The first step in any SEO campaign is thorough and comprehensive keyword research. Proper research and will enable web pages to be optimized for keywords that will deliver a positive ROI from natural search. The best way to measure SEO return on investment is through analytics. There are several different analytic providers that enable tracking conversions, identifying key traffic sources, organic and paid traffic, bounce rates, shopping cart abandonments and signups.

Today, clients are keen to understand the kind of work that goes into optimizing and promoting a website to achieve top search engine results.

For example, if a web site is already producing $50,000 in sales before SEO, and their efforts result in those sales increasing to $100,000 then there is significant increase in sales and will measure a good return on investment.

Measuring the ROI on SEO starts by creating a baseline of the traffic and revenue from organic search.

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.

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

Social Media Marketing promises remain significant for the 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. Retention, Lead Generation, Reputation Management, the possibilities are endless.

SEO is by far the most desired Pillar. It is the difference between coming up on the 1st page of a Google search and the 28th. Every website needs to be optimized for specific keywords to be found on the internet. With search engines always changing, getting smarter, 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.

When: Thursday May 19th @ 2pm EST

Where: Online Web Conference

Cost: Free

Registration for this Event is now Closed

THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING!

Another report surfaced on the New York Times yesterday that the highest European Court has a mandate. An adviser to the Court wants to restrict advertisers’ rights for deployment of keywords to generate sponsored links.  Sponsored link in a search engine result appear in a colored box above generated index results.  They are the dominant source of revenue for search engines since retailers pay top fees for that visibility.

It isn’t clear whether the final ruling with affect advertisers’ latitude in purchasing keywords on these shores. Search engine marketers have not dealt with the same level of federal imposition.  European markets, however, are a pricklier bunch.  It could affect digital growth of e-commerce as a major channel.  Innovation is also being challenged, as social media integrates with marketing campaigns in video.  Understandably, Europeans are worried about not only personal privacy, but also trademark infringement. LVMH is a prominent example.  In the spring rain, European network wires remain hot despite governmental attempts to cool them off.

The true function of search engine optimization parallels an old adage, that the cream will always rise to the top. If your brand equity is solid, then you will naturally be among the top of index results. In the world of interactive marketing, that starts will delivering a fresh website that mixes creative design and flash applications. You must also have quality copywriting. Good copywriting not only tags at your emotions. Ingenuity is also established by clearly highlighting your corporate accomplishments with a bundle of images. Your site architecture must be linear and make navigable sense to the user, who always can move on to another option.

It could be from their smartphone, tablet, or game console. You could have a memorable logo and sound commentary, but a potential customer must be able to solve their problem regardless of channel. If not, then that picture told to friends is worth more than a thousand words. In lost earnings.

Good brand images that search engines love take time to cultivate before they can be impenetrable. Think of any leading sneaker company, such as Adidas. They could survive a website that ranks poorly on the search index because of their long history of providing quality goods in the athletic apparel marketplace.  Adidas are recognized on every continent in every town.  If they tried, however, to pitch Adidas as a brand with two stripes, you get crickets.

In conclusion, search engine optimization is only as good as the value your firm provides to visitors. The keywords help to paint the picture strokes for a website. Advertisers need to keep this in mind for 2011.

Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Online Advertising are 3 of the “7 Pillars of Digital Strategy”. They are also arguably the most important.  Companies of all sizes have successfully built entire marketing strategies based solely on the establishment and maintenance of these 3 Pillars.

Social Media Marketing promises to 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 in the past and can be a vital part to your marketing campaign.

Search Engine Optimization is the difference between coming up on the 1st page of a Google search and the 28th. Every website needs to make use of this pillar to be significant on the internet. With search engines always changing and getting smarter, SEO is also changing and getting smarter. At Blueliner, we take pride in our great SEO work and would love to share some ideas with you.

Last but not least is Online Advertising. Probably the most well known of all the Pillars, it is highly regarded for its effectiveness. Blueliner invites you to an online presentation to learn about establishing a marketing plan and best practices for tackling these essential pillars. This presentation is perfect for business owners and management looking to expand their business online, as well those looking for fresh ideas to tweak their existing internet marketing strategies.

Registration for this Event is now closed.

Thank You for attending!

It will be interesting to see if Blekko can usher in a new philosophy of SEO relying on what it calls ‘slashtag’ search.  Slashtags are appended to search queries and limit search results to only the curated sets of sites, reminiscent of Twitter’s hashtag.  On Twitter, when posting a status update, you can create a hashtag by typing the number sign in front of a keyword. (ex. #bluelinermarketing).  When that hashtag is typed into the search and queried, then all status feeds with that index show up in the results index.  In Blekko’s feed, theoretically, you would type (interactive marketing/techblogs).

