Tag Archive - PPC

Comparing PPC spend to SEO spend is a dead science

October 6, 2011 in SEO with 0 Comments

There is an interesting conversation going on at LinkedIn in the LinkedSEO group, started with this question/statement;

88% of online search dollars are spent on paid results, even though 85% of searchers click on organic result. I am constantly bewildered at the number of online businesses that seem to waste huge money on a poor search strategy. They don’t invest in advanced SEO strategies to create organic traffic but they will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the shareholders at Google happier.

The responses are what you would expect, some frustrated that this is the case, some pointing out PPC is a very easily measured investment and SEO sometimes is not.

Having worked across both for sometime I think it’s an often misused comparison, like comparing print spend to SEO. Yes PPC and SEO are both search, but the business challenges and goals for each are on many occasions different, isolated and unique to the channel. This isn’t an anti-integration statement, just basic planning and I think many are now moving to accept all media should be integrated. There is a special relationship between PPC and SEO, integrated planning can be effective, but as ‘buys’ they are as different as chalk and cheese.

It’s worth looking at ‘where’ spend comes from, and that is – marketing teams with established off-line buying patterns. And the difference between online/offline is summed up here (PDF).

The high-volume, low-dollar, high-complexity nature of Digital programs makes it the most labor-intensive medium in the advertising industry.

Not only do we plan and buy digital media, but, for search, we implement that buy as well. This is important because marketing teams are used to buying media and paying a percentage fee to cover planning and buying. So, SEO is a stand out because it isn’t a ‘buy’. Some may suggest link buying is media spend, but really it’s more of an implementation spend.

And this is important. For a marketing team a traditional media buy can look like two distinct transactions – one to pay for the media and another to pay the agency. SEO looks more like consultancy.

I guess it’s easy to see how a PPC buy looks much more similar to a traditional buy than SEO does.

Marketing teams are not used to buying ‘people’ they generally want to pay as little as possible on the planning/buying and as much as possible on the media.

Search Predictions 2010

January 3, 2010 in Blog, Branding, Google AdWords, Search Marketing, SEO with 0 Comments

So, what’s in store for search marketing in 2010? Well here’s my predictions as to what both SEO and PPC marketers will be looking at in the year to come.

Brandrank

As search starts to move away from Pagerank and towards brandrank a brands social graph will become more important. Merely monitoring social media will not be sufficient, brands will need to engage fully with social media to ensure they have fresh comments and links from the major social media sites.

Personalised Search

No two people will see the same results page on Google, this will mean straight forward ranking as a metric will truly disappear. Behaviour will group consumers together and this will require best of class web analytics.

Beginning of the end for the Browser

Google Chrome OS and Windows are both moving towards search in context, in other words right from your spreadsheet or word processor. The danger of this move is that search could become interruptive.

Filters over Indexes

Google rarely if ever filters results to display something different to that which is in its index. But, as trends and queries and clicks start to tell Google a story for certain quick moving topics filters may be the only way to display relevant results until the index has had time to catch up. For some the index may never catch up. Universal search was the answer to this but as so few news sources have access to Google News blogs with fresh content still struggle to beat old, authoritative pages.

Mobile Search

Pizza, Taxi… enough said? Okay, probably not, Yes people are now using mobiles to search and apparently for more than just Pizza’s and Taxi’s! Those two terms accounted for a huge percentage of searches on Yahoo’s mobile search platform. Mobile is here, it is different to web search. Less navigational terms, lots of misspellings, so be ready…

PPC in 2010

Like most advertising channels paid search has had a rough time in 2009, budgets squeezed, conversion rates down, longer user journey’s and a consumer focus on value.

PCG (FMCG)

Packaged Consumer Goods companies will ‘invent the challenge’ in 2010. Paid search hasn’t been a natural channel for these companies because of it’s direct response nature. With users now spending 13 hours a week surfing the web compared to about 3.8 hours a day watching TV this is a channel that can’t be ignored and won’t be ignored by this vertical. Especially when you consider how many people do both together.

