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The Disconnect in PPC vs. SEO Spending Posted by randfish on Tue (10/21/08) at 12:21 AM Paid Search Ads There's a big disconnect in the way marketing dollars are allocated to search engine focused campaigns. Let me highlight: Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013. - Source: C|Net News, June 30, 2008 OK. So companies in the US spent $10 billion last year on paid search ads, and even more this year. How about SEO? SEO: $1.3 billion (11%) - Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008 According to SEMPO's data, it's 11% for SEO and 87% for PPC (with another 1.4% for SEM technologies and s turn to Enquiro: Organic Ranking Visibility (shown in a percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location) Rank 1 - 100% Rank 2 - 100% Rank 3 - 100% Rank 4 - 85% Rank 5 - 60% Rank 6 - 50% Rank 7 - 50% Rank 8 - 30% Rank 9 - 30% Rank 10 - 20% Side sponsored ad visibility (shown in percentage of participants looking at an ad in this location) 1 - 50% 2 - 40% 3 - 30% 4 - 20% 5 - 10% 6 - 10% 7 - 10% 8 - 10% Fascinating. So visibility is considerably higher for the organic results. What about clicks? Thanks to Comscore, we can see that clicks on paid search results has gone down over time, and is now ~22%. Conclusions: SEO drives 75%+ of all search traffic, yet garners less than 15% of marketing budgets for SEM campaigns. PPC receives less than 25% of all search traffic, yet earns 80%+ of SEM campaign budgets. Questions: * Why does paid search earn so many more marketing dollar

April US Social Networking Traffic Down 16% from '07\n\nThe market share of April US visits to a custom category of 57 of the leading social-networking websites increased 3 percent from March - but was down 16 percent from April 2007, Hitwise reports - via MarketingCharts. MySpace.com led in traffic, receiving 73.82 percent of the market share of US visits in April.\n\nhitwise-social-network-sites-traffic-market-share-april-2008.jpg\n\n * Facebook ranked second by the market share of visits, with 14.80 percent, followed by MyYearbook, which received 1.33 percent.\n * US traffic to MySpace and Bebo, among the top 5, decreased 5 percent and 13 percent, respectively, compared with April 2007.\n * MyYearbook had the largest gain in market share in April 2008, increasing 475 percent compared with April 2007.\n * Facebook and BlackPlanet followed, increasing 32 and 15 percent, respectively.\n\nNew and Returning Visitors\n\nhitwise-social-network-sites-returning-traffic-april-2008.jpg\n\n * Among the top five social networking websites by market share, MySpace received 95 percent of its visits from returning visitors in April.\n * Facebook and MyYearbook.com followed with 93 percent and 90 percent, respectively, of traffic returning from within the previous 30 days.\n\nTime Spent on Network\n\nhitwise-social-network-sites-time-spent-april-2008.jpg\n\n * In April, the average time spent among all social networking websites increased 73 percent compared with April 2007.\n * Among the top five most-visited websites, MyYearbook led with users spending an average of 32 minutes and 54 seconds on the website.\n * Facebook had the largest growth in average time spent, increasing 57 percent in April 2008, to 20 minutes and 52 seconds, from 13 minutes and 19 seconds in April 2007.\n\nHitwise, a subsidiary of Experian, has issued a social networking report, "The Impact of Social Networking in the US," analyzing which industries are most affected by social n

We are a consumer based organization providing reviews & ratings for modular homes, manufactured homes and panelized homes in the United States! Modular Homes Network and J R Consumer Resources have teamed up to provide the latest and most accurate CONSUMER INFORMATION for the modular housing industry today. Are you looking for a modular home builder? Would you like to know which manufacturers in your state build top quality homes at affordable prices? Are you considering a custom modular home? Would you like to know the differences between a modular home and manufactured home? Do you have questions about site preparation? Would you like to save thousands of dollars before you buy?

This Google resource brings together the latest industry facts and insights. These have been collected from a number of third party sources covering a range of topics from macroscopic economic and media trends to how consumer behaviour and technology are changing over time.

Tool time Lastly, augment all of that good data with professional keyword research tools. Microsoft offers a tool called adCenter Excel Add-in Keyword Research Tool for versions 2003 and 2007. (Note: You'll need to set up an adCenter account before you can use the tool. Luckily, unlike most other online ad vendors, adCenter offers customer support over the phone with a real person - at no cost to you! - to help you get your account set up and running.) Both Google and Yahoo! offer their own keyword research tools. In addition, there are many third-party keyword research tools available, some for free, others for a fee. The adCenter Excel Add-in Keyword Research Tool can do the following: * Scan your current website and extract the keywords that offer the highest confidence levels based on their current usage * Suggest new keywords based on user behavior or your existing keyword list * Provide: o Research data on top performing keywords o Performance data on the keywords you specify o Information on keyword usage based on geographic and demographic data Note that the keyword tool is primarily designed to help users figure out which keywords to use with their Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising campaigns. However, the tool's output is also extremely relevant to developing or revising a keyword list for your website as part of an SEO update. We'll talk about the process of creating a PPC campaign in later posts. To use the tool, I recommend adding your keywords (one word per line) to an empty Excel spreadsheet, listing them in column A. Select the words for which you want to see adCenter's confidence level rating, click the Ad Intelligence tab, and then click the lower half of the Keyword Suggestion button on the toolbar, using both the Contained and Similarity tasks. You'll get a list of additional suggested keywords and phrases that correspond to each of the keywords you selected. Use the ones that are relevant

