By Matt Dally, Search Strategist

“Search overload is over.” It was one year ago, on June 1, 2009, that Microsoft re-launched its search engine, previously known as Live Search, and bravely declared it a “decision engine” in a $100 million marketing campaign executed by JWT.

If the campaign didn’t achieve overnight success, it at least made Bing an overnight celebrity. Everybody wanted to know more about it. People tried it. Clients began asking about their rankings in Microsoft’s search engine. And SEOs, in turn, wanted to know how to optimize for Bing. The question was, would people really stop using Google and turn to Bing?

One year later, Bing’s share of searches has crept up from 9% to 13%, according to Nielsen, although this was almost entirely at the expense of Yahoo, whose search algorithm and ads will be replaced by Bing’s by the end of the year, thus giving Microsoft control of another 18% of the market. Rumors persist that Apple will make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone, dumping Google as the mobile war between the two companies intensifies. This would be a huge win for Microsoft, but it’s a hell-freezes-over scenario that has yet to materialize. But the fact that Microsoft has bagged one major deal and may be on the verge of another is a sign of how far Bing has come. Can you imagine anyone ever taking rumors of a Live Search-iPhone deal seriously?

Yet despite making progress bit by bit, when you ask the average person about Bing these days, you get a shrug or a “My mom uses it.” There are exceptions. I’ve started using Bing for driving directions, having found Google to be increasingly unreliable since they ditched TeleAtlas and decided to rely on their own data and crowdsourcing for Google Maps. Several of my friends say they like Bing’s Farecast feature for travel planning. But I suspect this is how many people use Bing these days – as an occasional alternative. People just like Google because it works. And people are accustomed to Google’s search results and so view them as the “right” results. When they go to Bing and see sites come up different from what they’re used to, it feels like they’re driving an unfamiliar rental car where all the buttons and switches are in the “wrong” places. And then they go back to Google after their brief Bing vacation.

So perhaps it is more notable what Google has done since Bing launched. They’ve moved their search ads closer to the organic results, incorporated more “instant answers” into results, mixed in real-time updates, and added a left sidebar. As I write this article, Google is even giving users the ability to upload a pretty photo as their Google homepage background – all very Bing-esque, but good luck getting Google to admit it has anything to do with that other search engine.

For the first time in years, Google has stopped gaining search share and faces serious competition. Google is being forced to innovate at a faster pace. Even if you’re not using Bing, Bing has had a significant impact on your search results. Whether Bing can take market share directly from Google will largely depend on its ability to improve its search results and add compelling new features, and whether or not Yahoo can successfully bring visitors back to its portal.

Our bet is that Google keeps its lead, but with a 30% market share forthcoming and new innovations in its pipeline, Bing is something that no search marketer can afford to ignore. Not a bad first year for Microsoft’s reincarnated search engine. Happy birthday, Bing!

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By Stan Wang, Director of Search

The latest news in the SEO world is that Google recently announced that they are including site speed as a factor in their ranking algorithm.  “Site speed” is defined simply as how quickly a website responds to web requests.  Before we talk about the implications of this change let’s go over a few important facts as mentioned by Google:

·         Page relevance is weighted much more heavily

·         The changes were launched “a few weeks back”

·         Fewer than 1% of search queries are affected

·         Currently only applies to English searches on google.com

Now of course the obvious question is - what does this mean for my SEO efforts? 

Borrowing from the Google Search Quality Team’s Principal Engineer, Matt Cutts, the first order of business is: don’t panic.  According to Google, this change has affected a very small percentage of search queries. 

Casual observation would support this attitude as well.  Few if any people even noticed the change when it was rolled out around early March.  Unsurprisingly, we have not seen any unexpected changes in our clients’ rankings at Red Bricks.  With nary a change in search engine results, the time to hit the panic button is not now. 

Google also mentions that relevancy factors are still weighted much more heavily than site speed.  That means things like keyword relevance, site authority, and backlinks -. i.e., all the things a good SEO program has been doing all along - are still the most important factors for ranking.

