Holidays 'provide opportunity for effective SEM'

Search engine marketers have been advised to promote their products in the run-up to Thanksgiving, since conversion rates are high on national holidays, reports an expert.
Search engine marketing (SEM) during national holidays can be more successful, according to advertising experts.
The Yahoo! Networks Insight team wrote on the company's advertising blog that conversion rates were higher during the national holidays around Thanksgiving in the US than they were during the rest of November 2008.
It showed that the day after the holiday - referred to as Black Friday - is now a very popular for consumers to make online purchases.
While conversion rates on Black Friday and Cyber Monday were up 147 per cent and 73 per cent respectively on the average day in November, clickthrough was down by 27 per cent on both days.
The team explained: "Not only is Cyber Monday still a top online shopping day, but the traditional offline shopping day Black Friday also proved to be a significant day for online sales conversions."
In order to profit from this trend, the team recommend raising awareness of products in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is on November 26th this year.

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Google announces new Adobe SEM deal

Google has announced a new partnership with Adobe.
Google has embarked on a new search engine marketing (SEM) relationship with Adobe, it has announced.
In a post on the search company's official blog Bill Coughran, senior vice-president of engineering at Google, explained that the firm has been working with Adobe on a range of different projects "for years".
He explained that Google Chrome, YouTube and Google Android all require close integration with technologies provided by Adobe.
"We're excited to be joining Adobe's Open Screen Project, an initiative established a year and a half ago to help developers more easily design content for the web across multiple screens using the Flash platform," Mr Coughran added.
Concluding, he said that Google is excited to be working with the firm on an open platform as this can allow for "greater innovation" on the internet.
In recent days, Google launched a range of new tools in its Search Options panel, such as an enhanced search history setting to improve efficiency with new queries.

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'Restrict keyword strings' for effective SEM

Using longer keyword strings can assist SEM, but businesses should be careful not to make them too long as they may not reach as many potential customers, says a marketing website.
To achieve successful search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns, a company's keyword string should not be too long, otherwise it will not be reached by enough consumers, according to an online advertising website.
Although longer strings achieve higher conversion during tests by Marketing Sherpa, it found that it is counterproductive to use more than six words.
This is because it noted that 95 per cent of searches use fewer than seven words, so the question arises whether it is worthwhile to restrict the number of potential customers to five per cent of the total.
The website observed: "Marketers need to identify, understand and speak the same language used by their target audience, and emphasise words that lead to the highest conversion levels.
It advised using site log files to work out what keywords to focus on, as it is something that copywriters already do.
This week, an eMarketer spokesperson predicted that there will be "increasing commitment" to search in the future, because of its proven return on investment.

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'More SEM spending' on the horizon

Search engine marketing has proven return on investment, which is why it has survived the current economic climate and will continue to grow, says an industry expert.
There will be more spending on search engine marketing (SEM) in the future because it is a proven method of marketing, according to an industry expert.
Karin von Abrams, senior analyst at eMarketer, pointed out that there is an evident return on investment when a company uses SEM.
She noted how this form of promotion has done well even in the current economic climate and predicted that it will be the "bedrock" of online marketing for the next two years.
Ms von Abrams explained: "We think that even after the economy and the online economy bounce back, we're still going to see an increasing commitment to search."
However, she commented that this will not stop other forms of advertising, such as rich media and video, from gaining popularity as well.
Recent research by ZenithOptimedia predicted that internet advertising will have a 15.1 per cent share of the global marketing sector in 2011.

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SEM 'opened up' to smaller businesses by telecoms giant

BT is launching a search engine marketing product with the help of Latitude, which is aimed at small and medium-sized companies.
Search engine marketing (SEM) services will be offered to small and medium-sized enterprises by BT.
The telecoms company is offering BT SearchSmart in a partnership with Latitude, which will offer businesses a portal where they can monitor keyword activity and other online reports.
Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business, pointed out that search engine marketing grew by 26 per cent year on year and it makes sense that smaller companies should be able to use the service.
He said: "We want to make sure that small businesses can participate in this rapidly growing market at a price they can afford and with access to the tools to manage their campaign."
The cost of the service starts at £74.99 per month and will allow business owners to talk to consultants as well as online analytics.
This week, Microsoft announced that it would be enhancing its Bing product by offering companies the chance to make their entry appear more "graphically-rich" on search results pages, according to Media Post.

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Search engine 'to begin marketing itself on a big scale'

Yahoo! will begin a marketing campaign to show that it is still a powerhouse of the online world at Advertisting Week in New York, says an industry analyst.
The search engine Yahoo! will begin marketing itself again to try to show customers how big a force it is in the digital world, according to an industry analyst.
Kara Swisher, co-producer of All Things Digital, stated that Advertising Week starting on September 21st in New York will be the beginning of Yahoo!'s campaign, since many of its senior executives will be there to speak to its biggest clients.
She claimed that the key message that the top brass will be looking to deliver is that the search engine is still huge in terms of online display advertising, even if its search power is set to be reduced when its proposed deal with Microsoft goes through.
The agreement will see Microsoft take over the back-end of Yahoo!'s search on a ten year deal while they both continue to compete on the front end.
However, Ms Swisher said: "Yahoo! - despite all the internal and external turmoil it has undergone in recent years - remains one of the largest sites on the Internet."

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Search engine marketing 'should not suffer in recession'

Firms involved in search engine marketing may welcome one industry commentator's assertions that e-commerce could be shielded from the effects of the recession through its low costs.

Firms involved in search engine marketing may welcome one industry commentator's assertions that e-commerce should be shielded from the ongoing effects of the global economic downturn.

Simon Bird, technical director at dotCommerce, claims that online retail is boosted in a recession since there are a variety of ways that companies can sell their products on the internet without having to spend a lot of money.

He points out that start-up costs are low compared to setting up a high street store and through search engine marketing a website can be visible on an international scale.

"Going back a number of years, e-commerce was viewed as something that was very expensive to do, but now it's not," he says.

While Mr Bird is aware that research showed spending online had slowed down, he still notes that growth in e-commerce is still "outstripping" high street sales growth.

Shoppers in the UK spent £22.9 billion in the first half of this year, according to the July IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index.

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