Forrester Research reports Europe’s search engine marketing investments will exceeds €8 billion in 2012.

Search spending will soar with 80 per cent growth in the next five years as marketers use search marketing to alter their customers’ buying decisions, forecasts the independent technology and market research company.

In 2012, Forrester expects search investment in Europe to top €8.1 billion, up from today’s spend of €4.5 billion. Paid search is expected to uphold the largest share of investment.

“Marketers will continue to like performance-based media buying,” suggests the organization. “Over the next five years, as broadband and e-commerce expand, search marketing investment will double in 12 of the 17 European countries tracked.”

Forrester also reports European e-mail marketing spend will hit €2.3 billion in 2012. 

In fact, European online consumers get almost twice as many commercial messages as work-related or personal e-mails, reports Forrester’s Senior Analyst Rebecca Jennings.

She notes: “Even though many of them delete the marketing e-mails unread or have spam filters, e-mail remains a strong marketing channel.”

Over the next five years, Forrester estimates that the volume of these messages will double, with the value of the market increasing from €1.5 billion in 2007 to €2.3 billion in 2012.

Concluded Jennings: “Marketers will use more sophisticated targeting, messaging, and analytics to engage the critical consumer.”

Editor’s note: PricewaterhouseCoopers recently reported on online spending in Canada, Asia and Latin America.

Businesses need to dig deeper to connect with customers in the expanding sea of Web 2.0 user-generated content.

The rapid rise of social networking and blogging is churning out information at record rates, creating a flood of independent ideas, views and expressions.

To make a mark in the new information age, businesses need to say goodbye to empty marketing hype, and say hello to relevant, in-depth website content.

Read more…

To get the right web copy working for your online business, you need to know exactly what market you’re targeting.

For instance, I recently consulted HR firm directors who want to invest in keyword-rich web copywriting to boost their organic search engine rankings. But they’re putting the cart before the horse; they have yet to clearly define their target market.

You can’t optimize your web copywriting with the right keywords if you don’t know exactly who you’re targeting and in what market or region. It turns out they will attempt to incubate a local network, and moving forward they’ll try to make themselves known to select organizations across Canada and the U.S.

Depending on the nature of your business, your SEO copywriting might need to be ‘regionalized’ to reach your target market. For instance, a North Vancouver-based skin care clinic we recently performed work for would have little or no benefit receiving traffic from other cities as all services are performed locally.

Hence, all SEO efforts had strong regional emphasis in a bid to attract local consumers. Again, online visitors from New York would have no value to this client, so we didn’t water down our efforts by targeting global or general terms.

The strategy and effort paid off. Within five weeks, the client benefited from 58 number one positions on the top three search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. In fact, the client reported a significant number of website-generated leads — all made possible by purposefully targeting regionalized keywords and phrases.     

Businesses of all sizes get taken by a bad breed of online marketing firms that shamelessly over promise and under deliver.

These fly-by-night SEO ‘experts’ lurk in the darkest corners of the Web, many under the cloak of anonymity, preying on businesses that seek a competitive edge on the ever-expanding Internet.

Unfortunately, many fall victim because they don’t do adequate research, and buy into hyped-up sales pitches packed with unachievable promises. When all’s said and done, they are left with sub-standard services, products and results — if anything at all.

Read entire SEO article…

Google has unleashed a Local Business Referrals program to tighten its stranglehold on Internet yellow pages (IYP) companies such as YellowPages.com. 

To improve its local results, Google is paying Business Referral Representatives to canvas local businesses to collect information, such as hours of operation, and take digital photos of the establishments. The representatives get up to $10 (U.S.) for each approved and verified referral. You can sign up here. 

Google tells candidates: “…you’ll be helping the businesses you refer attract new customers while also making it easier for people in your community to find the products and services they’re searching for.” 

Long-established directories that have been struggling to stay relevant in the rapidly progressing search engine industry may see the already significant gaps widen. Late last year, comScore reported Google garnered 29.8 per cent of local searches by U.S. Internet users compared to just 3.9 per cent by YellowPages.com. 

While competitors and Internet marketers will be studying Google’s Local Business Referral Referrals program closely, one thing’s for sure: the pace of the IYP/local search race is heating up and the offerings are going to get better.

Advantage: consumers, local businesses and, of course, advertisers.

While more business owners are recognizing the benefits of hiring professionals to compose copy for websites, confusion remains on what the following three types of writers can deliver. Here’s a brief breakdown: 

Copywriters
“A copywriter is a salesperson behind a typewriter,” wrote Bob Bly, a celebrated American poet. Typically writing for ads, articles and brochures, copywriters aim to persuade an action by tapping into an individual’s greed, need or fear. While professional copywriters are able to craft compelling copy, keywords and search engine optimization (SEO) is normally not a part of the equation.

SEO copywriters
An SEO copywriter strategically weaves keywords in web content to achieve higher search engine rankings. With more than 500 million searches made daily, and search engines accounting for over 85 per cent of all new visitors to websites, SEO is a very effective marketing strategy to gain online presence. SEO copywriters often have technical SEO-related backgrounds versus writing or marketing backgrounds. 

Web copywriters
Professional web copywriters write for two audiences: humans and search engine spiders. Keywords are used to satisfy logical needs of search engine spiders in a bid to boost search engine rankings and drive traffic to websites. The web writing also caters to the emotional needs of visitors to engage them and ultimately convert sales. Top web copywriters usually have communication and marketing backgrounds with subsequent SEO training.

Quality web copywriting is key

While keyword count and placement are important to improve search engine rankings, there are several other elements required to promote online presence and readability. Regardless who writes for you, ensure your web content is:

• Concise

• Objective

• Fresh

• Informative

• Scannable

Following these basics will make our website appealing to humans and search engine spiders alike. In time, both will reward you.

Google will soon be introducing a new ‘unavailable_after’ meta tag to allow web masters to advise Google when a particular page will no longer be available for crawling. For example, if you have a promotion on your website that expires on a specific date, you could use the unavailable_after tag to tell Google when to stop indexing it. The new Google tags are designed to help maintain relevant, up-to-date listings, especially for sites like eBay, so closed auction pages are eliminated from search results.

Clever business types recognize the fact that it takes less time, effort and money to retain customers rather than finding new ones. The same goes for website traffic.

Here are two strategies to keep visitors coming back for more, which establishes relationships and builds loyalty:

1/ Offer a free tool or service on your website. This will keep visitors coming back, and when they’re ready to invest, you’ll be top of mind.

2/ Build an e-mail list. By turning your visitors into newsletter subscribers, you’ll maintain contact and be able to highlight certain aspects of your website or business with every mail-out.

While it’s important to reach new visitors, never overlook opportunities to hold on to your existing website traffic.