4 Tactics to Drive Incremental Local SEO Performance

Even the most well-optimized local SEO campaigns can be enhanced to deliver more incremental results. The last thing brands that have built successful local SEO programs should do is rest on their laurels while competitors catch up. Instead, they should consider further defining tactics and strategies.

Before further strategies are engaged, brands should ensure they've effectively covered all the basic blocking and tackling for local SEO. After ensuring a solid foundation is in place, it's time to explore additional opportunities and enhance the program to further improve results. Brands ready to do so should consider these four tactics.

1. Google+ Verification & Optimization

Merge a location's Google+ Business with its Google+ Local page.

This process enables the most comprehensive ongoing optimization to be performed for the location, while maximizing social visibility through one critically important Google listing.

2. Promote Your Google+ Page

Google provides some very simple steps to promote your Google+ Page.

One example would be to connect your Google+ page to your AdWords campaign, which enables the advertiser and the Google+ page to share +1's.

Any +1's on a company's ads will count on its Google+ page and vice versa... simple! Businesses should explore this and other ways to promote their Google+ Local Pages.

3. Yelp Optimization

Yelp is an important reviews platform that is referenced by Apple Maps when users search for local businesses.

A location's Yelp business listing can be claimed and managed.

A business enhanced listing enables a business to update its info including photos, calls to action, videos and listing updates.

Despite Yelp's influence, many businesses ignore the opportunity to proactively manage their listings.

4. Video Production & Optimization

It helps to have geo-tagged video associated with a business and integrated into the business' Google+ optimization strategy.

Businesses can create YouTube channels to optimize video and integrate video into their enhanced Yelp listings.

Summary

Brands that invest in local SEO programs and realize solid returns on the investment shouldn't sit back and relax. Many brands have yet to embrace the opportunity offered by local SEO; so it will likely grow more competitive in the future.

The most effective marketers can protect their local SEO leadership by continuing to take stock of what's been done to date and investigate opportunities to deliver incremental value going forward.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Facebook Custom Audiences: 7 Strategies Marketers Can Start Using Today

At the end of January, Facebook announced the global rollout of Custom Audiences, an ad targeting and retargeting solution it began testing in October.

Custom Audiences allows marketers to retarget Facebook users who earlier visited their websites or mobile apps, as well as combine first-party data such as customer emails, purchase data, and CRM data with Facebook's own targeting parameters to make their Facebook ads much more relevant.

Already, Facebook's easy-to-use Custom Audiences targeting has proved highly popular among marketers. By simply appending Facebook's tracking pixel, you can now segment website visitors into target audiences and re-engage them with highly targeted messages across the world's largest social network.

Finally, advertisers have a Facebook retargeting solution with the power and scale of FBX, but without the monthly fees charged by third-party FBX media-buying partners.

Now that Custom Audiences are here to stay, what are some of the coolest ways marketers can use the targeting platform to reach more customers? Here are seven Custom Audiences strategies you can start using today.

1. Retarget Website Visitors

The most basic way to use Custom Audiences is to re-engage consumers who have visited your website, but left without converting.

Most often, when visitors "bounce" from your website it's because they're still researching products, or they aren't convinced your product is right for them.

Use Custom Audiences retargeting on Facebook to give them a reason to reconsider your brand. Make sure your ads include calls-to-action tailored to the devices they're using to access Facebook.

2. Product-Level Retargeting

You can now reengage website visitors based on the products, services, or destinations they last viewed on their websites.

Simply create a new Custom Audience based on a segment of website visitors who viewed a particular category of products. Then, use Facebook advertising to re-engage the product-category page visitors on with a tailored creative, incentive, or offer to help stimulate action or conversion.

3. Reach Mobile App Users on the Desktop

If you're investing heavily in mobile apps, but still struggle with how to justify mobile app ROI, use Facebook Custom Audiences to more easily connect the dots between customers who use their mobile apps, but purchase on other devices.

For example, a customer may use a mobile app to research flights, but only consider purchasing the flight on his laptop. With Custom Audiences, a travel marketer could present this person with a desktop-based incentive offer on Facebook, driving him to complete the purchase he originally researched on the mobile app.

4. Retarget Website Visitors on Mobile

Using the inverse of the previous example, marketers can also retarget visitors who have come to their websites through a desktop device with a mobile-targeted ad.

For example, a retail marketer could create a Custom Audience of website visitors from desktop devices who have abandoned during the final stages of the shopping process. Then, retarget the same users while they are "on the go" on their mobile devices with a geo-specific mobile campaign that will drive them into your brick-and-mortar store with the goal of conversion.

5. Cross-Sell/Upsell to Existing Customers

One of the primary ways marketers can increase sales with Custom Audiences is to reengage with existing, high-value customers. Marketing to existing customers is a great way to boost repeat sales.

With Custom Audiences, you can create new segments comprised solely of converting visitors, and then reengage them on Facebook with offers and promotions for similar or adjacent products.

6. Nurture Leads and Engage Customers

Despite huge advances in digital marketing, email still often works best for lead nurturing and customer communication. Custom Audiences offers another viable solution for nurturing leads and engaging current customers that is far easier than launching an email campaign.

Simply create new Facebook campaigns with the specific goal of lead outreach, and then tailor your KPIs accordingly.

For example, a B2B marketer could nurture leads by providing this audience segment with useful, topical, or thought-leadership content about its industry. That same marketer could build rapport and reduce churn with existing customers by using Facebook ads to update them on new blog posts, whitepapers, and customer events.

7. Retarget Facebook Users Based on Search Histories

It's now possible to combine the power of Custom Audience targeting with search retargeting using a digital marketing platform. This advanced form of Custom Audience retargeting helps you map the buying intentions (Google and Bing search history) of website visitors to their potential lifetime value (audience DNA), and then serve relevant ads to them on Facebook based on these profiles.

For example, with combined search and Custom Audience retargeting, you could target Facebook users who searched for "black running shoes" who are also female, 25-30 years old, high household income, and have made purchases from its website in the past year.

Summary

With Facebook Custom Audiences, you now have a way to engage customers, leads, and website visitors across devices, based on dozens of parameters, including search history and their stage in the buying cycle. Best of all, the new solution is easy to implement and less costly than advertising on FBX. Start with these seven simple tips and you'll be well on your way to Facebook retargeting success.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Facebook Custom Audiences: 7 Strategies Marketers Can Start Using Today

At the end of January, Facebook announced the global rollout of Custom Audiences, an ad targeting and retargeting solution it began testing in October.

Custom Audiences allows marketers to retarget Facebook users who earlier visited their websites or mobile apps, as well as combine first-party data such as customer emails, purchase data, and CRM data with Facebook's own targeting parameters to make their Facebook ads much more relevant.

Already, Facebook's easy-to-use Custom Audiences targeting has proved highly popular among marketers. By simply appending Facebook's tracking pixel, you can now segment website visitors into target audiences and re-engage them with highly targeted messages across the world's largest social network.

Finally, advertisers have a Facebook retargeting solution with the power and scale of FBX, but without the monthly fees charged by third-party FBX media-buying partners.

Now that Custom Audiences are here to stay, what are some of the coolest ways marketers can use the targeting platform to reach more customers? Here are seven Custom Audiences strategies you can start using today.

1. Retarget Website Visitors

The most basic way to use Custom Audiences is to re-engage consumers who have visited your website, but left without converting.

Most often, when visitors "bounce" from your website it's because they're still researching products, or they aren't convinced your product is right for them.

Use Custom Audiences retargeting on Facebook to give them a reason to reconsider your brand. Make sure your ads include calls-to-action tailored to the devices they're using to access Facebook.

2. Product-Level Retargeting

You can now reengage website visitors based on the products, services, or destinations they last viewed on their websites.

Simply create a new Custom Audience based on a segment of website visitors who viewed a particular category of products. Then, use Facebook advertising to re-engage the product-category page visitors on with a tailored creative, incentive, or offer to help stimulate action or conversion.

3. Reach Mobile App Users on the Desktop

If you're investing heavily in mobile apps, but still struggle with how to justify mobile app ROI, use Facebook Custom Audiences to more easily connect the dots between customers who use their mobile apps, but purchase on other devices.

For example, a customer may use a mobile app to research flights, but only consider purchasing the flight on his laptop. With Custom Audiences, a travel marketer could present this person with a desktop-based incentive offer on Facebook, driving him to complete the purchase he originally researched on the mobile app.

4. Retarget Website Visitors on Mobile

Using the inverse of the previous example, marketers can also retarget visitors who have come to their websites through a desktop device with a mobile-targeted ad.

For example, a retail marketer could create a Custom Audience of website visitors from desktop devices who have abandoned during the final stages of the shopping process. Then, retarget the same users while they are "on the go" on their mobile devices with a geo-specific mobile campaign that will drive them into your brick-and-mortar store with the goal of conversion.

5. Cross-Sell/Upsell to Existing Customers

One of the primary ways marketers can increase sales with Custom Audiences is to reengage with existing, high-value customers. Marketing to existing customers is a great way to boost repeat sales.

