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How Important is Your Domain Name to Your Brand?

March 9th, 2010 | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Cover Your Brand’s Bases With Your Domain Name

How important is your domain name to you brand? Most online businesses would probably consider it to be quite important, and with good reason. Sometimes before searching, customers may simply opt to go to the “yourbrandhere.com” URL simply because it makes sense. Now, sometimes that URL is already taken, and for start-ups, that’s something to consider in itself.

As Monte Cahn, Founder and President of Moniker mentioned in a recent interview with WebProNews, it’s a good idea to make sure the domain name is available when coming up with a name for your brand, or at least make sure that you are able to acquire it. Products have their own brands, and this way of thinking can also be applied to them in many cases. Cahn notes that even the big companies make mistakes in this area. For example, you would expect Apple to own iPad.com, considering the huge announcement about the device the company made this year, but someone else has that domain.

Cahn also stresses the importance of covering your brand in terms of domain names. This means getting all variations possible. Get typos, different extensions and country codes, etc. Use 301 redirects on misspells of key brands (including singular/plural versions). However, when it comes to domain names for different products, he says it’s best to build sub-sites around those with their own content, which can help drive link juice, SEO value, and traffic.

Getting the .com that reflects your company name is not always possible, unfortunately. In these cases, it may serve you well to find a different aspect of your brand to center your domain around, but this will require a greater level of promotion of that URL than a simple companyname.com. For example, if there are unique key phrases within your company’s slogan, you may find such an opportunity there.

Domains should be easy to remember, not too long, easy to spell, relevant to your brand, and avoid complicating characters such as hyphens. I think one key to a successful domain name is simplicity, although there are always exceptions to the rule.

More Than Just a Redesign Going on with Facebook This Week

February 5th, 2010 | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Facebook’s Big Week

It’s been a pretty big week for Facebook. Not only is there a lot of talk about Facebook’s potential for becoming the top news source on the web, but the company celebrated its sixth birthday, is passing the 400 million user mark, and began rolling out some new design changes. In addition, the company is said to be rewriting its messaging feature and preparing to launch a webmail product, but first things first.

The Birthday and 400 Million Users

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed it in a blog post last night. “Today we’re celebrating our sixth birthday, and this week there will be 400 million people on Facebook. Just one year ago we served less than half as many people, and thanks to you we’ve made great progress over the last year towards making the world more open and connected.”

“Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better.” he added. “We hoped Facebook would improve people’s lives in important ways. So it’s rewarding to see that as Facebook has grown, people around the world are using the service to share information about events big and small and to stay connected to everyone they care about.”

Facebook hosted a celebration and announced some releases at the Facebook headquarters last night. This was followed by a hackathon where Facebook staff stayed up all night coding and building new ideas for products.

Design Changes

Facebook announced some new changes to the design of its homepage. Users can find their newest notifications, requests, and messages in the top menu. When a user receives a notification, they will see a red bubble appear in the left-hand corner by the search bar. When the icon is clicked, a drop-down menu appears with the most recent notifications. The Home/Profile links are in the top-right corner with the Account menu, which includes privacy settings and the log out link.

Facebook Notifications

The menu on the left-hand side of the screen has been completely reworked. “The left menu has been organized to make it easier for you to communicate with and discover content from your friends. You can now access your messages and other core features all in one place, to the left of your News Feed,” says Facebook’s Jing Chen. “With the Photos dashboard you can browse recent photos of your friends, and the Events dashboard lists your upcoming events along with events your friends are attending. The Friends dashboard will help you find friends, see which of your friends have recently updated their profiles and filter your News Feed by Friend Lists you may have already created.”

Facebook Left Menu

Chat has also been made more prominent with a list of online friends displayed on the left. The new apps and games dashboards, which have been discussed lately, can be accessed from the menu as well. The dashboards feature personalized updates from the apps, and they have launched with new privacy settings.

The changes are still rolling out, so it’s possible that you do not have them yet, but you will soon enough.

