Investing in advertising might feel like we're simply buying people's time and attention, but there's far more to it than that. Done right, advertising can show returns in many organic channels, including SEO. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand shows us how.
For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!
Video transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about advertising investments and how paying for advertising can actually yield positive results for SEO, for links, for social shares, for content investments, for email marketing, for all of these organic channels.
I know this seems weird, but it actually can work. Google has some guidelines around this. They say, "Look, if you're over here and you're saying like, "Hey, man, I'll give you 500 bucks for a link on your site, a live, followed back link directly,' that is not okay." Even if the person on the other side says, "Sure, I'll take your 500 bucks and add that link."
Google doesn't want to count those links. They treat those as web spam. They're going to find ways to avoid that type of manipulation. They can, in fact, penalize you for it, and lots of times they do.
However, Google is totally fine with and they even support, endorse, and run systems, a whole advertising network around this to say, "Hey, I'd love to buy some ad spots from this website." Sure. My sidebar ads are no followed, and they cost $150 a month. This is totally 100% okay by Google.
In fact, this is okay by any form of things. So social networks are fine with this. Email things are fine with this. The FCC, the Federal Communications folks here in the U.S. are totally fine with this. The EU is fine with this. It's totally okay. As long as it's disclosed that this is an advertising relationship on the website, you're in the clear. In fact, very often it's the case that there's a correlation, a strong correlation between advertising and organic types of relationships and returns.
Tactics that are worth trying (depending on your business goals)
Blogs, forums, niche websites, or news/media sites
So a lot of times you'll see an ad buy is the first step to a deeper relationship between a website or a blogger or a media source and an advertiser, and that will lead to some forms of content sharing. Maybe some of the content will be promoted on the advertiser's site or the other way around. That might lead to some business development of some kind. That could lead to guest contributions of content or guest posting of some kind. It can lead to social sharing where the advertiser shares something that they've sponsored on the media sites or the other way around. It can lead to email inclusions and email sponsorships.
It can even lead directly to links and brand mentions. People will say, "Hey, I want to thank my advertiser," or "Hey, one of my advertisers came out with this cool product that, in fact, they didn't pay me to endorse, but I am organically endorsing it because I really like it. By the way, they happen to be top of mind for me because they're an advertiser." Sometimes you don't even realize those relationships are happening, but they do.
This is why often there is a very strong connection between advertising dollars and those kinds of more organic forms of relationships. While Google certainly is smart enough to realize that those relationships exist, they don't say, "No, it's not okay that you bought an advertising format from this person, and that eventually led to a more organic kind of relationship and now they're endorsing you without a followed link, without payment in an editorial kind of way." That's actually totally fine.
This is why advertising can be so powerful, not just for search and for links, although that's certainly a big one. So I've actually got a few suggestions, some places where we've seen over the course of time, and I've seen certainly in some of the companies that I occasionally help out informally, where they've benefited from these types of things. On the other side, I've seen from bloggers, journalists, and media sites and niche websites and forums, how they have also benefited from these forms of advertising.
Some of these tactics may be worth trying. It's really going to depend on your business goals and who your audience is. But the first and most obvious one is really what's reflected over here, and that is reaching out to these bloggers, forums, niche websites, news and media sites. They often offer direct forms of sponsorship or display or text ads on their site. They are going to be no followed, or they're going to use some sort of JavaScript redirect.
What you want to do, though, is you want to go direct. So I want to buy from NicheBloggerABC.com, not from Google Ads or Federated Media, which happens to power advertising on their site. So you want those direct advertising inquiries, where you have the relationship personally, and that's what you're building. Don't use that generic ad provider.
By the way, if you're going direct, make sure those links are no followed. You don't want to buy followed links, or you'll get into the problem that we had over here. You're trying to build a relationship, not a followed link. Hopefully, all those other positive organic things, those will come later if you buy these no followed links, if you start that relationship with advertising.
Conference and event sponsorships
Especially, in particular, more creative and more audience relevant forms of advertising can create much greater engagement. So if you buy a booth at a conference, well that can help. Maybe you've got a trade show booth and people come by and that kind of thing, and that does work for some folks, especially if they're looking for leads.
We've done a few things with conference and events, even here at Moz, where we've done forms of sponsorship that are more creative. We give out swag. We share some content. We do something that's very special for the audience, that happens to be relevant to their interests, usually along the lines of SEO stuff. That works much better. That often will get pickup and coverage by press and media, by bloggers who attend events, by people on social media who go to these events.
