Search Marketers – Too Generalist?

Posted on | October 12, 2009 | No Comments

In the last few years the online marketing field has grown to become more sophisticated, in line with the increasing demands of more knowledgeable clients and the constant evolution of the search industry. They say that the only constant in search is change’. They are right. A few years ago, it was more than feasible for a search marketer to be a generalist in SEO and PPC who dabbles in web analytics. But today, online marketing has expanded to include social media marketing (SMM), Web Analytics is a job title in itself and both SEO and PPC have grown to include a vast range of methodologies and analyses specific to each field.

Today, dynamic websites quickly become monoliths with 100s of pages compared to the traditionally static 5-10 page site. Dynamic is the new status quo, which makes SEO more tactically challenging. As businesses begin to grasp the significance of attribution, search marketing is being recognised as a channel in the marketing mix, rather than being just an independent online cash cow whose relative role is not measured among the other marketing activities.

Employers Playing Catch-up
However it does not appear that most companies who hire internal search marketers recognise the rapid, dynamic evolution of the field. Most search marketing job descriptions appear to be written for the generalist, who is capable of dabbling in it all, but mastering little.

Social Media, Pay Per Click, SEO and Web Analytics are job titles in themselves. If working for a small business, certainly, one person can man the fort on all these elements, but with varying interest and competence in each. What is concerning is that businesses expect both experience and expertise in each of the above specialisations without in fact acknowledging that each is in itself a specialisation. Being a generalist does not breed expertise in any of them.

Job Descriptions Wooing Search Marketing Candidates

One recent job description listed the following required skills:

Google Analytics
Google AdWords
Alexa
Facebook for business
Twitter for business
SEOBacklinks
Meta tags
Directory listings
Blogging
PR
Copywriting
Website HTML + coding
Design skills in Photoshop

The salary? No specifics were given, but the word ‘underpaid’ was utilised.

Today’s search marketers need to be analysts, writers, coders, designers, tacticians, marketers and strategists. Yet as the search marketing field continues to evolve, can this generalist approach be maintained while delivering quality search expertise?

I do not believe it can. Businesses need to start recognising the broad expansion of Internet marketing and start making hiring decisions accordingly or the average search marketer will continue to know a few things about everything without ever becoming an expert in a chosen online field.

Category: Search Engine Marketing
Tags: SEM

Going Off Track, Hurts You & Your Clients

Posted on | September 25, 2009 | No Comments

Going Off Track Sitting at the first Manic Street Preachers concert in Vancouver in 10 years, I began musing about all the people who came to the show so many years on, to show their continuing support of the band. We waited in line for the doors to open, then we waited for another two hours until 10pm for the band to get on stage, but when they started playing, it was a new flavour and it took many a song before any of the 90s classics were sung. This got me thinking.

Over the 10 year absence on the Vancouver stage, the band would not doubt have gone through an evolution. This is to be expected, but if their performance was so foreign to what they used to be, is that not forgetting about the people who supported them all those years ago? How many people walked out of that concert feeling bittersweet, going home to play some of those old records because their expectations were not met?

One for All, All for Me?

Remember those first few major clients that catapulted your company in the right direction with that major case study that featured your strengths or the solid reviews that drove more business?

How often in business are those first clients put into the legacy client pile and considered ‘small’, whereas once they were ‘the client to please’? I guess the key question here becomes whether your company is to your legacy clients what it once was or are they scratching their heads wondering whatever happened to that company they supported in the early days?

The same can be said for employees. Companies that uphold core values that have been developed upon fundamental principles are rare. Having said that, employees that work towards a common goal in which they believe, are arguably just as rare. Today it seems that to an increasingly large number of people, a job is just that, a job, work, a daily grind.

Are you recognising the people in your organisation that continue to oil the cogs and keep the machine running smoothly? Too quickly do we forget how intricately our success is interwoven with the support of our clients; the demand for our service offering and the service delivered by the people who deal directly with our clients. This can be said of a rock band that relies on its fans, as much as it applies to a company whose offering is built on the collective intellectual property of the people who work there.

