Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conferences are the largest global conferences focusing around Search and Social Marketing, touching on topics ranging from SEO to Video Optimization to PPC Management. The conference, since its start in 1999, has been held in major cities across the world and brings together professionals from a variety of different industries. The extensive, three-day event encompasses over 70 sessions, within tracks such as SEO, Paid Search and Social Media, along with interactive workshops led by Marketers and SEO professionals from major companies.

SES recently hosted one of their conferences here in Chicago. Rise Interactive’s CEO and Founder, Jon Morris, was featured on Day 1 during the SEO track. Morris participated on a panel focusing on Metrics for SEO. He later went into more detail on the topic with his presentation entitled “SEO: How Understanding Your Analytics Gives You the Edge,” which emphasized the importance of Web Analytics when looking to generate the highest return for your interactive investment. Following the event, Morris participated in an interview hosted by WebmasterRadio.FM where he further discussed the concept and practice of Interactive Investment Management.

SES Chicago presentation: http://www.riseinteractive.com/webinars/understanding-seo-analytics/get-the-analytics-edge.pdf

SES Chicago interview: http://www2.webmasterradio.fm/search-engine-strategies-conference/2011/interactive-investment-management

1. Communicate to cut the red tape

Getting something done in a corporate environment can be worse than pulling teeth. Clearly and thoroughly communicating what your link building efforts will entail—before they begin—to anyone who could possibly be affected by them is a crucial step to take. Upper management needs to be on board and in the loop from the start so that there won’t be any unpleasant surprises. Otherwise, any outreach efforts could end up stalled behind a wall of red tape.

2. Get Creative with your Content

Many big brands will have a team of graphic designers, researchers and web developers already in place that will hopefully be at your disposal, (if you executed step 1 well!), and using that team to create linkable content will be a major boost to any link building effort. In this scenario, your job as a link builder is three-fold: First, since a good link builder is constantly monitoring what topics relevant to the brand are being discussed out on the web, you can advise on what kind of content people might link to. Second, a link builder needs to identify the influencers in the client’s space who are leading the discussion. Third, a link builder needs to make sure these influencers see the content and are willing to distribute it through their respective channels. If you’ve successfully leveraged the creative capabilities of your corporate backer, these three steps shouldn’t be a challenge, considering that you’ll be able to produce outstanding, topical, shareable content and incentivize influencers to distribute it.

3. Making It Rain… for GOOD

Paid links, in the traditional sense of submitting to paid directories or throwing a webmaster a few bucks for an anchor text link, are not only increasingly useless, but also increasingly hazardous, as Google and the other search engines are constantly seeking to discover and penalize these kinds of activities. However, there are still plenty of ways in which a corporate link builder can utilize the well-lined pockets of his employer in a white-hat way. One example would be that anytime your client sponsors a community event, gives a scholarship, donates to a charity, etc., why not request a link on the recipient organization’s page as evidence of that generosity? It’s good PR, you’re supporting a good cause, AND you get a quality link out of it! Word of warning: I wouldn’t get too pushy when asking for a link in return though, since you don’t want it to seem like you’re contributing solely for the link.

4. Throw your weight around

Corporations occasionally get a bad rap for pushing around the little guy—for taking advantage of their heft. While living up to this stereotype might not be such a good PR move, it can be beneficial to your link building efforts. The most extreme example of this tactic I’ve ever heard was including a clause requiring an anchor text link as part of a business contract. That might be taking it too far, but gently prodding smaller vendors and other dependents to link is definitely fair game.

5. Utilize Your Employees

This is one of those painfully obvious tactics that should probably be the first step in any corporate link building program. Odds are that some of the company’s employees have blogs or websites of their own and the odds are even better that they have social media accounts. As part of your initial communication phase (remember step 1?), the client should encourage employees to link to the company site from their own personal sites, as hopefully they enjoy working there and thus don’t mind providing some easy, free publicity for the company. Encouraging employees (maybe providing some sort of incentive?) to share company news on their own social media accounts is even easier and might even be more important as social signals become an increasingly important factor in the SERP’s. Even a medium sized company will have hundreds of employees, so this tactic can have a big impact!

These ideas are only a few examples of how to leverage the size and scope of a large client. I’d love to hear any other suggestions or feedback in the comments section.

So, you might be wondering… how do I motivate employees to write blogs?

Honestly, our blog started as a simple competition…yes, we started with a trip to Vegas on the line! We quickly discovered that this was a good motivator, but there was an even better finding from this competition:

Thought leadership and personal growth is the ultimate motivation.

I recently had the opportunity to see Kevin Ryan, former CEO of DoubleClick and current founder and CEO of Gilt Group. The topic that Ryan spoke about was, “Hirer’s Remorse? Why 80 Percent of Business is Choosing the Right People.”  At this conference, Ryan said,

“A people want to work for A people.”

