SEO Blog

“Hello, I’m not sure if you’re they guys I need to talk to but I have a problem…”

Somebody has an emergency. Their business is in trouble and they know they need help. Since they are calling us with a big problem this is likely the first point of contact our agency has had with the caller. They almost certainly should have called sooner…

“My website was getting lots of traffic and making sales but in the past couple of weeks, all that has dried up. What should I do?”

Search engine optimization and marketing firms get this type of phone call every day. Somebody has invested a lot of money (relatively speaking, of course) and probably a lot of time into his or her online business and now they have an issue. Most of the time, the caller didn’t know who to speak with about their problem until it hit a critical point. Often, they didn’t even know they had a problem until their disaster struck. When it did, they would have turned to a friend or business associate that then referred them to us. Such is the extended marketing cycle for a well known search marketing shop.

Yesterday, Dave Davies and I used our weekly WebmasterRadio.fm show Webcology to predict the key trends and fortunes of the coming year. When we agreed to do a predictions show two weeks ago, I figured it would fairly easy. I have been writing an annual predictions column for at least five years and each one rolled off my fingers quickly. It should be as simple as it was last year, right?

I was wrong. While we did a fine show, it tended to be more of a conversation about how search and social media was faring and less about predicting where it was going. For a number of reasons, the predictions have been far harder to make this year.

The world we work in is changing quite rapidly. Change has been a dominant theme in my thoughts in 2006 and 2007 and entering 2008, we see those changes seriously manifesting all around us. The pace of evolution in the market, the greater economy, the environment and in global politics is going to get faster. Each of these meta-areas has a direct effect on the business of search and Internet marketing as we know it and each has to be factored into every prediction. As we are starting to realize about Global Warming, the pace of change is accelerating exponentially. In 2008 what we have known to be solid ground is going to get rather swampy, much like the permafrost around Hudson’s Bay.

Just a quick note to note the launch of the Metamend Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Facebook Profile page.

We’re just starting to load the profile with information about the company, its services and the people behind those services. We’re also using the social aspect of Facebook to promote our latest have fun for the Food Bank endeavour, Hockey Night on Yates St within the Victoria tech community.

Friends and supporters of Metamend are cordially invited to become “fans” and add to the content on the page. Profile fans can join in or start SEO discussions, ask SEO related questions, upload images, receive information about events we’re participating in, and network like heck through the layers of contacts Facebook profiles provide.

Microsoft announced it has bought a 1.6% stake in social networking site Facebook with an investment of $240 million. The agreement between the firms gives Microsoft exclusive advertising rights to versions of Facebook outside the United States. The companies had already struck an agreement giving Microsoft third party advertising rights in August 2006 in the US which continues until 2011.

Valued at approximately $15 billion, Facebook was the fastest growing social networking application last year attracting over 200,00 new users each day. The site saw 30.6 million US visitors in September according to comScore.

In a conference call held earlier today with reporters and analysts, Facebook Chief Revenue Officer, Owen Van Natta suggested the investment will allow ambitious expansion plans at Facebook. Facebook is expected to introduce their own ad-network tailored to personal preferences set by users at the Ad-Tech show in New York next month.

Facebook is an interesting buy-in for Microsoft. Partly driven by need and partly driven by technological interest, the investment represents a badly needed foothold in a social networking space where rapid evolution tends to be user-driven. Case in point, since allowing third-party developers to create widgets, games and tools for Facebook users, over 4,000 unique applications have been introduced and adopted.