Search is Not Just a Direct Response Vehicle!

By Aaron Goldman, VP, Marketing & Strategic Partnerships

Starcom MediaVest Group recently created a unit called SMG Performance Marketing to house its search, directory and direct groups. In reading ClickZ’s coverage of this news, one quote jumped out at me.

“In the past you might bring a search capability or a directory marketing capability to play [for a client],’ said Mullahy. Performance-based media planning, with its focus on lead generation and sales, ‘demands an integrated look across all forms of media in all different channels,’ she added.”

Now I have lots of friends over at SMG Search and SMG Directory and I know some of the leadership there so I can attest that these are smart folks with good intentions. That said, I don’t understand why they are lumping search into a performance division.

As I emphasized in my rant last week on Google’s toggling back and forth between promoting itself as a brand marketing and direct response solution, search does more than drive “lead generation and sales.” It is certainly the best performing DR channel available to marketers today but ignoring the impact of search on brand awareness and consideration metrics is leaving money on the table.

We recently completed a study with Microsoft that proved that mere exposure to search listings -- no click, no on-site actions, just the impression -- provides a significant lift (10+ points) across 6 key metrics:

• Unaided Brand Awareness
• Ad Recall
• Brand Favorability
• Positive Attitudes (towards the brand)
• Purchase Intent
• Likelihood of Recommendation

News flash: people who are searching are not always ready to buy immediately. But search can still be effective in engaging consumers and moving them down the purchase funnel. Treating search solely as a DR channel and silo’ing the folks who manage it into a DR group makes it impossible to capture the full opportunity.

Two different studies – same message?

Last month, the Center for Media Research posted an article on their blog titled, “More Gray, More Affluent, More Internet Shopping” , which looked at the results of a survey conducted by The Media Audit. The survey was conducted in more than 80 metropolitan markets.

Some key takeaways from the study included:
· The number of adults over the age of 50 with annual incomes of $50,000 or more has increased from 17.0 million in 2004 to 22.3 million in the past five years.
· In the past 12 months, 65.6% of these people made at least one purchase online, up from 50.2% in 2004.
· 62.4% of the “graying and affluent” households have incomes greater than $75,000

If marketers are ignoring this market, they’re missing out big time on a potentially very profitable group.

In contrast, on May 6, Joe Marchese posted a blog on Online Spin titled, “Meet the ‘New’ in New Media Consumer”. In it, he responds to a paper that discussed the new crop of consumers and how they interact with brands today, “Consumer 2.0: Five Rules to Engaging a New Breed of Consumer.” The paper states the five rules include: authenticity trumps celebrity, niche is the new norm, bite size communication dominates, personal utility drives adoption, and consumers own brands.

Mr. Marchese states in his post, “Look at all five rules from the perspective of putting more power in the hands of individual people. People control the ability to influence peers as much as, if not more than, celebrities. People demand relevance from brands looking to enter highly niched communities. People want to consume and share conveniently sized messages. People adopt what is most personally useful to them. . . People will define your brand.”

His conclusion, which he describes as “not-so-brilliant, border-line obvious” – Treat your message like a product.

So, how do you proceed?

1. Read the postings mentioned above as well as the research paper.
2. Understand the intentionality behind the five rules. My favorite is, “Niche is the New Norm – Consumers 2.0 do not form a mass market. They relish in choices and look for products and services that speak to them personally.” (I mention this below as well.)
3. Practice the five rules for creating, managing and optimizing online campaigns.

Niche is the New Norm – mass marketing the same message to all groups of people is not going to work anymore for anyone, not just the Gen Y’ers. It is imperative to understand who the audience is, what they are interested in, why they should care, and how your brand is going to help them. People are looking for choices, and not just any choices – but choices that appeal to them at any age.

Maybe the simple message is to be aware and pay attention.

Posted by: Steven Bauer, Director, Paid Search

How to Determine Purchase Latency

Purchase latency is the time that passes from when a customer first visits a website to when they eventually make a purchase. Knowing your website’s latency period helps a marketer answer a few tough questions:

· How many visits, and how much time, elapses before customers make a purchase?
· Should you invest more in acquiring new customers or in generating additional value from existing customers?
· How long before you can measure ROI on media investments?
· Do different visitor segments respond differently to advertisements?
· How long should I test copy or landing pages?
· How do I assign credit for a sale (introduction to site or visit of the purchase)?

