Web 2.0, Search engine Marketing and Your Business: What’s Next in Tech?

A message from Andy Valadez:

This week, I invite a guest writer, my friend Gene McCubbin, President of Webxites Holdings, Inc., to submit an article on Web 2.0.  I talked about web and media integration so much this week and wanted to feature the Web 2.0 side. Kevin Price recently interviewed me on one of his podcasts after our televised discussion (podcast interview) where we talk about the discussion in more detail.  The panel which aired featured three other guests on the “Innovations in Marketing” which ran as a segment on the Houston Manufacturers show “Movers and Shakers” with Kevin Price, which airs on Phonoscope (viewers can see the June 12th segment at www.HoustonManufacturers.com website).  Gene’s company is the market leader on what is happening in the Web 2.0 world and he agreed to provide this week’s article.

Gene McCubbin
President of Webxites Holdings, Inc.

Web 2.0, Search engine Marketing and Your Business: What’s Next in Tech?

By Gene McCubbin and Kelsey Ruger

Today’s Web is abuzz with a set of technologies and concepts commonly referred to as “Web 2.0” – the second generation of Web technologies. While there is a great debate whether Web 2.0 is a real evolution or just a marketing term, one thing is clear: people continue to use the Web proactively, shaping consumer and business economics through their actions, choices and persuasions.

Web 2.0 is influenced through social actions and human content that empowers business trends. As a result, you’ve probably heard of some of the technologies driving Web 2.0: blogs, podcasts, tags, RSS, social bookmarking and wikis.

It is crucial to understand that the Web is a dynamic, evolving, sometimes chaotic environment; what worked yesterday may not work today. Emerging companies like Did-It (www.did-it.com) and our company, Webxites (www.webxites.com), offer large and small-to-mid sized businesses access to a staff of highly skilled and knowledgeable people to support these technologies. However, a business owner who is not aware of the impact of these services is running a race they will have a hard time winning. Imagine racing against a Ferrari in your horse and buggy circa 1880. Technologies change … and business owners who change with the times usually win the race.

Here are the top concepts you should become familiar with as you begin to explore opportunities online:

Search Engine Pay-Per-Click Advertising and Optimization

The art and science of search engine marketing (SEM) is the combination of managing paid contextual advertising and directory ranking results. With search marketing, business owners have found a way to target qualified prospects; demographically, geographically and by specific areas of interest. Moreover, SEM provides identifiable ROI for as little as a few hundred dollars. SEM can be very lucrative for business owners and is the fastest growing advertising medium today. Sponsored links and pay-per-click advertising contribute the bulk of Google’s and Yahoo’s revenue, generating $12.5 billion in business in 2005.

Optimization is not quite as specific and targetable as SEM, but a small investment of resources can cause higher directory rankings on search engines and generate an enormous amount of business. To show the impact of first-page placement on the search engines, review the recent Kinderstart lawsuit against Google, in which Kinderstart claimed a 70 percent drop in revenues due to elimination from Google first page ranking.

Content Syndication and RSS

If you have read a blog entry or listened to a podcast, you probably were exposed to content syndication with RSS. While blogs and podcasting are getting all the press, RSS is the quiet workhorse doing all the magic. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a data format that makes it very easy to push out information to your users. With RSS, content can be distributed to multiple Web sites, summarized, viewed in compact headlines and consumed by any number of news services on the Web. RSS offers a unique, affordable communications method, and a number of uses have already become commonplace, including PR, company announcements and marketing communications (replacing e-mail and fax distribution).

Blogs and Podcasts

A blog is a Web site allowing users to enter chronological entries, such as Greg Price’s blog at PKF Texas: www.fromgregshead.com. Beside the “diary” type functions, a blog’s primary difference from a regular Web site is that its content can be syndicated through RSS. Blogs are popular today as a method of delivering information on a variety of topics. Search engines, such as Technorati, rank and disseminate blogging posts and RSS feeds.

Much like a blog, a podcast (named after Apple’s iPod) is a chronological entry that can be syndicated with RSS. The difference is that a podcast’s RSS feed contains audio attachments. These attachments, usually in MP3 format, allow on-demand listening at your computer, cell phone or other mobile device.

Social Networking: Wikis and More

With social networking sites, many people have become used to the idea of sharing their ideas and thoughts with others. Social networking via consumer verticals such as MySpace (for teens) and LinkedIn (for business people) allows users to gather based on interests, demographics, or the desire to be heard and influence culture, business and social issues. These sites are a powerful way to get a message out through the viral influence of community.

Social bookmarking is replacing desktop-based bookmark usage via the browser. It allows people to bookmark sites they like in a publicly accessible online database, thereby offering a great way to locate, classify, rank and share Internet resources. A wiki is a popular Web site that allows users to make additions to and edit any page of the Web site collaboratively. Wikis are most widely known for their use as online information compendiums, such as Wikipedia, a popular online encyclopedia.

Folksonomies and Tagging

Services such as del.icio.us and Flickr have popularized the concept of tagging. A “tag” is a keyword that acts like a category. A user may “tag” a page, image, article or multimedia content with his/her own description. These tags can then be used to search or organize the content on the Web for all to use. Tagging is a part of “Folksonomy,” a collaboratively created, open-ended labeling system that enables content to be organized by the masses rather than by a set group of professionals or machine- generated algorithms, generally reflecting the public’s opinion of how content should be organized. 

Folksonomies provide value to both the individuals who tag content and to the services that archive Web content. They are used to determine user interest and to promote an idea, concept or opportunity.

Mash-ups and Web APIs

A mash-up is a mixture of features from different applications available on the Internet. This is an evolution of open source coding. For example, do you need to build a mapping service for a cab company? Through the Google Maps Web API, Google has made access to their technology and code for this purpose.  Using APIs and businesses can grow and thrive upon the technology investment of a larger company.

Know Where You’re Going

It’s not difficult to spend the farm developing, implementing and using these technologies for your business or organization. The larger issue is to determine how much time and resources you want to put into these technologies, and how much they will benefit you in the long term.

1. Trends come and go – and what’s popular today (podcasts) may be old hat tomorrow. Spend some time working out a technology plan and decide the impact these innovations will have on your and your customers or clients. Sure, a blog is easy to create, but much easier to manage if you have a plan and know where you’re going.

Gene McCubbin is President of Webxites Holdings,  the fastest growing Search Marketing firm in the United States.  Visit:  www.webxites.com

Comments

[Bill]

Search engine marketing is the best out there, and there is not a next. Still I guess there is email marketing that has as much great potential as SEM . I have been searching through the firms that do email marketing as business and I found I must say, a few of them, but this one looked the most promising. Look what I found here:

Email marketing firm: mass mails softwares

[Search Marketing and Optimisation]

Search Engine Marketing is the way to promote your site in both paid and organic way. SEO and PPC aims to achieve the top spot and gain quality traffic and these traffic will eventually lead into sales.