Starting From Search

The Right to Buy Branded Keywords

This week, 1-800-Contacts sued LensWorld for allegedly purchasing branded terms in order to show LensWorld PPC ads when users are searching 1-800-Contacts. (MediaPost reports.) The key here is one company buying the branded terms of another company.

This is not the first lawsuit of its type. The question is around if it is infringement of any sort. Currently, engines allow advertisers to buy competitive brand terms if the competitors name is not used in the actual ad copy. Complaints to engines over this are handled on a case-by-case basis.

The main problem I see with a competitor buying the branded terms of another competitor is that it drives up the cost for that brand name. Simply, you could end up paying a high pay-per-click rate for your own name if your competitor purchased your brand name as well. (Many people I know in the industry follow an unwritten rule not to buy competitor brand names, often for fear of retribution on their own brand name.)

This is a problem that is very hard to solve, and sadly, will probably have to be sorted out in the court room. Is it Google or Yahoo's job to protect intellectual property? I say no, but engines constantly find themselves in the middle of this issue.

Honestly, it's not much different than two advertisers appearing on the same page of a magazine. It is up the professionals that create the ad to distinguish it among the competitors.

Besides, every company should rank highly in organic listings for their own branded terms. If a company can not stand out on a search results page for their own branded terms, they have much larger issues than a competitors bid price.

Target's PPC Ad Fails Expectations

This time of year is very exciting for my family. We have a small pond in our backyard and when spring arrives, it comes alive with activity. The fish come out of hibernation, birds gather to bathe and drink, and my kids look for new tadpoles. My six year old started asking a lot of questions about tadpoles, so we hit the web to search for information and pictures of the frog life cycle.

When looking for what types of food tadpoles eat, I noticed the PPC ads.

Wow, Target sells everything! They even have tadpole food. Or, they don't, which is what I found when I clicked the link to their landing page.

Target could have become part of my son's exciting adventure into tadpole care. With their ad they built an expectation, then failed to deliver. Leaving me, the consumer, and a 6-year old boy, frustrated with their brand.

Why would Target place such this PPC ad? Probably sloppy set up from their search vendor. When you get into SEM—or any advertising for that matter—you have to deliver upon the expectation you build. Not meeting those expectations will cost you customers.

Spring Hill Nursery's Earth Day Sale Forgets Search

I love Spring Hill Nursery. I've been getting their catalog for years and frequently order from them. Yesterday they emailed me to let them know about their Earth Day sale.

They obviously took time to plan the sale and get the email together to send out. Yet Spring Hill did not reflect their sale messaging in the PPC banner they have for their own name. That would be a perfect place to also announce the Earth Day sale, and connect it right to their site.

I'm am not knocking email in any way, but I do get tons of it each day - and that's just the email that I want. In other words, I could have missed the Spring Hill email. As a brand, you have to be ready to consistently message to your customers in multiple marketing channels. You may never know in which channel a consumer will see and react to first.

Search and Open Brands

During iCitizen, Resource President Kelly Mooney provided a glimpse into Open Branding – an innovative concept about how brands can embrace and benefit from the user-generated content model the Web has become.

Beginning to open a brand does not always mean investing in a tactic that feels fringe. It can be a challenge to convince a brand to invest in a viral video where ROI can be hard to determine. Many brands are also still trying to figure out if and how YouTube and Flickr should be part of their marketing strategies. But search is now a proven marketing initiative with easily trackable ROI and it’s a very effective first step to opening a brand.

Search has grown into the first step of every Web experience, becoming the filter by which people manage their Web experiences. According to comScore, Almost 60% of Web users use a search engine every day. Consumers have become accustomed to finding and making brand introductions in search engines.

A recent Nielsen BuzzMetrics study demonstrated that more than 25 percent of search results on Google for the world's 20 largest brands are links to consumer generated content. Search marketing and open branding go hand-in-hand.

At the end of September 2006, I launched an SEM campaign for MI Homes on the Google and Yahoo networks. The main purpose of this was to increase exposure to their brand in 13 different markets. With an industry average SEM click-through-rate of 1%, the MI Homes campaign experienced double that under the guidance of my search team.

Creating this accessibility benefited their brand, not just from increased conversions, but for the ever important mind share. A 2004 Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Nielsen/NetRatings study found that there is an effective brand lift from SEM campaigns. Consumers responded, as was evident by the high click through rate.

Search and Tax Accounting

I don’t do my own taxes anymore; I pay a CPA to handle them for me. It wasn't that difficult when it was fairly straight-forward – when I was living on my own making a few pennies a week. But as my life grew – wife, kids, and investments – doing taxes became more involved and complicated and it seemed obvious that letting an expert handle it was best. This analogy makes sense in the Search realm also, on a few levels.

First, if you are working on a small SEM campaign you may not need to hire anyone to help you with it. There are lots of small business owners that run tight, effective campaigns with a dozen or so keywords. They get the specific traffic they are looking for.

