Microsoft is buying a ton of TV advertising space for its Bing search engine, as you may have noticed. However, some of their ads are esoteric at one moment and overly-specific at others. Non-online marketing folks have commented to me that the following Bing ad leaves them wondering if Bing is a travel search site. (It does have a travel component, Farecast, which Microsoft bought about a year ago.)
It’s a branding challenge – does Bing have a strong enough brand with the average consumer to be discussing product benefits? I don’t think it does. View the ad below and be the judge:
I am often amazed at how many people forget the real purpose of SEO. The motive is not to get to the top of the search engine results pages, not really. That is like saying the purpose of cooking is to heat meat, rather than eat it.
The idea is to gain greater visibility and traffic. That means all content on a page must be interesting to people. People, not search engines.
It’s a great point. Attempts at keyword saturation can be effective with respect to SEO, but often yield copy that is clumsy and choppy. The artistry of SEO resides in the ability to craft copy that is at once saturated with keywords and effective at stimulating demand or driving action.
As an Internet marketing professional who began my career in writing, it’s refreshing to see a small step away from the highly technical nature of search engine optimization. Though I admire the reminder that Gibbons delivers, it’s important to note that Google doesn’t award style points.
This has big implications on two levels, one related to the basic usability of Yelp and the other related to Online Reputation Management for small businesses. If a user posts a negative comment and a business owner responds via Yelp’s new tools, that response will BOTH be posted on the Yelp.com review and arrive in the email inbox of the dissatisfied user. This represents the large departure with regard to the site’s basic usability.
From an Online Reputation Management perspective, Yelp may no longer be a potential liability. Even if a small business generates negative reviews or complaints on Yelp, business owners now have a public opportunity to address those concerns. Consumers love a tight response loop and acceptance of feedback, so business owners will now have a classic opportunity to turn negatives into positives. Why is this so powerful? Search engines love Yelp.com’s pages and they typically reside in high search engine results for business name queries.
Microsoft is buying a ton of TV advertising space for its Bing search engine, as you may have noticed. However, some of their ads are esoteric at one moment and overly-specific at others. Non-online marketing folks have commented to me that the following Bing ad leaves them wondering if Bing is a travel search site. (It does have a travel component, Farecast, which Microsoft bought about a year ago.) 
Marketing Pilgrim has a good post on 
Business owners can stop banging their heads against a digital wall!
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