Archive for January, 2010

Analytics & Content Strategy Among Key Topics

January 25th, 2010

As the UK search marketing industry awaits the sound of the Search Engine Strategies 2010 conference wagon wheels rolling into town in February, we took a look at the event’s schedule, to see what some of the key themes and topics will be this year.

Many will be excited to hear the keynote speeches from Avinash Kaushik, Google’s leading Analytics guru and Author, and from Jim Sterne, Author and Chairman of the Web Analytics Association. And indeed the theme of analytics and conversion modeling, conversion attribution and optimisation features frequently throughout the three-day event schedule. Clearly search marketers are no strangers to accountability, but being able to lift search out of its silo and beyond the last click, and to model its success in line with the performance of a brand’s website and of its entire cross-media activity is front of mind for the industry in 2010.   

There are the usual suspects for those new to search marketing such as Introductions to Paid Search and SEO and link building strategies. And it is important that such industry events accommodate the needs of new market entrants as well as stalwarts.

Another theme which has more prominence on the SES conference schedule this year than it has in previous years is the importance of ensuring that search informs and shapes content strategy. On Wednesday 17th February (Day 2) there is a panel called “Developing Great Content” which will explore a range of web content development strategies that are born of the search marketing set (as opposed to the more ‘traditional set’ of journalists, copy writers and designers).

Reform’s Amanda Davie will be speaking in this session, and will be joined by search content and publishing specialists from Site Logic Marketing, SearchEngineWatch, SuccessWorks and SEO-PR.

For more detail about the “Developing Great Content” session or indeed the SES London conference schedule in it entirety, please visit http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london 

Looking Into China’s Search Market & Social Networking Usage

January 7th, 2010

To kick off the new year, Reform is releasing the first of several in a series of their “International Search Reviews”.  The first one concentrates on the search market in China, which is rapidly evolving as we speak – even in the past week or so, where we’ve seen Microsoft announce how its making the market a major priority for 2010 – and how they plan on trying to get a better understanding of what Chinese users need.  Download a copy of the full “China Search Review” issue here (updated 13/01/10 with recent info regarding Google’s threat to leave the Chinese market).

And lets not forget Baidu’s announcement earlier this week to team up with Providence Equity Partners, who are an investor in U.S. video-viewing site Hulu – as they look to make a move in the online video marketplace.

We felt that the International Search Review series would be a good way to consolidate research and our own insight into these markets – and also helps answer the many questions people have when trying to find out the market share in China, the user internet population, or the effect of mobile search and social networking in China, the latter of which has proven not only profitable, but to be a lot different than how we may perceive it in the west.   For example – we look at how Social Networks in China have found a way to become profitable, without relying on advertising, and how the reasons users go on to social networks are quite different than why people in the UK or US might do so.

The SEO and PPC insights about China takes a look at Baidu’s natural search algorithm, along with their recent change of handling paid search campaigns – via their “Phoenix Nest” platform, along with how search works in the Chinese market, and local perceptions about what SEO and PPC are in the first place.  For example, “paid placements” were considered part of SEO.

We also look at what might lie ahead for this market in 2010, as big brands and technologies from the west focus stronger on what is now the biggest internet market in the world.

Of course, if you just want the stats, we’ve got that too - here’s some recent stats about search usage in China.

Baidu 64% / Google 21% / Others 15% (China Daily)

Baidu 62% / Google 29% / Bing 1% (Analysys International)

Baidu 76% / Google 20% / Yahoo & Bing 1% (Comscore – July 2009)

360,000,000 Internet users as of Sept, 09 and only a 25% estimated broadband penetration.

To get more details on this and everything else, download a copy of the full issue here – and let us know any comments / feedback.   Contact us, and we’ll get the next issue out to you before anyone else gets it!

You can also leave a comment below.

Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform