The Vizion Search Engine Optimization Blog
- 2006Jul13Underscores or Hyphens for Effective Search Engine Optimization
There has been much debate on this topic, for probably FAR too long…should you use underscores or hyphens within your URLs?
I spent years defending the underscore, because I had seen sites do well on Google, but at the same time I had wondered if it was as “friendly” to other search engines. Recently, I have pushed forward on the use of hyphens and I’ll tell you why.
Our friend Matt Cutt’s (Google Search Engineer) uses hyphens within his blog, located at www.mattcutts.com/blog . Here’s an example: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/bot-obedience-herding-googlebot/ (that’s a pretty good article to read, by the way).
So, if it’s good enough for Matt Cutts, it’s good enough for me. Seems he would know Google pretty well. End of discussion.
- 2006Jul9Radical Shift in Television Ad Buying Coming
Television media buying moves closer to the online media buying model, according to this article posted on AdAge. This is going to cause a radical shake up with the Networks and smaller cable networks as well.
I don’t see people spending more time watching television. I don’t know how the very specialized/vertical channels are going to be able to support themselves without a premium paid to support the cost of production/broadcast of the programs. And, if you read the article mentioned above, the other major issue is caused by how many people will be skipping television commercials, so this will drive them from the “average viewership of commercials for a pod” (again, as mentioned in the article) to the performance-based cost model.
The “pay for performance” model works well for the web because you can place 3-10 ads on a given web page. And, if you’re Yahoo!, you have a lot of pageviews to work with because people are spending more and more time on the web. When television finally does migrate to a “pay for performance” model, it could really disrupt what we all take for granted right now…”free” programming.
Here’s what I think…advertising agencies are going to have to come [...]
- 2006May23Google Announces Click-To-Play Video Ads
Well, the future of Interactive marketing is here…
Google has launched the ability for advertisers to bid on a CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per thousand) model for video ads and target these against keyword searches on its content network, just as it has offered for text and image ads.
As most would tell you, video is a much more compelling medium for advertisers, especially brand advertisers. Unlike regular television advertising, there is a direct response (click) associated with this, so it should be much more appealing to advertisers.
I wish I had more time to discuss this, but let me just say…”cool”. This is certainly something that we will be promoting to some of our larger clients. That being said, as is mentioned on the AdWords Blog, this is not merely something for large marketers to take advantage of, but something that all marketers can take advantage of.
Great job, Google!
- 2006May18AOL Does Something Smart Towards Providing Quality Marketing Opportunities
As someone who worked for AOL Time Warner soon after the marriage of the two, I am glad to see them making some smart decisions. Today they announced the acquisition of Lighteningcast and while I don’t know the company, I like what I’m hearing about their capabilities.
The pace at which companies have bought into the idea of convergence and measurement of media has amazed me. Right now, you’re seeing many companies jump on the band wagon of a major shake-up in the marketing arena. Wal-Mart’s recent news of leading the charge on changing the way television advertising is bought was a major step towards what will be the future of marketing…an online marketplace where any individual can manage their radio, television, “Internet” (whatever you want to call this) and search marketing from a single console. Think of AdWords on steroids. How would you like to be able to bid on an ad placement on a radio station in Boston, Los Angeles, Dallas, and New York City upload your commercial and measure exactly how many times someone listened to your spot. Even better…perhaps there’s a way for a listener to “click through” to an offer, so that you can measure this! [...]
- 2006Apr24Google Update – Part 2
Hold on to your horses…
Google’s update is more complex than originally meets the eye. Rankings that you see now are different when you log into your Google account. Rankings that you see are probably not the same that your friend across town will see. Some of this might be attributable to propagation and, more likely, it’s the new Google infrastructure.
Rest assured that we’re gonna stay on top of this and report back any findings.
More news to come!
- 2006Apr24Google Update
I’d like to welcome SEO, Inc. back to the world of Google rankings and Page Rank: http://www.seoinc.com/ – [Google search].
I can recall the days when these guys were #1 for “search engine optimization” for a long, long time. I won’t get into the reasons why they lost this ranking, but I do think it’s at least interesting to see that they’re back in Google’s good graces.
For all of those who say that Google’s sandbox does not exist, I would like to discuss this over a cold one with you some day. The VIZION Interactive website went live in early November 2005 and is finally showing on Google: [Google search]. As you’ve most likely read in the trades, “6 months on average to escape Google’s sandbox.
