SEO

An IMC approach to SEM, SEO and SMM

Posted by Paul Goldston on Aug 5, 2010 in SEM Tips, SEO Tips, Social Media | 0 comments

Apologies for the acronym soup I’ve served up today. Before we indulge in the main course, here’s the menu in brief:

IMC

IMC stands for Integrated Marketing Communication. According to Wikipedia, IMC is a “holistic approach to marketing” that “aims to ensure consistency of message and the complementary use of media” (IMC, Wikipedia, 2010).

SEM

SEM is short for Search Engine Marketing. In many cases, search marketing includes a wide variety of disciplines but for the sake of this article, when we refer to SEM we will be referring to pay-per-click search advertising. This includes sponsored advertising on the Google, Yahoo and Bing search and display networks.

SEO

If you are an avid reader of this blog, you will likely already have some idea of what SEO is. SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation (or, for the Americans reading this, Search Engine Optimization!). This involves the process of optimising your website in a bid to improve your search engine rankings on the keywords that are most valuable to you. SEO is achieved through a multitude of visible website changes (on-page SEO) and non-website (off-page SEO) strategies.

SMM

A relatively new acronym in the online marketing field, SMM simply stands for Social Media Marketing. This involves harnessing the communication and viral power of social media platforms in order to achieve a particular marketing objective.

The Main Course

Ok. Now that we know the dishes, it’s now time for the special – a combination of the four!

Consistency. This the main ingredient in a quality IMC campaign. IMC involves creating a consistent tone, character, appearance, personality and message across your entire marketing mix. IMC has been widely accepted as the most effective way to cut through media clutter and deliver a single minded brand proposition to your target market.

You have probably already experienced a quality Integrated Marketing Campaign without realising it. Consider Optus. The way Optus have developed their IMC campaign is through the use of a consistent brand theme throughout all of their visible customer touch points. This theme of course, revolves around the brand colours yellow and turquoise and the use of wild animals in all of their marketing discourse (open a new browser/tab and check out their website now – you’ll see what I mean).

So how can SEM, SEO and SMM be integrated into an IMC campaign? Here are a few tips:

SEM

• Ensure that you develop your PPC advertising campaigns to include keywords that are utlised in your offline marketing efforts (for example brand slogans, tvc messages, etc)
• If your brand has a recognisable and distinctive brand personality, try to incorporate this personality into the writing of your ads.
• If you have a special offer or promotion running offline, replicate and reinforce this offer though your ad copy in the search engines.
• Let users know they have landed in the right place by integrating your landing page/website design with offline marketing themes.

SEO

• Like with SEM, make sure you have optimised your website for keywords and phrases that a potential customer might type in after ingesting your offline marketing material.
• Increase your search engine real estate by dominating the most valuable keyword groups relating to your industry. This will increase your branding and will allow you to reinforce your integrated marketing message every time a user searches for a relevant term in your industry.
• Make sure that, in making on-page SEO changes to your website, that you are able to create a balance between SEO and readability so as to maintain a clear and consistent marketing message.

SMM

• If you have an actual brand character, consider integrating this character across all of your social media channels. Brand characters are very powerful marketing tools and work well to create instant brand recognition and connection.
• Once again, if you have offline promotions running, you can boost the profile of this promotion through a creative social media marketing strategy.
• If you have decided on the brand tone and personality you would like to convey to your audience (are you young with attitude or conservative and corporate?), make sure to convey this personality in your social media interactions. A great example of a brand with a consistent brand personality and theme is Virgin (cheeky, red and white, casual, innovative, slightly (and ironically) anti-corporate)).

Mmm delicious…

I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick taste test on some ways you can incorporate SEO, SEM and SMM into your integrated marketing campaigns.

Please feel free to add a comment below if you:

• Did or didn’t agree on any of the points,
• Know of another good IMC example?
• Or simply have a question about this post!

Popularity: 10%

Oh, How Google Has Changed…

Posted by Vinnie Palihakkara on Jul 27, 2010 in Google, Search Engine Optimisation | 0 comments

There have been many visible and invisible changes to the Google search engine this year (2010). You may have already noticed some of the aesthetic changes in terms of the look and feel of the world’s most beloved search portal. However, there have also been some very important algorithmic changes in the back end as well. In this article we will look at how some of these changes may affect your Googling!

Interface

The new look and feel of Google bodes a more modern and powerful overall search engine. Apart from the obvious and well publicised logo update, Google have implemented a variety of new search tools and filters on the left which cater to the needs of the evolved, modern day search engine user.  This has been dubbed “Universal Search”.

Users can now more easily filter and customise their searches based on the specific media or service they are looking for. Sure this has been available in a different form in the past but Google is now cementing these advanced search filters as one of the cornerstones of their search interface. The universal search toolbar now also provides a variety of extra search tools such as timeline and context specific searches to name a few.

But universal search has yet another trick up its sleeve. This is the ability of users to sort search results based on how often a website has been updated. This means users can now access the latest fresh content without the hassle of having to trawl through a list of outdated  results. Basically, universal search has made it even easier for users to switch between filters and views of the same search query in order to retrieve search results that are more applicable to their needs.

Finally, another notable new addition to the Google tool belt is Google Squared. This fascinating tool allows users to search for a product, category, service or any other entity and compare the results in a detailed matrix of information (in real time!). It’s just another helpful innovation from the good people at Google. Try it out for yourself here: http://www.google.com/squared.

Algorithm

As most search engine optimisation specialists would be aware, Google’s new search algorithm ‘Caffeine’ has changed the way in which Google looks at your website content. Google is now able to crawl a huge range of internet content (including video, music, news and social media) – faster and more reliably than it ever has before. This has enabled Google to understand the content and deliver a rich experience to the users in an array of new types of relevant and up to date search results.

