There’s a growing divide between online marketers who enjoy organic search and those who prefer paid search. So what do your preferences say about you?

Do you enjoy hours spent analyzing search terms and bidding on long-tail PPC keywords that squeeze an extra 20 percent return out of your budget? Or do you prefer to add lasting value to a Web site over the long term, gradually building authority through clever content and inching your way to the top of the natural search results?

If you work in optimization, chances are you do both each day. But which do you find harder and what does that say about you?

Here are my thoughts. Be warned, these are generalizations and clearly not everyone will conform to the below.

More Creative vs. More Analytical

Based on the teams I’ve worked with, the individuals who most enjoy organic optimization are more creative. They can take a holistic approach to the Web sites they work on and often help produce creative content such as blog posts, viral/social media marketing material, and landing page copy. It can be laborious, but they stay interested.

On the other side of the divide, those who prefer paid search tend to be more analytical and naturally mathematical. These people tend to enjoy watching for patterns and working to take advantage of these patterns. They can find the minutiae of SEO frustrating.

Long-Term Planners vs. Risk Takers

Where will the site be in a year or longer? That’s the kind of question an SEO fanatic ponders, while the colleague who prefers PPC may find it hard to see beyond next month’s returns. This slower, steadier approach can add lasting value to a site – value that wouldn’t immediately die off if the budgets were cut, so these people bring longevity to their clients’ Web sites.

Although PPC fanatics enjoy watching for and analyzing patterns, they also love the thrill of a risk that pays off. Sometimes they’ll rely on their intuition and take a gamble with a budget – risking part of it to increase an employer’s returns. Slower, steady on-site optimization leaves these folks cold.

Works Well With Others vs. Needs to Focus

Brilliant SEO workers often enthusiastically engage with other members of a company, especially PR staff. They’re always trying to rope people into getting involved, whether through setting up corporate Twitter accounts, representing the company in forums, or writing guest blog posts. Some SEOs find it hard to keep out of other promotional work (e.g., e-mail marketing) because they want to add some SEO benefit to other teams’ work – but often it’s just their natural interest in marketing coming out.

While SEOs are veering off in all sorts of directions, those who prefer PPC are far better at focusing on one problem and giving it their full attention. They like finishing jobs and will often be the driving force behind a project’s completion. However, they don’t want to waste time on some tasks, so they may lose interest in a project that doesn’t bring fast results.

The Online Team Your Business Needs

Perhaps you can tell a person’s strengths from which aspect of optimization they find easiest. Creative, long-term planners with the patience to gradually build authority and presence tend to be great at organic SEO, while analytical-types with an instinct for risk may thrive more at PPC.

A well-rounded optimization professional will be able to perform strongly in every area. However, employers should try and balance their teams, to make sure they have insight and intuition in all areas of optimization.

But how do you factor this into your recruitment? An applicant with half a brain won’t respond entirely truthfully to the question, “What are your weaknesses?” They will, of course, come up with an answer that makes them sound good.

So, you need to dig deep in your interview. Ask what projects they have most enjoyed working on to date, find out what they would recommend various Web sites focus on as an online strategy. Find out where their enthusiasm lies, because that’s where their strength is.

How to Recruit a Search Marketing Team

It’s better to have staff members who are strong and passionate in one particular area rather than merely acceptable across all the required skills. That means you need to pay attention and make sure you’re recruiting the right mix of people. Otherwise, there’s a real risk that the team becomes heavily weighted towards one aspect of search engine marketing and then clients would suffer.

After all, it doesn’t matter how brilliant the work is if you only cover half the ground because you’ll never achieve more than 50 percent of a Web site’s potential.

For a well-balanced search team, ideally you’d look to have a mix of people with analytical skills, social media creativity, client/account management experience, link building know-how, and a bit of technical SEO brilliance. That way you should be well set up to cover everything even your most demanding clients want to throw at you.