Does this mean there that nothing should be in done in response to this algorithm change?  Certainly not!  Google uses a multitude of factors to rank pages and it is important to do well in as many of them as possible.  While it is difficult to pinpoint precisely what Google may be looking for in a newly released factor, we can definitely approximate site speeds by looking at the page load times of the top performing sites out there.  The slowest of top performing sites generally have page load times of up to seven seconds.  A good rule of thumb for your website’s pages is to outperform this bottom quartile and have page load times of less than 7 seconds. Ideally, your page load times would be clocked at under 4 seconds.  There are several free page load analysis tools available, including Google Webmaster Tools, Page Speed, and YSlow. 

The good news is that the majority of sites require no immediate action., Page load times are easy to measure, and having a faster website offers benefits beyond helping search engine rankings.  As is typical for Google, they will monitor this change on google.com before rolling it out internationally. 

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By Andrew Leinicke, Media Drector

Online display advertising, or internet banners, has not amounted to a growth industry during the last five years. Even though interactive marketing budgets have grown in the face of a global recession, banners stagnated in terms of spend back in 2007. Spend levels haven’t really picked up since. So why is there so much excitement about display advertising as we march into the second quarter of 2010?

 The answer lies in new technology. Google has made no secret of its intent to leverage its considerable engineering and user experience talents to enter the display marketplace with force. Recently, Susan Wojcicki, Google’s Vice President of Product Management, outlined an ambitious vision for Google display advertising on the Official Google Blog. Under this vision advertisers of any size would be able to:

 “buy ads across the web at scale, create engaging ad formats, measure the impact of ad campaigns in innovative and insightful ways, [and] deliver relevant ads to precisely the right audiences in real-time…”

 As it happens, many in the industry believe that the way display advertising is bought and sold may change in fundamental ways: it will become hyper-targeted and transparent. IAB chair David Moore predicted last month that online media planners will soon need to be “quant experts” and that demand platforms—the technologies that allow agencies and advertisers to hand pick ideal audiences—will become de rigueur. It is possible that as technologies and service expertise mature, advertisers will invest more in display advertising and use it to achieve greater potential. In fact, the Wall Street Journal recently cited a Google study that found advertisers were willing to pay up to 130% more for impressions they thought would be directed to more qualified audiences.

 This finding comes as no surprise to Red Bricks Media, where we typically present campaign success as a function of measured performance at multiple points in the sales funnel. Without the right tools and technology, though, it is difficult to know which impressions and clicks are really providing value. If the economics are right, advertisers will naturally be willing to pay more for high performance.

 Google has positioned itself well to provide this visibility. Our agency has already written about the sophistication, power and usability of Google Analytics. Meanwhile, Google has also been building and acquiring technologies that address other elements of Web advertising.

 For example, Google now offers ad distribution with the acquisition and re-tooling of the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. There is also the Google Content Network (GCN), which has been running “image” ads for the last six years. We have begun to notice new features appearing in GCN, and they are ambitious. Recent improvements such as view-through conversion reporting, interest-based advertising (behavioral targeting), and retargeting indicate Google’s growing capacity for sophisticated display advertising.

 The Ad Exchange, Google Analytics, and GCN position Google well for targeting and distributing ads on the internet.

 The one question I often need to answer for clients, however, is what the level of inventory quality of the GCN is. It is known as a place for publishers who invest far more in search results listings than in editorial integrity. As a result, it is necessary to take precautions against advertising with publishers who use parked domains and misleading SEO listings in order to take advantage of Google’s advertising marketplace.

 Although the display advertising market hasn’t grown in recent years, it represents a substantial opportunity for Google, which already dominates the search space. New advertising technology is a significant evolution from the more manual buying approach of hand-selecting publisher sites with attractive demo profiles and networks with private targeting technologies. This development is the key to the growth of spend levels in display advertising. Google is moving strategically to capitalize on these trends. We share some people’s worries about Google becoming an even more powerful and omnipresent vendor. Nonetheless, it is worthwhile paying attention to Google’s new offerings in the display advertising landscape.

 Andrew (Andy) Leinicke is our Media Director and manages all aspects of our Paid Search Practice. Andy is in charge of organizing, developing and overseeing every aspect of a campaign from message and testing strategy to media buying and segmentation. His love of microsegmentation, thorough testing, and up-to-the-second tracking and optimization, makes him the best in the business when it comes to decreasing CPA and increasing ROI. Under his leadership, the team developed an advanced micro-segmentation strategy and industry-leading approach to keyword research.