How to Build a Robust Social Presence Get your basic data out there. For many professionals, the core of your social presence probably involves one or more of these: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Each of these can be set up in less than five minutes and costs you nothing. Before jumping in, a few tips are in order: * When creating your profile, be sure to include a nice photo, and follow the steps suggested at each site to complete as much of your profile as you can. When you're considering adding, following, or contacting someone, think about the impact of missing or otherwise insufficient information. Business networking should not feel like you're living in a mystery novel. None of us has time for that, so think about the people who are looking at you. Make it easy for them to understand who are and what you do. * Thoughtfully add people to your network. I overheard someone on a plane last week saying "I have over a thousand people in my personal network but have no idea who most of them are." If the people in your network lack credibility, what's that say about you? These are your "friends," right? * On LinkedIn, seek out recommendations, but only from people who are qualified to give them. Five hundred professional connections without a single recommendation sends an unfortunate message. Likewise, a recommendation that starts out "I've never actually worked with Dave, but..." is useless, and detracts from social capital and personal credibility. * Participate. Leverage your ability to add or become friends, to post, and to comment to your advantage. Talk about your business, about news that relates to you or your profession, about things that are of interest to your audience. Do not shill or spam. * Be careful with questions like "What are you doing right now?" This common question -- in the context of business -- is a thought-starter, not a literal interrogative. The best response is less along the lines of "ea

Took me awhile to get a sense of exactly what they do - but I think the core of it is that they have packages depending on what industry you are in, and based on that put you into a network of relevant sites. These sites all run banner advertisements for a cost per number of impressions. It's basically like IYP advertising. We should definitely explore adding this as a service. Service would include gathering network of applicable sites, creating ads, and reporting on monthly stats. More active management, like ad copy testing, could be included.

How can you begin using segment optimization in your campaigns? Start by making a list of possible segments within your audience. Who are the different types of people who look for you online - and why? Don't restrict yourself to the way you may have segmented people in your database or your business plan. Brainstorm what's important and relevant from the respondent's point-of-view, by considering any or all of the following issues: * the specific "problem" the respondent wants to solve * the demographic/psychographic "persona" of the respondent * the respondent's stage in the buying process * the role of the respondent in their organization * the respondent's geographic location * the respondent's industry or the size of their organization These are your initial buckets into which respondents could be segmented. Don't worry if there's overlap between buckets, as these won't necessarily be either/or choices. Next, review the keywords and ad creatives you're running in your search marketing campaigns. For each keyword/creative pair, ask yourself - is there a particular segment that its respondents would clearly belong to? If the answer is yes, add it to that bucket along with the number of clicks per month it generates. If there answer is no, leave a question mark next to it - perhaps with a handful of segments it might appeal to. For instance, in our example above, the keyword phrases "french exam" and "college french" are obvious candidates for the student segment. Phrases like "business french" and "executive french" fall into the business traveler bucket. But "learn french" can't be segmented just from the keyword. Now, look over your segment buckets and see which ones have the most number of clicks per month. These are your best targets for segment optimization. For each one, create a dedicated landing page that is focused on the needs, wants, and characteristics of that particular

Local Search Tools For the SMB and Professional Category: Local Search - Mike - 6:00 am I have been using two "new" local search tools of late and have been impressed with both of them. The Local Search Toolkit from seOverflow has recently been released from beta and upgraded to work with the many changes that occurred recently in Google Places. The tool provides competitive information for a range of information for the top 7 listings in a given geo search. It will provide both URLs and totals for each of the following: Site Title Tag, Categories, Citations, Reviews , Number of Photos, Number of Videos, whether the listing is Owner Verified and the listings Distance to City Center. It's free and provides a wealth of information. It's useful for determining which reviews sites are most prevalent in which industries and which citations sources are the most prominent. Another tool that I often use is the Whitespark Local Citation Finder. The free version has been around for a while and is also useful in finding citations for either keyword phrases, your own site or those of a competitor. They just released the Local Citation Finder Pro version. The Pro Version is $20/mo and normally I do not write about products that charge a fee but it has a new feature that I am finding incredibly useful (they provided me with a free subscription). Local Citations Pro now offers the ability compare the specific citations between any number of  searches and or business listings. So for example you can examine your business listing and the citations for the listing that is tops in your category and against the citations for a series of search pharse. The information is offered up both visually and via a spread sheet file: Pro users also get these other features: Compare Citations Easily determine which citations your competitors have that you're missing. Sort by Value Sort your results by SEOmoz Domain Authority and Majestic SEO ACRank. Get Results in Minutes

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