The first step is to find the average latency period for the website. As all online marketing should be tagged with campaign tracking codes from your web analytics (WA) program, WA is exactly where to start. Use the website average as directional and segment deeper for the traffic in question. Although each WA program has different names for the reports, here are a few examples and a quick analysis:

1. New vs. Returning Visitors – who is coming to the site and who ends up purchasing? Based on these reports, we see evidence of latency with 51% of visitors being new but 73% of purchases coming from returning visitors:





2. Loyalty – How often do folks visit on average? How does this differ from purchasers? In the charts below, 49% of visitors only saw the site once (consider cookie deletion). The good news is that 53% of purchases were from this visitor type. That said, a large chunk of buyers don’t convert until visit 4 or 5. Based on your accuracy goals, you’ll probably want to wait until at least 80% of visitors have purchased before judging ROI success.





3. Time Passed Since Previous Visit – The chart on the left supports the previous slide that most visitors visit only once. For those folks who do return, it’s important to note that there is a significant portion of visitors who wait 2-4 weeks before they return. In terms of purchases, 65% happened on the same day of their first visit (note, there can be multiple visits in a day), and 77% happened in the first week. Although some may be repeat purchases (another report available in WA tools), 11% of purchases happened >30 days after the initial visit.





Determining the average purchase latency window depends on the level of accuracy desired. In the above example, I’ll capture 80% of purchasers within 14 days or 93% in 60 days – how confident do I need to be before I measure ROI or establish an A/B test winner? It’s situational dependant. If you want to be more technical in determining statistical significance or confidence intervals, there are calculators out there. Further, I urge you to segment your traffic – visitors from Search typically have a much different latency period than visitors from display. Finally, what’s the point of gaining these insights from the data if you don’t take any action to shorten it, re-target during, personalize return visits, incorporate it into test durations, etc.? Data leads to insights which lead to actions – don’t stop halfway.

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

There’s no S-T-R-A-T-E-G-Y in Testing Technologies

Last week, Google announced their webpage testing technology, Google Website Optimizer (GWO), has been released from beta and is available, at no cost, to the general population. The questions poured in asking if this would cause our clients to take page testing in-house rather than rely on agency offerings. Here are a few reasons why this free technology isn’t going to be an immediate game changer for Resolution Media:

1. Testing is not just about technology. GWO is an execution tool. Prior to even using the tool, the strategy must be developed, data analysis completed, benchmarks/KPIs established, hypothesis written, confidence intervals agreed upon, etc. GWO isn’t going to tell you to test page two of the checkout process vs. a category landing page vs. your product page template…much less, what the alternate page designs should look like.

2. Landing page testing is as much about gaining new traffic as it is about improving the experience for current visitors (OK, a close second). Besides crunching historic bounce rates and conversion rates of landing pages, SEO & PPC opportunity must be included in the page selection strategy. As both Natural and PPC rankings factor in page relevance, someone versed in traffic levels, competitive opportunity, and ranking algorithms certainly should be part of any page design. It’s important to test which headline visitors react to more, but you also have to weigh which one may bring your more visitors via Natural Search or lower your PPC CPCs/ROI.

3. Lack of experience, talent, and ownership of page testing. No matter how many flash demo or help pages exist, there is a barrier to entry on experience on running tests as well as talent to interpret the data. This won’t exist for long, but in the meantime the testing talent is found in many agencies and WA consultancies. In addition, who, on the client-side, would own a testing initiative? IT, Marketing, E-Commerce?

4. Limitations of GWO. Like GA (Google Analytics), GWO is built for the general masses and that will not suit advanced/custom experiments or data analysis. For example: editing tests mid-stream, throttling test delivery, conditional element testing, traffic segmentation, testing non-conversion events, and more. You’ll need someone experienced in test design to navigate the waters of technology selection as GWO isn’t right for some experiments.

5. Google paranoia. Be it justified or not, there is reluctance to share conversion data (and profitability) with a media vendor who sets pricing (i.e. minimum bids for AdWords placement).

