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Vanessa Fox works as Entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners but is especially well known in the Search Marketing world because of her past work as Google’s search engine strategy spokesperson and creator of Google Webmaster Central. I’ve interviewed Vanessa several times on video in the past here, here, here and podcast here but nothing as substantial as what you’re about to read.

Vanessa has a new book coming out called “Marketing in the Age of Google“, which I’ve had the opportunity to preview and it reminds me of how important it is to draw attention to her exceptional insight. My kudos for the book:

“Finally! A C-level book about smarter search engine marketing.  Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox is undoubtedly, the search marketing bible for senior executives looking to maximize business growth through search engine marketing. This is a must read and if you don’t, your competition certainly will.”

In this interview you’ll discover the importance of SEO strategy, dealing with CEOs and social media, search personas, operationalizing Social Media and SEO, thoughts on upcoming search innovations and her favorite search engine (not what you think).

Let’s start off with an elevator bio: 50 words or less? (Not to be confused with the escalator bio, which is much shorter)

I’ve been involved in user experience, product development, and web development since the mid-90s. I was able to draw on all that background when I worked at Google and built Webmaster Central. We realized that we could provide a lot of key information to site owners (in ways such as diagnostic tools and education) to help them see better results from organic search acquisition. Now post-Google, I’m focused on that same goal.

Many companies are approaching social media tactically and making big mistakes. There’s a lot of encouragement for corporate social efforts to start with a strategy first. Do you think the same is true with SEO? Are companies approaching SEO tactically with little consideration of a search strategy?

Oh absolutely. True search strategy is integrated into overall product and business strategy, and too often whoever is responsible for SEO isn’t involved those parts of a company’s planning process. Unfortunately, that means that in some cases, those doing SEO focus on what they can accomplish tactically. Certainly, many tactical elements of SEO decoupled from strategy can improve search acquisition (particularly regarding architecture), but without a strategy, you can only go so far.

For instance, if you’re looking at search acquisition strategically, a large part of your assessment is around what your potential customer base is really looking for and how you can best meet their needs. Where that meeting first happens is often in the search results, but in order to have the potential to show up there, your site needs to provide what it takes to meet those needs, and that often lies beyond the SEO department.

Even with highly technical components, having a strategy can help ensure that you’re tackling the more impactful issues first and that you’re laying groundwork to ensure that any new infrastructure elements are search-friendly from the start. That prevents you from spending all of your time fixing issues that just pop right up again.

How can we get the C-Suite to overcome their fear of change when it comes to the importance search and social media within a marketing strategy?

I think the situation is already starting to change. Many marketing departments already realize that search and social media are important aspects of a comprehensive marketing strategy in today’s online world. The question becomes what to do with that knowledge. Traditionally, marketing has been able to operate well in silos. As long as everyone was working towards the same marketing message and vision, they could build their campaigns separately. But that’s no longer true. Truly effective search and social media strategies are integrated into larger marketing strategies and often that bridge needs to span beyond marketing and into web development as well.

In terms of implementation, it can significantly easier for a marketing department to have an agency build a microsite to support a campaign than to engage directly with the development team, but in terms of effectiveness, it’s more difficult to truly integrate search and social media.

“SEO isn’t voodoo or magic or spam.”

Some key things to consider are:

• The consumer experience – can the consumer easily engage with your brand if each social media site you are active on leads back to a different domain and has different goals? If the consumer is engaging on microsites named for particular campaigns, are they getting positive brand reinforcement or just a positive experience with that particular campaign? Do they have a clear path back to the brand or are you just adding confusion? What happens when the campaign ends? In some cases, building social media engagement via a particular campaign and building a microsite to support these efforts can absolutely be effective. But it’s important to make these decisions as part of a broader, more long-term plan and to understand the complexities.
• How search works – SEO isn’t voodoo or magic or spam. But it does require a firm understanding of both how search engines technically crawl and index pages and how searchers behave.  The company needs a search advocate who either understands it and can help ensure it’s taken into account during every step of the process, or needs to gain that expertise, whether it’s through hiring a consultant or firm an hiring someone in-house.
• Key metrics – Search in particular is very measurable, key is knowing what to measure and what the metrics mean. With web analytics and search data, you are overwhelmed with hundreds of data points. It’s easy to either dismiss them all or to fixate on certain ones that don’t seem to show progress. While some key pieces of data are important for any business, many of the important metrics tend to depend on your business goals and your customer base. Building an effective framework for measurement can alleviate the hesitation some may feel at expanding into these types of marketing efforts.  I still see a lot of powerpoint slides prepared for board meetings that showcase visits to the website as the key metric and that’s almost never the right primary measure.

