Google vs Bing vs Yahoo (Update for July 2011)

Over a year ago I wrote a blog looking at how the top search engines were doing.  I thought it was time for an update.  An article on Search Engine Watch, called "May 2011 Search Engine Market Share from comScore, Compete, Hitwise" by Danny Goodwin, (June 19, 2011), gave me the input for that.

Back in April 2010, Experian Hitwise reported that Google had 71.4% of share, Yahoo was at 14.96% and bing was hovering at 9.43%. 

Now?

According to  comScore, in May of 2011 that looks like: Google is at 65.5%, Yahoo is at 15.9%, and Bing has grown to 14.1%.  (You probably aren't asking, but in case you are curious, Ask.com is continuting to linger way, way down in the rankings.) 

So, year over year Google has dropped somewhere around 6%-8% in search rankings (depending on the web analytics company's stats you look at).  At the same time, Bing is enjoying growth!

Bing's not cutting it

When Microsoft rolled out Bing they were intending to beat up Google.  Unfortunately (for Bing) that's just not happening.  When it launched, Bing enjoyed an uptick on the search-o-meter.  It stole share from Yahoo!.  Google marched on. 

Now, Google is marching up.

MarketingProfs.com reported (through Experian Hitwise) that Google's market share actually GREW in April.  At the same time, Microsoft's fell.  Oh, Yahoo!'s fell too.  And, if you're asking (which you probably aren't), Ask.com's share also fell (dramatically).  Have a look at the results on MarketingProfs.com.

Looking for some SEO Software. Here's a shortlist.

Not that this is the "right" shortlist. It is really just my results from a simple Google Search of "SEO Software".

Some of the tools that I'm going to look at as options to help me with my SEO are:

• HubSpot (who also provide the HubSpot Grader for free)
• SEO Suite by Apex Promotion (this site includes a complete hack job on the next product in the list. They lose points on the "classy scale". Still, I'm going to check into their accusations.)
• WebPosition by WebTrends (A pretty thin site. Well promoted through affiliates. Hardcore on the call to action.)
• Web CEO (Probably the best site. Already, I'm leaning towards using them)
• SEO Elite
• SEO Suite
• Internet Business Promoter (IBP)
• lotusjump (This is Software as a Service, i.e. you pay a subscription and use their website to optimize your site)

Watch for a few more posts on this subject over the next few days. I'm getting closer to selecting a SEO software package. In the next couple of days I can tell you what I've chosen and why. After that, I'll let you know how it is working.

Have you used SEO Software? Please post a comment to this blog to tell me what you chose, why, and how it has worked out.

Looking for some SEO Software. But I don't want to wear a Black Hat.

My mission to find the right SEO system continues...

The one thing to be really careful when selecting (or using) SEO software, are Black Hat SEO techniques. These are techniques that were once legitimate, but have been heavily abused by SEO practitioners, and consequently are hated by the search engine companies. Additionally, they are hated by you, me, and everyone else who uses search engines to find what we are looking for quickly.

Once the search engines discover you are using Black Hat techniques (and they will), they will heavily penalize your rankings. Black Hat techniques include: Keyword stuffing, Spamdexing, Spam blogs, Cookie stuffing, Page indexing, Invisible text, Page cloaking, and Doorway pages. You can find out more at About.com or on Wikipedia.

In short, if you ensure that every page you generate has great content on it, and follows basic rules, then you will end up ranking well.

Watch for a few more posts on this subject over the next few days. Ultimately, I'm going to select some SEO software and kick its tires. My intent with the SEO software is to help me ensure that I am following the basic content rules. I'm excited to give it a whirl.

Have you used SEO Software? Please post a comment to this blog to tell me what you chose, why, and how it has worked out.

Looking for some SEO Software. A big extra is SEM capability.

I'm still searching for the right SEO software for me. Yesterday I listed out what SEO software should do, and talked about some of the extras I'd like to have. Today I'm hitting on one big "extra". It would be nice if the SEO software has SEM capabilities.

SEM is Search Engine Marketing. That means that you bid on keywords - sponsored links and the like - on the search engines like Google. Using SEM you pay only when someone clicks on your ad.

