SEO Blog

For the past ten years the Internet has consistently presented new advertising opportunities to businesses of all sizes. For search marketers, the rapid development of so many unique online communication products has offered a virtually unending number of venues of opportunity. From the earliest days of the banner and general search results to today’s cornucopia of marketing channels, search and internet marketers have been able to get messages spread using an ever growing variety of interlinked venues.

The only notable slow-down in tech came in the period of 2000 - 2003 after the dot-com meltdown in March 2000 followed by the shock of the multiple terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Innovation in the form of paid search advertising (and bid-by-auction) pulled tech out of the hole and in the process propelled Google on its current trajectory. Since then, the search and Internet advertising market has enjoyed five years of solid prosperity, growth and extraordinary innovation.

That’s about to change.

This economic downturn will force a lot of change to the search and social media advertising landscape. This is a sobering time and the high-flying days of buying eyeballs before knowing how to monetize the traffic are over. Valuations are again more important than innovations. The free-ride gravy-train of investor or VC capitalization come to a rapid halt, in some cases thousands of miles away from its passengers’ destinations.

Have you ever watched a marathon runner prepare for a very long distance run? Months of preparation precedes a four to five hour foot race as the athlete gets his or her body ready for the physical punishment of personal achievement. In the four to five hours it takes to run 26-miles however, the athlete will experience extreme highs and lows most of us can only esoterically understand. During the race, many report a sense that there is no completion, just an endless effort of putting one foot in front of the other step after step after step. At the eventual end of the race, the athlete gets the reward of achievement and the opportunity to get ready to run another as they start the training process again.

The process of search engine marketing is very much like running a marathon. It is hard work that can reap huge rewards but the actual preparation is often unseen and under-appreciated by observers. Most high-performance athletes have personal trainers. Think of a search marketing professional as a personal (or business) trainer. It’s the job of the trainer to get the athlete ready to compete and then to guide them through the process of competition.

(part 1 of this series, The Rules Rewritten | part 2 of this series, Digital Marketing Choices)

“psst… Hey buddy, ya wanna chant a mantra?”

I have a simple three word mantra that cuts to the heart of successful website promotion. If you are ever asked to describe the essence of digital marketing in three words, use these ones. Attract, Retain, Convert.

The search and Internet marketing sector has been a defining presence in the digital marketing space for over a decade. Most search marketing firms of note have been around long enough to understand the digitalization of all things media. For advertisers, the media is the medium in that its the places advertisers spread their messages.

What used to be the media; billboards, handbills, newspapers, radio and television is now (or soon to be), every surface imaginable. Four years ago, my father treated me to a Blue Jays game at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. Our first-base line tickets gave us a great view of the left-field outfield fence in which a series of massive screens scrolled through ads. These screens were embedded in the outfield fence and built to take the punishment of a 225lb athlete running headlong into them in pursuit of a long fly ball. Even more interesting, the ads tended not to repeat themselves. They were being drawn from what must have been a massive database of digital messages.

(Part 1 of this series, The Rules Rewritten)

“I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half.”, John Wanamaker 1838 - 1922, founder of the first American department stores and 35th US Postmaster General.

John Wanamaker lived in a gilded age that many think was much simpler than ours today. For a person of Wanamaker’s talents and ambitions however, the late 1800’s and early 1900’s would have presented challenges and difficulties left far behind in the age of digital marketing. The memorable quote attributed to him opening this post illustrates problems posed by traditional print, radio and television advertising.

It’s all about moving messages. Momentum in and of itself is the answer. The real question advertisers must ask is; “Who get’s it?” There is only one group of modern marketers who can give a true and thorough response to that question, digital marketers.

By and large, there are three ways to get information to large groups of people. Traditional advertising channels (print, radio and television) resemble a burst of grapeshot from a cannon in which an enormous number of projectiles are used to hit as many targets as possible on a broad field. Some projectiles will hit targets while most others will miss entirely. The shotgun effect.