With Custom Audiences, you can create new segments comprised solely of converting visitors, and then reengage them on Facebook with offers and promotions for similar or adjacent products.

6. Nurture Leads and Engage Customers

Despite huge advances in digital marketing, email still often works best for lead nurturing and customer communication. Custom Audiences offers another viable solution for nurturing leads and engaging current customers that is far easier than launching an email campaign.

Simply create new Facebook campaigns with the specific goal of lead outreach, and then tailor your KPIs accordingly.

For example, a B2B marketer could nurture leads by providing this audience segment with useful, topical, or thought-leadership content about its industry. That same marketer could build rapport and reduce churn with existing customers by using Facebook ads to update them on new blog posts, whitepapers, and customer events.

7. Retarget Facebook Users Based on Search Histories

It's now possible to combine the power of Custom Audience targeting with search retargeting using a digital marketing platform. This advanced form of Custom Audience retargeting helps you map the buying intentions (Google and Bing search history) of website visitors to their potential lifetime value (audience DNA), and then serve relevant ads to them on Facebook based on these profiles.

For example, with combined search and Custom Audience retargeting, you could target Facebook users who searched for "black running shoes" who are also female, 25-30 years old, high household income, and have made purchases from its website in the past year.

Summary

With Facebook Custom Audiences, you now have a way to engage customers, leads, and website visitors across devices, based on dozens of parameters, including search history and their stage in the buying cycle. Best of all, the new solution is easy to implement and less costly than advertising on FBX. Start with these seven simple tips and you'll be well on your way to Facebook retargeting success.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Google Gay Rights Doodle Kicks Off 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games

Google's home page today celebrates the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics and also protests Russia's stance on gay rights in the form of a Doodle. Abandoning its usual primary colors, Google's logo adopts rainbow colors symbolic of gay pride.

The sports depicted in Google's Doodle are skiing, hockey, curling, bobsledding, figure skating, and snowboarding. Beneath the Doodle is a quote from the Olympic Charter, from section 4 of the "Fundamental Principles of Olympism":

"The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play."

Google then links users to a search for [Olympic Charter]. The Doodle appears on all of Google's sites, including Russia (google.ru).

Showing support to the gay community shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has followed Google. In 2013, 2012, and 2011, Google was heavily involved with gay pride events. For LGBT-related searches during that month, Google also traditionally adds an Easter egg that decorates the search bar or search results with rainbow colors.

Not that the move comes without controversy, as comments sections on coverage of this story all over the web today is quite hateful from vocal (and usually anonymous troll) opponents of gay rights. However, Google isn't without supporters as well.

Google also took some heat on Valentine's Day 2012 by daring to feature a gay couple in their Doodle.

Russia passed an gay propaganda law, and has warned athletes, attendees, and protesters that any violations of its law will result in arrests, prison sentences, fines, or deportation.

"Google has once again proven itself to be a true corporate leader for equality," Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT rights organization, told Reuters. "Alongside Olympic sponsors like AT&T, Google has made a clear and unequivocal statement that Russia's anti-LGBT discrimination is indefensible. Now it's time for each and every remaining Olympic sponsor to follow their lead. The clock is ticking, and the world is watching."

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Google Requiring Some Business To Reverify Their Listings Or Be Removed From Google Maps

Some business owners are receiving emails from Google requiring them to reverify their listings within three-weeks or their listings will be removed from Google Maps and Google+ Local.

The emails contain the subject, “Action Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing.”

It is unclear how many businesses have received this notification and how many businesses this may have impacted.

Google’s Jade Wang said in a help thread that these emails are indeed from Google and should be taken seriously. The email reads:

Due to changes in Google Maps, we�d like to inform you that unless you review and confirm the information in your Google Places account, we will no longer be able to keep and show it to Google users after February 21, 2014.

As a result, on this date your listing “LISTING GOES HERE” may be deleted.

If you wish to keep your listing active, follow these three easy steps:

1. Log in to your Google Places account

2. Review and update your information

3. Click the �Submit� button

Sincerely,

The Google Places Team

If you are nervous the email went into your spam bucket and it might apply to you, then you can manually take these steps to be safe. Jade said:

If you did receive this email, don�t worry. Please log into Places for Business, take a look at your business information, update it if necessary, and click �Submit.� You�ll need to do this for all listings in your account by February 21, 2014, so they can stay on Google Maps. Otherwise, you�ll need to add your business information and undergo PIN verification using Google Places again.

Google Penalized A Germany Agency & Their Clients For Link Schemes, Says Matt Cutts

Soon after Google has warned Germany SEOs about paid links and link schemes, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted on Twitter that they took action on a German agency and their clients for link schemes.

Matt Cutts wrote, “this week we took action on a German agency’s link network/clients.” He added that Google will be going after more Germany link schemes in the near future.

This was not unexpected, the other week, Matt Cutts also announced on Twitter that they targeted a French link network, that shut down shortly after the announcement.

This time, Matt Cutts did not specify which agency or network of links Google targeted but I suspect in the next few days, we will hear rumors of the specific company.

Here is Matt’s tweet:

This week we took action on a German agency's link network/clients. More to come in Germany.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) February 7, 2014

Related Stories:Google Warns German Webmasters That Paid Links Violate Google�s GuidelinesGoogle Squashes Backlinks.com, Another Link Network Outed By Google�s Matt CuttsGoogle Eliminates Another Link Network, BuildMyRank.com � Just One Of Several?Google Busts Yet Another Link Network: Anglo RankGoogle May Have Penalized Another Major Link Network: Ghost Rank 2.0Did Google Just Penalize Another Link Network? SAPE Links�Text Link Ads� Was Latest Hit By Google�s Actions Against Link SellersGoogle Eliminates Another Link Network, BuildMyRank.com � Just One Of Several?Google Zaps Another Link Network, �Several Thousand� Link Sellers Hit

Wow! See How Much Screen Real Estate Google Is Giving Rivals In Its EU Antitrust Settlement

Google’s finally reached a proposed agreement with the European Union over antitrust charges. Judging from screenshots the EU has released, it will give Google rivals unprecedented positioning in Google’s results, sometimes for free, sometimes for a fee.

Consider how the EU is saying that shopping results will appear, as part of the agreement. The before:

And the after, based on screenshots that the EU has released:

In the after, you can see an “Alternatives” section that gives shopping search engines co-equal space alongside Google’s own advertisers who buy product listing ads (which is what “Google Shopping results” are — just ads). This treatment will also happen with mobile search:

Here’s a before on how it would work with local results:

And the after for desktop and tablet:

When They Pay & When They Don’t

Google competitors get another round of raising objections to the proposed settlement. Microsoft’s statement from its general counsel is cautious:

For decades transparency has been a hallmark of the Commission�s competition proceedings, and it should not be sacrificed today.� As Vice President Almunia has acknowledged, market testing of Google�s last two proposals identified serious and wide spread concerns about the damage they would have done. If these new proposals are materially better than those that have already been rejected then they should be broadly market tested.� If this is really a good deal for consumers then the data will confirm it.

But the FairSearch group, which Microsoft backs, is out�saying�the proposal is “worse than doing nothing.” That’s not surprising given that FairSearch often seems like it will be unsatisfied with anything short of Google completely closing.

However, “worse than nothing” is crazy, given what the competitors are getting here. In cases where Google doesn’t charge for listings, as with local, the proposals put competitors actually above Google’s own listings, in a guaranteed space, and for free.

Currently, competitors — like any publisher — have no guarantee of showing up in Google’s listings at all (listings that, in the US, have case law backing them as protected First Amendment free speech, IE, Google can largely list what it wants).

In cases where Google charges for listings, as with Google Shopping, then competitors will have to pay. The EU found this reasonable, in its press release about the proposed settlement:

Some complainants or competitors have expressed the view that Google should not require them to pay to feature prominently on Google’s page. Google’s proposals do not require payment for all forms of rival links. It is only required for the commercial categories such as shopping comparators, where Google charges for inclusion in its own specialised search service. For these commercial categories I consider the auction mechanism an efficient way to select rival links.

FairSearch objects:

The Google proposal requires rivals to pay Google for placement similar to that of Google�s own material, undercutting the ability of other to compete and provide consumer choice. This will be done through an auction mechanism that requires participating companies to hand the vast majority of their profits to Google.

FairSearch omits the fact that unlike virtually all other advertisers out there, this tiny group of Google competitors will apparently compete against themselves for a dedicated spot that actual merchants aren’t allowed in. The pool of competition for these spots will be much less — indeed, perhaps even making it possible for Google competitors to collude among themselves to keep the prices they pay for ads low, maybe lower than merchants themselves have to pay.

In some ways, it may even help institutionalize these players with having a guaranteed source of arbitrage, where they can buy Google traffic for cheaper than merchants can, then reselling it to merchants on their own sites and making a profit. They have no such guarantee of that now.

How it all will play out in practice still remains to be seen, as if the agreement proposed today is finalized. We’ll also have more reporting on this to come.

