Search Engine Advertising Choices Search advertisers are offered two basic marketing models, paid-ads and free organic ads. While there are advantages and disadvantages to both models, one clearly stands out as a better advertising option than the other. Why is it then that advertisers from small business to mega-corporation tend to show higher interest in the more expensive and least effective of the two? Most SEOs speculate that advertisers understand paid-advertising better than organic placement. As much of search marketing is conducted in-house and optimization is a learned-skill, corporate marketing departments lean towards the very simple model of paid-search. Organic search engine placement continues to be perceived as a nebulous service that can take time to show results. On the other hand, paid-ad placements tend to show up minutes after they are established and bidding one's way to top spot is relatively easy. With search ad-spends sometimes topping five or six figures per month, many SEOs shake their heads at businesses that refuse to invest a much smaller (generally low to mid four figure) sum on organic optimization. Ranging from small to mega sized operations, the number of paid-ad advertisers that ignore organic optimization seems to be growing. Over the past three years, independent research has consistently confirmed that search engine users tend to click on the center column organic (free) ads far more often than on paid ads. Earlier this year, search marketers benefited from a number of published studies that clearly demonstrate the higher value of organic placements. While the results of this research is easily available to all, traditional and tech media stories tend to focus on paid-search advertising. Two studies that made an enormous impact on the search marketing field this year are the Eye Tracking research conducted by Enquiro CEO Gord Hotchkiss and a whitepaper published by Lisa Wehr, CEO of OneUpWeb titled, " Target Google's Top Ten to Sell Online ." Gord's study shows the basic F (or triangular) shape search user's eyes tend to follow when examining search results. Lisa's study found that search users are up to 6X more likely to click on the first few organic results as they are to choose any of the paid results. A third study, " Accurately Interpreting Clickthrough Data as Implicit Feedback " , released earlier this week by Cornell professor Thorsten Joachims looked at the links users found on search engine results pages and questioned why they choose which link. The results show again the importance of high organic search engine rankings. The researchers asked subjects to perform searches and looked at which results they viewed, which they clicked on, and what happens if those links are mixed up. The Cornell study found that search users tended to view (look at) the first five organic results with a high percentage of them (approx. 2/3) viewing the top two listings with 42% of them selecting or clicking on that link. The number of search-viewers halves to approximately 1/3 of users viewing sites appearing in positions 3, 4 and 5. The numbers drop to about 1 in 10 users tending to view the 9 th and 10 th placed sites. When a search user views search listings, it doesn't necessarily mean they click on those listings. In this context, to view means to examine. Users tend to examine the text used to phrase the reference link as well as the descriptive paragraph appearing beneath the link before deciding to click on it. This is especially true for the smaller number of searchers who view listings found in the 3 rd to 10 th positions as users who examined those listings tended to spend more time on the results page before choosing the link to click first. In other words, 1/3 to 1/10 of users are conducting preliminary research by seriously reading the text used to phrase the results before clicking. This finding was backed up in another part of the Cornell study that showed when the same Top2 results were reversed, the text used in the link and description had a notable influence on which link the user clicks. The research found that when results were switched around, 34% of the users would still click on the site ranked in first place, even when they had seen the now #2 site there earlier. In his Alertbox review of the Cornell study, Jakob Nielsen succinctly notes, " If users always clicked the best link, then swapping the order of the two links should also swap the percentages, and this didn't happen. The top hit still got the most clicks." These findings led the research team to suggest there are two biases playing out in the minds of search engine users. The first is the Trust Bias, which leads the searcher to believe that a site ranked in the number 1 position is there because it must be the best reference for that keyword. The second is the Quality Bias, which considers the text used in the results to determine which is the best site to choose from. For search engine marketers and more importantly, search engine advertisers, there are two glaringly obvious implications. First of all, it is extremely important to be found at the Top of the search engine results. Being in the Top10 is likely sufficient for many businesses but the sites getting the most business are found at the top. To further these findings, Gord and Lisa's research clearly shows that searchers are choosing organic placements over paid-ads. Secondly, the copy used in your Title tag and site content has to be more compelling than that of your competitors. Search users are reading before clicking. If they have to make a choice between three sites that are all perceived to be equal (those in the 3 rd to 5 th positions), they will almost always choose the one with the most topically relevant descriptive text and link-copy. Put together, the results of the three studies show that search engine users are able to tell the difference between paid and free listings and tend to trust the free organic listings more than they do the paid ones. The studies also show that search users, while still tending to put a higher bias on the Top5 results are becoming sophisticated enough to seriously consider descriptive copy before choosing to select a link. In other words, the search users are starting to make what appears to them to be the wisest choices when selecting search advertising. The advertisers are advised to do the same. Article by Jim Hedger, News Editor, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com - Published Oct. 2005
Search Engine Marketing Issues
Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and editor of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter. Article by Jill Whalen, www.searchengineguide.com - Published Aug. 2005
Enough With the Upsells Already!