So, no matter how much your company evolves and grows over the years, do not lose sight of the type of company you strove to be to your clients and your employees in those early days, when you had everything to lose. Financial success has this tendency to take the ‘we’ out of the achievement and focus solely on the ‘I’. Well, you didn’t get to the top alone and the faster you recognise this, the sooner you will be a better company, boss or colleague to the people around you.

Category: SEM Agency
Tags: SEO Standards

Breaking the Search Marketing Silo

Posted on | September 17, 2009 | No Comments

In 1886 John Wanamaker coined the phrase that would define traditional marketing:

“I know that 50% of my advertising is wasted…
…I just don’t know which half!”

Then in 2000, search marketing made its official debut with the launch of Google AdWords. This redefined the marketing game, as Pay-per-Click (PPC) gave rise to a measurable form of consumer-initiated pull marketing. Not only was the consumer driving the interaction with the advertiser but also each level of the online touch point was highly measurable. Oh, and it was cheap. Back in the day when AdWords hit the market it was dirt-cheap with bids starting at 0.05 cents. This ability to so precisely target a market, deliver a highly relevant ad message initiated by the ad target and then accurately measure the resultant interactivity was to the traditional marketing world a panacea to all those campaigns that had previously gone into the 50/50 pool.

So what did traditional marketing do? It gave search marketing its own budget, its own department, its own staff and they watched with glee as their cash cow grew. Slowly, as the years rolled by, search marketing continued to outgrow all other forms of marketing, bringing in ROAS and ROI figures with which traditional marketing could not hope to compete. This continued to make search marketing more independent, more isolated, more siloed.

Online marketing also evolved and what may initially have started with banner advertising and PPC expanded to user-generated content, online video, blogging, social networks, podcasts, widgets and mobile marketing, just to highlight a few. Thus, increasingly, ‘search marketing’ did its own thing while ‘traditional marketing’ continued business as usual.

Old Barriers Meet New Barriers

The rocky relationship between sales and marketing has been well documented in the last decade. BusinessWeek online describes this in an aptly titled article - Sales and Marketing: Lost in a Thorny Forest The title follows to say: Our survey is in, and its picture of divided and dysfunctional efforts to achieve cooperation is fascinating, surprising and – a little sad

The almost rehearsed divisions between sales and marketing attitudes unfold:

Marketers see themselves as vastly underappreciated, and they regard sales teams as self-serving and short-sighted. Meanwhile, sales teams see themselves as indispensable, and they look upon marketers as ivory-tower strategists out of touch with the real world’s pressing demand of generating revenue.

Diagrammatically we can illustrate the sales & marketing relationship as follows:

Sales & Traditional Marketing Clash

The clashes are frequent, barriers to communication are embedded in the misconceptions held by each party and attempts to communicate often result in miscommunication, even open altercations. But while sales & marketing battles it out, what is happening to search marketing?

While in traditional marketing there is a fundamental understanding of integrated marketing communication, there appears to be a significant disconnect in integration between traditional marketing channels and search marketing. The examples vary, from a company advertising an online promotion omitting to place their website address in the TV ad, to no mention being made in online promotions of offers redeemable offline. Sometimes the online messaging diverges so greatly from the offline offer that it becomes difficult to recognise that it is the same brand being represented. A significant benefit of search marketing is the opportunity to track offline & online interaction and the ability to see the resultant website traffic just after a direct mail piece or e-mail campaign has been implemented. However, cross-channel communication is required to reap these benefits.

As much as sales & traditional marketing have a feisty relationship, at least there is one to speak of! Between traditional marketing and search marketing there appears to be very little interaction. A potential illustration of this relationship is represented below:

Search Marketing Silo Where sales and traditional marketing may make some headway, search marketing is completely out of the loop. Often it appears that search marketing and traditional marketing efforts are run by different departments and different people that barely know of the others’ existence.

What people seem to have forgotten is that ’search marketing’ is in fact another form of marketing – it is an additional channel to the existing ‘offline’ marketing repertoire of print, TV, radio, outdoor etc. Search marketing should then be integrated into the offline channels much in the same way that these offline channels are integrated with one another. So, instead of creating another division, it might be wiser for marketing to reign in the search marketing team and create in them an ally against those pesky sales people.

Category: Search Engine Marketing
Tags: SEM

How Important is this ‘Twitter’?