Future of Search & Content Marketing: Expand Your Mindset

Google, Bing, and Yahoo aren’t going away, but they will become less important in the grand scheme of content marketing. This, according to concepts emerging from Covario’s INFLECTIONPoint 2014 event on Wednesday.

The major search engines are gaining less traction today than they once were as people turn to “niche” search engines within social media and other destination sites to find what they need. Think Facebook, Amazon, Yelp and more. 

This was the focus of the Future of Search and Content Marketing talk led by Jeff MacGurn, vice president of earned media at Covario.

MacGurn began the talk by showing the rise in alternative search methods other than the traditional search engines like Google. The percentage of people who used social media to find websites increased 7 percent from 2011 to 2012, according to Forrester Research data: 

In fact, not too long ago, BuzzFeed reported the massive lift in traffic it was seeing from Facebook alone.

This and other similar data points segued into the importance of multichannel content marketing. MacGurn talked about the need to serve content where the audience is. For some, that means local channels. 

In fact, some industries sway towards a more mobile audience by nature, like pharmacies, restaurants, and financial institutions. Think Bank of America, said MacGurn: If users are searching for “B of A” on their mobile device, they’re not likely looking for an “about us” page; they’re looking for contact information. 

So what that means is not only thinking about optimizing for the device (i.e., reponsive design), but also creating the content that matters for the device. And it’s not just the Google or Bing search engine you should be thinking about as a local merchant. Don’t forget about niche search engines like:

Pinterest (we covered Pinterest’s move to local marketing at SEW, here)YelpFoursquare

And the future future of content marketing? Like the Orson Wells "1984" future? Think about the imminent rise of devices like Google Glass, said MacGurn. 

And why not? As marketers, we’re already thinking about how our content plays out across devices, as in responsive design. If equipment like Google Glass catches on as forecasts say it will, this could be the next “hot” device to optimize for. 

But for now, focus on making the content the best it can be in the mediums we already have an understanding of. And MacGurn said that while content has always been king, today, he argued, context is king. 

And to make great content, you need context – the story. MacGurn shared a case study he ran across that measured sentiment of images in social media. 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this study showed that a picture with a story behind it versus just a standalone picture skyrocketed the sentiment metric. Here’s an example from that case study:

So we have the devices, and within them, the media to deliver the message and the power of stories. What does this look like for search and content marketing in the future? 

People have specific needs when they search, MacGurn said, and Google and Bing aren’t always the first place they go to get that information anymore. While major search engines will continue to be important, MacGurn predicts it will be “the death of a thousand paper cuts” as the big players take somewhat of a back seat to the many ways users want to find information online.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Future of Search & Content Marketing: Expand Your Mindset

Google, Bing, and Yahoo aren’t going away, but they will become less important in the grand scheme of content marketing. This, according to concepts emerging from Covario’s INFLECTIONPoint 2014 event on Wednesday.

The major search engines are gaining less traction today than they once were as people turn to “niche” search engines within social media and other destination sites to find what they need. Think Facebook, Amazon, Yelp and more. 

This was the focus of the Future of Search and Content Marketing talk led by Jeff MacGurn, vice president of earned media at Covario.

MacGurn began the talk by showing the rise in alternative search methods other than the traditional search engines like Google. The percentage of people who used social media to find websites increased 7 percent from 2011 to 2012, according to Forrester Research data: 

In fact, not too long ago, BuzzFeed reported the massive lift in traffic it was seeing from Facebook alone.

This and other similar data points segued into the importance of multichannel content marketing. MacGurn talked about the need to serve content where the audience is. For some, that means local channels. 

In fact, some industries sway towards a more mobile audience by nature, like pharmacies, restaurants, and financial institutions. Think Bank of America, said MacGurn: If users are searching for “B of A” on their mobile device, they’re not likely looking for an “about us” page; they’re looking for contact information. 

So what that means is not only thinking about optimizing for the device (i.e., reponsive design), but also creating the content that matters for the device. And it’s not just the Google or Bing search engine you should be thinking about as a local merchant. Don’t forget about niche search engines like:

Pinterest (we covered Pinterest’s move to local marketing at SEW, here)YelpFoursquare

And the future future of content marketing? Like the Orson Wells "1984" future? Think about the imminent rise of devices like Google Glass, said MacGurn. 

And why not? As marketers, we’re already thinking about how our content plays out across devices, as in responsive design. If equipment like Google Glass catches on as forecasts say it will, this could be the next “hot” device to optimize for. 

But for now, focus on making the content the best it can be in the mediums we already have an understanding of. And MacGurn said that while content has always been king, today, he argued, context is king. 

And to make great content, you need context – the story. MacGurn shared a case study he ran across that measured sentiment of images in social media. 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this study showed that a picture with a story behind it versus just a standalone picture skyrocketed the sentiment metric. Here’s an example from that case study:

So we have the devices, and within them, the media to deliver the message and the power of stories. What does this look like for search and content marketing in the future? 

People have specific needs when they search, MacGurn said, and Google and Bing aren’t always the first place they go to get that information anymore. While major search engines will continue to be important, MacGurn predicts it will be “the death of a thousand paper cuts” as the big players take somewhat of a back seat to the many ways users want to find information online.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

4 Tactics to Drive Incremental Local SEO Performance

Even the most well-optimized local SEO campaigns can be enhanced to deliver more incremental results. The last thing brands that have built successful local SEO programs should do is rest on their laurels while competitors catch up. Instead, they should consider further defining tactics and strategies.

Before further strategies are engaged, brands should ensure they've effectively covered all the basic blocking and tackling for local SEO. After ensuring a solid foundation is in place, it's time to explore additional opportunities and enhance the program to further improve results. Brands ready to do so should consider these four tactics.

1. Google+ Verification & Optimization

Merge a location's Google+ Business with its Google+ Local page.

This process enables the most comprehensive ongoing optimization to be performed for the location, while maximizing social visibility through one critically important Google listing.

2. Promote Your Google+ Page

Google provides some very simple steps to promote your Google+ Page.

One example would be to connect your Google+ page to your AdWords campaign, which enables the advertiser and the Google+ page to share +1's.

Any +1's on a company's ads will count on its Google+ page and vice versa... simple! Businesses should explore this and other ways to promote their Google+ Local Pages.

3. Yelp Optimization

Yelp is an important reviews platform that is referenced by Apple Maps when users search for local businesses.

A location's Yelp business listing can be claimed and managed.

A business enhanced listing enables a business to update its info including photos, calls to action, videos and listing updates.

Despite Yelp's influence, many businesses ignore the opportunity to proactively manage their listings.

4. Video Production & Optimization

It helps to have geo-tagged video associated with a business and integrated into the business' Google+ optimization strategy.

Businesses can create YouTube channels to optimize video and integrate video into their enhanced Yelp listings.

Summary

Brands that invest in local SEO programs and realize solid returns on the investment shouldn't sit back and relax. Many brands have yet to embrace the opportunity offered by local SEO; so it will likely grow more competitive in the future.

The most effective marketers can protect their local SEO leadership by continuing to take stock of what's been done to date and investigate opportunities to deliver incremental value going forward.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Google’s Latest Manual Action Penalty: Spammy Structured Markup

Google recently began sending a new manual action spam notification to webmasters for “spammy structured markup” also known as rich snippet spam.

This comes after Google dropped 15% of the rich snippets, setting the bar higher for what sites are able to display rich snippets in the search results.

The new manual action message from Google reads as follows:

Spammy structured markup

Markup on some pages on this site appears to use techniques such as marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that violates Google’s Rich Snippet Quality guidelines.

This is the first time we’ve seen this manual action, in fact, it is not listed in the manual actions help page on Google’s guidelines page.

A webmaster reported getting this in the Google forums.

Related Stories:Google Releases Seven Videos On Typical Manual Spam ActionsGoogle Launches Manual Spam Actions Viewer, Streamlines Reconsideration ProcessGoogle Now Reports �Practically 100%� Of Manual ActionsGoogle Charts �Manual Actions� Against Spam In Search For First TimeGoogle Says �Snag� Has Taken Manual Spam Actions Viewer OfflineImage Mismatch: The Latest Google Webmaster Tools Manual Action Penalty

Wow! See How Much Screen Real Estate Google Is Giving Rivals In Its EU Antitrust Settlement

Google’s finally reached a proposed agreement with the European Union over antitrust charges. Judging from screenshots the EU has released, it will give Google rivals unprecedented positioning in Google’s results, sometimes for free, sometimes for a fee.

Consider how the EU is saying that shopping results will appear, as part of the agreement. The before:

And the after, based on screenshots that the EU has released:

In the after, you can see an “Alternatives” section that gives shopping search engines co-equal space alongside Google’s own advertisers who buy product listing ads (which is what “Google Shopping results” are — just ads). This treatment will also happen with mobile search:

Here’s a before on how it would work with local results:

And the after for desktop and tablet:

When They Pay & When They Don’t

Google competitors get another round of raising objections to the proposed settlement. Microsoft’s statement from its general counsel is cautious:

For decades transparency has been a hallmark of the Commission�s competition proceedings, and it should not be sacrificed today.� As Vice President Almunia has acknowledged, market testing of Google�s last two proposals identified serious and wide spread concerns about the damage they would have done. If these new proposals are materially better than those that have already been rejected then they should be broadly market tested.� If this is really a good deal for consumers then the data will confirm it.

