Posts filed under 'SEO Industry'
According to a survey carried out for the Online Marketing Show, commitment to spend on Online Marketing has increased dramatically over the course of the last year.
The Online Marketing Show survey, follows research carried out by the Internet Advertising Bureau which saw digital marketing continue to grow, breaking the £2bn spending mark for the first time. The OMS show research highlighted the following trends:
- One in five respondants spent half of their total marketing spend online
- 47% of respondants said they plan to work with a digital agency in the next year
- SEO, E-Mail Marketing, Banner advertising and Paid Search were the primary investment areas over the course of the last year. The continued mass interest in social media and Online PR took investment away from mobile and iTV channels
- Social media and online PR were cited as focus areas for investment by over 50% of respondents in the upcoming year
To see the survey in full, please visit the Online Marketing Show website
June 13th, 2007
According to a recent report by Internet Retailer, internet retailer (e-tailers) are shifting more and more of the marketing budgets to online marketing, in particular search engine optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC). The report was a result of a recent survey by Internet Retailer into such trends.
The report went on to state
- 30% of merchants said at least 50% of sales came via search engine marketing
- 82% of respondants did not have any plans to reduce pay-per-click spending for 2007
- 75% said search was working better than any other form of marketing activity
- Only 12% said it was underperforming compared with other online marketing activity.
However, suprisingly the report went on to say that many internet retailers prefered keeping their search marketing activity in house - somewhat suprising considering the current dearth of high quality search engine marketing specialists , with 66% going on to say that they had no plans to outsource such activity to external third parties.
Other trends were also highlighted during the survey
- 39% placed priority on paid search activity rather than SEO
- 34% focussed on SEO activity only
As regards sales activity, the following trends were significant
- 46% found that Organic search had a better ROI
- 37% said that PPC had better results
- 16% said both were equally as effective
The report concluded:
“Eighty percent of e-tailers are making changes to their website text to match what people are searching for. For the most poart, those engaged in PPC efforts plan to trim the number of keywords they manage but increase spending on those that survive the cull. ‘The intents is’ to improve ROI on the most effective keywords.”
With statistics such as this becoming the norm in many sectors, it is still suprising how many retailers are still cautious at embracing the Internet. Whilst, I am by no means saying that developing an online presence is a guaranteed route to success, it is however an important part in any marketing strategy. I would also go on to say that their is an educational factor with search marketing, which in many instances needs to be overcome, however as a ‘profession’ (which lets face it online marketing now is), this should be part of our remit.
May 17th, 2007
Today is … Google Searchology day. What is Google Searchology day you may well ask. Google Searchology day is a day devoted for Google to discuss its future plans regarding search and search innovations. The main feature is an invitation only press conference which will be webcast at 9:30 PT (US Pacific Time).
The speaker list looks very impressive, with Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience; Udi Manber, VP of Engineering; and Craig Silverstein, Technology Director all presenting.
To read the full Google press release, click here
May 16th, 2007
I have been interviewing a number of potential SEO executive candidates recently however I have to say I have been suprised by how difficult it is to get good Search Engine Marketeers in the current climate.
One of the candidates I spoke to, from a largish Manchester agency, spoke of his optimisation of a fantasy football website, with a circa £2K (A month!!!) link building budget… for a fantasy football site? Sure most SEO’s out there would be rubbing their hands gleefully at such a client. However my general gist during the interview was a feeling that whilst there was no doubting the research skills of the candidate, I didnt get the feeling he could think creatively, and out the box, in order to produce a rounded campaign for a client, not one sided in its origins, and ultimately likely to succeed long term.
This seems to have been a common theme throughout the interviews, clients ranging from technical wiz’s with no marketing acumen, to simple marketeers with no technical acumen.
Maybe thats what makes SEO so good, or maybe thats whats holding SEM in the UK back.
May 11th, 2007
I am constantly impressed by the state of the Search Engine Marketing industry in the UK, in particular the amount of research and ‘noise’ provided by the industry itself. In particular I was impressed with a recent report by Dylan Thwaites (and probably Jon Myers had a lot to do with it - with reference to the whitepaper itself referencing the author Jon Myers). That aside, a very insightful and interesting read,
The whitepaper itself focussed on recent research by the IAB/PWC which stated that 2.5% of all advertising spend in the US is spent on Search, compared against 11.4% in the UK. Dylan went onto state that it was his opinion that the UK online marketing industry is ‘the most advanced in the world’.
“The US market has roughly four times the volume of searches as the UK market and in bid economics should command higher prices for highly competitive phrases. It does not and this indicates a less competitive and less developed market state”.
Not mincing his word you may agree !!!!
