One of the pillars of our digital practice at Flightpath is to integrate the art of technology with the technology of art.  Nowhere is the fluidity of this precept more evident than in our SEO work.  The best search-engine optimization requires a mercury-quick understanding of what is happening in any given market at any given time, what words describe that market snapshot in an informative, creative way, and what technology delivers the information in compelling design (incidentally, another of our tenets).

A major breakthrough for us, then, is Google's increased ability to index Flash.  Flash, when it broke into mainstream consciousness, was the pretty new girl in school.  Everyone was a little bit in love and wanted to take her for a ride, but there was a rumbling contingent that warned about the correlative probability that good looks can mean less substance. 

This turned out to be true--Flash didn't offer much in the way of text that search-engine spiders could index; the crawlers couldn't link back to anything, because the browser didn't reload after interactivity.  Even pages that spiders indexed were useless in search results, because users landed on Flash home pages instead of product pages.   

Flash was . . . well, at least it was pretty. 

But, then, last year, Google dedicated the resources to figure out how to index text in Flash sites:

[We] developed an algorithm that explores Flash files in the same way that a person would, by clicking buttons, entering input, and so on. Our algorithm remembers all of the text that it encounters along the way, and that content is then available to be indexed.

The trick, then, is to put the text that you want indexed "along the way" the algorithm travels.  This might include adding text to Flash applications, including a Robots.txt file or adding alternative HTML code.  Making sure the site's organizational strategy includes lots of deep links helps with long-tail optimization, and page titles have never gone out of style.  

Essentially, as Google becomes more and more ubiquitous, making nearly everything about the digital space more inclusive and included in a more intuitive way, we can expect to allow our artistic strengths to shine in happy equilibirium with our market goals and technological requirements.  

We have a project we're wrapping soon for an amazing, artistic client with big-figure goals that will show this to great effect.   Stay tuned! 

Google announced last week that it is ready to begin its DoubleClick AdExchange.  AdAge reports:

The AdExchange works similarly [to how the search market matches ad buyers and ad impressions in real time], but for display advertising. It also includes integration with Google's search ad-sales system, with the idea that it will let search advertisers move money more easily to display and vice versa. In addition, all of Google's network inventory will be available as part of the exchange . . .

The exchange draws criticism from advertising leaders for failing to offer quality inventory based in genuine relevance because of a focus on moving ads as part of exchanges with other exchange centers that are already part of the display-advertising marketplace, but where Google's offer differs in the combination of its transparency and scalability. 

This combination of offers has always been the advantage of Google's advertising programs--any advertiser who has tested click-based against impression-based programs knows that quality scores and targets require a fine balance and that tinkering with that balance within each program is vital to return on investment. 

The criticism, then, that the DoubleClick exchange's weakness is its inability guarantee quality is no different than any criticism that one could make against any Google advertising program.  Advertisements ranked by quality scores--indeed, advertisements in any channel--have only ever been as good as the creative and marketing teams behind them.  Consumers do not respond to poor-quality ads in any channel.  The fact that Google traditionally rewards advertisements that will generate responses because they are constructed well--and that it continues to do so in new mediums--doesn't change that much from the perspective of a consumer market that benefits from additional creative display and more focused and scalable targeting.  

In that context, the criticism of "But will it be any good?" seems a bit like it's based in the straw-man and red-herring fallacies, whereby those that have an interest in maintaining premium, static pricing on digital-advertising real estate find it a protective necessity to play only with the major players within a narrow range of price points.  

This is where we find the true genius in the new exchange.  Before advertisers even begin to consider the elements of paid-search marketing, the core offers on their websites must be relevant, high-quality offers, and organic search concepts, arguably the foundation of search marketing, allow even the minor players to optimize and sustain competitiveness through the idea of the long tail, a frequency-distribution concept that means businesses sell less quantity of more unique unit types.  When sites communicate relevance for a specific product, that product gains visibility in search-engine results because it is focused to a specific target's need or needs.  