Prior to joining Red Bricks Media, Andy spent many years in publishing, serving as Sales and Marketing Director for Alpinist Magazine, Marketing Manager at Saveur and Garden Design, and Marketing Assistant at Worth Magazine. Andy received an M.S. in Marketing Science from Northwestern University and a B.S. in Molecular Biology from Kalamazoo College.

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By Micah Fisher-Kirshner, Search Strategist

As any other marketing channel, search engine optimization must be taken to a new level for international campaigns in order to properly optimize a site across one or many international websites. A cookie cutter approach to internationalization may work in some cases, but without a proper foundation of international SEO, this will most likely lead to an array of SEO issues further on.

Stay Consistent

Setting the ground work for sub-domains or separate domains requires consistency across all international sites as mixing and matching can often lead to confusion and tracking problems. Even then, prepare for potential problems in advance where some domain names may already have been purchased or where specific countries (such as China) prefer acquiring a domain hosted within that country.

Consider who controls each international SEO area in order to avoid problems with delegation of authority. At the same time, establish some baselines of allowed practices so that inconsistencies are not brought to light negatively such as Google Japan’s use of paid blogs that violated Google’s own SEO guidelines.

Provide Flexibility

A strict policy guideline or best practice for international SEO will quickly fail as Google does not dominate every market, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Even Google’s algorithm is not universal where certain tactics long-since forgotten in the United States is alive and well abroad.

Avoid Duplicating Duplications

More than likely the main domestic website already includes numerous amounts of duplicate content that is in the pipeline to be fixed. Keep in mind that those issues will be compounded if not planned for out of the gate for international campaigns. Search engines will be particularly confused which website to rank in which country if content is exactly the same across the US, the UK, Ireland, etc. Create new content and custom-tailor it to the specific geographic area.

Translate

Even with English as language of commerce, many countries primary online language is something other than English. Many countries in Europe have more than two languages as the national language, so be prepared to have multiple same-country websites in multiple languages in order to satisfy both the user and the search engines for searchers’ preferences. Furthermore, find a good translation for your business name and products in order to avoid horrible conversions such as when Chevy went into the Mexico car market with a brand product called Nova (translated as “no go”).

Localise the Language

Even if your website is launching in another English-speaking country, this does not mean that the same spelling, words, or meanings are going to equate. Optimizing a website for a common spelling in the US and exporting that to the UK may result in one’s SEO being optimized for a misspelling. The same goes for any other languages (Spain vs. Venezuela vs. Mexico vs. Columbia, etc.) and optimizing a website on the wrong keyword phrase or spelling can result in a perceived poor quality from both visitors and search engines.

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By Micah Fisher-Kirshner, Search Strategist & Resident Analytics Guru

What would we do without Web Analytics? They provide the data necessary to make performance marketing possible. This allows for more efficient campaign optimization and higher ROI for businesses large and small. For most marketers, however, getting to that point is not an easy process. Most marketers will jump through hoops in order to pull the data they need to analyze, and merely end up with results which are confusing or difficult to interpret.

Web Analytics has evolved from log server files and stat counters into software packages whch provide a wealth of valuable data about website usage.. As such, Web Analytics as a practice began mostly as an arm of web development and developed in importance to the point that most companies now require an additional division to understand online profitability. However, the fundamentals of Web Analytics software which were originally built for website audits have yet to fully escape their roots in web development.

When one launches one of the well-known Web Analytics software packages today, whether it be Omniture, Google Analytics, or Coremetrics, the question that drives the user is usually “How is my website doing?” rather than “How are my online marketing campaigns doing?” These Web Analytics packages are structured by the process one would use to audit specific pages or searches, and how they are performing concerning website usability.

This is not to downplay the importance of these kinds of views and metrics, but rather to point out that Web Analytics should play a larger role in online marketing, rather than merely providing information about a website’s usage. There are changes afoot within Web Analytics that are providing deeper, more insightful, and more useful information to online marketers.An example of this is Coremetrics’ user-interface tagging or Google Analytics’ new ‘Analytics Insight’ section.