Launch Schedule

The new era of .CO is coming this summer! The launch involves a multi-phase plan to ensure for the stable and orderly distribution of domains.

The Launch Plan incorporates industry best practices as well as other innovative rights protection mechanisms designed to protect the users of the .CO TLD. The Plan is consistent with the .CO Administration Policy of July 30, 2008.

The Launch has three core stages:

Global Sunrise April 26 – June 10:
This phase is for trademark holders with exact match domain names registered prior to July 30, 2008. This allows companies to apply for their desired domain or domains and secure their trademarks. Matching domains will go to auction.

Landrush June 21 – July 13:
Landrush takes place from the end of June through mid-July, and will be open to anyone interested in registering domain names of high commercial value. Any interest in matching domains will go to auction.

General Availability July 20:
Once the Global Sunrise and Landrush processes are complete, .CO domains will become available to anyone in the world through participating registrars. Except where otherwise reserved by the .CO Registry or earmarked for premium auctions, .CO domains will be available to the public based on the chronological order of registrations on a first come, first served basis.

9^th March 2010, London – Nominet, the national registry for .uk domain names, today opens a consultation regarding the release of two letter, one character and other reserved domain names. Registration of these domain names is not currently possible due to the rules governing the .uk domain space.

It is now proposed to lift this restriction and permit these registrations. To help inform which domains are made available for registration and determine how they are released, Nominet is formally inviting feedback from all Internet stakeholder groups, especially those who are interested in registering these short domains.

Lesley Cowley, CEO at Nominet says, “We are committed to ensuring that the release of these short domains is conducted in an appropriate, responsible and fair manner. We therefore urge all Internet stakeholders including consumers, industry and Government to submit their feedback during the next three months.”

The consultation closes on 8^th June 2010.  At this time, Nominet will publish a summary of all responses on its web site and develop a series of recommendations for the release of two letter and one character domains.

Feedback can be submitted via an online survey or by emailing shortdomains@nominet.org.uk. The full list of consultation questions can be viewed at:

http://www.nominet.org.uk/about/consultations/reservedshortdomains

Notes to Editors

About Nominet

Nominet operates at the heart of e-commerce in the UK , running one of the world’s largest Internet registries and managing over eight million domain names. Nominet maintains the register of .uk domain names and runs the DNS infrastructure that keeps .uk working.

It runs the technology that locates a computer in the Internet hosting the web site or email system you’re looking for when you type in a web address or send an email to an address that ends in .uk.

Nominet is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee that has members not shareholders, pays no dividends and its charges only cover its running costs. Anyone with an interest in the Internet may become a member. Nominet has over 2,800 members representing all areas of the Internet industry.

Nominet also runs the Tier 1 registry for UK ENUM, a service that combines telephone numbers and the Domain Name System to simplify the way telephone calls over the Internet work.  ENUM lets callers know that you have the capability to receive VoIP calls, so allowing them to take advantage of free calls over the Internet.

It was reported that the count of Internet users in Germany is about thirty-five million. On the other hand, the registered .de domain name is 6.5 million. Germany has turned itself to a country of domains and it’s people, domain savvy fanatics. Their CNO, which stands for .com, .net and .org, is about two million while Schlunde.de, a German info registrar is by far the largest today. With these statistics to back Germany up, they will surely conquer online business world in a few years time.

The release of .de domain names by the University of Dortmund Internet department in 1991, marked the conception of a long successful domain industry in Germany. Then in 1996 DENIC, the German co-operative was established by German Internet Providers and became the center source for .de domain names registry. DENIC follows the same policies of .com domains. The main rule is that anyone can have a domain name if they have an address in Germany. It doesn’t follow the costumer’s adage “first come, first serve basis.”

In Germany, most of the websites’ homepage have the .de domains, which are very popular to them. Those that have a .com, are not really thriving in Germany. Currently, .info is also becoming famous, but the experts say that it would not reach the popularity or statistics of .de users.
Despite the downfall of Internet worldwide, the German domain industry stood proudly as it continues to grow actively in the global internet market. In the recently posted statistics by DENIC, the German. An info sale is higher than english.info sales.