Posted on | September 6, 2009 | No Comments

Representing Twitter Remember when all your friends were jumping on the Facebook bandwagon but you resolutely held your ground until the nagging became unbearable? With a sense of resignation and personal betrayal for losing the battle, you joined the hordes of millions and decided to “re-befriend” the long lost friends of school with whom you have had absolutely zero contact for years, in order not to look like the only loser on Facebook with 5 friends.

Time has passed and you’ve made your peace with Facebook only for yet another social media networking tool to hit the market. This one’s called Twitter and it has been around for a while. It has reached the point of popular adoption, with a growth rate of over 1,382% between February 2008 – February 2009.

This time, it’s not really about your friends but rather the act of ‘following’ people, some of whom you have met but the majority of which who are industry thought leaders, celebrities or quite simply complete strangers. So, you ‘follow’ these people and in the interim read their 140 character messages that appear in real-time, whilst sharing your own 140 character tips, thoughts, news, gems of wisdom, arbitrary daily occurrences, personal schedule, interesting links, emotions, traffic reports, industry events etc. all in the hope that someone will ‘follow’ you. Again, ‘less is more’ is not a common mantra seen on Twitter. One of the goals appears to be to collect ‘followers’ and if you’re Ashton Kutcher, once you reach a million followers, Oprah will cover the story. So, as you can see, this ‘followers’ thing is a pretty big deal.

So, do you really need to be on Twitter?

It’s All Relative

If you work for Zappos, Twitter is fairly paramount, given CEO Tony Hsieh has revolutionised the manner in which a CEO of a prominent online company interacts with his audience.

On the other hand, if you work in a specialised field, for example as a geophysicist, the networking circle is so narrow that online interaction itself is scarce and beyond this, the highly technical nature of the field, including the jargon-loaded terminology does not lend itself to a social networking environment. Allow me to demonstrate a potential Tweet:

“Made progress on p-wave anisotropic measurements of the Cascadian subduction zone at the transition from the lithosphere to the astenosphere”

Moving right along.

The line becomes a little bit blurry when in a position of dependence, for example the job hunt. It is difficult to ascertain how the hiring company shall perceive the use of Twitter by the potential candidate. This, at the commencement of the recruiting process will depend entirely on the HR Director. If interested in social media networking, a candidate’s presence on Twitter may be an unwritten prerequisite in successfully proceeding to the next stage of the hiring process. However, if the HR Director falls into a more traditional realm in which social media remains a subject that is being tentatively explored, then an active Twitter profile may go unrecognised.

On a side note, if you are in job hunt mode, and are looking to secure a position that in some form or manner involves an understanding of the online marketing industry, you should utilise the social media platforms that are causing a stir in the online market – Twitter being one of them.

If the words ‘social media’ fall anywhere in your job title, it would be advisable to Tweet and perhaps write something insightful for your clients, rather than just sharing news on the shoes you purchased or the restaurant you are currently frequenting – unless your clients are supposed to meet you there!

So, if you think that Twitter is just pointless babble and have no desire to join the noise, do not feel pressured to do so. Having said that, it is difficult to derive value from something that you have not yet tried yourself, so before making any hasty conclusions, the only way to answer ‘To Tweet or not to Tweet?’ is to jump on and give it a shot. Unless you’re a geophysicist, of course.

Category: Social Media
Tags: Twitter

With Social Media The Truth Comes Out

Posted on | August 24, 2009 | No Comments

It must be said that the travel and accommodation industry are probably looking at social media and thinking of their business counterparts: ‘You poor bastards, you never stood a chance!’ The truth of the matter is that TripAdvisor has been providing user generated travel reviews since 2000, making the travel industry veterans in the business of mitigating poor customer experiences voiced in the form of online reviews. That is not to say that every hotel knows how to manage its brand & reputation online, but with over +1 million business reviews and nearly +2 million candid traveller hotel photos uploaded on the site, it would be difficult for the travel industry to stick its head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening.

Wakey Wakey

Bad Company Reviews on Twitter For a microblogging take on company reviews, jump on Twitter Search and type in keywords such as ‘shit company’, ‘worst company’, ‘crap company’ and you will find some eloquently vented frustrations of the dissatisfied customer. Consumers have never been more dangerous. Negative word-of-mouth (WOM) has gone viral. The traditional definition possibly no longer even completely communicates the awesome duplication effect of WOM online. It is certainly no longer a case of one dissatisfied customer telling 8 to 10 people of their experience.