But the FairSearch group, which Microsoft backs, is out�saying�the proposal is “worse than doing nothing.” That’s not surprising given that FairSearch often seems like it will be unsatisfied with anything short of Google completely closing.

However, “worse than nothing” is crazy, given what the competitors are getting here. In cases where Google doesn’t charge for listings, as with local, the proposals put competitors actually above Google’s own listings, in a guaranteed space, and for free.

Currently, competitors — like any publisher — have no guarantee of showing up in Google’s listings at all (listings that, in the US, have case law backing them as protected First Amendment free speech, IE, Google can largely list what it wants).

In cases where Google charges for listings, as with Google Shopping, then competitors will have to pay. The EU found this reasonable, in its press release about the proposed settlement:

Some complainants or competitors have expressed the view that Google should not require them to pay to feature prominently on Google’s page. Google’s proposals do not require payment for all forms of rival links. It is only required for the commercial categories such as shopping comparators, where Google charges for inclusion in its own specialised search service. For these commercial categories I consider the auction mechanism an efficient way to select rival links.

FairSearch objects:

The Google proposal requires rivals to pay Google for placement similar to that of Google�s own material, undercutting the ability of other to compete and provide consumer choice. This will be done through an auction mechanism that requires participating companies to hand the vast majority of their profits to Google.

FairSearch omits the fact that unlike virtually all other advertisers out there, this tiny group of Google competitors will apparently compete against themselves for a dedicated spot that actual merchants aren’t allowed in. The pool of competition for these spots will be much less — indeed, perhaps even making it possible for Google competitors to collude among themselves to keep the prices they pay for ads low, maybe lower than merchants themselves have to pay.

In some ways, it may even help institutionalize these players with having a guaranteed source of arbitrage, where they can buy Google traffic for cheaper than merchants can, then reselling it to merchants on their own sites and making a profit. They have no such guarantee of that now.

How it all will play out in practice still remains to be seen, as if the agreement proposed today is finalized. We’ll also have more reporting on this to come.

7 Ways to Get More Links From Every Piece of Content You Produce

Every day online there are vast amounts of content being created. More than 90 percent of all data ever created was in the last couple of years, yet a lot of people seem to think that they need to be creating new content all the time – carrying out more research, writing more words on their blog, or bombarding us with yet another infographic – in order for them to get more links, more traffic, and more exposure.

Sadly, businesses have created some amazing pieces of content over the years which have never been linked to, whether that's due to:

Failing to have effectively planned or budgeted their promotional campaign.Not putting the content into the correct media for their audiences.Not having an interesting hook or finding the story to sell it.

This post will show you how to improve the number of links you will be able to garner from every piece of content you produce:

Target Audience

When it comes to creating content or promoting it well you need to start by understanding your audience. Create personas for the people you want to reach with your content and how they will interact with it. At the very least, look at:

Who they are.Their goals.Where they visit.How they interact with content.Why your content will help them.

Check out this excellent guide to persona development if you need more help.

Plan Your Promotion Strategy

It's quite upsetting to know that a lot of businesses will happily spend $5,000+ on the research, development, and concept of a piece of content but then only allocate another 15 percent to promoting it.

Remember, people are being bombarded with more and more information every day. With somewhere in the region of 400 million tweets being sent, 150 billion emails, and billions of Facebook updates, is a few hundred dollars really going to make that much of an impact?

You should assign an equal (if not greater) amount of budget to the promotion of your content.

When developing your content promotion strategy think about the advantages and disadvantages of paid, owned, and earned media.

Image Credit: Forrester Research

Influencer Outreach

So many people get this wrong. Whenever I see a big piece of content being released online I like to monitor what happens to it and see who is sharing it, what techniques they might be using and more often than not it is quite embarrassing to watch.

Recently I watched as people from an agency sat bombarding tweets to TV stars and Hollywood actors to let them know of their latest Super Bowl content. I don't mean to sound rude but if you have never spoken to these people or never engaged with their management, then I can't really see a tweet from some agency Twitter account having any influence on them.

You want to find people who have an audience you want to get in front of, not just anyone with an audience; otherwise you'll be wasting your time.

If you're creating content in a niche you're unfamiliar with, then try using social media tools such as Buzz Sumo to find people who shared content similar to your own in the past or use Followerwonk to track these people down based on the interests they list in their Twitter bios.

Sometimes you might want to search various different interests at the same time but thankfully there are some advanced features for this.

If you're creating a large piece of content then it can be a good idea to contact subject matter experts during the development stages for feedback on it or perhaps ask them for a quote. If people feel invested in your content they will be more than likely happy to share it once it's released.

Influential people are often busy people, so make sure that they know of you by building up a relationship with them on social media or their blog beforehand. When it comes to asking them to share your content with their audience, make sure that your outreach email is short and not all about you.

Tap Into Content Curators

There are many fantastic curators who will be happy to help share your content with their audience. You'll be able to identify them as they will readily be sharing lots of different content on social media, by having a high percentage of URL shares and retweets along with a good social authority on Followerwonk.

It is common that these people will also write weekly or monthly round ups of the best content they have found recently. You can often find these round up articles by carrying out a few advanced search operators in Google to find them. Start out by getting to know these people a little first by commenting on the types of content they are curating and sharing, before you roll in and ask for them to link to yours.

Link Reclamation

Once your initial promotion efforts have slowed down and the dust has settled a little bit it's time to carry out some link reclamation. It's not uncommon for people to mention you or your content and either not link correctly or they may not link at all.

When planning your campaign, set up mention tracking. You can use a free service such as Google Alerts, but paid services such as Talk Walker or Mention are far more reliable and return results very quickly.

Use these tools to monitor for mentions of your brand or your content and follow up with the individuals who mentioned you to thank them and offer to answer any clarification questions and ask if they would be happy to credit you with a link.

If you use original visuals as part of your campaign, then load them into a service such as Image Raider to be alerted whenever your images are embedded on a website. It's a good idea to follow up with these people and ask them to credit your site as the original source of the image.

I do this for our comics that we produce on the company website and we release them under a Creative Commons license so that people can use them in blogs or presentations, and it's easy to see who is and who isn't linking back.

You could also look for other content types too such as SlideShare presentations which have been embedded on different websites and contact these people for interviews or guest posts.

Paid Promotion

You might have tried paid promotion in the past with varying degrees of success, but there are lots of great new formats being developed all the time to help you promote your content to your audience.

It's important that you have already determined where your audience spend their time online before using paid social promotion. Otherwise, you'll just waste your money. For example, you wouldn't want to promote a dental hygiene whitepaper on the r/funny subreddit.

In recent years there has also been a large growth in content discovery networks, which aim to amplify your content reach by either suggesting links or images to bloggers when they are creating their articles or by inserting "related links" to other websites. You usually pay on a cost by impression basis (CPM), which can be quite expensive.

For example, Wil Reynolds used Outbrain, Zemanta, Taboola and nRelate for a few experiments with his team and in some instances they were able to convert paid impressions on these networks into links for as little as $24 each. There are of course cases both for and against these services, but if you have the budget and experience with online display advertising it's certainly worth testing the waters to find out what works for you.

Not all paid content discovery campaigns need $500 per day to get them to work. Sometimes just boosting a Facebook update on your fan page for $5 can drive a 517 percent increase in the number of people clicking through to your content.

Repurpose your Content

To maximize the reach and potential number of links from your piece of content you should consider repurposing it into different formats to increase the reach.

Think about different forms and media. If you created a large animated infographic you could repurpose that into either a SlideShare presentation or YouTube video quite easily. Both of these media types could be embedded onto other websites, which you could then follow up with as part of your link reclamation efforts.

Alternatively, if you're giving a webinar or video presentation, transcribe it into an article for your blog.

People prefer to consume content in different ways, and understanding that will open up different possibilities for repurposing your content effectively.

Summary

Hopefully this post will help you plan your next campaign and ensure your awesome content gets the number of links it deserves.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

7 Ways to Get More Links From Every Piece of Content You Produce

Every day online there are vast amounts of content being created. More than 90 percent of all data ever created was in the last couple of years, yet a lot of people seem to think that they need to be creating new content all the time – carrying out more research, writing more words on their blog, or bombarding us with yet another infographic – in order for them to get more links, more traffic, and more exposure.

Sadly, businesses have created some amazing pieces of content over the years which have never been linked to, whether that's due to:

Failing to have effectively planned or budgeted their promotional campaign.Not putting the content into the correct media for their audiences.Not having an interesting hook or finding the story to sell it.

This post will show you how to improve the number of links you will be able to garner from every piece of content you produce:

Target Audience

When it comes to creating content or promoting it well you need to start by understanding your audience. Create personas for the people you want to reach with your content and how they will interact with it. At the very least, look at:

Who they are.Their goals.Where they visit.How they interact with content.Why your content will help them.

