Search Marketing Sage

With location, social networks, and search history playing a larger role in search rankings, it is becoming more difficult to use unpersonalized SERP rankings as a metric of SEO success. At the first session of the day on Tuesday, Rob Bucci and Ryan Jones presented some interesting ideas about how to effectively measure SEO performance.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one was around to hear it, did it make a sound?  The same philosophical question could be true of “If I post on Google+ and no one either sees it or reacts to it, does it even matter…”  The answer to the second question is yes, but that’s not the main point of this post.

Google+ is growing as a social network, but getting most brands on Google+ to see the value of it as a social media channel has been difficult for us as a search marketing agency.  The comparisons to Facebook won’t go away, and it can’t live up to those expectations right now.  User engagement with brands on Google+ is very low, and getting brands to treat Google+ as an equal to Facebook in terms of what they do to engage audiences has been extremely difficult.

Most people covet that number one position in search results, but what if there was another way to attract similar click through rates and traffic without obtaining the number one position? That is what video thumbnails in search can do for your site. As Brian Massay noted, video thumbnails can “make a number three ranking perform like a number one ranking.” With a video thumbnail appearing next to your website, the result stands out next to those without thumbnails, even those with higher rankings. 

In our complex high tech world new products and services are constantly being developed to solve the problems of life and business.  Frequently the solutions are so new and innovative that people don’t even know they exist.  As an online marketer you have to figure out ways to use online channels to get the world knowing that you have solutions and then seal the deal with a sale.

We’ve worked for lots of companies that sell products that the world doesn’t know they need yet and we have found 8 tactics that can help companies maximize online visibility and thereby make sales.

1. Focus Site Content on the Problem That the Product or Service Solves.  You can have a page devoted to all of problems your product or service solves, but it’s in your interest from an SEO perspective to devote individual pages detailing each exact problem and the exact solution you provide.

Usually the easiest thing an SEO can do for a major brand is get a number one ranking for that brands product names.  There is an exception to that rule though.  Getting ranked for product names when the product doesn’t exist yet can be a challenge – especially if there is any significant amount of pre-release publicity.

Search Mojo has represented several major brands in the past year that have had major new product launches.  The anticipation of the arrival of some of these products has been huge and the build up of hype surrounding them by fans, bloggers and the press has in some cases been rabid.  Examples include the Doritos Locos Taco from Taco Bell, the as yet unreleased Call of Duty Black Ops 2 and the 2013 Mazda CX-5.

As an SEO it is exciting to work with big brands with a lot of hype around their new products, but there are some significant disadvantages to be overcome.  The very hype that builds the excitement for the coming of the new product has to be overcome in search results.  All of those articles, blog posts, pictures from trade shows of new products, leaked YouTube videos, Spy Cam pictures are competition in the Search Engine Results Pages that you as an SEO will eventually have to outrank.