Weirdly, almost ironically, the less promotional you are in your advertising, which seems counterintuitive, the better this works for all of the organic kinds of things you're seeking. It might not work quite as well for that direct lead capture or sales capture. But by saying, "Hey, we're going to provide free Wi-Fi to the entire conference, and all you have to do is enter a repetition of our brand name three times as the password." Well, guess what? That builds a lot of brand equity, and it is much more appreciated than, "Hey, we're going to need you to take this free demo" or "You need to give us your email address and be promoted to," and these kinds of things. That less promotional can often have greater returns.
Outdoor/TV/radio/print advertising
Then the last one I'll mention here, even though this list could go on and on and you can use your imagination, is outdoor TV, radio, print, those old school forms of advertising. I think one of the most interesting studies I saw was a couple of years ago showing the correlation between these forms of advertising and search volume. The team from SEER Interactive put up a case study about some outdoor advertising.
Now, it could have been SEER. It might have been Distilled. I'm going to make sure, and I'm going to put it in the blog post itself. I'll link over to that study for you guys, showing that when one of their clients had invested in these forms of advertising, they saw a direct bump in search traffic.
Editor's note: Rand offered up a couple of other relevant links for more information about the relationship between offline ads and search traffic:
Mercedes-Benz: Quantifying how online and offline marketing work together to drive sales volume
Can TV Advertising Really Impact Search Performance?
Essentially more people were searching for their brand name, for their products, and those people went to their website. Now that's a beautiful thing, especially if you are trying to increase search demand and search click-through rate.
So if you perceive that you have a weakness in terms of, "Hey, we're just not getting as much branded search. We're not getting as high a click-through rate. Our brand recognition is low. That's hurting us in search results. People are getting better engagement than us, and as a result they are getting higher rankings and better links and all this other kind of stuff." This is a great way to potentially combat this.
With any form of tactic that you're trying like this, you're going to want to think really carefully about audience makeup. So many of the times when you're doing more traditional kinds of advertising, what you're seeking is an audience that's made up of people who are going to buy your product, people who have a high potential to be a customer.
That's actually not necessarily what you're seeking when you do these forms of advertising. You are really seeking, yes, people who might become customers, but also people who might influence customers. Customer influencers is often a very different group than direct customers themselves. It might be that you're reaching a much smaller audience, but it is more targeted to that flow.
For conferences and events, you really want those press and media types of people. For these blog, forums, and niche websites, you might be targeting influencers and journalists and other bloggers and social media mavens and that kind of stuff, who consume this type of content online far more than your regular customers do.
So you want to be careful about that when you're choosing advertising that is supposed to be helping you with organic channels. This is a really interesting topic. It's one of the newer kinds of forms and ways that people are leveraging paid advertising. It can run the risk, if you get too aggressive with it, that you actually step on some of these FCC guidelines or Google's guidelines. So you've got to be very careful. But if you walk this line well, you can experience great benefit to your SEO, your social, your content, your email, your brand by paying for it and getting those indirect benefits as a second order effect.
All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I look forward to some great comments. Hopefully, you all have some stories to share about this, and we'll see you again next week. Take care.
I think Google + Sharing very important for SEO, you need try share link with Google Plus.
When we run our conferences we always have traditional print materials (flyers/brochures/pop-up stands etc.) on hand, that include QR coded URLs (with Google URL parameters) linking to landing pages. I do believe that people still love to fumble through a nicely presented piece of traditional print. So we've been doing this for what 5+ years and it works, we know the delegates are using their smart phones to either get more information on our products, our solution offerings or client case studies.
Key really is to create strong links, and strong motivations for customers to make those connections between your offline and online content.
I'm just curious, how well do QR codes work? I've seen them, but have always wondered what kind of response you could get from them.
Pretty well Mark yes, I would say don't expect big traffic numbers from them but where you can try use them as little carrots to access additional content online or offers. Make them time sensitive as well i.e. Only applicable during a conference or workshop session. And if you can get them to jump to the online content add further encouragement to share the page/content whilst at the event.