But as the project gets bigger, it gets harder to manage the account. It requires the ability (and patience) to attend to a lot of data and to constantly monitor position changes and bidding changes. With a smaller set of keywords, this is not to difficult. When the keyword list gets into the hundreds it requires multiple layers of analysis, such as gauging overall campaign success, ad group performance, specific keyword performance, copy changes, conversion rate analysis, etc. In other words, as in my tax analogy above, as it gets bigger, it also gets complicated fast. Having an expert, where all those layers of complexity feel natural, work on the account makes sure you get the best overall performance and your monies worth.

Yahoo and Vodaphone Launch Mobile Advertising

One day after Google's CEO Eric Schmidt suggested an ad supported phone could allow for free cell service, Yahoo and Vodaphone announce they are heading that direction.

Vodafone and Yahoo! to launch advertising on mobile devices

Under the plans, customers who agree to accept carefully targeted display advertisements can expect to enjoy savings on certain Vodafone services.

Links to Ponder

NYTimes has a take down of Google's plans to put ads, well, everywhere.
Struggle Over Dominance and Definition

Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, has said the company plans eventually to have as many as 1,000 engineers and sales representatives working on the radio industry.

...

What’s at stake is pretty much everything in the $400 billion global advertising honey pot.

And speaking of ads being everywhere, in another article, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt suggests that placing ads on cell phones could lead to free cell phone service. Google CEO sees free cell phone service. GPhone, anyone?

SEO is the Click Fraud Killer

Click Fraud is a two-tiered problem. One is technological and the other public relations. One battlefield is the algorithms that ferret out invalid clicks and the other is dueling press releases and media outlets. Today’s news covers the later.

Independent click-fraud firms that sell click-fraud monitoring services are heightening the fear of click fraud. Or so Google says.

But while these firms may have a financial incentive to make the problem seem larger than it is, so to does Google have a financial incentive to make it seem smaller. Half the fight is over perception of the problem and not the problem itself.

I do agree with Google that the problem has been overstated in the media. It’s the hot topic of the moment which can be easily turned on its head, as I did in a previous post. [Post link: Doesn't It Mean Paid Search is 85% Effective?]

But what is most frustrating to me is that while there is much speculation regarding potential solutions for click fraud, I rarely see anyone talk about the most natural  solution—optimization!

SEO is the click fraud killer. A higher natural ranking means that an advertiser can spend less on pay-per-click and get the same results.

Yahoo Product Focused or Just Looking for Speed?

I was intrigued by a patent that was awarded to Yahoo this week. The patent mentions auction sites in regards to search engine results and relevance.

From paragraph eight: “Matching outdated, e.g, eBay listings pages to search queries can erode search user trust. The relevance problem that occurs when a query matches the title of an expired listing contributes to this.”

Patents are often written a vague as possible to hide the true intention of the idea/technology they are trying to patent. This patent seems to revolve around auction listings, referencing them no less than 10 times and specifically referencing eBay twice. It would make one wonder why Yahoo is focused on auctions. Are they concerned with delivering more product related returns?

Nope.

Obviously search result that goes to an outdated eBay auction would erode confidence. Not in that a user would care so much that the auction is over, but in that the search results were not fresh.

And that is what this patent is about – freshness. Auction sites provide a good example of the problem they are trying to solve yet is oblique enough to the true objective – indexing more sites much faster to provide very fresh results.

Why mask this? Online forums have seen their share of webmasters complaining about the amount of bandwidth search engines spiders consume – which is a problem since most hosting companies charge on bandwidth consumption. Jakob Nielsen covered this topic in the past.

Yahoo doesn’t want to bite the hands that feed them (webmasters) while trying to serve the freshest food (sites) to their consumers (searchers). I applaud this on many levels. As a search marketer, I want my client’s sites to be indexed as often as possible, and as an active searcher I want results that are up-to-the-minute fresh.

Yahoo is trying to find ways to push the gas pedal down while trying to respect bandwidth.

From paragraph 22: “This enables the search system to use update cycles which are best suited for particular types of content or listings, as well as reduce the number of queries required to maintain fresh and relevant content.”

In other words, update your site often and Yahoo is more likely to index more often. Yet they are clearly working on a system to reduce potential server load.

Technorati Tags: yahoo, patents, search results

Doesn't It Mean Paid Search is 85% Effective?

Lots of hubbub this week over some recent statistics on click fraud released by Outsell Inc., and reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"In today's report, advertisers say that 14.6 percent of all clicks are bogus. Moreover, three-quarters of advertisers said they had been victims at least once."

Playing devils advocate: if 15% of the clicks are bogus, then doesn't that mean the other 85% are effective? Any campaign in any marketing channel that can show an 85% effective rate is a smart investment to make. Besides, the 15% statistic is only interesting if it was 11% last year—in other words, trending upwards, which there is no evidence that it is.

Search Engine Watch digs deeper into the report, questioning some of the methodology.

Obviously click fraud need to be addressed (and it is by Google, Yahoo and many others). But don't fall for calls to end search marketing budgets. Nothing has been shown to match the efficient reach of search—paid or organic.