I don’t want to rain on the parade of a great tool; I am a big fan and user of GWO myself. In fact, I am thrilled to see the shift from optimizing incoming traffic to including the website experience itself. However, GWO is not the full answer to webpage testing. A quote sums it up well: “Using technology without strategy is a waste of technology.”

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

The Hypothesis is Wrong, Jeff

To follow-up on last week’s “Google Buys Arizona and Southern Idaho” post hypothesizing on a shocking title leading to the most popular post ever, um, it was wrong.

In my defense, the version that didn’t make it through RM editorial had a much more enticing title involving one starlet from “Herbie Fully Loaded” that just may have toppled the current winner. Who knows, with my natural search keyword prowess, it may be too early to declare defeat. Special thanks to Google attorneys who have ignored my outright false statement. (They aren’t allowed to do something evil like send me a cease & desist anyway, right?)

With the not-so-popular post appearing on 4/8, let’s look at the tape:

Daily Visits Report:


Top Content Report:


Ouch, not even close. I knew the A/B testing instructions from mid-January was the post to beat, but I didn’t even crack the top-25. I did have several comments such as “Your title totally made me read the post in my iGoogle today.” Unfortunately, reading our blog in a RSS feed reader doesn’t show up in our Google Analytics KPIs. Consider this hypothesis…BUSTED!

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Why do Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have Web Analytics Platforms?

Yahoo joined the group last week with the announcement to acquire IndexTools and today will be announcing it will be offered free to partners & clients. Google started the trend with the purchase of Urchin, which has morphed into Google Analytics, which is also free. Microsoft AdCenter Analytics, formerly known as Gatineau, is in beta stages currently with early reports showing many valuable and unique segmentation/demographic reports. AdCenter Analytics is also free.

Yahoo always had an analytics tool built deep in their Search Marketing suite, but it was mainly for a deeper analysis of your PPC performance only (I speak from legend, not experience). The big ‘ta-da’ was seeing “assists”, the previously searched keywords that introduced the user to your website prior to when they finally made that conversion. Either it didn’t catch on or wasn’t scalable outside of PPC and now it’s been replaced with an industry leader. So why the race to provide free analytics tools for customers? IMHO, to increase their media spend:

• Competing on analytics is the future of paid search (and all digital media). There is only one 1st place ranking on “auto insurance”, which causes CPC prices to continue to rise. Direct marketers must go deep in data analytics to measure the ROI and in turn, their budget limits. These engines are providing the data to show you the value in your media buys and hopefully take media from less efficient venues (i.e. newspaper/tv).

• SEMPO’s Annual State of Search Survey 2007 asked "How would you likely react to a hypothetical scenario where the cost of Paid Placement steadily increased for the next two years?” The top response: “Improve Site Conversion Efficiency”. How do you measure site conversion efficiency? Web analytics, of course. What happens when you improve site conversion rates? You can spend more money on media, especially on expensive terms that historically have not converted.

• Yahoo is a very large media network, with IndexTools customers will have an all-in-one ‘data-warehouse’ that should show the interaction of display and search buys. In addition, a search engine would be able to see domains (websites) sending large volumes of traffic (and conversions) and may add them to their networks. More quality traffic = more media spend.

• Advanced PPC optimization includes using Web Analytics data. Optimized media = more spend.

• Search engines (may) want client conversion data. If I were Google, I’d love to know which keywords were most profitable for clients and HYPOTHETICALLY capitalize on these strengths by raising minimum bids. There is no evidence of this, but it’s a concern of many.

• Search engines (may) want competing engines’ pricing. If I were Yahoo, I’d love to know that top spots for “auto insurance” were going for $25 per click on Google when only $8 on Y!, because HYPOTHETICALLY, I’d could set minimum bid prices or change my quality score to factor in bid price a bit more than normal. Engines could also look at comparative natural search volumes by engines to help reverse engineer competitive ranking factors or improve their own. There is no evidence of either example, but it’s a concern.

Whatever the reason for the trend, it was solidified today… Building or buying, search engines are offering free web analytics platforms to clients. Hey Ask.com, where you at?

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Google Buys Arizona and Southern Idaho

Hypothesis: If I use a shocking blog post title, I will receive more traffic than any previous blog post on this site.

