What a rocking 2008 year it been for the Search Engine Marketing industry! With the current economy in the dumps, unemployment at an all time high and a passing of the guard for the leadership of the U.S., uncertainty is the only thing on most Americans minds. So why am I the only guy in my neighborhood that’s not so nervous? Because I run a Search Engine Marketing company and as companies spend less on traditional media like television and radio, the new consensus for most companies is “cost-effective advertising”, which is why the Search Engine Marketing industry has little to worry about.
Organic Results
Organic search results have had quite a year of changes. The biggest news in the Organic World is the inclusion of several different “results” in Google’s search results. Never before have search results ever been so comprehensive now including video, books, real time news, and blog results. And Google knows these search results make for better searching, especially when the searcher that looking for up to the minute information on certain subjects.
I will admit including book results may be overboard, but let me give you an example of how helpful up to date info on Search Engines can really be. Last month was the biggest fight in MMA history as the UFC Heavyweight Championship was on the line when current champ, Randy Couture battled the up and coming monster, Brock Lesnar. Believe it or not, this CEO has basic cable and I can’t order any pay per view. Rather than go out to a crowded bar where I can barely hear or see what’s going on, I always pull up a chair to my PC and get live action from several blogs. Plus, I’m cheap and the $50 or so is a lot of money in my opinion. So, I’m multitasking reading comments from different people and sure enough most of the blogs as usual when something happens kind of froze up. I knew something must have happened so I went to Google and typed in “UFC 91” and right on the top of Google’s search results was the updated news with a picture and a headline that read “there’s a new Heavyweight Champion in the UFC”. Google is very cool and saved me $50. Of course not as cool as watching it live, but exciting none the less. Not only were Google’s search results extremely helpful, but they also saved me $$$. Google adding images, news and videos to their Algorithms have really made searching more fun and brought more opportunities to the SEM World.
Pay Per Click
Well folks, the days of .10 cent clicks are over. The PPC Management team at Direct Hit Solutions has recently noticed that Google is setting minimum bids on pretty much every category known to man. I remember years back, clients could get those inexpensive clicks on niche keywords, but Google has recently revamped their PPC platform and in most cases made advertisers monthly spend go up. In my opinion PPC advertising on Google is still very inexpensive and being that it’s performance based, I still say there’s nothing to lose unless your website is that terrible and has no chance of ever making you money.
Quality score is another part of the Google revamp which did exist before, but it seems it is much more heavily weighed upon than in years past. Having a 0/10 quality score is a priority to reorganize that specific non-impactful keyword into another ad group all together.
New Views! After years of looking at the same old campaign statistics, Google has upgraded campaign statistics by dividing search network and content network groupings up. Now you can easily see your campaign summary in several views including Search only, Search and Content Network, Search partners, etc… Much better and very helpful!
