Weekly Marketing Update: The Best of Share 14

BrightEdge’s Share 14 event brought together leading brands offering cutting-edge information around advancements in global search, mining data for SEO and content at scale, navigating secure search, and scaling in-house to build a successful enterprise SEO operation.

Featuring more than 60 global brands and industry luminaries, it was attended by over 1,000 people from around over the world. In this post, we’ve assembled a roundup of the coverage from Share 14, highlighting sessions and top takeaways.

And in other news, we’ll talk about new research we published this week on Google’s “Pigeon” update and its impact on local search results. Enjoy!

Secure Search: Moving from Keywords to Content Performance

So how did the world’s top brands adapt to Google’s global encryption of all search query data last fall (September 2013)?

At the Share 14 Secure Search session, Jordan Kastele, senior SEO manager at Red Door Interactive, Ken Shults, senior strategist and managing director of global consulting at Global Strategies, and Gene McKenna, director of search marketing at Groupon, each shared their experience of how they successfully shifted their SEO strategy from keywords to content performance at the site and page level.

Some of the strategies shared include researching site- and page-level search data, as well as tracking trending page views and ranking data. Both Red Door Interactive’s Jordan Kasteler and Global Strategies’ Ken Shults related that they bucket keywords, with Jordan saying that keyword-based optimization is now intent-based optimization.

Among the tools for keyword research shared by the secure search session speakers were:

• The BrightEdge Data Cube  (Jordan notes your SEO team can easily see what keywords competitors are ranking for by plugging in any URL).
• Google Site Search (a good resource for insights into what users are searching for on your site).
• AdWords for both paid and organic search reports.
• Google AdWords Keyword Planner
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Bing Webmaster Tools

For complete coverage of the Share 14 Secure Search session, refer to this article at Search Engine Watch.

Global Search: Creating a Winning Global SEO Program

How do you handle the SEO challenges of a multinational Web presence?

The Share 14 Global Search session featured Dave Lloyd, senior manager of global search marketing at Adobe Systems, Laura-Ann Mitchell, digital marketing manager at Intel, Mellissa Jensen of Global Strategies, Mattia Santin, global SEO and social marketing manager at adidas Group, and Craig Berdie, search marketing manager at 3M.

From techniques, tactics and logistics management to getting executive buy-in for global SEO, these experts shared their challenges and the strategies they employed to meet them. Here’s the recap:

• In his sweeping presentation, Adobe’s Dave Lloyd addressed search, content and localization on a global scale. He covered Adobe’s approach to global SEO with specifics on creating a general content optimization plan aligned to the customer journey, regional SEO coverage, and SEO localization flow.
• Intel’s Laura-Ann Mitchell and agency partner Global Strategies’ Mellissa Jensen discussed how to make the content creation process work on a global scale, by streamlining the content workflow and optimizing the organization’s infrastructure.
• adidas Group’s Mattia Santin emphasized the importance of benchmarking at the beginning, and shared how it envisions SEO, as well as how they made it work – with huge success — on a global scale.
• 3M’s Craig Berdie discussed the challenges of persuading the C-Suite to buy into global SEO, sharing how his team demonstrated the economic value of each click in organic search.

The full report of the Share 14 Global Search session is at the BrightEdge blog.

Enterprise SEO: Scaling In-House to Build a Successful Operation

Enterprise SEO is rife with complex challenges. How do the world’s top brands tackle them?

Global brand leaders Dave Lloyd, senior manager of global Ssearch marketing at Adobe Systems, Ngia Vang, digital marketing specialist at Experian Consumer Direct, Michael Jozaitis, manager of SEO strategy at Marriott Digital Services, and Alex Volk , search marketing director at Microsoft all faced the multi-faceted task of building and scaling their in-house SEO, and shared how they dealt with it at Share 14.

The in-house SEO challenges discussed by each brand spanned diverse projects: for Adobe, it was the underperformance of Adobe TV; for Experian, it was the content team working in silos; for Marriott, it was scattered online experiences due to its hotels employing different SEO agencies; for Microsoft, it was a lack of SEO altogether, resulting in issues ranging from redundant content and multiple product descriptions to inconsistent UX and internal keyword competition.

Each of the challenges was met with resounding success. Adobe focused on basic, tactical SEO, integrating search best practices with their primary content marketing goals, as well as business KPIs (key performance indicators) and content linking opportunities to turn Adobe TV around. Similarly, Experian, Marriott and Microsoft developed strategies to rein in and integrate their SEO in-house, and build it to scale.

Find out the details of the Share 14 Enterprise SEO session from this BrightEdge  post.