Technorati Tags: search, click fraud

Google Struggles to Diversify

Not that I was looking for validation on my last post, but it's fun to see that BusinessWeek Online landed on my side.

...Google Talk, an instant-messaging service launched last August, now ranks No. 10, garnering just 2% of the number of users for market leader MSN Messenger, according to comScore Media Metrix. Three-month-old Google Finance, heralded as a competitor to market leader Yahoo! Finance, has settled in as the 40th-most-visited finance site, according to data from Hitwise, a competitive intelligence firm. Gmail, the e-mail service that was lauded at its 2004 launch for offering 500 times as much storage space as some rivals (they quickly closed the gap), today is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail.

Technorati Tags: google+checkout, search

Keyword Prices Dropping?

MediaPost reports on a DoubleClick report that average keyword prices dropped in Q1. This headline appears every year.

It's a combination of more keyword competition during holiday season and a the higher return advertisers experience during the holiday season, giving them more room to increase bid prices as needed.

Marketing ramps up during hot shopping periods and cools down during other times. With the Valentines' Day/Mother's Day/Father's Day trifecta past, now may be the time to find some keyword bargains.

Technorati Tags: holiday, shopping, keywords,

Does Size Matter?

In an article titled, "Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power" in the NYTimes today, we get a peek at one of the major fronts in the search war -- server space.

Two interesting quotes from the article:

Today even the closest Google watchers have lost precise count of how big the system is. The best guess is that Google now has more than 450,000 servers spread over at least 25 locations around the world.

...and...

Microsoft's Internet computing effort is currently based on 200,000 servers, and the company expects that number to grow to 800,000 by 2011 under its most aggressive forecast

That's a lot of servers, but one important thing to point out. Microsoft's farm will be running windows. At least 100,000 of those servers will crash every day. =^)

Yahoo! to Release Redesigned Advertising Interface in Q3

This morning Yahoo! announced that it will release the much anticipated redesign of their advertising console in Q3 of this year.

The changes will include a more intuitive control panel, with a user-tested navigation. It is also aimed at helping advertisers to easily understand campaign results.

Also expected is better targeting for local search, so pay-per-click ads can be focused on more specific areas.

Ads will be activated in 30 minutes or less, instead of the occasional 3-day long wait that some advertisers currently experience.

There will be better forecasting to help advertisers get a better idea of what their campaigns may really cost. This is a welcome change since I have seen estimates prove to be highly inaccurate. Yahoo did not say how they will make it more accurate, but I will be eager to see how this works in practice.

Goal-based campaign optimization will also be added as a feature. Click price can be automatically adjusted based on cost-per-acquisition.

Yahoo will also be implementing what they call the Visible Quality Index. With this, ads will be scored based on quality, bid price and other variables. This score will be visible to advertisers, and will eventually determine how pay-per-click ads are ranked. Advertisers will not be able to buy the top spot solely on bid price anymore.

All these changes are welcome additions to Yahoo’s search marketing tools. After seeing another Yahoo product -- the email beta -- they appear to have really figured out how to provide powerful, yet simple tools.

Is your Search Marketing a Honda or a Porsche?

Every few weeks, new statistics on relative market share are released for each of the major engines. To no one’s surprise, Google continues to lead the pack by a fair margin.

What do these market share numbers have to do with your search marketing?

Nothing.

Google’s lead continues to increase, percentage-point-by-percentage point, such that when I talk to people about Search, they typically want to hear only about Google. I take this as my cue to try and educate people that a healthy search strategy should encompass search engines as a whole and not focus solely on a single player, no matter how dominant that player may be.

Obviously you want to spend your marketing budget where you can attract the most eyeballs, but focusing on only the top few engines can be folly.

Think of it in these terms. The Honda Accord is one of the best selling cars in America. Porsche, on the other hand, has a 1% market share. But the people who like Porsches would never consider themselves (or the brand they hold dear) to be irrelevant.

Internet users who frequent Ask.com (or LookSmart, or Lycos, or or or…), likewise, do not consider themselves to be irrelevant. They are trying to do the same thing that die-hard Google users are trying to do–find you!

TV Ads Losing Ground to Search Marketing

A new poll by Forrester Research discovered that advertisers are planning on moving ad dollars toward the web and away from TV ads, citing a decline in their effectiveness. Sixty-eight percent of those polled singled out search as a place of growing interest to replace TV ad spending.

The collision between these two channels was bound to happen. Marketers will use the most effective means to spread their brand and products. With 56% of the web population using search at least once a day, search is king.

But there are other reasons why search marketing provides great results. Consider the following:

Search marketing is an active participant in the process.
With the possible exception of the Super Bowl, people do not watch TV because they want to see commercials. TV ads interrupt the action you were participating in – watching the latest episode of Lost, for example. Search marketing, on the other hand, participates in a user’s action. A user goes to a search engine to find information and products. If you can provide it to them at that moment, the user will see that as part of the process itself, not an interruption to it.

