Search Marketing Insights
Our folks have opinions. And they have passion. And we often can't control either. So, in this space, we gave them a forum to talk to you. In this format, we'll share new ways to use Search. We will explore, along with you, all the possibilities related to what can be done with this incredibly-effective marketing discipline. Listen in...
Site Speed: The Latest Addition to Google’s Algorithm
By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist
Last year Google began hinting that site load time may become a part of the algorithm, and last week those hints became fact. Google has officially announced that site speed is indeed a part of the algorithm, as it is important to user satisfaction with a Web site.
The Update
This should come as no surprise, as the update has been swirling around the Webmaster rumor mills for months and Google itself plans to go live with their “caffeine” update to make their own results appear faster to users.
While this is a new addition to the algorithm, it is a small factor. Before you go rebuilding your Web site to make it lightning fast consider what remain the major factors in Googles algorithm: relevancy of content to the query, the number and relevance of in-bound links, reputation, and unique, valuable content still carry more weight in the algorithm than site speed.
According to Google, “fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com.” Let’s put that into perspective. If there are nearly 3 billion queries each month on Google.com and 91 million per day, less than 1 million queries per day will be affected by this change.
Also, load time itself is not a constant in the algorithm; rather, the algorithm incorporates load time specific to each query as a comparison of all the Web sites that appear in the results for that query.
Three Obstacles to SEO Success: They’re Not What You Think!
By: Carol Brenneisen, Director, Product Management
This article was originally published in Visibility Magazine, Spring 2010
Getting the Data
If justifying SEO means showing the return on investment, aggregating conversion data is key. But often, even if an analytics package is in place, there are huge challenges to getting the data out of it. Either the reports are not set up correctly, or no one in-house knows how to pull them (and there is no budget to pay someone else to pull them). Or in some cases, when an SEO vendor is involved, there is so much red tape involved in sharing the data that it never makes it into an ROI report. SEO efforts may have been wildly successful, and it may even be obvious from the rankings, but not being able to show the bottom line return can mean reduced budgets or canceled programs.
In some cases, the data acquisition can be impossible or cost-prohibitive. If so, unavailability of data should not delay SEO implementation. On the other hand, if getting the data is a matter of identifying and engaging the appropriate parties in your organization, then it makes sense to coordinate with those individuals prior to or in tandem with your SEO efforts. You may even consider donating a portion of the SEO budget to whatever data resources will be necessary, if it means being able to show the true value of SEO and justify additional budget in the future.
Twitter Begins a Revenue Model
By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist
After much speculation and criticism, Twitter announced plans for generating revenue from their 30MM+ user base. The lack of a revenue stream has long been the elephant in the room in discussions about whether Twitter is a fad or the real-deal. It appears that Twitter has attempted to answer that question, so long as marketers buy into the model.
Many brands have claimed their own handles (usernames) on Twitter in an effort to create one-on-one relationships with their customers. Those brands now have the opportunity to purchase “promoted tweets”.
The model is rather simple and closely resembles Google’s ad model. Marketers bid on keywords that trigger their promoted tweets to appear at the top of search results when a user queries that keyword. These tweets are labeled with a small icon labeled “promoted tweet.” Starbucks, Red Bull and Virgin Airlines are among the first advertisers taking part in the CPM-based ad program. In the coming months, Twitter plans to expand this CPM model into an ROI-based pricing model. Take a look at the example below:
Real Time Search
By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist
Search Engines are jumping on the social network craze. They are using Real-time Search as a first step to utilize these networks. Marketers are scrambling to answer compelling questions about this new addition to engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo!. Most importantly, marketers want to know: how will this change the perception of my brand and how can I capitalize on this momentum?
Bing:
Bing started the real-time search results by creating an exclusive partnership with Twitter, allowing them to produce results based on topic popularity.
Bing’s real time results are not integrated into the main search results pages, where you’ll typically see both natural and paid search results. Instead, they’ve stored real-time search results on a page dedicated to Twitter. A benefit to Bing’s results is the keyword cloud that quickly shows users what the top Twitter topics are at that exact moment. Twitter results are streaming on this page and can be paused. Another value-add from Bing is the fact that they order results based on which tweets are being shared most often. Now, Bing is testing the inclusion of real-time search results within their organic search results.
Search in 2010 and Beyond
By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist
As 2010 continues, companies will explore more effective ways of managing their online and offline campaigns and target spend to the most productive channels. Many companies will focus on making their campaigns work independently while aligning them with a similar message to yield better results. Learning from each marketing channel, creating efficiencies between them, and integrating their marketing messages will be a core focus for many marketers.