SEM capabilites include:

• Submit and manage your user name and profile setting in one place for multiple search engines
• Manage your account settings
• Manage account funding, billing, and so on
• Synchronize PPC accounts - Download campaigns and keywords from your existing PPC accounts
• Manage multiple PPC campaigns with a single interface
• Make recommendations about words that are working and words that aren't
• Campaign budgeting - make recommendations on where budgets should be spent, and change your daily budget setting
  
• Manage campaign status - set campaign online or offline
• Search Network management - change your campaign coverage for Search Network or Content Network
• Create and add AdGroups - create multiple Adgroups or import Adgroups from the program directly
• Create and edit Ad Creatives - from the program directly
• Disable and Enable Adgroups
• Preview Ad creative - improve your Ad Creative quality score
• Maximize your keyword coverage - Keyword Builder to help you to generate more relevant keywords
• Add or Remove keywords - allows you to add new keywords or remove keywords directly from your account
• Keyword forecasting - provides you a quick overview of your Minimum and Maximum position and CPC
• Set keywords online or offline
• URL bidding strategy - allows you to bid above or below a particular URL, enabling you to always be on top of your competitor, or below (if you choose)
• ROI bidding strategy for CPA and ROAS
• URL verification to make sure the url you have entered in you ads is correct.
• Automated email notification when your bids or position have been changed
• Comprehensive bidding & ROI performance reports
  
• Export keywords and ranking results to Excel database
• Competitor Analysis - determine competitors' detailed information and approximate PPC bidding price

Watch for a few more posts on this subject over the next few days. Ultimately, I'm going to select some SEO software and kick its tires. It would be great if it does SEM as well. That's something that I haven't done for Market GoGo yet. I know SEM kicks butt, so I need to get that done.

Have you used SEO Software or SEM Software? Please post a comment to this blog to tell me what you chose, why, and how it has worked out.

Looking for some SEO Software. What about the Extras?

So, there are a few extras that I'd really like to have in an SEO package. This is a short list. As I poke into the software more, I'll probably have some other ideas about other things that would be really nice to have.

• Online training - Free and included.
  
• Web Site Performance Analysis - Help to speed up your site
  
• Link validation tool- Check for broken links

Watch for a few more posts on this subject over the next few days. Ultimately, I'm going to select some SEO software and kick its tires. Hopefully I get it right, and find a good way to legitimately improve my page rankings.

Have you used SEO Software? Please post a comment to this blog to tell me what you chose, why, and how it has worked out.

Looking for some SEO Software. What should SEO Software do?

I'm a Marketing Strategy Consultant. I "get" the importance of SEO. But, I'm not an SEO expert, and as you can probably tell from my website, I'm not a technical expert. So, I've been looking for a Search Engine Optimization tool that will help me to "SEO" my own site. This is a "learning experience" for me.

The purpose of Search Engine Optimization is to improve your organic search ranking. That means when someone searches for phrases that are important to your company, that your site comes up on the first page right near the top. That's the goal, but of course it can be very hard to do depending on your industry, your size, and your competition.

What does Search Engine Optimization software do? Here are some things it should do. Wait a minute ... maybe it should do these things. It is important that you manage the use of the SEO software carefully so that you don't end up in trouble with the Search companies (more about that in another post or two):

• Search engine submission - helps you to submit your website to the search engines. This should hit all of the major search engines, as well as multiple "little ones". It also should allow you to do this manually and / or scheduled.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) - Provide practical advice and tips on how to improve your pages to increase their ranking advice for multiple search engines. Optimization advice touches upon factors such as general page properties, head and body areas and off-the-page parameters.
• Pinpoints possible and existing search engine visibility problems
• Give a complete breakdown of problems by the area of page
• Recommend changes to be made so that your site is found by prospective users
• Density Analysis Report - this search engine optimization report gives a breakdown on the density of phrases used on your page. This report helps you to see what keywords and phrases your page is actually optimized for and whether your optimization efforts influence your on-page parameters.
• Web ranking - Organic keyword rank reporting which tells you how you are ranking for each of your organic search terms. Reports should also show trends.
• Link popularity check - allows you to independently measure the number of incoming links to your website.
• Meta Tag generator and editor - creates or modifies keywords, descriptions, and titles for your web pages.
• Page Creator - Creates a "Doorway Page" or "Landing Page" automatically with the keywords you choose. You should be able to edit and customize this page subsequently. (Hmmm ... be careful with this one. A doorway page is clearly Black Hat. The page that is created should be a Landing Page that will be useful to a human.)
  
• Google Friendly API - Support for the Google API
• Keyword Library and Builder - a keyword research tool that will generate a list of suggestion keywords based on the keywords you provide or that it gleans from your site, in order to create or modify a keyword library database and use them for your web sites. You can target important keywords and phrases generated by Keyword Builder to use them to optimize your meta tags.
• Keyword Competitive analysis - Research each keyword's competition thoroughly.
• Page editor - Automatically tune your web pages for top-ranking in the major search engines
• Competitor Analysis - ability to see how your competitors rank and also what they are doing to rank where they are ranking.
• Maintain reciprocal links
• Generate new links from search engines
• Send "Personalized" link invitation messages
• Track and verify your link partners
• Create link pages automatically and promote them
• Site saturation monitoring - this number represents how many pages of your website are indexed by the search engine. (You can find this easily by querying on Google with the phrase "site:www.yoursite.com query".)
• Live product support
• Multiple URL capability - the ability to do run analysis on multiple URLs.
• Reports - capability to check & track your web site position on all major search engines, based on your list of keywords.
• Custom Reports - the ability to customize the reports with things like your logo, company name, and details.
• Send reports by email.
• Export stuff to Excel.
• Engine data renewal - Most of these SEO tools need you to renew your "license" with them each year.

Watch for a few more posts on this subject over the next few days. Ultimately, I'm going to select some SEO software and kick its tires. Will I get banned by the search engines ... I hope not :^).

Have you used SEO Software? Please post a comment to this blog to tell me what you chose, why, and how it has worked out.

Did you know that March 14th is "Pi Day"

Think about it ...

• March the 14th is the 3rd month and 14th day (3.14)
• Pi is that mythical number associated with circles 3.14159265 ... (typically referred to simply as 3.14).

March 14th also just happens to be Einstein's birthday (coincidence ... I think not!).
Apparently the big celebration is officially at 1:59 in the afternoon. Shouldn't it be 1:59 in the morning on March 14th? That might be better, then the party could start on the 13th!

Why is this interesting to the average web marketer? Well - take a look at Google's heat meter on the hot-ness of queries for "Pi Facts". It's on fire!
(That's as of about 1opm mountain time on March 12th, 2009. There are still 2 days to go.)

And, that's not the only "pi" term that is burning up the Google rankings:

• "Pi Facts" are currently#7
• "Pi Jokes" are #13
• "Pi Digits" are #15
  
• "Pi Poems" are #16
• "History of Pi" is #19
• ... and so on!

Google "Pi Facts", and the rest of those terms. You'll find that virtually no one is bidding on those terms. I'd buy them up over the next 2 days if I sold:

• PCs
• Pies
• Educational Supplies (like those giant wooden compasses they used when I was in Grade 6 ... do they still use those?)
  
• Party Supplies
• ... I'm sure there are more great ideas!

Sticking with the concept, I wonder what other "trivial" days there are out there that would be a fun opportunity to win with relevant and cheap search engine marketing?

(Here's a link in case you want more information about Pi Day.)

Penile Fracture - A top searched Google phrase

Oh, the things you learn from watching TV ... So, for anyone who watches Grey's Anatomy, last night one of the characters suffered a "Penile Fracture". Jokingly, I said to my wife, "I guess you'll have to Google that one to find out if it is possible."

To my surprise this morning, I noticed that "Penile Fracture" was one of the top searched Google terms. Ouch. More to my surprise, it is actually possible. Double ouch.

The National Post has a pretty good article about it.

I wonder why no one scooped up the sponsored search terms on "Penile Fracture" right away. I bet the Marketing teams at Viagra and other similar companies wish they had!

Trends for 2009: #8. Online Advertising will Continue to Grow

As Marketers (perhaps like you) struggle with a tightened budget and getting the best bang for your buck, it will be time for Advertisers to look more closely at the multitude of advertising media that is part of Online Advertising. Consequently, online advertising will grow in 2009. In contrast, almost all other media will shrink dramatically.

During the Great Depression, the "new media" of radio took off. In fact, in every recession since then Radio advertising has fared very well. Expect similar this time around - except in Radio's place, you will see innovations and growth in online advertising.

