FAQ: What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Strategies - New York City - March 2004

Haystack In A Needle's president and founder, Ed Kohler, spent the first week of March in New York City attending Jupiter Media's Search Engine Strategies conference. Below is a summary of some of the marketing nuggets he brought back:

Search Engine Strategies is the premier conference for search engine marketers, and continues to provide current information from experts in their respective fields in an easy to consume environment. The basic format of a SES conference is 4 days of 12 seminars a day where a panel of experts on a specific topic will each give a short presentation explaining their perspective on the issue, followed by audience questions.

I had a chance to attend seminars on the following topics in NYC:

• Search Engine Marketing & Ad Agencies
• Advanced Link Building Forum
• Evening forum with Danny Sullivan
• Competitive Research
• Leggo My Trademark: A SE Legal Update
• Search Engines & Affiliates
• Getting Local Pt 2 - Online Yellow Pages
• Measuring Offline Conversions
• Shopping Search & Merchant Sites

Here are a few of the highlights I've brought back, and have already started implementing with Haystack In A Needle's current clients:

Shopping Search Engines: More searchers are heading to product specific search engines when researching what product to buy and who to buy it from. Some of the big players in this industry are Shopping.com and Froogle.com (owned by Google). Since people using sites like this are so far along in the buying cycle, the conversion rates from people clicking through from sites like this are extremely high. As a retailer, to use sites like this, you need to send a data feed of your product information (Name, Description, URL, Image URL, Price, Shipping Info, etc.) to the shopping search engine for inclusion. Then Shopping.com charges you for each visitor they send your way. Froogle's system is free for retailers. They've chosen to make their money by serving relevant Google Adwords advertising alongside Froogle's results.

Adding Human Touch to Web Site Conversions: The Measuring Offline Conversions seminar focused on the challenges faced by businesses who have a web site, but their customers actually convert to buyers offline (over the phone, in retail store, through long sales process, etc.). Some of the suggestions included using a separate 800# on the web site to track sales, using online coupons, and creating a "web lead" field within your CRM system to track the original source of a lead. While that was all interesting (and very useful), I found this to be even more so:

Companies mentioned that they close sales at a much higher rate - and for a higher average sale - if they actually got a person on the phone.

Sound obvious? It is. A trained salesperson can surely do a better job understanding a customers needs, providing solutions to the customer, and making sure they purchase everything they need from you. This being the case, why do so many web sites make it so hard for their prospective customers to contact them? Sure, it costs more to have an actual human talk to an actual human, but if it's the difference between making a sale or not, and will on average bring in a higher receipt, why not?

Additionally, for those of you who've made a purchase online, how many phone calls have you received from online retailers thanking you for the purchase, confirming your order, then making a soft upsell or cross sell? I literally buy things online every day and can online remember one company ever doing this to me: Dell. And it worked (changed cable modem providers due to compelling offer).

Wait! Is that search engine marketing? No. It's good business.

If you have any questions about the summaries above, or wonder what went on in the other seminars, feel free to send Ed an email.

.

Find this article Interesting? Feel free to link to it, publish it on your site, in your newsletter, or on your blog. Please keep the by line attached, and link back to our site. Questions? Email us at webcontact@HaystackInANeedle.com