Searchers qualify themselves.
Advertisers buy TV spots based on statistics of the type of people likely to be watching a specific show or during particular time slots. Those statistics are usually based on age, sex, and income level. But those statistics do not indicate if that segment is actually interested in buying any particular product at any particular time. Searchers provide this information upfront based on what terms they use in queries. And based on those queries, one can determine where that customer is in the buying cycle. Having your information available at that moment is extremely effective.

Less guesswork for budgeting.
TV spots are paid for upfront, even if half of the audience is getting a snack or running to the restroom when that commercial is on. In terms of a pay-per-click campaign, you only pay when someone clicks on your banner – an indication that they are interested in you!

Search effectiveness is easy to track.
How many people actually watched your TV spot? How many of those that watched it then converted in some manner? One can only estimate that effectiveness. But with search marketing such rates are easy to track, from the number of ad impressions, to how many people clicked. From there, one can even determine how much profit a search campaign is generating to a company.

While TV spots and other forms of advertising will always have their place in marketing, search marketing is an extremely effective way to target customers. As such, any well-rounded marketing strategy should include an active search component.

eMarketer’s Misinformed "Shadowy World of Search Marketing"

Each day, I receive The eMarketer Daily. Today they turned their sights on search marketing.

As part of a report they are selling, the lead article says, "Search Marketing: What’s the Problem? While the media spotlight shines brightly on Google, a new eMarketer report delves into the shadowy world of search marketing to uncover problems that may lie ahead for the industry."

One question: when did search marketing become "shadowy"? Organized crime is shadowy. Espionage is shadowy. Search marketing is, well, marketing – a legitimate way to inform customers and potential customers about products.

For some reason, the search marketing arena has been tagged with this moniker in the popular media this year.

Consider junk bond traders only want fast cash, yet no one regards the investment community as a whole as shadowy. Search marketing has a few similar characters, but no where near enough to justify a tarnished image on the industry as a whole.

I have written about the role of search marketing and its place in the greater realm of marketing as a whole, including the perception some hold about/against search marketing:

SEOs: Evil Magicians or Benevolent Interpreters?
In this article, I discussed the original and appropriate intent of a search marketer.

SEO Shady? Hardly.
I posted this in response to a Newsweek article about search marketing. Referring to us as “shady,” Newsweek must have had us confused with Enron.

Search marketing is still a young industry. As a result we will experience some growing pains. But a greater portion of this growth is general education, which eMarketer (and Newsweek) clearly still need to gain.

Search Engine Use Increasing Exponentially. Are You Taking Advantage?

Last week Nielsen//NetRatings announced the search market has grown 55% in the last year.

The Kelsey Group is predicting local search will increase 30.5% over the next four years.

Today, Nielsen//NetRatings reported that Google and Yahoo sponsored link impressions have increased 16% in the last six months. In January alone, Google and Yahoo served almost 65 billion sponsored links!

Yet with all this rabid growth in the search channel, many companies are still not investing in this method of reaching customers, new or old. Likewise, there are also plenty of interactive agencies that fail to implement anything other than the simplest of search techniques for their clients.

The marketing "sweet spot" is reaching someone with your message when they want to buy products in your niche. That is exactly what search marketing does on a daily basis – presenting results (messages) to potential customers (searchers) right at the time they are looking for the information.

Search marketing has long past its tipping point. It is here and it is going to stay. It won’t be long before more people are going to experience your brand and products through a search engine results page than a TV commercial. Why not reach them at the moment they are looking for what you offer? If you are working with an interactive agency, ask them if they can deliver competent optimization as part of the project.

I will give a tip of the hat to the Ford Motor Company, though. They recently reported they have sold more than 250,000 vehicles through FordDirect internet referrals. The oldest car maker in the world is using a new channel of marketing to sell an old technology (cars) to an audience that is growing more reliant on search.

Pontiac, on the other hand, got it all wrong.

Pontiac Features Google in Ad; Comes Up Short

As I sat watching American Idol, a TV commercial for Pontiac aired expressing the features of their cars and ended by saying, "see for yourself, Google Pontiac."

At first, I thought, "Pontiac gets it!" Clearly, Pontiac is seizing power of the search engine. They must be aware that more and more people are relying on search. They must be aware how search engines are part of the buying funnel. Right??

So I did what the commercial suggested — I Google'd Pontiac. This is what I saw:

[Pop up image: 499 x 473 pixels]

At the top is a banner ad for Pontiac. Somewhat of a waste of money since the official Pontiac site ranks number one in the organic listings.

But I clicked on the banner ad anyway to see what page it would take me to. A page that mimics the message of the commercial? A further search tie-in??

The banner goes absolutely nowhere. Literally.

[Pop up image: 500 x 542 pixels]

Repeated tests of the banner ads continued to bring the same (lack of) response.

The third banner ad, directing users to the "Pontiac Shopping Site" does not work either. Since it is a GM banner ad, I assume it was placed in cooperation of the main banner ad.