Perhaps ‘viral word-of-mouth’ should have its own definition rather than being a sub-category of word-of-mouth. It would describe:

‘The mass online duplication of a positive or negative consumer experience by viral communication through social media platforms and relevant websites’

The consumer is empowered, they like the fact that their dissatisfaction may cost a company a few thousand or millions of dollars a year. Though it must be said that consumers are also more than willing to share the love when they have a stupendous tale to tell of customer service excellence. If it were not for this keen desire to share their experiences, Yelp.com would have a large hole in their business model. To the contrary, the site is expanding as their reader base continues to grow and share ‘what’s great and not so great’ in their area.

The beauty of this online chitter chatter is that the truth about companies starts to come out and those with dirty closets filled with skeletons will not be able to hide their secrets for very long. Consumers have always felt like the little guys in relation to the large, evil, polluting corporations, so now that David can take on Goliath, David comes out in full force. The sling of choice – social media.

Category: Social Media
Tags: SEM

Avoid Getting Fired on Facebook

Posted on | August 12, 2009 | No Comments

Human resources experts and recruitment agencies have been handing out quality recruiting advice by the boatload, making it freely available online for many years now. We seem to take heed of this advice during the interview process and when in ‘job hunting’ mode, but as soon as we have secured a job, somehow we seem to throw caution to the wind and begin our tirade, and it’s often about the boss!

Back in the day, prior to social media and the ability to tell countless millions of people how we feel about our day, or the fact that our dog is sick, or how we hate working late, we would let off steam at a private face-to-face rendezvous with a close friend. But, how narcissistic we are, how we love to share our thoughts with others in order to receive sympathy or encouragement. We are ‘till the end, social creatures, for better or for worse.

So, when we have that irrepressible urge to tell our boss how much we hate our job or publicly call him a ‘wanker’, it would serve us well to remember whether we added him as a Facebook friend or not!

What to do? What to do?

Most interview tips will clearly state NOT to bad mouth your employer, former or current, in any way whatsoever. So, why do we think it is okay to do it when holding down a position with the current employer?

So, here are a few options to review when that unmistakable urge hits you to slander your boss on ANY social media platform:

1. Think – before you post anything ludicrous, potentially damaging to your own reputation or someone else’s think about the potential consequences.

Remember that this is in fact the Internet and the information is readily available to everyone, it is not just your private broadcasting centre set up for you to vent your daily frustrations.

If you can help yourself, don’t do it! Smash a glass against the wall instead! Though messy, it will not be nearly as messy as being fired for saying something so damaging the consequence of which could only be losing your job.

2. Do not be ‘friends’ with your boss – there’s LinkedIn which has been specifically designed to further professional relationships and then there’s Facebook – the audience and the interaction vary significantly.

Do not mix your personal life and your business life too extensively. Know where to draw the line. We seem to have moved into a new era in which there almost is no line between personal and professional, which can be a problem if you forget that your boss is in fact your boss, and not just that really cool guy that can take a joke.

3. If you have to be friends, be ‘Limited Profile’ friends – if you absolutely have to accept your employer’s invitation to be friends on Facebook, there are options to limit how much of your profile can be viewed. Investigate the security and profile settings on your social media platforms! Facebook in particular offers a number of options from limited profiles to outright blocking people so that as far as they are concerned, on Facebook, you do not exist.

There are options, you simply have to take some control over your social media accounts. Do not simply adhere to all the default settings because they may simply not be in your best interests.

What follows is a step-by-step account of how to either block someone or give them a limited view of your Facebook account:

Facebook Privacy Settings

Scroll over the Settings tab,
next to your Log out button
and select Privacy Settings

Blocking

On the next page that appears, you will see the first jewel – the ability to block people. In a nutshell, by blocking someone, you no longer exist to them on Facebook, nor do they exist to you. This extends as far as not being able to find that person in a Facebook search. Anyone with an –ex could fit well in this category, ex-boyfriends, ex-friends, anyone who has little business knowing the details of your personal life.

