The 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing Blog

Bing search results- between authorship and subjectship March 26, 2013 – 5:33 pm				Cristiana

Search results have always been important both for SEO and sales . While the algorithmic  formula is kept secret, many search engines are trying  to push the “creativity” further.Let’s compare Bing and Google.When someone starts searching for a particular keyword, the results  surprise, especially because they are confusing. For instance, the Bing results for author images seem to show exactly as the ones from Google. With one exception: they cannot be called author images,because they get more into subject images (which may be an attribute specific only to Bing search results).Example of authorship image from Google:

This is a  picture of Jim Crammer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money and a co-founder and chairman of TheStreet.com. In this case, Google associated my search with his picture and biography.Now moving forward with this analysis, let’s take a look at how Bing proceeds in terms of showing search results.

Both arrows reveal that Nick Goodman’s picture shows he is author of those articles instead of … topic. In the middle of the search results page, instead of Nick’s picture (since he is the founder of the company that is subject of the article), one can notice a picture showing a plane  - the cover picture of the article in Forbes Magazine.While constantly trying to improve their search results,  engines have the tendency to become more confusing instead of creative. I think the best way to bring improvements to your search results  is using clarity and avoiding as much as possible misunderstandings. People get confused very easily, and if they are not particularly interested in a specific topic, and will go further with their readings, (so if  they just take a look at the Bing page) they will not understand who Nicholas Woodman is.

Posted by Cristiana
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3) | No Comments »

The customer you are looking for, you already have September 20, 2012 – 9:22 am				Damjan Dano

The latest research done by Adobe Inc. and their Digital Index section of the website shows that the Pareto principle should not be forgotten and still plays a valuable role in the business planning process.  The research outlines that 41% of online revenue comes from returning (customers who have already purchased something twice on your website) and repeat purchases (post-second purchase visitors that buy more stuff), who represent only 8% of total visitors to your online store.

The research states that in the US, only 1% of shoppers actually make a purchase, but more then 75% of retail marketing budgets are spent on search and display advertising to attract these type of visitors, not to bring or to increase the brand loyalty with the repeat purchasers.

The lesson from the report is to invest in brand loyalty, to make sure your current customers are satisfied and are coming back or referring you to their social circles, before you go and spend money chasing new customers that most likely will not convert. Tools like e-mail marketing, social media strategies and loyalty promotions and even simple thank you notes are the channels that should be used to target your valuable customers.

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), CRM (Pillar 5), Email Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online PR, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6), Web Analytics | No Comments »
Tags: brand loyalty programs, digital marketing, marketers, marketing agency, marketing research, online research, online shopping research, repeat customers, social media agency

14 years later, Google still owns online search September 11, 2012 – 3:38 pm				Damjan Dano

On the 4th of September, 1998, Google was officially registered as a company in the U.S., making their mission to instantly change the way people search for information online and to set up new standards for the global network called internet.

Nowadays, there is no internet user that does not use Google and it’s search engine. The company is worth over $200 billion US, has various projects and services and has more then 50.000 employees around the globe. Now Google owns Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Android, Google+ and a lot of other services that we use on a daily basis. They are even trying to make autonomous cars!

The search engine as a project was started in 1996 by the two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and was named after the word “Googol” (mathematical term for a number equivalent to ten raised to the power of a hundred), but later changed to “Google” as an alternative. They registered Google.com on 15th of September, 1997 and started their journey, it took them about a year until they found a good investor and launch their business.

Below is an interesting part of the Discovery Channel’s Download episode devoted to the search giant’s history:

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in Content Marketing (Pillar 1), SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3), web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tags: google, google's history, internet search, online search, search experts, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO, SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3)

Facebook is rolling out new features and marketers are rolling their eyes August 22, 2012 – 5:52 pm				Damjan Dano

Today the largest social network made few updates to their Open Graph platform… it allowed users to tag their friends in 3rd party apps like social games (ex: FarmVille) and geo-location apps (ex: FourSquare)… it also announced that sponsored links will be shown in user’s searches on Facebook.com.

Now your friends can tag you on 3rd party apps and you will receieve the notifications about the tag – via a Mention or Action method.

The difference between these two is outlined below:

This feature will not be added by default, users will give permissions for tagging to the apps, the same way they do now when they want to interact with some app. (tip: If you currently have some active apps on your profile, in order to use this you’ll need to renew the permissions, you can do that with  going to Account settings > Apps).

