nielsen-logoNielsen have shared their predictions for the advertising marketing in 2010, with smartphone and social networking advertising set to provide new sales channels.
Here’s a look at their top 5 trends from the Nielsen blog:
1. Optimizing media convergence is a top priority. A better understanding of media convergence will manifest in order to deliver a better return on investment. The ability to accurately measure activity and link online ads to offline purchasing behavior will be critical.
2. New models emerge to take advantage of smartphones. Accurate mobile measurement will be required to stay head of the snowballing growth of that media platform.
3. More cross-media ad campaigns surface. The massive growth of online video games played and shared online leads the way for more successful interactive and cross-media advertising campaigns to appear. Growth in the adoption of this innovative advertising across screens and activities will increase.
4. Commercialization of social networking hubs increase. Social media will provide a new sales channel for establishing product awareness and commercializing brands to better support traditional advertising or text-based ads.
5. More interesting and interactive online ads appear. Increased use of more creative advertising and content models online such as video, attention-seeking page takeover ads and mechanisms for greater interactivity will drive the next era of Web development.
Overall online marketing took a step back in 2009, with years of successive growth coming to a standstill with the global financial crisis. However, it was also a year we saw services like twitter and facebook hit the big time, partly thanks to increasing smartphone usage.
For marketers to be successful in 2010, they will need to develop ways to interact with consumers in these environments. Budgets may be moved away from programs like Google AdWords towards maintaining company social media profiles across twitter and facebook.
Monday, December 21, 2009
A small design firm is suing Microsoft over the name “Bing”
A small design firm is suing Microsoft over the name “Bing” after claims that the Bing search engine is infringing on their trademark. Bing LLC has been running since 2000 and has a pending trademark application over the Bing name.
According to the lawsuit, Bing LLC claims that Microsoft’s Bing “causes confusion with regard to the relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant, confuses the public with regard to the origin of the plaintiff’s services and dilutes the value of the plaintiff’s trademark.”
With the Bing search engine being launched in 2009, there’s no doubt Microsoft would have done their research before deciding on the name. Trademark law does allow firms in different industries to use the same name, so I am not confident this case will have a huge amount of merit.
Here’s what Microsoft had to say, “We believe this suit to be without merit and we do not believe there is any confusion in the marketplace with regard to the complainant’s offerings and Microsoft’s Bing,”
Even if the suit doesn’t go ahead, it’s been a good link building exercise for the company, with several media sites now linking to their homepage!
According to the lawsuit, Bing LLC claims that Microsoft’s Bing “causes confusion with regard to the relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant, confuses the public with regard to the origin of the plaintiff’s services and dilutes the value of the plaintiff’s trademark.”
With the Bing search engine being launched in 2009, there’s no doubt Microsoft would have done their research before deciding on the name. Trademark law does allow firms in different industries to use the same name, so I am not confident this case will have a huge amount of merit.
Here’s what Microsoft had to say, “We believe this suit to be without merit and we do not believe there is any confusion in the marketplace with regard to the complainant’s offerings and Microsoft’s Bing,”
Even if the suit doesn’t go ahead, it’s been a good link building exercise for the company, with several media sites now linking to their homepage!
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
SEO TIps: Are You Splitting Your Home Page Link Value?
- www.example.com
- www.example.com/index.html
- example.com
- example.com/index.html
If you happen to have links going to each variation of this page, you’ll end up with a 4-way split in link value! Obviously, this is going to result in lost rankings and duplicate content issues, so lets look at best way to address this.
- The first step is to decide on which URL you would like to use. In the large majority of cases this is going to be www.example.com
- Next, make sure all your internal links point to the URL you have decided above. For example, if your logo or “home” link points to “/index.html” change this to www.example.com.
- Another good idea is to add a 301 (permanent) redirect that points to the URL you would like to be indexed. Using the example above, we would setup a redirect of example.com pointing to www.example.com
- Finally, Google’s webmaster tools allow you to specify which URL you would like them to use in results. This can be found under Site configuration > Settings. A screenshot is below:
One final tip, when building links to your site, make sure to use the main URL format you would like indexed. While the 301 redirect should pass on any link juice from existing links which have been formatted incorrectly, it is best not to rely on this for the future.
SEO article post
SEO tips: 4 Steps to Successful Keyword Research: SES Chicago Video!
The series of Search Engine Strategies (SES) conferences attract a variety of SEM professionals across the globe.
The Chicago leg of the conference was held just last week and one of the guest speakers was Christine Churchill from KeyRelevance.com who discussed (yep, you guessed it) keyword research for PPC campaigns.
We’ve written a number of articles in the past about keywords. Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of any PPC campaign – its no use bidding on a search term for your PPC ad, if that’s not the keyword your target market is going to use to find you. Here is a quick reference guide to our most popular keyword research article:
DIY SEO: How to Perform Keyword Research Using Google’s Free Tool
Are Keywords in the Domain Name Still Important?
Google’s New Keyword Research Tool Adds More Filtering Options
The Top 10 Small Business SEO Mistakes
Google Advice: Don’t Obsess About Keyword Position in URLs
Back at the SES conference, Christine was kind enough to chat to Byron Gordon from the SES Conference Channel after her presentation to discuss keyword research in more depth. You can check out the video below of their discussion; however I have also outlined the steps Christine uses to conduct keyword research for any company:
- Look at the keywords already available within your company. What phrases or words do you use to describe your products or services? Try not to list pet phrases that customers won’t know.
- Go to your consumer base to get an understanding of what they call or describe your products or services. It’s highly likely that consumers might call your product a different name.
- Search online on how people are describing your product. Journalists or product reviewers are a good source as they relate directly to the consumer.
- Use keyword tools such as Google Trends, Google Insights, Keyword Discovery and Hitwise to get a viewpoint on keyword popularity that is beyond what you can get in your analytics. Use a variety of tools, some free and some fee-based to get a better comparison.
SEO tips: Local Search SEO Cheat Sheet: Optimize Your Website for Local Customers
Besides the listing itself, there are additional steps that webmasters can take to ensure that their website is optimized for local search.
The folks over at Search Engine Journal have compiled an easy guide for SEO for local search, so I have outlined some of the main areas below:
- Display full business contact details clearly on your site. This includes:
- Title of the page (especially for the contact page)
- Meta description of the contact page and “About Us” page (to be displayed in SERPs)
- Bottom of each page throughout the site (this is the most common place for visitors to look for your contact details) - Contact and About Us pages contain business location and phone number including local area code. (Local area codes are sometimes associated with the local search ranking factors)
- Make sure your business domain WHOIS information lists your business mail address and contact information
- List your business in the regional sections of popular directories like BOTW and Business.com
- Create business profiles on major social networks and include your address
The full guide is available here.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
50 Free Article Submission Websites
Check Avangate's article submission sites list. Promote your site through articles in order to gain more popularity and to obtain a better page rank. These submission sites are ordered according to Google PageRank and are listed with links to "Submit article" or "Register" page.
* You need to create an account in order to submit an article.
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