We are big users of Woopra for example and we notify our events people in real-time at the event if someone has elected to scan a specific pop-up banner stand offer or maybe what is a popular online report. We create interactive reports and we have altered what we present and display at events based on what we see is popular to the delegates. We have also done this with ad-hoc promotional business cards at an event, where the person can pick one up at the stand and be taken to one of our contacts online LinkedIn profile, so that they can contact and connect up. We find as well that it can be different approaches for different countries, yes the US and UK are super active users of social media at events but we did one in Ethiopia 2 years ago for instance where the uptake was less so. Therefore traditional printing techniques were more acceptable and people were more reserved in how they would interact with us.
So yes I guess it is just a case of thinking how creative you can be in employing offline methods like this.
In a soccer game not every player scores but there are 11 players. Same thing with advertising. Businesses need to run ads on multiple channels to support the converting one.
Sefaticonsulting, that is an excellent piece of insight into advertising. I'd like to use that in my next Senior management presentation - who do I credit please?
Great post. Just a question on the links that organically develop from the websites/blogs where the paid ads are placed. Will Google punish your website if you eventually receive followed links from them? In a lot of cases the site linking back to you won't have the knowledge required to make a link nofollow so if that's the case they could be innocently wanting to promote a service or product they believe in but end up hurting them instead of helping.
In addition to this question: what about sponsored events? Is it allowed to ask for a follow link (in form of text link or image link) on the page of the event you sponsor? Just because it'd make sense to have it there?
I would really like to have answers to those questions as well. Wouldn't it be completely natural for Google to see a website receive a follow link from a legit business partner/advertiser? Thank you and nice WBF as usual!
If you're sponsoring an event, the right/best thing to do is ask for a nofollowed link. Asking for a followed link is a way to potentially get in trouble with Google and sponsoring events is a form of paid links if one is directly tied to the other.
The nice thing about sponsoring events is that lots of positive branding and organic marketing things tend to flow from them - relationships, awareness, etc - that many times lead, indirectly, to links (and other positive ranking signals like brand searches, click biasing, etc).
It's a fine line, but my understanding is that Google has no problem if a relationship that begins through advertising or sponsorship eventually leads to an organic one (and to followed links) as well. So long as the exchange isn't directly predicated on the sponsorship/advertising, you should be in the clear, e.g. You buy ads from a blogger, then continue to interact/engage, and in a post several months later, they happen to mention and link to a new product or launch or piece of content on your site.
Hi Rand,
Can we make a Rule of Thumb to get "Only no follow links" for any paid campaign to save the trust of Google?
Its better to go with Safe Mode ( Nofollow Links) to Happy Big G.
Hey Rand, I have got a question here: What if some blogger writes about your brand and gives back a do-follow link. Should we ask them to change its attribute to No-follow? or should we enjoy the free link juice?
^^ By far my favorite part of Friday. ^^
The key to effectively improving your SEO value through ads can be summed up in one word--transparency. Google has no issue seeing your site build relationships with other sites as long as you're taking the necessary steps to be honest (not deceitful or suspicious). Also really like the comment someone else mentioned about targeting ads for journalists (LinkedIn) and bloggers. Often the more targeted you can get in your outreach, the more likely you are to be effective in reaching them.
Good stuff as always, Rand. I know you have talked about this and Moz has in general been an advocate of good SEO looking more and more like the PR process as far as link acquisition goes.
I've had a lot of success with this. If you have the budget to tap a PR firm with good contacts in your niche, you can get a lot of really good backlinks depending on your content and targeting.
Specifically, I've had a lot of success running simple surveys with SurveyMonkey.com then turning the data into infographics. I then post the infographic with a long form piece of content. If you can do all of that on your own without paying the PR firm to create your content, you can save some budget and allow the PR firm to simply tap their contacts and get you links.
If you don't have any budget at all, you can always do the outreach yourself. I've had pretty good success both ways.
I would add: "unless both the blogger and the advertiser don't care about Google nor about nofollow tags". ;)
I'm that kind of blogger, but if my advertiser wants to benefit from Google traffic, I'll ask them to consider a nofollow attribute for their link.
FCC guidelines are not a given, in my case, because I'm Italian. However, if I deal internationally and my advertiser doesn't want to disclose openly but I still like their proposal, I'll write an intro for the reader to let them know the content comes from a guest but that I approve of it for this and that reason.
The compromise has worked so far. Readers can tell and they deserve respect; also, they have a right to make an informed decision, so they should at least know that some information or opinion comes with a bias.