A
few days later, it happened again. I was at a website, transferring a few
domain names. After I added the transfer service to my cart, the upsells
started. Page after page came for hosting; domain parking; useless, mass
search engine optimization; anonymous WhoIs registration - you name it! Did
I buy any of the offers? No. After reading the first one or two, I
scrolled - without reading a word - through FOUR more pages of upsells
before reaching the final order page.
When
someone adds something to their shopping basket or calls to place an order,
by all means offer them special deals to increase sales. This strategy has
worked to bring in additional revenue for decades. Don't, however, bombard
the customer with upsell after upsell. Not only will the effect be
completely lost after three or four attempts to make additional sales, but
customers will also quickly become irritated. They may even hang up or
click away to another site.
SEO/SEM Pricing Models
Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and editor of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter. Article by Jill Whalen, www.searchengineguide.com - Published Aug. 2005
Summer 2005, Must be the Season of the Niche The summer of 2005 is going to be an interesting one. The world of search will be fundamentally different by Labour Day. From the recent changes at Google (the effects of which will be shown over time in the core algorithm), to the introduction of several unique types of search engines, dozens of fresh ideas and innovations are finding their way onto our monitors each day. The landscape of the search environment is going to alter its appearance before the leaves change colour in mid-autumn. These changes should serve to solidify the market for a number of new niches in the search-marketing sector. The environment has already shifted in substantial ways. For the most part, these shifts seem natural and in most ways will be enormously beneficial for search engine users, advertisers and marketers. It is a bit overwhelming though. The introduction of so many new features, tools and types of search in such a short time makes it difficult to phrase thoughts about the future of search, even three months down the road. In the last year we have seen the introduction of new types of search tools such as local search, vertically themed engines, video search, and desktop search appliances. The four major search engines and about a dozen well placed competitors have spent the year collectively inventing, innovating, acquiring, and coping from each other. Not only are these new tools very different from the general search engines of previous years, the quantity and number of sources these tools draw references from has grown. As Andrew Goodman points out at Traffick, the number of places a search-generated reference might appear has also grown with Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN furiously creating new real estate to display them on. For search engine users, the environment is evolving in what appears to be a beneficial way. Information continues to become more accessible as the mainstream search engines learn to better sort results with stricter relevancy standards. Local search offers users an experience combining the Yellow Pages, comparison-shopping and instant mapping. Vertical search engines cut a lot of static out from results by honing in on industry and interest specific search results. Personalization features like desktop search applications, toolbars and mega-storage search-friendly Email accounts can save hours of looking for information a user has already seen each month. Search engine users appear to endorse the new tools and features by adopting their usage. A recent Harris Interactive survey commissioned by iCrossing shows that consumers are rapidly adapting to make use of the various new types of search. According to the survey of 2139 US adults between April 19 - 21, 51% of US adults use the Internet for shopping with 80% of them using the 'net to compare prices. Local search is gaining a presence with nearly 50% of users looking for a local shop to purchase goods researched over the Internet. 54% of searchers use the Internet to find people and businesses instead of the phone book with most looking for personal contact information. By the end of the summer, it is reasonable to expect this trend to have a major effect on the services offered by search marketers and the expectations of their clients. The search marketing industry is already a highly stratified environment with paid search marketing and organic search optimization defining the two basic search-systems influencing the environment. Those focusing on paid search marketing have spent the last year learning to take full advantage of new places for ad placement created by the Big4 and their competitors. They are also learning how to best use the application programming interfaces offered by the major search engines to target their clients' advertising based on geography, time and season. There has been a rationalization in keyword prices