Okay, that headline’s a bit dramatic. eMarketer has only slightly downgraded its estimated U.S. online ad spend for 2008.

Rather than the $25.9 billion it predicted in March, it now predicts that advertisers in the U.S. will spend $24.9 billion online this year.

This lower estimate still reflects an increase of 17.4% over online ad spending in 2007. eMarketer believes the increase in Internet advertising will come out of traditional (broadcast and print) media budgets.

Perhaps. Depending on who you believe, spending on both display and search engine marketing has dipped in the past few months. Of course, that doesn’t mean overall digital ad spending won’t be up on last year… but it may not be as high as first predicted.

Source: eMarketer, “Online Ad Spending Update”, August 13, 2008

Despite rumblings over the validity of Chris Anderson’s long tail theory (Is The Long Tail Just a Bunch of B.S.?), there are those who swear that it’s live and kicking in local search engine marketing.

Brian Wool, for example, points out that data from a comScore report shows that only 36 percent of Internet users spend time on the top 20 sites, which represents a 4 percent decline in one year. Meanwhile, more people are using local directories rather than the major search engines.

According to Mr Wool, 18 months ago 90 percent of searchers used the major search engines and directories, such as Google, Yahoo, Live, Yellow Pages, etc; nowadays that percentage has declined to 82 percent.

If true, this is good news for Internet marketers focused on building local directories or portals. It also highlights the growing benefit of being listed in local directories and portals in addition to the major search engines and directories.

Source: Brian Wool, “Has the Long-Tail Theory Been Disproved?”, The ClickZ Network, Jul 17, 2008

Here’s the final insight from the research by Enquiro and MarketingSherpa that we’ve been discussing over the past few days.

Firstly, let’s recap the previously mentioned insights:

1. Search engine searchers quickly scan or skim the results page;
2. If a listing attracts their attention, they typically spend less than a second (0.7 seconds) reading it; and
3. Almost no-one looks at the right side of the page.

Because of all this, there’s every chance that searchers will miss you if you only have one listing in the results.

Therefore… you need your listing to show up in more than one place on a results page!

Plus, according to MarketingSherpa, people differ as to how they read and click on search results. There are actually five different patterns searchers tend to use depending on where they are in the sales/educational cycle:

• The Quick Click
• The Linear Scan
• The Golden Triangle Scan
• The Deliberate Scan
• The Pickup Search

It follows then, that your search engine marketing (SEM) efforts should be focused on achieving multiple listings per page! Ideally, this means having more than one listing in the natural
results. But it also means running a cost-effective pay-per-click campaign.

While it’s tempting to think that you won’t need to run a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign if you have high rankings in the organic search engine results, the aforementioned research indicates that you will LOSE potential leads if you don’t do both.

Or, looked at in reverse, by having a greater presence on any given search engine result page (SERP) you’ll have a better chance of capturing the attention of your typical 0.7 second search engine user!

Source: Anne Holland, “Search Engine Marketing: Top Five Eye-Tracking Laboratory Test Results”, MarketingSherpa, January 4, 2006

Yesterday, I hinted at some stunning results uncovered by Enquiro and MarketingSherpa about what searchers see when they use search engines.

Well, here it is…

According to the research, almost no searchers look at the right side of the page!

So… if you run pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google or Yahoo, for example, almost no-one will see your ad when they search because, except for the first three PPC ads, all the ads are displayed on the right side of the page.

Now, there is a slight difference if the searchers are specifically looking for something to buy. In this case, a few more of them will look at the top-right ads. The vast majority, however, will still focus on the listings on the left.

Does that mean you should abandon your PPC efforts? NO!

A well crafted PPC campaign is a powerful and cost-effective way to generate qualified traffic to your website.

Remember, you only pay per click. Sure, only a small minority of searchers may see your ad. But if you still generate profitable sales by getting enough of them to click through and buy from you, then there’s no question that you should continue your PPC campaign.

HOWEVER, what the research does mean is that you must invest in search engine optimization to get your listing seen by the majority of searchers.

Otherwise, you are ignoring - or should I say, being ignored by - the vast majority of searchers… and leaving money on the table.

Now, there’s one more result from the research that impacts on your SEO and PPC efforts. I’ll share it with you in Monday’s issue of Kikabink News.

Source: Anne Holland, “Search Engine Marketing: Top Five Eye-Tracking Laboratory Test Results”, MarketingSherpa, January 4, 2006

If you think the average search engine searcher types in a keyphrase then patiently and diligently reviews all the resulting listings and ads… think again!

Research by Enquiro and MarketingSherpa reveals that the typical searcher scans the results in a matter of seconds and, even when a particular listing or ad captures their attention, only devotes 0.7 seconds to reading it!

That means you’ve got LESS THAN ONE SECOND to capture someone’s interest!

The upshot is to ensure your listing or ad quickly gets people’s attention. So… here are some techniques to test in doing so:

• Use the keyphrases in your listing or ad
• Use bold (automatic if your listing or ad incorporates words in the searched on keyphrase)
• Use upper and lower capitalization
• Use keyphrases or compelling words in your link
• Display prices
• Include a phone number

If you’re surprised by the short amount of time given to listings, you’ll be STUNNED by what the research uncovered about natural / organic listings versus paid listings.

I’ll explain all next time!