The Webmail Product

Michael Arrington is reporting that a “source with knowledge of the product” says Facebook is launching a webmail product. If MySpace can do it, surely Facebook can too. It’s being referred to right now as “Project Titan”, although the name will likely change.

Facebook’s messages as they stand right now, lend to email notifications. When you check your email, you find that someone has sent you a message on Facebook. If Facebook gets you using its own email service, it’s cutting out the middle man, and that means…you guessed it – more time spent on Facebook.

Facebook As the Web’s Top News Source?

I’ve already written on this topic this week, but basically, the more time people spend on Facebook, the more convenient they may find it to simply get their news feeds there. If Facebook enters the email game, that’s only going to get people using Facebook that much more, and even open up yet another way for them to get their news on Facebook, through email newsletters and news alerts.

Update: Microsoft has announced some changes to its partnership with Facebook. Facebook will now be taking over its own display advertising, and will get a more feature-rich version of Bing search for its web search.

Has Google Begun Changing How it Indexes the Web?

January 26th, 2010 | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Last summer Google announced a new project called “Caffeine”, which was described as a re-write of Google’s web search architecture. Around that time, Matt Cutts discussed Caffeine with WebProNews, comparing it to the “Big Daddy Update” of 2005, which consisted of changes to the way Google crawls and indexes websites. It appears that more people are now seeing the effects from Caffeine out in the wild.

Have you seen possible Caffeine effects in use? Tell us about it.

Back before the holidays, Google made it a point to assure everybody that Caffeine would not be rolled out (except for at one data center) until after the holidays were over – January at the earliest. The reason for this was that Google didn’t want to shake everything up during a key time for businesses (they didn’t want a repeat of the Florida update).

The company let everyone know about its intentions at PubCon in November. In fact, a few days ago, Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video running through his presentation from that event on his blog. He also provided the slideshow. It covers much more than just Caffeine, but if you missed it, you may want to consider watching it anyway (Caffeine discussion starts at about 22:10 in the video and at slide 29 in the presentation).

“It’s a re-write of our indexing infrastructure. It’s taking the old way that we used to index things that we’d crawled around the web, and we’re replacing that with new architecture that’s fresh and that had been written to be more scalable, more flexible, [with] the ability to attach different types of data, and in the process of indexing, the ability to do more documents for a more comprehensive version of the web, and the ability to do it faster,” Cutts says of Caffeine.

But enough background. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a WebmasterWorld forum thread where administrator Tedster claimed to have seen Caffeine in action at a number of IP addresses. He wrote:

I’m seeing the Caffeine data-set being served via this set of IP addresses: 64.233.169.147, 64.233.169.105, 64.233.169.103, 64.233.169.104, 64.233.169.99,64.233.169.106

It seems to take 5 IP addresses to build the complete SERP, where in the past it often took only 3.

Schwartz also pointed to another member’s post (Whitenight), who said:

Well, just tripled checked with offices/employees in Texas, Colorado, and Indiana. All 5 “control” keywords/sites showed live Caffeine.

That member’s latest post says that the Caffeine Dataset is also on http://66.102.7.99 and http://66.102.7.104.

We don’t know for sure if this is all really Caffeine in action though. Google hasn’t commented on it, and has not made any announcements regarding Caffeine since what Matt said above. Some people don’t believe this is Caffeine at all. As Schwartz notes, we’ll have to wait for Google to say something.

Still, January is almost over, and Google said it would wait until after the holidays, specifically mentioning the month of January. It’s about time for this to be rolling out to some extent. Speed has been emphasized a significant amount in Caffeine discussion, and Cutts told us that page speed would likely become a ranking factor. Regardless of whether or not you are witnessing Caffeine in action yet, rest assured that it will be here sooner or later, and any edge you can give yourself in the meantime is for the good of your own site’s performance. Speed will not only supposedly help you in search going forward, but it just makes for a better user experience.

Succeeding In SEO Requires Change

January 8th, 2010 | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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As search engines change you should too!

