All things branding, inbound marketing, inbound sales + growth blog

Latest Trends in Search Engine Marketing

Written by Remington Begg | July 15, 2011 at 12:49 PM


FACEBOOK’S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Google has been grabbing all of the social media headlines with the release of the new Google+ feature (though for now, it’s by invitation only). Earlier this month, Facebook took back some of those headlines with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that they would soon “launch something awesome.” And that awesome new feature is: Skype video chat. While not particularly innovative, video chat is certainly a way for Facebook to get its users to spend more time on the site. Zuckerberg reports that Facebook has 750 million active users and new features are added almost every week that draw people in and keep them there for longer stretches of time. A very large, highly engaged audience makes Facebook a great marketing tool. If you’d like more information about our social media service, including setting up and managing a profile/marketing page or PPC campaign on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, let us know.

MARKETING IN YOUR OWN NEIGHBORHOOD

More and more people are using smart phones, iPads and other portable devices to make spur of the moment buying decisions when they’re on the go. Bing for iPad just made searching easier with a new app called “Lasso” that allows users to search by circling text in an article instead of typing text into a search box. iPhone and Android app phones are pre-loaded with Google Maps which pulls local business information from Google Places. Every business must maximize exposure in local directories and online map sites including Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Yelp and so on. Google Places is a good place to get started. If you need help setting up and managing your local directories, call us!

MOBILE DEVICES AND EMAIL MARKETING

Mobile internet access means that people are able to check their email just about anywhere they go. If you’ve been collecting customers’ email addresses through your marketing efforts, an email campaign is a great way to notify those customers of new products, new services or special offers. Your customers will have that email coupon or special offer in hand when they’re out making their purchasing decisions. Promotions that are offered exclusively via email encourage customers to sign up for your email list. Email campaigns can be cumbersome and bulk email services are not free. The good news: we’re updating our email platform to make email campaigns easy and affordable. Call us if you’d like more information about our email marketing service.

ABOUT THAT GOOGLE FARMER UPDATE

It’s still in the news because, apparently, there’s been an update to the update! Google has tried to downplay Panda Update 2.2, saying this is just one of about 500 algorithmic search tweaks they make each year. But webmasters and everyone in the search marketing industry seems to agree that the previous Panda updates punished some legitimate websites while many scraper sites got by unscathed. Google could not ignore the backlash from bloggers and the media, hence, Panda 2.2. If you’d like to read more and keep up with the ongoing saga, this article is a good place to start. Of course, we’ll continue to watch how this plays out and report updates in the future