As you might know, SEMPO Canada, the Canadian Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization is involved in the launch of SEMPO’s 4th annual State of Search Marketing Survey. Whether you are seasoned in SEM or still wet behind the ears, your input is valued and needed! Therefore, if you have been involved in the preparation and/or implementation of a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Plan in 2007 or if you know someone in your organization, we want to hear from you.

Please take a few minutes to answer the 4th Annual SEMPO Survey.

If you are not involved in Search Marketing, please forward to the appropriate Canadian people within your organization and network. Your help means a lot to us in improving the growth of Search Marketing in Canada. Feel free to blog about it and thanks for you collaboration!

More on SEMPO Canada:
SEMPO Canada is Canadian Non-Profit Professional Search Marketing Association working to increase awareness and promote the value of Search Engine Marketing in Canada. This Working Group was founded in November 2006 by Ken Jurina & Alexandre Brabant and focuses on improving the growth, awareness and understanding Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in Canada including Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Link Building, Pay Per Click Management best practices in this new field of marketing and how it uniquely pertains and is of relevance to Canadians worldwide across any sector, vertical or industry.

Thank you so much for participating.

Alexandre Brabant & Ken Jurina
Co-Chairs SEMPO Canada
Canadian Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization

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SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, just launch a section on YouTube where they put all their videos from various sources. You will find videos there from many people sitting on the Board of Directors where they talk about SEMPO, SEMPO Institute, SEMPO Research & Marketing and all the other SEMPO committees. These are the leaders shaping the Search Engine Marketing industry worldwide and it is very inspiring to hear them speak about their respective responsibilities as part of SEMPO. I selected this one for your review, where SEMPO Director Dana Todd talks about SEMPO and the SEMPO Institute.

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As I was searching the web for a link building refresher for a Client, I came across this Clip featuring Eric Ward, the link building Master. If you are not familiar with link building and why you need to do this, you need to watch the video. If you prefer to read about it, here is a good link building primer article you want to read before you start the job.

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I have been receiving newsletters lately from ForestEthics, a non-profit organization that focuses on preserving endangered forest in Canada. In their last few emails, they were fiercefully attacking Sears Canada for their environmental policy with regards to the printing of their well known and heavy catalogues. Since 1880, Sears has been famous for their catalogues, but now it is 2007 and Sears must face this new era of climate change and recognize their role in it. They produce around 425 million catalogues every year - and the paper is coming from Canada’s Boreal Forest.

Change can happen. A few months ago month, Forest Ethics got a new commitment from Victoria’s Secret for adopting a more sensitive environmental policy with the printing of their catalogues.

Forest Ethics Activist Campaign against Victoria’s Secret in 2004:

See more about it on VictoriaDirtySecret.net

I personally love to support these initiatives. What is the link with Search Marketing? I think Google has brought up an environmental solution to an economic problem by allowing customers and suppliers to meet online as opposed to a paper-based support. It seems like more and more people are making this analogy with regards to search marketing. I hear it everywhere now in each Online Marketing conference. Not only will you get a better return on your advertising investment by doing Search Marketing, you will also save trees and the environment in the same way. What’s not to like? I can’t wait to see major companies like Sears Canada, who are selling thousands of products, adopting search marketing best practices with thousands of search terms. 

Now it is Sears Canada’s turn to adopt such environmental policy. As such, since the holiday season is just around the corner and so is their first International Day of Action on the Sears Campaign - you are invited to protest! On Tuesday, December 4, people across Canada and the United States will be taking action to tell Sears that they’re on our collective naughty list and it’s time to be nice to our Endangered Forests.

People are gathering in Vancouver (BC):
In Vancouver, we will be gathering at the downtown Sears outlet at 701 Granville St. from 12:30-1:00PM to send a message to the department store giant to stop cutting Canadian forests for their catalogues. Please call 604-724-4307 or send en email to Neil Monckton: neil{at}forestethics.org, if you can join ForestEthics on Dec. 4 over lunchtime at the Vancouver Sears outlet. Details are below:

Date: Tues., Dec. 4
Time: Lunchtime, 12:30-1:00PM
Location: Sears Canada, 701 Granville St. (northeast entrance at Georgia and Granville)
Contact: Call 604-724-4307 or email to RSVP

Tell Sears you don’t want a Wishbook, but that we’re wishing they would stop destroying Canadian forests! For more info, please contact Neil Monckton, ForestEthics Senior Organizing Associate - British Columbia. If you can’t attend the Vancouver event, please consider staging your own action at your local Sears outlet.