The reason German domain names industry is in motion and on top of everyone else’s is its strong secondary *domain market. It is supported by sedo.com, which is one of the top sellers of domain names. In fact, it has sold more than the combined Afternic and GreatDomains sales, which is one-fourth of the market in the United States. Sedo also plays a major part in weaving together the basic and secondary markets in Germany by simply establishing partnerships with top registrar domain names’ companies.

If you’re a domain investor, it is best to try your business in the German market by signing up to Sedo and listing your domains. You can even enlist it on sedo.us or sedo.uk, and they will instantly put your domains in sedo.de as long as you indicate it. Germany is a good market for there are lots of domain names purchasers who will buy your domains in no time. If ever you feel that it’s not going well, you can always resell your domain names in a higher price. In this way, you can gain some income.

In other domain news in Germany, huettenberger-case-fabrik.de becomes the ten millionth-domain name. This shows the dramatic increase of domain names in Germany as DENIC’s rules have become lenient just to accommodate lots of domain name registration. On the other hand, United Kingdom also announced that they hit five million domain names with Nominate. Accordingly, they ranked fourth place in the world’s top domain countries today. This news is certainly favorable to the domain industry as more and more countries have increasing domain names. This will surely uplift the domain market to the next level.

As for Germany, there’s a lot of room for growth and development for their domain industry. In fact, if their current sales grow more, the number of domain names will double in just a few years time.

Whenever an SEO talks about geo-targeting your site to a specific region, so it ranks well on that localized version of Google they tell you to do a few things.

(1) Host in the country you want to rank well for
(2) Try to use a ccTLD for that country, i.e. domain.co.uk for UK
(3) Set the geographic target in Google Webmaster Tools

However, instead of using a ccTLD, I often see sites deploy a subdomain or subfolder to specify a different language or geographic target. A ccTLD is best, in my opinion. Of course, there are times you want to use a localized language by target the main Google – so that does apply.

JohnMu from Google replied to a Google Webmaster Help thread stating that a ccTLD is much more powerful than hosting your site on a server in that country. Specifically, John said:

Yes, we do try to find context from these two factors (I think this article is being updated to be a bit more clear though ) — however, if your site has a geographic TLD/ccTLD (like .co.nz) then we will not use the location of the server as well. Doing that would be a bit confusing, we can’t really “average” between New Zealand and the USA… At any rate, if you are using a ccTLD like .co.nz you really don’t have to worry about where you’re hosting your website, the ccTLD is generally a much stronger signal than the server’s location could ever be.

Google will use the ccTLD over the server location to geotarget your site. This makes sense to me, but I do not think this has been covered here. We covered the overal topic dozens of times, but not specifically which factor is more important.

Social media could be considered one of the most fundamentally disruptive influences of the century. Those few thousand people and outlets that once controlled the information we received along with how we received it has dramatically shifted to a world where we all have the opportunity to share and
gather information on an infinite scale. This shift to a Social Web is opening up new opportunities for individuals and organizations that were just not possible before. The rapid adoption of social media has fueled this Social Web revolution where technology has met a fundamental human need or desire – the need to
communicate, be heard and belong.

We are no longer restricted by geography, social standing or any other demographic factor. The Social Web is a great equalizer. If you have a computer or mobile device with web access, you can communicate with whoever you want no matter where or who they are.

As with most disruptive and revolutionary concepts, they eventually become commercialized for business use. There is certainly no difference here, except for the fact that most organizations are struggling with how to incorporate social media into their business models.

