Author Archives: bevelwise

ESPN launches local Chicago website

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Add ESPN to the list of national news outlets positioning themselves to capitalize on the demise of local newspapers. The “Worldwide Leader in Sports” this week launched ESPNChicago.com, a Web site devoted to the Chicago sports scene. The site will feature a daily Chicago version of “Sportscenter,” ESPN’s signature sports news show, and contributions from ESPN columnists and radio personalities with ties to the city.

ESPN hopes ESPNChicago.com will be the first of a series of new sites that will deepen its online penetration in local markets, following an increasingly popular approach for major content providers. Having already built a national audience of devotees of a particular topic, some publishers are targeting subgroups linked by geography and civic pride.

The Huffington Post, the left-leaning news site that enjoyed a surge in popularity during the presidential campaign, late last year began rolling out local sites beginning, incidentally, with Chicago. A Huffington Post spokesman said the launch “has gone very well” and several more cities will be added over the next 12 months. The Web site Politico has beefed up its staff recently to cover more local politics and sell it to understaffed newspapers in those cities.

This local or regional expansion is far from a can’t-miss strategy, particularly in an advertising recession. McGraw-Hill’s BusinessWeek magazine last June ceased publication of “BusinessWeek Chicago” — What is it about Chicago? – less than a year after launch. For ESPN, Chicago makes sense for two key reasons: It’s a city of passionate sports fans where the local papers have been crippled by the industry’s revenue drain. The Chicago Tribune’s owner, Tribune Co., in December filed for bankruptcy protection because of its crushing debt, and the owner of the Chicago Sun-Times has been drastically cutting costs to stem losses and avoid a similar fate.

At least one advertiser is already sold on ESPN’s idea. MillerCoors has signed on as the site’s charter advertiser.

Internet Ad Sales In 2008

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From today’s New York Times Media & Marketing Section:

Internet advertising rose in 2008, according to a report released Monday, but the growth is starting to flatten.

“The economy has had a significant impact on the short-term growth of the Internet advertising market,” David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which contributed to the report, said in a conference call.

Internet advertising grew to $23.4 billion in 2008, an increase of 10.6 percent from 2007, according to the Internet Advertising Revenue Report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group representing online advertisers, as well as PricewaterhouseCoopers.

That was the only category of advertising spending that grew in 2008 other than cable television, which rose 7.8 percent, according to Nielsen figures supplied for the report,

Over all, total non-Internet media revenue declined 2.4 percent in 2008 from 2007, according to Nielsen. Spending in network television declined 3.5 percent, in national magazines 7.6 percent and in local newspapers 7.8 percent.

Internet advertising rose in 2008, according to a report released Monday, but the growth is starting to flatten.

“The economy has had a significant impact on the short-term growth of the Internet advertising market,” David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which contributed to the report, said in a conference call.

Internet advertising grew to $23.4 billion in 2008, an increase of 10.6 percent from 2007, according to the Internet Advertising Revenue Report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group representing online advertisers, as well as PricewaterhouseCoopers.

That was the only category of advertising spending that grew in 2008 other than cable television, which rose 7.8 percent, according to Nielsen figures supplied for the report,

Over all, total non-Internet media revenue declined 2.4 percent in 2008 from 2007, according to Nielsen. Spending in network television declined 3.5 percent, in national magazines 7.6 percent and in local newspapers 7.8 percent.

Though overall growth was strong relative to other mediums, Internet advertising did not have the large increases of recent years.

Internet revenue dipped in the first and second quarters for the first time in four years. And online advertising in 2008 had the lowest growth rate — 2.6 percent — from the fourth quarter compared with the period a year earlier.

As Mr. Silverman said, however, “it’s one of the few things that actually grew in the fourth quarter 2008.”

There were some interesting shifts within Internet advertising.

