SEMpdx and Portland State have teamed up to offer a scholarship twice per year to students who wish to take the Search Engine Marketing course in the 
PSU Digital Marketing Strategies certificate program.   The current scholarship covers the course fee ($650) for the Search Engine Marketing course taught on 3 Fridays: April 12, 19, and 26.  Click on the scholarship link to complete an application. All applications are due by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, March 22nd.   The winner will be selected and contacted on or before April 3rd.

April 3rd UPDATE: Congratulations to Claire McEachern! She is the recipient of the PSU Digital Marketing Strategies scholarship. Best of luck Claire!

Portland State’s Winter term of digital learning has already kicked off, with some Spring term classes to start shortly.  Three certificates, Digital Marketing Strategies, Designing and Developing for Mobile
and Introduction to Web Development, are designed for working professionals and career changers updating traditional media skills in print design, content development, marketing/PR and related fields.  Explore the Winter and Spring digital media courses.

These programs are offered through the Professional Development Center at Portland State University, with classes taught by top Portland interactive developers, designers, and executives.  Classes are structured to meet the needs of current business professionals and may be taken as individual courses or as part of a certificate. Day and evening classes are held at the Market Square Building, located on 5th Avenue, between SW Market St. and SW Clay St.

Complete Scholarship Application Now

Mel Carson will be speaking at the “Digital Evangelism Inside & Out” session at SearchFest 2013 which will be taking place on February 22, 2013 at the Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click the following link.

1) Please give us your background and let us know what you do for a living.
I’ve spent last 12 years connecting consumers and businesses through search engine marketing, digital advertising and social media. During 7 of those years I travelled the world as Microsoft’s Digital Marketing Evangelist talking about the industry, dissecting the issues and providing a platform for thought leaders to discuss trends and offer their advice on what’s coming next. I left Microsoft in 2012 to start Delightful Communications, a social media integration, digital PR and personal branding consultancy based in Seattle. I love doing digital for a living.

2) How did you evangelize AdCenter to the hordes of people who saw AdWords as the only valid PPC platform?
Back in 2006 when adCenter (now Bing Ads) launched, Microsoft had a tiny market share, but many in the industry relished a new player who would try and push the envelope and provide some kind of complimentary platform. We started with a blog on Windows Live Spaces (remember that?!) and a forum, and made it our mission to “help advertisers help themselves”. Customer service, engagement and timely responses were hugely important to that mission. We really saw the opportunity to differentiate through really listening to customers and building trust. I then got invited to speak at more conferences and worked on building my personal brand on MelCarson.com. Customers and potential customers valued having a “face” they could identify with and approach instead of just a logo. It was a long few years of chipping away before Bing caught up and the Yahoo! Search Alliance was struck, but the rest, as they say, is history.

3) How is social media a platform for brand evangelism?
Social media provides a mechanism for both a one-to-one and one-to-many dialogue. My mantra has always been to make helpful and relevant content and messaging discoverable and sharable through digital means. Don’t make the mistake of setting up your channels, crossing your fingers and hoping for it all to go viral. Integrating your social channels into your other marketing channels will help amplify the essence behind your products and services beyond others who don’t, simply because you’re giving them a chance to be found more easily and shared for longer. Social media is a fantastic tool for building relationships with potential brand advocates and ambassadors. With the right chemistry, these advocates can help you propel your brand into the consciousness of customers and potential customers you’d never even thought of.

BTW, for those who don’t know…Mel was the dashing young gentleman in this Joe Cocker video:

SEMpdx and Portland State have teamed up to offer a scholarship twice per year to students who wish to take the Search Engine Marketing course in the PSU Digital Marketing Strategies certificate program.   The current scholarship covers the course fee ($650) for the Search Engine Marketing course taught on 3 Fridays: November 16, November 30 and  December 7.  Click on the scholarship link to complete an application. All applications are due by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, October 12.   The winner will be selected and contacted on or before October 26.

OCT. 26 UPDATE:  Kathy Covey of the Cat Adoption Team in Sherwood has been chosen as the recipient of the Fall 2012 PSU SEM Workshop scholarship. Congratulations!

Portland State’s Fall term of digital learning is kicking off soon.  Three certificates, Interactive Producer and Internet Design, and Digital Marketing Strategies are designed for working professionals and career changers updating traditional media skills in print design, content development, marketing/PR and related fields.  Explore the Fall and Winter Technology and Media courses.

These programs are offered through the Professional Development Center at Portland State University, with classes taught by over 30 top Portland interactive developers, designers, and executives.  Classes are structured to meet the needs of current business professionals and may be taken as individual courses or as part of a certificate. Day and evening classes are held at the Market Square Building, located on 5^th Avenue, between SW Market St. and SW Clay St.

