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

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 Arsovski
Posted in Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC), search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 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, Interactive Marketing, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 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, Digital Media, Marketing, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 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, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Small Business, Social Media Marketing | 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, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Small Business, Social Media Marketing | 1 Comment »
Tags: 2011 spring webinar series, arman rousta, Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency, riyaad edoo, seo media agency, social media marketing agency

SEO Suites Review – IBP vs. Web CEO May 2, 2011 – 2:13 pm				Tanveer

Good Search engine rankings are important for any web page, as the largest number of users find destination web sites by browsing search engines.  Some times it can be difficult to get your web site to the top. That’s why many people and specialists look into using SEO software.  However, there are many different kinds of SEO software in the market – IBP and Web CEO are two of the leading SEO softwares on the market.

IBP

Internet Business Promoter (IBP) is a sophisticated website promotion software tool. IBP helps to achieve high search engine ranking results. It is constantly being updated and helps to optimize web pages based on the most current search engine algorithms. It can submit websites to major search engines automatically and can monitor their search rankings. IBP offers useful tools for website optimization, position checking, link building, directory submission, search engine submission, keyword analysis and research, competitor analysis and much more. IBP has one of the more effective link building and web page optimization tools. IBP uses only moral search engine optimization methods that are accepted by all search engines.

Web CEO

Web CEO is a comprehensive SEO software suite. It can assist in overall website promotion. It has twelve SEO tools for search engine optimization, including keyword research, search engine submission, a web page editor, ranking checker, PPC campaigns manager, web analytics, link popularity analyzer, website quality audit, FTP uploader, and website monitoring tool. Web CEO has a good looking user interface that helps to automate most of the tasks & encourages taking a more strategic approach to search engine marketing. Web CEO came up with a very helpful website auditing tool that can easily outline the performance of web pages. It also provides information on missing images, broken links, slow pages, invalid displayed graphics, and missing META information.

High search engine rankings are important for gaining traffic as it allows users to more easily find your link via online search engines. The problem is it can be difficult to get high search engine rankings. Normally 40-45% of users visit the first page listed, and even less users visit the second, third and fourth (Not guaranteed s/he will be targeted users). The majority of people would like to be on the first page (Top 10 positions), because that is where most of the users go. Helping you achieve these goals and saving time is SEO software.

IBP and Web CEO both offer almost identical SEO tools but differ on their features. For keyword research, IBP’s keyword research tool will help look up the top searched keywords immediately and users can also find out information about keywords. Web CEO’s keyword search tool is a little more in depth and allows coming up with variations of keywords and suggestion.

With these tools users can check their competitor’s site’s back links, ranking position. Web CEO generates reports of a users site and those of their competitors. But IBP’s report function offers more features than Web CEO. Users can customize their report and save into various formats like .pdf, .html, .xls etc.
Another important feature of these tools is that users can manually or automatically submit their web pages to search engines, directories, and special interest sites. Web CEO is proficient of helping you find link partners according to the pattern and subject of web page, will help looking for link partners based on targeted keywords, and will help submit URLs to the most important search engines and directories.

Like Web CEO, IBP offers full featured functionality in free trial. However in IBP, the report customization and various project management functions are limited in free trial. But get proper SEO suggestion and benefit there are no alternate of paid version.

Common Features of IBP and Web CEO

• Different keyword suggestion mechanisms
• Google Keyword Suggestion
• Emailing reports to clients automatically
• Keyword data available for printout
• Saving reports in HTML
• Choosing the search engine for which to optimize the webpage
• Finding sites that already link to you
• Generating link building reports
• The exact URL from which the backlink stands
• Does a page really link back?
• Link’s anchor text
• Link’s anchor URL
• Number of competing sites
• Runs on Windows
• Wizards
• Scheduling keyword research and reporting tasks
• Creating optimization strategy based on competition research
• Unlimited number of sites to check
• Stop words (omitting or indicating articles, prepositions and other words search engines don’t take into account)
• Main onpage factors
• Main offpage factors
• Recommendations for optimized content
• Keyword density analysis
• SEO tips in the report
• Generating onpage optimization reports
• Reports available for printout
• FTP upload of reports to make them available online
• Finding quality link partners in the leading search engines
• Search for potential partners among sites linking to your competitors
• Sending personalized emails using customizable templates
• Email variables
• Automatic cycle of email correspondence
• Automatic email address mining
• Checking if link partners link back to you
• Retrieving contact info
• Indicate how your site ranks for each keyword
• Rich search engine choice
• Selecting multiple search engines based on country and language
• Human Emulation
• Competitors’ rankings
• Typing in keywords manually
• Comparing ranking results from different dates
• Preferred SEs
• Reports view
• Generating ranking reports
• Scheduling rank checking and reporting tasks
• KEI

