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SMX East 2011 Recap Pt 1 – Google +1 and Schema.org

September 26th, 2011

The Search Marketing Expo in New York, also known as SMX East, wound up festivities on September 15^th after three days of speakers and programs that bill themselves as the “World’s Leading Search Engine Marketing Conference.”

SMX, produced by the fine folks at Search Engine Land, did not disappoint. They delivered an incredibly-comprehensive educational and networking experience for hundreds of search marketers, techies and business professionals from all over the globe.

The programming was chock-full of essential tidbits – almost too much to mention, even in a series of blog articles – but there were some interesting takeaways that absolutely bear mentioning:

1. “Google +1s not influencing search rankings,” said Tiffany Oberoi, Software Engineer at Google. This was a hot item that surfaced in the Making Data From Google Webmaster Central & Bing Webmaster Tools Actionable panel.

Google steadfastly asserts that they do not currently use +1s for ranking purposes, despite what numerous others have said. Ms. Oberoi, who works in search quality, showed the attendees the +1 metrics in Google Webmaster Tools and reassured all that they are not a ranking factor at the moment. Could this change? Certainly. We shall wait and see.

2. “Microformats are the game changer in allowing your content to be found,” said Topher Kohan, SEO Coordinator at CNN. Mr. Kohan addressed the crowd at the Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging For 2012 panel and gave listeners a highly-informed look at the history of microformats and a look at their expected future.

Microformats are a semantic markup that has been in XHTML for years. It allows site owners and content developers to utilize a library of mark-up elements that address site content and tell the engines and bots more about what the content is actually all about. The really great aspect of semantic mark-up is that it allows the site owners to make content available to as many possible sources – creating even more access to content than ever before.

The big player in microformats is, of course, Schema.org, an initiative launched on June 2^nd of 2011 by Google, Bing, and Yahoo! to introduce the concept of the semantic web to websites and create a common vocabulary for structured data markup on our pages. The official Google blog post on the Schema.org initiative states that “Schema.org introduces schemas for more than a hundred new categories, including movies, music, organizations, TV shows, products, places and more. As webmasters add this markup to their sites, search engines can develop richer search experiences.”

In other words (and as an example direct from the Schema.org site), you may have an item on your site about the 2009 blockbuster film Avatar that was directed by James Cameron. By using the itemscope element, you can specify that the HTML contained in the <div>…</div> block is about Avatar the “Movie” and not about the avatar concept in Hinduism or Avatar the Swedish death metal band.

<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Movie”>

<h1>Avatar</h1>

<span>Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)</span>

<span>Science fiction</span>

<a href=”../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html”>Trailer</a>

</div>

Once microformats are explained in a way that makes it easy to understand how these elements are further addressing content on sites, it becomes simple enough to understand.

Join us next week for pt. 2 of the Search Marketing Expo East wrap-up.

Tags: Content Development, microformats, Schema.org, search marketing, search rankings
Posted in Bing, Google, SEO, Social Networking, Sweet Spot Marketing, Yahoo | No Comments

Average SEO and SEM Budgets in 2011

August 29th, 2011

Let’s take a look at some of the investment numbers for The State of Search 2011:

In a recent study, it was reported that, on average, U.S. and Canadian companies expected to spend 43% more on SEO in 2011 than they did in 2010. This was the same average increase as for the 2010 report. The amount for this investment was upwards of $25,000 annually for 39% of the respondents and up to $75,000 for 17% of respondents. Only 9% reported that they were spending ZERO dollars on SEO in 2011.

The takeaway is this: More companies are spending more dollars on SEM. It’s trending upwards.

Note: There’s something that needs to be mentioned here about increases in spending and increases in competition. More companies are moving toward SEO and SEM for advertising. That means more competition. It should come as no surprise that these trends also lead to increases in investments for the same services over the previous year. This is never more prevalent than in pay-per click (PPC) or paid search advertising. The State of Search data shows that 24% of respondents saw a 20% increase in prices for the keywords they routinely bid on.

