The Google Suggest feature, long a part of Google labs has behavior that will feel familiar to most readers of my blog. But for the remaining millions of casual users, which Michael Jensen refers to as the “Grandma Factor“, we may see some changes in search behavior. Now, a rumor once again has emerged that we’ll soon see it on the default Google search page in the USA.

As PPC marketers we will want to remain aware of the phrases that are suggested for our “money terms” and bid accordingly. Phrase match and Exact Match will start to become more important in many cases as Suggest “structures” the queries.

According to onestat, the 10 most used numbers of word phrases compared to October 2007 in search engines on the web are here…

#Words	I predict after Suggest	June 2008	October 2007
1	less	15.52%	15.22%
2	less	33.65%	31.91%
3	much more	26.27%	27.02%
4	much more	13.81%	14.75%
5	much more	6.13%	6.49%
6	more	2.61%	2.68%
7	more	1.14%	1.12%
8	more	0.51%	0.48%
9	more	0.24%	0.22%
10	more	0.12%	0.11%

I think that Google Suggest will shift these numbers quite a bit, and with it, the need to react as search marketers.

A few other thoughts.

1. We May See More Traffic to Regional Sites. People regularly enter “cheap gas” and “best dentist” in search engines - without qualifying the searches at all. Organic results tend to send people to national portals, but suggest-driven search gets them closer to well optimized, regional sites. A search for “cheap gas” without search suggest offers gasbuddy.com at number one organic result, while a “suggested” search for “cheap gas houston” gives houstongasprices.com.
2. Google Suggest Drop Down a new micro “SERP”: Those who make their way into the suggest feature get a “better than #1″ position. For example, typing “ipod case” into Google with Suggest shows the first suggested feature as “ipod cases at Wal-Mart” - grabbing people and then offering up the organic page free from PPC ads that use “Wal-Mart” in their keywords.
3. Google Suggest Results May Change Long-Tail Search Optimization. Those of us who believe in doing long-tail marketing may find an decrease down the tail from search, and a greater need to develop segments of our site to serve those long tail queries. Searches that used to come in with two word phrases may now have 3-4 words, which helps with medium-tail optimization, but longer phrases previously further down the tail may be “clipped.” This will concentrate search terms so that Adwords bids will rise and competition increases in a sort of “cluster” effect.
4. Google Suggest SERPS offer More Impact for Trademark Blocking in PPC. If your tradename is offered in Google suggest results, and you’ve filed a trademark complaint form, the results page will be free from paid competition giving you a better shot at the traffic through organic or ppc links.
5. Google Suggest Can Improve User/Searcher Skills Forever. With Google suggest constantly popping up when you go about your daily queries, many who never really thought of keyphrases will now start to think about them. It will be a constant reinforcement of our efforts to think about how consumers search. We may have to adjust our planning to meet these enhanced skills.
6. Google Suggest Can Be an Ad-Hoc Negative Keyword Tool. There are other ways to be more comprehensive, but Google suggest can help to identify negative keywords you may want to enter in your campaigns. And I saw some negative phrases with higher index numbers that never showed up in Google keyword tools.
7. Dramatically Reduced Spelling Error Opportunity. While many of us set up adgroups to capture spelling errors, this will have a decreasing impact as people start to use the suggest feature as a live auto-correction. Typo-campaigns may get less traffic.
8. Hijacking Google Suggest May Become a SEO Technique. It may become possible to hijack Google suggest so that competitive phrases are strategically flashed to the user. For example.. if you sell “abc widget” then a suggest of “abc widget fails miserably” could be used to divert traffic.
9. Better Searches Offer Improved Analytics Information. With the user making clear choices among those available, we’ll have better information about what is enticing and engaging to the users. Vague, high volume two-word searches are always confusing when we’re looking to make decisions, and this might just help us plan better.

I think that this will have a measurable impact on how people search - possibly forever.

The North American SEM industry grew from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.2 billion in 2007, exceeding earlier projections of $11.5 billion for 2007 and marketers are finding more search dollars by poaching budget from print magazine spending, website development, direct mail and other marketing programs.

The SEMPO study released today offered some good news for Agencies, as 53% of advertisers outsource their organic SEO because it is to hard to stay up-to-date with best practices in-house. 37% say they don’t have the right tools, and 33% say they get more bang for their buck with an outside provider.

But overall, a trend to in-house these efforts is still strong. Forrester research shows least two-thirds of U.S. businesses prefer to keep SEM in-house. In-house training and education efforts will probably continue to improve and drive performance gains. (more…)

I’ve not written a post for a while that just draws attention to another discussion. But I thought Mark Jackson’s two articles from the past week or so were absolutely brilliant. Mark - look me up sometime, I’d love to buy you a beer.

