By Gerry Bavaro, Vice President and Managing Director
"Strategy." Saying this term is over-used in the search and overall digital marketing space is an understatement. One person's perception of what strategy is may be drastically different than another's. Many agencies and advertisers in the space may be thinking they've got a killer strategy yet they don't know what they don't know and in reality are missing opportunities because what they really have is a bunch of tactics with no combined value or end goal. Let's break down the components of strategy and take a deeper look at what this word should be about in order to drive maximum business value from search.
Re-Painting The Lines of the Search Playing Field
Before anyone on the agency or client side defines or collaborates on a search strategy; ask the question “What is search?” Search doesn't look like it did a year or two ago, let alone five years ago. Engine programs for paid media go beyond placement on search results pages. Universal and real-time search results challenge the simple linear approach to share of voice, share of click achievement and gains on results pages. Most importantly, those impressions and clicks from paid and natural search programs are actually human beings behaving a certain way based on intent. Search is not at the bottom of the purchase funnel anymore. Forty-nine percent of Internet users search daily, and next to email, it's the behavior of choice. Your strategy needs to be based on how consumers search and behave in the digital space. Consumers move swiftly from awareness to interest and from desire to action, and since search is everywhere, it can either be a series of properly planned touch points that ultimately drive actions (sales, page views, etc.) or fragmented impressions and clicks with no desired end in mind.
Breaking Down Strategy, Simply
I’ve never constructed a building, but I do know that this situation requires proper strategy. Why? Because the goal is big and important, stakes are high, risk must be minimized because the consequences are serious, and there's a lot of moving parts and complexities that culminate in success or failure based on how they’re managed. What if you’re in charge of that building project? Your goal is to have a nice shiny structure completed by a certain date. Your strategy would be the architectural plan and the high level initiatives that consider specific factors that will achieve your end goal. However, big plans are filled with confusing complexities and do not provide simple clarity to the challenge you may be presented with nor the intent on how you’ll get there.
Know the goal, think of the problem you're trying to solve, break down your strategy as the specific intentions that will achieve the goal, then align the proper tactics.
Goals Definition and Problem Identification
There are usually a number of parties involved that will determine the end result of how your strategies conclude. So, what’s a search marketer to do?
Be a great strategist and think like a professional problem solver or consultant. This means breaking down the problem or challenge you are faced with which is often where goals start. Don’t expect or assume that someone else has all the answers or is clear about the problem, that’s what they’re paying professionals for. If there are internal client teams or partners that have suggestions, leverage their research and data to break through the clutter.
Search provides a wealth of data from queries that can quantitatively highlight problems. There’s a reason why search consumes half of the $27 billion spent in digital marketing today; search works because it’s clearly measurable and data-driven. It’s often not about what the goal IS but what it SHOULD BE. Sometimes an initial idea can be drastically transformed by the introduction of relevant and undiscovered data which can ultimately provide a platform for the right strategy, associated tactics, and success.
Now that we’re clear on the lifecycle, components, and some best practices of search strategy, I will follow up next time with more advanced and deeper layers that come into play today when developing search strategy.
Understanding Search Strategy – Part 1
The PC Era, the Mobile Era and Thoughts on Flash
By Dave McAnally, Associate Director, Content Solutions
Oringally Appeared on EatenByGiants
This is a Cliff’s Notes version of my post over here, but the issue had me thinking enough that it warranted a post on FindResolution.com as well. A couple of things have come up in the last few weeks that have really shed some light on how people’s online experiences will evolve over the next few years.
There was Facebook’s Open Graph launch. This is ultimately an enhancement of Facebook Connect. As webmarketers, we see the opportunity to improve engagement and close the loop a bit with our customers’ social activity and our own brands. However, from a user perspective, what this means is that you are becoming more and more connected with people.
The other major issue is the iPad. I think when things like the iPad come along, webmarketers and techies get caught up in the minutia they fail to recognize the bigger issues at play. Up until Flash began being deployed across the iPhone platform (of which I consider the iPad to be 4th generation), I had trouble wrapping my head around what the iPad actually meant for the industry in terms of being a “game changer.”
With that in mind, let’s see how Flash plays into all of this? Steve Jobs believes Flash was a technology that was well served in the “PC Era” but that it was not translating in the “Mobile Era.” Here’s where I think the iPad may have HUGE search marketing implications. It redefines the whole experience for casual computing and the app store is an extension of that. If I were to describe the “PC Era” and the “Mobile Era,” as they pertain to search, I would describe them like this:
PC Era -Software ignores the device because the device does not inform the experience. Experiences are uniform in that users interact with information by pointing, clicking and typing. The ability to best anticipate exactly what a user is looking for when they set about looking for something determines the best search engine.