Google's DoubleClick AdExchange allows a similar focused targeting and scalability, only, now, advertisers can marry these benefits with high-impact creative, which has previously been limited to a mostly static, contract marketplace.  What this means for advertisers is that the best of all worlds are now coming together, so that the real opportunity of the DoubleClick AdExchange network is exactly that for which some are criticizing it--everyone now has the ability to compete based on merit, as measured by consumer response, across all playing fields, regardless of scale.     

I attended a presentation by Microsoft last week at NYU about Bing, the new search engine. 

Bing is interesting, foremost, because it is not Google.  We all know Google is God, a theoretically benevolent entity that holds all knowledge and harbors secrets that would blow our minds, so when another engine pops up with vivid, landing-page images of exotic locales and promises of cashback on purchases you make through its links, suddenly, well, Google seems a little boring. 

That plain white screen, all that clicking to see if the page you think you requested is what you really, truly want--as if you could ever know what you want without the Internet telling you--all of this seems so . . . pre-June '09.  Bing isn't just a boring ol' search engine; it's a decision engine.  The alternate URL says so.  Microsoft's introductory letter to the public says so.

When you Bing (capital letter! like when you Google something!) an idea, Bing returns to you pretty different results than Google does.  This is because the algorithm for relevance is way different and way better, says Microsoft, than what Google uses. 

Google's algorithm for relevance is unknown in the entirety to most of us, but we do know a little bit about how we can trick out our results.  Type in the words that relate to the topic in concise, natural syntax that relies on noun forms for a lot of words and you'll generally get what you're seeking--if what you're really seeking is what you entered.  

Lots of people, though, do not really know what they want.  Good thing we have Bing.  Bing knows what we want, sort of.  

Say I type in "maintain energy while cutting carbs."  This is something I really want to do.  Bing's first result is "Maintaining your Energy Levels While Dieting."  Bing even lets me hover over the result and shows me a fun box that covers up all the sidebar ads and tells me what the first two paragraphs on the page say!  I don't have to click to the page and click back if that wasn't what I wanted.  I can hover over all the results on the page and see what's up with each offer before I make a final decision to click. Oooh, decision engine! 

Google, on the other hand, gives me a page about how to plan out a low-carb diet.  Ahem.  I already made that decision, but Google didn't know that, because it was too busy being extra-literal with what I said.  

Sometimes, Bing is all wrong--like when Microsoft demonstrated its travel search and showed me how it could find me competitive fares and predict fare drops for flights from JFK to San Francisco.  The results were really cool, but when I tried it alone, searching for "Newark to South Padre Island," Bing tried to make me decide I want to go on vacation blind through Priceline or stay at a HoJo.

Now, perhaps that is what many people want to do when they visit Texas' number-one Spring Break destination, but I actually want to stay somewhere really beautiful and ritzy and read about the cannibal Karankawas that used to inhabit the island.  Bing totally threw me lowest common-denominator results, because it didn't take my search entry seriously enough to simply show me what I said I wanted to see.  

What this means for how we focus on creating search visibility is extremely exciting.  Microsoft told me that Bing has 94 million unique users.  That's a lot of people that will soon expect their search engine to know what they mean without having to hit keywords in a certain order (you do this when you search whether you realize it or not).  That's also a lot of people that will not be reinforcing the relevance of search engine-optimized copy by clicking the link for a page that some amazing writer constructed carefully just for your goals. 

Bing is making SEO a lot harder for copywriters and digital marketers to direct.  The pages we create still require that we effect a legitimate strategy in order to garner visibility, but the substantive elements of the content now require a genuine, topical offer that delves into the minds and desires of the audience.  We need to consider the searcher as more than just a person who enters keywords, but as a person who is about to make a decision, because Bing is making it easier than ever for people to make decisions without the positive reinforcement for our work that Google has provided for us for so long. 

Essentially, if Bing is going to read minds, we, as digital marketers, need to read minds, too.  Should be pretty amazing.   

Let's talk next time about how Bing's market penetration and organic search vs. PPC models affect advertisers now and through the end of the year.  In the meantime, check out the New York Times' take on Bing, too.

Organic SEO was once a meritocracy--not that long ago, either. 