Um, so Google didn’t start buying U.S. States? No, not yet. My apologies; this is a post about the importance of having a hypothesis before optimizing search campaigns. Thanks for participating.

In our data-centric, direct response world of Search Marketing (PPC+SEO), you can basically run an experiment on everything: different ad copy, bids/positions, landing pages, match types, day-parts, geo-segmentation, meta titles, keyword density, calls to action, and much, much more. Because we have this ability, does that mean we should test just to test? Of course not. Does that mean we should always be testing something? Probably.

With all of the available options, one should choose an experiment based on its potential for positive impact on campaign goals (aka, KPI’s). From looking at digital media ROI reports or on-site behavior in web analytics, there is a vast amount of data to comb over and ask, “Is this what I expected?”, “Can performance be improved?”, and “…by how much?” Further, compare the data to industry benchmarks to see if your expectations and performance goals are in line. Speculate on why things are happening and what influences them.

Once you’ve identified a testing opportunity, step one is to write a hypothesis. In other words, write down the steps you are planning to take and the improvement you expect. “Copy A will outperform Copy B in Click Volume, CTR, and Conversion Rate by using ‘Official Site’ in the ad title.” “The Category X landing page would have a higher entry to conversion rate by using product images over people images.” “Broad matching keyword phrases containing over three words, I’ll gain more high converting ‘tail’ traffic.” Wrong assumptions will be made; it’s OK, as not trying is much worse than failing. The next steps of a good experiment include establishing baseline data and KPI success metrics as well as determining the test duration and projecting performance. Remember, testing always starts with a hypothesis. Don’t just test to test, have a goal and design that test around it.

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Green Marketing

One of the hot new buzz phrases is “green marketing”. Green marketing is all about identifying how eco-friendly client products and services are—everything from online banking to the appliances you buy for your home.

Jacquelyn Ottman of J. Ottman Consulting, Inc. has written a great article on this topic. I recommend everyone read the article. But in the meantime, here is a summary of the five important points when engaging in green marketing.

1. Know your customer. If you want to sell a green product to consumers, you first need to make sure that the consumer is aware of and concerned about the issues that your product attempts to address. (Whirlpool learned the hard way that consumers wouldn’t pay a premium for a CFC-free refrigerator because consumers didn’t know what CFCs were!)

2. Empower consumers. Make sure that consumers feel, by themselves or in concert with all the other users of your product, that they can make a difference. This is called empowerment, and it’s the main reason why consumers buy greener products.

3. Be transparent. Consumers must believe in the legitimacy of your product and the specific claims you are making. Caution: There’s a lot of skepticism out there that is fueled by the raft of spurious claims made in the “go-go” era of green marketing that occurred during the late 80s–early90s — one brand of household cleaner claimed to have been “environmentally friendly since 1884”!

4. Reassure the buyer. Consumers need to believe that your product performs the job it’s supposed to do — they won't forego product quality in the name of the environment. (Besides, products that don’t work will likely wind up in the trash bin, and that’s not very kind to the environment.)

5. Consider your pricing. If you're charging a premium for your product — and many environmentally preferable products cost more due to economies of scale and use of higher-quality ingredients — make sure that consumers can afford the premium and feel it’s worth it. Many consumers, of course, cannot afford premiums for any type of product these days, much less greener ones, so keep this in mind as you develop your target audience and product specifications.

Posted by: Steven Bauer, Director of Paid Search

Proving SEO ROI for E-Commerce is Simple

How do you prove ROI with SEO? This question is causing a debate in the blogosphere…if only they were to Find Resolution here. The current answer out there is SEO ROI can’t and shouldn’t be tracked to ROI. I totally disagree.

ROI must be tracked if an agency or 3rd party wants to win and retain business (SEO, PPC, or web dev). In fact, I’d be skeptical of any agency that didn’t show ROI performance or question any e-commerce business that didn’t want to see the monetary value generated from a major investment such as this.

Increased Sales from SEO Efforts / SEO Cost = ROI

In my opinion, tracking SEO ROI is simple. Using web analytics (WA) data, add the sales increases of targeted keywords achieving higher positions to sales generated from targeted referral domains and divide by what was paid in employee hours or agency fees for research, implementation, and data analysis.

