Archive for August, 2008

What You can Learn from Wikipedia’s Top Search Engine Placement Techniques

August 27, 2008

One of the most crucial pieces of successful search engine placement in a web marketing campaign is content and volume. And arguably, the most crucial aspect of a successful Web site—one that brings long-lasting results—is content. And by that we mean lots of quality content spread out over lots of pages. For proof of this, you need to look no further than the search engine placement success of Wikipedia. Wikipedia achieves superior search engine placement because it has heaps and heaps of pages indexed (over 2.5 million English language articles exist), with unique content on nearly every page. And anyone who has spent time with Google can attest that Wikipedia entries consistently get great search engine placement and land among Google’s top search results.

Why? Wikipedia offers what Google wants among its top search results. Google gives Web pages like Wikipedia’s great search engine placement because Google wants a page that’s geared directly toward whatever it was that you searched for. Search for “golden retriever” and you’ll get a Wikipedia page that’s about one thing: golden retrievers.

It also helps Wikipedia’s search engine placement when they theme their content. At the bottom of Wikipedia’s golden retriever page are links to related sections: “Dog breeds,” “Sporting dogs,” and “Breeds originating in Scotland.” Wikipedia can link to other content-rich pages related to their golden retriever page, pages that also undoubtedly contain the original search term “golden retriever” several times, gives Wikipedia that all-important facet known as “authority” which is crucial to search engine placement.

To achieve authority and top search engine placement in your particular field, you need what Wikipedia has: unique content and many pages. Luckily, you probably won’t need the 2.5 million that Wikipedia boasts. But with search engine placement, the more pages the better. Sometimes that means as much as a few hundred pages.

This may sound like a colossal undertaking. And maybe not even worth it. But with the right search engine strategy for search engine placement, it can be easier then you think to rack up a few hundred pages within a few months. A multifaceted campaign that incorporates blogs, advanced product categorization, articles, advice, and social industry marketing can get lots of unique pages and earn your Web page top search engine placement in Google’s rankings.

Embrace Change: Audio and Video SEO Marketing

August 27, 2008

David Bowie may have said it best when he wrote “turn and face the strange” in the song “Changes.” Everything goes through changes including businesses. Marketing departments are consistently searching for new and interesting ways to change their tactics when it comes to advertising and marketing.

The current trend is to use audio and video ads on the internet. With high speed streaming and interactivity that is unimaginable in any other medium, the internet has become the hottest new marketing tool. The only problem is that so many companies are afraid to utilize it.

It was once stated that the Internet is “the wave of the future.” Well the future is now, and companies and businesses alike need to begin to understand how audio and video SEO marketing can positively affect their business.

Whenever a new technology is introduced it is met with criticism because chief executive officers and presidents fear the worst. This should not be the case with audio and video SEO marketing, which has proven itself as a great way to expand business and bring in new clients.

Take the advice of so many who have tried it before. If you want to generate and retain a new and current client base, then you need to step up to the future.

Microsoft’s New Plans for Search Engine Marketing

August 20, 2008

Lately we’ve heard a lot in search engine marketing about Yahoo!, the second most popular search engine on the Internet, making recent and innovative strides in an attempt to boost its user base. With additional search engine marketing content launches like Fire Eagle, which seeks to give Yahoo! a boost in the local search market, and Yahoo! Buzz, which sees the company taking a stab at user-generated content, Yahoo! shows no sign of slowing down. Even as internal strife makes the company’s future direction uncertain.

 

But what has Microsoft, whose MSN search engine has fallen further behind Yahoo!, in the past year, been up to? Well in search engine marketing, not much. Until now, that is. Recently, Microsoft announced its latest search engine marketing project. The software company said that it intends to unroll an updated MSN search engine that provides much better tailored individual search results. This search engine marketing announcement comes just after Microsoft announced that they have acquired the burgeoning search engine company Powerset.

 

And that’s not a coincidence. Powerset is a new search engine that strives to apply “language processing” to searches. That means it’s a search engine built to better understand human language better than Google or Yahoo! currently can. According to the Powerset team’s search engine marketing materials, their engine can read Web pages more like a human reads Web pages, so it can return more relevant results. This means a user can be more expressive in their search queries. They can ask questions or give the search engine commands in plain English (or Spanish, or Italian, or Bahasa Indonesian). Of course a search engine marketing strategy of teaching computers, machines that are purely logical, to understand humans is a notoriously hard job. Humans often think and communicate in metaphors and abstracts, and those can be difficult for computers to understand. And humans have a hard enough time communicating with each other, after all. But the Powerset team believes that their search engine marketing strategy is on to something, and so does Microsoft.

 

This new development in search engine marketing looks promising, but MSN has a long way to go before it’s once again considered a serious contender with Yahoo! and Google. Right now, MSN only registers 10% of U.S. search queries; MSN can’t just rely on innovative technology to regain market share. It has to win a public relations battle and bring new users into the fold.