Yet, Web Analytics packages truly need to go through a full restructuring in order to avoid feeling like an add-on of an add-on, charging by the number of users or by the number of reports one creates. When an online marketer logs in to a Web Analytics interface, the first thing available should provide an overall view of performance by marketing channel, allowing any online marketer to dive into their own data and gain insights into their specialty without having to navigate through multiple areas in order to get data that is relevant to them.

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by Craig Hordlow, Chief Strategist

With so much excitement about the iPhone amongst both businesses and consumers, as well as the vertical market share growth charted by the device (from 5 to 10% between 2008 and 2009), it’s puzzling to see a recent Gartner Inc. report predict that Google’s Android, currently at 2% market share, will leapfrog to 14.5% by 2012, making it the second-largest mobile platform at the great expense of the iPhone’s market share.                  

The Gartner report predicts that the iPhone’s growth will become stagnant, growing a few points to a whopping 12% by 2012.  Why such a slow-down for the iPhone? And what does this mean for marketers who are just now catching onto the surge of client interest and investment?

Most of the projected growth is attributed to Google’s own ability and efforts to promote the Android, as well as its own apps and the large number of manufacturers making the open source device, which will make it a cheaper option than the iPhone. Additionally, the iPhone, not being open source, has limitations, whereas an open platform allows developers to implement functionality the platform providers haven’t gotten around to yet, are not good at, or simply put: other people could do it better

What should marketers be doing?

• Follow Android’s market share growth and start talking to your clients or in-house teams about the emergence of Android so they are comfortable with the change if and when it happens
• Study the mobile apps already on Android, and what your competitors are doing on the platform
• Get your technical teams up to speed on Android by downloading the SDK:
  http://developer.android.com/guide/index.html
• Create your demo project long before anyone else does!

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New service offers complex, comprehensive performance assessment and monitoring solutions.

San Francisco, CA – November 3, 2009 – Red Bricks Media, a full-service digital marketing agency, announced its new Analytics & Insights practice. Offerings will help clients better utilize marketing and website data to make more intelligent business decisions.

In order to meet the increasing and varied demands of digital marketers, Analytics & Insights will provide solutions that are both highly customized and platform independent. From defining analytics requirements to ad-hoc report development to generating robust data visualizations, the new service focuses on providing the data needed to make informed marketing decisions on budget and resource allocations.

“While a lot of agencies offer one-size-fits-all reports, our solutions focus on determining exactly what drives the success and failures of our clients’ digital marketing campaigns,” said CEO Elliott Easterling. “Whether we are analyzing the performance of a single channel or pulling together complex information from multiple campaigns, our goal is to provide custom, data-driven recommendations that will improve performance.”

The first offerings within the new practice will address the core elements digital marketers need to get analytics configured and intelligence uncovered:

• Analytics Platform Implementation Consulting
• Customized Reporting Solutions
• Deep Dive Analyses
• Cross-Platform Analysis Tools

For more complete information please visit www.redbricksmedia.com.

About Red Bricks Media:

Red Bricks Media is a full-service global marketing agency headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York and Hong Kong. Since 2003, they have offered services in search engine marketing, interactive media planning, email campaign management, creative, web design, and social media marketing. Their client list includes top brands like Microsoft, Hearst Magazines, THQ and the Los Angeles Times. To learn more about Red Bricks Media’s Web Analytics practice, please contact sales@redbricksmedia.com.

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by Elliott Easterling, CEO

I recall the first day I opened up AdWords almost 6 years ago to test out the self service functions. That feeling of bliss came to me again when I explored Facebook’s self service tool for the first time last December.

Joy came to me with AdWords because I encountered the tool as a data driven marketer. I spent 3.5 years at Digital Impact (now Axciom Digital) learning the ins and outs of database marketing before I started Red Bricks Media. At the time, we were working with algorithms to process large amounts of user behavior and self-profile data to predict the best products to put into individual emails. This behavioral targeting experience is what got me excited about AdWords. I quickly realized that search queries were in fact behaviors that could be used to present targeted ads to potential consumers. I was amazed that I could tap directly into the flow of demand. The combination of powerful targeting and scale is what made Google such a useful tool for marketers.