Now, that said, if you are a Publisher or an Advertising Network it isn't time to start counting your coins yet. While online advertising will grow in 2009, budgets will still be tight, and it may not even grow as much as it did in 2008. Relative to other advertising media however, it will be glowing. Why? Well, the equation might look something like this for an Advertiser:

This Year's advertising budget = Last Year's Budget / 2.
Where do I put that little bit of money?

• Print 2009 = Print 2008 x 1/3
  
• TV 2009 = TV 2008 x 1/2
• Radio 2009 = Radio 2008 x 3/4
  
• Out of Home 2009 = Out of Home 2008 x 2/3
• Online 2009 = Online 2008 x 1.1

Okay ... the math may not make sense, and those numbers are all just a WAG, but the concept stands. Budgets will get cut, and the increase in online spending is going to come at the expense of other media.

What online advertising is going to grow? All of it. Paid search (probably more than the rest), Banner Ads, Video, Online Games and Contests, etc., etc., etc.. Some people are forecasting that this will lead to an overall increase in Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). Maybe, but maybe not. The content and opportunities on the internet are almost limitless, but there are only a small handfull of really popular sites. The CPM (thousand impressions) or CPC (click) will increase on those sites. But as an Advertiser, if you focus on conversions and use an outlet like an Advertising Network that leverages the power of the long-tail, then you may actually come out with a low and stable CPA.

What's a Marketer to do in 2009?

• Do review your traditional advertising spend VERY closely. What worked? What didn't? What is dubious? Slash and burn anything but that which worked. Figure out how you can build on those things that worked.
  
• Do online advertising. Look at how you can be creative with it. Also, look at how you can integrate with traditional advertising that is working. Similarly, look at how you can integrate it with Direct Marketing opportunities.
• Focus on your Cost Per Acquisition. Use analytics and look at all of your online advertising and its performance (including creative, message, placement, etc.). Use this information to tune your ads and your media buys in order to lower your CPA. To lower your media buys, look at options like bulk buys, advertising networks, or even changing the type or mix of ads you are running entirely (e.g. maybe increase your search spend, and reduce your banner ad spend).
  

Will I be right? The year will tell!

• Follow this blog and watch for the next marketing trends I'm forecasting for 2009.
• Feel free to contact Market GoGo to discuss this further.

Trends for 2009: #6. Paid Search advertising (i.e. Google's revenue) will grow substantially again (i.e. Time to invest in Google?)

Web traffic will continue to climb. Web shoppers will increase in numbers. Web surfers will continue to start their purchase process on a search engine. The search engine of choice will continue to be Google, and in fact their share of the search market will grow dramatically.

Simultaneously ... Marketing budgets will drop. Marketing departments will be under more pressure then ever to draw prospective customers in.

So, what is a Marketer to do? In 2009 Marketers will spend more time than ever before focusing on Search Marketing - both paid and organic. Paid search advertising however is the easiest and quickest way to make things work.

It is likely that paid search advertising costs will actually increase substantially in 2009, as more Marketers bid on common phrases. Nonetheless, a good search strategy is still going to be substantially cheaper, much more effective, and infinitely more measurable than any signficant newspaper ad.

Search Marketing strategies to focus on in 2009:

• Do Paid Search Engine Marketing: Oh, and do it well. Track the ROI of keywords and be sure that you are making your money on every word that you are bidding on.
• Work your copy: A paid search ad is just a simple little bit of text. But, it may be the most powerful 12 to 15 words you ever write. Test, revise, test, revise, and don't stop. Make sure that every bit of copy you put out there on those search ads is on brand and works as well as it possibly can. Additionally, customize copy for each search term you have out there. You should have tens, hundreds, or even thousands of ads floating out there in the ether of the search world.
  
• Create Landing Pages: Every paid search bid should have its own purpose-made landing page with your call to action highlighted. No one should ever click on your paid search ad and end up at your home page (or worse, a 404 error).
• Do Organic Search Engine Optimization: SEO is "free" and having a high organic rank will pay off rapidly - even in places where you are also bidding on a relevant keyword. But, to be honest, SEO isn't free and it isn't a one-time project. SEO requires solid resourcing with people who have a good understanding of what they are doing. It is also a journey not a destination. So, you have to be prepared to continually revisit your SEO and tune your website.

Will I be right? The year will tell!

• Follow this blog and watch for the next marketing trends I'm forecasting for 2009.
• Feel free to contact Market GoGo to discuss this further.