The Features not supported by both IBP and Web CEO

• Link value of a potential backlink
• Marking pages that may provide the best link value
• Yahoo! Search Assist
• Ask TypeAhead Search Suggestions
• Choice of types of misspellings
• Length of keyphrase
• Your current ranking for each keyword
• Advanced workspace filters
• Runs on Mac OS X
• Runs on Linux
• Quick search through keywords
• Yahoo! API key
• Bing API key
• Generating keyword reports
• CAPTCHA recognition
• Displaying the number of page elements containing a keyword
• Analy zing words other than specified keywords
• Checking link partners’ link popularity
• Measuring your own website’s popularity over time
• Receiving and organizing emails from your link partners
• Manageable workspaces
• Building linking strategy based on competition research
• Ability to find sitewide links
• Google PageRank of each page
• Country of the linking site
• Domain age
• Generating link strategy reports
• Emailing link strategy reports to clients
• Customizable filters
• Number of searches
• KEI for keywords
• Displaying keyphrase length
• Setting time period for which to build a progress graph
• Integrated keyword research

Different between IBP & Web CEO

Posted by Tanveer
Posted in blog, Digital Media, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »
Tags: compare, IBP, internet business promotor, SEO suites, SEO tools review, software, Web CEO

Why the #1 Position in Search Engines Sucks April 21, 2011 – 11:29 am				Asif Anwar

For those that utilize Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you know how important it is to get the number 1 ranking for your most important keywords. If the keyword is popular, then it is a dream come true. Or is it? How can getting the #1 ranking for your keyword can be a nightmare? Well, the answer is ROI. It’s not the #1 ranking that you should rely most on.

At Blueliner, we are mostly ROI driven and strive to achieve the best ranking to boost your ROI. Without a good ROI, the #1 ranking in search engines can disrupt your business operations, marketing, and branding. Here is how:

Searcher’s Intent does not match Your Commercial Goals

Even with sophisticated web analytics tools, it can be difficult to identify the search intent. Most of the searchers don’t merely come to your site to buy your product or service. Bringing visitors is good for your site. But, bringing visitors with varied intentions and expectations may not always be good or turn into sales.

There are many visitors who constantly look for information for academic purposes or research; some think you are a potential client (usually spammers), some are competitors, some that have already been sold, some are future prospects, some are not that serious, and few are your present buyers. Most visitors will have different motives to visit your site, but it is obvious that it will not always match your commercial goals.

Increased Sales, Support, and Operation Cost

If you rank #1 for a popular keyword, you will get substantial amount of traffic to your site. However, all the serious and non-serious buyers will come knocking on your door for queries. The bad thing is, you may think all of them are leads, while most are queries. To keep up with the pace, you need to put more pressure on sales and support team or increase the size of the team. If you are offering free trial or samples of your product, then the increased number of non-serious visitors will seriously increase your operation costs, including sales and marketing costs.

Low ROI and Competitive Disturbance

As a mix of serious and non-serious visitors come to your site, it is obvious that the number of sales against each query or lead will be low, hence a low ROI. As the cost of goods sold increases, your ROI will also decrease automatically.

The intention of the searcher to go beyond the #1 position is directly related to his/her seriousness for purchase. So, the ROI of #2 and #3 position will be high, even though they make the same number of sales. So, what happens is, you spend your budget to entertain the non-serious lead generators, while the #2 and #3 position competitors get to eat the same fruit with less effort. Moreover, if your competitors’ sales approach more efficient or has better product, then they will just be piggybacking on your position. Actually, the #1 position will be kinda like a philanthropic position to educate customers on what to expect.

As the searchers go beyond the #3 position, the level of seriousness generally increases. Traffic on the other hand decreases. But, with the amount of sales that the site generates, it is able to generate a higher ROI. The clear winner from a serious buyer will be the company/site that has good sales approach, quality product/service, and offers good value to the customer. i.e. if a searcher knocks almost all the companies/sites in the top 10 list, then there is no competitive advantage of being the #1 ranking site.

Decreased Reputation at Increased Level

So, you are thinking about decreasing cost and increasing ROI, by not being philanthropic and being selective on who you reply to and not? Then, be ready to face the invisible wrath. When you don’t reply a customer, it has some ripple affect. Some of the affects are:

• You throw away the customer and  give him/her away to your competitors by your own hand
• You create a perception about yourself and your brand, that you are not serious about sales
• The negative perception of un-attended customers spreads to other potential customers and starts to ruin your brand and reputation
• If the traffic is high, then this will happen quite frequently and you may one day find someone blogging negatively about your site.

No Advantage for being the First Shop in a Mall

Think of a real life example of a shopping mall where you can buy similar products. You try to see all the offers, products, features, and prices at all possible outlets. You make the final decision based on the outlet that offers you the best value. However, there is really no advantage to be the first outlet seen.

The Disclaimer

The #1 position for your main keyword is highly desirable if you can bear the expense. Moreover, it also helps for a strong reputation, being the #1 site.  So, I am not discouraging your SEO effort to get #1 position in search engine.