Excitement came to me with Facebook because I recognized the same opportunity to build marketing programs with amazing targeting capabilities supported by significant scale. Facebook allows marketers to target users based on the content of their profiles. Rather than being fueled by behavioral data, Facebook campaigns are fueled by profile data. This data is incredibly clean and accurate because, in general, people do not lie about their interests on Facebook. They might exaggerate but they won’t likely lie because peer pressure from Facebook friends creates a system of accountability. The profile data in Facebook is especially powerful because it represents the brand of Facebook users. The things you put in your profile represent the things that are most important to you and also the way you see yourself and want to represent yourself to the world. Facebook profiles are the sum of passions, interests, and make up the brand of one. Facebook also provides a separate targeting axis - one that surrounds demographic data. Where you live, where you went to school, and every piece of data collected in the registration process is targetable on Facebook. This matrix of interest data and demographic data make for great user segmentation and targeting. See chart below.

Since users are not actively seeking out information on Facebook as they are doing on search engines, the click-through rates (CTR) tend to be lower. This limitation can be overcome using the sheer scale of available inventory on Facebook, which can yield great click volume even with low CTRs. From our experience, Facebook campaigns can realize good conversion rates because our campaigns heavily segment users into tight interest groups and then present compelling messages to those users. Our background in database marketing has given us an edge in developing and designing successful Facebook campaigns.

Is Facebook right for your business? It is, to the degree to which interests in Facebook correlate to an interest in your product or services. If, for example, you are in the business of selling tissues online, you may not get much out of Facebook’s targeting capabilities. No one is likely to wax poetic on the virtues on a clean nose on their profile. Alternately, if you sell tours of India, you will have access to the more than 2.8MM 18 and older Americans that that show “travel” as an interest in Facebook. Matched with demographic data, a campaign could even target users in San Francisco with customized messaging – “Explore our tours to majestic India, flights leaving from San Francisco daily.”

As performance marketers, we tend to focus more on media that drives conversions. Facebook also has the amazing ability to drive great branding, so let’s not rule out the campaign for the tissue company quite yet. Facebook branding and fan development warrant a separate discussion, which is forthcoming next month.

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By Andrew Leinicke, Senior Director and Joe Van Remortel, Vice President

Chances are good that your search engine marketing program is an underachiever. The growing complexity of search engine marketing can often result in higher costs and lower conversions. If your paid search campaigns have not accounted for the 20-25 variables that influence results they are likely candidates for reassessment.

Deciphering the root causes of search engine marketing performance is not easy. In fact, many seasoned search engine marketers miss opportunities for campaign improvement because they stray away from core performance-enhancing principles and fail to migrate campaigns through the dynamics of efficiency and volume.

Performance Enhancing Principles

The upshot is that marketers can boost the performance of their search engine marketing and PPC campaigns by 30%-50% or more by acting on four fundamental tenets of PPC advertising.

1. Simplify the Inherent Complexity of Search Engine Marketing

Search engine algorithms, policies and functionality are in a continuous state of evolution. And with 20-25 variables (such as match type, messaging relevancy, bid strategy) influencing search campaign performance, your PPC program becomes a complex, dynamic system that requires insightful management. Success is earned through finding the unique set of performance variables that drive efficiency and volume.

2. Iterative Campaign Management Influences Performance

There is no magic wand to wave over a search campaign to generate immediate, breakthrough success. A common pitfall in search engine marketing is an over-reliance on technology and automation. Automation can create process efficiencies, but too often campaigns are auto-piloted right into mediocrity, as the value of insightful human intellect is discounted. Cultivating new opportunities are what sophisticated PPC strategists do. Keyword universe segmentation as well as testing and landing page optimization are never complete.

 3. Messaging Relavancy is a Critical Performance Factor

In the beginning, there was keyword research: a means to build a semantic foundation for your PPC campaign. Visitor quality and conversion rates are directly correlated to the consistency of the relationship among keywords, queries, ads and landing pages. Thus, “messaging relevancy” greatly influences conversions, ROI and quality score. Get control of your messaging relevancy and you will go a long way to improving performance. 

