Google Search Changes and Impact on Organic SEO efforts

The growing importance of organic search and all search efforts continues to change and keep everyone dependent and focused on changes made at Google. The desire to incorporate an effective organic search strategy is at the foundation of more and more companies efforts.

A recent drive to enable personalized search results threatens many current efforts. The question of how much a downturn in budgets for pay per click ads on Googles Ad Words makes one wonder what is truly the driving force behind changes in how this is done. Given the Holy Grail position of Page rank in the Google universe this could signal a seismic shift in how companies apprach organic search efforts vs paid search for 2009.

Check out this article for more details and debate on ths topic:

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/12/17/what-will-google-serp-changes-mean-for-reputation-management

Why email? Now more than ever? Because it makes you money!!

We continue to focus on delivering and growing email campaigns with our customers. The importance of email is more and more obvious in an economic downturn as we are experiencing because only tactics and approaches that deliver are growing as opposed to being cut. The following are several key take aways from a recent Whitepaper from our email partner Exact Target.

Perhaps no drum has been beaten as loud and proud in email marketing circles as the Direct Marketing

Association’s annual finding that email delivers the highest return-on-investment (ROI) of any directmarketing tactic—online or off.5 In its 2008 survey, the DMA found that email generated $45.06 for every dollar spent. That’s an ROI of over two times that of other online marketing tactics surveyed and over six times that of catalog direct marketing.

So, according to the DMA, email delivers the most bang for your buck. As Ken Magill from Direct Magazine recently said, “[W]hile e-mail’s ROI far outpaces every other
channel, spending on it lags far behind, possibly because it remains primarily a retention vehicle and its deployment costs are far lower than other channels.”
Savvy email marketers understand that email deployment is only a small part of the investment required to do email right. The other key components for success are:

Personnel: Hiring and retaining knowledgeable, committed email marketing experts who are in it to build long-term results rather than pad their resumes with short-term gains.

Data Integration: Investing time and personnel in a strategy that brings website, point-of-sale, CRM, and response data together in a way that can be leveraged to make all email and one-to-one customer interactions more relevant, personal, and timely.

With data integration in place, your company will be able to introduce increasing levels of segmentation and personalization into your email marketing program. This effort will translate into email capable of honoring what we call “The Four Rights:”

  • The right message
  • Sent to the right person
  • At the right time
  • Through the right channel

    In explaining this to your C-Suite, it is imperative that you demonstrate that personalization is about far more than beginning your email with, “Dear [Subscriber].” It is about using the information your subscribers share with you, combining it with data you know about them from point of sale, CRM systems, and previous online interactions, and then delivering content that actually aligns with their needs and interests.

    Examples include:
  • Delivering account status information
  • Tailoring product content inclusions based on predictive or behavioral modeling
  • Populating email content based on abandoned cart contents or site search and browsing history
  • Moving individual subscribers to a less frequent email schedule based on explicit subscriber requests or automated response analysis

    For a copy of the whitepaper or more information on our email services contact Siewierski Consulting at 303.554.0222.
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