Check out this excellent guide to persona development if you need more help.

Plan Your Promotion Strategy

It's quite upsetting to know that a lot of businesses will happily spend $5,000+ on the research, development, and concept of a piece of content but then only allocate another 15 percent to promoting it.

Remember, people are being bombarded with more and more information every day. With somewhere in the region of 400 million tweets being sent, 150 billion emails, and billions of Facebook updates, is a few hundred dollars really going to make that much of an impact?

You should assign an equal (if not greater) amount of budget to the promotion of your content.

When developing your content promotion strategy think about the advantages and disadvantages of paid, owned, and earned media.

Image Credit: Forrester Research

Influencer Outreach

So many people get this wrong. Whenever I see a big piece of content being released online I like to monitor what happens to it and see who is sharing it, what techniques they might be using and more often than not it is quite embarrassing to watch.

Recently I watched as people from an agency sat bombarding tweets to TV stars and Hollywood actors to let them know of their latest Super Bowl content. I don't mean to sound rude but if you have never spoken to these people or never engaged with their management, then I can't really see a tweet from some agency Twitter account having any influence on them.

You want to find people who have an audience you want to get in front of, not just anyone with an audience; otherwise you'll be wasting your time.

If you're creating content in a niche you're unfamiliar with, then try using social media tools such as Buzz Sumo to find people who shared content similar to your own in the past or use Followerwonk to track these people down based on the interests they list in their Twitter bios.

Sometimes you might want to search various different interests at the same time but thankfully there are some advanced features for this.

If you're creating a large piece of content then it can be a good idea to contact subject matter experts during the development stages for feedback on it or perhaps ask them for a quote. If people feel invested in your content they will be more than likely happy to share it once it's released.

Influential people are often busy people, so make sure that they know of you by building up a relationship with them on social media or their blog beforehand. When it comes to asking them to share your content with their audience, make sure that your outreach email is short and not all about you.

Tap Into Content Curators

There are many fantastic curators who will be happy to help share your content with their audience. You'll be able to identify them as they will readily be sharing lots of different content on social media, by having a high percentage of URL shares and retweets along with a good social authority on Followerwonk.

It is common that these people will also write weekly or monthly round ups of the best content they have found recently. You can often find these round up articles by carrying out a few advanced search operators in Google to find them. Start out by getting to know these people a little first by commenting on the types of content they are curating and sharing, before you roll in and ask for them to link to yours.

Link Reclamation

Once your initial promotion efforts have slowed down and the dust has settled a little bit it's time to carry out some link reclamation. It's not uncommon for people to mention you or your content and either not link correctly or they may not link at all.

When planning your campaign, set up mention tracking. You can use a free service such as Google Alerts, but paid services such as Talk Walker or Mention are far more reliable and return results very quickly.

Use these tools to monitor for mentions of your brand or your content and follow up with the individuals who mentioned you to thank them and offer to answer any clarification questions and ask if they would be happy to credit you with a link.

If you use original visuals as part of your campaign, then load them into a service such as Image Raider to be alerted whenever your images are embedded on a website. It's a good idea to follow up with these people and ask them to credit your site as the original source of the image.

I do this for our comics that we produce on the company website and we release them under a Creative Commons license so that people can use them in blogs or presentations, and it's easy to see who is and who isn't linking back.

You could also look for other content types too such as SlideShare presentations which have been embedded on different websites and contact these people for interviews or guest posts.

Paid Promotion

You might have tried paid promotion in the past with varying degrees of success, but there are lots of great new formats being developed all the time to help you promote your content to your audience.

It's important that you have already determined where your audience spend their time online before using paid social promotion. Otherwise, you'll just waste your money. For example, you wouldn't want to promote a dental hygiene whitepaper on the r/funny subreddit.

In recent years there has also been a large growth in content discovery networks, which aim to amplify your content reach by either suggesting links or images to bloggers when they are creating their articles or by inserting "related links" to other websites. You usually pay on a cost by impression basis (CPM), which can be quite expensive.

For example, Wil Reynolds used Outbrain, Zemanta, Taboola and nRelate for a few experiments with his team and in some instances they were able to convert paid impressions on these networks into links for as little as $24 each. There are of course cases both for and against these services, but if you have the budget and experience with online display advertising it's certainly worth testing the waters to find out what works for you.

Not all paid content discovery campaigns need $500 per day to get them to work. Sometimes just boosting a Facebook update on your fan page for $5 can drive a 517 percent increase in the number of people clicking through to your content.

Repurpose your Content

To maximize the reach and potential number of links from your piece of content you should consider repurposing it into different formats to increase the reach.

Think about different forms and media. If you created a large animated infographic you could repurpose that into either a SlideShare presentation or YouTube video quite easily. Both of these media types could be embedded onto other websites, which you could then follow up with as part of your link reclamation efforts.

Alternatively, if you're giving a webinar or video presentation, transcribe it into an article for your blog.

People prefer to consume content in different ways, and understanding that will open up different possibilities for repurposing your content effectively.

Summary

Hopefully this post will help you plan your next campaign and ensure your awesome content gets the number of links it deserves.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

5 Social Media Profile Optimization Tips for Brands

One of the easiest things you can do as a social media marketer is to optimize your social media profiles. It only takes a few minutes to improve a social media profile, and most of the optimizations can be implemented when you first create the account.

Here are five recommendations to help optimize your social media profiles.

1. Branded Cover Photos and Background Images

Every social network has different image dimensions for cover or background photos, but the reasoning for why we want we want our logo on the images is the same: branding. The cover image is usually the first thing a user sees when he or she becomes a fan of your page, and you want to give them a good impression of your brand.

On Facebook, adding a logo to your cover photo turns it into a giant brand billboard. If a fan "likes" the cover photo, it could show up as a story in a non-fan's feed.

Why not make the Facebook story a giant brand billboard? If you aren't adding branding to your cover photo or background images, you're missing out on a great opportunity.

Here's an example of great branding on a Facebook cover photo. It's simple and effective:

Sometimes brands get creative with a cover photo by letting it "bleed" into the profile picture:

2. Link to Other Social Media Profiles

One of the easiest ways to activate your brand loyalists on another social platform is to tell them about it. Simple updates informing fans that you just launched an Instagram account can do the trick, but the time the post sits in the feed (regardless of social network) is ephemeral.

A quick way to fix this problem is to have easy-to-find links to your other social networks within your profile. Pinterest, Facebook, and Google+ provide the best opportunities to link to your other social profiles.

Let's start with Facebook. First, you can add Facebook apps that link or showcase other social profiles. The Instagram and YouTube apps can be found in the app store, and Pinterest or Twitter can be added through WooBox.

Here's an example of a page (Kitchen Daily) with a Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter app activated.

You can also add links to your social profiles in your Facebook profile contact information by putting a comma and a space after your main website URL. I highly recommend putting links to your other social profiles here because it will help users easily locate your other official social accounts.

The National Guard added links to all their other social profiles within the Facebook contact information so that users can stay connected with them across the web.

Next, you can add a link to your Twitter profile within your Pinterest account. Go to Settings>Social Networks, and log in with your Twitter account. When it's linked, it will show in the profile like this.

Google+ gives you the ability to link your other social profiles in the About>Links section of the profile. Connect everything, especially YouTube.

By linking to the other profiles, it will help Google connect the dots between your content and your social accounts. The YouTube connection is especially important because Google+ now powers the commenting system.

If you're a blogger, you should also set up Google+ authorship. This will make your name appear under the article title on the search engine results page. More information on Google+ authorship can be found here.

3. Link to Your Main Website

Make sure your main website is listed on each of your social profiles. This will improve branding, and it will help users distinguish between the official versus unofficial profile pages.

One trick on Facebook is to add the site URL in the "about" section under the page description. If you're page isn't verified, I highly recommend doing this to convey a sense of authenticity.

4. Fill Out Every Profile Field

This might seem like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised at the number of brands that have incomplete profiles.

Fill out everything you can with quality descriptions and accurate information. Doing this will improve brand association (with locations, topics, goals, etc.) and add value to your followers' experience with the brand.

Facebook has way more profile fields than any other platform, so it will take the longest to complete. The other social networks will only take a few minutes to finish.

Over the last few years several new fields have been added to Facebook and Google+, so make sure you double check your profile completeness once a quarter. Again, the National Guard offers a great example of a near complete Facebook profile.

5. Uniformity in Profile Descriptions

Every social profile doesn't have to have the exact same description, but you should use most of the same keywords. You want consistency in how you market your brand to fans, and a social media profile isn't any different.

Daily Finance does a great job with uniformity between social profiles. Here are their Facebook and Twitter profile descriptions.

Summary

Optimizing a social media profile is easy, and it doesn't take much time to do. Play around with these recommendations, and feel free to leave comments with any additional suggestions for how to optimize your profiles.