What today’s organizations need to keep in mind is that Social Media is more than overhyped tools and fancy buzzwords. When used as an integrated part of any marketing mix, it can inform audiences, harvest actionable data, build knowledge about an audience and impact bottom line results. The data and information
gleaned from social media is critical when trying to deliver best practices, services and even goods to prospective buyers. Used skillfully, it has the potential to be a revenue booster in the form of organic content and authentic conversations. Consider a June 2009 study from MarketingVox and Nielsen which found that 25 percent of search results for the world’s Top 20 brands linked back to usergenerated
content. This means that the broadcast messages brands put out through www.awarenessnetworks.com

“Companies and executives are finally beginning to really jump on the social media bandwagon, and that’s fantastic. However, for social media to fully work (for everyone), businesses and brands need to be able to evaluate the impact their social media use is having, both positive and negative.” – “HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI” Mashable, Christina Warren, October 2009 www.awarenessnetworks.3 com End the Hype traditional channels have less influence on business results because consumers will get their perspectives out there first. From conversations on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, branded communities, email, blogs and elsewhere, social media presents a unique way for companies to find out what’s making customers open their wallets or walk right past their store.

Ask yourself these questions. Is this just a revolution you need to participate in or is it just an overhyped fad lacking any true business benefits? While we may not be able to fully measure the difference between let’s say a press release impression and a positive customer recommendation on a community site or even the impact thousands of YouTube views has over a Super Bowl ad, organizations need to remember that its customers are spending more time than ever in those social media channels, and they’re not going away.

Now is the time to invest in understanding what each channel means for your target audience through
profiling and segmentation. It will be different, but traditional marketing principles have not changed and
still apply. Don’t let those social media “experts” fool you. There is no secret social media sauce or silver
bullet. It’s trial and error through testing and continued learning, just like with traditional media in
the good old days.

How far are you in understanding social marketing and how much are you really investing? You need commitment and investment in order to see any results. Here’s why – your competitors are trying to friend your friends while your customers are joining your competitors’ communities and engaging with them and not you.

If you are just getting started in social marketing or an early adopter with a clear understanding of the value, this eBook contains information that can help you cut through the hype of social media and drive real usiness results.

Set Yourself Apart

The key for most organizations is to use social media tools in ways that work for them and their organization. No matter what you may hear from the hundreds of social media gurus, Social Media does not come in “one size fits all.” Your social media strategy needs to align with your corporate strategy and business objectives. As such, the mix of tools that works for one company may not work for another.

When all is said and done, the social web and its millions of users, present a golden opportunity for intelligent enterprises to connect with their audience in a way not previously possible. That said, leveraging the free social web (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) is only the tip of the iceberg. After testing these channels, organizations gain even more momentum through their own branded community.

For example, ASOS – the UK’s largest independent online fashion and beauty retailer – built an online community called ASOS Life to facilitate interactions and conversations between the brand and its customers.

Retail organizations like ASOS are making social media a critical component of the marketing mix because they understand the power community influence has on driving purchases. Eighty-three percent of online shoppers say they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place (Manage Smarter, September 2009).

ASOS Life builds on the enthusiasm customers have for the brand by connecting them with each other and ASOS Insiders (ASOS employees), to talk fashion, shopping and all things ASOS. By building on this information, they are rapidly becoming the market leader in the UK online fashion world. Their site, ASOS.com attracts more than 5.3 million unique visitors a month and has 2.3 million registered users.

For companies like ASOS, establishing clear objectives up front allow for clearer tracking of social media return. There’s no substitute for well-reasoned, empathetic marketing techniques, and when the distracting hype of social media fades, effective marketers will identify the real business benefits of these tools.

The Social Media Way

TThe business landscape is scattered with social media “experts” who promise impact and ROI. For the most part, these folks are passionate, energetic and many times, uninformed. Many trainers and pros advocate jumping into the social media ocean and abandoning your existing marketing strategy. While that direction may be advocated by many in the space, be warned: One of the most common “The AIR MILES community gives collectors a destination to share and exchange information and connect with each other and social media gives us the ability to engage in a dialogue that was previously not possible.”