4. Focus on Relative Value to Optimize Yields

Don’t become mesmerized by the most obvious metrics. Develop a portfolio of high-yield campaigns based not on click-through rates, but on customer value generation. Measure and optimize the highest order campaign metrics—customer acquisition, revenue, cost savings to make true ROI optimization decisions. Investigate relative campaign performance at the adgroup level, and then apply a performance-tiering approach to restructure the campaign to give you more control over feeding the winners and starving the losers.

Efficiency-Volume Matrix

When working with existing campaigns, Red Bricks Media applies these methods through the looking glass of our Four Quadrant PPC Analysis™. This approach is designed to identify the core drivers of PPC success and develop strategies based on the advertiser’s industry and location on the Four Quadrant diagnostic grid. Our Four Quadrant methodology assesses PPC campaigns along two critical dimensions: efficiency (cost) and volume (conversions). All PPC campaigns strive to be in Quadrant 1 in the matrix below—a state of maximized volume and efficiency. Our diagnosis places each campaign in one of the four quadrants. Depending on its location in the matrix and campaign parameters, we prescribe a specific set of strategies and tactics aimed at migrating campaigns to Quadrant 1.  

For example, in the matrix above, a company in a highly competitive, mature sector—consumer banking, mobile phone services, or retail — is likely to have PPC campaigns constrained in Quadrant 4.  

As depicted, our approach uncovers the key performance drivers and inhibitors, and then conceives an improvement program built on moving the campaign to Quadrant 1, with expanded volume and improved efficiencies. One must first analyze past and current performance data in light of current inventory and CPC rates in order to properly locate a campaign on the grid. Experiential knowledge of PPC campaigns and rigorous testing and optimization scenarios expose the success drivers and inhibitors that power the migration to greater levels of success.

The benefits of this approach can be significant. In a recent case when Red Bricks Media adopted an existing search program for an entertainment client, we applied the methods described above. The program had been deemed optimized, but, in fact, was languishing in Quadrant 3. Within six months, the Red Bricks Media team reduced the cost-per-click from $1.24 to $0.19, while more than tripling campaign volume. In order to achieve such results under the old campaign regime, our client would have been required to invest an additional $2.8 million. That is found money.

Search engine marketing isn’t getting more simple, but rather more complex. The way to penetrate that complexity—and simplify campaign management—is to focus on the four principles described above. Structuring that analysis within the Four Quadrant model enables campaign strategists to identify a powerful set of performance-enhancing strategies and tactics that can turn the underachieving campaign into an overachieving success.

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By Micah Fisher-Kirshner, Search Strategist

One of the more subtle, but ingenious changes to the free analytics package flagship of Google Analytics Enterprise was the inclusion of the motion charts that help visualize data in five dimensions.

Yes, you have read that right—five full dimensions: the standard x- and y-axes, bubble size, bubble colors, and time. Now, you could get all technical and note that the fourth dimension is really space-time, and that time should be merged with something, such as ‘bubble-time’ or ‘time-bubble’ (which actually is an accurate analysis of what you will be in when playing with motion charts), but let’s not quibble with these semantics, let’s stick to the motion charts as being five-dimensional.

The beauty of what Google did was to take the semi-used bubble charts and push them beyond the envelope by figuring out how to visually make something appeal to a larger audience, not just to nerds who played text-based MUD games in the 1990s or created their own 4×4 four-dimensional tic-tac-toe game (guilty as charged). Instead, the Google Analytics team figured out how to make a chart visually appealing, and just as importantly, useful to a large group of Google Analytics users—all for free.

The subtle brilliance of Google Analytics’s motion chart is in its ability to easily change scales such as the standard linear x-y axis to logarithmic x-y axis or variables from revenue to average time on site with a simple drop-down menu. Even (space-) time is made to look like a simple calculus formula by allowing the user control over the speed of the integral time period and pause at any interval to note any singular events.

The lightness of the program is a thing of beauty from which you can never escape, as you watch up to 50 data points flying around like fireflies in the night sky. Yet, the motion chart is better used for differentiating two themes across different metrics or KPIs in a kind of multi-variable A/B test. Nonetheless, as a caution to spending your time playing with this program, it is advisable to fiddle with it after work as you can quickly lose track of time until your boss comes around and yells at you for what he perceives as you playing a game on company time.

Take a look for yourself of Google Analytics’s motion chart below:

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