A lot has changed in search technology and how search results are displayed over the past year or so. Since we’re in the new year, any predications on major changes in the nest 6-12 months?

This is difficult to answer, as we’ve seen a lot of experimentation in the last year and many of the changes will likely be based on the searcher data that results. We’re still watching to see what’s going to happen with Microsoft and Yahoo. If that deal indeed goes through, it’s not clear exactly how that will change things, so a lot is in flux.

For instance, will Yahoo still offer BOSS, which currently powers a number of smaller search engines? I’m not sure that they can without a crawling infrastructure and index of their own.

But certainly we’ll see continued evolution beyond text-based search results. The major search engines have to balance richness against complexity. I find the ability to view search results just from the last week or just from forums, for instance, really helpful, but if those options were front and center, they’d likely confuse many searchers who just want to type into the box and get back an answer.

Of course, the solution Google is skewing towards is personalization. Google will ask for less interaction, but will show you more variety in results based on your online behavior. Microsoft seems to be taking a different tack – they’re also providing more variety (for instance, with categorized search) but are also providing more ways to interact directly within the search results (such as with the Farecast integration).

Please explain the notion of search personas and why they’re important.

Searcher personas and search acquisition workflows are integral to the way I approach search strategy. Before you can start attracting visitors to your web site, you need to know who you are attracting and why.  I always start with asking what the goals of the business and the goals of the web site are. From there, we can work backwards to who the company wants to attract to help them meet those goals, and then dive into the goals of that audience.

With that information, we can build searcher personas, which are similar to typical personas, except that they start with understanding what the audience wants to accomplish and what they are searching for. This leads to a user workflow that starts at least two steps before the user accesses the website. And of course, with search and social media, every page of the site is the home page, so the user workflow assessment evaluates each page to determine if it meets the searcher goal and if it draws the visitor deeper into the site to meet the business goal.

Without this framework, it’s difficult to fully realize the potential of search.

“If a company is serious about building search and social media into their organizations, they need to make a real commitment to building that expertise”

Advice given in some Social Media/SEO sessions at conferences can be quite varied from recommendations to automate duplicate content on bookmarking sites to the importance of listening and engagement. What is it that marketers should be paying attention to when it comes to Social Media and SEO?

That’s a broad topic but one thing marketers should think about is how search and social media can work together. When you’re working on a viral campaign, make sure links are designed in a way to provide SEO benefit (via their structure and anchor text). Realize that with search, social media efforts can have long lasting impact beyond the engagement. If you help someone solve a problem, that discussion may later surface in search results for someone else looking to solve that same issue. I’ve seen companies build pages that expire after 90 days.

Any tips on operationalizing SEO or Social Media in organizations? How can companies move from where they are to making SEO part of processes?

This happens as search and social media become a regular part of the business (product development, marketing, customer support, etc.) and not a separate silo. But if a company is serious about building search and social media into their organizations, they need to make a real commitment to building that expertise (through hiring a consultant, training, hiring someone in-house, or some other way of gaining expertise). I’ve seen so many organizations who felt search was important but implemented it ad hoc based on random advice different people would read online (like this interview! ) So, while it was great that everyone in the company was empowered to drive SEO, one programmer who decide to add nofollow tags on all the footers, and someone in marketing would change all the title tags to be a certain number of characters, and without a comprehensive strategy, and without any barometer of what was a valuable use of time, the company can feel like SEO was a failure for them.

