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You are here: Home / Archives for Search Marketing

Search Marketing

Google Launches Instant Search

by Eric Leuenberger Leave a Comment

Today Google unveiled what they call Google Instant. It provides you with search results as you type (no need to click the ‘search’ button.)

It’s pretty slick and if you haven’t seen it already jump on over to Google and give it a go.

To learn more about what it’s all about you can go to the Google Instant page.

Here’s a quick look at it:

Start at the home page as normal
Google Instant Search Start Screen

Start typing and get dynamic results on the fly
Google Instant. Real time search results while you type.

Filed Under: Breaking News, Search Marketing Tagged With: google instant, instant search google

PPC vs. Organic SEO

by Eric Leuenberger 5 Comments

Are you engaged in any active Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? What about Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising? The fact is you should be working on both.

Both channels should work in conjunction with the other, sharing information between each to further enhance the overall sales return. That is what it is all about, getting the biggest bang for your buck at the lowest risk.

I can’t count the number of times I hear others say that PPC doesn’t work and costs too much. They tend to opt for SEO over PPC because they feel SEO will drive traffic at a less costly rate — but that is a mistake in judgment … more on that below.

PPC when run properly is a very valuable asset to all businesses. If you are losing money on pay per click you are likely not operating it correctly. SEO is also a very important component to business needs, but it should not be the only method you rely on for traffic generation either.

Consider the following example scenario.

You decide not to run any PPC advertising and in place of it put all your traffic generation eggs into the Organic SEO basket. Your efforts have you enjoying a nice ride at the top of the engines, your sales are high and life is good. You wake up one day and for some unknown reason your sales have not only dipped, but have come to an almost screeching halt. Doing some research you find out that the search engines unleashed some new update to their algorithms and with that update, your previous high flying rankings are now non-existent — and your sales are paying the price.

The risk is real. If you were running PPC in conjunction with Organic SEO this hit would not be as significant, and furthermore, you could quickly “buy” your way back into the search results and pick up pretty much where you left off until your natural rankings recover.

You shouldn’t wait to run PPC. As with SEO, many factors in pay per click rely on time and performance. For example, Quality Scores are affected by performance of ads / keywords and the more historical data you have the more opportunity you have to better those scores. Higher Quality Scores mean you can pay less for higher positions in the search engines — even when your competitor is bidding more than you for that same keyword.

Now if you are one of those who think you can wait for the organic SEO to fail and then at that time buy your way back into the engines with PPC, you’re slightly mistaken. Yes, you can have traffic up and running within a few hours at the most. But the price you will pay for that traffic is going to be higher and the learning curve of what works to convert and what doesn’t will still be something that can only be determined with time.

Here are some pros and cons regarding PPC and SEO:

Pros of PPC Advertising

  1. You have more control over paid search traffic.
  2. Targeting your ideal customer is easier.
  3. You can have quality traffic running to your site in just a few hours.
  4. Your traffic will continue to flow as long as your budget allows.
  5. Changes you make to your campaigns are active within hours and thus testing creative, landing pages, etc… is easier.
  6. Taking advantage of limited time opportunities to drive traffic (like holiday sales, back to school, etc…) is easier.

Cons of PPC Advertising

  1. Can get out of hand quickly and bust your budget if not setup and monitored properly.
  2. Can be a challenge to work with if not versed managing PPC campaigns to some degree.
  3. Depending on the type of system you use to set it up / run it, can be difficult with larger numbers of keywords, ads, and ad groups.

Pros of SEO:

  1. Can be more cost effective than PPC (but not always!)
  2. Can help you increase rankings for keywords that might otherwise be out of budget in the PPC channel.
  3. Indexed pages of your site stay in the search engines forever (providing they are not “dropped”).

Cons of SEO:

  1. Testing creative, landing pages, etc… is harder. Changes you make to your campaigns take time to work their way through the system (weeks, months, etc…) and by the time they are active, it’s likely too late to take advantage of any “would be” opportunities.
  2. Here today, gone the next. You could be #1 in Google (or any other engine) one day, and be non-existent the next.
  3. Traffic slows (or stops) as your search rankings drop and it can take time to recover those ranks.
  4. Harder to target and qualify your ideal customer.
  5. Time is your friend here (but that’s not always a good thing.) Things in the SEO world just take time.
  6. No guaranteed placement.

PPC and SEO are both effective means of delivering traffic to your website and arguments can be made for each as to their effectiveness. The fact is if you’re not running both, you’re limiting your potential for growth and increasing your risk. SEO should be seen as an ongoing marketing objective with “long term” results. PPC should also be an ongoing marketing objective with “short term” results. Combine them both, and the two traffic generation methods can work as a well oiled unit, delivering not only a continual flow of visitors to your site, but increased sales as well.

Got anymore insights? I’d love to hear them. Voice your opinion below.

Filed Under: Search Marketing Tagged With: natural search engine optimization, paid search, paid search strategies, ppc, ppc marketing

Improving Paid Search Quality Scores

by Eric Leuenberger Leave a Comment

If you are managing any form of advertising, getting the biggest bang for your buck should be at the top of your mind. Spend less, make more.

When it comes to paid search advertising, there is any number of ways to get more for less. One of them is by paying attention to your quality scores. In short, a higher quality score can mean you actually pay less for the same — or even higher — placement.

In effect you could actually be paying less (i.e. cpc) than a competitor bidding on the same keyword(s) yet have a higher placement in the search results.

So what can you do to better you quality scores? Well the real key is keep things relevant. Keywords should be relevant to the ad and to the landing page the user ends up on. This can often be achieved by developing tightly focused groups of keywords (sometimes only 2 or 3 per group) based around a single ad group. Do not try to lump everything you are bidding on into one giant campaign / ad group — our ability to focus will be quickly lost, and that won’t only hurt your quality scores, it will hurt your sales conversion.

Yes, developing a large number of tightly focused groups can be time consuming (but there are some tools out there that can help make it easier). In the end, it is worth the effort. I have campaigns I manage consisting of over 17,000 keywords broken into several hundred ad groups containing several thousand ads. Then others I manage consist of just a handful of keywords. The process of developing a paid search campaign that delivers high ROI is the same in all instances — focus on relevancy and tight groups of highly targeted keywords.

You can read any number of article relating to paid search quality scores. Rather than write another that re-iterates what is already out there, I thought I would list links to several below that I found interesting.

  • Ultimate Quality Score Guide. 15 Experts Comment on how to increase quality scores.
  • 10 Ways to Increase Adwords Quality Score
  • The Quality Score Handbook
  • 5 Steps to Optimizing a PPC Account

Enjoy!

Filed Under: Search Marketing Tagged With: paid search relevancy, ppc quality scores

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