Needless to say this is a rare case and that I want my advertisers to disclose, because the answer may be a sound 'no'.
Thanks Luana! I think you're right to be on the safe side of things, and I believe the EU and/or Italy in particular may have some rules about advertising disclosures, too. It's also great because it instills trust in your readers, which I think is essential to maintaining an audience and building a community.
Thanks, Rand. :) And blogs/websites replace your face and your mouth for readers, so it would be like lying in their face. Who could ever trust that? If I can't disclose the 'ordinary way', I'll have to at least let my readers know this is a different kind of information and why I wanted it on my website. That way, trust remains intact.
It's always great to see strategies like these being developed.
If a business/brand is willing to creatively invest in SEO - or just keep the SEO team looped in to any/all projects that could potentially affect organic search - there are plenty of ways for paid media investments to benefit SEO.
Any type of sponsorship or event placement is a great idea, of course, but also really enjoyed the traditional advertising pitch. If you can measure it properly, awesome way to meet some business owners/execs/higher-ups in the middle!
Hi Rand & WBF viewers,
I love this (one of the first steps to becoming a true brand) This marketing has worked on me.Before attending search of San Diego, I was reading the site and came across deep crawl I called them up started working with them that day. I later met the people became friends have been a customer since because they sponsored part of search love San Diego.
Aforementioned is part of building a business relationship. I have done the trade show thing in chemical engineering. Having said that we do not miss an opportunity to pay for somebody else with a bigger name to do something and put your name on it that's a win-win.
I think this is foundational sales no matter what you're dealing with rather it is politics anyone ever pay to attend a dinner?
Think of how many more connections you might be able to create from doing this.
Giving away a free putter gets your name called over 2000 people can play, and somebody wins the putter but in the end you definitely when they remember you were speaking about you.
Getting your name out there today in a positive and endorsed light is not the easiest thing I think what Rand touched on is probably the most key element in building a business and building your brand. Not just paying people but creating business relationships through offering to help the other person even if it costs you money.
I can tell you that it works I was at the Miami boat show people are lining up to get their brands associated with certain yachting companies.
When you hear $.25 beers for two hours because of Cable Marine you're going to remember it.
Case in point, Thank you to Moz, Wistia, Distilled, Deep Crawl and many more for all the beers past and future.
Now go in and see what you can offer every person you know that could use help. I'm not saying put your URL on the bottom of their website build for them. But you can give people free help that's a good start.
PS TV affects your search it's what can bring down servers along with putting catchy jingles in your head.
Happy Friday all the best,
Tom
Great WBF Rand and kudos to you for rocking that GB jersey in Seattle ;)
We have been using a similar strategy for a while now and have developed long lasting relationships with influential bloggers in our space.
Here are few tips from our experience with this strategy:
This stuff definitely works, but not all of the time. Some publishers are just selling ads and thats where the business relations ends. That's fine, don't burn bridges, just thank them for their time and move on. The key is to limit your risk by doing your homework and advertising on sites that you know will appreciate your content and share it organically.
Best of luck folks!
This made me think of Meetup.com for local businesses. It's a great way to get local signals and brand awareness. Finding a group with similar interests or that are directly related to the business. It could be a really small fee for certain groups and I believe it's a follow link.
Totally agree! And the best part about doing this for Local is that events often yield mentions/citations that can be helpful for local rankings in addition to all the positive buzz and reciprocation from the event itself.
Hmm, a Packers jersey worn by someone who works in Seattle... Did someone lose a bet? ;o)
Been a Packers fan since I was a teengaer, actually. See https://www.everywhereist.com/lambeau-field-and-the-packers-hall-of-fame-green-bay-wisconsin/
Nice! As a Browns fan, I have no further smack to talk.
And thank you to whoever downvoted this purely observational conversation.
Cheers.
Rand, I liked you before, but even better now knowing you're a Packer fan.
Fine information, many thanks sir. Getting the maximum traffic (visitors) to your website is a dream for every website owner.
True, also I had a few cases where CPC helped organic ranking of certain pages which were advertised through Google Adwords. I believe that user interaction with the page may help rankings, as we're always experiencing user behaviour to be strictly correlated with organic rankings. Thanks for sharing this great WBF!
Makes perfect sense. Anything you do, do it in a way that's creative, white hat, long term, kind a thing. Anything that works overnight, is usually not. Build relationships. Build a brand. Build a product.
