Posts About ‘Business’

5 checks to Make Sure You’re Getting Value Out of Your SEO Agency

SEO is a complex industry to be involved in as you can ask 5 experts to solve a websites ranking problems and you’ll most likely get 10 different strategies. The issue is 8 out of the 10 will work and each one will have strengths and weaknesses.

So how do you appoint an agency?

Hiring a reputable agency with a strong track record is the route a lot of companies go with but that also has its weaknesses as you may get the A team in the pitch but the C team actually works on your project. Conversely hiring a small agency may mean that they simply don’t have the resource or aren’t geared up for expansion leaving you frustrated with your level of service.

Having seen a few of these scenarios lately I thought I’d write a post on a few quick checks you can make to ensure you are getting value out of your agency. (more…)

By Who and Why Google got Sued

Not everybody likes Google. Last week we saw how the different acquisitions Google made were received and how Google got some claims against them.

But if you take a closer look you’ll find a lot more. Searchenginejournal did look further and made this infographic about “Google’s darkside”. Who sued Google and why? Did you know for example that Google got sued by a California woman for damages after she got hit by a car after following directions from Google Maps making her drive against traffic? (more…)

Million Euro Google and Heineken deal shows new business directions for Google

The Financial Times last week announced that Google and Heineken have struck a million dollar deal. The beer-giant and the search giant will become ad partners.

The deal will mean Heineken will be advertising on different Google properties like YouTube and Mobile ads. The most important part of the deal however is going the other way around: Heineken gets Google’s data.

Heineken will be getting access to databases from Google. They will be able to extract data about the preferences of those watching the ads on Google properties: “where they shop, or what other words they search for on Google.” (more…)

Brand SEO, Information Retrieval and Ecommerce

I am constantly surprised by how often different term sets and query types are either ignored, or their role in a user-journey, misunderstood. All too often, run-of-the-mill keyword-research advice leads with an emphasis on relevance, volume and competition; ignoring the vital supporting role of e.g. “brand” terms – or the interplay between product/transactional terms and brand/navigational terms.

Brand SEO is often overlooked, as let’s face it – it’s pretty easy to dominate a good few pages of any search engine with your company results (whether on your owned and operated properties, or whether {your content} on social network and sharing sites), which means it’s not so sexy. However when it comes to Ecommerce, it is brand visitors that drive the revenue, often at a far greater contribution to overall revenue than what we may understand to be “transactional” terms. In order to get at the “why” we need to get out of our “doing” mindset and think about brand SEO from a user perspective and to do that, we need to revisit Information Retrieval and query-type classification. (more…)

Facebook Behind Whisper Campaign Against Google

Earlier this week I reported about a “whisper campaign” which had been set up against Google by PR Company Burson-Marsteller, trying to get media outlets to report about privacy issues around Google’s social circle and Gmail. The whisper campaign backfired at Burson-Marsteller when the story came out on USA Today.

At that time the client which had hired Burson-Marsteller to set up the campaign was unknown. We immediately thought of companies like Microsoft, Apple or Facebook. But Burson-Marsteller was smart enough to mention them too in their e-mails as being companies who were dancing around on thin ice when it comes to privacy matters. Now is revealed, and confirmed, that it was indeed Facebook that had hired Burson-Marsteller. The reason? Google tried to use Facebook data for their search results. (more…)

Page’s first days in office: Product chief Jonathan Rosenberg resigns

Starting this week things at Google are different. We’ve known for a few months now that Eric Schmidt would be stepping down as CEO and Larry Page would be taking over. This week that change is being made. No more quotes from Schmidt but we won’t be bored with Page’s renewed reign if signals are right. In his first week we see in the upcoming departure of product chief Jonathan Rosenberg.

Let’s make one thing clear: Page did not fire Rosenberg. Jonathan Rosenberg was asked, together with the other executives, to long-term, multiyear commitment plan about their future at the company. Rosenberg stated that he had always planned to step down in 2013 because then his daughter would go to college. He didn’t feel planning ahead would then make sense. (more…)

Google is taking political steps towards EU regulators

We’ve said it before, we will be missing Eric Schmidt when he finally steps down as CEO of Google in a few months. But he is still here. And he doesn’t seem to feel any need at all to stop adding quotes to his already impressive list.

This weekend he apparently told the UK Newspaper The Sunday Telegraph that Google might be willing to make changes to their algorithm methodology. This time it is not a ‘scary’ quote, but to say the least an interesting statement. It is another sign of Google getting more and more political with their moves.

The original article doesn’t literally quote Schmidt saying they would be willing to, but the indication is there. Google told Searchengineland that even though Schmidt didn’t literally say it like that it is not unthinkable, after all, Google already changes their algorithm often. And in some cases because of complaints. It is therefore possible that Google might make changes based on concerns from the EU. Still, if Google does make those changes, it would be very interesting since it would be changes made because of regulations-complaints, not complaints from a business. Whether or not Google really will make any changes remains to be seen. For now the fact that they are hinting at it may be enough. (more…)

Yandex sees huge growth: 43% revenue increase in a year

It’s that time of the year again! We are seeing numbers from all the major companies world wide, including the search engines. This Thursday Google will announce their numbers. But they might have a hard time beating the growth numbers which Yandex has produced. The Russian giants sees a growth of no less than 43% on a year to year basis.

I guess when Barry wrote about the alternative for Google last week, he was right when it comes to money. The company’s ruble revenue grew to 12.5 billion rubles ($410 million). Compared to 2009 that is an increase of 43%. They mainly make that money via contextual advertising. (more…)

The Business of SEO

SEO is a bit of an odd duck in the total mix of online (marketing) disciplines. On the one hand it’s a very techy, ‘hard’ discipline that requires a lot of skill and expertise in a wide range of fields. On the other hand, it’s probably one of the more difficult online disciplines to quantify.

Web developers, for example, have a finished product they deliver: a working website built according to the customer’s spec. Email marketers too have very clear deliverables: open-rates, click-through rates, spam reports, delivered emails – all these are very solid metrics that an email marketer can influence and report, and they tend to correlate to a financial ROI somewhere down the line.

Conversion rate optimisers have it even easier: their whole job is to map out the ROI-funnel of a website and to make it work better. And many social media marketers are as of yet still wallowing in the fuzziness of old-school, offline marketing – they get away with meaningless lingo-speak like ‘customer engagement’ and ‘brand building’. In other words, ROI isn’t (yet) a big part of the SMO business.

(more…)