Both Google & Microsoft reported their earnings today. Both search engine companies missed analyst’s estimates bringing up more question about how much the slowing economy is weighing on the search engine market.

Google fell $49.70 (-9.3%) to $473.74 as of 9:35PM PST. Microsoft slid $2.14 (-7.8%) to $25.37.

The missed targets brings up the concern that searchers are spending less online and the effect of the economy on the technology industry as a whole. Google reported a slowdown in the growth of consumers clicking on their online ads. Eric Schmidt said that Google faces “a more challenging economic environment” for the first time in a while. Though some technology companies, most notably Intel Corp, was able to beat estimates, the entire technology sector was brought down by the slow reported earnings.

Google also reported a higher than expected increase in research as their spend rose 65 percent which cut into their profits. Administrative expenses also rose 49 percent partly due to their fight against Viacom Inc.

LeadQual as a whole is starting feel the impact of the economy as many clients are curbing their spend or targeting higher ROI at the expense of volume. As LeadQual’s clients range across numerous industries, we see that some sectors such as real estate are hit the hardest while others like B2B continue to remain more steady. Though marketing dollars are being cut, many companies do end up allocating a larger percentage of their budget to SEM because it’s a medium that is fully trackable and easy to measure.

Paul Lee
Director of Online Marketing
LeadQual - Search Engine Marketing

Did you know the Google Mini Fridge can be plugged into your car lighter? Did you know the Google Mini Fridge can be set on Cold or Hot? Did yo know the Cold & Hot switches are switched backwards? For those who have been using Google Adwords extensively for their businesses may know about a little swag called the “Google Mini Fridge”. Most small business users are often surprised when this gift appears at their door but for those who have been advertising on Google for years know, this is the swag you wanted. Why? The fridge itself is nothing spectacular but it’s almost a trophy item. It’s a badge that says, you’ve spent a lot of money on Google. Hopefully this translate to having a lot of experience rather than having wasted tons of money. Regardless LeadQual is a proud owner of a mini-fridge. See it below!

What does that mean for LeadQual? It means we have tons of experience…In all seriousness, since several of us have done PPC and SEM for many years we’ve come across many fridges in our time.

So how does one receive such a novelty item?
You have to hit particular milestones. Whether that be a million clicks, 3 million clicks, 1 million leads, it is certainly all over the place depending on who you ask but what is certain is that you have to hit the million mark to be considered. The three figures I noted above were real click and lead milestones I’ve heard that warranted a Google Mini Fridge. It seems to be its really up to the Google reps.There are some interesting things people are doing with the fridge. Some are posting it on Ebay. Others are using it to create back links for their blogs by running contests that requires the entrants to link to their blog. Others like us are just using it as a beauty piece occasionally used to hold cold drinks for the office.

Paul Lee
Sr. Manager of Web Marketing
LeadQual - Search Engine Marketing

Integrating Google Analytics with Google Doc Spreadsheets

If you are looking for a way to integrate Google Analytics with Google Doc Spreadsheet look no further. With the help of Firefox Greasemonkey plugin and some honest hard work by Michael Freeman, you now have the ability to quickly integrate and download analytics data into a Google Spreadsheet. Instructions and Downloads are available here.

Google Keyword Trends in Google Analytics

Another great script for pulling keyword volume trends in Google Analytics. See which keywords or referral sites are causing the jumps and declines in your data.

Social Media

There has been a lot of articles being published in regards to the recent crowning of facebook as the #1 social site in terms of monthly visitor. It isn’t surprising as facebook continues to grow and become mainstream while myspace continues to become outdated in its ad plastered pages. So how do the social media sites stack up against one another in terms of value?

Webmaster & Online Marketing Training Videos

Trying to learn some SEM, SEO, Social Media, Usability, Web Design or any other internet related field? You can read books, blogs or take online classes, but another option is to watch youtube videos. Check out this list of webmaster & online marketing videos!

LeadQual News

For those who may be interested in our Lead Qualification Services, here is a forum discussion in regards to our product.

Paul Lee
Sr. Manager of Web Marketing
 LeadQual

LeadQual Expands

This early part of 2008 will go down as one of the most memorable times in the history of LeadQual. Our client list in all our products from Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well as our Lead Qualification Service has been growing rapidly and as a result both the East Coast & West Coast offices have been knocking down walls (literally) in order to make room to bring in new talent.

Our Search Engine Marketing Team is located in Emeryville right in the heart of the Eastbay coast. We’ve recently moved into a new office located in 6001 Shellmound St. #325 right next to the infamous Public Market known for their great variety of international eateries. No more Subway 5 times a week, thank goodness. Our office is newly furnished with spacious tables arranged in an open atmosphere conducive to promoting teamwork as our guys are always hard at work exchanging creative ideas to improve our client’s accounts. We’ve bought new more powerful computers to crunch those 50 megabyte excel files for analysis and new network gear for faster connectivity. The newer members are already taking it for granted while the older members continue with their “back in my day” horror stories. Good times.