When I did get to the home page (by clicking the first organic listing), I see that the messaging on the home page is similar to what they are trying to accomplish with the TV commercial. They are encouraging users to see what others are saying about them.

They are encouraging people to interact with the Pontiac brand through Word-of-Mouth marketing. But even the results page comes up short — no Pontiac fans extolling their love for the brand or the quality of the cars.

It makes me wonder, did Pontiac Google Pontiac? Did the ad agency that produced the commercial Google Pontiac?

So I wondered, what would happen if I Yahoo'd Pontiac?

[Pop Up Image: 501 x 506 pixels]

Same banner ad, same results.

[Pop Up Image: 497 x 506 pixels]

MSN?

[Pop Up Image: 500 x 481 pixels]

Results?

[Pop Up Image: 500 x 482 pixels]

And this took place during American Idol. Forty million eyeballs about to turn into deaf ears?

Pontiac almost got it. It’s just a shame they were undone by terrible SEM execution.

When Search Marketing becomes Mechanical

I just went through a Wendy’s drive-thru to pick up some lunch and had one of those eureka moments that most people have in the shower.

Like you might expect, first I gave my order into the menu board speaker, then I pulled up to the first window to pay. To my surprise, the drive-thru lady greeted me with a handful of change. Not only had I not paid for the meal yet, but I was going to pay with plastic.

At first I was just confused. Then I realized what she had done; she’d assumed that I’d hand her a specific amount of cash and she’d already counted out the change to give me in return. Her job has become so mechanical that she can predetermine how much change she needs to have ready based on the total. My order was $5.37, so she had change for $10 ready for me.

After surprising her with a credit card, she had to zero out my order and start over. While her mechanical system probably saves time for many people, it took much longer for me.

While I'm all for watching the numbers, following trends and making educated guesses, I wonder how often we lean on these shortcuts and they in turn do us (or other people) a disservice. Is your marketing this mechanical? Is it driven by some predetermined rules or experiences that do not or cannot comfortably deal with exceptions?

Like any channel of marketing, search can accidentally become mechanical. That is where working with a search expert, either as a consultant or on staff, pays dividends.

On a recent web project, upon learning that the client regarded search as very important, a developer said, "no problem, we’ll just pop in title tags and meta tags." As a search expert, I recognized how horribly over-simplified this statement was. (Reference a previous entry where I listed just a few best practices.)

Search does not always boil down to a single tactical implementation. For fear of sounding cliché, search is as much art as it is science. There is a broad palette of tools, strategies and tactics to work with to create a robust, flexible search strategy—one that handles the rules and the exceptions.

Search Tactics: The Low Hanging Fruit

A little while ago while giving a small search presentation, I was asked by an attendee if there were some “easy” search tactics that could be implemented on a site.

I worked up a short list, of which I could write a paragraph about each one. Maybe I’ll cover each in more detail in upcoming entries.

1. Place unique title tags on every page. Include primary keywords and key phrases related to that specific page.

2. Place unique meta descriptions and meta keywords tags on every page that contain keywords/phrases relevant to that specific page.

3. Write indexable, relevant body copy that contains primary keywords and key phrases.

4. Be sure all your page links that contain descriptive anchor text (not "click here") that cross link pages on a site.

5. Use the ALT attribute in IMG tag. This is also valuable for screen readers and 508-compliance as well.

6. Place a site map text link in the footer of as many pages as possible. Be sure the site map has text links to every page on your site. It’s a quick and easy roadmap that helps get spiders (and users!) around your site.

The above list is just a start, of course. Some next steps could include keyword research, database improvements, submissions, site audits, measuring site rankings, pay-per-click ads, navigation changes and other ongoing maintenance.

Search Grew 55%. Did Your Brand Awareness?

Newly released data from Nielsen//NetRatings shows tremendous growth in online search. Measured across 60 search engines from December 2004 to December 2005, search traffic grew 55%. Google still holds a higher market share over other engines.

Did this growth in search engine usage also increase your brand awareness?

This double-digit growth shows greater reliance on search engines to find information and products on the Web. More than ever, brand awareness could very well begin with search. Not that highly designed print ad, or with a giant billboard - but that stark, search engine results page.

Search as Part of your Shopping Cart

Holiday and comparison shopping go hand-in-hand. Who doesn’t want a good deal when you’re buying a small mountain of gifts for family and friends? New data suggest that shopping and search engines now go hand-in-hand as well.

Hitwise found that 11.1% of all December shopping related visits started at Google. Yahoo! added in another 4%.

More than one of every ten holiday purchases online started at a search engine!

Search engines are becoming a natural part of the buying funnel and they make a perfect gateway when comparison shopping. Typing in more specific product names net a large return of sellers. A few clicks and a shopper can quickly see who is offering better pricing.

Look at your site stats? Where are people entering your site? It is not uncommon for well optimized, highly product driven sites to have two-thirds of site visitors enter on a product page – not your home page.

