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By Gareth Owen, Search Engine Watch, June 30, 2010

One of the points that will be high on the agenda at this year’s Online Marketing Show will be that the web has finally graduated from our PC monitors and now exists firmly in the air around us, waiting to be accessed at any given moment. Internet usage on mobile devices is now growing at the rate that was predicted some three or four years ago, making this year definitely, officially, the year of mobile… hooray!

It’s not all about mobile. Any number of devices during the next decade and beyond will be able to access the wonders of the Internet, and all of them will need to be able to search and quickly retrieve the information or websites that people are looking for. This is where search engines need to think about how their interfaces and results will work on any number of new devices.

Even on the biggest, prettiest smartphones, Google’s search results don’t fit on the screen, removing the majority of paid search listings that make up so much of Google’s revenue. If everyone were to use mobiles only to search for info, Google might even go bankrupt!

Google has a separate index for mobile devices, so it’s not as though they haven’t thought about this. But as the web becomes ever more accessible, two questions remain:

1.How will search engines really help users find what they’re looking for, especially on the smaller devices?
2.How will they continue to know what are the most important results for natural search?
The second question is particularly important for SEO. So much of what we do boils down to ensuring that the myriad of connections on the internet make it clear that our sites, or our clients’ sites, are viewed by the search engines as important. Not only important, but important for specific themes and keywords, and we manage this using techniques on and off the website itself.

So how does that change when people are using the Internet in different ways via different devices and potentially being given different results depending on what device they use? How will search engines know what is important, or whether something is more important for a mobile user than a tablet or laptop user?

There are still a lot of “ifs” involved here. Ultimately, the search engines might feel that what exists now is good enough to tell them which are the most important sites.

In SEO we’ve become accustomed in more recent times to viewing off-site optimization techniques as having the biggest impact on rankings. But perhaps there is an argument that for each device you will need a site specifically optimized for each different version of Google. Google for mobile, Google for smartphone, Google for tablets — each version might prefer different types of web property to display higher in the listings.

Ultimately, there isn’t a definitive answer right now. However, in the near future it’s likely that SEO will not only encompass social media (that’s if you believe it doesn’t already), but SEO teams may well need to ensure their skill-sets include a large degree of developer knowledge specifically for ensuring websites are compatible with multiple devices.

By Gareth Owen, Search Engine Watch, June 2, 2010
The biggest obstacle with actually integrating SEO activities with other business functions is that SEO people don’t talk to other teams enough.

This isn’t as harsh a criticism as it first sounds — we’re all busy in agencies and passionate about the subject and clients. Time is at a premium. So it isn’t as easy as just saying that SEOs are antisocial hermits tucking themselves away in corners.

Good SEO doesn’t happen in a vacuum, as we all know. There are many ranking factors that are specifically aimed at ensuring SEO happens as part of a natural online marketing presence and not just a focus on the one goal of getting traffic from Google.

Happily, there is a big plus side to this for digital agencies, as a good display campaign, affiliate campaign, and social media campaign will all help your SEO progress for a range of reasons. Here’s a quick list of considerations for SEO teams.

Speak to Your Display Team

Always try and negotiate content hosting arrangements with media buys. If you’re buying banner ads on a site, then see if they will also host press releases or product reviews with backlinks.

Alternatively, ask your display/media team for their list of contacts at key industry sites and see if you can negotiate a deal separately.

Finally, see if you can put clean links within display ads so that all ad placements pass direct value back to the client’s site.

Speak to Your Affiliate Team

If you’re running a good affiliate campaign, see if you can negotiate clean links or content hosting alongside your affiliate links. Some sites already add a clean link as well as a standard affiliate link as a matter of course.

See if you can get a list of affiliate contacts and negotiate deals to put useful content on their sites — good quality product reviews, for example, can be of real interest.

