Constant Connected Consumer

Understanding how mobile can support your existing marketing programs and developing a mobile strategy is the best place to start. But, if you want to jump right in, one of the easiest and most effective ways to generate mobile marketing success is a dedicated mobile search campaign.

Mobile search as has grown 400% in the past year*. Hybrid campaigns which target desktop computers and mobile devices can be effective, but to truly maximize mobile visibility, advertisers should budget for separate mobile campaigns for these 10 reasons –

1. Mobile use is on the rise and it’s only expected to significantly increase in 2012.

2. Google has seen advertisers experience an 11.5% average increase in mobile CTR with a dedicated mobile campaign.

3. Gain better insight into your campaigns performance allowing you to optimize mobile ads without impacting your desktop campaign.

4. Customized mobile ad creative will connect better with your mobile audience, “Download your mobile coupon”.

5. Mobile device specific features influence immediate action, such as Click-to-Call or Text coupon to 1234.

6. 1in 3 mobile searches have local intent. You can be local in search before you think about location-based apps or services.

7. Mobile optimized landing pages will increase mobile page rank which will improve your campaign performance.

8. Search is a great way to better understand you audience before investing in expanded mobile experiences.

9. As you finish this blog post someone else just purchased a smart phone and mobile search grown.

*Google Insights

If you are an SEO, I bet you get a little tired of making titles out of keywords like “mobile application development” and “business process improvement”? I sure do. While keyword optimized titles are legit SEO-wise, it can be challenging to create an interesting title out of dull keywords.

Back in my more regular blogging days (3-5 per week) one of my most ridiculous blog titles was, “Rich Internet Application Database Development: Project Crescent” Keyword stuffing anyone? I was obviously tired after writing the article, and just took the easy (and boring) way out with the title.

If you read the content/news-aggregator Huffington Post, you know that they have great titles for their syndicated content. I visit often and usually make several tabs of articles I want to read, simply because the titles are so interesting and make me to want to know more.

Because Huffington Post is an aggregator, they have the luxury of having both a title that is optimized (coming from the actual news source) and a vanity title (that they ‘rename’ the content, this is the one you see and click on). This means they can focus on pure draw with the headline.

Here are a few examples:

Unfortunately, we’re not all aggregators and cannot have vanity titles for our own original content. There is however a lesson in this; about breaking the mold on conventional titles.  In the ever-evolving world of SEO, Google Panda and changing user relevancy algorithms, creating less keyword-stuffed, more interesting titles will serve us better rankings and popularity-wise.

How to Create Interesting Titles for Content:

Limit keywords: Fit in a keyword if you can, 1-2 maximum. We know sometimes they have to be there, but do not keyword stuff.

Leave them asking questions: “How did she change it all?” “How was the Cain Train rocked?” Make readers want to answer the question that comes from the title.

Put away the thesaurus: Try to use smaller words; big words do not register as easily with readers.

Test Different Things: Test a sensational/goofy/alluring title once-in-a-while to see if it works.

Take some time to think about it. Many of us rush titles because it’s the last thing we think about; but it’s really the price tag on your product. How will your title entice people to act?

Soldier On SEOs!

Jansen’s latest book, Understanding Sponsored Search, is a great pickup for anyone interested in the foundational elements behind search marketing.

Capture the Conversation: How is search marketing affected by social media like Facebook and Twitter?
Jim Jansen: Social media has already had an impact on search marketing. Facebook’s online advertising platform seems to be working well, with their demographic targeting. The viral component of social media, on Facebook and Twitter, seems to be an effective marketing and advertising medium. So, social media aspects will probably be more closely connected in the future.

CTC: Will Google+ have a big impact on search results and Google advertising?
JJ: Personally, don’t know if Google+ is disruptive enough to change the marketplace any, relative to what Facebook and Twitter are already doing. However, the ability of Google to link all their products within a browser is or can be a key advantage. We’ll see though. To me, it doesn’t seem like a disruptive enough technology to make much (i.e. >10%) of a difference.

