Friday, July 18, 2008

SEM vs. SMO Part 1


Today marks the beginning of a two part series that outlines how Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) practices can help produce a well rounded campaign that generates great response numbers and leaves a lasting impression in search engine indexes. Let’s dive right in with a brief conversation about Search Engine Marketing.

SEM: Bang for the Buck!

Search Engine Marketing is one of the best ways a company or campaign can raise its profile on a tight budget. As with most things advertising, you can find ways to spend every dime of that precious budget, but few things are as measurable and actionable as a good paid placement plan. Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft offer their respective paid placement products, but most experts (and the stock market) agree that Google provides the best offering through AdWords and related products.

Andrew McMains of AdWeek offers a poignant reminder of how underutilized paid placement can be. The kicker – he is talking about interactive agencies! Why an interactive agency would not engage in a paid placement campaign is beyond me. I suggest you read Mr. McMains’ entire article and learn more about some of the fundamentals of getting your name (or the name of your client) to the right audience.

The paid options aside, my favorite topic when speaking about SEM practices is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. SEO gets into the gray area of advertising on the internet. The major search engines guard their search algorithms from the public eye to keep SEO experts from “cracking the code” and circumventing the hundreds of data points a search engine uses to calculate the ranking of a page or site. When am asked about SEO strategies and the best ways to increase page ranking I always recommend using the natural tendencies of search engine spiders to generate a successful result. What do I mean by, “natural tendencies”? Generate relevant content!

Page titles and Meta Tags are the most basic – but also often overlooked – aspects of SEO. Make sure your titles and tags are relevant to your audience on every page and update them as your campaign evolves.

Frequent updates are important to search engines. Old content that has gone stale will be replaced by newer indexing. The best way to keep things fresh and on the top of everyone’s list is to update your page content weekly with relevant information. This may mean a blog or a news/press release section. How many times do you go to a company’s website and find their last press release is two years old? Shameful! If the contract is a one time revenue stream, build a simple method into your project that allows your client to update the page on their own without you (or your agency) helping.

Linking between sites is critical to generating great search results! Make sure your client has active links to their new project on all their websites. Conversely, make sure you link to your client’s new project on all your agency sites. Research professional and industry associations that may be interested in your client’s campaign or project and solicit links from those organizations. Ask your client what companies or relationships they maintain with vendors, business partners, etc… and network to build a solid base of links.

FLASH! The new player in the SEO world. As ADMAVEN covered in a previous post text within Flash SWF files is now available for indexing on the major search engines (Microsoft excluded). Place relevant words and text in your Flash projects to ensure proper indexing. Remember – indexing of Flash files does not apply to ActionScript text, Library names, or any convention not readily viewable by the end user.

Keep reading for the next article in the SEM vs. SEO series, when I delve into more detailed information on SEM as well as graze the virgin territory of SMO!

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of digital marketing programs that generate measurable signups, conversions and sales.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Spam King Adam Vitale Gets 30 Months

Reuters has reported Adam Vitale, the Spam King of Brooklyn, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for sending over one million unsolicited emails to AOL users in 2005. Government informants posing as a legitimate company hired Vitale to send the spam advertising computer security software in exchange for half of the products profits. Vitale’s network of servers routed the outgoing mail in such a way that AOL’s spam filtering software was rendered useless.

Convictions for sending spam are rare in the United States and practically nonexistent in the rest of the world. In my opinion this is a good step in ensuring interactive advertising is taken seriously. No one wants to receive spam; it cheapens the interactive advertising industry as a whole and blocks out advertisements that customers may actually want to get.

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of complete digital communications solutions with a proven ROI for a variety of industries.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Lively by Google Seeks to Break New Ground

Eerily similar to Second Life, Google Labs has produced a virtual world in which avatars interact with user created content in three dimensions. Did I mention it is free to download and use? Lively by Google utilizes in browser software to allow webgoers to dive head first into virtual reality and interact with other avatars and their environment.

Google, in typical press release fashion, states they will not place ads of any kind in Lively. I have to wonder how long this will last – especially with marked success from similar products like Second Life, in which advertising is rampant. Implications for interactive adspace are huge. Take corporate self-promotion for example. I had a quick look at the popular rooms page on the Google Lively website and found the interactive agency Proximity Worldwide’s room.

Looks like a typical agency setting to me. Note the YouTube videos rolling on the wall and the Proximity logo covering the floor. Conversation in Lively comes easily: simply type your message into the box and hit enter to generate an easy to read chat bubble. Now if only I had someone else in the room who would answer me.

Other frustrations came quickly. The initial load time for the room is about 30 seconds – not a death sentence by any means – and subsequent lag ensues after the space is generated. My laptop is not wimpy by any means, but Lively seems to eat all my resources and then some.

Lively also provides simple ways to integrate your personal space with a MySpace, Facebook, or other social networking page. I am a fan of improved interactivity and “bringing the customer into your house”, but Lively needs to solve a few key problems regarding slow loading and jerky movement before this tool will be truly useful to the interactive advertising community.

My verdict: keep a close eye on Lively in the months to come, but don’t scramble to set up your own complex virtual labyrinth only to realize you are the only one populating it.

Key implications: look to Lively for enhanced customer service apps, live order taking, and embedded YouTube viral marketing in the near future. There may come a day when interactive agencies sell a Lively environment as part of the standard online presence package.

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of complete digital communications solutions for a variety of industries.

Friday, July 11, 2008

United Airlines Distributes PR Letter to MP Customers

If you are like me you fly often, and are probably a member of more than one frequent flier program. These programs are integral to the airline business and were some of the first large companies to successfully tap the power of interactive marketing campaigns by capturing user data through websites and transmitting it to outside vendors.

I seldom see anything in my inbox other than e-fares every Tuesday and mileage summaries every month, so I was very surprised to see this:

Click the link for a lar

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of complete digital communications solutions for a variety of industries.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Google Indexes SWF - Yahoo! Follows Suit

Five days ago the Associated Press (among others) reported that Google will begin indexing Flash content on a text level. For those of us who work with Flash and SEO on a daily basis the news came as a pleasant surprise. Let's examine the key points of the announcement:

1) Flash content (.swf files) will be indexed according to text rendered within the movie or application. This includes hyperlinks, but does not include library names, variables, and other ActionScript items that are not visible in the web browser.

2) Adobe has announced that Yahoo! will soon follow suit, indexing .swf files. Presumably the algorithms will be different than those used by Google, but the results will be similar: visible text and links only.

3) Microsoft has not made an announcement regarding their choice to collaborate with Adobe to make Flash content indexable through the various Microsoft channels. Microsoft's reaction will reveal their position on seriously competing with Adobe, as Silverlight is now beta-testing version 2.0.



Capitalizing off search engine indexing is critical to an interactive campaign. Flash as a technology is certainly more “sexy” than HTML, but until now has been inappropriate for sites and campaigns looking to capitalize off traffic from search engines.

It should be interesting to see how this affects design elements as well as campaign pitches. Will we start seeing more Flash integration? One would think so, but time will tell.

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of complete digital communications solutions for a variety of industries.

Welcome!

Readers,

Welcome to ADMAVEN! This blog specializes in all things Advertising with a focus on the digital realm. My goal is to highlight new technologies, research, and industry practices that have a practical impact on the traditional and interactive Advertising world!

I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoy writing it!