Web search engine

SEO is Marketing isn’t it?

The search engine optimisation (SEO) industry has been growing for some time now. I myself have been an avid marketer for around 6 years and have been involved in SEO for the last 12 months. A constantly recurring theme throughout the last year has been that SEO is an industry all of its own.

Last week saw Search Engine Land announce that they would be launching a sister site Marketing Land, suggesting that in fact the two are a separate entity.

This is something that I find hard to agree with, as marketing in its truest form is about understanding consumer behaviour, predicting it and then meeting the consumers needs. With this in mind surely online marketing is therefore these three steps but translated for the internet.

SEO can be defined as a the practice of increasing the traffic that a site receives via a search engine. The process itself has developed from the understanding that consumers behaviour when using a search engine means that the higher the rank of the site the more users will visit that site.

As more and more marketers become aware of the Google Panda update, what does appear open to debate is how important SEO is to your marketing strategy and equally how long using SEO in your marketing strategy will last. There is no greater lesson to be learned than those sites which have all their eggs in one basket and have been punished by the Panda update.

It is this unpredictability on search engine updates that provides the sole reason why it isn’t recommended to build a business based upon search traffic, and illustrates why SEO should be carried out as part of an overall marketing strategy.

Beware of Google Image Search for Competitions

For those of you using search engines on a daily basis you will be familiar with Google Image Search. Paste in your image URL or upload a picture and Google find visually similar images for you. A great tool particularly if you’re looking to measure coverage or ‘take up’ on any campaigns your brand may have run such as an infographic.

Whilst this tool is undoubtedly useful for marketers, it may also poke a serious hole in some online marketing campaigns.

Take Vouchercloud for example, who are currently running their Christmas comp (we all LOVE a Xmas viral) where you have to “spot the snowball” from a picture which has been airbrushed – to remove the snowball.

Unfortunately for them, using the google image search tool, you can are able to find the original picture – COMPLETE with snowballs, on Shutterstock.

So the real question here is, intentional move by the marketing department to embrace the image search functionality or not? We’ve all seen the TV competition questions which are so easy, it guarantees entrants. Is this the case? As a marketer I’d like to think so, but then again……

…..Hope I win!

Update: Apparently the original picture is not what counts here – according to Voucher Cloud, the winner will be the one closest to where the judges think the snowball(s) is(are). Sounds a little strange to me, but check out item 15 on the terms and see what you think!

Brought to you by the epic combination of Matthew Jackson and Liam Stilgoe.

Finding websites

Image via Wikipedia

Anyone who works online will undoubtedly have used google at some point. Not everyone is aware of the different features available from google so here’s a quick overview of features that I find most useful for finding appropriate sites to advertise on:

related:  – This feature enables you to search for similar sites. This is ideal if you’re looking to place a widget or skyscraper banner, as you can find sites that will suit your target audience. e.g. related:www.yoursitename.com

~ (synonym) - This feature allows you to search for the keyword and its synonym’s, again this is useful if your searching a particular niche, for example ~car sales also includes van sales i it’s search results.

+ - not related to Google Plus, but this feature allows you to include a specific term, so if you’re searching for a term that must include two things such as salt+and pepper.

From time to time it is also useful to use a few different sources to find appropriate ad sites such as:

technorati.com - This site provides a list of top blogs based on any niche you identify, you can search by posts or by blogs.

Bing.com – Although another search engine, results often differ to that of Google, so you may find some decent sites that Google hasn’t referred you to.