10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Material and Structure -, June 21, 2010
This review is from: Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy (Hardcover)
Every once in a great while a new business book is published that just oozes with credibility and usefulness. Such is the case with Vanessa Fox's "Marketing in the Age of Google." Vanessa is a search engine optimization expert and former Google spokesperson. Her book takes off quickly, pointing out that 88% of online search dollars are spent on paid results, but 85% of searchers click on organic (non-paid) results. Slightly over half (56%) of Google searches return no paid ads. Although $9.1 billion was spent on online advertising in 2007, and it is projected to reach $20.9 billion in 2013, improving performance with organic search results is the focus of her book.
Worldwide there are 131 billion searchers/month, 23 billion by Americans. About 12% of U.S. searches are focused on retail items, and 63% of search-related purchases occur offline. Essentially all searchers look at the first organic result, while only 50% look at the first paid result. Fox points out that searchers will tell you exactly what will compel them to buy your products - if only you will look for the answers. Information within Google Insights for Search and Google Trends can reveal the relative popularity of similar search terms, trends and seasonality in their popularity, where (geographically) most inquiries are coming from. Other sources for useful sights include Google Adwords (Fox suggests trying a few ads, if only for the information retrieved), Google Analytics (reports number of visits, time on site, number of pages visited, bounce rate), Compete.com (degree of competition associated with various search terms), and [...] (what sites and search terms are driving visitors to your site). [...] and others can help alert marketers to PR disasters in the making before they get too far.
Must reading, and ownership for any marketer.
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23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good material despite some flaws, September 8, 2010
This review is from: Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy (Hardcover)
Although overall a book with a lot of tips, the author does not explain things as well as she could. For instant, she starts talking about Google Trends and doesn't tell us where to find it online (I guess there's Google for that ;). That said, there are a lot of good gems she shares. Here are some:
-Searchers click on organic results 85% of the time
-Companies connect with searches in two ways: Paid and Organic
-Longer search queries = fewer paid results appearing to the searcher
-Videos and images draw users away from the paid search column
-50% of searchers will see the 7th search result
-100% of searchers look at the first organic result; 50% look at the first paid result
-Increased organic results = increased brand awareness
-organic results last over time, whereas paid results stop the second you stop paying for them
-Searchers click on a brand 92% of the time when a brand is in both paid and organic results
-A search is on avg. three words long; nearly 25% are only one word
-Women are more deliberate in reading search results
-A #1 ranking is less important than people think. If you rank in the top 3 to 4 results and have a more compelling title and description, you may own the click
-Searchers don't even look at the entire title. They look at the left half of it
-Remember that every page of your site is a potential entry for visitors
-The days of normal search results that everyone sees the same are now over
-YouTube is the second largest search engine
-Results that contain both video and images, searches start with that first, then go above, and then below in their scan
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great snapshot of online marketing, today., May 19, 2010
This review is from: Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy (Hardcover)
A great overview of how businesses can leverage search engine optimization, pay per click and social media tactics as their business and marketing strategy. The book details not just what search engines are looking for, but how you can leverage data and analytics to better promote your business with greater opportunities to be found in search engines or online communities via online marketing tactics. I consider this book as a must have for anyone just getting into marketing or needs to familiarize themselves with SEO and/or online marketing.
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