As you know full well, the search industry is constantly changing, and that means SEOs and businesses must adapt. This is always made abundantly clear at the change of each year as the previous year is reflected upon, and predictions about trends in the upcoming year are discussed. SEOs know that adaptation and ongoing education are crucial. The problem is that businesses don’t always understand just how much the search landscape actually does change. This can present a whole different set of challenges for both the small business and the professional SEO.

What are some SEO tactics you’ve had a hard time convincing clients to employ?

Searching for Profit founder Amanda Watlington recently discussed some arising trends in the search industry and how understanding the changing search landscape is of vital importance. One example of change is the possible inclusion of site speed as a ranking factor in Google. Matt Cutts dropped that bomb a couple months ago, and while many welcome it, a lot are dreading it.

For one, businesses and clients of SEOs simply may not be so eager to put forth the time and money required to make the necessary adjustments to their sites to optimize for speed, although it is clearly in the best interest of the customer’s experience anyway.

Another challenge, as Watlington mentions, is personalized search. Companies don’t always get that not everybody is necessarily going to see the same search results for any given query, and it can sometimes be difficult for SEOs to convince them that this is the case.

Although things appear to be looking up, budgets have been tight, and businesses are demanding better results for their bucks, but they are not always aware of the big picture, which is why it is up to the hired SEO professional to educate them as best they can, and for other businesses to educate themselves.

Luckily, there are plenty of industry resources freely available on the web. After all, you’ve probably read about the very tactics you have in mind there yourself. SEOs should find instances to back up their case to convince stubborn clients. Some of them are just hung up on outdated trends. Obviously this can make it hard to produce the results they are after.

“The evolution has been slow, and I don’t think we’ve helped it as much as we could,” Watlington says of companies’ understanding of SEO trends.

If you are the client of an SEO or a business trying to get things done yourself, don’t stay hung up on old tactics that might be outdated. At this point, these are some of the things you should keep in mind:

- Site Speed (it’s going to matter, so don’t ignore it…here are some things to consider)
- Personalized Search (Not everyone is going to see the same Google results)
- Universal Search (Showing up here requires attention to different indexes)
- Real-Tme Search (look for more evolution in this area)
- Changes in Local (there are frequently tweaks made by Google here)
- Some things do stay the same (things like reputable links will always be in style)
- Most importantly, stay informed (just keep up with the latest in industry developments)

As Watlington notes in the interview, metrics are very important, and there has been a great deal of focus on them in the industry in recent years. New metrics come about, just as new tools do. Metrics can help illustrate the bigger picture, custom-fit to a particular organizations goals.

What’s Better: PPC or SEO?

December 9th, 2009 | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Pay-Per-Click vs. Search Engine Optimization

At SES Chicago, there was an interesting session in which a group of search marketing professionals debated the issue of which is better between PPC and SEO. Participants included Dave Naylor, Chirstine Churchill, Michael Gray, and Karen Weber, and Rand Fishkin.

Does PPC have more benefits than SEO? Comment here.

Chruchill pointed to a study from Engine Ready on conversion rates by source of traffic (PPC vs organic). The study found:

- Conversion rates: PPC just barely beat SEO
- Average Order Value: Paid won
- Average time on site: Paid won

She gave the following as advantages of PPC:

Christine Churchill- Gives immediate online presence

- Have a new site? Have ads in an hour
- Start getting ROI sooner
- No ramp up time
- Great for seasonal items or time sensitive promotions
- Great for testing
- Easily test effectiveness of new marketing message or site design change
- Quickly gather feedback
- Regulate traffic volume
- Sales pipeline empty? Use PPC to push traffic
- Overloaded? Pause campaigns or cut back spend
- Have limited sales season? Saturate market while demand is high

“PPC is very agile. It’s also has targeting advantages,” said Churchill.

For targeting, she says PPC provides opportunity for high visibility in multiple channels (search engines, content sites, mobile phones), expands results beyond search results, and gives you control over placement on SERPs and better control over landing page/message.