Anne Holland, “Search Engine Marketing: Top Five Eye-Tracking Laboratory Test Results”, MarketingSherpa, January 4, 2006

In an interview with US Today magazine, Google’s high profile engineer and blogger Matt Cutt’s has revealed his top 5 tips for ranking higher in Google.

Useful advice but if you’re an SEO pro be prepared to be… underwhelmed. Cutts’ top 5 tips are:

1. Use search terms on your webpages. You want your webpage to rank higher for a given phrase? Make sure it’s actually on the page!
2. Fill in the Title and Description tags with your targeted terms… but give the Keywords tag a miss (Google practically ignores it).
3. Get back links from other sites – back links are given a higher weighting than any of the 100+ data pieces considered by Google’s algorithm when determining a site’s natural search results ranking. (To the search engine marketing firm that continues to mislead its clients into believing that on-page factors are still the most important of all: Google has just spoken.)
4. Launch a blog, post to it, and post often. Blogging allows you to easily create content (more search engine spider food), are more frequently visited by the search engines, and facilitate links back to your website.
5. Register for free tools, such as Google’s webmaster tools. Whether giving you information about who is linking to your site, or how often Google visits your site, such tools will help you attain greater search engine visibility for your site.

Source: Jefferson Graham, “Google’s Cutts: Good directions drive traffic to your website”, USA Today, June 22, 2008

There are more indications that spending on Internet advertising is growing… at the expense of spending on traditional media advertising.

Last year, the top 100 U.S. advertisers in the U.S. - responsible for about 41 percent of total advertising spending in that country - pulled about $1 billion from their TV and newspaper ad budgets and poured it into online advertising.

According to Ad Age, the top 100 advertisers’ 2007 expenditure on TV, print, radio and web advertising was flat, growing just 0.3 percent over the previous year to reach $61.3 billion. However, since online display ad expenditure rose 33 percent to $4.2 billion, a significant chunk of ad spending was transferred from  traditional media to online media.

Meanwhile, prominent search engine marketing firm, SearchIgnite – which has about $350 million in annual billings - says that in the second quarter of 2008 its clients increased their search marketing expenditure by around 10 percent over the previous quarter. The increase in spend was apportioned evenly across each search network - Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live.

Does anyone seriously see this trend reversing? While economic conditions may well temper advertising spending in general, I can’t see anything other than online advertising continuing to erode traditional media advertising.

Perhaps the only ones who are (and should be) doing more offline advertising (and marketing in general) are Internet marketers!

Sources: Erick Schonfeld, “Top 100 Advertisers Shifted $1 Billion To the Web Last Year At The Expense Of TV And Newspapers”, TechCrunch, June 23, 2007, Bradley Johnson, “Top 100’s Ad-Spend Growth Grinds to Halt”, Ad Age, June 23, 2008, Michael Learmonth, “Search Marketer: Search Spending Up 10% In Q2″, Silicon Alley Insider, June 25, 2008

According to JupiterResearch, online marketers will spend $2.1 billion on affiliate marketing fees in 2008… and up to $3.3 billion in 2012.

JupiterResearch’s report, “US Online Affiliate Marketing Forecast”, indicates that many merchants are attracted to affiliate marketing programs because they are performance based, present low risk, and require low initial investments.

The report does note that because affiliate marketing is reliant on the search engine marketing industry, Google is a “wild card” that may affect the overall growth of the industry. For example, the cost-effectiveness of running a pay-per-click advertising campaign on Google depends on the ability of a given affiliate to achieve high Quality Scores for its landing pages.

Barring some kind of disaster, we too can only see affiliate marketing grow into the future. We see particular potential for more large corporates – those who have already found success with search marketing - to profit from signing up potentially huge networks of complementary online businesses as affiliates.

In other words, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Source: JupiterResearch, “JupiterResearch Finds That Online Affiliate Marketing Spending Will Continue to Grow, Reaching $3.3 Billion in 2012″, JupiterResearch, June 16, 2008

No Internet marketer – well, no Internet marketer with at least a passing interest in search engine marketing – should be without:

1. The Firefox web browser - whether Firefox 2.0 or 3.0 (the latest version); or

2. The free SEO tools and software available from Aaron Wall’s Seobook.com website. These are available as plugins for Firefox.

I’ll cover some of these tools in future issues of Kikabink News. For now, though, let me explain why Aaron’s RankChecker tool is a must-have.

To put it simply, if you want to know how your website ranks for one or more keywords… RankChecker will tell you. You basically type in your domain name, type in however many keywords you wish to check, click “Start” and RankChecker will tell you where you rank (if at all) in Google (US and international), Yahoo Search, and Microsoft Live. You can also export the results in CSV format (i.e. to save in your spreadsheet program).

Click here to download or learn more about RankChecker (yes, it works with Firefox 3.0).

If you haven’t already, click here to download Firefox 3.0 (I’ve heard a couple people say it’s buggy but it seems fine to me… and it certainly leaves its main competitor in the dust).

Yahoo has finally pulled its previously freely accessible Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool from the Net.

If you visit inventory.overture.com you will now be permanently redirected to a landing page promoting Yahoo Search Marketing to small businesses. Of course, you can still access Yahoo’s keyword suggestions if you sign up as an advertiser on Yahoo’s search marketing platform.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable, “Yahoo Finally Kills Overture’s Keyword Suggestion Tool?”, June 27, 2008, Yahoo Search Engine Marketing