Author's disclosure: I am currently employed by AOL, which owns Engadget, TechCrunch, Kitchen Daily, Huffington Post, and Daily Finance. I used to do agency work with the National Guard when I worked with LM&O Advertising.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Google, Europe Near Antitrust Deal, Really This Time?

Google has offered further concessions to address the European Commission's (EC) antitrust concerns, which could finally put an end to the ongoing case.

The EC said today that with its latest offer, Google has effectively settled the three year probe and has dodged a potential $5 billion fine. While the EC has accepted the concessions, they must first be accepted by the complainants, a list which includes Google's rival Microsoft. 

In its latest proposal, Google said that it will display results from three competitors in a similar way whenever it promotes its own specialized search services.

This joins Google's previous concessions, which include giving content providers the option to opt-out of its specialized search services, removing exclusivity requirements in its agreements with publishers, and removing restrictions on the ability for competing search advertising services to run campaigns advertising their services.

"My mission is to protect competition to the benefit of consumers, not competitors," said European Commission VP in charge of competition policy Joaquín Almunia.  "I believe that the new proposal obtained from Google after long and difficult talks can now address the Commission's concerns.

"Without preventing Google from improving its own services, it provides users with real choice between competing services presented in a comparable way; it is then up to them to choose the best alternative. This way, both Google and its rivals will be able and encouraged to innovate and improve their offerings. Turning this proposal into a legally binding obligation for Google would ensure that competitive conditions are both restored quickly and maintained over the next years."

Google said in a statement:

We will be making significant changes to the way Google operates in Europe. We have been working with the European Commission to address issues they raised and look forward to resolving this matter.

The EC said it will put forward Google's latest concessions to the complainants for scrutiny before the matter is officially settled.

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Google Vows to Reduce Fake YouTube Views

Google is stepping up its efforts to stop what it calls "fraudulent" views on YouTube videos.

Google, which owns YouTube, said that reports of fake views on the video sharing website's videos have been brought to its attention recently.

Various tools are available online for people to redirect or buy views, with Google noting that there are a number of third-party marketing firms that will also try to sell content creators fake YouTube views for considerable sums.

It's unclear how many "fake" views YouTube videos have been racking up, but Google said that its incoming measures to monitor views should affect only a 'miniscule fraction' of video clips on the website.

Fake views are undermining what YouTube is all about, and the firm will step up its efforts to ensure that it doesn't continue, Google software engineer Philipp Pfeiffenberger said in a blog post:

When some bad actors try to game the system by artificially inflating view counts, they're not just misleading fans about the popularity of a video, they're undermining one of YouTube's most important and unique qualities.

As part of our long-standing effort to keep YouTube authentic and full of meaningful interactions, we've begun periodically auditing the views a video has received. While in the past we would scan views for spam immediately after they occurred, starting today we will periodically validate the video's view count, removing fraudulent views as new evidence comes to light. We don't expect this approach to affect more than a minuscule fraction of videos on YouTube, but we believe it's crucial to improving the accuracy of view counts and maintaining the trust of our fans and creators.

Analysts have said that by stepping up its efforts, Google is trying to ensure that advertisers won't flock to other social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Facebook Tests Mobile Graph Search

Facebook has confirmed it’s testing a mobile version of Graph Search – the social network’s unique search function that allows you to connect people you know with places and things you’re curious about. 

If you aren't familiar with Graph Search yet because you haven’t used it or it’s not available to you (currently only those using Facebook in English have access), it’s a handy little tool that lets you dream up scenarios to your heart’s content, like how many of your friends have read the book, “To Kill a Mockingbird” (try that search and see!) or any other factoid you may be interested in. 

To use it, you just begin typing a query in the Facebook search bar, as illustrated below:

Some reports are criticizing Facebook’s slow adaption of Graph Search to mobile. Graph Search rolled out to English-speaking users in August 2013, but first launched in January of last year.

From CNET:

Zuckerberg attempted to explain away the lag in a mobile release with remarks about the complexity of indexing more than 1 trillion connections and a trillion status updates. Graph Search, he insisted, is a multiyear effort.

But it really isn't an easy task, as we found out late last year when we took a peek under the hood of a new feature in Graph Search. Back in October 2013, Facebook added a layer of complexity to the search, allowing users to seek out posts, comments, and more in addition to what Graph Search had already been able to do.

In October, a Facebook engineer talked about what goes into being able to search for posts in Graph Search. He highlighted the fact that the “posts index" was much larger than any other at Facebook; the company had to move from RAM to solid-state flash memory to accommodate the more than 700 terabytes of data in the posts index.

For the lucky few who have been chosen as test cases for the mobile rollout of Graph Search, it seems much of the functionality is business as usual; however, the real potential, reported Mashable, is the local angle. 

No confirmation yet from Facebook on exactly when this feature will be official; however, in the company’s Q4 earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated it would be “pretty soon."

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

5 Social Media Profile Optimization Tips for Brands

One of the easiest things you can do as a social media marketer is to optimize your social media profiles. It only takes a few minutes to improve a social media profile, and most of the optimizations can be implemented when you first create the account.

Here are five recommendations to help optimize your social media profiles.

1. Branded Cover Photos and Background Images

Every social network has different image dimensions for cover or background photos, but the reasoning for why we want we want our logo on the images is the same: branding. The cover image is usually the first thing a user sees when he or she becomes a fan of your page, and you want to give them a good impression of your brand.

On Facebook, adding a logo to your cover photo turns it into a giant brand billboard. If a fan "likes" the cover photo, it could show up as a story in a non-fan's feed.

Why not make the Facebook story a giant brand billboard? If you aren't adding branding to your cover photo or background images, you're missing out on a great opportunity.

Here's an example of great branding on a Facebook cover photo. It's simple and effective:

Sometimes brands get creative with a cover photo by letting it "bleed" into the profile picture:

2. Link to Other Social Media Profiles

One of the easiest ways to activate your brand loyalists on another social platform is to tell them about it. Simple updates informing fans that you just launched an Instagram account can do the trick, but the time the post sits in the feed (regardless of social network) is ephemeral.

A quick way to fix this problem is to have easy-to-find links to your other social networks within your profile. Pinterest, Facebook, and Google+ provide the best opportunities to link to your other social profiles.

Let's start with Facebook. First, you can add Facebook apps that link or showcase other social profiles. The Instagram and YouTube apps can be found in the app store, and Pinterest or Twitter can be added through WooBox.

Here's an example of a page (Kitchen Daily) with a Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter app activated.

You can also add links to your social profiles in your Facebook profile contact information by putting a comma and a space after your main website URL. I highly recommend putting links to your other social profiles here because it will help users easily locate your other official social accounts.

The National Guard added links to all their other social profiles within the Facebook contact information so that users can stay connected with them across the web.

Next, you can add a link to your Twitter profile within your Pinterest account. Go to Settings>Social Networks, and log in with your Twitter account. When it's linked, it will show in the profile like this.

Google+ gives you the ability to link your other social profiles in the About>Links section of the profile. Connect everything, especially YouTube.

By linking to the other profiles, it will help Google connect the dots between your content and your social accounts. The YouTube connection is especially important because Google+ now powers the commenting system.

If you're a blogger, you should also set up Google+ authorship. This will make your name appear under the article title on the search engine results page. More information on Google+ authorship can be found here.

3. Link to Your Main Website

Make sure your main website is listed on each of your social profiles. This will improve branding, and it will help users distinguish between the official versus unofficial profile pages.

One trick on Facebook is to add the site URL in the "about" section under the page description. If you're page isn't verified, I highly recommend doing this to convey a sense of authenticity.

4. Fill Out Every Profile Field

This might seem like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised at the number of brands that have incomplete profiles.

Fill out everything you can with quality descriptions and accurate information. Doing this will improve brand association (with locations, topics, goals, etc.) and add value to your followers' experience with the brand.

Facebook has way more profile fields than any other platform, so it will take the longest to complete. The other social networks will only take a few minutes to finish.

Over the last few years several new fields have been added to Facebook and Google+, so make sure you double check your profile completeness once a quarter. Again, the National Guard offers a great example of a near complete Facebook profile.

5. Uniformity in Profile Descriptions

Every social profile doesn't have to have the exact same description, but you should use most of the same keywords. You want consistency in how you market your brand to fans, and a social media profile isn't any different.

Daily Finance does a great job with uniformity between social profiles. Here are their Facebook and Twitter profile descriptions.

Summary

Optimizing a social media profile is easy, and it doesn't take much time to do. Play around with these recommendations, and feel free to leave comments with any additional suggestions for how to optimize your profiles.

Author's disclosure: I am currently employed by AOL, which owns Engadget, TechCrunch, Kitchen Daily, Huffington Post, and Daily Finance. I used to do agency work with the National Guard when I worked with LM&O Advertising.

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Google’s DoubleClick Search Ramps Focus On PLAs And Ecommerce With New Commerce Suite

In a sign of where its focus lies and the growing importance of PLAs in the search ecosystem, today Google is introducing the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite, what it calls “a smarter, faster, product-centric layer to search management”.