Speak to Your Social Media Team

More SEO Advice
•Search Engine Optimization is Unfair
•Breaking the Single Keyword Obsession in SEO Campaigns
•Powerful SEO Content: Understanding Breadth of Coverage
It may be jumping the gun slightly, as there is no conclusive data or any confirmation from Google, but I’ll join the ranks of SEOs already going with this. A well-run social media campaign will have SEO benefits. If you can get people talking about your special offers on LCD TVs for the World Cup, then you will rank better for related keywords.

One of the benefits of a well-run social media campaign is that key influencers will be identified and directly engaged. Get your social media team to help you out by trying to get that all-important content onto the key blogger sites.

These are some simple solutions to the age-old problem of getting links from important and relevant sites. And remember, if you’re extra charming, you might even get other teams to get those links for you — double whammy!

By Gareth Owen, Search Engine Watch, May 5, 2010

People don’t just search on search engines. Think about it – when was the last time you bought something online simply by searching for it and going straight to a site to buy it?

This isn’t a recent trend. Consumers have never acted this simply. They have been much smarter than search marketers have given them credit for since e-commerce was born. It’s only now, as we interact online more than ever, that this is becoming ever clearer and more measurable.

The purchase decision takes place before and after a keyword search – that much is clear. People are searching for information on Facebook, Twitter, and review and price comparison sites for starters, and using the information they find to help them make the right decision.

For example, according to a Forrester survey of adults 16 and up in the U.K. who made a recent purchase, 31 percent used retailer sites, comparison sites, and other websites when starting to research products before buying, and 25 percent used a search engine.

One other clear illustration that these things are important: Google has replicated them all within its search results. For “price comparison and user reviews,” read “Google products.” For “social media recommendations,” check out information on social search results being trialled in Google labs.

Google, in particular, has followed these trends admirably, but hasn’t led them — they already existed. The key is to make the most of this opportunity and see past Google’s dominance, for brands and agencies. So what does it really mean for both?

What does it Mean For Brands?

First, to properly identify the true cause and effect of a range of online activities, brands will need proper tracking and attribution modeling software, which is already an ongoing issue for many. There are a lot of solutions available. The challenge is to find one that works across all of the required channels and can be implemented on your website platform for a reasonable cost. A tag carrier is a good place to start, building in flexibility to use different providers if necessary, and strike direct CPA deals in the display and affiliate spaces where available.

Second, visibility across a range of media is one thing, but the company needs to have a genuine marketing strategy behind their online campaigns — a picture of what they’re trying to achieve before starting, not just an ROI figure in mind. KPIs need to be set for display ads, site sponsorship, paid search, and social media campaigns to reflect the whole online search journey. One key figure rarely taken into account online is the impact on brand recognition and loyalty. It’s not anything new really, complex attribution models have been used for offline media for years.

What does it Mean for Agencies?

Agencies really need to prove their worth. The old argument about search providing a better ROI than other forms of advertising is no longer enough. It doesn’t work in a silo and search doesn’t just happen on search engines.

The real value-add of a good agency is a focus on a set of data and metrics and an understanding of how to improve them. Take that basic principle and apply it to running online campaigns across a range of activities and you have a valuable search agency. Fail, and you’re history.

One specific result of this change is that digital agencies cannot afford to allow PPC, SEO, display, affiliates, mobile, and social media to operate as individual teams. They’re all part of one campaign for one client, so this requires a lot of data and strategy sharing between teams. Sometimes this might mean working closely with a competitor.

Finally, the onus is on agencies to lead clients. This means proving the case by testing different KPIs for different campaigns. Perhaps the best way to visualize this is to go back to the AIDA funnel and think about what activities should sit at each point, the KPIs that would be most relevant at each stage, and build a strategy from there.

Where does Search go From Here?

As a discipline, search will still be focused on optimization of keywords for maximum ROI, but it’s time for companies and agencies to start to put those keyword searches in their proper context within the online consumer journey and consider measuring individual campaigns using a range of different metrics — all of which are available with the right tools.