Google just became part of your shopping cart.

Google in the Lead

According to comScore Media Metrix, Google increased its market share, leading by a full 10%. With a marketshare of 39.8%, Google widens its lead over Yahoo! with 28.5%, and MSN with 14.2%.

For some, this will reinforce the "follow Google" movement. Far too many search marketers disproportionately focus on a single engine, which can reduce the effectiveness of a search campaign. After all, Yahoo (with "only" 29% of the market) is still a doorway to a huge audience.

I have written about this twice before, and I think it offers valuable perspective if you are looking at optimization and banners. (Article links: Widen the Point of View and Lack of Search Loyalty)

In short, don’t let your search marketing firm focus to closely on Google, or any single engine.

Pay-Per-Click vs Print Ads

Robert Cringely brought up some interesting issues in his most recent column over at PBS.org. (Article link: Stop the Presses! How Pay-Per-Click Is Killing the Traditional Publishing Industry.) Like most of Cringely’s articles, it's a valuable read.

But I would like to add in a few ancillary thoughts.

For journals and print magazines to qualify for Second Class Mail, they can have an ad-to-editorial ratio no larger than 75%–meaning no more than 75% can be used for advertising. As Cringley points out, Web sites normally don’t have the space to allow for that much advertising.

I think he misses the larger point–that while we will thumb through an industry journal that may be upwards of 75% advertising, we would never browse a site with that much advertising. People behave and respond differently based on the medium. TV spots have different calls-to-action than print ads, for example.

Likewise, pay-per-click banner ads are a different marketing channel from print ads. They need to be built with that in mind, with a different call-to-action.

That is an important aspect to remember before you raid your print budget to start up a pay-per-click campaign.

SEO Shady? Hardly.

The latest edition of Newsweek has a short article on SEO. It actually seems to be more an article on black-hat SEO, the dark side of our industry.

Black-hat SEO is akin to junk bond traders. It does not mean that financial investing is shady, just that there are a few people that toss ethics aside for fast cash. Despite the (I believe) low numbers of black hat SEOs, our industry is disproportionately stigmatized by their presence.

I have noticed that popular media articles tend to lean toward reporting on this type of search marketing. Is it sexier? I'm guessing that a lead such as Newsweek's, "Inside the shadowy world of SEOs" will get more eyeballs than, "How companies can increase profits with search marketing." One seems intriguing, one seems like a boring business article.

I also take difference with the author's statement that search engines "tolerate" SEO. I've written before about the true nature of SEOs and our role with search engines. While I'm sure various engines would rather us tell our clients to purchase pay-per-click banners (to increase their profits), ethical SEOs play an important role in organizing the web's data for easy finding.

I also wish Brad Stone made it clear that black-hat SEO can lead to a site being banned from search engines.

If nothing else, this article should be a cautionary tail to Marketing Directors everywhere to be aware of unethical tactics used by some in the industry. Don't hesitate to ask a search marketer about ethics and ask them to include a statement about following ethical search practices in a contract.

Keyword Prices Dropping?

Previously I mentioned the price of keywords going up. Today, Fathom Online says the average keyword price is going down.

Which is it?

The Fathom research measure eight categories: automotive; consumer retail; consumer services; travel/hospitality; finance/investing; finance/mortgage; broadband; and wireless.

Their report indicates dropping keyword prices. For example, their research shows that pricing for consumer retail has dropped 29%, while the price for finance/investing has gone up 6%. Obviously averaging those changes would result in a keyword price drop.

But does this encompass all keywords? No. Reading to the end of the report, it states:

Fathom states that the pricing fluctuations should be viewed in the context of the eight categories reported, and not as a proxy for the entire search industry.

In other words, the data sample is not large enough to indicate an overall trend in keyword pricing, despite all the catchy headlines sprinkled about the various marketing journals and blogs.

So, are keyword prices going up or down? Both. It depends on the industry you operate in.

The Race is On

Just a few days ago, I assembled a quote for a client on pay-per-click banner ads. In the short time it took for it to be approved, the pricing on keywords had jumped. In a few cases, the price increased dramatically.

The race is on for holiday shoppers. Be sure you know your comfort (and profitability) level so you don't get caught up in a bidding war.

Control the Search Conversation

Search marketing as a whole has only recently (in the last few years) found it's place along side other forms of channel marketing. Marketing Directors and VP's have begun to budget for it along side other facets in their marketing campaigns.

While it is good to see, those of us that have been in search marketing for years have to remind ourselves that there are still quite a number of people that do not know all the buzz words of our niche. Last week when talking to a prospective client, he said, "I don't even know what I should ask you..."

I listen for, what I call, the verbal ellipses. Anyone who has read a book has seen the three-dot ellipse that signifies a sentence trailing off. People have a tendency to speak with a verbal ellipse when they are unsure what to say or ask.

I use the verbal ellipse as my cue to control the conversation and find ways to make it easy for the other person to be part of the search marketing conversation. If you sell SEO, you need to do that, too.

