In a conversation with a client the other day, I found out that not only is Google checkout an eye magnet for shoppers, it is also a pretty good deal. Apparently for every dollar you spend on Google Adwords, you receive $100 worth of free checkout. Google normally charges 2%, a good rate in of itself, so if you spend $1,000 on Adwords, you will save $2,000 on your checkout fees. That is certainly worth looking into.

Interesting article in Search Engine Land outlining an interview with Google guru Matt Cutts. Google has been working on, and will continue working on personalized search results. The theory is that the results you see on Google will be based not only on the Google algorithm, but also on your past searches. This would seem to sound a death knell for a lot of bad SEO companies and for black hat practices, which is great for good SEO companies and for consumers. The interesting thing that he did say was that;

“the sort of people who have been doing “new” SEO, or whatever you want to call it, that’s social media optimization, link bait, things that are interesting to people and attract word of mouth and buzz, those sorts of sites naturally attract visitors, attract repeat visitors, attract back links, attract lots of discussion. Those sorts of sites are going to benefit as the world goes forward”.

What I take from this is that according to Google, you should be using blogs, social media, RSS and video to promote interest in your site thus generating buzz and back links. Fiddling with your tags, putting new content on your site, and agonizing over keyword density is not going to matter. There may be something to this newfangled “blog marketing” after all.

As our company continues to grow, and we see clients’ campaigns mature, even we are surprised by the strength of results. We have seen great increases in rankings from the following campaigns;

Blog creation. The client pays us a flat one-time fee to build a search friendly, customized blog. We provide training on the management of and the writing in the blog. The blog helps the search engines navigate into interior pages of the clients’ main site, and also generates valuable back links. The blog can also be used for marketing purposes, enhancing communication with clients and eliciting feedback.

Blog writing. We write 12-30 articles a month in a clients’ blog, focusing on a couple of keywords or phrases with each article. A cost effective and highly effective way of ensuring that the blog is working and being recognized by engines.

Blog linking. We have created a network of bloggers who write articles about and link into our clients’ websites. Very effective in generating text specific, targeted back links.

Taken together, these services are incredibly effective and will outperform any other method available of generating natural search traffic.

It is not really all that surprising that video would begin showing up in natural search results. If you do a search for “shoes” on Google, one of the top listings is a youtube video of a band singing about shoes. Not the kind of result a shoe retailer wants to see. What is surprising is that Metacafe listings are starting to show up on Yahoo and MSN. This could either be a blip and will be corrected soon, or the beginning of a brand new trend.

Is it possible that video results will control natural search? A series of optimized video commercials on the first page of every search engine? With way the internet is going, that wouldn’t be surprising. But where does that leave etailers who are not using optimized video?

I read a great study recently from Forrester Research that confirms everything I have been hearing from larger companies for years. The big agencies are in trouble with the new media of internet, blogs and social media, and are starting to lose their grip on corporate advertising budgets. Big agencies still account for over 60% of marketing budgets, but that is not going to continue indefinitely. Two things that came out of the report that I found interesting:

-21 % of agency clients would recommend the agencies to others. That means that 79% would not.

-76% of clients had no way of measuring ROI from their agencies of record.

This tells me that most clients feel that they are getting a raw deal, but stay with the status quo. They have no idea of the return, they just keep spending, because that is what they have always done.

The question I have is why? Do these fortune 100 companies have any idea what a company like mine could do for them with even a $10m budget? Obviously not, but that is starting to change. Blogs and social media give small and large companies alike the opportunity to engage in inexpensive do it yourself advertising. Perhaps more marketing directors will come to realize that blind loyalty to big old agencies is not helping their bottom line.

Here at Retail Blog Marketing we have been talking for the last year about how blogs can be used to collect information and get feedback from customers and prospective customers alike. The blog essentially becomes a free focus group. Well, according to Business Week, a lot of large etailers are listening and are letting customers post feedback and information on their websites and blogs.

Macy’s is a good example. They opened up their sites to reviews from customers and they are now receiving over 350 reviews a day. Obviously, this does nothing but help Macys. 80% of these reviews are positive (surprise, surprise) and Macys has gained a definite competitive advantage. This move is also reflective of a broader trend to involve customers in marketing initiatives. According to Marketing Sherpa, by the end of 2005 23% of e-commerce sites had customer reviews and feedback. That had doubled by the end of 2006, and my prediction is that it will double again by the end of this year.

If you couple the obvious advantage of customer feedback with the search advantages of blog marketing, why on earth would an e-tailer not want to follow this trend, build a blog and involve themselves with viral marketing? Beats me.

I was doing a search today on Google and noticed that some of the search results had an interesting new icon next to them. It was like an eye magnet. My attention was immediately drawn. It was a Google Checkout. It seems a little unfair in terms of attracting attention, but it begs the following questions:

Is the Google checkout icon ever going to appear in the natural search results?
If you don’t have Google Checkout will you be penalized in terms of the legitimacy of your ad and your click through?

It remains to be seen. It seems to me like a blatant attempt by Google to direct more traffic to paid search and to drive merchants to use their checkout system.

If you have been lamenting the unreliability of the Overture term suggestion tool for your keyword research, Wordtracker has released a free one. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
This handy marketing tool will help you pick out those hard to find derivations of your favorite keywords. The keywords every marketer on the planet looks for that have low levels of competition and high conversions into sales. Once you have identified these money making phrases, why not use a blog and blog marketing techniques to get your website ranked for them. Sure beats paying Google and Yahoo per click if you can generate a high level of natural search traffic.

Ikea is getting in on the craze of consumer generated content and viral marketing by gathering home made videos of people coming up with innovative ways of making a bed. The winning entry walks off with $5,000, but what does Ikea get out of the deal? A lot more than $5,000. People are undoubtedly going to come up with strange and unusual videos that will spread like wildfire and promote the IKEA brand all over the internet. So why are more companies not doing this? Beats me. Every company that brands its products and wants to be well known should be using blogs and video optimization as a matter of course.

Interesting article on Marketing Vox about the effectiveness of affiliate marketing. I have suspected for a long time that managed affiliate marketing programs work for 10% of merchants and are a waste of money for the rest. According to this article, I was correct. Last year, 15% of etailers had 10,000 or more affiliates; that number has dropped to 9% for this year. The firms that do run affiliate marketing programs are getting more out of a limited pool of affiliates. They are also seeing significant conversions into sales from traffic generated by these choice affiliates; some as high as 5%.

So the lessons learned from all this? Do not put a whole lot of money into large managed affiliate programs. Rather, focus your energy on a small number of highly qualified traffic sources. If you nurture these sources and generate loyalty, you could see some pretty good conversions down the line. Don’t expect it to happen overnight though. Affiliate marketing programs take at least six months to develop. If you want quick results, you should turn to blog marketing.