CTC: With location-based deals becoming a popular means of marketing, how do search marketers react?
JJ: The location deals are really popular because they are really targeted geographically. One might see an even more tightening and targeting by location and interests. For example, I like the restaurant offers now. Not keen on the spa treatments. I see this as another avenue of marketing for commercial entity. Everything doesn’t have to fit in the sponsored search/keyword advertising box.

CTC: How do search marketers prepare for the rise of the mobile web?
JJ: After years of predicting “this is the year of mobile,” mobile is already here. And search engine marketers should already be working this aspect into their normal routines. Mobile, combined with the smart phone technology, has change the way people interact with the web.

CTC: Do you have any tips or unique ideas to build off-page links?
JJ: Provide good content and a great user experience first!

About the author: Jim Jansen is an associate professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at The Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of several books, most recently UNDERSTANDING SPONSORED SEARCH (Cambridge University Press, September 1, 2011). He is currently a senior fellow at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, where he studies the uses and affordances of the Web for information searching and ecommerce, with a focus on the interaction between the person and the technology.

Honestly, initial engagement around this news leads me to believe people are not understanding how significant it actually is. Time (and search results) will certainly tell – but in the spirit of helping companies do all the right things to get and keep high search engine visibility – here’s some quick insight:

What’s Schema and Why Should We Care
Schema is a collection of new HTML tags that help search engines more accurately index relevant content within web pages.

Since the collaboration and roll-out of this new tagging system was coordinated by the three leading search engines, everyone should be looking at Schema (schema.org) as a new standard for making web pages as search engine friendly as possible.

Note: I appreciate the arguments about how The Big Three have dictated this change, essentially skipping organizational/open review processes often associated with creating “standards.” But what’s done is done – so in the spirit of Heartbreak Ridge, it’s now time to improvise, adapt and overcome.

What You Should Do
Start by making sure your webmaster or whomever is handling SEO/search engine visibility for your web properties is on this. I’d recommend proceeding as follows:

1. Get oriented on why and how: The Schema site FAQ is a good overview of the purpose and reasoning behind the big change – but the real meat of what and how to implement the new markup language resides within the Getting Started documentation.
2. Get familiar with the Schema vocabulary applicable to your web pages: This begins to get technical, but the Getting Started document provides a good understanding of how information within your web page can be structured through “types” and “properties.”Even without being technically-minded, you can look at the full list of item types to get a quick idea of the kind of web page attributes which can now be indexed via the new standard.
3. Create a Schema plan: Conduct an audit of your web pages/sites to match applicable content with the Schema item types. You have numerous options for documenting how you will go about making changes, depending on how detailed you want to get. A spreadsheet might be the most helpful for organizing items types and properties by page, content sections, etc.
4. Make the Changes and Test Your Results: Google promises the Rich Snippets Testing Tool will soon support testing of the new Schema tags to ensure you have an opportunity to see how your content is parsed/displayed in the search results. I would recommend implementing your schema plan regardless of how long it takes for this tool to be ready for prime time. As always, keep an eye on your analytics to see the results of your changes.

A couple of other thoughts that come to mind with this change pertain to how we’ll begin seeing search results adjust due to those taking advantage of Schema vs. those who are not. Other than our own clients’ search results, we’ll of course be watching organizations like SEOMoz to see what they come up with in terms of research to validate the predicted significance.

I’m also curious about how the use of Schema might effect quality scores on landing pages used in conjunction with pay per click marketing. I can only guess that search engine ads driving traffic to pages that leverage schema will have a greater likelihood of higher placement and lower cost per click.

As Marshall Kirkpatrick stated yesterday, “This will change the way people design websites, it will change the way people do search marketing, it will change a lot of things. It should be very, very interesting.” I agree. How bout’ you?

But, when I read stats like “84% use mobile search to look for information on local retailers“, and “88% of these users take action within a day,” I can’t help but think the people who can benefit most from a mobile marketing strategy are local business owners.