In that situation it's easy to take control of the search conversation. Don't wait on them to ask you about your expertise. When you hear the verbal ellipses, start asking questions. Buy keeping the conversation going and focusing it on the client, you will be able to demonstrate your knowledge.

Things you can ask:
When did you notice your search marketing was not where you wanted it to be?
How do your competitors rank in comparison to you?
Do you know what keywords are the most popular in your industry?
Do you have more than one site? Do they link to each other?
Are you currently buying any keyword banners?
What type of results are you looking for from a search strategy?

Every Day is a Good Day for Search

Recently ExactTarget released a report regarding which day was the best day to send an email blast. They ascertained that there is no best day.

Overall, email marketing is interruption marketing, much like television commercials. They interrupt what you are doing to capture your attention.

Search, on the other hand, is capture marketing. It captures customers at the moment when they are already looking for the product or service you offer. This is why a MarketingSherpa annual reader survey found that more marketers are happier with paid search advertising this year than last. It’s easier to convert a customer when they are already in the act of trying to find what you offer.

No other form of marketing can offer that, no matter what day of the week it is.

What Search Engines can Learn from Supermarkets

In a poll released in early May by Harris Interactive, consumers rated which industries they felt were doing a good (or bad) job of serving their consumers.

Supermarkets ranked number one in terms of consumer satisfaction with 92% of respondents saying supermarkets were doing a good job, as opposed to 8% who didn’t. Computer hardware companies were second with an 84% favorable to 10% unfavorable ratio.

Search engines held a respectable 7th place with 79% favorable and 11% unfavorable. (Not surprisingly, Tobacco and Oil companies came in last with two out of every three people saying they did a poor job.)

What can a search engine learn from a supermarket? Categorization.

When you walk into a grocery store you are presented many aisles – items divided in categories. Like foodstuffs are put together with signs in each aisle telling customers what is there. The end of each aisle has other items that could be related or just sale items. In search terms, I think of those as the pay-per-click listings. Easy to skip if you want, but sometimes very helpful.

Search engines have failed to grasp this concept. Most engines present information in a single, long list that spans many pages. That would be the equivalent of a grocery store having a single, long aisle. Shoppers would find that tedious and unhelpful, yet search engines have stuck to that very motif for years.

Search professionals fight for the first 10 spots for any keyword search. Statistics show that most searchers don’t view results on the second page. That makes sense, if you think about it. People are looking at what is up front, even if it is not particular relevant.

If I was a producer, I would want my products at the very front of the aisle because I know that the things up front would tend to be noticed more, even if they weren’t relevant to what the customer really wanted.

Look at this research by Thorsten Joachims, et al., at Cornell University [Link to PDF] and perfectly summed up by Jakob Nielson. After typing in a search query, a majority of searchers clicked the very first link returned even if it was not relevant.

This is why categorization becomes important.

Teoma beat everyone with this concept with their Results, Refine, and Resources method of listing results. While I would argue the results of the refine and resources are not always helpful, they have the right idea. They are trying to find ways to present relevant information to their users in a way that is also quick to browse – just like the signs hanging in the supermarket aisle.

Zoom with Jeeves
In late May, Ask Jeeves introduced Zoom, which they describe as the "next-generation related-search tool that gives users suggestions to narrow or expand their searches." They also claim it is the only search technology that clusters the web into topical communities in real-time.

It displays three sets of related results on the right side of the page next to the search listings. The first set lets you "Zoom in" or narrow your search, the next set lets you "Zoom out" by offering listings that are wider but still conceptually related, while the third and least useful of the sets offers names of people that are related to the original search.

I have also had mixed results with Ask Jeeves' Zoom tool. But I applaud the effort and hope it blossoms and becomes more wide spread. Hopefully over time, they will spend as much time refining their categorization tools as they spend on their ranking algorithms. Then search engines will be more useful than supermarkets.

Searching for Truth: Mining Site Stats

What are your site stats really telling you?

Web stats packages such as Webtrends and Urchin can tell site owners how visitors are interacting with a site. It’s certainly a valuable tool overall, but more and more I see webmasters and marketing directors looking at site stats for insights into search marketing. In one case, the insight they are seeking is a misguided one.

Top Keyword Referrer
Site stat packages offer a listing of the top ten keyword referrers. It's not uncommon for a site owner to tell me that they know what keywords are working – they have the top keyword referrers from their site stats. But this is not the list you may think it is.

This will tell you what keywords you are ranking well for now, but it doesn't tell you what keywords you actually need to rank well for to fully utilize your potential. And if any more than 4 or 5 of those keywords are variations of your company name, your search optimization is failing you.

Only quality keyword research can uncover which keywords and keyword phrases are being used in your market space, and thusly, which keywords need to be optimized for on a site.