Love the nice and quick "reminder" Rand :). Cheers.
Rand, this time you came with something unusual. A very big thanks for this episode. This will be useful as reference when I will participate in bebate with few of my friends of the same industry who misguide clients like "this is era of online promotion like SEO" "you have to invest in social media promotion only" "you just need to scrap all the offline campaign and invest in online world only". I read many articles promoting such things not only in blog but also in web page content too....
I strongly believe, you must apply all the tactics wheather it is offline or online if you want to grow your business( revenue & branding)
I eventually meet many people who complain like there isnt any benefit of offline ads in search traffic, we have used our website name(I mean URL) in all our print materials(business cards, brochure, catalogue etc.), outdoor hordings etc.
But when I check his business card I found they simply write website URL without any punchline who drive attention of visitors. few punchlines I love..
I can't understand why people write http prefix in business card and other printing materials..!! Its not a sign of smart brand strategist.
Definetely all above efforts(done by Rand and other commentors) work for organic channels like SEO and other....
Great topic in this week's WBF, Rand. I have a story in regards to your point you made about print advertising having SEO benefits. This story is about one of my clients early on in my career as an SEO.
They were a Photography Studio that had been in business since 1988 and they had contracts with about half of the schools in Miami. Their domain had been registered 9 years when we started our campaign. They had a very aggressive print advertising campaign and consistently sent out brochures, mailers, and advertising on the final products they sent to their customers.
When we started they were nowhere to be found in the SERP’s based on their targeted keywords. They had an incomplete WordPress website with zero onsite SEO. I downloaded the WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast, and started on their SEO.
It was pretty awesome to see what happened next.
Within only two months, their domain started appearing on the 2nd page of Google for some of their keywords – such as; photo studio Miami and Miami photography studio. It was pretty exciting for our client and for us, to see results like this so quickly for pretty competitive keywords.
Five months later they started showing up on the first page of results on Google. Two months later they appeared in the top three positions. The answer is yes, these positive results resulted in increased relevant traffic that converted.
From analyzing their Google Analytics and identifying their traffic sources. I was able to establish that their print advertising was bringing in tons of traffic which was contributing to boosting their DA and SERP’s. Check out the data from this campaign, if you’re interested.
Rand Fishkin Yesterday, I have attended the forum of Payoneer, Pakistan. I was really a nice experience as it was my first ever attendance at any seminar being professionally organized. The speakers were very professional and friendly, sharing all the insights about freelancing and related issues. But there was a guy named Ali Saif who is a marketer and shared a very interesting way of getting direct leads by using the PAID MEDIUM :) I was impressed a lot.
It was similar to you but now I can assume that very soon you and the rest of the world will see Pakistani Marketers being standing shoulder to shoulder with Marketing Super Man like you and others.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks.
Conference and local event marketing has been paying us back in dividends for us.
We've found these marketing channels can yield fantastic results for the right niches, including using earned media and sponsoring scholarships, and can pay off nicely when used correctly.
Would be interesting to see how Digital OOH would play into the list you get from standard billboards. Digital OOH screens I find in bars, washroom and airports can be larger and interesting spots that could make a good impact if you're going after a business or social audience.
Thanks again!
you simply took the blindfold from my eyes! I always focused only on internet marketing, but from now on, I will reinforce it with printed material.
Very good post!
Great post Rand.
Coming from an Advertising background (media, strategy & digital) your points resonated with all of the analytics and Cross media studies we've done for clients. Although perhaps not pinpointing down to traffic per se, the halo effect of additional touchpoints is not as simple as having a 1+1 = 2 effect. Synergies across touchpoints shows more than a simple double up effect both in terms of media metrics, but also brand metrics. The latter which, clients may find more fluffy as there's no particular conversion tracking, but just as important to the brand (and portfolio) as a whole.
Unfortunately, I can't share any research or reports from our clients but I thought you might find these interesting (and expensive - at $30K a pop for CrossMedia Research) which is on the same topic, but beyond just SEO and traffic.
https://www.printpower.eu/userfiles/files/effectsmagadv.pdf and
https://iabmexico.com/InnovationDays/MillwardBrown.pdf
Good WBF! And thank you for the study links!
Es un interesan artículo, me lo he leído todo completo, que si con algunas dificultades pero ahí voy.
thank youu perfect blog!