Sadly, many local businesses don’t understand how their customers are changing the way they shop. Here are a few very convincing stats that should encourage you to think about your mobile marketing strategy:

• 95 percent of smartphone users have looked for local information
• 88 percent of these users take action within a day
• 1 in three mobile Google searches is local
• 80% of searchers research online before purchasing in a 10-20 mile radius

Yes, the numbers can get overwhelming, but what this means is:

Local shoppers (your neighbors, friends, family, and customers) use their mobile phones to search for information on local businesses (ie. the coffee shop on the corner) and they make purchase decisions based on what they find.

In short, you need a mobile marketing plan. Below, there are a few easy tips for local business owners to get started with mobile:

1. Claim your listings on Google, Yelp, and Facebook.
Make sure the information on those listings is accurate. Create deals for your customers using the easy tools they provide (Learn about easy local deals on Google, Yelp, and Facebook).

2. Create a simple mobile version of your website.
Start with a single landing page and a clear call to action. Make it easy to find a map or contact your business when someone visits your site on a phone. There are some great tips on this blog post.

3. Run Google Mobile Ads on mobile searches in your area.
If you are a plumber in Denver, you want your ads to appear when someone in Denver Googles “broken pipes.” “plumbing,” or “plumbers” on their phone. You don’t need a big budget to see results.

If you get started with these three things, you will be miles ahead of your competitors. As an added bonus, people have seen significantly higher return on investment in local search ads (In this example, Roy’s Restaurants saw 800% ROI).

Feel free to contact bwhalenATroom214DOTcom with any questions.

Neglecting your ongoing account optimization

Seems obvious, but a lot of folks get their account all set up and then forget about it completely. This is what we like to call the “set it and forget it” mentality. It is absolutely critical to not do this, as what will typically happen is your account will spiral out of control. Maybe there’s a rogue display network placement that is spending all your budget without bringing quality traffic and conversions to your site. Maybe your keyword bids that were once good are now way too low and your average position is such that your ads aren’t showing. Maybe the Google Search Partners are sucking hard. Maybe your credit card changed and you aren’t even running ads. Point is, if you aren’t keeping track, something will go horribly wrong with your account in time. Be warned … Ok that’s the end of my ominous rant.

Not using conversion tracking

So, you’re driving traffic to your website. What do you want users to do after clicking on your site? Please, please, please don’t tell me you just want to bring “traffic”. That’s what I like to call wasting your money. Surely there is some funnel you want users to find and ultimately click. It can be buying products, signing up for email newsletters, filling out forms, downloading assets (behind forms), or the like. But you need to get conversion tracking in place to be able to monitor how many users are performing the desired action. Conversion metrics are the gold mine for PPC.

Grouping too many keywords into ad groups

I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve been guilty of this before. Sometimes you want to get the new ad group up and running ASAP, but keep these ad groups as granular as possible. I have ad groups with one keyword in it. Why, you ask? Think of how targeted you can make your ad, which will improve your CTR, which will raise your quality score, which will make the keyword less expensive, which makes everyone happy.

Forgetting about landing pages

Ever search for something in particular, click on a PPC and and get taken to the home page of the site? Usually not super helpful. What you want to do is take users to a highly relevant landing page. I’ve got clients where we have 15+ specific PPC landing pages. I’m sure there are clients with many, many more. Are you an e-commerce site? At least take users to the product page of the product they are searching for. It is a pain sometimes to get tons of PPC specific landing pages dialed in, but it is worth it. As I’ve said, ads really just compel users to click. Landing pages take that user expectation and ideally, funnel users to a conversion. Therefore, I cannot stress how important landing pages are.

Leaving ad serving at optimized instead of rotate

By default, Google thinks it knows more than you. Which is probably right. But in this case, you’ll want to set your ad serving to rotate. Otherwise, you won’t get to do real A/B ad testing.

Neglecting negative keywords

Good way to save some money. You can do a little work when first setting up your accounts by thinking of similar terms that might show your ad that simply aren’t relevant. You can also see what actual searches your ads are showing for by clicking the “See search terms” button in the “Keywords” tab. You can then sort by spend and see which terms are bringing in traffic without converting. There are a lot of useful blog posts on the Internet about negative keywords if you’d like more detailed information.