Back in February, I talked about "the soulless algorithm" that defines search-engine visibility and how to accomodate its calculations while remaining creative.  My point was that an incisive choice of words that mirrors the common lexicon of a targeted market has the capability to generate visibility in search engines and excite and convince an audience about your offer's value in equal measure.  In simpler terms, I said smart writing delivers results.  

I mentioned, then, that search engines influence what we, as writers and marketers, offer them in concomitance.  I promised to tell you more about the syntactical evolution your offer requires to stay relevant in the market and to the search terms your targets enter. 

As it turns out, online marketing is trending away from that syntactical evolution, but only within the context of what creative marketers offer.  Where you may have been able to lead the majority of your market--and, thus, your searchers--into entering sequences of words you created for them, now search behavior leads the creative mind and the digital marketer more than ever. 

Organic SEO is becoming a democracy--and that means you need a lot of people to prefer your offer in order to generate the results your position-based angle generated in the past.

Steve Rubel, SVP & Director of Insight at Edelman, the world's largest PR firm, writes for AdAge [account required] about how sites earn search visibility more than ever these days:

 . . . the search-engine landscape is shifting. Today consumers are far more likely to seek out and, what's more, trust what they read on other sites rather than anything we put out. The reasons are both technological and sociological. 

He cites two new kinds of search, reputational and social.  Reputational search isn't anything new to most of us, but it recognizes that as online media grants growing credibility to blogs, social-media pages, and aggregators through increased PageRank, writers and marketers need to apply SEO concepts to traditional PR materials that appear online.  His tactical triumvirate of research, content development, and measurement is old hat for SEO copywriters, but offers a new approach for PR professionals.  

Rubel breaks ground when he discusses the importance of social search, though:

As more searches take place inside social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, brands that are early adopters in building out "embassies" will be more visible.

There's no doubt that brand reputation today is incresingly shaped by sites we don't control.  This means that even a nascent field such as search-engine marketing must change in order to survive and thrive.

Rubel ends his thoughts with the mention of requisite change, undoubtedly so that readers engage with Edelman to learn more, but I like the idea of exploring the thought with you further here at Flightpath.  

Essentially, social search means search benchmarks are powered by the people.  SEO copywriters and digital marketers must meet the audience on its turf and on its terms, in all senses of the word.  We have to calibrate our message to keywords the masses use within their own worlds. 

As digital marketers, our traditional website and social-media pages must match the vertical and social engines' expectations.  Our blog posts have to satisfy the topical markers--the words--the audience promulgates.  Our tweets must integrate their hashtags.  Our voice is now the brand voice plus the voice of everyone in the world who already cares about our common interest, that is, our offer to them.  

The fine modicum of control we may have enjoyed as creative market leaders still exists in part--Google will never die, and natural search results will always matter--but, more and more, the future of search is in the hands of the people.   

Real genius in web copy happens when you marry best practices for creative copy and search engine marketing & optimization goals.  True, true, you nod along, but what about these clunky phrases, then, that treat the audience like skim-and-scan robots that don't deserve the respect of fluid sentences?  Who, indeed, thinks that a phrase like, "search engine marketing optimization" is going to make sense anywhere but in a Google toolbar?

Well, we copywriters have our tricks, as I've just shown you (a little bit, only a little bit--call us; let's talk), but I have a theory, too, that all the hyper-referencing of thesauri and SEO reports is no match for true lexicographical command, whereby understanding the flexibility of a language allows me to play within the rules of an essential, soulless algorithm and thereby meet your marketing objectives better than anyone else can.  

SEO reports are fine and dandy.  I use them regularly, but what I really use is my brain. I think about the connotations and denotations of words, the contextual penumbras that shade your perception of meaning, and how each increment of texture influences the message as a whole.  Our vocabulary forms a matrix of ideas and impressions, and this matrix is the foundation of relevance as it relates to writing for strategic communication.  One word impresses us this way; its cousin impresses us that way; the search engines know the two are related--I write to that.  