over the past six months with a general lowering of keyword click-bids but concerns over click-fraud continue to grow. Click-fraud in the pay-per-click market is said to be on the rise but a highly professional niche is growing to address the problem. Since last year, several firms have established PPC Fraud analytics and detection services. Anyone with a high ad-spend should consider the advice offered by these firms. Another interesting paid-search niche is the growing Pay-per-call billing model in which advertisers pay a flat-fee per call as opposed to a bid-fee per click. Currently offered by AOL and MIVA (formerly FindWhat), Greg Stirling from the Kelsey Group predicts the pay-per-call model could grow from its infancy today to a $4billion industry by 2009. According to Stirling 's study of the industry, major online publishers MediaTracks and ZiffLeads are changing their business models to promote pay-per-call. Kelsey says the pay per call model will help drive live-leads to businesses that tend to be more valuable than electronic leads as there is immediate personal interaction between the potential buyer and the vendor. As it is easier to track telephone connections than it is to trace an individual over the Internet, pay-per-call is also promoted as a solution to click-fraud. Serving the most obvious paid-search niche is the legion of smaller firms existing in, or jumping into, the search-advertising arena. From the major traditional media publishers such as the New York Times or TimeWarner through the AOL network to long-term players such as Kanoodle and FindWhat (MIVA), a significant number of Internet users are being delivered paid-advertising that matches the topic or context of the document the ad appears on, for fractions of the costs of Google and Yahoo Search Marketing advertising. Over on the organic Search Engine Optimization side of the industry, several major changes that happened in the past twelve months are showing their effects today. The first has been the introduction of new forms of search such as local search and vertical search tools. In both cases, unique databases are used to extract search results, even when the service is offered by one of the major search engines. Google local for instance draws its original results from the Yellow Pages based on zip codes instead of drawing results from its general database. The vertical search engine Become.com has its own spidered database and its own propitiatory ranking algorithm known as Affinity Index Ranking. By expanding the number of databases search results are drawn from, the search firms inadvertently create new niches and services for SEOs to specialize in. A second trend over the past year is the flattening out of Google traffic numbers and the subsequent increases MSN and Yahoo have enjoyed. Today, the combined traffic driven by MSN and Yahoo exceeds that from Google. That might not sound like a huge shift, two years ago however, Google drove almost 85% of organic search traffic by feeding results to practically everyone. For the past year, MSN and Yahoo have created their own spidered results. This has led to a relevancy challenge between the major search engines. New and unique algorithms are starting to take hold across the search landscape with MSN, Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Become, and others using engine specific algos instead of drawing results from a competitor. This trend leads to specialization within SEO shops with different staff becoming expert in different engines. For example, Google just updated its core algorithm and is examining documents within websites with an ever-expanding view of a website's historic existence. This shift has led to a major shift in link-building strategies and has pushed many SEOs to review their techniques. Thing is, what works at Google won't necessarily work with MSN, Yahoo, or Ask Jeeves. As search engine users become more adept at finding the best search service for their specific need, the range of options for search advertisers in both paid and organic search marketing systems is increasing. Users are starting to adopt more sophisticated means of search and in turn search engines and ad firms are becoming more sophisticated. As the knowledge necessary to conduct a full fledge search engine marketing campaign has increased exponentially, specialization of services is taking shape both in SEM shops and in the world of freelance tech-workers. Established SEO and SEM shops are hurrying to catch-up. Those entering the field might want to think about niche-market SEO and SEM services. The environment is ready to support them and for those with well-developed expertise, that environment is only getting more resource-full. Article by Jim Hedger, News Editor, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com - Published Jul. 2005
Working out a marketing plan for new and
evolving websites is a bit more complicated than it used to be. There are a
few new things to be considered before embarking on a search marketing
campaign than in previous years. Search marketing has become more important