It’s often easier to sell PPC to management because the concept is similar to traditional advertising, and provides for direct accountability. It’s easy to track measures of success. It’s an effective way to drive qualified traffic to your site, and it allows you to expand your opportunities.

Karen Weber Weber says the top five reasons why “PPC rules,” are: speed, flexibility, it’s unlimited, it’s goal-driven, and it’s controllable. You can quickly manipulate keywords to those that drive conversions, you can quickly change bid prices, and you can quickly get in and out of the market. You can turn your campaign on and off, and change ad copy, keywords, etc. You can target a much wider range of keywords, adhere to a budget, and have an immediate impact on sales.

Fishkin pointed out that PPC gets 10% of clicks, but 90% of spend. He said SEO is more challenging and less controllable, but the spend is there and the fact that people click organic results.

Gray said he believes that PPC could make SEO better, but Google is banning people now, so it makes things more challenging. Naylor said he believes SEO is more “open.” Weber and Fishkin both said they would outsource PPC over SEO.

Michael Gray Gray said it’s important to get in the top during the early part of the research phase, especially since Google is personalizing results for everyone now. Churchill noted that Google’s personalization is a better argument for PPC. Like iEntry CEO Rich Ord recently noted, the addition of personalized results could “make people less reliant on organic search results for their traffic and in turn increase their use of Adwords.”

Another point was brought up as we recently discussed – that the search engines are pushing organic listings down with mixed media (blended, universal) results.

Certainly there are many advantages to both PPC and SEO, and they can compliment one another. Actually, a recent study from a couple of NYU Stern professors found that organic search engine results can play a direct role in whether or not a paid listing is clicked.

Which do you think is more important – SEO or PPC?

Share your thoughts here.

2009 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

December 3rd, 2009 | Posted in Blog | No Comments

Another year has come and gone, and as always, we’re taking a moment to look back at the happenings of 2009—the people, events and memories that made this year unique. Each year, we examine the billions of queries that people around the world have typed into Google search to discover the zeitgeist—the spirit of the times. As we welcome the new year, we hope you enjoy this glimpse at the past.

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Fastest Rising (Global)

1. michael jackson
2. facebook
3. tuenti
4. twitter
5. sanalika
6. new moon
7. lady gaga
8. windows 7
9. dantri.com.vn
10. torpedo gratis

Fastest Rising in Entertainment (Global)

1. michael jackson
2. transformers
3. eminem
4. naruto shippuden
5. beyonce
6. peliculas id
7. paranormal activity
8. anime online
9. natasha richardson
10. poker face lyrics

Fastest Rising in Food & Drink (Global)

1. acai berry
2. picnic
3. ??????
4. tesco direct
5. senseo
6. peanut butter recall
7. nespresso commande
8. habibs delivery
9. mocktail
10. masterchef australia

Fastest Falling (Global)

1. beijing 2008
2. euro 2008
3. heath ledger
4. barack obama
5. amy winehouse
6. kraloyun
7. dailymotion
8. bebo
9. wii
10. emule

Fastest Rising in Sports (Global)

1. real madrid
2. us open
3. ufc
4. sahadan
5. livescore
6. pacquiao vs cotto
7. wbc ??
8. pga tour leaderboard
9. confederations cup
10. l’equipe football

Methodology

To compile the 2009 Year-End Zeitgeist, we studied the aggregation of billions of queries people typed into Google search this year. We use data from multiple sources, including Insights for Search, Google Trends and internal data tools. We also filter out spam and repeat queries to build out lists that best reflect “the spirit of the times.” All of the search queries we studied are anonymous—no personal information was used.

Except where noted, all of these search terms are most popular for 2009—ranked in order of the queries with the largest volume of searches this year. In some cases, we list the “fastest rising” queries, which means we found the most popular searches conducted in 2009 and then ranked them based on how much their popularity increased compared to 2008. Conversely, “fastest falling” queries were very popular in 2008 but flattened in popularity in 2009.