The second update marks a direct poke from Facebook to Google (maybe because of this Google is running around crazy), and will allow businesses to bid for user’s query in the search box and results page like shown in the image below:

While the tagging feature update is clearly a long awaited and requested from the 3rd party app providers and many users, the second feature update is clearly a shot to make the shareholders happy and to bump the price of current low-performing stock on the market.

Most likely the first feature will be accepted very well by the users, and the second one will likely be highly ignored with very low click-throughs as most of the current sidebar ads on Facebook. I have trouble figuring out why Facebook – platform that has tons of data and behavior patterns for all of us, still can’t figure out how to make money and how to properly integrate semantic marketing and targeting, but are copying some old-school concepts.

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Business News, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), Digital Media (Pillar 4), eCommerce, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online PR, Pay Per Click (PPC), Public Relations, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: Digital Media (Pillar 4), facebook, Facebook marketing, foursquare, google, Internet Marketing, search marketing, semantics marketing, Social Marketing, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6), social networks, tagging, tags

Google buys print ad to advertise online ad!? August 21, 2012 – 10:25 am				Damjan Dano

Google’s marketing team made another move that spiked a lot of controversy and conversations about online vs. offline advertising all over the net. Last week, Google bought an print ad space in the Canada’s Globe and Mail and National Post in order to advertise their online search ads:

With this ad purchase, Google is trying to show that print ads don’t really work and that their online AdWords platform is much more efficient…. but did Google really made the right move with buying this ad space and putting that ad copy there?

Many journalists, bloggers and media folks are making fun of the search giant’s move, claiming that with this Google actually demonstrated the value of print ads. Or maybe Google’s marketing department just wanted to poke at its direct competition and just spike a controversy. As Engadget states, the “universe has yet to implode.”

What do you make of Google’s ad?

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), Digital Media (Pillar 4), Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online PR, Public Relations, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: Digital Media (Pillar 4), google, google advertising, internet advertising, Marketing, online marketing, search marketing, SEM, SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Where did Google make their money in 2011? January 24, 2012 – 7:37 pm				Damjan Dano

The internet marketing software company WordStream published an interesting infographic about Google’s 2011 revenues. The data in the infographic is based on Google’s investor reports and financial tables and is stating the facts in a very nice visual format.

Google’s 2011 revenues were a total of 37.9 billion dollars… yes, 37.9 billion, with a B. The most interesting fact is that 96% of the revenue came from advertising.

Thanks to companies like StateFarm, Progressive, Amazon, Macy’s, Sears, Quicken Loans, Lowe’s, Booking.com and many others like them that spend millions of dollars per year bidding for keywords like “new york hotels” with average CPC of $7.68 (used by Booking.com), “zumba dance dvd” with average CPC $5.18 (amazon), “self employed health insurance” with a extremely high CPC of $43.39 (eHealthInsurance), “cheap hybrid cars” bidding for average CPC of $15.57 (Cars.com) Google made its billions.

Below you can find the infographic with all the breakdowns and stats…

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/01/23/google-revenues

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC), SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3) | No Comments »
Tags: advertisers, Advertising, AdWords, cost per click, cpc, google, google revenue, google revenue 2011, paid search, pay per click, ppc

Stretch Out The Meaning of SEO June 24, 2011 – 3:35 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

We here at Blueliner Marketing believe in the growth of digital media.  Our ability to communicate on all platforms offer a flexibility in business production which has never been realized in any other era.  Corporations are learning slowly about terms like metadata, page views, and conversion rates. But some executives still aren’t convinced that search engine optimization is a worthy investment, even if consumer traffic begins with a website for everyone. Outspoken Media had some opinions for marketing managers to crack the digital ceiling.

1.  Turn Your Data Into a Story

You relentlessly comb over the site map looking for mistakes in the metadata. The keyword list rankings have shifted a little bit over the quarter, but not too much.  The metrics paint a vivid for you to implement strategy, but what about your supervisors? Use a television show or allegorical reference to spread your data evangelism.

2.  Your Boss Isn’t Educated On the Seemingly Ancillary Benefits

In fact, I have conversations with co-workers all the time about clients who expect a complete brand transfusion in their conversion metrics when starting an SEO campaign. Unfortunately, in this world of button gratification, no mas. It takes a lot of protocol and slow roasting to see the results.  Outspoken brings out several points of value.  You gain increased web, image, and video search.  Your brand authority improves while customer acquisition costs decline.  Over time, you engage more with the customer base, and then the sales flow in.