Any of you readers have any other common mistakes to avoid with AdWords? I’d love to hear them.

However keyword research isn’t just for optimizing websites or building out pay-per-click campaigns anymore. Utilizing keyword research for social media optimization has become an important tactic for improved online visibility. Why do you need to worry about including high quality keywords in your social content? By “high quality”, I am referring to those keyword phrases that are very relevant to your business, have significant search volume and in some cases have low competition.

1. For Greater Social Network Visibility
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, behind Google. Twitter search is widely used and incorporated into many 3rd party clients/tools. Facebook search… well Facebook search is awful but has to improve at some point. Optimizing social content with high quality keywords is important for improved visibility on each social network. Including keyword phrases in titles, post content, descriptions, tags, and image/video names are all important areas to focus on for optimization.

Greater visibility in social networks will help build your community, grow engagement and drive high quality traffic back to your website. The next time you are reviewing your site analytics, check out your website’s referral traffic stats. There is a good chance you are experiencing a steady increase in referral traffic from social network sites.  If you are using Google Analytics, here is a great tutorial on how to set up an advanced segment to track referral data from all social media sources together.

2. For Greater Search Engine Visibility
For well over a year, Google and Bing (which powers Yahoo) have been displaying traditional search results blended with content from social networks, such as branded profiles, publicly posted content and real-time updates. Authority and popularity of the content are certainly factors in determining what gets displayed in search results however search engines need a way to categorize all of this social content, which means… keyword phrases.

Putting it all together
This graph helps to illustrate how traditional search engine optimization and social media optimization increase visibility (a.k.a. awareness) and drive traffic from multiple channels (click to enlarge).

Greater visibility in search engine and social network search results will lead to greater awareness, traffic, leads, revenue and brand advocates – the ultimate conversion in social media marketing. This reinforces the importance of having a well-managed social presence with a content strategy for converting visitors and achieving your ultimate business objectives for social media.

Getting Started
Go dig into some keyword research, compile a short list of high-priority keywords, print it out, laminate it and give it to every person in your company who creates content for social. Going forward, have a keyword focus when writing tweets, Facebook updates, YouTube video headlines/descriptions/tags, image names etc… Be cautious though, you don’t want to sound like a robot spewing nonsensical keyword phrases. The content has to be engaging and entice clicks.

Similar to traditional SEO, it is not enough to just optimize content with keywords. The content has to add value and you must work the popularity contest that is link building by sharing content everywhere.

Bottom line: If you are not utilizing keyword research for social media optimization, you are missing out on an opportunity for improved online visibility.

A search engine’s ultimate mission is to serve the most relevant information it can. But from a search perspective, the emergence of social media has essentially expanded what’s relevant.

While many refer to this subject matter as social media optimization (SMO), I prefer social search optimization due to the specificity. The end game is simple, and nothing new under the sun: maximizing the visibility of relevant content for those looking for it.

But First, a Real War Story

My good friend, Valerie, was recently looking for a job. In anticipation of the process, she updated her LinkedIn profile and did some house cleaning on her Facebook page.

Considering what any recruiter might do, she then did a Google search of her own name, and pow! The third search result was displaying a comment she made about a video within the Facebook page of the hit TV show, “Lost.”

Commenting about Sawyer (“the hot guy”) in the video, she wrote, “mmmmm, finger lickin’ good!” To her shock, those were the words displayed front and center in the search result, with a link to the video right under her good name.

This is specific to an individual, but we can probably all recall a popular pizza maker who experienced ugly search results tied to their name in a different way — yet still driven from social media.

Understanding Social Search: Two Sides

Social search varies in scope and definition, but most recognize it as the addition or inclusion of social content in the context of online search.

One side of social search is dedicated to understanding peoples’ search habits (online and offline) for the purpose of improving the user experience. Think about how juicy this subject matter might be to a company like Google, which is constantly testing and changing the waters (algorithm) to serve the most relevant search results.