Digital video revenue more than doubled in 2008 versus 2007, growing to $734 million from $324 million. Advertisers were also more frequently using performance-based ads – where they pay only when someone clicks on the ad or buys something after seeing the ad. Performance-based ads made up 57 percent of all Internet advertising in 2008, according to the report, up from 51 percent in 2007. Ads that were paid for based on how frequently they were shown – called CPM-based pricing, for cost-per-thousand – fell to 39 percent, from 45 percent. And sponsorship advertising, where publishers create custom pages and advertisements for brands, was less popular this year than last: it fell to 1 percent of all fourth-quarter revenue in 2008, down from 3 percent in 2007.

Online advertising from consumer-packaged goods companies was a big growth area, rising to $1.5 billion in 2008, up from $925 million in 2007. That was significant, said Peter S. Fader, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who participated in the conference call.

That was “something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. People didn’t think this would be the right space to be selling grocery-type products,” he said. Now, “customers are becoming accustomed to seeing relatively mundane products advertised and promoted” on the Internet, he said.

Courtesy of www.nytimes.com

Actionable insight into your advertising and website design

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Just discovered this great Google Analytics overview video on their conversion university channel. Google Analytics helps you find out what keywords attract your most desirable prospects, what advertising copy pulled the most responses, and what landing pages and content make the most money for you. Here is the video from Google.

Print or SEO?

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The Grand Rapids Press announced in yesterday’s edition that they are making employee cuts and possibly future cuts to delivery in the coming months due to the “current economic climate.” Publisher Day Gaydou had been keeping this under wraps but had to come clean with readers after the Ann Arbor News and other Booth Newspapers announced their cutbacks yesterday. The Ann Arbor Press is shuttering it’s entire print organization just weeks after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer did the same.

What does this mean? Further evidence that newspaper readership is declining, and if you are a marketer still using print advertisements as your primary marketing channel while ignoring local search, then you are missing the boat.

Take this opportunity to reassess the ROI from all your marketing channels. Ask yourself if traditional media is achieving the objectives needed to be profitable.

Internet Marketing, be it Paid Search, Organic Search, Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) and web portal advertising should be a key part if not the cornerstone of your marketing mix.

SEO (search engine optimzation) is most important though. There are endless reasons why search engine optimization must be implemented into your marketing strategy before you are left in the dust of your competition. Here are the top 5:

  1. Absence of risk. In many cases, paid advertising is subject to click fraud risk and competitor’s black techniques (such as using software that would click your ads thousands of times without any real profit to your site; however, you pay for each click to the search engine). High-tech pay-for-performance programs (such as Google AdWords) claim to have advanced protection against such behavior (and they do have), however the risk can never be reduced to zero. SEO is free of any risk. Unless you spam or make obvious mistakes, it cannot damage your business.
  2. Reliability. Banner ads or paid search engine placement work until the marketing budget depletes. Then, the site disappears from the listings, and your returning customers cannot find you any more (new visitors cannot find you either). SEO helps buffer this process, so you can gradually reduce the advertising budget as you’re increasing your results obtained from organic search engine listings. Also consumers are more likely to purchase from a site ranked high in the search engine results than from an evidently placed advertisement
  3. Brand awareness. A web site having a high ranking means more people see the name of the company and become familiar with the company and its products, even if they haven’t made a purchase. A surveys show that consumers are twice as likely to recognize businesses ranked in the top three in search engine results than those appearing in banner ads.
  4. Targeted traffic. Search engine optimization brings paying customers to your door step. The customers that SEO bring you are long for your products/services as they have entered your websites keywords/phrases into the search engines. SEO will further help you transform visitors into buyers by analyzing their behavior once they find your site. You will learn how to transform these visitors into buyers by utilizing the content of your website in the most effective manner possible.
  5. Affordability. In comparison to banner ads, which cost between $2500 to $35000 a month and outsourced SEO plan costs as little as $1000.

These are only 5 of the reasons which substantiate why SEO is the single best investment for all marketers.

Think about it. And don’t forget to recycle!!

I Want A Mouthguard!