The FMCG company that invents the challenge, asks the right questions and creates a search strategy that works will have competitive advantage. What’s the consumer action if we don’t sell online?

Split Testing

Major PPC campaigns have never had enough split testing. The idea of testing creative copy in paid search adverts is widely used, but testing copy/landing page/offer isn’t. Next years winners will be those who follow the pure players; be able to quickly test hundreds of landing pages against many different offers. The prize will be conversion rates well above industry averages and whilst giving cost benefits will also promote growth and profits.

Watch out in your vertical for signs of your competitors carrying out large multivariate testing on their paid search campaigns.

Vertical Search

As CPC inflation will continue the smart retailers are already fully embracing vertical search, feeds will become important, especially if we consider browser-less search.

Integration

Last year saw many brands embrace integration and this will continue in 2010 as they look to drive even more value from advertising budgets. I’m not sure the world is going towards full comms planning in 2010 but everything is shifting in that direction. As people live in-line (concurrently off-line and on-line) so integrated campaigns make more sense.

Pure-Play vs Clicks’n'Bricks

We will see a greater divergence in search marketing from these two differing business models.

Many pure players have ‘mature’ search marketing campaigns, gaining extra impression volume will require them to think outside of the funnel. I can see pure players heading towards becoming publishers as they seek out greater volume from ‘emotional’ as well as ‘functional’ keywords.We may also see the expansion of pure players into bricks and mortar, although Amazon have denied they are opening any physical shops.

The clicks’n'bricks retailers will move further towards multi-channel as ‘click and collect’ becomes more widespread. The key for these retailers will be analytics, finding ways to measure both foot traffic and phone orders prompted by search.

In summary it’s going to be an exciting year for search.

Ad Sitelinks the new Google Ad Extension

November 8, 2009 in Google AdWords with 0 Comments

Yet again Google add a new extension to their paid search offering – Ad Sitelinks. Sitelinks for natural search results have been around for sometime, they usually appear for brand terms or results that are absolutely the ‘best answer’, they appear as up to 8 links under the result, like this

Google Sitelinks for Natural Search

Google Sitelinks for Natural Search

Not so long ago Google widened the scheme to include single line Sitelinks that also appeared for results on generic keywords and on results that are not just position 1, such as this:

Single Line Sitelinks

Single Line Sitelinks

This site appears 7th for the keyword but has single line Sitelinks. Generally Sitelinks are about stability of the position and age of the domain.

Google Ad Sitelinks

In the last week Google has launched Sitelinks for Ads, so paid adverts on Google can now show Sitelinks. They look like this:

Ad Sitelinks Google

Ad Sitelinks Google

How do you get Ad Sitelinks?

How are they generated? Firstly you need to modify your AdWords campaign and here is Google’s instructions:

  1. Log into your AdWords account
  2. Click on the Campaign Settings tab and go to the “Show additional links to my site” section under “Ad extensions”
  3. List the names and URLs of up to 10 internal links (prioritizing the most important links first)
  4. Click “Save” when you’ve finished adding your links
  5. If a user search triggers your ad to run with Ad Sitelinks, our system may include up to four of your additional links on your ad, along with the main landing page link

What Triggers Ad Sitelinks?

Well, similar to natural search Sitelinks and Google has this to say on how they are triggered:

  • Your ad should have the first position above the search results
  • Your ad should have a very high quality score
  • Your Ad Sitelinks URLs must direct users to pages that are part of your main website, and allow users to navigate freely

Actually I don’t think anything other than a brand term would trigger them.

Key Point for Integrated Search Strategies

What’s important is that you need to be position 1, for those sites that have reduced brand position in AdWords because natural search picks up the slack may have to revisit that strategy. Previously advertisers have carried out extensive positional tests where competitors bid on their brand term to find the optimal position for their advert, for some this has been as low as 4 or 5, this may need to change.

What’s the Cost?

All links within the advert are charged at the same rate, so if you are paying £0.10 per click and Ad Sitelinks appear you will pay £0.10 no matter which of your links is clicked.