Interactive Marketing Blog

It’s been a while since I posted

Google recently released a video explaining that they don’t use or factor in keyword meta tags in the Google search engine optimization  seo algorithm.  Matt Cutts, a Google Software Engineer is featured in the 2 minute video and explains that Google places no relevance on this technique for search engine optimization.

Cutts did explain that the Google Search Appliance does use the keyword meta data to help filter search appliance queries; however the keyword meta data has absolute no bearing on search engine rankings in the Google search platform.

The meta description tag and content are weighed and are very useful.  Google uses this and will often use it as the snippet of information that is returned in the SERP, Search Engine Results Page summarizing the content of the website that Google returns.

Personally, I would hold off on abandoning the keyword meta tags because it doesn’t mean they aren’t weighed by Yahoo, bing or other search providers.  I am a big believer that if your keyword meta tags strongly resemble the quality content on your page that it will only enhance your seo efforts and rankings while conversely stuffing keywords in your meta data that don’t resemble your web site content will irreversibly harm your seo rankings and strategy, so always practice white hat seo tactics and build quality content that is valuable to end users.

You can download the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide for how to get started.

According to Comscore, the global source for digital market intelligence, Microsoft’s bing made a slight gain in market share in the rapidly growing search marketplace.

Bing increased from a 8% share to 9.3% of global monhtly searches. Yahoo continues to maintain it’s distant second place ranking with 19% market share trailing the search marketing industry leader Google which owns 64% of the search engine marketing share.

Search engine marketing recently passed 100 Billion searches globally, therefore the 3 market leaders continue to strive and make grounds for market share. Microsoft recently has invested $100 Million in advertising campaigns promoting bing and Yahoo is set to release a new advertising campaign at Advertising Week which will focus on the Yahoo Search Marketing platform.

Many online and interactive marketing professionals believe search engine marketing Pay Per Click Search Ads and Search Engine Optimization SEO continues to offer the greatest ROI in the digital and interactive marketing landscape.

What is your favorite search engine? and why? Would love to see your comments here…..

You’re at a South Carolina football game, sitting in the sun at Williams-Brice Stadium. South Carolina scores, and as the fans go wild, you tweet to your buddies, “Touchdown, Gamecocks!”

SEC and Tweeting

Oops, there’s a flag on that play. All social networking at games is against SEC rules. Gamecocks can’t tweet.

Or can they? The Southeastern Conference told The Observer on Monday that the conference is revising what might be college sports’ most restrictive policy on social media. Why? Because of the negative reaction in the media and on social media.

“I know what’s being written,” said conference spokesman Charles Bloom. “The thought process is to get it loosened up a bit.” Bloom expects a revision to be finished in a day or two.

The SEC is trying to protect its $3billion, 15-year contract with CBS and ESPN, which have video rights to its sporting events. A restriction on fans posting videos is “tougher to move,” Bloom said. “The main concern is videos.”

So, can fans post photos to Twitter and Facebook from the games? That remains to be seen, Bloom said. He indicated that fans would probably be able to tweet from the stands. But he confirmed that, under the current policy, that is forbidden.

According to the policy, ticketed fans can’t “produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information.”

In contrast, the Big 10 also recently released a social media policy, but invites fans to take part.

This article was written by Jeff Elder and can be found in it’s entirety at the Charlotte Observer:

By Jeff Elder
jelder@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009

Following leaked revelations Twitter will take in as much as $20 million or so per month by the fourth quarter of 2010, it appears the company is testing a new contextual advertising system that will target ads to people based upon the contents of their tweets.

Saul Hansell of the New York Times tweeted yesterday he’s apparently in on the test and will have more to report at a later date.

Inline contextual advertising on Twitter might not be such a bad thing. If it’s relevant. If it’s not too frequent. And if it actually serves a person’s needs. Time and testing will address that but one thing is clear. Either through fees, ad revenue or some other source, Twitter does need to start making money. Even the best services can’t live on VC money indefinitely.

Twitter, of course, states all this leaked information is inaccurate and unofficial. But, there may be a reality TV show in the works called Final Tweet. Seriously. That has to be a joke.

This article was posted from AdRants.

Matthew Robson, 15, recently finished an internship at Morgan Stanley where he was tasked with explaining teenage media consumption.  He explained that he was only relaying the daily conversations of the 200 teenagers in his year and thousands of others across the country, translated into language that bankers would understand.

Today he is the talk of Tokyo, Wall Street and the City. Fund managers, CEOs and analysts are poring over his report, How Teenagers Consume Media, which he wrote last week while on work experience at Morgan Stanley.

In it he laid out the world according to the teenager: a confusing place where the PC is a radio, the games console is a telephone, the mobile telephone is a stereo and text-message machine, the DVDs are pirate copies and no one uses Twitter.

Teenagers do not listen to the radio, he wrote, preferring online streaming sites, nor do they ever buy music. Games consoles “now… connect to the internet, voice chat is possible between users… one can speak for free over the console so a teenager would be unwilling to use a phone,” he wrote.