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Okay, true story that relates to the frustration of NOT using the web for purchases. My 12 year old daughter plays indoor soccer. After watching her get barraged with high powered shots on Saturday, I decided she needs a mouth guard to protect her braces. I had been told that Shock Doctor made a special mouth guard’s for kids with braces. So, I decided to start my search at the largest sporting goods store in town, MC Sports. (why order online for a $15 mouth guard and pay the shipping, right?) Well, MC’s was sold out of all youth mouth guards, so I bought an adult size for braces. Never mind that the indifferent sales clerk never bothered to check with another MC location, or offer to get me the item off their web site. This was very poor customer service which is a whole different issue. So, frustrated, I left the store with the adult mouth guard which turned out to be too big. Before I made another trip across town to Dunham’s sporting goods, I called ahead to ask them if they had any mouth guards in stock for kids with braces. The clerk on the other end of the line had no idea what I was talking about. A mouth guard for braces, huh? So, he put me hold and after 5 minutes, I hung up. More wasted time. Another dead end. Now what, she had another game on Sunday so I had to have that mouthguard. I wasn’t sure where else to go in town, so that night I figured I would just get iit on the web, so I went to Google and searched for “youth mouth guards for braces”, here were the search results:

youth mouth guards for braces

I selected the first Google Base result from HitRunScore and bought a Shock Doctor Youth Mouth Guard for braces for $14.99 plus shipping. Problem solved, I just hope I get it before her next game. As for MC Sports, they should be doing Google Base for their store and allowed me to pick it up locally just like other retailers, (see Best Buy, Target, etc). They don’t get it. And the poor service at MC’s and Dunham’s makes it unlikely I will be back in those stores anytime soon.

MC Sports offers ortho youth mouth guards on their site, but the clerk never knew that I am sure. What a disconnect. How about Google Base MC’s? Your warehouse is less than a mile from the store I was in! Here are the web sites for the retailers mentioned above:

http://www.dunhamssports.com/home/index.jsp

http://www.mcsports.com/home/index.jsp

Get a clue guys!

The H1 Debate? Where should I put it?

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There has been much debate recently about where to place the H1 — does the H1 belong on the logo? Or as the page’s title? It’s a rather hot topic right now, so a site called H1Debate.com has launched in which you vote for the proper H1 placement via Twitter. Here’s what I voted and why.

Historically, the H1 has been on the logo. However, I believe the H1 makes more sense on the title. Why?

From a purely SEO standpoint, the H1 is very important. It tells the search engines what the page is all about. Keywords are super important in your header tags. With the H1 as the logo, you’re rendering a powerful piece of SEO ineffective (unless you care only about your brand name).If I’m reading a report or viewing a presentation, I expect the header to be about that page. I don’t expect the header to be the logo or brand name, nor to be identical across all pages.

That would just be weird if my presentations all had “Bevelwise” describing every page/slide.SEOMoz (a very well-respected SEO resource) interviewed 37 SEO leaders, and they ranked keywords in H1′s as the 4th most important part of SEO.

Google produced their SEO Starter Guide and said “On a page containing a news story, we might put the name of our site into an tag and the topic of the story into an tag.” However, the example of the H1 (the name of the site) they gave was “Brandon’s Baseball Cards,” which is actually very keyword-rich – unlike most logos/brand names (think “Bevelwise”). Additionally, on the next page Google says, to “Imagine you’re writing an outline” and “Avoid placing text in heading tags that wouldn’t be helpful in defining the structure of the page” – like a logo, for example? Does seeing the word “Bevelwise” over and over help “define the structure of the page?” I suppose you could answer “yes,” but that just seems a bit weird to me.

Google’s, Matt Cutts also chimes in on the subject in a recent YouTube post, check it out.

Google’s Matt Cutts On Keywords In The URL

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Google’s Matt Cutts posted a recent video answering a question about the position of the keywords in the URL.
The question asked, does the order of the words in the URL make an impact on one’s ranking at Google? Cutts said one should not obsess about the order of the words but he said keywords in the URL “does help a little bit.”
Does this mean you should go back to your existing sites and change URLs without keywords to have keywords in them? Cutts says, “If you’ve got an existing solution that works for you, it’s not really worth going back to change your urls. It may worth considering when you’re doing a new site.” Should new sites have keywords in the URL. He also indicates, “It makes sense if a) it’s easy for you to do in your content management system, and b) the keywords are useful and descriptive-definitely don’t overdo it.”