Again, if you don’t have top 10 rankings for your important keywords, then you have no chance in getting leads. I am are not encouraging you to obtain ranks beyond the top 10 positions. It is really hard to find so serious customers that go beyond top 10 results. Only people that are data-mining typically do that, who may never be your customer.

However, if you are a mom & pop company and striving to make maximum profit with less cost, then you can use this mindset to stay happy with little. But, if you are a big company, then go for the #1 ranking, which you truly deserve.

Posted by Asif Anwar
Posted in blog, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 7 Comments »

2011 Search Marketing Report Projects $19 Billion In Expenditures April 18, 2011 – 3:43 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

The data research firm eConsultancy released a report covering the state of digital marketing. To access more key notes, click on the yellow man with the magnifying glass.  The projected figures are promising. According to this piece from Mobile Marketing Watch, search engine marketing investment will climb 16% from last year’s pace.  Mobile marketing is accelerating the pace for search algorithms. It is a direct, simple correlation with the rise of smartphone users who are purchasing extensive data plans.

Social media channels are also fueling growth.  Consumers have begun to survey products online in m-commerce sites when perusing inside of stores. This is the fascinating part of search engine marketing’s development. Content is being accessed and distributed across devices at dizzying speeds.  When it comes to SEO, however, Google is still the gold standard. 95% of companies use Google AdWords to build their online advertising campaigns.  As a result, they have a monopoly on display and PPC (pay-per-click) rates.  People query for solutions to direct issues such as the location of a building when using their smartphone.  Sponsored links that hit the index only gain from that exposure.

The report has some other featured developments. I found these two statements intriguing:  Only 44% of companies are now carrying out search engine optimization in-house, compared to 51% last year.  Social media marketing is being conducted in-house at a 55% rate this year, down 7% from last year.  This is a good trend for interactive marketing agencies, who can offer personnel with thorough knowledge of the appropriate services needed to increase ROI.  Corporations remain confused about leveraging strategy, and until the medium gets sophisticated, expect these trends to rise.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Interactive Marketing, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency nyc, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, seo news

Millennials Know Their History April 12, 2011 – 12:10 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Marketers are still trying to figure out their behavioral patterns.  Advertisers will not and cannot afford to ignore their burgeoning consumer potential.  After a long hiatus, we bring back the millennials. The millennial is part of a demographic born in 1981. They are known for possessing superior savviness with modern technology along with brand recognition.

Truth be told, the millennials are not going anywhere for the foreseeable future.  You just would be hard-pressed to find anyone throw the term loosely in conversation at the local coffee house.    Prior generations view them with skepticism, criticizing their seemingly fickle nature.  Erin Bilezikjian-Johnson, a market researcher from OMD, attempts to dispel this myth in an interview with Ad Age about the millennials showing tested themes in their consumer behavior.  Here’s a snippet.

Ad Age Stat: What surprised you about millennials?

Bilezikjian-Johnson: Despite the fact that millennials are so digitally inclined there’s still a place for traditional media specifically TV. Fifty-seven percent of millennials indicated that TV was the first way that they hear about products and services. What that means for our clients is that when you’re talking to millennials, it’s not solely about digital. Despite the fact that they’re savvy consumers, they are open to having relationships with brands, but brands in kind have to meet some key criteria for them. Among those is the concept of authenticity. Also the idea of expression — enabling them to express themselves — affordability … and quality.

Here’s the remainder.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Mobile Marketing, search engine marketing | No Comments »
Tags: ad age daily, ad age digital, Blueliner Marketing, consumer behavior, digital marketing agency, millennial, millennials, new york interactive marketing agency

Search Competition for Mobile Heats Up April 11, 2011 – 2:05 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Consumers are searching for content through mobile devices at a greater clip.  We know that Google has an overwhelming grip on the market place, at 97%.  Microsoft and Yahoo have the rest at 3%, but their differentiated algorithm is promising.  Marketers should take advantage by updating their SEO meta tags to optimize the cross-channel flow of content.  You don’t want to overdo this update, however, as the reverse effect can happen to your index.  Your industry is also a key determinant in strategy, as certain goods’ appeal stays strong on mobile. In fact, eBay‘s mobile strategy has proven over the years that a variety of goods can sell in real-time.

Mobile queries differ in that they are searching for an impulsive, instant result with an image. Therefore, your SEM strategy on mobile should be tailored for unique views and little else.  One obvious example is the name of a restaurant or destination.  The lead page should include simple, pertinent details and limit the number of pages.  Your conversion rates will substantially improve in real-time. Online advertising will also be more effective, as a relationship forms through a sound mobile experience. Then have a separate SEM strategy for the PC.  As marketers differentiate these strategies, they will have a clearer understanding of their marketplace. Objectives will be fulfilled, keeping content king.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, ny seo agency, seo news