3.  Rankings Are Up, But Traffic is Down

Again, this harkens to the last paragraph where investors could freak out in the early stages.  After a thorough metadata review and keyword implementation, you are separating the wheat from the chaff.  When this infiltrates a strong website with simple navigation paths, you will attract customers rather than surveyors.

4.  A Relationship of Obscurity

A last point they bring up is that it could be a plain old gap. Whether it be an age or personality gap  is irrelevant.  The forces of nature are not permitting management not understanding the basic value of your daily responsibility.  I bring this into the fray as a conclusion point for one simple reason. It is an indicator of a macroeconomic problem within your firm structure which is a coin flip at best.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), Interactive Marketing, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3) | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency nyc, new york interactive marketing, outspoken media, seo news

Google Speeds Up The Web June 17, 2011 – 12:04 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

In this video above, a Google programmer discusses the enhancements in language to their search algorithm, which speeds up the search query to handle the rise of mobile data transfers. The UI now also includes the ability to search by image pulled from your files or pages. Ad Age also notes of another innovation named Google Instant for Pages. The search giant will pre-load the predicted page in user results based on prior queries, saving approximately 10 seconds. More so than classified advertising, this new technology will drive up the value of banner advertising, as the number of impressions will rise for a user. Unfortunately, the test can only happen on the Chrome server. Holders of that portal should pass along feedback. Here’s another video.

Such an increased speed of a visual search algorithm foreshadows some developments for the future of the query experience. A future where SEO could be rendered obsolete. It should also prove advantageous for producers of video content, as load times will decrease with processor improvement. I also think that access to a wider range of personalized video content will improve, and do not be surprised if Netflix applies these tools to its query dashboard.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), Digital Media (Pillar 4), Marketing, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3) | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency, new york interactive marketing

Google Adds +1 To Share, Search June 2, 2011 – 5:06 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Google has also rolled out a share content button to rival the premiere social network buttons.  As with other Google software products, the content will be mined in the search result indices.  Depending on its success, you could see a benefit for small businesses that are looking to push a strategy online through local channels.  The button has been available for web developers since March.  You can grab the code here, then affix it to your website.  The search giant also linked up with several partners, including Add This, Mashable, Huffington Post, Nordstrom, and so forth.  According to this blog entry, Google could have learned from their prior failures into social media with Wave and Buzz.

The offer from the source piece points out that Google’s +1 allows users and webmasters to be the determinant of which content reaches the top of index results.  This content, as I mentioned, could range from local businesses to music content and personal profiles.  With the advent of Google’s Cloud Music Service (still in beta), marketers can use web analytics for integration of all those users to track consumer behaviors. This author also mentioned that Google’s service portfolio is utilized by many for business or personal lines of communication.  Could the third time be a charm for Google entering the social sharing domain? Here’s a video:

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Digital Media (Pillar 4), Interactive Marketing, Marketing, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3), Small Business, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency nyc, google +1, google local search, google news, seo media agency nyc

Free Webinar Tomorrow! Optimizing SEO & Social Media May 18, 2011 – 4:47 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Tomorrow at 2 p.m. Eastern time will be a continuing episode in Blueliner’s Spring Webinar Series.  Participants will learn more about the value of social media marketing and search engine optimization in your digital strategy.

Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization are 2 of the “7 Pillars of Digital Strategy”. They are also arguably the most important critical pillars. Many companies have built entire marketing strategies based solely on their methodology.

Social Media Marketing promise of solid ROI remain significant for years to come. It’s instant communication and now available at the pockets of millions of consumers. It allows for a direct dialogue unlike anything businesses had the ability to practice on a mass level in the past. The possibilities begin with web analytics coding metrics like customer retention, lead generation, and reputation management.

SEO is by far the most desired Pillar in digital marketing. It is the difference between a search result index on the first page or the 28th. Every website needs to be optimized for specific keywords to be found on the Internet. With search algorithms always improving, SEO is also changing and getting smarter.  At Blueliner, we take pride in our great SEO work.

Blueliner invites you to an online presentation to learn about setting up marketing plans and best practices for tackling these essential pillars.  Click here or The Black Hat to register now!

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3), Small Business, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | 1 Comment »
Tags: 2011 spring webinar series, arman rousta, Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency, riyaad edoo, seo media agency, social media marketing agency