Mobile Era -The device informs the software design and user-interaction varies based on the device type. Users aren't limited to just pointing and clicking on things anymore; rather touch-screens, tilt-functionality and single-function apps define the user experience. From a functional standpoint, it’s unclear who (or if any one entity) can actually do this better than the next. As of right now, the leader in search in the mobile era is still anyone's game. Adobe certainly has the opportunity to be the development leader regardless of Flash implementation.
Now What?
It’s hard to put into words how big of a shift this could potentially be, but that won’t stop me from attempting to do so. Why do I say it’s still anyone’s game for search? Because it’s possible this shift most likely signifies the end of the life-cycle for a traditional SERP (search engine results page) to the casual-user. We’re moving towards a device and app specific specialization. Rather than an all-inclusive search engine, we’re seeing the potential for an era of micro-engines where engines can specialize at being good at on particular kind of search, monetize it accordingly and deliver a more effective and efficient user experience. As I’ve probably implied by now, this is a very exciting stage in web-history because we’ve reached a crossroads where instead of simply translating old technology (PC Era) into a new one (Mobile Era), the latter is leaving the constraints of the old era behind and charting its own course. By that I mean, 4-5 years ago, the belief was that there’d come a day where people would surf the web on their phones just like they do on their desktops. What we’re seeing is the groundwork being laid to completely redefine how digital content will be experienced in a new mobile era. Rather than just a big ‘ol iPod Touch, the iPad actually takes that mobile-paradigm and brings it into a viable platform for casual (and professional in many ways) computing. I don’t at all think that’s too grandiose a statement. Remember the last time Apple did that?
For search marketing this has many tactical implications…most of which we don’t even have the capacity to fathom at the moment. However, the following are some things I would suggest marketers must embrace if they are going to be successful in the new era:
Digital Behavior is King: I think it’s fair to say we need to have more dimensions to our SEO understandings than “content is king”. We have to be prepared to understand how our audience connects with that content (apps, mobile, video, social), how they share it among their social graph, and where query intent aligns best (informational, navigational, transactional). Marketers need analytics like Facebook Insights, Web Analytics, Video Analytics, and digital behavior tools like AdPlanner all working together to answer these questions
The Middleware is Real: John Batelle made some excellent points a few weeks ago about how the application world the Android and iPhone are driving towards create a new web experience that creates a new layer of search. Understanding this dimension, how your users find apps and what their behavior will be is key (see how that first point plays in here).
The Device(s) Inform Your Strategy: We are leaving an era where the web is a two-dimensional one-size-fits-all plane and entering one where developers are free to really ‘use the space’ in new and creative ways. This will spawn innovation and specialization. What I’m trying to say here is that you need to think about how your users will experience content on a tablet, verses a phone, verses their social graph and how those three (and beyond, we’ve only just begun) could interact. I predict that the days of creating an iPhone App with one dev group, an Android One with another and building a website with your creative agency are numbered.
Strategically, content will need to live in a way that conforms to your users’ “digital day.” Understand what content is best consumed on a phone, how that should relate to the users’ tablet, and how/what of that content interaction should be shared with their social graph.
Why Mobile Searchers Need Mobile-Optimized Sites
By Bryson Meunier, Natural Search Associate Director, Content Solutions
Orginally Appeared on Search Engine Land
In mobile SEO I straddle two industries: mobile marketing and search marketing, both of which contain smart people with good questions about mobile search. I think there’s a widespread desire in both camps these days to handle mobile SEO in a way that is not only going to be beneficial to brands today, but will have positive ramifications for years to come.
A common practice in mobile web site design today is to redirect a mobile user to another domain through user agent detection, rather than to optimize the site for mobile searchers. I often get asked, “Why would someone who is on the first page with a working desktop result that redirects to appropriate mobile content in mobile search need to optimize a mobile site for mobile search?” These people typically don’t understand why anyone would need to optimize for mobile search when they do traditional SEO and mobile search engine users are redirected to their desktop site.
It’s a good question, in a sense, because if you have an optimized desktop site that appears in mobile search results, and you’re redirecting mobile users to mobile content, you’re getting some traffic to your mobile site from mobile searchers, even if the site’s not in the search engine’s index. Why would one need to specifically optimize for mobile searchers, when the mobile searchers are finding their content via redirects? I know that a few of the major mobile content publishers simply use redirects rather than optimize for mobile search specifically, and I have to say I think that’s a bit short-sighted. I sat down to think of a good objection to the practice, and came up with sixteen:
- Mobility is a ranking factor for mobile search, and not optimizing a mobile site could make it more difficult to appear in competitive nonbranded searches where mobility is a factor. Likewise, having an optimized mobile site could make it easier to appear for competitive nonbranded keywords where mobility is a factor.