Of Brands & Agencies: Making the Relationship Work

Brands and agencies: can’t we all just get along?

Adam Audette, chief knowledge officer of Rimm-Kaufman Group (RKG) Agency, Doug Peeples of General Motors (GM) Marketing and Advertising, and GM’s agency partner, Antonio Esposito, Detroit regional SEO lead and GM global SEO lead at iProspect, each offered their take on the state of the brand-agency relationship, and how to get it right.

RKG’s Adam Audette described the inherent conflict plaguing today’s brand-agency relationship: divergent goals and internal “cruxes.” Regarding divergent goals, Adam pointed out that the brand wants expertise and partnership, while the SEO agency wants to scale, hiring inexpensive resources to meet their goal.

The conundrum is compounded by the internal crux faced by the agency: as it grows, the very expertise that their brand clientele wants gets stripped away, while the brand crux is resource constraints.  Clear communication on strategy and priorities, flexibility on the part of both agencies and brands, and a time frame of two to three years to solidify the brand-agency partnership are key, Adam said.

An example of a successful brand-agency partnership, GM’s Doug Peeples and agency partner, iProspect’s Antonio Esposito, took the stage to discuss the dynamics of a productive brand-agency relationship. Antonio emphasized the need for agencies to establish whom they need to work with to implement strategies, and to meet with all the people who hold a stake in the brand’s success from the outset to set expectations.

He outlined three phases to integrating the brand-agency relationship: education, auditing,and implementation, noting that with GM, the education phase alone took several months. Read up on Share 14’s Brand and Agency Success session with this article at ClickZ .

SEO & Content at Scale: Mining Data

How do you go about mining data for insights into content and SEO performance at scale?

Denis Scott, senior director of acquisition marketing at OpenTable, Chris Attewell, senior vice president, Americas, at Search Laboratory, Kirill Kronrod, senior global SEO manager at Adobe Systems, and Matt Saunders, director and SEO strategist at Rosetta, offered their own case studies in mining data for content and SEO at scale at Share 14.

The case studies presented by the speakers ranged from a large, complex brand/site migration to mining big data quickly, but the common theme throughout was their reliance on BrightEdge’s suite of tools to accomplish their tasks efficiently, at scale.

OpenTable’s Denis Scott found that the key data questions his team needed to answer when OpenTable needed to migrate an acquired brand to its site were readily organized visually using weekly dashboards in the BrightEdge platform.

Search Laboratory’s Chris Attewell presented the case study of the huge retail site, Wal-Mart, in which his team was able to visualize keyword strategy for maximum ROI by using Bright Edge’s “opportunity forecasting” tool, as well as measure the effectiveness of keyword groups within the BrightEdge platform.Using the BrightEdge tools, Chris said they were able to mine long-tail terms to uncover some great trends that they hadn’t been tracking.

Adobe’s Kirill Kronrod discussed several case studies, as well as the search impact lifecycle  and how SEO data fits into it. In a case study involving data mining, Kirill said that his team used the BrightEdge Data Cube to determine that migrating to a CMS was a cost-effective decision.

Rosetta’s Matthew Saunders also discussed use cases using the BrightEdge Data Cube to mine big data quickly to gain insights to scale SEO and content.

The full report of the Data Mining for SEO and Content at Scale session can be found here .

Content from the Bright Ideas Blog

Google Unleashes the Pigeon on Local Search Results

If your Google Places results went haywire lately, chances are your industry’s “local pack” results were affected by Google’s update to its local search algorithm.

As reported by Seth Restaino and Sudhir Sharma at the BrightEdge blog , Google’s local search update – named “Pigeon” by Search Engine Land analysts in lieu of an official name by Google – was released on or about July 24 on U.S. English sites, wreaking havoc on some industry verticals while providing a boon to others.

The analysis of data from the BrightEdge Data Cube found that overall, Google is displaying Google Places (“local pack”) results for 11.26 percent fewer queries.

Among the industry verticals hardest hit by the update are jobs and career-related queries, with a steep drop of 67.68 percent in their appearance rate in the local pack results, followed by real estate, with a 63.45 percent decrease.

Clearly, there were winners with this latest search update, including the hospitality, food and education industry sectors, as well as local directory sites such as Yelp . The complete findings from the BrightEdge Data Cube “Pigeon” analysis are shown below*:

* Note: Queries that were difficult to classify are included in the final “All” row, but weren’t mapped to a specific industry, so industry rows do not sum up to the “All” row.

The BrightEdge professional services analysts will continue to track this issue closely.

Have a fantastic weekend!