There used to be an old saying in marketing, “Buy today; prices go up tomorrow.” It’s true. Keep that in mind and get in early. You’ll be glad you did.

So, what’s the right SEO or SEM investment for your organization?

Good question. First, let’s determine what the existing traffic to your website is worth. For the sake of keeping the numbers simple, let’s say your site presently receives 100 visitors per day, and you convert 10% of your traffic into paying customers. Let’s also assume that this 10% spends an average of $50 during their visit. You’re making $500 a day, or about $15,000 per month.

100 visitors x 10% = 10 new customers daily
10 customers x $50.00 average spend = $500.00 per day
$500.00 per day x 30 days = $15,000.00 in revenues per month

That’s the present value of your site without SEO.

Now, let’s assume you take $5,000 (33% of those monthly revenues) and invest it all in SEO or SEM services. It may seem like a hefty chunk of your current online revenues, but remember: a program like this is meant to drive more traffic to your site and convert those visitors into customers. So, for the purposes of keeping numbers simple, let’s assume that your new program effectively doubles the number of visitors to your site (easily done in most cases) and that all the conversion and spend numbers remain the same.

200 visitors x 10% = 20 new customers daily
20 customers x $50.00 average spend = $1,000.00 per day
$1,000.00 per day x 30 days = $30,000.00 in revenues per month

All of a sudden, you’re receiving 200 visitors each day and 20 of them become paying customers. Instead of $15,000 a month, you’re making $30,000 and the investment for your program drops from 33% to 16% of your revenues.

Even though we left off the calculations for margin dollars (you can plug those in yourself), these are quick and dirty numbers that may help you in your decision to engage the services of a talented SEO or SEM team like Sweet Spot Marketing.

In the end, you can expect that an SEO or SEM investment will be a small percentage of your incoming revenues and that all of your efforts will be easily measurable. Your return on the investment will outweigh your outlays. Your business will grow. Your competition will shrink.

Tags: search marketing, SEM
Posted in PPC, SEO, Social Networking, Sweet Spot Marketing | No Comments

5 Reasons Companies are Shifting Money From Traditional Marketing to SEM

August 29th, 2011

Let’s not talk about budget. Let’s eliminate the term costs from the vocabulary of the discussion as well.

When it comes time to think about funding your search engine marketing (SEM) or search engine optimization (SEO) program, it would be wise to create a mindset in which you are addressing these outlays as investments. Now, that may seem like an overused term, but what I’d like to point out is that we traditionally expect a Return on Investments (ROI), yes? Your expectations for an investment in SEO or SEM should be no different.

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you know that your expected ROI is one of the central financial metrics for making your marketing decisions. You can expect that a high ROI means that your funding investment gains will compare favorably to your investment outlays. In marketing your business, you have a number of choices: yellow pages, TV ads, radio spots, newspapers, billboards, direct mail, sandwich boards and search marketing. With any business-case scenario, the choice with the higher ROI is often considered the best choice. We would add that targeted reach and ease of measurement are also important factors, as this is where SEO and SEM begin to grossly outweigh traditional marketing.

At this point, there’s no reason to go into a lengthy dialogue about how search and web marketing has replaced mass communications as the dominant advertising policy, but here are:

5 Top Reasons that Companies are Shifting Money from Traditional Marketing to SEM:

Through analytics, SEM is infinitely more measureable in its effects.
Because the web has no specific print edition or time slot, SEM is a constant source of messaging, branding and advertising.
Because SEM is tailored to your chosen audience, it’s better at reaching your targets.
Via online communities and social media, SEM provides better word-of-mouth.
Through your ability to change tactics and wording on the fly, SEM can also change to increase your conversions.

When it comes to advertising returns, measurement is the key. Very simply: if you don’t know what’s broke, how can you fix it? With search optimization and online marketing, the magnitude and timing of your returns are easily shown through your site analytics. Need to make an adjustment? Can do. No need to wait for the next edition of the phone book to drop.

Tags: SEM
Posted in PPC, SEO, Sweet Spot Marketing | No Comments