I’ve also seen that my friends at Kinetic Results have seen some movement from this latest update, as well: [Google search].
We’ve also noticed some very nice improvements for our client’s rankings, so I’d like to thank Google for this update. There have been some, in the past, that have freaked me out a little bit. This one seems to be just fine.
- 2006Mar22Interactive TV
For all the hype that convergence has had over the years, it’s really interesting to see how quickly major companies are adopting new technology, all of a sudden.
On today’s adage.com, there’s an article about how companies are losing confidence in the :30 television spot. The headline reads “78% say the effectiveness of television is diminishing”. This is just the beginning. We still don’t have really good measures for the ACTUAL reach/frequency of a :30 television spot. When we have a majority of households with a digital (two-way) signal, and Nielsen really begins to monitor these things, we will see exactly how many people actually view a spot and (in the near future?) how many people interacted with a :30 television spot.
When I started selling Interactive advertising for Lycos (February 2000) I was blown away by the measurability of the medium. Of course, I joined Lycos after selling advertising for The Dallas Morning News. At the newspaper, measurement of an ads success was determined by the quality of the print production (a tear-sheet) and the number of people who cut the ad out to bring it into the advertisers locations. All of a sudden, with Lycos, advertisers were calling me within [...]
- 2006Mar15Search Engine Marketing Fraud
More hype about search engine marketing click fraud in this article from B2B. I won’t pretend to know exactly how it would work, but I am still waiting for someone (Google/Yahoo!) to reintroduce the CPM model for search engine marketing. I know that they have information on average CTR (click through rate) and the average CPC (cost per click) so I’ve gotta think that there’s a way to make this model work.
Those of you that think “this guy doesn’t get it”. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I have received significant refunds for clients that were victims of click fraud. So, I support any measures that can be put into place to help elliminate the problem. My idea is that CPM resolves this issue, pretty quickly.
The real issue, in my mind, is that most marketers have an easy time understanding PPC (you pay when someone clicks…okay, “I get it”). It is, without a doubt, much easier math. I spend $100 on 10 clicks and I make $300…saWEET! When it’s CPM based, if you know your conversion rates and the CTR (click through rate) you should be able to “know” what you can afford to spend on a cost-per-thousand based [...]
- 2006Mar13Convergence Continues
Just reading this article on Ad Age and I had to chuckle a little bit.
When Internet advertising was getting off of the ground, there were no “Interactive marketing” teams at agencies, to speak of, and certainly no Interactive marketing teams client-side. In my position with Lycos, I would be bounced from the IT department to the Marketing department and rarely come across someone that said “oh, Interactive marketing…yes, that’s my department”. More often than not, the decision to get involved with Internet marketing came from the CEO and was pushed down.
Most successful websites, in the early days, were born from the most successful areas of the newspaper. Classified Advertising (the most profitable section of any newspaper) was hurt severely by Monster.com and others. CNN.com, and others, made the Main section of the newspaper seem outdated. ESPN.com took on the Sports Section of the newspaper. On and on until there are now websites for every section of the newspaper.
Now, the “web” is taking on television (or is television taking to the web?). In either case, it’s convergence. And, just as there was a shake up within marketing departments on how to deal with “this Internet thing”, there are shake [...]
- 2006Mar13Future of Search Engine Marketing?
Well, had another interesting discussion with Mike Grehan, last Friday. There’s nothing like a healthly debate on where the Industry is heading. I really respect Mike’s opinions and always love to share ideas with him.
One of the things that we touched upon was the future of search engine marketing.
If we are to believe SEMPO’s studies which say that around 60% of all companies active in search engine marketing are highly interested in branding via search marketing, then I believe we will soon see the return of the ad banner on Google and other major search engines. It would be really funny to me, to see this happen.
Years ago, I was blessed to have met Rick Boyce, formerly the VP of Sales at Wired.com who launched the first ad banner on hotwired.com a long time ago. He shared with me a story that the initial banner received a 40% click through rate. At the time, there were many websites and few business models to show how a web-based company would be profitable. I don’t think I need to tell you that when “advertising-supported” became the business model and VC’s got wind of how “well” these banners worked, the Industry exploded. When [...]
400 E Royal Ln