Let’s say someone reads your new book, Marketing in the Age of Google, and they “get it”. What should they do next to take that appreciation for a strategic perspective and start improving their marketing?

In the book, I provide a number of suggestions for getting started. If the company already has an in-house SEO or consultant, then involve them in high-level strategy discussions. How can search data help influence product strategy? How can the technical team build search best practices into their development process? How can marketing better integrate search acquisition?

If search is new to the organization, it’s probably worthwhile to hire someone to help build a strategy that works for the organization: benchmark where things are, flag any big issues, help build in search best practices at the key points of the organization, develop searcher personas and workflows that can be used as templates for future development.

Once search is built into existing processes, ongoing search strategy is much easier and companies can see much better results.

If you were a search engine, which would you be?

It would be the Urban Spoon iPhone app: always traveling and surrounded by delicious food.

Thank you Vanessa!

Find more about Vanessa’s work online at:

• ninebyblue.com – Online marketing strategy
• janeandrobot.com – Search friendly design patterns for web development
• SearchEngineLand.com – Contributing Editor
• Office Hours – Weekly podcast
• @vanessafox – Twitter

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SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) are an online business owner’s best friend. With Google celebrating its 12th birthday and twice as many people online as there were just five years ago, there has never been a better time to make search engines work for you. That said; let’s see how you can absolutely dominate Google!

This article has three parts; Stats, Spying and Shortcuts. Each section and tip can be used alone or used together for faster results. The following information is what the SEO and SEM experts know and gives you the inside scoop on the tools they use.

Part 1; Search Engine Stats: This will give you the latest intel on search engines. This is to help you make informed decisions on how to spend your SEO time and where to spend your SEM money (search engine marketing, which includes pay per click advertising.)

A.) Google gets nearly half of all US searches performed on the Internet so you can bet that’s at the top of our SEO to do list. Here are the exact numbers as provided by the “comScore for searchenginewatch.com” survey:

42.7% Google 28.0% Yahoo! 13.2% MSN 7.60% AOL 5.90% ASK 2.60% All Others Combined

B.) Now that we know how much the search engines are used let’s get some inside information to help us plan SEO and SEM strategies. According to the UK based company Neutralize.com, users of Google versus those of MSN are just about polar opposites when it comes to natural versus paid search listings. Here’s what their research found:

Google: 72.3% of searchers prefer clicking on the natural listings that SEO helps you get. Only 27.7% prefer using the paid links you might use as part of your SEM plan.

MSN: Only 28.8% of searchers go for the natural listings while 71.2% rely on paid links. This is almost the exact opposite of how Google users work.

That is amazing information to have! You know right away that your time and effort is better spent on SEO for Google while putting your pay per click dollars into MSN is probably your best bet.

C.) Now for the biggie; return on investment (ROI.) Once again our friends at Neutralize have some great information. The following numbers show the approximate ROI that Website owners got using SEO and SEM (specifically pay per click.) for lead generation and actual sales…

Lead Generation: * 79% SEO * 75% Paid Search (SEM)

Actual Sales: * 78% SEO * 63% Paid Search (SEM)

These are huge returns on investment. In comparison, banners only account for about one third as many leads and sales.

Part 2; Spying: This will show you where and how to get the very best inside info on what all your competitors are doing and how to beat them. It’s like being handed a copy of your competitions’ online business plans. Just go to “SpyFu.com” and take a look at some of the free information they offer. Better yet, check out https://www.spyfu.com/WhyBuySpyfu.aspx to see everything you can get, free and paid. I’m a big believer in spending wisely so for most people I would recommend just spending the $6 for a 3 day full access package instead of paying for a regular subscription.

Here’s a blurb from the site that tells what SpyFu offers…”Want to know which of your competitors has the largest ad budget, or which term gets the most clicks per day? Use SpyFu’s Advanced Search to find out. Advanced Search allows one to search by all the metrics provided on the site and allows you to focus on the data that’s most important to you. What’s more, you can save your Advanced Search results to Excel with the click of a button.”