- Some users prefer to access desktop sites on their smartphones, and some prefer to access mobile sites. By forcing the mobile site for desktop users, you’re only pleasing the one audience of searchers. Having a link to the mobile site from the desktop site and vice versa, as the W3C recommends, pleases the most users.
- If online reputation management is a factor for a brand, having a mobile optimized site could give an additional listing (or sometimes two or three) in branded search results, pushing negative content down.
- Not optimizing a mobile site usually means that a brand is presenting a slimmed down version of their desktop site, which doesn’t take advantage of features that make for an inherently mobile user experience (e.g. GPS or location awareness), which will likely garner fewer natural links than a site that provides a truly mobile user experience, making it more difficult for the site to rank in mobile search.
- As mobile search evolves and mobile ranking factors become more prevalent, brands that don’t optimize a mobile site today will be busy playing catch up tomorrow, building mobile links and paying attention to mobile ranking factors to their site. Search engines look at age of links and age of site when it comes to ranking because such factors are hard to manipulate. Success in mobile SEO will be difficult if postponed until absolutely necessary.
- Assuming that mobile SEO is not necessary because a desktop site redirects to a mobile site for mobile browsers assumes that mobile searchers are searching for web sites. Mobile application optimization is a large part of mobile search visibility, and it has very little to do with mobile web search at this point.
- Voice search, search suggest, location and mobility changes keyword targeting, and a brand with a local presence might be able to target more competitive keywords to an audience that is nearby. This can’t be controlled if a mobile site is not optimized for mobile searchers.
- Mobile visual search is another emerging mobile search trend that has nothing to do with desktop or mobile web sites. If someone takes a picture of a store, logo or product, will they be able to find the information that they’re looking for? This can be optimized, if not controlled, and brands thinking about mobile SEO will be ready for it before brands who aren’t.
- For Blackberry users, who represent the majority of smartphone users, as well as feature phone users (who represent the majority of mobile users) Google places a green mobile icon next to mobile search results (e.g. http://www.google.com/m/search?q=espn+mobile), which can increase CTR from users who prefer mobile sites and understand what it represents. For these users, desktop sites might not render at all on their phones, and they may need a mobile optimized site in order to interact with it.
- Keywords like “coupons” could have a different meaning to people on mobile devices than they do on the desktop, as you can’t redeem printable coupons on your phone. You want to provide a different landing page to these consumers in the search engines so that they’re able to convert.
- Providing a mobile landing page to a mobile user makes it more likely that they will perform the desired action. By redirecting every mobile searcher to the mobile homepage, you’re performing a similar action to sending all paid searchers to a homepage, which isn’t as relevant to their query and forces them to do extra work before they can convert. Optimizing mobile pages for mobile queries increases the chance of conversion.
- Because of efforts by Google and other search engines to make mobile search easy and convenient for users, it is growing so quickly that many analysts expect it to outpace desktop search by 2011. In general, brands who make an effort to understand and optimize for the mobile search experience will be better prepared for that day when there are more mobile searchers than desktop searchers.
- Mobile searchers sometimes never get to search listings because they find the content they’re looking for in the search suggest box. Optimizing for mobile search suggest makes it possible for the user to find what the brand wants them to find without ever accessing a mobile site.
- New phones come out all the time and adding a new user agent for all of them is additional maintenance. Easier to optimize both a desktop and mobile site and let the engines send the right traffic.
- If a site contains mobile-specific content that’s not on the desktop site, that content will never be found for mobile-specific searches if mobile site is not indexed.
- It’s an argument from authority, but I’m going to make it because it’s what many people in this industry listen to. That is, it’s not 2005 anymore where it seems like there are only five of us recommending optimizing for mobile search, while most are advising to wait until next year. At this point many agencies and consultants and even engines are recommending optimizing for mobile searchers. Here’s a partial list:
Have you tried to recommend mobile search optimization only to get asked why bother optimizing a mobile site for mobile search? If you did and you didn’t have a compelling argument in favor of optimizing mobile sites for mobile searchers, now you have 16.
So if not for this question, why aren’t you optimizing for mobile searchers? I’m sure there are other questions that people have and I’d like to answer them all. Ask yours in the comments and if I see it enough I’ll address it in a future post.