The Commerce Suite is comprised of two new capabilities:

1. Dynamic Product Listing Ads creation is an extension of inventory-aware campaigns, which launched in June of last year, as an update of its inventory management solution. Advertisers can automatically create ad group, keywords and ads based on their Google Merchant Center feeds. Dynamic Product Listing Ads bring real-time capabilities to campaign management.

�The ability to auto-generate PLA campaigns from existing product inventory drastically simplifies our setup process,� said Carissa McStay, Associate Manager at The Search Agency, in the announcement.

2. Product Listing Ads optimization, which is still in beta, allows advertisers to optimize campaigns from additional sources including formula columns in feeds, external data such as call metrics, and Google Analytics goals.

“Real-time is the future of retail, and DoubleClick is leading the way with the ability to optimize from real-time conversion information,� said Jeremy Hull, Director of Bought Media at iProspect, in the announcement.

This functionality is already available for text ad management. PLA advertisers will now be able to automate bid adjustments based on real-time data.

Success Of PLAs Drives New Focus For DoubleClick Search

As PLAs become a bigger focus and revenue driver for retailers, Google’s DoubleClick Search team is taking clear steps to position itself as a leader in product search management and leverage its unique power of native product integrations with Google Merchant Center and Google Analytics.

Despite its Google pedigree, DoubleClick Search has faced strong competition from the likes of Kenshoo, IgnitionOne, Marin, Adobe and others. Just two years ago, research firm Forrester bluntly declared, “the platform is not competitive.” The debut of Product Listing Ads in 2012 ushered in a new set of competitors in the product management field including Adchemy, Adlucent, Datapop and CSE management services such as Mercent, and CPC Strategy.

In a clear sign of where Google plans to position DoubleClick Search, the company says, “This product-centric focus will continue to guide our feature development, helping us quickly innovate additional tools that will drive revenue for the e-commerce business.”

Google’s DoubleClick Search Ramps Focus On PLAs And Ecommerce With New Commerce Suite

In a sign of where its focus lies and the growing importance of PLAs in the search ecosystem, today Google is introducing the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite, what it calls “a smarter, faster, product-centric layer to search management”.

The Commerce Suite is comprised of two new capabilities:

1. Dynamic Product Listing Ads creation is an extension of inventory-aware campaigns, which launched in June of last year, as an update of its inventory management solution. Advertisers can automatically create ad group, keywords and ads based on their Google Merchant Center feeds. Dynamic Product Listing Ads bring real-time capabilities to campaign management.

�The ability to auto-generate PLA campaigns from existing product inventory drastically simplifies our setup process,� said Carissa McStay, Associate Manager at The Search Agency, in the announcement.

2. Product Listing Ads optimization, which is still in beta, allows advertisers to optimize campaigns from additional sources including formula columns in feeds, external data such as call metrics, and Google Analytics goals.

“Real-time is the future of retail, and DoubleClick is leading the way with the ability to optimize from real-time conversion information,� said Jeremy Hull, Director of Bought Media at iProspect, in the announcement.

This functionality is already available for text ad management. PLA advertisers will now be able to automate bid adjustments based on real-time data.

Success Of PLAs Drives New Focus For DoubleClick Search

As PLAs become a bigger focus and revenue driver for retailers, Google’s DoubleClick Search team is taking clear steps to position itself as a leader in product search management and leverage its unique power of native product integrations with Google Merchant Center and Google Analytics.

Despite its Google pedigree, DoubleClick Search has faced strong competition from the likes of Kenshoo, IgnitionOne, Marin, Adobe and others. Just two years ago, research firm Forrester bluntly declared, “the platform is not competitive.” The debut of Product Listing Ads in 2012 ushered in a new set of competitors in the product management field including Adchemy, Adlucent, Datapop and CSE management services such as Mercent, and CPC Strategy.

In a clear sign of where Google plans to position DoubleClick Search, the company says, “This product-centric focus will continue to guide our feature development, helping us quickly innovate additional tools that will drive revenue for the e-commerce business.”

Conquering Content Marketing, Step 2: The Content (and Plot) Develops

Previously, on British Outfitters …

Lisa Hughes, British Outfitters' most recent New York hire, was sitting in the office of her boss, Don Makerfield, anxiously waiting for him to get off the phone. Earlier that day, Don asked Lisa to develop a content marketing strategy that would help British Outfitters penetrate the highly competitive U.S. teen fashion market. It didn't take Lisa long to come up with an idea that she knows Don will love. As he wraps up his phone call, let's see what he thinks ...

The Conversation

"Is that so?" Don said dryly into the receiver. He looked over at Lisa who gave a polite smile.

"Have you tried setting the thing on fire?" he asked with a sarcastic grin. "All right, look, I've got someone in my office. I've got to go... What can I do for you, Lisa?"

"Well, Don. I've been thinking about our marketing campaign, and here it is! What's the one thing all girls want, but they can never have?"

Don thought about this a moment, repeating the last phrase quietly to himself. "I don't know, what?" he asked.

"A perfect body! All girls want a perfect body, but it's unattainable. There is always something that can be improved. Here's what I'm thinking …"

Before Lisa could complete her thought, Don cut her off. "I know exactly where you're going with this, Lisa, and I like it! I can see it now, a huge billboard showing super-thin models in our tightest jeans with the words, 'British Outfitters – The Perfect Jeans for the Perfect Body.' Girls will buy our jeans to show the world that they've finally achieved the perfect figure."

Lisa looked at Don, dumbfounded. "Um … I was actually thinking about taking it in the opposite direction. Let's rebel against the image of super-skinny models! We should meet our customers on their terms with a message like, 'You're perfectly you, and so are our jeans.' Maybe get real teen girls to tell their story of why they're happy with who they are, not who the media says they should be. We can post videos, do a print and social campaign, and create a positive image for our brand."

Don looked at Lisa in surprise. "Hm ... That's ... an idea." Don weighed both ideas in silence; Lisa prayed he wouldn't go with his direction. No such luck.

"OK," said Don, "We're going with my idea. You have $20,000 for the photo shoot – make sure to get really skinny models – and $80,000 for advertising. The creative team will organize the shoot but I want you to oversee it. Maybe record some behind-the-scenes footage for our blog or whatever. Now, I'm late for a conference call, but keep me in the loop on the campaign's progress. And I want that billboard!"

Shell-shocked, Lisa slowly and numbly exited Don's office. "Right …"

The Billboard

Over the next few weeks, Lisa supervised the shoot, negotiated ad buys on the sites Don told her to advertise on, and she even got Don's billboard produced, despite many heated arguments about why his concept was so misguided. Consumers were about to tell him the same thing.

Two Weeks In

The campaign had been live for about two weeks, and it wasn't going well at all. British Outfitters burned through almost $10,000 on display ads that brought just a few thousand visitors, and hardly any conversions.

Although there was no way to tell if the billboard was doing anything, Lisa was pretty sure it wasn't because sales were dismal across the board. Lisa's team wrote on the company's blog almost every day, but it was a ghost town, and the only social activity was from a group of conservative moms who criticized the ads as too provocative, which they were; Don had made sure of it!

It was right about then that the consumers decided to create some British Outfitters content of their own.

One Thursday, British Outfitters' Twitter account started to light up. Some of the angry moms organized a live protest outside a one of British Outfitters' retail locations. Soon after, images of Don's billboard being vandalized started circulating on social platforms and around the blogosphere.

It started with a few protesters tweeting pics of the billboard with the hashtag #BOboycott. The tweets made their way into a popular mommy blogger's TweetChat, which shifted the topic to British Outfitters. Soon #BOboycott was trending worldwide. The conversation then jumped to Reddit, where Don's "The Perfect Jeans for the Perfect Body" line found its way onto some distasteful memes. The memes hit Tumblr and Pinterest in force, prompting bloggers to churn out exaggerated stories without any real fact checking.

It was frustrating, but there wasn't much Lisa could do. She checked in with the social group before leaving for the day, and they were in full crisis management mode.

Don's door was closed so Lisa called it a night, wondering what tomorrow would look like. On her way out she noticed a police car parked across the street. Could things be that bad that their office needed protection?

The next morning Lisa walked into a war zone. People were running around, papers were flying off desks, phones were ringing with nobody to answer them.

At her desk she saw close to 150 new emails and thousands of tweets pouring into British Outfitters' Twitter channel. A major gossip blog had gotten hold of a few internal emails containing highly distasteful comments about the type of people who British Outfitters' management did and did not want wearing their clothing. This fueled the fire under the conservative moms who were now close to rioting at the retail stores. To add insult to injury, someone had set fire to Don's billboard the night before, and people were taking pictures of the flaming billboard from the highway!

Lisa saw that Don's office door was still closed and his light was off. She turned to her co-worker, Mike, to ask about Don, but he was too busy dealing with website instability to give her an answer. The PR crisis was sending surges of traffic to their website; Mike and his team were now playing triage nurse to their small network of underpowered web servers.

Without Don around, Lisa needed to step up and make some quick decisions. All ad campaigns were immediately paused, and budgets were shifted to Twitter and Facebook to try and control the messaging.

