Value of Portals

I'm going to write today about how portals have really changed the way that we do business. Before (and I mean back in the old days prior to 2000), we would register a trademark and a company name and really blast that trademark out there and build goodwill as well as brand recognition. Companies like Coca Cola, McDonalds, IBM, Apple, and others were extremely valuable and most of them really were marketing companies (Apple for example gets most of its parts overseas and simply assembles them to sell to you). Today, these brands are extremely valuable as end products. However, online, purchasing these products has never been easier or more competitive.

Think about how your web browser fires up. It usually opens to some type of portal page (most are set to Google). In fact, the most searched for term every month is "MySpace" or some variation of. So that really does change the way we do branding. If you are selling the latest no frills mp3 player, how can you compete against iPod? You can't, but you can optimize your website to be on the first page of search results.


In fact SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a ever growing field where firms charge anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a hundred thousand dollars per month to ensure that your site stays on top. And usually if your site is on top, very few people pay attention to your URL. So even if you have a www.icouldntbuyashorterurlbecausetheywerealltaken.com it won't matter because people are clicking on the link anyway. Which leads back to making sure that your page is optimized for those terms that people search for. There are a bunch of different tools out there that determine "keyword density" and a bunch more that tell you how often a given term is search for.

Overall, if you are running an online business (or conduct more than 50% of your business online), I would think about hiring an SEO firm before you purchase another full page color ad in the New York Times.

Loving Google

Ok, I admit, I've been bashing Google a bit on their quest to take over the world and its probably a bad thing because the traffic to this blog from non-subscribers will probably plummet, but I couldn't ignore the incredible earnings release last night as well as their announcement of purchasing a WebEx type company this morning. Everywhere I turn Google this Google that, and now with a market cap that is about half of Microsoft, Google is definitely a force to be reckoned with. Coupled with Yahoo's drop in earnings, Google is the leader on the Web. But the interesting thing about Google is that for all of the neat little things they put out there, nearly all of its revenue comes from Search. How many times have you seen someone fire up their web browser go to Google and type in the URL? I bet Google (or some derivation with a Google search box) are on 70% of a person's starting (home page).

That being said, as a marketer, SEO (search engine optimization) is becoming more and more important. The first three pages must be positive about your firm and its products. And if they are not, get a PR team and an SEO to make sure that they are. However, the beauty of Google is that it is a true meritocracy. Just because you are throwing more money at a problem doesn't mean that it will go away. If a product is truly faulty, and appears negatively in a blogger's blog, and is linked to many times, you will have a tough time pushing that mention off the first page. Wikipedia no doubt will be on that front page as well (if you are popular enough to have a Wikipedia entry) so hope that that has a positive spin on you as well.

We haven't even spoken about SEM or search engine marketing, Google's bread and butter. Monitor your entries and make sure that you aren't overpaying for clicks that can be had for less. And while I'm not going to go into a whole lesson on SEM I think the most important thing: Make sure the landing page is relevant and ready to purchase. Imagine, you clicked on the link for the book The Tipping Point and it just brought you to Amazon.com's home page (where you'd have to redo the entire search). Sounds small but you'd be annoyed and you'd have a smaller chance of capturing that conversion. But the lesson today is that search is becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives especially via Google (the numbers are our evidence) so please don't ignore that as part of your marketing plan.