Top 5 SEO Tricks to Get the Best Treat – More Leads!

October 29th, 2010 by Alex Dunks

In true Halloween spirit, we’d like to dedicate this week’s blog post to the top 5 SEO tricks to get the ultimate treat–more leads! Since most of you readers won’t necessarily be trick-or-treating (or maybe you will be, we won’t judge :) ), we hope these tricks will suffice.

1) Drive Qualified Traffic to your Site – Don’t scare visitors away with

Traffic to your website is great.  Qualified traffic is even better.  Qualified traffic means visitors to your site that are more likely to results in a sale, lead or other type of conversion. These visitors are usually further along in the sales cycle and know what they are looking for.  Best practices for driving qualified traffic are optimizing for long-tail keywords and also analyzing Google Analytics goal data to determine which keywords results in the highest number of conversions.

2) Utilize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

When a user performs a search for one of your keywords, the first thing they see on your listing are your page title and your meta description.  Page titles should be optimized with your highest priority keywords for that particular page, as page titles hold a great deal of SEO weight in the eyes of search engines.  Meta descriptions should include relevant information that will make a user want to click on your search listing, possibly including a call to action. Good meta descriptions can increase clickthrough rate from the search engine results page and result in driving more leads from organic search.

3) Make Conversion Elements Stand Out

Once customers arrive at your site, is the desired course of action obvious?  If you want a user to make a purchase or fill out a lead form, make sure that there is a call to action in an obvious location. Place these conversion elements (link, button, form, etc.) in a location that users can’t miss.  According to EyeTrack III’s Eyetracking study, users first look in the top left of a page and move right and down.  However, location is only one factor to consider.  Call to action, value proposition and color can also be very important factors in not only getting a user to notice a button, but decide to click it as well.

4) Add Fresh Content

Even if your site is a lead generation site or an e-commerce site that doesn’t seem like there’s a need for regularly added content, you should always be adding as much fresh content as possible.  In order to rank well for a given set of keywords, you must write about the topics relating to these keywords.  The more often content is added, the more likely search spiders will increase the frequency at which they crawl your site. Being crawled more often can help a page rank higher for its targeted set of keywords.

5) Write Compelling Content

In addition to regularly adding content to your site, it’s important to take the time to make sure your content is compelling.  Creating fresh content for search spiders to read is important, but you should also consider your users. For longer-tail searches, often times the snippet listed on the search engine results page will display content from within the site, highlighting the search terms and where they were found on the page.  If your content is interesting and informative, people will be more likely to visit your site, and more likely to come back in the future.  This should also increase your time on site, and bounce rate, as users will have a reason to stick around.

Again, we hope these 5 tips help your SEO efforts.  Have a great Halloween!

-Alex

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Webinar Recap: How the Facebook-Bing Partnership Will Affect Your SEO

October 29th, 2010 by Cynthia Everson

On October 13th, Facebook and Bing held a joint press event to announce the start of their new relationship, working together to form what they are calling “instant personalization”. Twitter feeds and Youtube videos showing up on the Google SERP have become a standard sight, but now Bing has teamed up with Facebook to take the integration of social media into the search engines to another level: pulling data out of your personal account and putting it among all of the organic results.

Unfortunately, getting the actual results pulled from Facebook to show up on the Bing SERP is quite the challenge. The steps to syncing up the accounts are not obvious and have changed a couple of times since the press event.

Cynthia-FB-Bing-Post1

Currently, you have to go into Preferences to log in to Facebook, and until today I couldn’t find an option to sign in to Facebook without first logging into Windows Live first.
Also, there are only two types of information that Bing is pulling from Facebook:
1. People: Namely, your friends and your friend’s friends. Search their names, and get a lovely picture right at the top.

2. Things your friends “like”. Meaning, they click a button on Facebook that says they “like” something and become a “fan”. To be honest, I have yet to see this actually come up on the Bing SERP. Either it’s being rolled out reeeally slowly, or the algorithm needs some serious tweaking. I suspect results to come up more easily in the near future.

That’s me!?! Thanks, Bing!

That’s me!?! Thanks, Bing!

So what does this all mean?

At this point, I think it should be treated as more of a heads up that social media is on the rise. No, this won’t affect your organic rankings, but your organic results will be sharing the SERP more and more with social media results.

My SEO advice: Keep optimizing. And don’t neglect Bing just because Google is still taking the lead. Between this Facebook alliance and the Bing-Yahoo alliance several months back, it looks like Bing is taking some pretty smart steps to keep Google on their toes.

My social media advice: Get started on it now if you haven’t already. It’s still on its way up, so best to get on now.

My overall advice: Utilize both SEO and social media. The two go hand-in-hand (see last week’s Webinar with MarketingSherpa, The Real Truth About Social Media and SEO). Hey, get PPC going, too, and you could be dominating the SERP on three different platforms!

The main takeaway here: Nothing major has happened yet, but baby steps are being taken and new ways of doing search are being put out there. Get your Facebook account going and don’t forget about Bing!

-@cynniebug

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Marketing Sherpa’s Real Truth about Social Media & SEO

October 26th, 2010 by Sarah Shakour

The key to getting your website to rank at the top of a search engine’s results is to implement SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Integrate SEO with SM (Social Media) and you’re sure to see your rankings and website’s popularity increase. In last week’s webinar, MarketingSherpa’s Real Truth About Social Media & SEO, Webmarketing123’s Paul Taylor (@Webmarketing123) and MarketingSherpa’s Todd Lebo (@ToddLebo) discussed how SM and SEO combine to help your business increase sales, lead generations and website rankings on Search Engine Result pages.

At Webmarketing123, we have the 5 Pillars of SEO. By following these tactics, your website will significantly improve its ranking on Search Engine Result pages. These 5 pillars include optimizing your Keywords, site content, Meta content, URLS and inbound links. Among SM users, 64% use keyword research to find what they are looking for vs. 59% of non SM users. Keyword research is one of the most important components of SEO–determining the language people use to describe products/services and what keywords they are using is crucial! In addition, 48% of SM users rely on link building to market their brand vs. only 37% of non SM users. See below:

Marketingsherpa-SM-graph

This chart indicates how all aspects of SEO are enhanced by the integration of SM. This correlation will only become more apparent as SM evolves.

There are many unique marketing benefits that SM provides. Having a SM presence:

  • Increases brand awareness
  • Builds community following
  • Helps establish loyalty and trust behind your brand (one of the most important benefits!)
  • Offers direct sales opportunities
  • Displays your SM results on the first page of Google

SEO has a lot of benefits as well that yield:

  • A higher ROI
  • 3RD Party Validation (Google determining your site’s relevance to search terms)
  • Improved flow of Traffic

Integrating SM with your SEO efforts will have far-reaching benefits for your website’s market presence. Your site will likely experience an increased number of inbound links, improving your current rankings and increasing click through rates on Search Engine Result pages.

Marketingsherpa-respondents-graph

MarketingSherpa research includes a mix of Social and Search data to improve inbound traffic, leads and conversion rates. Here are a few key takeaways to help your site reach its goals:

  • Optimize content for keywords using SM channels
  • SEO and SM work together to create a comprehensive online campaign.
  • The combination yields a stronger customer community, an increase in conversions and a higher ROI
  • SM will become more integrated in organic search results in the near future

-@SarahShakour

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Back to the Basics: Long Tail Keywords vs. Short Tail Keywords

October 18th, 2010 by Ray Mao

If you’ve ever seen one of our webinars, or know the first thing about SEM (search engine marketing), you know how essential keywords are to your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts. You may also know that keywords can be split up into 2 groups, long tail and short tail keywords.

Short tail keywords are generic or broad keywords that are highly searched. They lack any specificity that can characterize the user as uninformed about the search term. Also, unless your company is a giant monopoly and a household name in your industry, it’s going to be pretty tough (and expensive) to rank for and go after generic keywords. On the other hand, long tail keywords are phrases that are detailed. Though they are less widely searched, ranking for long tailed keywords will refine your audience and bring qualified users to your site, increasing your chances of conversion. Seems pretty simple, right? But with SEM, we know that’s not always the case.

Effects of Google Instant

With the new Google Instant that rolled out last month, the days of waiting for Google to deliver results are long gone. As you may have noticed, Google will actually deliver search results as you type– does this mean the end of long tail keywords? One might think that the months, perhaps years they have spent eliminating short tail keywords and going after the quality converting phrases will go to waste now that Google delivers instant results, but here’s what I think:

From a user perspective, I can see how Google Instant’s predictive search opens up a new can of worms for chasing keywords. I mean, who could resist a recommended search for juicy gossip about your favorite band when what you originally wanted were their tour dates–but really, how often will the predictive results influence a user’s search?  I’m willing to bet not that often. Only time will tell if Google Instant will have an effect on long tail keywords but after one month, I have not seen much of a change. Personally, I like predictive search. It shows me what else is being searched and rarely do I find myself getting carried off track by a predicted search term. If a user really knows what they are looking for, don’t you think they’re going to follow through with their search query? And if they don’t, they aren’t necessarily the users you want to bring to your site anyway.

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Webmarketing123

How to Sell SEO to Your CEO

October 11th, 2010 by Webmarketing123

At Webmarketing 123, we use ‘Search Marketing‘ as an umbrella term that covers both PPC (Pay Per Click) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The majority of B2B companies that implement SEM (Search Engine Marketing) do so to increase sales and lead generation. One of the biggest obstacles in implementing SEM is selling the idea internally, within a company.

In our latest webinar, How to Sell SEO to Your CEO, Travis Low (Director of Search Marketing) discussed questions that many CEO’s may ask in regard to Search Marketing. Here is a recap of Travis’s method for convincing your boss that Search Marketing is a great investment:

Question 1: Why SEO? What’s the Point?

Search Engine Optimization is the process of structuring a website so that it can be found more easily and indexed by search engines in the most effective way possible. SEO ensures that your website will rank as high as possible in organic search results. There is a third party validation that occurs when you conduct a search. Based on the keywords that are used, the search engine will retrieve a set of links that it has deemed relevant to your needs. Searchers are inclined to click on the most-relevant links, those that are found at the top of the results page.

A paid result (PPC) means that you are selling a product or service within an advertisement. PPC results will appear to rank above the organic search results. Some people may have doubts about PPC’s effectiveness but companies spend millions of dollars on PPC campaigns because they deliver positive ROI. Research shows that if your website does not appear on the first page of search results, you are essentially invisible because most visitors will not click beyond page one. If your site ranks number one on the first page of search results, you will have a ten times better chance of getting clicked on, than someone who is ranked number ten (42% vs. 3% click-through-rate, respectively).

Question 2: Do people in my industry search online?

Currently, over 75% of North American’s use the internet. This means that there is a high likelihood someone is looking for your product or service on the internet. So how do you know if people in your industry are searching online? You can use software to analyze your market segment with tools such as Google Adwords, that determine which keywords people are searching for, on sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing–imagine the ranking opportunity if your site was optimized for 40 of your industry’s top keywords! Regardless of your industry, chances are that your target audience is searching. If you’re well optimized, the power of your website and your company’s growth could be immense.

Question 3: Are my competitors doing SEO?

First, you have to identify who your competitors are. Your competition (in our world), is the companies that rank above you in search results. If they rank above you, they are taking away valuable clicks from your website. To determine whether or not your competitors are doing SEO, look for these easy to spot signs:

  • Figure out the keywords your company should rank for.
  • Look at the site content. Do your competitors have some of the keywords you are optimizing for, within their site? If they are ranked above you, they probably do.
  • Check out their Meta Content. Do their page titles also incorporate keywords you are bidding on?
  • URL’s. Are their keywords in the site URL?
  • How many inbound links does your company compared to your competitors?

These are things you can find right away. Not just by analyzing their website, but also using tools like Yahoo and Google.

How to Stay Ahead of the Competition?

1) Target the right keywords

2) Include keyword rich content on the site

3) Have a lot of relevant one way inbound links (links from other websites to your website)

Question 4: How long does it take?

Many people assume that once they rank well on the search results page, the job is done—but this is wrong, it takes a lot of work to stay on top. Because the web is constantly evolving, your competitors will force you to implement new strategies to keep improving your marketing efforts. It’s important to continually develop your marketing tactics because SEO is an endless process. It takes about 6 months for your company to get first page rankings. With consistent optimization, keyword research and planning, your company can make its way to the first page.

Question 5: How can I measure ROI?

Follow these steps:

1) Set up goals

  • Set a goal value (make a sale, filling out a form, etc)
  • Define conversions
  • Analyze which keywords are leading to more conversions
  • Observe where visitors abandon the goal path

2) Use analytics to measure ROL-Measure Trends

  • Compare metrics, present and past (How was your site doing before you implemented an SEO campaign?)
  • Observe seasonality
  • See progress by analyzing non-paid, non-branded traffic trends.