Complete Scholarship Application Now

For today’s search agencies, there’s no shortage of information, advice and opinions on the best way to optimize your clients’ campaigns for greater value, or to make the latest Google algorithm tweak work better for you. What there isn’t a whole lot of, however, is information on how to improve the business side of your search agency. 

As the search landscape continues to evolve—adding mobile, social, display and more along the way—those on the executive team at search agencies are struggling with how to best adapt to this evolution.  How can we differentiate? How can we scale? What do clients want from us? How can we get more wallet share? How can we systematically enchant our clients? Get the answers right and your search agency won’t just survive—it will thrive, and your current and new customers will reap the rewards right along with you. But get it wrong, at the very least you’re leaving money on the table—or even worse, driving prospective clients right to your competition.

To help address the real business concerns shared by search agencies, performance marketing platform creators Acquisio have added an entire business track to their upcoming AcquisioUserSummit that will be held in Montreal from June 27-29, 2012. In the Summit’s business track, search agency execs will share their strategies for retaining and upselling current clients, attracting new clients and winning new business. They’ll also talk about how to successfully add Facebook and display advertising to your service offerings, and will pinpoint the best way to differentiate your business so you can increase your deal flow.

And remember the question about what clients want from your agency? Acquisio has an entire session devoted specifically to that topic, featuring 3 CMOs who will tell you what they like, what they look for, and what they avoid when working with a performance media company.

Interested in learning more? Get the scoop on the User Summit and the business track sessions on the Summitwebsite—and then take advantage of the early registration price for the Summit which is good through March 31.

–Marc Poirier, Co-Founder and VP Marketing, Acquisio

Top 6 Reasons to Take the SEMPO State of Search Marketing Survey today

6) Your feedback is important, this SEMPO Survey reveals a great deal about the industry and where it’s going. Your contribution is essential to gathering great data to share with you, our members and the industry.

5) Upon completion, you’ll be entered to win a new iPad.

4) Upon completion, if you belong to a Regional or Local Search Marketing Organization, just add your Organization name to the final page of the survey and be entered to win a pass to SMX Social Media Marketing in Las Vegas, December 5-6, 2012.

3) Upon completion, if you are from a business/company in Europe, Asia (or anywhere besides US) you’ll be entered to win an SES pass of your choosing for Hong Kong, Singapore, Toronto or London.

2) Once survey results are completed, you’ll receive a copy of the survey for free ($400 value).

1) Your business or agency can use the data to learn more about upcoming trends and other important information to help you guide your business plans.

Complete the SEMPO Survey today (April 6th last day), it just takes a couple of minutes. So what are you waiting for?

SEMpdx and Portland State have teamed up to offer a scholarship twice per year to students who wish to take the Search Engine Marketing course in the PSU Digital Marketing Strategies certificate program.   The current scholarship covers the course fee ($650) for the Search Engine Marketing course taught on 3 consecutive Fridays, April 20 through May 4.  Click on the scholarship link to complete an application. All applications are due by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, March 30.   The winner will be selected and contacted on or before April 6.

Updated — Andrew Grossman has been selected by the SEMpdx Board of Directors to receive the Spring 2012 PSU SEM Workshop Scholarship. Congratulations, Andrew!

Portland State’s Spring term of digital learning is kicking off now.  Three certificates, Interactive Producer and Internet Design, starting March 23, and Digital Marketing Strategies starting March 2, are designed for working professionals and career changers updating traditional media skills in print design, content development, marketing/PR and related fields.  View the Spring & Summer 2012 line-up of classes for Interactive Producer and Internet Design. Take a look at the Digital Marketing certificate.

These programs are offered through the Professional Development Center at Portland State University, with classes taught by over 30 top Portland interactive developers, designers, and executives.  Classes are structured to meet the needs of current business professionals and may be taken as individual courses or as part of a certificate. Digital Marketing Strategy classes are held in the Market Square Building. Evening and weekend lab classes are held in the state-of-the-art Broadway Lab on SW Broadway and Jefferson. Contact Jennifer Portis with questions at portisj@pdx.edu or 503-725-4803.

Analytics creates the ability to track and measure revenue from a lead to completion focus. The Advanced Analytics session reviewed important metrics to emphasize when analyzing your data to minimize confusion and map your digital business plan.