From the same page, you can tweak the privacy settings under these titles:
Facebook Privacy Settings

Profile
This is where you control who can see things such as your personal details or photos tagged of you, your status updates and links etc. Limit Profile If you wish to create limited profiles, simply click on Customise in the drop down menu and from there you can limit who sees your specific profile information.
Search
This section is more important than you think. Not only do you control who can search for your name on Facebook but you can also opt out of the Public Search Listing which controls whether your Facebook profile is searchable in the search engine results.

If you do not want employers to use Facebook to measure your compatibility with company culture, do not make your Facebook page easy to find, particulary in search engine query searches.

News Feed and Wall
This controls which Facebook actions others can see – if you do not wish to advertise all your Facebook activities such as adding a friend, writing a wall post or changing your relationship status – this is where you would tweak this visibility.

Applications
If you find yourself frequently using applications on Facebook, it would be worthwhile reviewing the privacy settings to see exactly how much personal information an application can view. Of course, the default will be that the application can access all your information, so you have to manually restrict this by logging into the privacy settings.

Take control of your Facebook privacy settings with the same zest with which you proclaim your daily sentiments in your status updates. This small endeavour may save you from consequences that would have you grumbling about your current jobless status in what would still officially be termed a recession.

As another reference point, this is a great post on how Facebook will be rolling out new privacy settings in the near future.

Category: Privacy & Security
Tags: Social Media

Oh, That’s Right, We Don’t Need SEO Standards

Posted on | August 10, 2009 | No Comments

What is SEO?

“Suppose it’s got something to do with when doing a search, getting the most and best hits back, i.e. no crap.”

“A practise that improves performance and relevance of result sets for search engines. Never heard of it as a service.”

“No understanding at all…is it something that makes Google work better?”

“My guess is that you pay for a good position on the search engine.”

That is how 4 of 33 respondents in a closed study defined SEO. This very basic study was conducted among tertiary qualified professionals to provide a snapshot of the ‘general public’s ’ understanding of search engine optimization. All respondents were asked not to perform any research prior to answering the questions.

Interestingly, quite a few people (30%) considered SEO to be a practice performed by the search engines themselves, such as changing the algorithm to improve performance and deliver more relevant results.

In addition, a surprisingly high number of respondents (42%) had a basic idea of the practice of SEO, citing that changes would need to be made to a target website to improve its ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Putting a PRICE on the SEO service was a problem

SEOCostExpectations

There was a very wide gap in pricing expectations:

46% of respondents had ‘no idea’ how much they could expect to pay for search engine optimization services

A collective 21% expected SEO to be either FREE (9%) or to cost less than $1,000 (12%).

21% proposed a performance fee structure based on increase in bottom line generated through the SEO. Notably these were professionals from tertiary service industries such as banking, public relations and consulting.

Observation 1: If most people have no idea what to pay for the SEO service while a proportion would hand over potentially $1,000s in percentage based fees this indicates a significant gap in client expectations.

A website offering services at $200 is as believable as one providing the service for $2,000, because people literally do not know what to expect.

For SEO to be considered among other professional fields such as law or medicine, the SEO industry has to deliver its services at a certain benchmark standard in order for those services to be valued at a particular price.

Searching for SEO
Overwhelmingly, most respondents would use Google (64%) or a search engine (15%) to find out more information about SEO.
So, if people are using Google to research SEO, what do they find?

Sample of some of first page SERP results on Google.ca for phrase ‘search engine optimization’:

- Guaranteed Page 1 or Pay Nothing, Page 1 in Seven Days $69.95/Month
- Search engine optimization is the way to pull massive amounts of free traffic
- Get listed on 200+ search engines in 8 hours!
- 300+ Top 10 And Top 3 Rankings In Every Search Engine For $179.95

Observation 2: Guarantees! Promises! Refunds! First page Google rankings for a $100 per month! Free search engine submission to hundreds of search engines!

Search for a lawyer or dentist online and you will not see this type of price undercutting. The focus is on quality, expertise, value and years of experience.

The SEO industry is diluting the value of its own service with this type of advertising. Searchers form the opinion that SEO is a cheap; easy-to-implement service offering that any SEO business listed on the SERPs can perform.