- Neil Everett, Chief Marketing Officer, AIR MILES Reward Program. mistakes businesses make is leaping into social media without a plan. Without a plan and objectives clearly defined makes it difficult, if not impossible, to break out the actual costs involved, measure success and define a return on an investment. This leads to a critical question that many organizations are struggling with: How should companies decide how much capital to spend on social marketing activities if they can’t even define what it costs or what it will return?
Again, a focus on the end-user – your target audience – is key. Connect with your community and let them provide YOU with direction. Since you’re looking for returns—both in awareness and on the bottom line—you have a unique opportunity to leverage social media tools to connect and engage with people. The
genuine feedback provided by your community will temper the overload of hype.

The audiences with whom you connect can really lead your marketing efforts—in both traditional and new media. For example, take a look at how AIR MILES Reward Program — Canada’s Premier Coalition Loyalty Program – uses social media to connect with their passionate and loyal community. Using a multi-channel marketing approach that included both traditional and social media channels, AIR MILES informed their Collectors, or loyalty program members, of the launch of their online community. This included traditional channels, like direct mail, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. As of Q4 2009, the AIR MILES marketing program attracted over 20,000 community members who were actively engaged in thousands of discussions.

The AIR MILES community, available in both English and French, features several sections that are designed to drive community participation, including a tips & tricks section that allows users to find and share information on how to earn more reward miles and get the most out of the AIR MILES Reward Program.
There is also a discussion forum that encourages members to begin conversations, ask and answer specific questions, and connect with fellow Collectors as well as AIR MILES Sponsors and the AIR MILES reward program. Users are also encouraged to upload photos within its interactive photo gallery to showcase everything from great vacations to testing out new products.

“The AIR MILES community gives collectors a destination to share and exchange information and connect with each other,” says Neil Everett, Chief Marketing Officer, AIR MILES Reward Program. “Social media gives us the ability to engage in a dialogue that was previously not possible.” Without an awareness of the investment, techniques and tools necessary to succeed, efforts are going to fall flat…hype or no hype… Regardless of how active and present an organization strives to be. But the tools CAN work when you start
with an educated approach.

The Social Web World

The conclusion is simple. We are now part of a Social Web World. Your customers and prospects are migrating there at an alarming rate and your organization needs to be there too. There is no five point holy grail plan, no perfect return on investment methodologies. You need to do what you can to learn and accelerate your switch between traditional and social media. Don’t get frustrated. This is still a new frontier.
Go beyond the hype and establish a plan for connecting with every audience that matters to your success. We’re no longer in an environment where “push” and “interrupt” – driven media rules the roost. The methods today are truly conversations and connecting with your audience.

Learn More

Find out more about Social Media specifics; read case studies; download checklists for Social Media success; and much more at http://awarenessnetworks.com. Sources used in this paper:

ASOS Case Study
Building a Beautiful Community
www.awarenessnetworks.com/news/press-releases/awareness/060309.asp
AIR MILES Case Study
Loyalty – Sharing within a Loyal Community
www.awarenessnetworks.com/news/press-releases/awareness/061509.asp
Awareness News
A Selection of Case Studies and Business Announcements
www.awarenessnetworks.com/news/press-releases/

About the Author

Mark Cattini is a veteran executive in the software industry with more than 20 years experience helping high-profile companies strategically grow and become profitable. Prior to joining Awareness, Cattini was
president and CEO of MapInfo. During his tenure, Cattini led the company’s charge into newly-defined vertical markets and revamped the company’s business model to create a more predictable revenue stream. His successful leadership led to the company’s acquisition by Pitney Bowes in a transaction worth approximately $500M.

Google Quality Score is an assigned number from 1 – 10, based on how well your keywords relate to your ad text and landing pages. The higher your Quality Score, the higher your ads can be ranked in position for less cost. Generally speaking, in Google, any keyword with a Quality Score of 6 or below is considered low.