Search Marketing is becoming one of the most used marketing tools in industries and companies across the board. Below are a few takeaways to convince your CEO to being an SEO campaign:

• SEO is a medium that drives results for a fraction of the price of other marketing mediums

• There are many tools that provide insight into your industry’s online search behavior

• Engage in SEO now because the web is constantly evolving

• ROI is transparent with the proper analytics in place

• Increasing visibility on search engines is the most cost-efficient way to get more sales and leads to your business

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Travis Low

Share of Search: How to Measure Your Company’s Overall Search Volume

September 21st, 2010 by Travis Low

Companies continuously wonder what their online market share is. Ideally, they want to know how many people are searching for their company on search engine sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing. This information is especially important to them when reviewing how many people search on their brand versus a competitor brand.

Luckily, there is an easy way to measure your overall share of search by using web traffic tools like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  With this tool, you can quickly find how many times your brand or your products are being searched in the previous month.

Your company can also look at non-branded keywords. These are keywords that do not contain your company name or the name of your branded products. Look for top performing keywords in your industry–they should be keywords that are being frequently searched for, convert really well and are industry wide keywords that describe your type of business.

Here are certain steps you can take to measure search volume:

1)     Keyword Analysis: Figure out which keywords are getting a decent amount of traffic or keywords that are specific to your industry

2)     Relative: Are these keywords related to your company, as well as your competitors? (i.e. Competitor A, Competitor B)

After you have compiled your list, enter your own analytics to figure out the number of visitors you receive using those keywords, then you can devise your search.

Now let’s give an example of Branded Share of Search: if companies within your industry are receiving 100,000 searches on company named keywords, and 30,000 of those 100,000 are for your company name, then your share of branded search would be at 30%.

As basic as these steps are, they can give your company better insight as to where you stack up against your competitors.

-@TravisLowSEO

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Webmarketing123

Google Instant–Will it Affect Your SEO?

September 17th, 2010 by Webmarketing123

The biggest question from our webinar yesterday (held by Travis Low–@TravisLowSEO) was: Will Google Instant Affect SEO?

Before we get into the details, we want to make sure we define a few key terms that will be used throughout the post:

Short-tail/Head Match Keywords – a general 1-2 keyword search term. For example, with keywords such as “black running shoes size 12,” “nike running shoes for women” or “light running shoes” the head match is “running shoes.”

Long-tail Keywords – at least 3+ keyword search term. For example, “business process management software solutions.”

Impressions – (defined post-Google Instant)

1)      User begins a search query and clicks anywhere on the page

2)      User chooses a particular query by clicking the search button, hitting enter, or selecting an auto-complete suggestion

3)      User stops typing and results are displayed for a minimum of 3 seconds

An example of seeing impressions through Google Adwords can be seen below:

Impressions on Google Adwords

Impressions on Google Adwords - KW: "bpm software" with 1,600 Impressions

Now that we addressed key terms, we can discuss how Instant has changed. Google Instant displays the predicted query—unless searchers continue typing or click on the search button. What is important to know is that Google Instant is changing the overall experience for the user, and now it is even more important that your website ranks on the first page, preferably within positions 1-3. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

  • Keywords should be in your site content, meta content, inbound links, hyper text links, URL, and content silos
  • Focus on your title and meta descriptions
  • Short-tail keywords will get a lot more impressions, but the quality of search terms will improve over time as users are given more long-tail suggestions
  • You need to start focusing on optimizing for the long-tail keyword suggestions Google provides

For example:

google-instant-predictive-text-ex

Keyword “BPM Software” - Google Instant Predictive Text

Google captures what are the most searched queries on certain topics. If one of your keywords, for example, is “bpm software” (seen above), you want to start optimizing for the long-tail keywords that Google suggests. Frequently check to see if there are newer keywords Google suggests, or if the ones shown above remain to be the top searched queries on “bpm software” and optimize for those.

Keep in mind that with Google Instant, there is no change to the organic algorithm. If you ranked #1 prior to Google Instant, then you remain #1. The significant affect of Google Instant is with user experience.

Key Takeaways:

1)      Google makes no changes in ranking algorithm, it’s primarily just changing the user ranking

2)      Too early to tell how user behavior may change, but first page rankings and auto complete suggestions are more important. Essential to optimize for these suggestions.

3)      Impressions for head match terms will definitely increase. The quality for the search terms will improve as we are starting to give more long-tail suggestions.

4)      Important that your SEO campaigns focus on your return on investment. What are your overall marketing and business goals? Once these are defined, it’ll be easier to optimize.