He told The Times that at home he usually communicates with his male friends while blowing up terrorists on the action game Call of Duty. “You use a mobile phone if you want to talk to girls,” he said, as “only about one in fifty girls plays computer games.”

Girls are a lot more prone to spend their time on social networking sites. Matthew uses Facebook but his accounts with Piczo and Bebo have lapsed and Twitter is strictly for the elderly. “It’s aimed at adults,” he said. “Stephen Fry is not particularly cool. Also, for the cost of one tweet you could send quite a few text messages.” As no teenagers followed each other’s profiles, tweeting was “pointless”.

He believes cost is a critical factor in the teenage market as “no one has any money”. “Eight out of ten teenagers don’t buy music,” he said. “It comes from limewire, blogs or torrents.” Meanwhile, pirated DVDs generally cost £2 and go on sale even as the films are in the cinema.

The entire article can be found on TimesOnline.

Learning and fun top the list.

If idle hands are the devil’s workshop, the Internet is a pretty hot place.

According to Ruder Finn, 100% of US Internet users surveyed in Q2 2009 went online to pass the time.

Other popular reasons were education, connecting with others, researching and sharing.

The least common intentions when logging on were to make purchases, manage finances, comparison shop and join causes.

“Intent is the new demographic,” said Kathy Bloomgarden, Ruder Finn co-CEO. “Delving deeper into the underlying motivations of online behavior is critical to developing proactive strategies.”

Overall, Ruder Finn divided online activities into six categories, listed from most common to least:

• Learn
• Have fun
• Socialize
• Express oneself
• Advocate
• Do business
• Shop

Men were more likely than women to go online for business, entertainment and to keep informed on news and current events.

Women, in turn, were more likely to use the Internet to advocate for a cause or issue, express themselves and socialize.

You can view the entire article by visiting EMarketer.

Interactive marketing will near $55 billion and represent 21 percent of all marketing dollars spent in 2014 as advertisers shift money away from traditional media to search marketing, display advertising, e-mail marketing, social media and mobile promotions, according to a recent study.

The trend is already underway, as more marketers this year are taking money from traditional marketing budgets and using it in interactive advertising, as opposed to supporting interactive efforts with new funding, as was the case in years past, according to the Forrester Research report “US Interactive Marketing Forecast 2009 to 2014,” by Shar VanBoskirk.

The above chart represents the interactive marketing spend forecast through year 2014. 

• Search Marketing will continue to lead the lion’s share of interactive spend growing from an estimated $15 Billion in 2009 to in excess of $31 Billion in 2014.
• Display Advertising comes in second behind search and will increase from just under $8 Billion in 2009 to $17 Billion in 2014.
• Email Marketing will double from $1.2 Billion, and
• Social Media and Mobile Marketing which are realizing the fastest growth percentage wise will total in excess of $4 Billion in 2014.

You can read the full article on internetnews.com.

Google to Target Users by Fico Score
Google has teamed with Compete and plans to experiment with targeting online ads to consumers based on high Fico Scores.  The ads which will be available on the Google Content Network will primarily focus on financial offerings like credit cards and other high end luxury products.  You can read the complete article here at MediaBuyerPlanner.

Google Takes the Battle to Microsoft
Google is taking the battle to Microsoft’s backyard with the recent announcement of Google Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system designed to initially run on netbooks and later be available to the open source community.

The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.  You can read the complete article here at googleblog.blogspot.com.

The Growing Power of Mommy Bloggers
Last week, one of my associates and rising public relations star, Kim Jaimeson gave our internal agency staff a presentation on the power of Mommy Bloggers.  I came across this article and it sparked me to mention some startling statistics related to the power and growth in this emerging buying group.

Mommies are flocking to social networks, according to new research from BabyCenter LLC, which runs several parenting Web and community sites.

The number of moms using social media regularly has grown from 11% in 2006 to 63% today, an increase of 462% in three years, the company said.

Social media are not equal in online mommies’ eyes, however. Most say they use mass-reach networks such as Facebook for socializing and entertainment, but turn to specialized content sites for information and counsel from fellow parents.  You can read the full article by visiting Promo Magazine.

Improving Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Clicks and Conversions
I do a fair amount of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and trying to keep up with white hat methods and practices is like sometimes drinking water from a firehose.  Google, Yahoo and MSN Bing consistently update and change their algorithms therefore keeping search engine optimization rankings as a dynamic practice.

Recently, I came across this webinar on Marketing Expirements, which I think does an outstanding job of explaining white hat tips and strategy to effectively building sites and landing pages optimized for search engines and better conversions.

Humorous Web 2.0 Viral Video
One of my distinguished colleagues, Mark Newsome, Sr. Vice President of Client Services shared this web site story musical video with myself and others today.  While I self proclaim to honing absolutely zero ability when it comes to musical talent, I thought this was a very funny and viral video and wanted to share it with you and my vastly growing audience of 40,000 unique visitors (actually 4 visitors according to Google Analytics a few moments ago), but hey, an Interactive Marketing Blogger has to start somewhere right?  Can only go up from here.