Remember: there are alternatives to reach your audience without printing catalogues and destroying our forests. Thanks!

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In one of the last posts, I was talking about how helpful it is to use Google Trends to estimate search volume, spread your PPC budget over time and factor in seasonality. I have always been naturally inclined to start any Client Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Plan with a Pay Per Click (PPC) program and learn from it before creating an SEO Strategy. I just thought about this intuitively, and I believed that would make the best process. In Search Marketing, process is key. You skip a step and your plan goes sideways. I found a great article today that talks about this and how to use paid search results to guide your site optimization plan. It is a great article written by Nathan Lewis.

In a nutshell, because PPC is a serious business that drives billions of revenues for Google, MSN and Yahoo, and because it could be a serious investment item for your business, you need to gain as much information as you can in the process. There is a lot to be learn on how people search in your industry, how they think about it and you need to understand these nuances in order to implement an effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Plan.

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I was a little surprised today when I discovered that the choice of my video titles used on my website (here and there) made a big differences in search results. Everyone knows that Youtube videos are now being indexed in Google but I was not sure if the other providers were, such as Brightcove, our preferred choice. With Dan Beauparlant, my awesome Videographer, we decided to put “Alexandre Brabant, Search Marketing” as the video title, just in case someone would stumble upon it elsewhere than my site. That decision proved to be right.

When I Google myself today, I found the Brightcove link in position #6.

What does this mean to you?
When you make a clip of anything, make sure that the content of the clip is well represented in the title, just like you would do with your site. Use the longest string of words that the video platform allows in order to increase your chances.Your clip then becomes searchable and more likely to be found. A keyword-rich video title can make a big difference in the amount of viewers and therefore generates a positive feedback for your business or anything else you want to promote.

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Blogging is an addiction. You can easily spend the whole day blogging and not work on anything. I am glad to see that my addiction is somewhat under control. I scored 65%. Try the fun little blogging quiz and share your results.

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On Tuesday the 4th of December from 7:00AM to 9:30AM at the Terminal City Club, 837 West Hastings Street, Vancouver VKI Studios will be hosting the first WAA & eMetrics breakfast event.

This event will feature Jim Sterne, founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits, and founding Chairman and current President of the Web Analytics Association. Jim will be speaking about the current maturity of the web analytics industry. He will share insights into the level of expertise among today’s practitioners; challenges they face; the opportunities that are available; and the role we play as companies adopt the continuous improvement method of marketing optimization (at VKI Studios we have branded this as our Hippo Tango service) and truly start listening, engaging and participating in a dialogue with customers.

In addition to Jim’s presentation VKI Studio’s John Hossack will be presenting a recent case study that we have put together on marketing/landing page optimization. This case study will focus on the use of web analytics and testing (in this case Google Analytics and Google’s Website Optimizer) and the importance of planning and process to maximize results.

This event is targeted at people who want have an interest in marketing optimization, web analytics, and testing. I hope that attendees will gain a solid understanding of the current state of the analytics arena from Jim and an appreciation of the benefits of becoming a data driven organization and the importance of planning and process from my presentation.

You can register here.

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Most Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics provides anonymous web traffic information. You know where your visitors are coming from, what kind of keywords they use, how much time they spent on your site, which search engines they used and so on. This information is useful and you can keep track of your traffic progression over time. That’s great. But, what if you would know which companies are visiting your site? Your site traffic would then become a fantastic lead generator and you would be able to phone the people who just visited your website, in real time. I (We) just found that company (thanks to James Sherrett for the find). They are DomoDomain.com.

Here is the DomoDomain tool description:
Domodomain turns your Ad Campaigns and your website into a lead generation machine by automatically capturing detailed information about business visitors, in real time and without visitor registration. Domodomain transforms otherwise “invisible” website clicks into actionable sales and marketing intelligence with no software to install. Domodomain transforms the concept of Web Analytics, from a statistical analysis tool into a window onto visitor browsing experience, generating intuitive and useful information for sales and marketing teams.