I do wonder, however, if Blekko is getting into the game too late for the site to become a mainstream purveyor of search.  Google Instant allows users to type less in the search query.  Blekko wants a longer line in the cloud.  Location-based applications from social media websites also are personalizing search queries based on entered data characteristics and can deliver results in real-time for mobile devices.  It’s not clear if Blekko has a mobile application available for smart or dumb phones.  On any level, I will Blekko it for awhile by slashing and see what comes up.  On a hunch, I think Google is safe.  You can view a test run of the site here:

blekko: how to slash the web from blekko on Vimeo.

Facts about Facebook:

1. 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
2. Facebook has about 100 billion hits a day
3. 50 billion photos on Facebook and more than 3 billion photos uploaded each month
4. More than 3 million active pages on Facebook
5. More than 70 translations options available on the site
6. 1.5 million Local businesses have active pages on Facebook
7. Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
8. 100 million active users are accessing Facebook through their mobile phones

So how do companies successfully use Facebook to market its products or services to large group of users? Facebook Optimization is the answer. Here are some key points that need to be followed on a Facebook Marketing Campaign includes: developing specific messages to target audience, paying appropriate attention to what is being discussed, and engaging in a good conversation. There are special tools that are specifically made for Facebook portal that help small businesses engage more and more deeply with the consumers and prospects. Facebook open graph tool help optimize your Facebook pages and with this tool, Facebook Optimization is now increasingly becoming the new SEO.

It will be interesting to see how this affects search engine campaigns in the future, as new content is added to the search engine results pages at a much faster rate. Website owners typically rely on a steady flow of routine traffic with a Search Engine Results Page position. Google Caffeine may threaten that organic movement. Ranking improvements and demotions may happen even quicker than in the past. Content that you and your competitors create will have a faster impact on the results index. Nevertheless, the objective of any marketer is to deliver optimal value to your audience. In time, the optimization will catch up to speed.

Marketers will need to implement a targeted content strategy to ensure they are updating their sites frequently with relevant information. Programmers also need to build clean and clear sites that allow for this new content to be easily found and indexed. The code will need to be sharp, otherwise your keywords could become conflated or even dated next to rivals.

Google Caffeine will also have some effects on SEO methodology. Our own Prasad Sistla and Asif Anwar, two of our top SEOs, share their thoughts on the key points to pay attention to.

Page Load Time: Incorporating speed means that page load times are going to be an even bigger factor than in the past. While a low page load time is typically two seconds, it is more crucial with Google’s Caffeine jolt. This means that flash objects, videos, content, and so forth will need strong optimization for expedient loading.

Keywords and Phrases: Keyword relevancy is now a premium, meaning that your SEO campaign requires even more attention. This will be a challenge for some SEO professionals, but in these cases, the best ones will make adjustments and continue to thrive.

Social Buzz: Caffeine will really benefit social media and news results for general search inquiry. We also believe that more specific keyword searches will return more website results and advertising shelf space. It will benefit webmasters and SEO specialists in all phases of content to maximize traffic.

Content/Site Updates: Caffeine places further priority on regular content creation and site updates. This means that old, static sites sitting at the top of SERPs will need to produce fresh content to maintain their top standing. Sites that blog regularly and make regular adjustments will benefit.

Ads: PPC management will become more important as well. Caffeine prioritizes organic search results rather than paid advertisements. Thus, the advertisements used are even more important. The necessity for a strong page load time greatly affects your PPC management and Quality Score for AdWords.

Sitemaps: Sitemaps and navigation should be restructured to have deeper pages with fewer clicks and at good positions. Spiders will index the web faster and deeper, without going onto clumsy, discombobulated sites.

Avg Time on Site: Google Caffeine will factor in the amount of time that users spend on sites. Again, sites that have good content and great user experience will rise to the top. This is really Google’s ultimate goal, to deliver the best possible results and improve the user’s experience.

Caffeine’s indexing could also benefit e-commerce sites that have quality products. Since results will be updated on a constant basis, the quality of traffic should improve, leading to more click-throughs and ultimately sales. Try Caffeine for yourself here to see the difference:

According to comScore’s statistics, U.S. Internet users watched 28.1 billion videos in February, with Google Sites ranking as the top video property with 11.9 billion videos, representing 42.5% all videos viewed online. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99% of all videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked second with 912.5 million videos, or 3.2% of all online videos viewed. Microsoft Sites ranked third with 623 million (2.2%), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 455 million (1.6%) and Turner Network with 318 million (1.1%).

Cisco has developed the Cisco VNI Forecast to estimate future global IP traffic growth. Highlights of current forecast include the following projections:

• Annual global IP traffic will reach almost three-fourths of a zettabyte (767 exabytes) by 2014. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes.
• The various forms of video (TV, VoD, Internet Video, and P2P) will exceed 91% of global consumer traffic, and global online video will approach 57% of consumer Internet traffic (up from 40% in 2010).