Search Strategies

 


Google takes its first bite of the Apple

So, less than a month after filing the trademark application for the ‘Nexus One’, Google has launched its first hardware retail product direct to consumers and starts a direct assault on Apple’s dominance of the mobile sector. This is a great example of ‘speed to market’ from the most over-exposed brand on the planet launching a product in the most over-exposed global consumer market. In fact, the only other brand that has shown that it can operate as effectively as this is, er... Apple. Google is breaking new ground by becoming a direct retailer of this handset. It suggests that they will be braver than Microsoft in entering the PC hardware retail space. Can we therefore expect this year a Google laptop running their Chrome PC operating system to rival the much rumoured Apple tablet (due possibly in Q1 2010)? The question we should be asking ourselves as marketers is:... Read full article

Spark Something - Driving Search Demand... and Ignoring SEO

As companies become more and more comfortable with search as a marketing medium, we've seen increasing numbers of ATL (above the line, or TV, radio, press, outdoor or cinema) advertising campaigns utilising a search based call to action either instead of or in addition to a web address. The attraction of this approach is obvious; telling people what to search for is a lot more memorable than having them remember a web address - even a short "vanity URL" - and makes the marketing approach more interactive ("pull" rather than "push" marketing). Obviously this only works well if you can be sure of capturing as much of the resulting search traffic as possible. That means bidding for position using PPC and ranking naturally as well - something which is very easy given the long lead times that these ATL campaigns have and the (usually) uncompetitive nature of the terms in... Read full article

Why you need a search strategy

With so mch information flying around about how to make search engines rank you higher, its not surprising that people have started to absorb that information, and are starting to produce very techncial RFP's. But there's a probelm there in that alot of what you read about how to do SEO is dictated in a startegic vacuum. What you think you need to do, might not neccessarily achive the goal you have in the back of your mind. Let me give you example. I had a great chat with a very nice woman from a large healthcare company, who after having heard all about SEO from many soucres over the last 6 months, was adamant that her sites (all 35 of them around the world) needed to be better indexed, as currently search engines couldn't get in to them, and consequently they weren't visible anywhere. SO he needed a lengthy... Read full article