Here is the video, it is worth watching:

Microsoft Says Most Small Businesses With Web Sites Don’t Buy Search Ads

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The search advertising market still has most of the way to grow among small businesses, results from a Microsoft-sponsored online survey suggest.

59% of responding small businesses with Web sites still don’t buy search advertising — usually because they worry it will be too expensive or not “the best use of their marketing budgets.”

Reading between the lines, it’s obvious that Microsoft is trying to suggest that search advertising leader Google does a poor job marketing itself and making customers comfortable with its products.

Of course, Microsoft sponsored the survey and presumably only released numbers it thinks will help them sell more search ads, so you have to take them with a grain of salt. Still, they’re interesting:

  • 59% of small businesses with Web sites don’t currently use any paid search marketing
  • Of those, 90% have never even attempted it.
  • 70% of small business owners say they would rather do their own taxes than start a search marketing campaign
  • 86% small business owners felt that they could be missing opportunities to grow their business.
  • 75% believed prospective customers could be searching online for the type of service their business offers.
  • 89 % feared keywords may become too expensive.
  • 81% questioned if paid search marketing is the best use of their marketing budgets.
  • 25% of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex.
  • 21% thought it would be too time consuming.
  • 25% felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign.

The Obama Effect: Google Says President Changed Search Activity

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The first five minutes of my local TV newscast last night was spent showing how much local interest there was in President Barack Obama’s inauguration. People watched on TV in schools, sports bars, department stores, dentists’ offices, nursing homes, and just about anywhere else a TV could be turned on.

Google says that interest was also reflected online. In a late-night blog post, Google shares some interesting facts and figures about inauguration-related search activity:

  • popular queries during the inauguration ceremony included “live inauguration coverage,” “inauguration day 2009 streaming,” and “listen to inauguration live”
  • search activity spiked as people looked for information on other participants, such as Dr. Rick Warren, Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, and performers Aretha Franklin, Yo-Yo Ma, and others
  • 12% of inauguration-related queries came from outside the US

To me, the most interesting sign of online interest in the inauguration is a chart Google provided that shows a dramatic drop in search activity while the President was giving his speech:

chart

As I sat in front of the TV with my laptop, I noticed something similar: While I usually get a never-ending stream of incoming email, I only received two during Obama’s 20-minute speech. I don’t recall him promising to help reduce Inbox Clutter, but that might be a platform to think about in 2012.

Google Leads U.S. Search Advertising Market With 76% Market Share

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Efficient Frontier today released the findings of its quarterly analysis of U.S. paid search activity. The report was based on an analysis of 92 billion impressions and 600 million clicks across a portion of Efficient Frontier customers during the fourth quarter of 2008, which includes some of the world’s largest brands. According to the report, Google has maintained its hold on the search advertising market with 76 percent market share, and Yahoo continued to increase its presence, gaining 3 percent market share year-over-year.

Despite the economic downturn and reports of the erosion of other marketing channels in 2008, the index of Efficient Frontier customers included in the Q4 report saw a minimal 8 percent decrease year-over-year, while the retail sector saw a 9 percent uptick in spending year-over-year, an indication of the strength of the search marketing channel.

Additional search engine marketing trends

  • Small advertisers in the U.S. accounted for a greater decrease in search advertising spend than larger, more established brands
  • Overall impressions for search engines are down 6 percent year-over-year
  • Overall click-through-rates (CTRs) in search were relatively flat year-over-year, gaining only 2 percent
  • Overall search cost-per-click (CPC) is down 5 percent year-over-year
  • Automotive industry spend declined 15 percent, due primarily to lower impression volume, reflecting weakness in consumer demand.
  • Financial service spend declined 20 percent despite impressions being up by 5 percent reflecting high customer demand for financial services, with but fewer qualified conversions
  • Retail spend increased 9 percent, reflecting the strength of the channel in price comparison and shopping efficiency, particularly for more established online brands
  • Travel and Entertainment spend decreased 24 percent, primarily due to reduced traffic volume, which is down in by 18 percent in the sector year-over-year