 |
|
|
Gentrification: ECNext Markets Premium
Content in Search Engines to Upscale Audiences |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
17 April 2006 |
|
|
|
|
While many business publishers and aggregators still
disdain exposing their content in Web search engines this
appears to be the year in which their arguments are
beginning to crumble away. ECNext CEO Pamela Springer's new
eBook on search engine marketing points to many of the key
reasons. Amongst them are the need to recognize that for
highly focused premium content SEM techniques are very
cost-effective ways to draw audiences to content in the
venues in which they seek out first-try answers most
often. Publishers may not like the "riff-raff" still found
in many search engine results but when you're investing in
a gentrified neighborhood it pays to service the
trend-setters early on. |
|
What can be written about search engine marketing (SEM)
for content via Web search engine queries and contextual ads
that hasn't been written already? Apparently a whole book's
worth, based on what
ECNext CEO
Pam Springer has assembled in a
new free eBook download (PDF) entitled "Search Engine
Marketing for Publishers." Publishers have been aware of the
need to optimize their content for search engines for several
years, but for many magazines and news outlets used to
marketing their publications from the flagstaff on down it's
been a half-hearted effort at best. For publishers of
high-end premium content, though, search engine marketing has
been a boon. SEM allows highly focused and oftentimes esoteric
premium reports and reference books to find exactly the
audiences that they're looking for in the native search engine
results and contextual ads.
As
Shore research shows that 85 percent of business
information users in small and medium U.S. businesses see
Google as a very good or excellent source of business
information it's no surprise that premium publishers are
succeeding with Web search engines as a key marketing channel
to enterprise content buyers seeking very specific types of
premium and ad-supported content. What may be surprising to
some is just how well it works. ECNext's own
Manta
portal markets business research reports from just four sources
- Datamonitor, D&B, Icon Group International and Snapdata - yet
after just six months online
Manta visits rank in Alexa statistics atop long-established
premium business content portals such as
Factiva,
MarketResearch.com,
IDC and
Gartner.
ECNext is far from alone in effective search engine placement of
business information, of course. Online veteran
Hoover's,
a subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet, places ad-supported and
premium business
profiles very effectively in Web search engines and ranks among
the top 1,000 Alexa Web site destinations regularly. Other more
narrowly-focused business and scientific publishers have also
found great success with their own highly targeted SEM
campaigns.
Though Web site visits aren't always equivalent to revenues
there would seem to be a message that effective SEM for
high-value content and healthy revenues go hand-in-hand in many
instances. Search engine users see search results as "instant
portals," aggregations of content that are as likely to meet
very specific needs in their minds as any particular
publisher's portal. Good portal design is still a very
important factor once one arrives at destination content but
the maxim "treat every page like a home page" argues strongly
for both ad-supported and premium business publishers to invest
for effective returns by getting each page of a portal into
whatever context search-driven researchers are likely to find
specific items of content. Here are a few thoughts regarding
the implications of Pam's insights how high-value content needs
to be marketed in a search-centric world:
- Think like a CPG company. Consumer goods companies
were early adapters of search engine marketing techniques, in
part because they had a least-common-denominator audience
available in the early days of search engine able to leverage
their power across a developing audience base. For these
companies effective SEM techniques in the "mass market"
search engines are in some ways the equivalent of supermarket
"slotting
fees" paid to get consumer goods in front of the fleeting
eyes of consumers. Supermarkets now eagerly highlight luxury
goods such as organic produce and specialty foods, oftentimes
in displays that have the look and feel of boutiques.
Magazine publishers, note: specialty "stores" need to change
with the times. The "where" of marketing is melting away in
many contexts, with content providers having to adapt to
audiences that are ready to find and consume content in
whatever channel suits their limited attention span most
effectively at any given moment.
- Invest in search engine gentrification. At the
recent
Buying and Selling eContent conference Northern Light CEO
David Seuss noted pithily about premium content in Web search
engines that "if you're hanging out with low-account friends
you're going to be thought of as being low-account." While
there will always be "great neighborhoods" for premium
content there is a
gentrification effect with today's enormously powerful
Web search engines. Audiences get excited by finding great
nuggets in the middle of junk using increasingly
discriminating search queries to filter out the undesirable
elements. As they do content quality snowballs as other
publishers rush in to service a growing community - and get
enormous returns with relatively small investments.
"Gentrified" Web search engines may always lack the cachet of
more high-stepping content outlets, but when high-end money
is going there any way it pays to be on the earlier end of
the market.
- Play the game to win. Although many publishers are
just beginning to warm up to the idea of taxonomies and rich
data enhancements as ways to draw in audiences to their
portals more still are just on the outskirts of dabbling with
search engine marketing as a way to attract new audiences and
to ensure loyalty with existing subscribers. Getting search
engine marketing to work has to be as high a priority in
one's online content marketing scheme as any other aspect of
online content development - especially if one is publishing
content with a relatively narrow focus that can take
advantage of SEM techniques very cost-effectively. Thinking
of Manta's quick rise in the Alexa stats it's important to
accept that anyone can play this search engine game
effectively - and overtake your market position overnight
with attractive, well-targeted content that rises to the top
of search engine results. Sharpen your elbows, ladies and
gents, it's a tough game.
Pam's book may not be the last word on search engine
marketing but it's an excellent state-of-the-art report at a
moment when premium content providers are mulling over how best
to confront the search engine phenomenon. This is a year in
which many premium publishers already invested in open search
engine marketing are reaping huge rewards - and setting the
stage for enterprise and vertical search engines as new
specialty venues for their online content. Once packaged
effectively for search engine marketing great content is likely
to be finding itself in any number of neighborhoods where it
will be most welcome.
-
John Blossom
To top of
page
 |