Great post, thank you! Different, but related: You can also run targeted ads for journalists (Linkedin) and bloggers .
Hi Rand,
To be very honest, advertisers who are always on the fast track or want to reap the fruits much easily and quickly by all fair or unfair means would mind this approach because it will take a bit to bring in their consumers or their referred people. Advertising with a no-follow banner will not help much because of a link that is not counted but we should definitely think of it like a billboard on highway that attracts its reader or even becomes a word of mouth for some one else whom they might refer to your business or service.
Being an advertiser or marketer you should have multidimensional approach and must cover all aspects that are friendly for Google and for a common user. With this advertising approach it is 100% true that your brand is being promoted and that is the best thing after all.
I must say, people should think out of the box while advertising and should cover all possible sources.
This was a perfect white board episode :)
This is awesome Rand, would love to see more on the synergy of offline and online marketing. Such as the idea of "one campaign" as well as other integrated marketing communications terms.
Hi guys
This is really interesting! As a small bussiness moz.com has been an insperation! We're just setting the marketing ball rolling here at Sussex Chef dot com. The fact that a followed link from an advertising site could be damaging is a warning I shall heed!
This seems to be a bit more focused on larger bussiness to ours, but this seam to good an opportunity to miss with all the big guns that watch and comment hear, so sorry if I'm a little off topic but....
How do I build up to this type of marketing?
I've taken the mos advice and written blog posts that could attract links or shares (only one so far but 3 in the pipe line to come out soon)
Tried AdWords but spent loads for a small bussiness, rand mentioned wordstream and we are seriously considering taking this up, as the fee is less than my mistakes cost me.
I've made landing pages for turns such as wedding catering in Brighton and tracked them in moz, they're on their way up the rankings but still a way to go.
Can anyone offer any other insight on the first marketing steps for small businesses that can't afford a big campaign like sponcering a trade show?
Thanks guys moz is such an amazing resource! I find I know more than the people that cold call me offering SEO! HAHA
All the best
Ben
In fact, very often it's the case that there's a correlation, a strong correlation between advertising and organic types of relationships and returns.
Rand, you're exactly correct -- I just always phrase it a bit differently. Links -- and the value that they bring -- are by-products of doing advertising and publicity. Here's a generic example. Dollar Shave Club created a hilarious ad that a lot of Mozzers probably know. By paying to create and promote that advertisement, they got tens or hundreds of thousands of links from people who then discuss the ad in blogs, publications, news outlets, and elsewhere.
My general recommendation to people nowadays is to stop thinking directly about links and to start thinking more about doing what brings links naturally.
It also answers the question of why Google seems to prefer big brands. Well, those big brands have marketing and advertising departments that do what Dollar Shave Club did -- and they do it every single day.
Go Pack Go! Nice work Rand...and very brave of you wearing a Packers jersey in Seattle. Love it!!
We may or may not have withheld this particular post until after the Super Bowl. Which we shall not talk about. ;)
I love the fact that Rand is wearing a Donald Driver Green Bay jersey over any Seattle Seahawk jerseys especially with them being based in Seattle. :)
Agreed. Very cool. As a person in living in Vancouver (2.5 hr north) I can tell you the bandwagoning had reached all time highs. Rand wearing a Packers jersey means he's not a follower. Although I feel there was a lost opportunity to use the word "Driver" in the title of this article.
Being on the Packers bandwagon since Donald Driver isn't better. Especially when you live in Seattle.
Hey Rand - really interesting point about getting in front of influencers instead of end consumers, if done properly those influencers may well create more exposure than if you just targeted end consumers. Also, I think it just highlights the point that marketing departments or facets of marketing can and should be working together so that they all benefit from one another instead of getting too caught up in their own techniques providing results. After all, they are all working towards the same goal!
Hey Rand....with regard to the traditional media routes of newspaper, magazines, television etc our experience has actually been the reverse in that we have seen some significant Search Engine performance when budgets were moved from these areas to focus more heavily on SEO (completely in some cases). I suppose we need to caveat that by saying that they were perhaps starting from a low SEO performance point in the first place and therefore the gains were easily made. This, however, has had the affect that now our clients put less perceived value on traditional routes because of the considerable gains that SEO effort made in the past.
Essentially you have highlighted that perhaps these are worth revisiting and that past difference in performance gains were temporary while the SEO work took hold.