So why are people overcomplicating this or disagreeing that you can put an ROI on SEO? Here are a few arguments followed by my responses:

- Looking at monthly SEO ROI is too short of a period as ranking results can take 6+ months to achieve.

• First, ROI is not the only KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to be tracked. And I agree, in the first few months it’s about eliminating technical hurdles, and getting pages indexed. Set short term goals with different KPIs or set expectations on a short-term negative ROI, but the cost portion of the initial months can’t be overlooked in quarterly or annual ROI reports.
  

- Factors other than SERP Rank effect revenue, such as seasonality, product changes, price, or promotion.

• Yes, account for those factors in your ROI forecast; adjust that forecast as necessary. Rarely have I encountered a company without months or years of past data, even if it can only be used directionally. Further, ask for the advertising calendar to anticipate lift from a Super Bowl ad or radio push.

- Increase in traffic/clicks, rather than revenue, is a better determinate for success.

• There is something to be said for the numbers game, but ultimately why waste optimization efforts or bandwidth on visitors whose intent does not match that of the website’s (sales). It’s not too difficult to get traffic; it’s difficult to get converting traffic. Selecting the right keywords to match the desired behavior is an important process with SEO.

- What about a non-e-commerce website or branding intentions?

• I wouldn’t accept a penny from any client without first establishing and gaining agreement on quantitative goals and KPIs. Be it time on site, clicks, or page views, I can set a monetary value to that success and measure that ROI with the above method and benchmark against past data.

- What if the engine algorithms change?

• They absolutely will change; “improve” is a better descriptor. If SEO efforts are in the name of providing a good/relevant user experience, providing accessible content, and steering clear from shady practices, the site, and its ROI, should not be in jeopardy.

- What if the site has a poor conversion rate or poor checkout process that hinders revenue?

• The client should be focused first on converting the quality traffic they are already getting. Every visitor is a potential sale. That said, your benchmark data should reflect the poor conversion rate and it becomes a constant.

Bottom line(s): 1) never optimize anything (or pay for optimization via a 3rd party) without an initial hypothesis on what you plan to achieve, and 2) gain agreement on all quantitative methods and timeframes to track the progress/achievement of that goal. Go forth and measure your success!

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Focus on Quality Score Factors

On the second day of the SES Conference, I attended a very informative lecture on the subject of Quality Scores titled, “Ads in a Quality Score World.”

The panel of speakers included the following (in order of apearance):

- Joel Lapp – Reprise Media
SVP, Acct. Management & Media
- Jon Kelly – Sure Hits
President
- David Miller – Yahoo Search Marketing
- Frederick Vallaeys – Google
Adwords Evangelist

The opening speaker, Joel Lapp, began by giving a brief history of the evolution of Quality Score and how the Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) have altered their process over the years. The major theme preached by all speakers was the importance of relevance as the main method of improving a particular ad’s Quality Score.

In the early times of QS indexing, the engines would rely heavily on CTR and historical ad performance as a dominant factor. Though these items still play a very large part in the overall QS of an ad, the engines found that CTR does not always mean that an ad has significant relevance. The question became does traffic equal quality?

During Jon Kelly’s (Sure Hits) presentation, he mentioned some areas of QS indexing where the engines need improvement. The main point was the desire by advertisers for greater transparency into the ‘secret element’ that goes into the QS equation process for each engine. Knowing this information would provide advertisers with a deeper understanding of how to adapt their ads and LP consumer experience.

The other item was in regards to very specific areas of advertising and the lack of historic data that a search engine may have for a particular ad. As stated before, historic performance plays a vital role in determining QS.

However, if the ad is brand new or if the advertised item is new to the search industry as a whole, the historic data will be very limited. In this instance the QS of a particular ad may suffer, even though all other elements could be very relevant to the consumer search queries. The panel mentioned that the engines could give advertisers the benefit of the doubt on particular cases when the level of data is small.

David Miller with Yahoo Search Marketing stressed the importance of advertisers to constantly review and optimize their account structure. He noted that a big part of improving QS begins at the keyword level, and making sure that the account is organized so keywords that are performing well are not grouped with poorly performing keywords that will bring down the QS of the entire ad group.

