Epiphany Search Marketing Blog

Having sat on both sides of the fence it can be easy to see why many marketing agencies offer faux search marketing services, white labeling third party suppliers for the ‘greater good’ of the client. The attitude of we control media spend, ergo we control you…’Let’s not confuse things’

The question that begs to be answered is what are the benefits of this white labeled lip service over open relationships, where the search marketing company is brought in as a trusted supplier alongside the media buyer?

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The fact that Yahoo have ceased to update their Overture keyword suggestion tool has been known for several months. Overture US was last updated in January 07 and the UK data was last refreshed in May 07 and Yahoo have officially commented on their termination of support for the tool.

This morning however, it seems that the tool has become completely defunct as no terms return any search results. Does this mean the tool is officially dead ? Either way this throws a serious issue for the little guys who relied on the fact the Overture tool was free.

So what now ?

With Wordtracker now using UK data there is now a solid alternative at a cost. £15 per week / £29 per month / £149 per year. Having now used this tool with the UK data (I wouldn’t have recommended it to the UK market prior) I can say it is a sound investment and the billing structure makes it accessible to both big and small whether you want to cram all your keyword research into a single week or have the tool on hand all the time.

That being said, I for one would like to see the Overture tool reborn as it provided another angle to compare with Wordtracker and the more thorough you can be with your research, the better the results.

Seems like a bold statement to make doesn’t it? Well I don’t think it is and in this article I hope to explain why, to both business owners and website developers alike.

Let me explain. Roughly 80% of all UK search traffic originates from Google. In the majority of cases, your long term website traffic (& conversions) will originate from a search engine (insert your own social media caveat here). Before this online behemoth and others can begin sending you those potential customers it has to visit, ‘read’ and ‘understand’ your website, not just once, but hopefully time and time again. How else can Google decide on which pages to recommend to its users? ‘The machine’ (or rather several thousand servers) that does this is know as the Google Bot.

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Chinwag’s PPC earthquake event on tuesday night was entertaining. Hosted by Mike Butcher, as per his usual style, discussions cut to the chase immediately. This was a welcome break from the normal sanitized chat on PPC that occurs at these types of events. Panellists included three agencies, Blue Barracuda, Latitude and Neutralize and Nigel Leggat from Microsoft Adcenter. (names updated)

Firstly, i liked to say that most PPC events tend to be pretty dull for anyone who knows about the industry becuase typically what happens is the agencies tow the line and refuse to get drawn into opinionated discussions whilst the search engines play a game of diplomacy. Which all leads to a rather luke warm discussion on what is now a more mature industry. Nonetheless, there were lots of things to nod at or mumble under your breath about.

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As a bit of a departure from my normal technical heavy SEO ramblings, I have decided to assess if the new wireless, paper-free, mobile office and all the gizmos involved will allow me to successfully monitor, manage and maintain my clients SEO projects and my team while on maternity leave.

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