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This post is part of a multi-series column called, Searching for Truth, designed to shed light on the latest trends, myths and misconceptions in search marketing. Links to other columns in this series:

February 22, 2006 - Searching for Truth: Placing Keywords in a Page URL
September 19, 2005 - Searching for Truth: Mining Site Stats
August 4, 2005 - Searching for Truth: Site Resubmissions

Crazy Pigs and Search Rankings

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., has arguably done more for animal rights than any other person in the United States. As an animal behaviorist, she consults all around the US regarding livestock behavior – to safe and stress-free ways to transport animals, to the design of facilities and even humane methods of slaughter.

She’s also autistic and has written and lectured on the world of autism from an insider's point of view. My nephew is autistic and I learned of her work while researching autism.

She has a unique insight that can be applied to search marketing in a very powerful way. I was listening to an interview on NPR, when I realized how her concept of “the new normal” can apply to search marketing as well.

She was describing the trend in livestock farming where pigs are being specifically bred to produce leaner, less fatty meat. In the process these pigs developed nervous personalities and thusly, were not as healthy. But the farmers did not notice because with each successive generation, they were forgetting how "normal" pigs behaved. Their point-of-view led them to a new "normal."

What do nervous pigs have to do with your search rankings?

As I consult with clients about marketing, and particularly search marketing, they tend to fall into a trap of wanting a strategy based on their competition. One client told me they did not want to "mess with meta tags" because their competitors were not using them. Their “new normal” led them believe they didn’t need them.

Another client only wanted to only target keywords that their competition seemed to be targeting.

Much like Dr. Grandin, a search expert like myself can keep an agnostic view of search marketing. In the specific cases above, meta tags do help search rankings (and are valuable for in-site search tools), and you should target the keywords customers target. After all, your competitor could be targeting the wrong search terms.

While one should not ignore the marketing strategies of competitors, it’s important employ a strategy that provides the best chance of higher rankings.

Holiday Cheer in August

As I have noted previously noted, now is the time to start thinking about the holiday season in regards to the search channel. Yes, it’s still sunny out and you may be thinking more about getting your kids back to school, or lamenting about Halloween being just around the corner, but it is indeed the time think about the winter holidays and your search rankings. Here’s why:

Organic Search
Higher listings take longer to build but are worth it. Significantly more searchers click on organic listings over paid listings – by a margin of upwards of 10-to-1. It can take weeks for keyword and other SEO changes on your site to resonate as higher rankings in engines. Start working on those organic rankings now to be sure you have a good foundation in November.

Pay-Per-Click
You have a bit more time with pay-per-click since banners can be added and removed fairly quickly. But measuring your ROI on your banner campaign and to get comfortable running an effective budget takes a bit more time. Starting now (or soon) gives you time to refine your pay-per-click campaign so that it is delivering the most effective results by the time all the holiday searchers come online.

With over 90% of the online population using search engines to get around the web, the amount of traffic search engines can bring to a site is a major factor in online holiday success.

Yahoo Ups the Ante

Announcing an ad-serving program called the Yahoo! Publisher Network, Yahoo is now directly competing with Google’s AdSense program. Up till this point, Google was the only engine offering an ad program of this kind.

Yahoo has been making big strides on challenging Google this year. And it’s perfect timing. In general the media has been focused on a Google vs Microsoft battle, which allows Yahoo to innovate quietly, off the radar. It’s almost as if everyone forgot that Yahoo is still the number 2 search engine.

By my estimation, the Yahoo! Publisher Program surpasses Google’s AdSense program. Google does not pay on an AdSense account until a site surpasses $100. With so many lesser-read blogs using AdSense that can be an unrealistically high watermark to meet. For many, it must feel like that check from Google will never come.

With the program aimed at small- and medium-sized web sites, I hope Yahoo sets their payment schedule lower, down around $20 or so. That would provide a real benefit to people using their ads.

The Yahoo! Publisher Network is open to invited sites only while they are still in beta. I wonder if Google can counter before the end of the year?

The Better Mouse Trap

Click fraud is becoming a hotter and hotter topic, especially with a recent lawsuit filed against Google. Click Defense claims Google is well aware of click fraud and they are not acting to stamp out this practice. Google says they routinely refund money to advertisers that are victims of click fraud.

Click fraud consists, basically, of companies or individuals that click on pay-per-click ads for the purpose of driving up (or rather, drying up) a marketing budget.

Even the FTC believes it's time to take action. Howard Beales, FTC’s Director of Consumer Protection Bureau, told a Senate subcommittee that click fraud causes "significant injury to consumers and harms public confidence in the Internet as an emerging marketplace."

Snap.com thinks it may have fixed the problem. Instead of charges being based on clicks, the charge would be based on actual conversions. Meaning, no fee is charged unless a click through leads to a purchase.

BlowSearch has offered a solution called Click Defender, still in beta. It is a real-time auditing tool designed to separate humans from click crazy bots. When a user clicks on a link, Click Defender authenticates 20 different points of information in combination that BlowSearch says cannot be faked.

These efforts by Snap.com and BlowSearch are not silver bullets, but it’s a great start. But the bigger issue, which I think the lawsuit is tr