Conrad Saam, the Director of Marketing at Urbanspoon, discussed analytics from his perspective, which involves translating the data between people who are actually doing it and high level executives. The main points emphasized during his presentation are listed below:

Ranking Reports
Ranking reports can lead to being sidetracked and are becoming increasingly useless. An example that Conrad used during the session involved data for a page titled: Tattoo Story. The ranking report was 63, but the page received a reasonable amount of traffic for that page. About 10% of the traffic terms included “pics”, “photos”, odd characters, specific type of tattoos, misspellings, and the word “tattoo” actually ranked. In reality, this page has proven to be very successful, regardless of the ranking. This demonstrates that page ranking is not a critical element in order for significant traffic to be achieved.

Reporting Structure
In creating reports, critical elements vary depending on keyword. The main elements reported on are listed below with the corresponding keyword type:

• Ubercompetitive/online reputation looking: Ranking
• Head: Traffic
• Long tail: Traffic, Number of Keywords, Number of Entry Pages, and Number of Indexed Pages

Multi Channel Attribution
The Multi Channel Overview demonstrates that direct, organic, referral, social, and other traffic sources are working together to produce conversions. An important element to consider is Assisted vs. Last Conversions – how many times was the user exposed and touched before they converted? Five questions Multi-channel can answer are listed below:

1. True ROI for PPC (or any other top of funnel) channel
2. Top of funnel keywrods (that actualy convert)
3. ID Closer channels
4. ID colossally ineffective channels
5. Evaluate retargeting effectiveness

Mike Pantoliano is an SEO Consultant at Distilled. His presentation, Making Google Analytics Work For You, explained analytics as a means of making sound business decisions with the data that you have. Google Analytics answers important questions regardless of your web analytics package and offers increased flexibility through event tracking, custom reports, advanced segments, and custom variables.

Event Tracking Ideas

• Checkout errors and alerts.
• Video plays
• Button Clicks
• File Downloads
• Content Scroll Analysis
• Site Exits

Custom Variable Ideas

• Social entrants
• Blog post author
• Blog post year
• Repeat purchaser
• Logged in/ member

Custom Alert Ideas

• Traffic drops
• Bounce rate increases
• Conversion drops
• Long tail traffic drops

Roll Up Accounts
Cross Domain accounts can get very complicated. Don’t forget to create secondary trackers and make sure you are matched up exactly across domains. The Google Analytics Chrome debugger is a great test tool to ensure that everything has been set up correctly. Filters can be set up within Google Analytics to view data separately for each domain.

Multi-Channel Funnels
The first thing you should do is create your own channel for branded and non-branded organic terms. A helpful hint that Mike mentioned during his presentation is that ‘t.co’ is registering as a referral in stock channels – this is the default setting and this should be changed in order to ensure that the data is being reflected accurately for Social Media.

During his presentation, Mike mentioned ‘not provided data’. This missing data can be ignored or extrapolated. Extrapolating data is imprecise and untrustworthy. Ignoring the missing data is the best thing you can do. It is better to have less data than questionable data.

Speakers:

Justin Kistner – Webtrends

Kelly Feller – Citrix

Moderator:

Jessica Ward Amplify Interactive

Summary:

You’re a social marketing genius. Your Twitter Followers are up 900%. Your Facebook Fans are pushing 40,000. You have thousands of people subscribing to your RSS feed. Your efforts are successful right? Learn how to set goals and have your social strategy help to achieve those goals from our leading panel of experts.

Speaker: Kelly Feller

Social Media for Business

• Executives agree that social media is important, but priorities don’t reflect that. Why?
  • ROI is hard to calculate
  • Results are not often immediate
  • Focus on too many tools dilutes efforts
  • Infrastructure investments (hiring in-house) is often required
  • Marketers and Finance are accustomed to managing and funding short term campaigns, not long term programs
• Misaligned strategic model
  • Campaign approach; transactional, occasional, impersonal, short-term
  • Programmatic approach; interaction, constant, relationship, sustained
    • Metrics are measured different for each
  • Social campaign…
    • Awareness, can often be outsourced, finite time periods, specific budgets, specific success metrics, ROI easier to calculate, less head-count, often B2C, less risk, agency expertise
  • VS. Social program
    • Engagement, in-house, ongoing, various budgets, diverse success metrics, ROI difficult to calculate, head-count investment, often B2B, greater risk, consultant expertise
  • Campaign approach is good for..
    • Awareness building, elections, product or campaign launches, pledge drives, event/trade shows, social advertising, social contests, facebook fan builder
  • Program approach is good for..
    • Relationship building, communities, blogs, customer support, corporate facebook page
  • Social media proliferation is bad for companies, and leads to a fragmented brand experience
  • Focus on doing a couple things well;
    • Determine objectives; share messages, join conversations, learn from audience, acquire new fans
    • Choose one or two; listening, blog (when in doubt) twitter, LinkedIn
    • Test and Measure; set specific goals, engage at least daily, don’t give up, report results regularly
  • LinkedIn
    • People don’t mind talking about businesses on LinkedIn