and is thus becoming more professional. With growing acceptance of online
communication tools, and a number of alterations to the faces of search
engines themselves, the marketing arena has Three general factors push the increasing sophistication of the search-marketing sector. The first is simple; consumers are becoming much more Internet savvy, as are the businesses that advertise on the net. The second is far more complicated; the nature of search marketing has been affected by the popularization of new communication techniques such as instant messaging, email/desktop search, blogs, press releases, social networks and special interest forums. The major search engines are both driving and being driven by the development and proliferation of cool new tools. The third factor is the changing faces of the search engines themselves. Over the past six months the major search engines have introduced new features and advertising opportunities, and new forms of search engines have emerged, giving SEOs and SEMs a lot more to think about and plan for. Smarter stuff makes us all
smarter New Tools Advertisers in the information sector are taking advantage of social networking applications such as Google or Yahoo Groups, or one of the thousands of special interest forums around the web. Along with a growing community of other knowledgeable workers to bounce ideas off and receive information from, social-network applications help knowledge-based workers promote their strongest assets, their knowledge. Social networking groups are extremely interesting for the engineers at the major search engines. While they are somewhat interested in what is being said, they are even more engrossed in who is saying what to whom and how that knowledge spreads across a network of related persons. Smart SEOs and SEMs are helping their clients use these types of groups to subtly promote their websites by teaching them how to use forum-signature links and how to responsibly offer good and relevant advice. The new applications and tools offered and/or honoured by the search engines have changed how search engine marketing is practiced. Both blogs and social networking tools have been around for a few years. After the early halcyon days of spam-exploitation, most search marketers have settled down to use these tools wisely to offer long-term benefits for their clients. In this way, search marketing requires a longer-term commitment between client and practitioner especially in light of the changes in the search engine environment brought by new communications technologies. The changing face of search What has changed is the stuff behind the veil at every major search engine though; the more things change the more they seem to be the same. Each search engine has similar features and applications such as local-search, paid-search advertising and desktop tools. The smaller search firms also have similar features and applications, some having more innovative core-functions than anything the Big4 currently offer. There are also a growing number of sector or interest specific search tools called vertical search engines. Part of the search engine environment is fragmenting into a more specific list of tools from highly specialized search tools to local search engines designed to find shops or products just down the street from you. While played on an enormous field, search marketing is often seen as a game of inches. Knowing how to get sites placed in local and vertical venues is important for your clients. Local Search and Mapping Luckily, it isn't that difficult to get your client listed in a local-search tool. The largest like Ask, Google and Yahoo have deals with the phone companies and publishers of the Yellow Pages to include all their listings, regardless of whether the businesses listed even have websites. The first thing a search marketer should do when considering local search is to use an internet based local yellow pages or telephone directory to see if their client is listed. If they are a new business, the search marketer should call the phone company or phone directory publisher in their client's region to get them into the local-business database for future spidering. Search marketers should also place geographic identifiers such as street address, telephone numbers, zip or area codes and even GPS coordinates in the footer of each page of the site. Vertical Search Vertical search engines are betting that as the Internet grows more complicated, search users will turn to a search tool they know specializes in the product, service or activity they are directly interested in. LookSmart has jumped on the vertical search bandwagon with five unique verticals and another vertical search tool, Answers.Com has developed a deal with Google to provide information culled from its various vertical databases. Earlier this year, the shopping focused vertical search tool Become.Com was launched by industry leaders Michael Yang and Yeogirl Yun who quickly hired industry legend Jon Glick away from Yahoo. Most high-quality vertical search engines are spider-driven or draw from spider-driven databases so getting a site into them should be as easy as paying attention to relevant link-building however SEOs and SEMs are advised to check into vertical search tools for clients by their specific sector and to ask their clients if they know of any sector-specific search engines. Desktop Search