The report concluded:
1. The search engines pay commission in the UK and this has had a firestarter effect on search penetration
2. The US market has a much higher proportion of in house search marketers, who to be less innovative and do not operate search as effectively as search agencies, slowing the flow of funds from other media
3. Many US search agencies reacted slowly to the paid search opportunity due to organic inertia
4. The UK market is more mature and more competitive than the US market and hence more intensely innovative
5. Cost per click prices are marginally higher in the UK, but there is no evidence to show that the engines are abusing their market dominance
Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with all the point raised in the report, points 1-3 within the above conclusions would seem to be on the ball from recent research we have conducted, however point 4 is slightly more contentious. In my opinion there are only a handful of agencies in the UK that can handle the large scale projects for the larger organisations, BigMouthMedia, Latitude, a couple of the WPP organisations to name a few. Whilst I don’t argue with his analysis of the recent MSN trials in France vs UK, whether this is comparable to the US market is debatable IMO
However on the whole, the report is well worth a read, and can be accessed by clicking here
May 4th, 2007
Not sure I would believe it if it werent for the source, but Microsoft are apparently after closest rivals Yahoo. Wall St journals suggest a value of $50bn for Yahoo.
To read the full article, click here
May 4th, 2007
Been browsing round the results today, and noticed a couple of changes not noticed before.
1) It was only a matter of time before they included it, following the development of Google Checkout, however right next to the-direct-group.co.uk result was a banner for Google Checkout.
However just because they can I have to say, they shouldn’t. One of the best things about Google is the fact that it has always been impartial without lending weighting one way or another (apart from factors such as Bid Price/Quality Score etc), however this really is a break from the norm, and one that I wholeheartedly disagree with (no doubt this will lead to a rath of people redeveloping their e-commerce platforms to incorporate Google Checkout)
2) Google joins the Web2.0 Personalised Search club. Whilst doing a site:example.com on google noticed the ability to ‘note this’ on the results.
No doubt more to come from Google in the coming months
April 24th, 2007
Google has just annoumced a raft of new services to the Google webmaster tools, particularly tackling requests for page removal, directory or subdirectory removal or indeed complete site removal. Obviously many of these improvements tackle issues which may arise after your site has been indexed, however this is still a significant improvement in terms of functionality.
For sites that you’ve verified ownership for in your webmaster tools account, you’ll now see a new option under the Diagnostic tab called URL Removals. To get started, simply click the URL Removals link, then New Removal Request. Choose the option that matches the type of removal you’d like from the following options:
- Individual URL’s, web pages or images or other files
- A directory or sub directory on your site
- Your entire site
- Cached copy of a search result
Individual URLs, web pages, images or other files
Choose this option if you’d like to remove a URL or image. In order for the URL to be eligible for removal, one of the following must be true:
Obviously if all of the above do not apply, your page will only be reindexed again… common sense really
Removing a directory
Choose this option if you’d like to remove a directory or sub directory. As with the deletion of individual files, the directories should not be indexable (ie advised by your robots.txt file that they are not to be indexed.)
To remove a folder simply provide the path to the folder/directory you wish to remove ie:
For instance, if you request removal of the following:
http://www.example.co.uk/testfolder
type testfolder after the path provided in the Webmaster Tools interface.
Removal of an entire site
Choose this option only if you want to remove an entire site from the Google index. This option will remove all subdirectories and files.
To use this option, you must block the site using a robots.txt file.
Note:
Do not use this option to remove the non-preferred version of your site’s URLs from being indexed.
If you want all of your URLs indexed using the www version, specify the version you want indexed using the Preferred domain tool in the Webmaster Tools system(and do a 301 redirect to the preferred version, if possible).
Other changes introduced to ther Webmaster interface include:
- Advise of changing of page content
- Checking status of removal requests
- Advise to reinclude content
- Requesting removal of content you do not own
All in all this provides both Search engine marketing specialists and webmasters with a very useful set of tools in order to administer the indexation of their site more effectively.
To read the full google blogpost click here
Other reading:
Search Engine Land - Google introduces improved content removal toolsÂ
Managing Google results
April 18th, 2007
According to a recent report by E-Consultancy and search marketing firm, Neutralize (*\*), UK companies are seeing the benefits of paid search engine optimisation or SEO.
The report went on to state, that nearly two thirds of those surveyed had seen increases in excess of 300%, with fourty percent of those experiencing increases of over 500%. Unsuprisingly this has had a knock on effect in terms of increased confidence in UK SEO, and UK search engine marketing in general.
Other key findings in the report were
- 87% of search engine marketers said their organisations paid to advertise on Google, compared to 45% for Yahoo, 33% for MSN, 11% for MIVA and 6% for Ask.
- More than half of respondents (56%) said that their companies spend in excess of £10000 on paid search annually. A quarter of respondents (25%) reported spending more than £100000 annually.
- 62% plan to greatly increase investment in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for natural/organic listings.
- On average, respondants spent circa 32% of their marketing budget on online marketing.
April 16th, 2007
Google has recently announced some interesting new features to sitemaps.org. As well as now being available in 18 languages, including Japanese and German, but they have also made it easier to advise search engine robots of sitemap files.
By adding a line as follows:
Sitemap: http://www.e-gain.co.uk/sitemap.xml (including full URL ie http:// etc
to your robots.txt file, any search engine supporting the sitemap protocol will be able to retrieve the sitemap and process accordingly, including Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.
To read further please visit
April 12th, 2007
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