has been growing up and dragging online marketers along with it. Lately, in order to be successful, an SEO campaign needs to focus on more than just page optimization. With a finite amount of search engine traffic everyday, there is a limit to how many people can be reached and how high a site can rank. To increase their share of this traffic, search marketers are starting to explore alternative ways to get their clients more involved in the online mix. In short, SEO practitioners are stepping up their game, and I predict a trend of search marketing departments evolving to keep up.

In some industries, paid search is becoming increasingly expensive and competitive. With so many clients vying for the same coveted keywords, pay-per-click costs are rising. In search of a cost-effective method to reach online users, clients are starting to request additional services to drive traffic to their site. In response, SEO practitioners are starting to expand their scope of expertise to keep their clients at the top of search results pages.

Why SEO needs to continue to expand
As the internet continues to evolve and additional platforms are created, SEO departments will begin to follow suit. It is extremely important and effective for SEO strategies to start where the online conversation originates. Right now a large amount of people still have search engines as their homepages, but users are in the process of shifting gears. More and more people are accessing the internet through social networking sites because that is a key component of their web experience. The industry has already seen the change from browser-based to search engine-focused usage when people started logging online to do more than just check email. Google has recognized this trend with its incorporation of tools like Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Photo. Yahoo continues to embrace its origin as a portal, but it has increased Web 2.0 offerings with tools like Yahoo Buzz and Pulse, a social shopping platform. With this current transition, "SEOers" are joining in and adding a social, user-generated content (UGC) and Web 2.0 focus to their optimizing efforts.

Blended search and subject matter experts
With the advent of blended search, search engine marketers are starting to look beyond the text of a website to images, video and audio content. A side effect of expanding their definition of content is that search engine marketers are becoming more active participants in the online conversation on behalf of their clients. By moving beyond pull marketing strategies to interactive branding initiatives on social networking and bookmarking platforms, a number of SEOers inadvertently ended up on the cutting edge of emerging Web 2.0 trends.  

Link building has gotten harder as site owners have gotten savvy and stingy with their linking, and as a result, search marketers had to resort to other tactics in search of links (blogging, blended content efforts and maybe even begging). Another byproduct of this expanded purview is that SEO practitioners have become subject matter experts on an extremely wide array of interactive topics. To create inbound links, search marketers are creating link-worthy content on blogs, UGC sites and video aggregators all in the hopes of generating interest and links. By spreading viral videos and Digg'ing like there is no tomorrow, SEO professionals are creating organic traffic for clients. That is traffic stemming from an aggregator, social site or blog, as opposed to paid efforts like pay-per-click or banner advertisements.

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Comments

Bill Burke
Bill Burke May 7, 2008 at 11:49 AM

Excellent article, Andrew. Just a quick aside; keep your eye on a new SE called Powerset. They are rapidly refining natural language searching, and I'd bet dollars to donuts Google will snap them up to get this technology fairly soon, as this is one area Google is woefully deficient in, andthey have been exploring this arena quite a bit lately.

Bill Burke
http://wirelessspeech.blogspot.com

Anucha Niyamapa
Anucha Niyamapa April 30, 2008 at 1:24 PM

Nice article, Andrew.

Have you, or anyone, considered writing standards-based, semantic markup? Then, develop relevant, pertinent content based on user-feedback, traffic visits, tracking, user-analysis, etc.? And writing content that user's are interested in reading?

Questions for SEO experts, Interactive & Online Marketer's are:
1- Why do you use Flash-heavy/intensive sites when search engines can't read, nor interpret text?
2- Do you use MS proprietary tools, VB Script, to write your site's code? If so, why?

Thanks in advance and hope to learn more from experienced SEOers.

Cheers,

Niya

P.S. Stephen, it would be my pleasure to read your 7-step guide if possible?
Email: anucha [at] comcast.net
THX.

Stephen Ellis
Stephen Ellis April 28, 2008 at 1:57 PM

Great article. Brian and Becky raise some great points too.

In terms of tracking on-site user behavior of SEO traffic, consider making your internal product pages and PPC-facing pages separate (so you can track traffic more easily in Omniture, etc). Also, build a progression in your site that gives you intermediate data if a customer doesn't convert (demos, click-to-chat, separate order flow). By tracking the pages that form part of the customer experience, measuring fall-out, time on page, etc; you'll have the insight into the SEO campaign's performance that Andrew worries about capturing on page 2.

In terms of Becky's point, I recommend focusing on low-lying fruit first: basic SEO principles, then start building a larger foot-print for your site with a separate blog, then look at social networking efforts like building out the LinkedIn profile of your key staff; etc. You might also reach out to your IT service providers and offer to write a case-study or some other co-branded item that could get you a strong traffic-generating link from their site.

I'd be happy to email a 7-step guide to online marketing that I put together for my internal team. Note: I don't work for an agency & am not offering any professional service, making a sales pitch, etc – just offering free, no-strings help from one marketer to another.
-Stephen.Ellis@muralconsulting.com

Becky Jacoby
Becky Jacoby April 28, 2008 at 9:58 AM

Interesting insights...but how can an entrepreneur, small business or nonprofit (all usually having staff stretched thin) utilize the organic search trend? We expect corporations to move this way. Does that omit SEO organic growth-trend for smaller enterprises?

Brian Carter
Brian Carter April 28, 2008 at 9:17 AM

Everything sounds good except for what you measure in SEO. I understand the concentration on increasing reach, but when analytics packages like Omniture can help you focus on which search terms lead to business results (MWR conversions), how can you not hold your SEO activities accountable for that? I also understand that with both PPC and SEO there's a sales cycle that means people don't immediately convert- there's still room for branding and measuring engagement for these people, but I think measuring conversions has to be part of SEO metrics.