The number of methods used to express and recall information across the Internet are increasing and becoming simpler to use. Webmasters and advertisers now incorporate audio/video files, blogs, and Flash animations into their websites and the major search engines are indexing them. Search engine marketers are finding the environment in which they practice evolving faster than the techniques used in their practices. There are literally dozens of different tools to use when building a web presence and each approach will have an effect on search marketing efforts. Fortunately, much of what is new is based on the foundation of how spider-driven search engines have always worked. New technologies provide better ways to communicate ideas, services and products and savvy search marketers are learning to use them. As long as spiders act like spiders and search engines continue to spider sites, finding the way to the future by following the paths of the past continues to be the best marketing plan. Article by Jim Hedger, News Editor, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com - Published May 2005
Dealing with Times of Great Change
Features vs. Benefits vs. End Results If you've been in the copywriting realm for very long at all, you've heard the phrase "features vs. benefits." It's a fundamental copywriting principle and driving force behind much of what we, as copywriters, create. But there's also another aspect to this equation. What happens after customers buy your product or service? Once they've used what you have to offer, what will be different in their lives? What will the end results, of their buying decision, be? Getting your customers to look at the end results of their actions can be an extremely powerful persuasion tool that you'll want to incorporate into your copy. Let's look at features, benefits and end results and see how all three work individually and collectively to create a targeted push to the point of purchase. Features - The Basic Outline of Your Product or Service Features, in copywriting, are a starting point. They provide a basic outline for what your customer needs to know. Features describe (most often) the attributes of a product or service. If we're using the example of a cordless, telephone-answering system, some features might be:
For a person who knows nothing about cordless phones with answering machines, this list might not mean much. It's a basic blueprint of the telephone and nothing more. Benefits - Make the Product or Service More Personal Benefits enliven the features. Benefits make the features, and the product or service, more personal. They explain how the features will improve the customer's life in some way. Using the features list above, see what the benefits might be. (The list below was taken from Panasonic™ marketing materials and relates directly to their KX-TG5230M model phone.)
Benefits make the features personal. They explain how the features will be of use in the customer's life. End Results - A Glimpse Into the Future We can take this process one step further, however. After customers buy the phone, and after they use it, what end results will they experience? As asked before, how will their lives be improved? What will the effects of their buying decision be? Let's go back to our list and add end results as the last sentence in the benefits list.
Do you see what the end results have done? They've given the customer a glimpse into the future. The feature states that the phone offers 5.8GHz technology. The benefit goes on to explain that 5.8GHz technology is important because it offers clear reception and safety. The end result wraps things up by stating the customer will have a life filled with freedom and no interference from their highly advanced system. Other end results point out how the phone system will make each user's life more convenient, how this smart investment will save time and money, how it will conform to one’s personality and how the phone will lend flexibility to the customer's life. When you create your copywriting plan, be sure to list the features and build your benefits as usual. But, for added power, don't forget to include end results that will help the customers visualize how your product or service will make their lives better. Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors with The Step-by-Step Copywriting Course. Be sure to check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)."
Search Engine
Marketing FAQ Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and editor of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter. Article by Jill Whalen, www.searchengineguide.com - Published Apr. 2005 How long does it take to get listed in Google?