The best part of the discussion came from Frederick Vallaeys with Google. He mentioned that advertisers should avoid slow Landing Pages, which is something that is important to note as some companies still prefer to use flashy microsites that take longer to load than static pages. In terms of Google’s QS indexing, he noted that Google has no plans to add conversion rate as a metric when determining Quality Score. He summed up the lecture by saying that advertisers should, “Obsess over user experience, not Quality Score.”

All in all, this was an informative and useful session. While the details of how engines decipher quality score remain a mystery – any time the belief that user experience is key to SERP success is relayed, it’s a beneficial lesson to marketers.

Posted by: Matt Duffy, Account Supervisor

What's in Your RSS Reader?

My mantra (and Rick Pitino’s apparently) is “Success Is A Choice.” I’ve blogged numerous times that self-education is the key to getting ahead in this industry and that the knowledge is readily available in the 100’s of blogs, websites, and networks out there. Sure, you can get the full list of “Top” SEM/SEO blogs here, see Barry Schwartz’s Top 76, or enjoy Rand’s Top 50, but I’m interested in what you find useful. Please use the comments section to list your top 3 to 5 industry favorites (be it SEO, PPC, or WA). I’ll start…

I read the following most often (outside of this one, of course), but as my role has changed over the years, so has this list:

1. Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik
Why: Google’s “Analytics Evangelist” doles out tactical advice. No comments on other blogs, no predictions, no regurgitation of the news…this is a “how to” blog if you are looking to learn and master WA.
2. Sphinn Hot Topics
Why: A good aggregator of PPC, SEO, and Social Marketing news and discussions. Users submit and “Sphinn” the articles they like and the more popular posts gain higher placement (warning: just because it’s popular, doesn’t mean it’s news). It’s in the most prominent spot as the content changes frequently.
3. AdAge Digital
Why: When major digital news crosses the wires, you can read it here. Also a great place to learn about what other Omnicom agencies or competitors are up to. Advertising Age is read by everyone who’s anyone in the ad biz, and it’s probably best if you are able to hold a conversation with those people. ;)

Three very diverse blogs…if I was to add a fourth, it would be a ClickZ or MediaPost, where you can get general Search industry news/updates. What about you? Please help others optimize their RSS Readers & Bookmarks!

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Lessons Learned from Blogging

I learn by doing, simple as that. About a month ago, I was inspired to jump on the blog bandwagon and am surprised how well what I’ve learned translates into Search Engine Marketing:

1. Picking/finding an interesting niche topic (interesting for you and readers/searchers). With Technorati’s latest State of the Blogosphere Report showing there is a new blog created every 1.4 seconds (and over 70 million blogs already out there), the more specific the target, the better if you are to gain readership and search engine rankings. I wanted to keep track of wines I’ve enjoyed over the years and avoid repeating the non-enjoyable ones. There are an endless amount of wine reviews sites out there, but few focusing on ‘cheap’ wine (<$15) and few using humor in the reviews. I used tools like Keyword Discovery to find words like “cheap” and “inexpensive” + wine = ranking opportunity.

2. Publicize it at every opportunity. Grass-roots marketing at its finest. The catch 22 of search engines rankings is they consider your current traffic a factor determining your SERP rankings; to increase your chances of top rankings to gain new traffic, it helps to already have a baseline of active visitors. Involve your friends for guest postings. Heck, use your work blog to promote your personal blog. http://awineaweek.com/ – check it out. I also made myself findable by creating RSS feeds and submitting them to the major readers and track the adoption. I’ve created/updated profiles in the major social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, MyBlogLog, Technorati, Del.icio.us, etc.) to include a link to my blog. After giving a few thumbs-up/favorites/reviews out to others, the reciprocity has been overwhelming.

3. Basic web development and HTML. I was astonished how easy it was to select a basic template on Blogger.com and create my blog. Leaving the WYSIWYG template and making HTML edits was a bit scarier. Thanks to trial and error, I can now read, write, and edit basic HTML. Outside of HTML, I conquered many other web development tasks such as buying a domain name, setting a 301 redirect, and masking my free .blogspot.com domain.