We will keep you updated on the progression and/or any changes with Google Instant, and how or if it will affect your Search Marketing efforts–so keep checking back! To download a copy of the slides, click here.

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Posted in Google Updates, Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »

Linking Tips for Ranking #1

September 9th, 2010 by Sarah Shakour

Linking is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Search Engine Optimization, but is very significant to your business. If you don’t have a good linking program in place, your site won’t rank well. On last Thursday’s webinar, held by Paul Taylor and Travis Low, they focused on key points and tips on why building a good linking campaign is crucial for your site, especially those top 10 spots on page 1 of search engines site. To start off, let’s go over some need-to-know facts.

  • Research shows if you are not on the first page, most visitors won’t go beyond page one.
  • If you’re ranked number one on the first page of search engine sites, you will have 10 times more of a chance to get clicked on than someone who is ranked number ten (42% vs. 3% click-through-rate, respectively).
  • Inbound linking is the most cost-effective way to improve rankings (we’ll get into definitions later).
  • Nowadays, the top 3 positions on the 1st page are normally considered “above the fold.”
  • Organic searches, overall, still get majority of clicks compared to Paid searches (but we’re currently working on a case study, so stay tuned!).
  • The importance of ranking high will translate to more revenue, and business growth!

There are a few ways to link your site in order to get a better ranking. One way is through inbound links, which are hyperlinks on external sites that you don’t own which link back to your site. These sites should be relevant to your business and regarded high by search engines, so that the inbound links serve as “votes” that tell search engines your site is useful and relevant. It is also important to diversify your links, and not just add a whole bunch to navigate to just one page. Directories are the quickest and easiest way to build up your search rankings and press releases help optimize your keywords. However, one tool that does not help with ranking is social media. All social media sites that you are accustomed to—like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn—have no follow tags. They tell search engine spiders to not follow the text outside of their website, so your site can’t link any of the “juice.” (For more information on the diversity of inbound links, check below on how to get a copy of the slides!)

In addition, internal links are links within your site for Google spiders to know what your site is about, and to see a “content silo” of inter-linked pages. It is imperative to keep the theme distinctive, which will strengthen your website and rank.

One thing that should be known about linking is that it is a gradual process. You want it to be a diverse group you’re ranking from, and the gradual buildup will allow your rankings to look like a natural evolution. Not all links are created equal, so you want to create one that will have a lot of domain authority as well as making sure Google sees that it is relevant.

Every site benefits from linking; e.g. if you don’t have the budget for a full SEO campaign but need to boost search engine rankings, if your site is optimized but not ranking well, and/or if your site needs to be optimized but faces technical limitations. Be sure to proceed with caution, and build a timeline for implementing this process! If you have any questions, or need evaluation and analysis, Webmarketing123 can assist you. Contact Mark Powers at (800) 619-1570 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (800) 619-1570 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or Mark.P@webmarketing123.com–and don’t forget to ask for a copy of the slides!

-Sarah

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Webmarketing123

4 Ways to Increase Your Blog’s Effectiveness

September 2nd, 2010 by Webmarketing123

Blogging is definitely becoming a company-wide effort, so make sure you take note of how to participate effectively in this activity–whether it be for personal or professional reasons!

Update Blogs Frequently

It might seem obvious to update a blog regularly, but many blogs suffer from a lack of fresh content. There are many reasons to produce new content regularly for your blog, and, given the nature of blogs, they are much easier to update than a website. One of the biggest reasons to update is to keep your readers coming back. If a blog is never updated with new posts, readers will start to lose their incentive to check back for new content. Additionally, if the blog is hosted on your website, search engines will look favorably on all of the new content being added to your site on a consistent basis.

Provide Useful, Informative Content

It might be tempting to write a blog post hyping your newest product or promoting your company, but blog readers are looking for informative, sincere content. Most readers can tell the difference between a blog with useful information versus a blog that sounds like a marketing campaign or advertisement. Take this opportunity to connect with customers and provide them with honest information about new products, industry trends, or even job openings. However, stay away from blog posts that seem like they have a hidden motive; provide a real and honest voice on your blog that customers can relate to. A great way to get sincere and also fresh content is to encourage employees to write blog posts. This is often the best way to come up with new content and give more employees a personal voice in the company.

