Google Oil Spill Aid: BP’s Expensive AdWords Campaign

In its effort to save itself from further trouble, BP is employing search engine marketing as a PR tool. Yes, search engine marketing can be used as a reputation management device, even if it’s not sustainable or long term solution. I posted an entry about the benefits of having multiple pages appearing on the same search query results citing that by trying to own the page for a certain keyword query, the information search engine users see is the one you want them to see. That’s probably in the mind of BP, which is now spending up to US$10,000 per day to maintain its ads at the most prominent ranking. Hopefully, to those who use the query to find more news (and probably more degrading to BP) they’ll be able to find an alternative tone, essentially a positive message in spite of the huge tragedy the spill has caused. All searches on Google for ‘BP oil spill’, ‘BP oil spill lawsuit’ and ‘BP suit’ show a sponsored listing from BP as the first result.

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195M Young Chinese Netizens Spend Time Online On Music, Games, Video

According to the annual China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) report “2009 Report on the Behavior of China’s Young Internet Users”, the number of young Chinese Internet users — those who are younger than 25 — rose almost 17 percent to 195 million from the end of 2008 to 2009. In addition, this group accounts for 51 percent of all Internet users in China. There’s also a 24 percent increase in mobile phone usage to access the Web; currently, 74 percent of these youngsters access the Web through phones.

Young Chinese Internet users spend lots of time on gaming. Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/randomwire/

More highlights from the CNNIC survey:

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• Internet penetration for China’s young population now stands at 54.5 percent.

Opinion for Sale: Trust in Social Media Eroding?

It seems that while many businesses are pinching traditional marketing budget to accommodate social media, consumers have started showing lack of trust on messages carried by the medium. In recent years, social media phenomenon exploded, riding high with the trustworthiness of friends. The holy grail of marketing appears to be found in the minds of friends rather than advertisers; with such information it’s now possible to deliver more targeted ads and less irrelevant ones. If I like somebody’s post about a Rickenbacker or Epiphone guitars on Facebook, I might see more ads about the same brands of guitar, or amplifiers, CDs or tuners later on.

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Ways to Measure Social Media Campaigns

Just like any other online marketing campaign, we all want social media to provide us with proven results more than the hype everyone seems to be touting it. It’s no surprise that social media is getting a ton of attention. Social media helps increase brand awareness, improve visitor traffic, generate leads, convert into sales and add subscribers, so the more impact our pages get received, the better results. On the other hand, social media may also help influence search results, by way of referring links and targeted content (relevant content, anchor text, etc). For the sake of illustration, we’ll use Google Analytics as our web analytics tool.

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35 Common SEO Mistakes of Webmasters, Website Owners and Even SEOs

Should SEO be done shortly after the site has been rebuilt? Should keyword ranking be a basis of success? There are so many questions fielded in by curious website owners. And there are equally so many answers and unsolicited advice scattered across the Web. While many of these SEO advices are insightful, some are outdated or simply a product of misunderstanding and should be avoided.

So what are the common SEO mistakes website owners, webmasters and even SEOs like me commit?

Planning and Implementation Stage

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1. Failure to identify the main website objectives before performing SEO tasks such as keyword research and making content recommendations.
2. Failure to incorporate user experience in web design as to complement an SEO campaign.