With Google’s intelligence ever increasing, it has now become more important than ever to use reliable, white hat SEO techniques in order to achieve great search engine rankings as Google is  becoming more and more adept at differentiating between real content and spam/scam SEO work. For more information on how Google Caffeine may affect your business, read Andrew Knight’s article – What is Google Caffeine?

Popularity: 13%

SEO Checklist

Posted by Andrew Knight on Apr 9, 2010 in Search Engine Optimisation | 1 comment

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is required for any website wanting to rank well in search engines such as Google, without it you may be potentially turning away thousands of new customers every year, even more depending on which industry your business or company represents.

Therefore, employing the services of a trusted and ethical SEO Company is recommended. However there are certain steps which can be initiated before SEO takes place to help make your website SEO ready.

• Website Content: A common and critical issue of today is lack of content (information) on websites. As content enables the creation of authority or “juice”, it helps search engines define what your website is about and ensures correct placement within their indexes. Just as a person will read to learn more, a search engine crawls to gather more information. However, please bear in mind when adding content to your website that it’s unique (not duplicated anywhere else online) and relevant, if not your website may be penalised or removed from the search engine’s index completely. For further information on content and how to maximise its return, please read my previous article on Building Authority.
• Website Pages: A website is generally created to offer a message, to sell products or offer services; therefore it becomes important to structure your website correctly. Nobody wants to read a giant page with information, nor do search engines. Just as we would turn the page of a book or a document, a search engine will crawl a website and its pages and categorise accordingly. Adding additional pages to your website with unique and relevant content will help further improve your chances of ranking higher when SEO is implemented.
• External References: An important factor search engines take into consideration are inbound links to a website, i.e. websites which link to a website. Without these external references, competing for keywords which yield high return is not possible. SEO itself involves extensive link building to help make a website relevant to its target keywords; however there is a line in the sand between quality and quantity. Therefore, contacting other websites which relate to your industry and requesting a link can potentially benefit you, however keep in mind when requesting a link the website is related. For example, if Bobs Tyre Company specialises in selling tyres for vehicles, his industry would be automotive. If Bob requested a link from Jane’s Beauty Parlour, Google may find that to be irrelevant, therefore the quality of that link will be low. However, if Bob requested a link from Smith’s Vehicle Parts, the same industry as Bob, Google will find that to be relevant and the quality will be much higher. For further information, please read my previous article on Link Building.

With these above points in mind and initiated before you enlist the services of an SEO Company, it will most likely save you both time and money whilst increasing the possibility of ranking higher in Google and other search engines faster.

Popularity: 30%

Social Media Hits Search

Posted by Brijesh Shah on Nov 23, 2009 in Social Media | 0 comments

Google and Bing have both announced a partnership with social networking giant Twitter. Bing was the first to announce their partnership with Twitter and has already rolled out a Beta version of BingTweets.

This is great news for users as it means they will be shown real time content based on popular user tweets. As the competition in Search Engine Space becomes more intense, Google and Bing are trying everything to attract users. The big news, however, is this officially makes Twitter the most influential social networking site on the web.

Bing Tweets pulls in trends from Twitter and filters into categories such as “Popular Now”, “People”, “Places” and “Products”, supposedly providing easier navigation to changing trends. When you do a search, you’ll get tweets at the top of the page and shared links at the bottom. The result displayed removes duplicate tweets, and filters out any adult content for better usability. When you do a search, by default new tweets will flow automatically into the tweets section of results.

Google, on the other hand, displays the five most recent tweets for the query the user has searched, giving both real-time Twitter search results and Google results on the same page. So users can not only view the pages indexed by Google but also see relevant Twitter conversations happening for that particular search query.

This will result in companies marketing aggressively in the social media space. It also creates challenges for businesses to ensure that users are updated with latest offerings and ensure customers are satisfied with the products and services they provide, in order to maintain their brand image.

The inclusion of Twitter into the search results will change the internet marketing space, but only time will tell how users respond to those changes.

Popularity: 9%

SEO Companies Need to Act Like Home Lenders

Posted by Llew Jury on Oct 30, 2009 in Search Engine Optimisation | 1 comment

To get great results on a website with search engine optimisation (SEO), a business and their SEO firm need to be able to work in partnership.

For example, a site brought to an SEO company that is technically very sound but poorly visually designed won’t convert well, meaning no amount of SEO will be able to increase revenue because users will simply arrive at the site from Google, take one look at it and never come back.

By the same token, a fantastic looking site that is SEO-technically challenged will not look attractive to the search engines when being crawled. This means you’ve got a great looking site that no-one ever sees.

If the SEO industry wants to gain more credibility, then SEO providers need to start acting more like banks that process home loans. In a nutshell, not every home loan is approved.

For SEO companies, we must look at a range of conversion, design, technical and financial factors during the assessment period to ascertain whether the client is serious about SEO, whether they have the right website for SEO and whether they understand that it’s a long term process, and not something that happens overnight by throwing a few bad links around.

When a bank is assessing a loan, they determine whether or not a person is capable of paying back the loan over a period of say 30 years.

With SEO, we need to make sure that the client has the shared vision and commitment to ensure the website is initially designed well to suit their target audience, they are ready to add SEO friendly content when requested and most importantly they are prepared to take the time to read the FAQs and understand how the SEO process works.

Without this shared commitment, sometimes there isn’t any point in doing SEO for a client as it may leave “a bad taste in the mouth” for all parties involved and eventually hurt the industry itself.

For Reload Media’s SEO FAQs, please see: http://www.reloadmedia.com.au/seo-faqs.php

Popularity: 10%