Search Market Grows

Speaking of new members, the Search Engine Marketing industry is very unique in its job market situation. In this time of recession, Search Engine Marketing (at least at LeadQual) continues to grow. The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization has reported the industry has grown nearly 30% from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.1 billion in 2007. Year over Year growth has been slower but this is reflective of the maturation of the search industry. It is well recorded that SEO and SEM are rated second and third respectively as the most effective among all online and offline marketing tactics. The first being internal email marketing. For this very reason, despite the slow economy and smaller overall marketing budgets, many of the big SEM spenders who have optimized their campaigns to ROI continue to allocate more of their marketing dollars to SEM. Overall SEM budgets are expected to grow and this is consistent with what we see with our clients. In an economy where Return on Investment is so important, Search Engine Marketing when implemented well and optimized properly becomes an extremely attractive solution.

Grabbing Talent

Despite the growth in SEM, it continues to be difficult for Search Engine Marketing companies to procure good talent. There are plenty of people looking but we pride ourselves in taking whatever time and resources to find someone we know will succeed and have the experience to bring great value to both our team and to our clients. I have noticed that the awareness level of Search Engine Marketing has been growing in the last few months. Some higher institutions are starting to touch upon SEM and SEO in their e-commerce courses. Others have simply become more familiar with online marketing and want to enter into this hot field. I feel extremely blessed to have gotten into this industry early and have been urging my friends to get in while the industry is still young. LeadQual is always growing so be sure to check out open job opportunities in our career section.

Search Marketers! What is your feel for the market? How has your hiring experience been?

Paul LeeSr. Manager of Web MarketingLeadQual

This is my first post to the LeadQual SEO blog. I thought I’d start out with a top level view of how we at LeadQual approach Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services for our customers. You can find more information about our SEO services here.

First, we take a long term view. We want our customers to be successful over the long term, rather that a quick fix. This of course means we take a “white hat” approach to SEO, using what we consider to be “best practices” for SEO (which of course change over time as the SEO landscape changes). It means we really try to understand our customer’s business and objectives, so we can focus our efforts on meeting their goals. It also means we give recommendations that are focused on achieving high SEO rankings over the long term.

How we approach an SEO engagment varies significantly depending on the needs and objectives of the customer. This can range from a detailed analysis of a current website, to working in an agile and iterative fashion as a member of a team launching a new or redesigned site. We pride ourselves on being flexible in working in whatever mode is needed to make our customers successful.

Regardless of how we approach SEO for a given customer, we find it will always involve the following areas:

1) Keyword analysis
2) Website structural analysis and recommendations
3) Website content analysis and recommendations
4) Linkbuilding

It is critical that each of these areas be done well in order to achieve good SEO rankings. You need to do all of these to succeed.

First, keywords are critical for SEO. You need to target keywords that will bring the right users to the website. You also need to be sure you choose keywords and phrases where it is possible for the website to compete, based on the relative link popularity of the website and the competition. You may choose to go after very competitive terms, or you may go after less competitive terms where you can achieve high rankings.

Second, a website needs to have a structure that search engine spiders can crawl and index. The site needs good navigation and clean links, without “spider traps” such as redirects, JavaScript links, Flash navigation, excess query parameters and the many other things that can prevent spiders from finding a page. The linking hierarchy of the site also needs to be structured so that each page can be reached from the home page within a few clicks, and so that each page does not have too many links. Spiders favor “top level” pages, and will only follow so many links on a page.

Next, the site has to have good content, and that content must have keywords. “Content is King” is an old addage for SEO, and it is true. You need to make sure each page has a unique title and meta description tag that contains keywords, and that you make effective use of on-page elements such as headings, body text, and alt attributes. You also need to avoid “hiding” content via images, Flash, AJAX and other methods where search engines cannot read the text.

Finally, the site needs to have good link popularity in order to rank well. Inbound links to a site are a “vote” for the site, and the search engines, especially Google, place a lot of importance on inbound links. Link building is hard, because you need to convince other sites to place a link to your site on theirs. The search engines work hard to discount “artificial” linking strategies such as reciprocal links, paid links, directories, link farms, etc. You need good links from good sites. The best way to get links is to attract them by having great content — build a site that others want to link to. There are also many other things you can do to attract good links — we’ll get into that in later posts.

There are of courses many other things we do to help our customers succeed at SEO, but starting with keywords, structure, content and linking gives a good basis for virtually all of our SEO engagements.

Stay tuned to this blog for many more posts with information, tips and techniques about SEO. If you need help, feel free to contact us.

John Erickson
VP SEO
www.LeadQual.com