Speaker: Justin Kistner        

Paid Social Campaigns

General

• Still at the infancy stage of social analytics
• Facebook’s ad network is growing 125% faster than Google’s did during same age in company
• The older Facebook users are, the more they click on Facebook ads

Building Facebook fans

• Engagement earns fans
• Built through friends
• Brand posts are not seen by the majority of fans; if a company has 1 million fans and posts something on their wall, this will only show up in about 3% of fan news feeds
• Edgerank – this is to Facebook as page rank is to Google
• Use content that is socially relevant for Facebook to build engagement; blog posts generally do poorly

Business purpose

• Facebook is more about customer loyalty than customer acquisition
• Give fans a reason to be fans (special offers)
• Fans of brands will spend more on those brands
• CTR is 7X higher for ads targeted to fans, rather than non fans

Measure and Optimize

• Use apps to create landing pages
• Track Facebook campaigns like a website

Advanced Off-Site SEO makes you think about links. Both Scott Hendison and Ian Lurie (filling in for Adam Audette) are masters in the area. The following is a live blog of their discussion at SearchFest 2012:

Scott Hendison:

Scott began marketing in 1999

In addition to links, off-site is all about trust and credibility.

Note – Facebook EdgeRank Is a secondary ranking factor in Google.

It is important to let employees spend time on social, including new tools like Google Plus and Pinterest. It’s like having children, you should encourage them to explore new interests especially if they are going to do it anyway.

Branding IS social. You need to get socialized even if you are not active. At a bar minimum sign up and fill out Google +, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Check it all out on Knowem.com

Branding IS Social IS Credibility

Join reputable associations and organizations. Don’t only think local, but global.

Google wants to be ‘the’ trusted authority, and they want to charge us for the privilege. Their goal is to make money on every search. We are all beta testers.

It is all about trust, brute force is dead. Does Google trust you?

Microdata (schema.org) is very prevalent in search and shows positive signs in SERPs.

Get trusted with Google, as they now have a trust program.

Time to talk about LINKS!

Grade links on a academic school, A-F.

C is for crappy. D is for damn crappy. F is another bad word with “embarrassing” tagged on the end.

How do you really get A & B links.

Imagination, hard work, and creativity are not a bad start.

You are doomed to fail without paid tools.

Majestic SEO Clique Hunter is a simple way to test the top ten versus yourself, so you can target those sites.

Fix your 404 inbound links! All you have to do is use a 301 re-direct. 404 redirected is a WordPress plugin that will redirect 404’s to most relevant pages by algorithm.

Citation Labs has a good new link prospecting tool.

Because of time constraints, we are moving on to Ian Lurie. (There are rumors about a cool tool called scrape box that is in the missing slides.)

Ian Lurie –

Zero people here know what inverted index means, and the formulas of the page rank formula. That is advanced, and not many people know it.

Google: “We Do No Evil” = “We Do Know Evil”

The steps towards advanced are small. For example, who know how to change a tire?

You say advanced, you mean easy.

Be careful about advanced link development techniques. Think about link diversity, you want to build out your number of link domains, not necessarily links themselves.

Do some serious data mining in log files.

Get a bot list. A good tool for this is Fantomaster Spider Spy which gives you the IP’s for all bots that crawl your site. It can be used as a database builder. Long story short get the log files by any means necessary. This is said because people usually think it is a waste of time or hassle, it isn’t.

By running a simple Python Script you can see which links have never been seen by Google within a specific timeframe.

An example. Client X was found to have links from a prestigious university that Google couldn’t even see because it was going to a 404. REBUILD THE PAGE from scratch. All you are doing is changing the tires on this website. Being advanced.

How do we ensure Google heads back to a land that it thinks is dead? Tweet it, post it, bam! Once a link is shared (even by a Twitter bot) it will be picked up by Google again.

Once you have fixed all broken links then move on. These are the easy ones, do it first.

Other methods-

Bribery is good (take this lightly)

Social is a huge and growing ranking factor. Level of participation is equal to the link. That stands for how many people are interacting and engaging.

Mechanical Turk is your friend. You can essentially buy poll answers, tread lightly and think naturally.

250 dollars on M-Turk (from Amazon) resulted in 10% increase in organic traffic as social participation blossomed.

Talking about Google Plus now.

Google is now giving prime SERP Real Estate.

Based on a test from Ian, those who rank in the top ten for response rates (this means users responding to your content) are the ones showing up in Search Plus Your World.