This means a couple things to me:

1.  ‘A’ people seek out other ‘A’ people to surround themselves with. ‘A’ people want to learn and grow from other ‘A’ people.

2.  You’d better hire an ’A’ person for HR since they will be doing the hiring!

Rise Interactive is a group of ‘A’ people; we are thought leaders who seek to surround ourselves with ‘A’ people . Everyone at Rise quickly discovered there was a new excitement that went along with doing research and digging into a topic that may be outside of a person’s expertise. When you really took the time to pull your nose out of your expertise, listen and reflect on what is going on today—right this minute—you can come away with some incredible findings which can be applied to your clients.

The best advice: encourage thought leadership.

We have always taken tremendous pride at Rise that we go above and beyond for our clients so that we ultimately make their lives better.  This has been core to Rise’s culture from day 1.  In fact, on the first day of work, everyone is taught that our #1 sales goal is to never lose a client.  My feeling is that if you asked any employee they would all agree that this is core to who we are and something that will never go away.

Although we are probably one of the most client-centric organizations you will ever meet, I believe we have to be more than client-centric.  We need to become employee-centric, vendor-centric, etc.  That does not mean that we do not treat our employees, resellers, vendors, and other parties well.  I believe we treat everyone well and that we strive to be a good partner.  The difference though is that we always made our clients the primary focus.  Everyone else was always secondary.  After all, our clients are our boss.

I believe that this customer-centric philosophy is excellent, but falls short of building truly passionate advocates.  I think that every group is integral to the success of our clients and we should make it our mission to improve the lives of all parties we touch.

In order to make this happen, I am asking for your help.  Please share ideas with me on how Rise can improve and evolve our culture.  Ideas can range from helping me craft our core values to something that makes life more fun.

While this concern has been broached at the national level, many states (including Illinois, New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island) are looking at changing state tax codes quicker than the United States Congress is willing to change them.  In order to do this (and remain legal), the states involved claim that having an affiliate marketing presence is equivalent to having a brick and mortar store in the state and are adjusting tax laws for online retailers as a result, requiring them to collect sales tax from individuals purchasing from any state via affiliates.

Amazon was the first retailer to respond to these changes, announcing they would discontinue affiliate programs in states making these tax changes, calling the law “unconstitutional and offensive.”  Overstock recently followed suit, announcing they would also discontinue relationships with affiliates and partners in these states.  This move has many affiliates in the affected states considering moving to states that do not have the tax restriction in order to maintain the viability of their businesses.

Despite the fact that this change isn’t good for customers, my company or my clients, I support this change as an effort to level the playing field between online brick-and-mortar retailers.  Considering the current system provides an unfair advantage to Internet retailers versus their brick and mortar counterparts, I support this change and expect national laws follow suit in time.

How have these changes affected your business and/or clients?  What strategies do you have in place to minimize the fallout (or take advantage of it)?

This technology, currently being licensed out by the agency, allows advertisers to manage multiple Facebook advertising campaigns from one platform, thereby reducing the management time and simplifying the management process of monitoring complex campaigns.  Advertisers can now add, delete and modify many campaigns in Facebook from a simple spreadsheet.

The technology also:

- Allows advertisers to track conversion numbers on Facebook, enabling them to more accurately measure ROI and make informed optimization decisions for each campaign.

- Enables the adjustment of bids and budget management for multiple campaigns in real-time

- Provides a larger range of reporting data and reporting tools available for the advertiser’s use.

This technology advancement enables you to measure a channel that you previously could not, allowing marketers to utilize social media to its fullest potential. Having conversion data, real-time bid and budget management and access to robust data give you the tools and the insights needed to maximize your ROI.

Hopefully this is the advent of many more resources to come in terms of being able to track, optimize, and monetize Web 2.0.

I thought through the various components of revenue and developed the following formula:

Expected Revenue = Existing Revenue + Up-selling Opportunities + New Revenue

Each one of the components that make up revenue is derived from a few attributes:

Existing Revenue=Number of Existing Customers X Price per Customer X Retention rate

New Revenue=Number of Leads X Price per Customer X Conversation Rate

Up-selling Opportunities=Number of Opportunities X Conversation Rate X Price

The five components of these formulas are conversion rate, retention rate, price per customer, up-selling opportunities and the number of new leads.  In a down economy, each of these variables decreases due to macroeconomic factors.  Given this information, where should you focus your time to grow your revenue?  In my opinion, the only thing you can substantially improve during a down economy is the number of leads.  If you increase the number of new leads, you can reach your revenue goals provided that the leads grow enough to off-set the other declines.

To increase our leads, Rise developed and implemented a marketing plan in January of 2009.  Although each company will differ, it took Rise only six weeks to generate enough leads per month to put us on track for our annual revenue goal.