Utilize Keywords in Blog Posts

Many of our clients understand the value of keywords, as they are the basis of search engine optimization, but the importance of using keywords cannot be overstated. Keywords are search terms that customers use to find your site, your blog, or your product. Not using keywords within your blog content underutilizes a valuable resource. It is possible to use keywords as many times as it makes sense to in a given article, but make sure to not throw keywords in excessively. This is called keyword-stuffing; search engines consider this “spammy” and downgrade your rankings accordingly. A good baseline is to use all primary keywords two to three times each in a 250-300 word article, and any secondary keywords once in an article.

Choose Effective Titles and Calls to Action

In addition to keywords, there are many other opportunities in a blog post to be very specific in word choice. A catchy, attention-getting title might be the determining factor in whether someone clicks a link to your blog post. A great technique is to ask or answer a question in the title of your blog, prompting your readers to want to find out more about your subject. Examples might include “10 Tips to Increase Search Engine Rankings” or “Why isn’t my website ranking where it should be?” Now that you’ve gotten people to your blog post with a catchy title, where would you like for them to go next? Would you like them to click over to your website and do some research on your products? How about signing up for a newsletter or becoming a member of your blog? Whatever the goal of your blog, make that clear. A great place for a call to action is the footer of your blog. Here, you can provide a value proposition or call to action with a link to the next step.

I hope this information helps you and/or your company in writing upcoming posts, as well as providing structure to your blog as a whole!

-Alex

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Yahoogle? A New Alliance of Search Engines in Japan

August 3rd, 2010 by Cynthia Everson

A week ago, I wrote a blog entry chronicling Google’s gradual move into Japan. I was living and working in Tokyo from April 2008 to April 2010, and in that two-year time-frame Google started popping up all over the place in a country that otherwise had been dominated by Yahoo Japan.

Fortunately, we hadn’t gotten around to publishing that blog post yet, because in it I concluded that Google would never have the presence in Japan that Yahoo has. Then last week I found out…they’re teaming up, forming an alliance of sorts. Not a merger (Yahoo will keep its logo and interface), but the organic search and paid results will be based on Google’s technology. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Google will take over Yahoo’s presence, per se, since the logo will remain Yahoo’s, but it does mean that they will hold a virtual monopoly over what you can find on the Internet in Japan.

As someone who has lived in Japan, I believe the real power of Yahoo Japan comes from their partnership with SoftBank, the largest cell phone provider in the country, that owns a 40% stake in Yahoo Japan (compared to Yahoo Inc.’s 35% stake). I used Softbank while I was in there and found myself, always a loyal user of Google in the US, slowly switching to Yahoo. I never had the chance to sneak into a Japanese person’s house to track their search engine usage, but the feeling I got was that most people used the Internet more on their cell phone than at home from a personal computer. Trains in Tokyo are an odd site. They’re jam-packed with people to the point that you can barely move at rush hour (and rush hour, by the way, is more like eight hours), and still most of the people are glued to their phones, either text messaging (a major Japanese pastime), surfing the web, reading the news, or even watching TV. With the default browser of the biggest cell phone provider set to Yahoo, the Yahoo search engine maintains a very high status.

I think the affinity for SoftBank in Japan goes beyond what we as Americans can understand as brand loyalty to a cell phone provider. Because mobile phones are such a way of life in Japan and marketing is as amazing as it is, it’s not uncommon to see the mascot, a big white dog who used to be a human father of a family of normal people, dangling from people’s bags or worn as slippers at home. I follow the dog on Twitter. He has a separate account from actual Softbank. Furthermore, Softbank sponsors a baseball team, the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks, which plays at the Fukuoka Yahoo! JAPAN Dome. Sweet deal.

As proof of Softbank’s status in Japan, here’s a fascinating commercial, featuring Brad Pitt carrying a gigantic sumo wrestler.

Anyway…

I think the biggest concern among Japanese people that are keeping up with the news of this alliance is that the organic search results are going to be really different. It always seemed to me that when I ran a search in Japanese on Google, the results weren’t as relevant as the ones Yahoo Japan pulled up. But I’m not a native speaker, so I’m not really the person to ask.

So what does the future hold for Google Japan? Probably a lot. But with the Yahoo logo still staying up as the SoftBank default browser, I don’t know that their presence will surpass Yahoo’s dominance as the most popular search engine in Japan. Yahoo is pretty settled into the Internet world there and I highly doubt Google could take over the dominance of their weather reports, auctions (did you know they had auctions? I didn’t! ), and aforementioned train schedules. It would be pretty cool, though, if they took over Yahoo! JAPAN Dome and painted it multi-colored…

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Posted in Google Updates, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »

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