Some good places to buy links-

BBB – 1000 dollars

Business Associations, Industry Associations, YouTube Annotations, Media Sharing Sites, Bookmarking Sites, Local (getlisted.org)

Overview, Get The Easy Links!

That’s it for Scott and Ian, as they gave a ton of good insights. One more presentation to go and SearchFest 2012 will be a wrap. It has been great so far, what more surprises are to come?

Retargeting: What is it & How Can I Use it?

Joanna Lord of SEOmoz: 

The search and info discovery process has become so fragmented (every morning you’re inundated with facebook links, twitter links, spread across multiple sites) so marketing has changed. Re-targeting is the answer to the new way people search and discover information.

Display advertising of yesteryear: less was expected (old model):

• Acquisition: generate traffic and improve brand awareness
• Conversion: produce conversions, increase revenue of each conversion
• Retention: set expectations that will be met at this point and establish trust  (Here’s where retargeting shines.)

What is retargeting?  

Someone comes to your site, they are marked with a cookie, and then my ads are shown across ad networks on other sites. Goal is to bring them back to our site further along in the buying process–hopefully trust has been built through ads–so that they’re further down the purchase process.

Stats:

• More than 90% of retailers do not complete a transaction in their first visit.
• Retargeted consumers are nearly 70% more likely to complete a purchase as compared to non-retargeted consumers.
• Retargeted consumers spend, on average 50% more than those served with non-retargeted banner ads.

10 Retargeting Tips:

1. Go after the 90%: Optimize beyond the desired action. Retargeting ads should be optimized to each user’s site use patterns, if they visit the blog most, retargeting ads should be tailored towards the blog.
2. Capitalize visually on what makes your brand memorable: Because you have multiple impressions with retargeting, you can tailor your images and branding and be much, much more creative than display.
3. Sequence retargeting: Tell a brand story using sequential ads over time. Segment what you’re showing people based upon how long they’ve had your cookie without a conversion.
4. Expect more from the data: Know what to expect and then micro manage your way there.
5. Choose your triggers wisely with retargeting (& sequence them): Time sensitive promos are more powerful. You can only show a promo to someone who’s already seen your site, so a retargeted ad is a much more powerful ad.
6. Test any and every truth you operate under.
7. Get social: Engaging with strangers is nice, engaging with qualified leads is better. Use retargeting to start social conversations. PROTIP: CUSTOMIZE THE FB AND TWITTER LOGOS TO STICK OUT.
8. Correlation & Causation: Subliminal messaging FTW! Go to partners, stick your ads next to partners that will lend brand equity to each other.
9. Go beyond your site: Use search retargeting to target users that searched organically for related terms and target users that visited similar sites to your own, target users that visited partner sites to yours, target users that you correspond to in emails.
10. Think outside the box: Stop trying to use the time honored “build trust” and use retargeting to take what’s unique about your brand and leverage it in a creative way. You can be really creative with retargeting; leverage that to create a persuasive media message.

Where to start?  Start building out your first audience.

Challenges with Retargeting

1. Tracking can be difficult. Dial your segment code, burn code, and conversion code.
2. Settling expectations and handling haters: Send an email out to your company and let them know you’re testing the program. Be honest with people who email you about stalking them across the web: “we’re testing. please be patient”
3. Optimization is required. You have to optimize research, landing pages, negative sites, managing backlash, banner ads, reporting uphill, etc. It’s a lot of work and a lot of testing, but exceptionally effective once dialed.

Adam Berke of AdRoll:

Retarget Like a Rockstar with Adroll!

AdRoll is the most widely used retargeting platform in the world, used by Fortune 500 companies–over 3500 companies using it today.

The Evolution of the Display Ecosystem 

• Direct Buy
• Ad Networks
• Ad Exchanges
• Intent Data (98%* of carts are abandoned)

Leveraging Your Intent Data: Segmentation. 

• Look at time statistics to segment your retargeting.
• Time counts: time might be the most effective stat to segment.

Retargeting is great for retention.

It’s a fantastic CRM channel for cross selling, up-selling. Use reminders to get them convert after some time. “The cookie is the new email.” Nurture relationships using triggers and time stats.

Demand Control & Transparency

Demand transparency in your retargeting. Get the data and use it to your advantage.

Utilize the Display Canvas

Example, display different tshirts on a particular model the customer lingered on. Personalize your retargeting creative based on user behavior.

TAKE AWAYS:

• Leverage your intent data
• Segment and consider timing
• Make your marketing message useful
• Don’t obsess about pricing model, everyone has to buy it on a CPM