Online Shoppers Have Bigger Holiday…

November 24th, 2009 | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Online Shoppers Have Bigger Holiday Budgets Than Offline Shoppers

Study Finds Online Shoppers To Spend Over 30% Online

Compete has shared some findings from a new study on consumer holiday shopping behavior. According to the firm, active online buyers (consumers who intend to spend over 30% of their holiday budgets online) have bigger budgets than other shoppers. Furthermore, they are more likely to spend that money on Black Friday.

The study shows that “active online buyers” plan to spend twice as much ($912 on average) throughout the holiday season as other consumers. 37 percent of the online buyers also say they’ll shop on Black Friday, compared with 33 percent of other consumers.

“Many retailers are bracing for lower online sales, but our research shows that not all shoppers are created equal,” said Debra Miller, associate, Retail and Consumers Products at Compete. “While most consumers say they’ll spend less this year, online shoppers seem to have deeper pockets and they’ll be looking for deals starting on Black Friday. Smart retailers should take a much closer look at online shopping segments relevant to them to capture a larger share of wallet among online consumers.”

compete-holiday-retail1

compete-holiday-retail2

Other findings from Compete include:

– 86 percent of shoppers have completed less than half of their total holiday shopping; 41 percent have not yet begun.

– 90 percent of consumers will spend at least some portion of their holiday budget online this year, up from 84 percent in 2008.

– 42 percent of consumers reported that they are likely or extremely likely to select an “in store pick up” option if available for holiday purchases.

– 44 percent of consumers plan to spend less this holiday season compared to last year, while only 12 percent of shoppers anticipate spending more.

The report was compiled from a survey of over 2,900 consumers this month. What are your holiday spending plans? Are you an “active online buyer?”

Google Finally Shows Off Chrome OS

November 19th, 2009 | Posted in Blog | No Comments

Google Chrome OS to Be Ready for the Holidays (Next Year)

Everybody has been waiting to see a glimpse of Google’s upcoming Chrome OS – that is Google’s new operating system. Those who attended an event at the company’s headquarters today had a chance to view a demo in person, and many more details than previously available are now out on the OS.

Google has now opened up the code for Chrome OS, so developers can get in there and see what it’s really all about. For all of the non-developer types, Google has provided the following short video, which sums up what Chrome OS is as a concept.

Google says Chrome OS is focused on three main things: speed, simplicity, and security. The main philosophy behind Chrome OS is that most people use their computers mostly to access the web, so Chrome OS cuts out the middle man, which is your operating system. With Chrome OS, your browser is the operating system. The programs you would use on Chrome OS are all web apps. They’re all in the cloud. Nothing is saved on your computer. This mean that if your machine dies on you, or you lose it, or if it gets broken, you can just get another one and all of your data will be readily available, because it’s all in the cloud.

Google says that it takes about seven seconds to go to the log-in screen, and three more to log on to an application. That’s much less time that it probably takes you to boot up and get onto Facebook on your current machine.

The look of Chrome OS is very similar to the Chrome browser, but it has application tabs and an app menu. You may have seen the screenshots at TechCrunch recently. Google did note, however, that the user interface could change to some extent by the time it actually launches.

When you use apps in Chrome OS, they can take up the entire screen, so that it doesn’t even look like you’re using a browser or an OS. You can also drag and drop tabs. If you hook up additional hardware to the machine, it will bring up windows for that. For example, at the demo, they pointed out that if you hook a camera up, it will bring up a window with the picture files, and you can pull a picture up and open it in a new browser Window.

Fore more technical details about Chrome OS, and how it handles security issues, read this live blog. Here is another account from Danny Sullivan.

From the sounds of it, Google Chrome OS will not be replacing established operating systems for users who use a lot of programs that aren’t web-based. However, it has the potential to cut significantly into the market share of Windows, Mac, etc. among users who do mainly use their machines to connect to the web. I can see this catching on in a big way, particularly with the Netbook crowd, which Chrome OS is essentially aimed at.