The goal for most PPC advertisers is to achieve a higher Quality Score; which sometimes means making large changes within the account in a short amount of time. However, this tactic can be detrimental to your overall account health. Re-structuring and re-organizing your accounts for a higher Quality Score can actually decrease your scores initially, if not done correctly. A decrease in Quality Score will essentially bring in less traffic and less conversions or leads, at a higher spend. The goal then becomes to optimize your account without initially killing existing high Quality Scores. Low Quality Scores will eventually pick up in a few months — but who wants to have a broken PPC account for any length of time when the goal was to make it better?

Though trial and error, research, and speaking with my Google and Yahoo! reps, I have found the best way to restructure and optimize existing PPC accounts without killing existing high Quality Scores.

1. Don’t be in a hurry. Whether restructuring your account entirely, or just moving a few keywords around and writing new ads, take it slow. Especially in Google, when you make large changes in an account, it can throw the system into “shock,” as we call it. Google assumes your Ad- Words account was set up correctly in the first place. So, when you begin to make large changes, Google thinks that you must be doing something wrong, or made a mistake the first time around. Therefore, after large changes to an account your Quality Scores can tank. After a while (maybe a few months) Google can see that you have actually improved your organization, and your Quality Scores will begin to recover. But a couple of months with bad Quality Scores can result in lower traffic numbers, lower conversions, fewer leads, and lower ROI. Therefore, make a plan of optimizing your account week by week. Do one campaign or ad group restructure per week, including writing new ads, adjusting keyword bids, and settings.

2. Adjust campaign settings first. One thing you can do quickly and should be done immediately is to make sure your settings are correct for each campaign. The first setting I make sure to change can be found under rotate ads > set ads to rotate evenly. Do not set them to “optimize.” Setting your ads to optimize means that Google will only show the ad with the highest click-through rate. This also means that if you’re writing new ads for testing purposes, you can not split test (A/B) the new ad versus the old ad. The second setting I change can be found under bidding and budget > delivery method. This should be set to “accelerate.” This means that your ads will show as soon as someone types in your keyword. Google has an option to show your ads evenly throughout the day in order to make your daily budget last longer. The problem with this is that you could be missing out on potential qualified traffic by not having your ads show at all times for any search query.

3. Don’t overwrite old ad text. If you’re testing ad text — and you should be — do not write over the old ads, even if they have lower click-through rates. If there are any ads you wish to discontinue, simply pause the ad, and write an entirely new one. Anytime you edit existing ad text you’re writing over that ad’s click-through rate. Quality Score is based on having a high click-through rate. If you remove or edit ads with high or medium click-through rates and accidently replace them with ads that have low click-through rates you are hurting your Quality Scores.

4. Re-structure for optimal targeting. If your PPC account has more than 20 keywords per ad group, or only has one campaign in the entire account, it’s time to re-structure. Remember, Quality Scores are based on how well your keyword relates to your ad text. Therefore, if you have more than 20 keywords in each ad group, you can probably break those down into smaller, more targeted ad groups and write better targeted ad text. Doing so will increase click-through rates — a main driver of achieving higher Quality Scores. As mentioned previously, when restructuring, take it slow. Execute one campaign re-structure per day. In that campaign, you will be examining all of the keywords in your ad groups to find groups of keywords that can be broken out into their own, new ad groups.

5. Adjust bids accordingly. Again, when it comes to adjusting keyword bids, or pausing or deleting keywords, take it slow. According to my Google reps, taking a keyword bid from $10 down to $1 (or vice-versa) does not register well with AdWords. If you find keywords that could use major bid adjustments, pause them now then activate them later when you have the time and budget to work with those keywords.

Although it might be frustrating to make large changes slowly, it will be worth it in the end. Achieving a high Quality Score in Google or Yahoo! will take time — it’s not an overnight fix but, eventually, you will see traffic, and conversions and leads go up, while spend goes down.