MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

I recently upgraded my mobile, finally, after the long 2 year wait we have with mobile contracts in SA. While it has a bigger screen, higher screen resolution, and is 3G compatible, it’s not as feature packed as the models higher in Nokia’s N Series range, but hey, my N73 rocks :). Instead of the standard GPRS for internet access on my mobile, 3G presents a faster connection speed, and to my amazement (yes I did know about it, but we need to test/play with things before we realise what they can do), webpages load faster than before. No more waiting to get to the office or home for internet access. I can now browse the internet fairly quickly on my mobile to find what I need at the exact moment I need to, wherever I am. Now, I realise that I’ve been slow to reach this stage in mobile technology, because other mobile users have been enjoying this benefit for quite some time, and it’s made me wonder if we in the SEM industry have taken note of this.

No Comments »

Images are becoming an increasingly prevalent method to source visits to your website. Google’s Universal Search is one of the tools that make this possible. With a fair amount of images present in multimedia, including books, news articles and reviews, showing up in SERPs, will they replace traditional search results or simply supplement them?

Jack Menzel, director of the universal search program, says that Google has not yet made a decision on this and that only a limited number of Universal search results get shown. Susan Moskwa, also from Google, shared the sentiment. She says constant testing is being done on how to implement universal search results effectively and that we should “stay tuned”.

No Comments »

Just as Paris Hilton is a brand, so are you. Paris is associated with certain things, shoes, cars, money, clothing, nightclubs… you get the drift. How she conducts herself and what she does affects her reputation and the way outsiders see her as a brand.

Personal and corporate branding are very different but equally important. Corporate branding is a lot easier as you can have a group of brand ambassadors looking after one brand. Personal branding is a little trickier . You should always pay attention to personal branding. At the very least, you want to make yourself easy to be found via Search. People used to call and check references. Nowadays, you get Googled.

No Comments »

Many SEO specialists have, over time, put their own twist on the fascinating events that make up the lifecycle of their niche market – Search Engine Optimisation. Jessica Bowman of Business.com continually compares the SEO lifecycle to the stages that make up a marriage.

According to Bowman’s marriage analogy, there are four phases that form the framework of a company’s SEO lifecycle. Firstly, there is the Courtship phase, which requires that the right SEO specialist be sourced from the ocean of SEO fish to lead your company’s website to the very top of the SERPs. This can be a daunting task and may take a few attempts to find the right one for you. This is similar to the process of finding a life-time partner, but the difference here is that you pay financially for each failed attempt.

No Comments »

Google have changed their Trademark Rules and are now allowing companies to bid on their competitor’s Trademarks. The associated ad copy cannot contain any reference to this Trademark name though.

Why are Google doing this? Are they enhancing the user experience? Opinions definitely seem to differ on this topic. Some think that Google is simply trying to make money by forcing companies to bid on their own Trademarks. Others argue that Google is increasing the user experience by offering them more choice.

Personally I think that companies like Tesco, who are refusing to bid on competitor keywords on ethical grounds, need to be congratulated.

No Comments »

There’s no hiding from the fact that search is evolving. It happens every day right in front of our eyes, yet we seem so slow to acknowledge this process. Search engines need to evolve accordingly so that they can stay profitable and relevant. Since 2007, when Google launched its Universal Search, they have been including image and video results in their SERPs. So, is this the nudge that small businesses need to compete with industry big-wigs?

1 Comment »

Blogging is considered to be one of the most stressful jobs of the modern age. Which is pretty weird when you think about it. I mean, no lives hang in the balance of an interesting post, world economies won’t disintegrate because of a bad one, and the sun will continue to shine if you miss a deadline. But many bloggers don’t see it that way. I think that something in the blogosphere makes them lose perspective and they go a little nuts.

1 Comment »

I recently wrote straplines/taglines/spirit lines for MVI Data Recovery. It proved to be a difficult task, or at least, not something a writer can pull out of her hat of preferred epithets (not that I ever do, of course). To clarify, a stapline is a short sentence, sometimes a fragment of just three words (“Just Do It”), which escorts a company’s logo into the public eye. I’ve seen it referred to as business’s war cry. I’d add that it’s like the Lunar Module landing on the Moon: delicate, precise, and if all goes well, an opportunity to explore new territory between business and client.

1 Comment »

It’s no easy task to master and could take years and years. The search landscape is extremely dynamic, so if you don’t have passion, determination and a thirst for knowledge, there is no way you will ever reach the pinnacle of success.

Hard work is a given, high energy is a prerequisite. If you have all of the above and adequate resources and relationships to support your endeavour, there is no reason why you shouldn’t succeed.

According to Adam, the challenge is in getting clients to adopt SEO when they have never heard of it, don’t believe it is “really that important right now” (typically heard from startups), or still believe SEO is spamming.

No Comments »