Google Leads the Way in the Media Mix
In 2009, Google announced that it was struggling to attribute online customer activity to offline advertisers. Although the inability to see concrete results has limited Google’s spend on offline campaigns, Google is currently looking for a solution that will help attribute customer activity to both online and offline channels.
SES New York: The Flock is Turning. Who will be the Shepherd?
By: Matt Naeger, Executive VP, Operations
For those of you in the Search industry who did not attend SES New York a few weeks ago, let me tell you some things that you probably already know: engines (particularly Google) don’t like duplicate content; linking is hard; enterprise SEO is really just SEO explained to a lot of people at your company; and analytics are important to marketing.
Having not attended the last few SES conferences, I expected the conversation in New York to be on a different level. I found myself, after returning to the office, astonished and disappointed at the lack of innovation in the panel discussions. I recognize that SES is not just for Search experts and that industry conferences need to be a place where novices can go to get up to speed. However, what I am finding way too often these days is that we, as an industry, are not talking about where the next evolution of Search should and could come from.
Paid Search Marketing: Can It Learn From Database Marketing
By: Pat Stroh, VP Analysis and Decision Support, IMPAQT
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) regularly and steadily generates copious amounts of data and reports. Some commentators highlight the abilities of database marketers and analysts to synthesize, sift and understand data, and then produce actionable recommendations. In addition, those database marketing abilities translate directly over to the data rich environment of Paid Search Marketing. Thus, it is important to ask: What are the similarities between Database Marketing (DM) and paid SEM? What are the key differences and key pitfalls? And what are the opportunities for “cross learning” from DM and SEM?
Writing for Readers, Not Just Buyers or Cynics
By: Bryce Walat, Content Development Specialist
In the SEO Book.com article Writing for Buyers vs. Writing for Cynics, one of the comments stated that:
“It’s easy to say that you should write about what you love or you’ll get bored, but the big money is always in things that no one loves, like mortgages and loans, etc…”
What do you do when you have to write about something you don’t love, or don’t know that much about, and have to write it for SEO?
Reframing SEO Writing
At its most basic, search is about questions and answers, and problems and solutions. When searchers search, they’re ultimately looking for answers to questions or solutions to problems. They’re looking for a way to compare mortgages and pick the best option, or get help with payment problems, for example.
With that in mind, SEO writing is more about answering a question or solving a problem than writing content to promote a product or service. Therefore, when writing for SEO, it’s a good idea to reframe the task from writing to promote a product or service to writing to answer a question or solve a problem.
Current Considerations for Future Tracking
By: Pat Stroh, VP Analysis and Decision Support Pat Stroh
While there is a widespread recognition that online tracking is important for the operation of optimized marketing campaigns, I believe there is a widespread lack of understanding about how online tracking impacts actual campaign analysis and management. First and foremost, it is important to recognize if and how conversions are tracked BACK to actual clicks (from search ads, etc.). The reason why this is so important is that it is very difficult to understand the impact of bid changes, ad copy tests, etc. if the conversions are not attributed to the actual management activities. Imagine a situation where conversions occur days after the initial click (e.g., loan applications). If you don’t synchronize that conversion with the click management tactics, you will often be mislead about the success or failure of your campaigns. So, as a foundation of an online search campaign, it is very important to establish the link between the conversion and the click-date. This can be complicated, because the tracking codes must be “sticky” throughout the conversion process. And there are other complications, such as cookie length, “conversion attribution to which click?” questions (e.g., the first click or the last click?), and whether “intermediate conversions” such as the online application itself can actually predict a lagged conversion days later. Without a firm understanding of that process, however, it is very difficult to make informed decisions regarding your online campaigns.
Behavioral Targeting: Going beyond Rich Media, Display and Search
By: Matt Naeger, Executive VP, Operations
Although it's surrounded by consumer privacy concerns and lackluster technology and expertise to back up the concept, behavioral targeting still remains to be a hot topic among marketers.
The combination of Search and display can be a tactic to find and leverage targeted audiences by yielding an influx of searchers looking for a particular brand or a visible brand driving an increase in searchers. We learned in 2008 that Google might have already ventured into the behavioral targeting arena (re: Behavioural targeting: Not necessarily a bad idea). Although unconfirmed, this could be the push that the industry needs in order to develop an effective behavioral targeting system that delivers more directed advertising to consumers, increasing conversion rates, while gathering relevant consumer information in a transparent manner.
Rich media is starting to evolve as a way to harness behavioral targeting. For example, applets that allow user interaction and special effects can be effective in branding because of its user engagement opportunities.