Google Chrome OS is currently scheduled to launch sometime before the holiday season next year. Do you think Chrome OS will be a hit? Tell us what you think.

Internet Most Popular Source For Sports News And Information

November 9th, 2009 | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Both men and women look for sports content online

While TV is the most common way for people to watch sports, the Internet is the most popular way for both men and women (36.1% and 32.7% respectively) to get sports news and information, according to a new report by Burst Media.

The Internet is trailed by local TV programming (23.7%), national TV networks (15.1%), local newspaper (6.7%), national newspaper (3.6%), and sports radio (2.9%).

Among the key age segments, 18-24 years and 25-34 years, the Internet far outweighs both local and national TV coverage as the main source of sports and news information. Adults 55 years and over still turn to local TV news over the Internet.

Among all respondents sports content is in demand regardless of which media is cited as their primary source. Nearly one-half (49.2%) of respondents use the Internet to check sports scores and 41.3 percent read sports-related news stories online.

Interestingly, nearly as many women as men use the Internet to check sports scores (47.3% vs.50.5%), read sports stories (39% vs. 42.8%) and visit professional team sports sites (25.2% vs. 26.2%). The Burst survey also found over half (55%) of all respondents indicated they have never watched live streaming game coverage on the Internet.

“It’s abundantly clear that men and women of all ages are active consumers of sports content online,” said Chuck Moran, Chief Marketing Officer for Burst Media. “This provides marketers an opportunity to expand the reach of their campaigns targeted to sports enthusiasts by adding an online component”.
Chuck-Moran
“Also, by utilizing a multichannel strategy of combining Internet and TV, advertisers can surround their target audience with coordinated messaging for greater impact.”

The survey also found that although the Internet is the most popular media source for sports content, it is not seen as the best source. Overall, national TV sports networks, such as ESPN, are viewed by respondents as the best place to get sports and information news. However, men believe national TV sports networks and Internet sports content sites offer equivalent sports content (30.1% and 28.7% of men, respectively).

Internet domain names set to appear in non-Latin scripts

October 30th, 2009 | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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October 30, 2009 8:13 a.m. EDT

(CNN) — The group that controls top-level domain codes for Internet addresses is poised to permit non-Latin language codes for the first time in its history.

“It’s the single biggest change in 10 or 15 years,” said Rod Beckstrom, CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

The board of directors of the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will vote on the proposed protocol for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) — those represented by local language characters — Friday at its meeting in Seoul, South Korea.

The change, which has a target implementation date of November 16, would allow Web addresses in Cyrillic, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese and others.

“This is one of the most exciting developments for the users of the Internet globally in years,” said Beckstrom. “IDNs will enable the people the world over to use domain name addresses in their own language.”

Beckstrom said support for the change is strong around the world and that all objections had “been handled.”

“So I think it’s just extremely probable, and we’re really excited to move forward with that,” he said.

And if, as expected, it does move forward, it means that Web surfing is about to get easier for about half of the world’s 1.6 billion Internet users.

“There are over 40 million users in the Arab world,” said Wael Ghanim, Google’s product and marketing manager for the Middle East and Africa, “and this number is expected to increase in the coming days, which in turn makes the Arabic language one of the strategic languages through which a lot of companies, for instance Google, are interested in.”

But some worry that the change could lead to more miscommunication.

“If Korean is used during the international communication, foreigners won’t be able to understand and won’t be able to read it well enough, so there could be some problems in communication,” said South Korean Internet user Chang Yong-woong.

But others see the IDNs opening the Internet to a much broader population.

“If they can make this technology work, and people can use their own language to enter in addresses, I think that that would really expand the practical applications of the Internet,” said Chinese Internet cafe owner Zhang Zhiming.

“People from different walks of life and different age groups could get more engaged with it.”

One question that has not yet been resolved, however, is how people in countries that use the Latin script will be able to access Web sites with Korean, Hindi or Arabic domain names.

ICANN doesn’t have an answer to that, but is confident a new technology will fill that gap soon.

CNN’s Errol Barnett contributed to this report.

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