What the Deal Entails
The 10-year agreement gives Microsoft control over Yahoo! Search while Yahoo will now focus on promoting the other aspects of its properties (e-mail, messenger, games and puzzles, news, etc).  Yahoo’s site will continue functioning as it currently does, but once the deal is finalized, Bing will power the search on Yahoo.com. The agreement gives Microsoft exclusive rights to Yahoo!’s search technologies and the rights to integrate those technologies into their existing platform. Additionally, Microsoft’s Bing will exclusively provide paid and organic search on Yahoo! Web sites.

Implications
Right now based on data from Comscore’s June 2009 release, MSN holds about 8% of the search market while Yahoo holds 20% and Google 65%. Once the deal takes effect, MSN will hold approximately 30% of the search market, becoming a larger threat to Google. Now that there are only two contenders, it gives advertisers more opportunities to be recognized.

*Figure 1 per Comscore

From a paid search perspective, it has positive and negative implications. On the positive side, the deal will result in time-savings for PPC managers and developers. From a developer standpoint, there will be one less API to deal with. From a campaign manager’s standpoint, there will be one less keyword list and interface to deal with. A downside is costs-per-clicks will inevitably increase as more advertisers compete on both spaces and bids increase.

Additionally, the deal is encouraging to paid search managers as Microsoft will continue to use their already-existing PPC tool, adCenter, instead of Yahoo!’s tools, which are notorious for being difficult to use. Though Google’s Adwords interface still outshines adCenter, as does Google’s customer service, Microsoft’s adCenter is a definite step-up from Yahoo!’s PPC interface, making the deal that much more encouraging to PPC advertisers.

What does this mean for you?
In the near future, nothing. Because the agreement has to pass the proper regulatory bodies before even beginning implementation, the search market won’t start seeing the effects of this for some time.  The official press release states that full implementation will not be reached until two years after the deal receives regulatory approval.  Exactly how long will this process take? We’re not sure yet.  For now, just be aware the change is coming down the road and start thinking of steps that you may take to be sure you’re ready to take action when the time comes.

What does Rise Think?
While it’s bittersweet to see the pioneer of the search engines take a back seat, we’re excited to see how the Yahoo – Bing partnership will reflect on the robustness of the combined platform.  In our opinion, Google Adwords has been leaps and bounds ahead of MSN/Live/Bing and Yahoo in terms of the online interface, tools offered, and customer service.

As all paid search marketers know, it is very rare that everything goes perfect (especially during a setup) in any of three major engines.  When complications arise and you call customer service, isn’t it a beautiful thing when they resolve the issue immediately and you can quickly move on?  That scenario plays out much more often through Adwords customer service than it does with Yahoo and Bing.  So now let’s say you make the customer service call to any of the three major engines and the person does not immediately know the answer.  I’m going to have to research this and get back to you… ok, fair enough. Now, the waiting game ensues.  I’ll bet you money you’re going to wait a lot longer (often days) to get that ever so vital answer out of Yahoo and Bing than Adwords.

Here at Rise, we hope that the Yahoo/Bing partnership will lead to a search engine that is easier to use for all involved.  We would like to see customers, advertisers and campaign managers who are happy to interact with YaBing or MicroHoo.  How do you keep all stakeholders happy? You help them achieve the results they desire in an easy and efficient manner on all fronts.  Although our attitude towards Yahoo and Bing seems somewhat negative, there are positive attributes to each company that will hopefully contribute to a greater whole.  We would like to see this merger succeed and make search less of a pseudo-monopoly.

If you think about it, every aspect of business revolves around trust. I have highlighted one example of a situation that I encountered over the years that reinforces my belief that trust truly is the most crucial factor in running a successful company.

Trust in Employer
Like many other companies, Rise saw a decrease in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2008 and I had to take immediate action to ensure that Rise was able to continue operating profitably. I developed a strategy to pull the company out of the situation which unfortunately included a mandatory decrease in employee pay. In order for this to be successful, it was crucial that I build the staff’s trust that this strategy would work and was worth sticking with Rise in the long run, even though there would be short-term pain. To do this, I met with every employee individually to explain our situation, my strategy and where we needed to be to return to profitable ground. As it turned out, my employees kicked butt in helping the agency recover and I was able to repay every employee for the money that was initially cut. I received nothing but positive feedback from my employees regarding how I managed the situation and was able to build their trust during a volatile time.

HOW TO BUILD TRUST?
1.) Caring
Prove your commitment to employees, clients and vendors. If they know you have their best interest at heart and value the relationship, they are more apt to return the loyalty to the company.

2.) Actions
As you’re probably thinking, caring alone is not enough to build trust. The agency needs to take actionable measures to ensure it is living up to its promises and goals. Develop goals and standards for your organization and constantly keep those in check to ensure you’re reinforcing trust throughout the company.

To build trust within your agency, you need to fully believe and be invested in the goals and interests of all parties involved—be it employees, clients or vendors. I find that once trust is in place, employees will work harder to please clients, clients will in turn be thrilled with the quality of service, and therefore, the business continues to grow and thrive.