Cognitive dissonance begins to form between client expectations and perceived value of the service. Clients expect top rankings to be delivered at a low price point.

Final Thoughts
Though the basic study that has been discussed was small and from a statistical perspective has limitations, the insight that just 33 respondents provided is significant:

- If most people would search on Google for SEO, where can searchers find quality information that will assist them in developing their expectations of SEO services?

- SEMPO does feature in the SERPs for some search terms and though the website is a valuable resource, does it adequately help shape a searcher’s understanding of why they would pay $100 for one SEO service and $10,000 for another?

- A standard definition of SEO would help the public understand what to expect from SEO and more effectively find services that suit their business requirements and budget.

- SEO standards would assist in setting a minimum benchmark for SEO service delivery, which would ultimately increase the client value perception of these services, and so many SEOs would no longer have to feel like they are working for FREE!

In the words of Ian McAnerin: ‘Standards? We don’t need no stinkin’ standards. But the public does. I think it’s time we grew up and took responsibility for our own profession, before someone does it for us.’

Originally published as an entry in Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship Contest

Category: Search Engine Marketing
Tags: SEO Standards

My PPC Ad Position Has Moved, Again!

Posted on | August 3, 2009 | No Comments

Angry SEM Client There’s a great deal of advice out there about selecting the right SEM agency so that your business reaps a positive return from the online marketing, but what about the SEM agency getting the perfect client?

As difficult as it can be for clients to work with agencies, there is a plethora of clients that give agencies significant headaches with continuous phone calls, repetitive questions and unrealistic expectations that impact the success of the project. Are you expecting your SEM agency to deliver PPC miracles on an unrealistic budget? Have you set SEO ranking expectations on an unrealistic timeline?

If you are one of those clients who constantly check their PPC sponsored listings, you should be aware of some of the factors that may affect your PPC ad positioning. So, before you pick up the telephone to scream at your SEM strategist because you typed in some important keywords but only the competitors’ ads come up, consider the dynamics that may affect your PPC ad position.

Performance of Your Ad, Relative to Search Query
The relative performance of the potential PPC ads that could be shown for each search query are dynamically evaluated by the search engines. What this means is that the performance of your ad will be measured against:

CTR of your ad relative to the specific search query – what is your historic click-through-rate for that ad variation?

The performance of competitive ads relative to yours for a search query – how well have your competitors’ ads performed relative to yours?

CTR performance for each keyword in your ad groups – what is your historic click-through-rate for individual keywords?

What you need to bear in mind is that each search query is dynamically evaluated, which means that if you type in a keyword for your business now and check the results, in all likelihood when you check that same keyword query in 5 minutes the ad positioning will be different. A number of elements interplay dynamically to determine the ad rank of each competitive ad vying for a ranking on a particular keyword.

Maximum Bid
Maximum bid is the single most influential factor under the advertiser’s control that drives ad positioning. If you would like your ad to be at the top of sponsored listings in the number 1 position, setting a high enough maximum bid on keywords can ensure this.

Why? Maximum bid and Quality Score are the elements of Ad Rank, i.e.:

Maximum Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank

Of course ranking in the number 1 ad position just for the sake of being number 1 cannot even be considered a bidding strategy. Your ad positioning should be driven by business metrics such as desired maximum customer acquisition (CPA) and it should be within the limit of your maximum CPC. Simply bidding up for higher rank positions may very quickly render the PPC efforts unprofitable for your business.

So, if you are one of those clients that obsessively like to see their PPC ads in the 1^st position on the SERPs, stay calm if you see your ad in the 3^rd of 4^th positions. This may be the optimal position for your ad based on driving the highest level of relevant traffic to your site, within budget and at an acceptable cost & conversion rate within your business model.

Geographic Targeting
Be mindful, that if a specific campaign is targeting a geographic region that lies beyond the physical location from which you are checking your ad positioning, it is a good thing if you do not see your ads appearing!

Specific geo-targeted campaigns allow for tighter location-based targeting of your market. For this type of PPC campaign to be successful, campaign settings need to be set up so as to minimise “leakage” of ads appearing in non-relevant geographic regions.