But I don't actually know Google's exact take on best practices for search engine marketing or optimization, so I can't be particularly rigid.  Strategic communication is only successful if it allows for uncertainties, and what Google considers the bullseye is a gigantic uncertainty for me.  I need to know everything I can about what meaning people attach to words, so that I can create messaging that is likely to fulfill the highest number of marketing objectives possible at the highest level of practice possible. 

In other words, if I am going to be the best, I have to know everything it is possible to know about what everyone else may not realize they know about vocabulary, so that I can use words with insane precision in order to hit narrow search-engine targets and broad ideas to inspire your customers.  It's an amazing job and it's super fun.

So, that’s me writing to search engines.  What about the fact that search engines determine relevance based on how people search?  There’s a nifty study from the University of California that indicates that emotional connotation is difficult to conceptualize.  If you ask people to figure out how written words next to each other relate, they aren’t very good at describing the contextual penumbras that make creative web copy so much fun.

Sure, it could be a limitation of the participants—if you do not think in terms of strategic communication, you just sort of “know what you mean” and expect others will, too—but, when we apply these results in a broader context, it also means that whatever relatively static vocabulary people use to communicate is what search engines read in order to develop new ideas of relevance for words that relate to your offer.  Intuitive, emotional understanding is a huge part of communicating between people, but not as much when we “talk” to our computers.

The point is that strategic communication is about balance.  One of my challenges is to balance the words that perform to metrics with the emotional shades that engage creatively.  When search engines begin to shift ideas of relevance based on the connotations we communicate to them, my use of words needs to shift, too.

You see this throughout this post, because I am purposefully showing it to you.  I found ways to take an extremely bizarre phrase (“search engine marketing & optimization”) and massage it, so that my syntax is comfortable for my audience.  I do this regularly and with quite a bit more finesse, because search engines now influence the ways we use words.  

Let’s talk next time about how you can become a leader in your market with branding and messaging that leverages the different points of syntactical change for search engines and creative copy.

Flightpath knows its effectiveness as an interactive marketing agency in New York and for the U.S. relies on delivering messages that generate responses.

We accomplish this with holistic creative concepts that include images and words.  The process is constantly active for us, but each team member supports a certain objective. 

I write web copy at Flightpath, so my objective is to make sure the individual words and the entirety of the copywriting we present are honed for the audience we want reading--but who is that audience?  Who is reading?

Smart copywriters know that writing for the web is not about only about writing; it's about reading, too.  If your words remain unread, your copywriting is a failure.  

Of course, even smarter copywriters are now thinking, "Everything I write for the web gets read.  Search engines are crawling alllllllll over my work." 

Search engines are the first audience. 

Search engines send their spiders over the pages I write and they determine how relevant the copy is to particular keyword phrases.  My goal is that when someone enters one of these relevant keyword phrases, the search engine suggests the page I wrote. 

If the search engine does not read my copy the way I hope it will, the constructive effect is that I have written something unreadable, because the intended audience--my live readers--will never see it.

Search engines are the gatekeepers to my live readers.  Strong SEO copywriting, the kind a competitive interactive agency needs to provide every time, must respect that all the creative sparkle in the English language is nothing but pretty dust if the first audience fails to read what I want it to read. 

People are the primary audience.

Once the search engines suggest my copy, people are reading what I write.

People read very differently from search engines.  People, live readers, read maybe a third of the screen--but people comprise the audience that delivers the energetic response Flightpath needs. 

My goal when I write for people, then, is not to get them to read every word--but to get them to read every idea.  When people absorb good ideas, Flightpath can shape their imaginations.  The effect of my words on this audience is how Flightpath uses copywriting to motivate interaction between our clients and their customers. 

I need my primary audience to read just as much as I need my first audience to read--the skill is knowing which words engage both.  

The audience determines the words.

I use certain tricks that make the reading easy, but most of my results are because I know the audience determines the words. 

I write for my search-engine audience and I write for my live-reader audience, but the meaning and response each audience gives to those words determines their efficacy. 

The smartest copywriters understand the dynamism of effective web writing and write so that every audience reads exactly what the writer intends.  

Let us know in the comments--how do Flightpath's words speak to you?