Part 3; SEO and SEM Shortcuts: “Shortcuts” does NOT mean cutting corners. Our “shortcuts” are based on finding how the professionals do it and following in their footsteps. When it comes to SEO and SEM, the best shortcuts to success involve finding the best performing and least expensive software that provides the quickest return on investment.

A.) The best SEM shortcut I know is using software to find your top keywords and otherwise help manage your pay per click campaign. Two of the most popular and widely used tools are WordTracker.com and Keyword Elite.

With WordTracker.com you pay a recurring subscription fee of $59 per month or $329 per year. I used this for a while then bought Keyword Elite (http://www.KeywordEliteWeb.com) for $175 because it appeared to do more and cost less than subscribing to WordTracker. I found it to be a better deal for my needs since there are no recurring fees and lifetime free upgrades. But it’s all about personal preference. Both products are fantastic!

B.) Picking the top SEO tool is a no brainer for me. I retired my other three products after working with SEO Elite (http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com) for just a few weeks. Although I admit I was first attracted by the small price tag of $167, it wasn’t long before I tossed the more expensive tools and just used SEO Elite. Here’s what it did, right from the start…It helped me land 121 top 5 rankings on Google within three weeks; Mostly 1′s and 2′s. It also nabbed 377 great link partners in the first 2 weeks alone, which led to even more top 10 rankings on Google. This is the same company that published Keyword Elite, which also helped me make the initial decision. They’ve been a major SEO software development player for years and the lifetime of free upgrades with zero annual costs they offer is that special touch that shows they can relate to people in the world of search engine optimization.

This information can help you dominate Google, Yahoo and MSN very quickly. Enjoy!

SEM short and long term cost is considered prior to hiring an expert. Anyone who hires an expert without getting a full readout of the costs is subject to paying higher fees for SEM or search engine marketing. Thus, before you hire someone to handle your SEM business make sure that you consider some important questions.

How much it cost? The cost of SEM depends on the service you hire. If you elect to use Yahoo you can set up a budget plan. Some of Yahoo’s, Google, and MSN’s marketing packages are dangerously high especially if you have small business. The amount you pay monthly for SEM can cause major financial burdens. If you have a larger company you can get away with using the PPC or Pay per click services offered by Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The average large company pays anywhere between $3000 and $15,000 according to MSN and Google.

What are the different options?

You can bypass Google, Yahoo, and MSN’s marketing plans and do SEM procedures on your own. If you elect to do your own SEM it will cost you much less. You also have the option to research various services online that offer both SEO and SEM packages. Try to find the best companies’ with good track records and affordable rates.

How SEM can be improved strategies and how to make it effective?

In considering the question how SEM can be improved strategies and how to make it effective, we must consider the various marketing strategies, which include link exchange, organic SEO, press release, article submission, directory submission, optimization strategies, PPC management, market tracking, partnering, etc. SEO has to be included with SEM strategies since many of the SEO methods used are marketing aids. Web content is another SEM tool. When you have high quality, relevant content on your web pages it helps to promote your website by encouraging interested visitors to view your web site’s content.

Can SEO be more effective then SEM and less costly?

SEO can be more effective then SEM. Why, because SEO if you do the work yourself takes up more time than it uses money. Most of our SEO tactics include content creation, keyword research, keyword list building, link building, etc. If you were to hire someone to handle your link building process it would cost you around $300 for 100 web links. If you do it yourself, you can save the $300, but you will spend at least 1 week or more getting those links. If you have the time you SEO is less costly. If you hire someone to handle your SEM needs, it could cost you around $1500 or more. On the other hand, if you combine SEO and SEM, you can cut back on those expenses.

Do we need SEM or we need only SEO?

You need both SEO and SEM respectively. SEO is simply the process of optimizing and marketing your web pages while SEM is the complete marketing strategy that gets your pages recognized once you have completed the optimization processes.