Dayparting by You & Your Competitors
Avoid embarrassment – if your target market is in the B2B buying space and your customers are known to be the most active during business hours, then give your search marketer credit if they are rotating ads during specific hours, instead of ‘freaking out’ because the ads are not showing at 7:00am.

Also, bear in mind that the dayparting bid strategies of your competitors will affect your positioning. If a few competitors, with higher bids start appearing at a set time while your ad is showing, it may serve to drop your ad rank positioning. The greater the number of advertisers competing for a keyword, the more variable ad positioning will be.

A/B Testing of Ads
If you are testing your ad variations, which you should be, invariably there will be a weaker ad and a stronger ad. The ad with the higher CTR and greater perceived relevance may then have a higher ad position than the other one. When you type in a search query into the search engine, you cannot control which ad will be shown for that query.

Nebulous Search Engines
The fact is that the search engines have their unique algorithms according to which they may practice random testing, ad rotation, algorithm adjustments and Quality Score allocations. Not everything affecting ad position fluctuation can be explained according to a checklist of possible causes. Sometimes, the cause of a rank drop is due to the cumulative effect of a number of elements, some of which the advertiser can influence and others over which the search engines maintain exclusive control.

So, before you pick up that phone, consider that your SEM agency’s time would be better spent managing these dynamic elements of your PPC campaign, rather than having to explain the fundamentals to you, again!

Category: Search Engine Marketing
Tags: Pay-Per-Click

How Accountable is Your SEO Agency?

Posted on | July 27, 2009 | No Comments

Most SEO companies still talk about rankings as the first measure of SEO success, but is this really the best measure of their clients’ success?

Surely, clients would rather receive a monthly report that highlights the ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) of the SEO investment, instead of a ranking report with arrows pointing out whether organic rankings have dropped or increased?

According to a 2007 iProspect and JupiterResearch study, 58% of search marketers’ job performance was evaluated on the amount of traffic driven to a client website. This was the leading metric used to evaluate how successfully search marketers were doing their job, on the traffic generated to a site. Similarly, in 2005 the same metric was the lead indicator of success.

Two years later, it would be interesting to see comparative figures for 2009, but even without this, it still appears that many SEO agencies shy away from solid monetary business metrics in the evaluation of SEO campaigns. Perhaps this trend would be more prevalent among smaller businesses and agencies targeting the SME market, because the top tier agencies have bigger client budgets, larger campaigns and more demanding corporate metrics on which to deliver, but it remains a serious problem.

Poor measurement and reporting of key metrics is a concern because the majority of businesses fall into the SME category, which means that apart from multinationals that have the budgets to commission top tier agencies, most businesses are being fed these non-monetary metrics, that do not offer any accountability, as measures of SEO success.

A ranking report and traffic volume chart do not tell a meaningful story unless they are backed up by conversion metrics, sales figures, customer acquisition costs, return on ad spend calculations and ROI percentages from the search marketing efforts.

Keeping the Waters Murky
It would appear that most companies are reluctant to make web traffic and search engine ranking secondary measures of success because this would make them far more accountable for the work they do. The SERP positioning for a particular keyword does not actually mean anything. A keyword’s positioning only begins to have meaning when incorporating further metrics relative to this positioning.

A number one ranking in the SERPs that does not deliver traffic because the keyword is not searched, is like no ranking at all. The same goes for a keyword that receives traffic but does not convert – whether this is because the page to which searchers are taken does not satisfy search criteria or because of the questionable credibility of the page to which traffic is driven.

By focusing on monetary metrics, companies could more easily justify a higher spend on SEO to their clients, especially if clients could see positive ROAS figures. In this way, SEO agencies could grow client spend from the existing client base rather than aggressively hunting new sales.

Unfortunately, a certain stigma appears to linger in the SEO industry, that the lowest hanging fruit is the easy money. It’s not the smoke and mirrors of the past, in which anxious clients were stalled by the mystical ‘sandbox’ but the SEO relationship still seems to be built on a ‘need to know basis’. This usually translates to keeping the client in the dark because from the reporting that is done, it does not seem that the client needs to know much!

If the client knew how little value those rankings were actually driving, well, that would create more accountability and work for the company, wouldn’t it?