I suppose what we need to ensure is that we don't rule something out just because it didn't appear to be working while we were making ground in other areas.
great post and great fun
Great post, thank you! Different, but related: You can also run targeted ads for journalists (Linkedin) and bloggers (Facebook, look for "like WordPress" and "like your niche"). Sometimes this works very well.
Hi Rand,
Great post, I agree that each medium is equally important. All the channels combined can do much more than just sticking to one or two chanels.
However, in advertising some blogs have forms, we fill them and our ad is placed without actual communication. What do you suggest in this case?
Hi Shariq - in those cases, I wouldn't worry too much. Ads that are accepted in more automated fashions are almost always nofollowed and disclosed by default. If you're worried that one isn't, I'd reach out to the site owners.
Sorry Rand I couldn't make it clear. In this case how can I make rerelationship with the site owner?
Ah - gotcha. I think dropping them a line directly, e.g. "Hi - love your site, just bought some ads with you folks via XYZ network, but wanted to introduce myself and my company. If there's ever other opportunities for direct sponsorships or working together, please drop us a line. Cheers!" - that kinda thing.
Hey Rand -
Great post, really interesting point. I agree that each medium is equally important. All the channels combined can do much more than.You can also run targeted ads for bloggers.
I think the best way to build a link is to ask yourself if it benefits your client outside of just link equity. For things like sponsorships and local advertising, not only are you getting some sort of link to your website on it but you are also helping get your clients name out to other potential customers in their area. At least that is my general thoughts on link building through sponsorships.
I would even add one more specific example, Yelp ads for local businesses.
I've ran campaigns before with Yelp ads to drum up local reviews on Yelp listings, and with a florist in Los Angeles I was able to get them ~180 reviews in a few months of advertising on Yelp. After we even stopped advertising on Yelp those reviews helped drive a ton of traffic due to them out-ranking all of their competitors in the Yelp engine due to the amount of reviews and traffic they got from their ads, not to mention the Yelp ads gave them a ton of in-store walk-in purchases, as well as referral purchases online.
That's another paid attribution funnel that can return organic value long after you stop paying.
Hi Rand, this is a really interesting topic. Thanks for the excellent ideas that you shared on some of the best ways to implemented this strategy without breaking Google and FCC rules. It sound really counter intuitive but its true, paid marketing channel can provide the fastest way to expand brand awareness that can lead to a big boast in SEO traffic, leads and sales.
Thanks for sharing
Rand, first, I like your today's style, and as usual, it's an interesting WBF.
But, I can hardly imagine, how Ad buy can eventually lead to links and brand mentions. There are too many steps and assumptions in this process. It definitely looks nice and great in theory, but I would like to see how this theory works in practice. Any real life cases you could share with us?
Excellent idea! I guess paid advertising/sponsorship is the 'short-cut' to visibility and exposure in your industry. It takes a lot longer to build awareness by other means, namely engaging in comments sections or social media. Sponsorship with diligent companies will force them to take a look at your service/products and ethos and, if it aligns with their brand too, it's sounds like a great first step in a mutually beneficial relationship.
Thanks for the tip, Rand!
I found the best paid advertising for a conference... Neustar. They target based on Geo..So they can target all mobile devices that are in the actual conference room, during the conference. Then Neustar can target mobile devices that are staying at a specific hotel after the conference.
Highly targeted traffic, and fairly cheap...best of both worlds
Rand,
Could you distil the written form of your WBF's into simple bullet points - the reason being that I (and I imagine many others) can't watch and listen to videos at work and have to rely on the transcripts where the conversational language (sans video) is distracting. It would also be easier to pick out the salient points which I struggle to do at times because it's not paired with anything else in its written form.
Cheers
Great read! We've found these marketing channels can yield fantastic results for the right niches, including using earned media and sponsoring scholarships, and can pay off nicely when used correctly.
Hi Rand,
Very interesting Whiteboard Friday, as always.
It should take into account what you said to announce and win customers, without being penalized by Google.
As you have said here, the key is to ask the seller where you put the banner to put you in NoFollow, so Google did not note.
Thanks!
I have been doing a lot of thinking about SEO and I have a few Ideas I passed to Cyrus Shepard once over a year ago and haven't been able to get through since. I would very much like an email to send my ideas to as I do not have anyone to bounce ideas off of without broadcasting everything openly.
my email is [email protected], email me if it would be possible to have some discourse on random SEO topics from time to time.