I signed up for a 30-day free trial this morning and I must say that I am really impressed about the quality of the information I received so far. If you are already engaged in any form of web promotion, I highly recommend that you try this tool. Yesterday, I knew there were between 50-100 people who visited my site. Now I know who these people are. A picture is worth a thousands words

Here are my leads for today:

DomoDomain also provides a dashboard with similar information that you would find in a typical Web Analytics software. The implementation of the tool is a very easy and short process. Give it a try. If you want more information on how you can turn your site into a lead generator machine, feel free to communicate with Joshua M. Gold, Esq. at joshua{at}domodomain.com. He is a really nice guy who speaks French and English.

Here are all his contact details:

Joshua M. Gold
Co-Founder/Director Corporate Development
DomoDomain, Inc.
51 Jefferson Blvd, 5th Fl.
Warwick, RI 02888 USA
Tel: +1-888-590-9773
Mobile: +1-401-864-4471
Fax: +1-401-633-7200
email:
url: http://www.domodomain.com

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I discovered the band Keepers a few months ago when my friend Dan Beauparlant told me he was working on a music video for the group. Today, Ric Antonishin and the rest of his Keepers are releasing the video and I am pleased to share it with you. I really like this local rock band and I am pleased to mention that they will be playing at the Coppertank in Kitsilano on December 31, 2007. Tickets are sold at the Coppertank, 3135 West Broadway, Vancouver. I will be there.

Here is the video:

For more information on the rock band Keepers, where they play, when, or if you want to hire them for an evening, please contact Ric Antonishin: ricantonishin{at}shaw.ca

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Clients always want to know how much it would cost them to implement a Search Marketing plan involving Pay per Click (PPC) Investment Whereas it is a simple question, it is not as easy to answer it. I usually give them ballpark figures and I hope it makes sense for them. When you think about it, it is the equivalent of asking a web designer or a web developer on how much it would cost to build a website? It varies a lot. In terms of Search Marketing though, we are fortunate enough to have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools that can help us define the search volume for your targeted search terms. The relationship between search volume and your targeted geographic area will help us come up with Cost (investment) estimates. Google Trends is one of them.

Simply put, Google Trends gives us a snapshot of the search volume for a given search term (or terms), over time. It provides seasonality search volume information which help us understand how we should spread your Pay Per Click (PPC) budget over a 12 month period and therefore get the most out of your investment.

For example, as we all know, Whistler is both a winter and a summer destination. More people would go to Whistler in the winter of course, but the question remains: if you would get the traffic during the winter months anyway, when the search volume is at its peak, wouldn’t you get a better return on your PPC advertising investment during the summer months, when the online competition (and average cost per click) is at its lowest? Wouldn’t make more sense? This decision is in relation to your yearly PPC budget. You would be surprised how important it is to run a summer and a winter PPC campaigns year-round in order to capitalize on this seasonality factor. See the graph below, showing the search volume for the search term “whistler”:

As you can see, the search volume drops in summer months but not as much as you might think. Use it for your own search terms and define peaks and valleys to help you spread your PPC budget over time and get the most out of your PPC investment.

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I got informed last week of a new competitive intelligence tool that is worth talking about. It is called KeywordSpy.com. KeywordSpy gives you the opportunity to immediately track down your competitors and gather keywords for the promotional campaign of your online business. I played with it for a few minutes and I found it very helpful and easy to use in order to understand how many keywords your competitors have in their basket, how much they are paying for it and the corresponding rank. Remember, if your competitors only have a few dozens of keywords, they are not capitalizing in the power of The Long Tail. Therefore, if you use this PPC Management Tool , you can beat them with a better Search Marketing plan.

Here is an example on competitive information KeywordSpy can gather on Whistler.com online market place. Feel free to Mouse over the question marks (?) in order to have the definition of what each column means.

Here are some additional informations on KeywordSpy:
KeywordSpy is keyword research technology where you can also earn and even surpass what your competitors are making with Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture). KeywordSpy gives you the key to their success: a good ad-campaign with the right keywords. It also has a ClickBank Affiliates Search Engine where you can see the actual market landscape at ClickBank.