Ironic though that companies choose this path because this creates agencies that become like factory lines, doing the same thing for every client, not pushing the status quo, bringing in more clients but generating minimal growth in the existing client base. The great companies will always rise to the top, but unfortunately, not every business has the budget to work with the top agencies. What this means is that clients need to become more educated and accountable for the types of SEO agencies with which they choose to work.

Next time you receive your monthly SEO reporting, ask yourself what it’s really telling you. Does it share ANY valuable data? If not, it is up to you to do demand the monetary metrics that speak to your business bottom line.

Category: Reporting
Tags: Search Engine Optimisation

SEM Agency Website Errors

Posted on | July 20, 2009 | No Comments

SEM Website Errors Perhaps businesses underestimate the effect that copywriting errors have on the credibility of their websites. Perhaps it is only a handful of people who are negatively affected and perturbed by these grammatical mishaps, but certainly, I for one can confidently say that these egregious blunders paint a lasting image of a business’ attention to the finer details.

When reviewing companies in the search engine marketing field, the attention to detail on the company website, or lack thereof is a subtle indicator of how efficiently and accurately the smallest details are executed. After all, pay-per-click advertising is a service that requires an incredibly high level of attention to the finest details, one incorrect bid or check in the wrong box, and there goes some of that valuable money that the hired company is supposed to be managing.

You may argue that in the greater scheme of things there are more important things to do than go through the website copywriting with a fine tooth comb, but I would argue to the contrary.

For years, job applicants have been hammered for grammatical and spelling errors on their applications. If judgement can be passed on an individual from a résumé document, then why should a company website not carry the same clout? It is after all, a company’s summary of its assets and services – a compelling online summary of what the company can offer you and why the fit would be mutually beneficial.

Below I will summarise some of the website copywriting errors that cleanly wipe off a few points on a company’s score sheet when they glaringly appear on the company site.

#1. AdWords NOT Adwords
When an SEM agency offers ‘Adwords’ management services, it is troubling to consider that said company cannot even take the time to correctly identify the trademark of the service that they are offering clients.

Correct spelling: AdWords – capital ‘A’ and capital ‘W’

#2. It’s 2009! Even closer to 2010 than 2008!
If you have STILL not changed your copyright stamp to ‘copyright 2009’ in mid-July, you may as well leave it until 2010 and perhaps be timely next year.

If it hasn’t been a priority to date, it’s unlikely to become one now.

#3. The ‘Effect’ of Misusing ‘Affect’
Confusion between effect and affect occurs frequently. In reality, both these words have a function as a verb and a noun, but rather than adding confusion into the mix, let’s focus on their commonly used English meanings.

Affect is commonly used as a verb. A synonym would be ‘to influence’
i.e.: The relevance of keywords selected in an SEO project will affect traffic and conversions
Effect is commonly used as a noun. A synonym would be ‘outcome’
i.e.: The relevance of keywords selected in an SEO project will have an effect on traffic and conversions

#4. The Apostrophe
There appears to be a widespread ignorance of the correct use of the apostrophe. The greatest misuse of the apostrophe arises when the distinction between a ‘contraction’ and a ‘possessive pronoun’ is not made, particularly in the use of its and it’s.

To clarify
The possessive pronoun: its
It replaces the noun and expresses a relationship of belonging

So, instead of saying: The company offers the company’s SEO services
We can say: The company offers its SEO services

The possessive pronoun (its) is commonly confused with the contraction of ‘it is’ which looks like (it’s)

There is a clear difference in meaning between it is (the contraction) and that which belongs to it (the possessive pronoun)

So, when you incorrectly write: The company offers it’s services
Understand that you are writing: The company offers it is services

If more people understood the grammar behind this contraction and the possessive pronoun, the error would be made less frequently, because the mistake would become glaringly obvious.

#5. That Blog Needs an Update
It is disconcerting when SEM agencies and more so, social media experts host a blog but have not posted a new entry since, say February 2009. A thought, if you are updating your blog quarterly, perhaps it’s time to opt for a newsletter.

An infrequently updated blog tells clients that you may not take these resource intensive and repetitive tasks too seriously. The question may then arise, are any other time-consuming tasks in the search campaign being overlooked, such as monthly link building or ongoing monthly pay-per-click management?

Category: SEM Agency
Tags: Copywriting

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