It also rekindled my thinking that I need to finally change the name of my firm. You all know what a joy doing that is, especially when you have strong search rank for your old domain name.

I hear this all the time

“I’m a designer and I don’t really do I.T.”
“I’m more of an I.T. person, I don’t really do design.”
“I looked at competitor sites and built something similar.”
“We don’t really look at our site’s statistics much.”
…and on….

I’m old. I’m blessed (cursed?) with a background EXTENSIVE in both I.T., Design, and Search Marketing. What I realized even with the different viewpoints is that SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is far more important than any pixel tweaking or snazzy coding ever was or would be to the growth of a web business. I imagine I see the world like those flies that have 100s of lenses each giving a slightly different angle on things.

In 1998 when I started, I was all about web design and meta tags, but over the next 3-4 years, through 2002, I did more and more real search marketing. By 2004, it was almost full-time, a split between organic SEO, PPC, and landing page optimization. Design was done as a necessary vehicle to achieve search rank - sort of a super-landing-page project (in my mind at least.) Site Creations, Inc. doesn’t fit anymore. I’m going to have to rebrand soon to be faithful to this change.

I feel that no design should be started without a true SEM expert present at the meeting, and throughout design. This introduces confusion into my sales activity, of course. Most people come to me wanting web design, often for abysmal product offerings. I want to help, but unless they have a great offer, and truly understand how conversion-driven design works, I have a hard time staying enthused unless we can address some of the underlying issues first. I thought David Rodnitzky did a nice job of summing up one way this can work:

….frequently pitch clients on a combination of ongoing SEM consulting and a one-time usability tune-up. Again, this is a win-win situation – I get more of the client’s business by charging for the usability assessment, the client gets a much better converting Web site out of the deal, and we both end up satisfied with the increased success of the search engine marketing campaign….

….it’s important as a consultant to try to bring these folks at least a little closer to earth and establish realistic and clearly understood goals at the beginning of the relationship….

I realize that I.T. and design skills are both vital to the success of many sites - features, functions, branding, and identity are naturally very important. But when “expertise-egos” get in the way, you lose. When that feature is taken too far for no good reason, or when that customer-driven design compromise makes you feel defensive, it’s time to hand over the keys.

This week, my call log shows four companies calling me with sad stories to tell about ill-conceived internet marketing strategies executed by way of an agency or part-time “SEO.”

It’s unacceptable. Business customers deserve honesty, integrity and more help in understanding which are selling bullshit and which have the needed expertise. If a product or service isn’t going to fly online, they deserve to be told so, and why- not bled dry.

I envision a process including the following steps in order to make this happen: 1. Define commonly used search marketing tactics; 2. Rate the tactics by risk level; and 3. Educate webmasters on the ratings… he search engines provide Webmasters with guidelines on what tactics they consider right or wrong. Enumerating the various tactics, and the risk rating associated with each tactic would allow people who are not familiar with search marketing to make informed decisions. It would also go a long way toward fostering a better understanding of the work that goes into organic search engine optimization.

So here I cast my link juice to this article about SEO/SEM Standards and why they’re needed. Chris, you did well, my man.

Go check it out.

I have six professional heroes presently - and I don’t mind sharing. In random order, they are:

• Seth Godin - For telling me to quit dead ends and focus on being the best.
• Edward Tufte - Guided me into information design, recognizing and avoiding chartjunk, and telling stories visually.
• Jakob Nielson - For telling it like it is even when it’s totally unpopular.
• Richard Florida - For drawing attention to what drives creative people.
• Steve Wozniak - For his approachable demeanor as well as the desire to spread knowledge.
• Steve Jobs - For his relentless passion to innovate.

I’ve met Florida, Tufte, Jobs and Wozniak. If only for a moment (they wouldn’t remember me.) I had no trouble making the list above. It came to me in 3 minutes. Each have contributed through a career of hard work with a real passion to improve things.

Have any heroes emerged in the SEO world? Should we expect it? As I sat in a meeting recently all eyes were on me to save the business. My answers about content creation, social media, and slow, steady growth were not superhero answers. Some are looking for the cape crusader to save old-school companies with new marketing feats of awe. People start looking for a mild-mannered SEO to burst from the phone booth and fix the problem. I don’t know why.

(more…)

I removed this post because it simply wasn’t worth it for me to argue the points, and the discussion on Sphinn and this post at piloSEO are probably sufficient.

No wait, here’s another good rant on it.