4. Applying SEO best practices works indeed. Using keyword-rich URLs and post titles, manually adding alt tags to my images, and editing meta data are minor tasks that the common blogger is not doing and should help with search engine rankings. I’m still struggling with adding a site map and playing nice with the W3C validator, but there are endless resources out there that tell me how to do this. 72% of my March traffic is from new visitors, 56% coming from search engines. I installed tags for Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer to help me see what the search engines see (and got indexed quickly!).

5. Using web analytics. I know where my traffic is coming from and why it came from there. I know that a review about 1 Chianti brought double the traffic of 10 Pinot Noirs combined. I know the right mix of small vineyards to popular ones, or California wines to French wines. I know what works because I use web analytics. I installed Google Analytics in 6 minutes, without knowing a lick of HTML. I’ve set up multiple behavior profiles and have my traffic segmented four ways to Sunday.

6. Seeing results. I’ve lived through the pain of DMOZ submission. I’ve seen how much and how quickly StumbleUpon can generate traffic. I have seen the power of Google Webmaster Tools firsthand. I know what trips Yahoo!’s trigger for rankings. I am in a better position to add value to clients because of my blog experiences.

Learn by doing…and enjoy a good cheap wine in the process!

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Brand Keywords, Improving the Impact of Navigation Behavior

To piggyback off Jeff’s recent post concerning Branded Keywords, I thought I’d disperse a little knowledge from recent research. Last year Atlas Search published a study that “…suggests a big chunk of search ad spending is wasted because advertisers pay top dollar for high ad placements clicked by consumers who are en route to their sites anyway. Listings tied to such "branded" keywords, typically a company's name or products, eat up about half of search budgets, Atlas estimates.”

The study concludes with three recommendations, which I strongly endorse, to reduce the negative impact of navigation behavior on search campaigns.

- Separate out your branded keywords when looking at clicks, costs and performance.
The structure of an account within the search engines is critical to establishing a strong foundation for campaigns to perform well. Therefore, there must be at least one campaign dedicated solely to brand keywords. Performance goals for brand keywords should be different than the goals for non-brand keywords so you understand fully the affect these keyword types have on your account.

- Test what happens if branded key phrases are bid down or removed altogether.
No doubt, brand keywords can be expensive. But they do not have to be. Test lowering bids incrementally to see what you need to pay to maintain position in the search engines.

- Consider all touch-points that led to a conversion, not just the last ad.
Much discussion is happening these days on attribution of conversion – does the last click model still work? Consumers are not exposed to just search, or just display or any other type of marketing opportunity. Therefore, it is important to be able to understand the effect of these multiple touch points have in convincing the consumer to convert.

Brand Keywords – do they belong in paid search campaigns? OF COURSE, but it is critical to understand their intent, to establish attainable goals and measure based on those goals.

Posted by: Steven Bauer, Director of Paid Search

Branded Keywords: To Buy or Not to Buy?

It’s typically in the best interests of an SEM to include branded keywords in their PPC portfolio for a multitude of reasons, such as including the superior performance in the overall performance numbers and the added media spend (if paid on a percent spend model), but is it in the best interest of the client?

I consistently get two questions from clients regarding spending their media dollars on branded keywords. Hopefully, my answers show the strategic benefit for the investment.

1) “If the searcher knows my brand name, won’t they eventually find my website?”
Hopefully. But, bidding on brand keywords moves the chances of being found from ‘maybe’ to ‘probably’. A searcher could just as easily find a related competitor product, not find anything, or find one of your resellers/affiliates. It’s amazing to see the misspellings people search on, the complex queries in which your brand name may appear within, or brand taglines where you don’t yet/no longer appear. As smart marketers know, visitors = potential conversions and you have to capture that searcher to make them a visitor. Invest in a two week test (factoring in any latency/seasonality, of course) and bid on branded keywords. Then compare those traffic volumes and conversion rates to a similar two-week period where you didn’t target that traffic with Sponsored Listings. Did you get more traffic? Was the ROI worth continuing? I’m betting on yes and yes.

