SnapHawk Blog

The analytic capability now possible for measuring online behavior is astounding, and it’s only going to get better.  Amazingly, we are only in the infancy period of what is actually going to be feasible with website analytics in the future.  Even now, analytics enables smart business decisions and advertising that is more relevant, targeted, and cost efficient than anything in marketing history.  With all of the powerful tools available, though, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the amount of data that’s out there. 

Mark Jeffery’s Data-Driven Marketing gives techniques to simplify this abundant data with 15 metrics.  Five of these easy-to-understand metrics are directly related to search engine marketing (SEM), and can help you determine which strategies are effective and which are allowing you to lose money.  Of course there are other metrics out there, but Jeffery’s are important to consider in the ongoing evolution of website analytics, and are relatively simple and easy to apply.   Below is a brief overview of how each metric can work for you.

In February 2010. the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission approved the partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo! announced in July 2009 to consolidate their search engines into a single powerhouse that will potentially rival Google.  According to the agreement, Microsoft’s Bing will now serve as the search engine on every Yahoo! site.  Additionally, Microsoft will take charge of all paid ads while Yahoo! will regulate sales support for high volume advertisers.  So what does this mean to those in the search engine marketing business?

Essentially, if this partnership means Microsoft and Yahoo! can better compete with Google, then it will ideally mean lower prices for online advertisers across the Web.  Considering Google currently receives 65% of search engine queries, compared to Microsoft’s 17% and Yahoo’s 11%, this new partnership could start to chip away at Google’s overwhelming dominance.  If that starts to happen, Google will inevitably have to lower their paid-ad prices, making the clients of search-engine marketing agencies around the world ecstatic.

Developing business partnerships or strategic alliances traditionally brings to mind mounds of paperwork, attorneys, and long legal documents. Also, the belief that these alliances could somehow limit flexibility can scare businesses away from developing these partnerships. However, by slamming the door on this opportunity, your firm could be missing out on a significant platform to grow your business and provide value for your clients.

Partnerships, at their most basic level, are simply a business-to-business collaboration and are only as complicated as you make them. If your business does not have a budget for intensive advertising or media campaigns, relying on free PR such as customer referrals from partnerships is a key channel for incremental business. According to the “Small Business Notes” website, companies in partnerships report that at much as 18 percent of their revenues come from their alliances...

Social Media Marketing has become one of the hottest buzzwords in the online marketing area. Though many companies have already started to provide social media services, few fully understand the complexities and impact of viral marketing or successful social media campaigns.

Marketers’ interest and involvement with Social Media Marketing are growing rapidly and offer a innovative opportunity for companies seeking to expand their online presence and brand awareness capabilities. To optimize your Search Engine Marketing strategy, you should consider Social Media Marketing a great chance to build a universal, effective, and powerful relationship with your clients using various non-text digital assets traditionally associated with current search engine marketing campaigns. In other words, use integrated marketing...

Utilizing its expertise in windows office, Microsoft‘s Advertising Intelligence is a great tool regarding keyword research and creation. The short story is, it could save you huge amount of time (compared with tools provided by Google) and still provide notable insights.

As a certified Microsoft adCenter member, SnapHawk would like to share some of the experience in using this great tool.Now, let’s play around with it using some live examples.

Popular keywords

Popular keywords allow you to rank the keywords in the selected category by impression. You will see what are among the hottest topic in a certain category. For example, if we want to generate potential keywords for an education client.Wesimply click the popular keywords -> vertical category content list and then choose the "college/university" category. Here is the screenshot of the keywords represent people's interest in college education...

By now, you must have heard the latest research against technology. The pundits are predicting that social media will degrade the value of traditional ways of socialization; the more we connect virtually, the less we connect inter personally. Educators are struggling to engage students who, more than ever before, require instant gratifications due to short attention spans. Twitter, Facebook and email remain primary ways to connect with our friends and loved ones. We can tell everyone what we are up to in 140 characters, we can tell hundreds of people where we went and share photos with a few clicks. People can know our world and track our lives without ever picking up the phone and calling us.

These sociological trends have trickled into the way we do internet business. Search Engine Marketing, one of the most effective forms of advertising, easily falls into this trap. Many agencies apply a 'one size fits all' approach to numerous clients in the hopes of expanding their business quickly. There is greater distance between clients and their Search Engine Marketing agencies. Also, the time to listen and empathize with clients, to understand their customers and growing pains has decreased...

Today we share some tips and thoughts on using Google Analytics. We hope these are useful for you!

First, lets start with search engine configuration.

By default, Google Analytics identifies the following sites as search engine referrals. (Referrals from search engines not in the list are found under the Referring Sites report.)...

Aside from the obvious differences (one is organic and one is paid), Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click have one very important and often times overlooked difference. With Pay-Per-Click, you control the landing pages visitors will see. With Search Engine Optimization, spiders control the landing pages.

As a marketer, you will want to provide the most relevant landing pages for your visitors so they don't hit the back button immediately after arriving at your website. Pay-Per-Click seems like it would work well with customer turnout for specific products or services, sales, discounts, special offers, etc. that would require strategic landing pages.Search Engine Optimization seems more effective for visitors looking for a wider range of information on a website rather than specific pages within the website...