Working with the PR and creative teams, she put up a quick landing page on the site where they could acknowledge the situation and answer questions. The whole day was like that, putting out fire after fire, trying to just get through the nightmare.

30-Second Commercial Break

Let's pause the story to consider how British Outfitters' PR disaster plays a role in our five-point content marketing framework.

Content creation, the second step in the framework, cannot always be controlled by your brand. Sometimes consumers ignore your content, sometimes they react to it the wrong way, and sometimes they take over the conversation with their own version of your message.

Whether we like it or not, consumer-generated content can be extremely powerful. It's created quickly, cheaply, and it's twice as trustworthy as content that lives on a brand's website.

Look at the difference in trust between the content brands post themselves on social networks (15 percent trusted in the U.S.) and consumer-generated reviews on Amazon and YouTube (70 percent trusted in the U.S.).

If you're spending a lot of energy creating content on social networks to drive consumers to your website, you're spinning your wheels. Not only will a tiny fraction of your audience actually see your posts, but of the ones that do only 15 percent trust your message. Instead, you're far better off spending your energy persuading consumers to talk about you and your products on your behalf.

"How does one do that?" you ask.

Get your product in consumers' hands: If you're new to the market, send free samples to bloggers and influencers. If your product has been in the market for a while, give coupons to customers who review your product on Amazon or YouTube.Treat customers like royalty: Deliver amazing customer service. Expedite their shipping. Offer a free add-on with their order.Engage with them on an individual level: Strike up a friendly conversation with a few loyal customers on Twitter. Send a personal follow-up email to ask them their opinion.Help them without expecting anything in return: Look for consumers who are having trouble online. If your product can solve their problem, send them a free sample. If it can't, point them in the right direction, even if it's toward a competitor.Meet customers in person: Attend local meet ups and events. Get to know them on a first-name basis.Make yourself available: Don't make consumers come to your site to contact you. Go where they are: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Vine, Instagram, forums, etc. You don't need to spend a ton of time on every platform, but you do need to be accessible there.

If you find yourself in some hot water, like British Outfitters, try to get in front of the situation. Address the problem, apologize, and try to patch things up quickly. Listen to consumer feedback, thank them for their input, and show them that you're using it to improve your product, service, or message.

Now back to our story...

The Weekend

Lisa had never been more grateful for a Saturday off in her life. She felt bad for the PR teams who were undoubtedly "earning their keep" this weekend. Around lunchtime she received a text from Mike.

"Lisa, it's Mike. Did you hear Don's in the hospital?"

Lisa almost choked on her salad. "No! What happened!" she pounded out.

"Not sure. We'll find out Monday I guess," he responded.

Thirty minutes later Lisa's phone started to vibrate. It was a call from the UK.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is this Lisa Hughes?"

"This is she."

"Hi, Lisa, this is Holly Spaulding from the British Outfitters corporate office. I'm Don's supervisor. Do you have a few minutes?"

To Be Continued...

What will Holly say to Lisa? Is Lisa at risk of losing her job? Why was Don in the hospital? What were those cops doing outside the office? Join us next month when all will be revealed next time, exclusively on Search Engine Watch.

While you're waiting for the next installment, what memorable stories about content creation can you share with us in the comments?

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
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With Nadella’s Appointment, The “Search CEOs” Now Run Google, Yahoo & Microsoft

Satya Nadella being named CEO of Microsoft isn’t just big news for Microsoft. It’s big news for search. For the first time in ages, the three major search companies in the US are all run by CEOs who either came out of a search-background or have a solid understanding of it.

Despite the attention search has gained over the years, I feel like it still gets overlooked as the powerhouse it is. It’s responsible for about half of online ad spending in the US. It’s where the majority of Google’s money comes from. As I joke, Google Glass and those self-driving cars are being funded by ads about mesothelioma and payday loans.

Search is a money-maker. It’s not as cool as social, where so much of the attention is these days, but it’s the dependable product that, done right, can lead to huge profits. Just ask Google. Having a “search CEO” who understands the importance of the product can potentially be a big win. Or, at least, perhaps part of a win. That’s because winning against Google is still so very tough.

Google’s Search CEO: Larry Page

You can’t get anyone with more “search CEO” cred that Google’s CEO Larry Page. He’s a CEO who literally built Google’s first search engine, along with cofounder Sergey Brin. And long before Google got into seemingly every other product under the sun (smoke detectors, anyone), Page was CEO and still closely tied to the search product. He gets search.

Of course, Page handed over the CEO reins to Eric Schmidt, then took them back again. Did it make a difference to Google’s conquest of search? Hard to say. Google pretty much had won, at that point. Its share of the search market in the US has stayed pretty solid after the change.

Google’s continued to churn out impressive search products, like conversational search and Google Now. But the degree that Page is deeply involved with any of this, or responsible for it, is unclear to me. Personally, I’ve been under the impression search really isn’t that important to him, as attention is focused in other places.

By important, that is, something where he either shows a personal interest or gets personally involved. I could be wrong about all this, but it’s rare that I hear him talk about search much or see him at any of Google’s search-related events.�He has a luxury here, in that Google has plenty of long-term, experienced execs who know search well. They’re “search natives,” so to speak, so maybe Page figures search is the safe area he doesn’t need to mess with.

Yahoo’s Search CEO: Marissa Mayer

Marissa Mayer oversaw Google search (the consumer-facing part of it, rather than the under-the-hood part) for about a decade, giving her plenty of search cred as the CEO of Yahoo. She knows search.

Unfortunately, Mayer inherited a company that largely gave up all of its search technology to Microsoft. And for all her knowledge of search, there’s no coming back from that.

Sure, Yahoo can try with the new search initiative that Recode wrote about last Friday. Sure, maybe there is an opportunity in mobile. But as I wrote in 2009, Yahoo was over when it cut that search deal with Microsoft:

And then there were two.�Make no mistake, Yahoo�s out of the search game. I know the spin. Better user interface, new ways to innovate,�a winning play. Let�s not kid ourselves. They�re done. Not today, not necessarily in a year, but down the line at some point. Done.

I’m coming up on having covered search for 18 years. In all that time, I have never seen a search engine recover from a sustained decline. I expect Mayer has no magic solution that will change that, despite all her search knowledge..

Rather, I expect she’ll do what I predicted when Mayer took over as Yahoo CEO. Try for a better deal with Microsoft or seek a new one with Google. Continue to talk search as being strong so as not to freak out investors even though ultimately, she’s “sunsetting” that product in hopes that other products will do better.

Microsoft’s Search CEO: Satya Nadella

Anyone who’s a veteran of the search space already knows Satya Nadella’s name well. He’s the person who in 2007�inherited the mess that was Microsoft Windows Live MSN Search, the search engine with almost as many names as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Orange County Southern California.

When Nadella took over, Microsoft had started down the path of building its own search technology but still hadn’t gotten anywhere.

By the time Nadella moved on�elsewhere at Microsoft in 2011, Bing was moving up, both in share and respectability as a solid alternative to Google. It has continued that rise. Some knock it as being the number two to Google. I think having the number two search engine in the United States is an incredible achievement and one that ultimately may lead to profits.

Figuring whether Bing is profitable is tough because Microsoft doesn’t break it out as an independent operation. It’s also tough when Bing is being woven within all types of Microsoft products. But Nadella is someone who knows the power of search, and I’d expect that’s going to see Microsoft playing the long-game there, rather than dumping search as some thought potential CEO candidate Stephen Elop might do.

What Search CEOs Bring Beyond Search

So there you have it. Three companies all run by people who�understand the power of search, the direct connection it makes with consumers, their demands and needs and how minutely that can be tracked (four if you want add in CBS Interactive chief Jim Lanzone).

Years ago, I spoke about how search marketers were unique not because of search because they were also “metrics marketers,” that they understood that marketing could be tracked, should be tracked and be proven to pay off.

I still believe this, that search marketing especially has given us a generation of marketers that’s rising up where it’s about CTR and ROI and things that can be proven rather than CPM and “lift” and potential audience.

Those metrics marketers are going to continue to look for places that allow them to get measurable results. And so, I feel that the “search CEO” may also be the “measurement CEO” who understands that need and ensures that they are delivering products for that rising generation of metrics marketers.

Postscript: As Google’s web spam chief Matt Cutts noted on Twitter, if you want to go beyond companies with popular search engines but which are lead by those with search experience, Tim Armstrong, the CEO of AOL, definitely belongs on that list. And while Sheryl Sandberg isn’t CEO of Facebook, as Facebook’s COO, she still has a deep knowledge of search from her days at Google.

Related StoriesIt�s Official: Satya Nadella Is The New Microsoft CEOPotential Microsoft CEO Elop Would Consider Selling BingWhy Yahoo Will Never Reach The �Revenue Per Search� That Microsoft PromisedGoogle�s Broken Promises & Who�s Running The Search Engine?What�s Yahoo? Mayer Says �Search, Communications, Digital Magazines & Video�The Amazing �Google Now� � When Google Searches Before You Think To