2) “We already have top rankings in the Natural/Organic section, why pay for Sponsored Links?” (Or, “Won’t PPC listings cannibalize my free traffic?”)
Reason one for buying brand terms: Get additional traffic, which should result in additional conversions. See the previously suggested test to verify this as some cannibalization will occur, but typically ROI will justify it. Reason two: Displace your competition/own the limited real estate. Some searchers simply favor Sponsored Links as they’ve found (thanks to savvy marketers) the copy reflects their wants, the links are targeted to deep and relevant pages, and they don’t see them as evil advertising (hey, if Google put this as the top listing, it must be the best). If you aren’t there, your competition will be. Reasons three and four: Utilize different copy and/or landing pages than your Natural listing. Free shipping promotion? Seasonal landing page? Spring sale? Different strokes for different folks – cover your bases. Finally: Because industry studies have shown appearing in both Paid and Natural top positions dramatically increases click thru rate, visitors, actions, pageviews, orders, and more.

To Buy or Not to Buy? ‘To Buy’…that is the answer. Still not convinced? Well, you’d be the first and I’d love to know why you weren’t sold (or if data showed you the ROI didn’t support it). As a final reminder, branded keywords should be tracked separately, but not looked at/optimized in a vacuum, as much of their traffic comes from repeat visitors.

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

More on that other word . . . Intentionality

What is the big deal with this word? Well, not so much the word itself, but what does this word mean and why should search marketers care?

It’s all about INTENT, or the purpose behind what we all are doing; the intent of the advertiser as well as the intent of the consumer.

Let’s begin with the intent of the advertiser. From one perspective, the intentionality of search marketing is to drive traffic to an advertiser’s website. Is there a specific type of traffic they want to target? Are those types defined by age, gender, income or need?

From another stance, the advertiser is striving to deliver the best and be better than their online competition.

Let’s hope that advertisers also have the intentionality of providing the consumer with a good user-experience while they are online.

The intentionally of consumers is as varied as the consumers themselves. That said, awareness, information and purchase are the three main internationalities of consumers.

The challenge of an advertiser is to understand how these two, sometimes diverse, internationalities can work together to the benefit of the consumer and the advertiser. For example, the intentionality of automobile manufacturers is to sell cars and probably more cars than any other automobile manufacturer. The intentionality of a large group of consumers is to buy a vehicle that is fuel-efficient and eco-friendly. Therefore, for auto makers to sell more cars they need to listen to consumers and offer more vehicles that are fuel-efficient and eco-friendly.

So, what is the big deal with this word? The big deal is this—advertisers must be able to execute on their intentionality and that must, in turn, address the intentionality of the consumer.

Posted by: Steven Bauer, Director of Paid Search

Have You Achieved Rockstar Optimizer Status?

After my previous “How to Become A Better Search Marketer” post, young grasshoppers asked which specific skills to develop and managers inquired on what skills to dig out in interviews. IMHO, there are at least ten core skills that must be present before someone has achieved Rockstar Optimizer Status (R.O.S.) in the land of PPC & SEO optimization.

1. You realize the endgame of data analysis is to gain INSIGHTS that lead to ACTION. If no action is taken, your crunching was for naught. Again, don’t be scared to test the ideas that the data leads you toward.
2. You spend at least 15 minutes per day reading tactical blogs, and can rattle off your favorites.
3. You are an Excel expert when it comes to analyzing data. You have embraced the Pivot Table and use it weekly. You know how many rows are in Excel (a great interview question) and mass quantities of data don’t scare you.
4. You optimize to multiple success events (it’s not all about immediate revenue) and know the true business value of each KPI metric. Further, you understand/agree with how those KPI goals were derived.
5. Before doing any important data analysis, you visit the website as a consumer – from SERP to checkout. (adapted from Avinash’s #8 in Signs You Are A Great Web Analyst)
6. You track/act on competitor and industry trends with research from ComScore, Nielson, AdGooRoo, Hitwise, Alexa, Google Alerts, Compete, and buzz tools. You take advantage of your competitor’s bid management tools weaknesses. You know when they run out of budget for the month and plan accordingly.
7. You “start high, then dig deep” with data. Then you go back up to tell a compelling story about why certain changes need to be made and the big-picture impact on the business/results that makes your recommendation a priority.
8. You are an avid tester: A/B/C Splits or Multivariate, Entry pages or exit pages, copy on the website or on the SERP, PPC ranks or match types…you’ve tested it all and still aren’t satisfied. You “play offense, not defense” as Avi