It offers Free trials. For more information, feel free to communicate with Tolits Bana: linksline{at}gmail.com

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I hope you can read this in its original format. People don’t like any form of interruption advertising. Here is an excerpt from the press release:

Une étude réalisée par Australie et Ipsos met à jour le peu d’estime que portent les consommateurs français à la création publicitaire. Selon cette enquête, 79% d’entre eux trouvent la publicité “envahissante” et 65% la qualifient de “banale”.  Critiques, les Français sont aussi méfiants. La moitié jugent la pub “dangereuse”. Le nombre de publiphobes a d’ailleurs augmenté (30% contre 25% en 2004). Le phénomène est tempéré par Jean-Marc Lech, coprésident d’Ipsos, qui affirme dans une entrevue pour le magazine Influencia, que “ce n’est pas un phénomène militant”.

La recherche révèle par ailleurs que la perception de la pub est influencée par la pratique d’Internet. “Les gros consommateurs d’Internet sont les plus critiques (35% de publiphobes), bien qu’il soient accros de la consommation”, note Vincent Leclabart, président d’Australie. Ils trouvent la pub sur le Net ennuyeuse (73%), terriblement envahissante (94%) et très agressante (77%). Seulement 20% la jugent convaincante. Les Français sont particulièrement virulents envers la publicité télévisée. Ainsi, 90% la jugent envahissante, et 57% l’estiment banale et agressante.

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People fear change. They fear what they don’t understand. I have seen that behavior time and time again in this new field called Search Marketing, the art and science of getting traffic through Search Engines. Whenever I try to convince someone to engage in a Search Marketing project, even the most basic SEO package, business owners feel like they are taking a risk. The ironic part is, the risk is actually much greater if you are NOT doing it. Here is why.

Search is a zero-sum game. If traffic goes to site A, that means it does not go to site B. Have you followed the Search Engines market share landscape lately? Google’s market share is on the rise. Everybody loves Google. When is the last time you search on AOL, Altavista, Ask and even Yahoo or MSN? Ask any Search Engine other than Google what they think about this. If you don’t get in, someone else with nothing to lose will. They will build market share and you won’t. A famous quote from an IBM executive that I have kept over the years goes like this: “It is no longer the big eating the small, but rather, the fast eating the slow”. It does not matter how small or how big your business and your Search Marketing budget is. You HAVE to step in, before your competitors do. 

One of the Search Marketing grand masters, Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro, wrote another memorable piece last week that is called Caution will kill you in the Search Game. There is a part within this article that I especially liked where he reported a conversation he had a few weeks back about the idea of taking the risk of investing into Search Marketing. Most people want to use caution when investing in Search Engine Marketing (SEM). They watch their competitors and based on this, then decide to move forward or not. Gord mentions, well, those are only the competitors you know about. I bet competition will arise from completely unexpected places. Here is an excerpt that summarizes this perspective: 

But the irony here is that while it appears you have a choice, you really don’t. Because if you don’t take this chance, someone with a lot less to lose will. And eventually, that someone else will win. They’ll win, and you’ll lose, because Web traffic is a zero-sum game. Just ask every search engine who’s not Google. So while it appears there’s way too much to lose by reinventing your business model, it’s much, much riskier not to. Because as much as you think you’re in control of your business, you’re not. The users are, and you have them now by the simple virtue of there not being a better place to go—yet. In the Internet world, there will always be a better place to go, eventually. Either you build it or someone else will.

Have the courage to step in. It will be rewarded. In the end, you don’t have choice.

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I seriously did not think I would see this kind of information available for free anytime soon. And yet, it is here. Get competitive metrics (ie. traffic) for every site on the web - powered by the largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry. Compete.com considers themselves the best in the industry and I believe it. This is competitive intelligence 2.0. I played with the tool for an hour yesterday and I can tell you that the numbers are pretty accurate, actually far more accurate than anything I have seen from a free tool such as Alexa Ranking. Sure, you can buy Hitwise which provides the full meal deal on competitors data for $30,000 a year but the bottom line is, how do you measure up on the sheer volume of traffic against your competitors. It is an awesome tool and you should use it. Here is a screenshot based on major tourism sites (BC vs Quebec):

During summer months, we usually see an increase in traffic, which we don’t in this case with BonjourQuebec.com compare to HelloBC.com. It is even better (for BC) when we compare it with Ontario Tourism. Try Compete.com today and beat your competitors.

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