With search now implementing social content within the results, social interaction design (SxD) enthusiasts continue analyzing what works and what doesn’t for people seeking information under various circumstances.

Brynn Evans, a respected thought leader in the field, has identified three categories of social search that fit this focus:

1. Collective Social Search: For example, Twitter Trends as a crowdsourcing approach to search via real-time “harvester” tools.
2. Friend-filtered Social Search: For example, Google Social Search, which yields results that may include tweets, blog posts, images, status updates and other results from your friends and contacts.
3. Collaborative: For example, Google’s acquisition of Aardvark, which enables two or more people working through an IM platform to get answers to questions).

Each of the three search types maintain a value unique from traditional, keyword-based search engines — ultimately relying on people (beyond Google PageRank) to deliver the most meaningful results.

The second side of social search, typically more applicable to marketing, is one of “social objects.” Social objects may consist of Facebook entries, YouTube videos, blog posts, comments, Flickr images, Yelp reviews, Scribd documents and much more.

Social objects are the elements that help drive conversations, and may consist of content directly indexed or associated through meta data (keywords that describe the content).

What Does it All Mean?

To reference Brian Solis’s viewpoint: The future of marketing starts with publishing, therefore every company is a media company. As you may have surmised, social objects are the new low hanging fruit of search optimization.

That means applying some of the same search engine optimization (SEO) strategies you’ve used on traditional web pages to applicable social objects. From smart keyword-targeted tags and titles (of your videos, pics, posts, etc.), to the effective use of keywords in comments and Facebook profile descriptions — your opportunity to optimize social assets for increased search visibility now abounds.

Fear of the Social

We constantly hear from people who think that getting into the world of social media is a terrifying leap from the traditional media they are used to. It doesn’t have to be scary when you slowly integrate what you are currently doing with a bit of the online world. And remember, trying this doesn’t mean the commitment to a million-dollar media buy.

I’d like to highlight some campaigns that have caught my attention by doing a great job of integrating social media with print, radio, TV, or websites.

Beginner

I noticed a Toyota Sienna commercial last week that finished not with their website, but with their youtube site. What’s great about this is it drives consumers to a site that is the consumer’s, not Toyota’s, “safe zone”, making it feel much more comfortable.

Intermediate

Using navy.mil as the jumping off point, the Navy utilizes various social media resources, including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, RSS feeds, podcasts and Flickr. These resources allow them to effectively manage and communicate with multiple constituent groups, a process that could be confusing and nightmarish to manage given that their constituents range from enlisted men to the media to worried mothers. Specific organizations have specific social media accounts, so if you need to find information about your friend in Amphibious Force Seventh Fleet, you can easily find the fleet’s feeds here.

Expert

Old Navy, who has been using mannequins as a central focus of their traditional media campaigns, started the Supermodelquin Search, which solicits a significant amount of interaction from users, both offline and online:

• Users take photos of themselves and upload them to a website
• The best pictures bubble to the top through user voting
• Users can share what they like through easy share buttons on each page
• The campaign has been neatly integrated with the existing Old Navy Facebook page
• 7 of their modelquins have Twitter accounts, where they share amusing information, push the contest, and promote the brand

So. Any good (or bad) examples that you can think of?

At the risk of paraphrasing, she basically indicated the importance of optimizing web pages is going away. If you consider how referral traffic is migrating from search engines to social networks, I’d say it’s easy to agree.

Of course, what we are seeing is search engines staying relevant by indexing social content. Case and point: I do a quick search on Google for “iPad” – and what do you know: My friend and business partner, James Clark, shows up on the first page of the search results.

Wow, over 48 million results, and his mug comes up on the first page? Yes, because Google is now recognizing and leveraging the relevance of social connections.

And although the optimization of web pages may be bearing less weight, I’m not throwing out the baby with the bath water (ugh, I used that phrase). Keywords, for example, remain foundational to online visibility from both a topical search, and monitoring perspective.

There is a great deal more to the social search discussion recently written by Brian Solis. One of our (Room 214’s) responses has been to create a formal Social Search Optimization program for our customers.

What are you doing to optimize for social search?