Search Marketing in 2005 - Adaptation Ensures Evolution The environment is changing rapidly. The core temperature of the search engine sector is continuously growing warmer as interest in search-advertising increases. Over a dozen consecutive quarters of this intensifying heat is melting the ice cap that formed a glass ceiling between search engine marketers and mainstream advertising consciousness. Long-term revenue streams are now flooding as the melting ice cap sends buckets of liquid capital flowing into all regions of the sector. Changes to an environment are often signaled by several seemingly unconnected events, the effects of which only become fully apparent as they unfold. The list of seemingly unconnected events grows longer every day. For months astute observers have noted the very real effects these events have on how search results are provided. An example would be the effect of Blogs both on popular culture and Google results. Another is the growing adoption of broadband in the United States. Other examples include, Yahoo's growing relationship with Hollywood, Google's global goals, MSN's declaration of tech-war, Ask's recent acquisitions, and this week's purchase of About.com by the New York Times. With search engine related items hitting the financial news on a daily basis, multi-billion dollar revenue projections and the sudden realization of what were once science-fiction fantasies, a shift in corporate group-think was inevitable. One day, the print-addled ad-execs on Madison Avenue woke up, smelled the silicone and went to the bank. This shift in corporate consciousness has, to a large degree, caused and affected the evolution of the search engine environment. Over the past three years, various concepts of search have moved in from the peripheries towards the middle on the radar screens of corporate marketers. Being creatures of habit and working from their power base, they went where the money was. Until recently, the largest advertisers appeared to define search as the PPC (pay-per-click) offerings of Google's Adwords and Overture, and the myriad of smaller pay-per-click programs. Unlike the technically challenging and unpredictable world of organic SEO, PPC programs give marketing departments solid numbers to base budget estimates and outcome projections on. PPC programs with their massive contextual distribution networks caught the attention of corporate marketers and their investments in PPC have sustained and driven both Google and Overture's bottom lines. The effect of reliance on PPC has had a positive effect on the business of search, allowing both Google and Yahoo to post record profits on astronomical revenues in the last quarter. Investment in the search sector is also driven by the success of PPC/ad-delivery programs. That bulk of money is being pumped back into innovation and acquisitions with both giants and their smaller rivals expected to release dozens of new features in the coming months. Corporate reliance on PPC has had a negative effect on growth in the search sector as well. With more attention being paid to paid listings, many large corporations neglected their websites' organic placements. Numerous studies have shown that most online traffic is generated by the organic or unpaid listings and that actual sales tend to stem from a holistic branding approach to search engine marketing. Reliance on one form of search-advertising has almost certainly inhibited online sales for many larger corporate sites, a situation which places their confidence in search-advertising models at risk. A lowering of advertiser confidence may be evidenced by a slight decline in the number of ad-purchases and keyword cost-bids in January though post-Christmas budget-shock might be an invisible factor. For the past few weeks search engine journalists have written about the lack of corporate interest in organic placements and the perils of ignoring the free listings. Another study released today by Nick Hynes of UK SEM shop, The Search Works notes that over two thirds of FTSE100 (UK version of Fortune100) companies do not appear in the Top20 under keyword phrases relevant to their industries. Similar results can be found when searching for Fortune100 companies at Google, Yahoo and MSN. This prompting is starting to have an effect with an increase in corporate awareness about the importance of organic placements. If corporate advertisers find a profitable balance between organic and paid search marketing, this balance will form the basis of optimal search-marketing campaigns for the coming years, thus providing both advertisers and the SEMs who serve them a sense of solid ground in the midst of the rapidly changing environment. Ultimately, the effects on the environment have been very positive for most of the SEO/SEM sector. Established SEM shops tend to be coping quite well with the sudden changes and are happily netting increasing volumes of big and small fish. They are hiring and training new SEOs and retraining older staff in SEM technique in order to keep up. Several independent SEOs are even turning work away as they are simply too busy to take on new clients. Conventional wisdom says that the organic SEO shops that learn to combine organic and PPC services (either directly or with a third party) will not only survive the changes in our working environment but will be in a position to provide a much more comprehensive service to their clients. Today's bottom line for both corporate advertisers and the SEMs who serve them is simple; learn, adapt, evolve, integrate skill-sets and thrive in the ever-expanding world of search. As the floods come in, don't be afraid to get your feet wet. Article by Jim Hedger, News Editor, StepForth Search Engine Placement, Inc. www.stepforth.com - Published Mar. 2005
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"What's the use of a good quotation (algorithm) if you can't change it?" Dr. Who (The Fortune Program)