Posts tagged seo

Google Adwords quietly updated its Keyword Tool on September 7th, resulting in a drop of up to 95% in search counts for some phrases. For those who rely the Google Adwords keyword tool to predict potential SEO performance or to identify phrases to optimize for, this update could throw them for a loop.

Google Adwords quietly updated its Keyword Tool on September 7th, resulting in a drop of up to 95% in search counts for some phrases. For those who rely the Google Adwords keyword tool to predict potential SEO performance or to identify phrases to optimize for, this update could throw them for a loop.

How Google Instant Impacts SEO

There has been some buzz around the internets regarding Google Instant making search engine optimization a less viable tactic. I would wholeheartedly disagree with anyone that thinks that SEO professionals will be standing in the unemployment line anytime soon.

Because Google Instant gives users suggestions for terms as they type, it changes the actual phrases that users will search on. This should only create more uniform, specific searches to be uncovered when an SEO professional is looking at historical search results and planning their target keywords.

Extremely long tail searches that had only a few hundred searches per month will now be replaced by shorter phrases that get the user what they were looking for anyway. Basically, search volume for the best resulting search queries will increase. So anyone that is focusing on extremely long tail, low volume keywords to drive traffic from organic search will need to reconsider their strategy do to Google Instant. Other than that, SEO professionals can keep doing what they are doing - looking for the most relevant terms with the right balance of search volume and competition to optimize for.

Savvy scammers siphon the online traffic meant for your brand

A good overview article by Frederick Felman published on MediaPost talks points out that brand scammers are simply knowledgeable marketers that use best practices in interactive marketing - using the same tools as a legitimate brand marketer. Channels such as search engine optimization (SEO), paid search advertising (PPC), social media, and affiliate marketing. 

According to the article, Felman references that $13 billion is spent on search marketing each year, while HitWise finds that 14% of branded searches go to a site other than that of the brand. If you do the math - thats $1.8 billion of industry search budget being diverted. Factor in lost sales, increased support and service costs and negative effects on lifetime value of a customer and these numbers become even more sobering.