Search Marketing InsiderPay Per Click, Social Media and SEO Strategies – An Internet Marketing Institute Publication

By Dane Christensen, Search Engine Marketing Manager at Lyris, Inc

Countless articles have been written about the importance of focusing on long-tail keywords for both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.  It’s generally agreed that long-tail keywords produce higher quality traffic at a lower cost. 

It’s a great theory.  But there is the small matter of generating the massive number of long-tail keywords needed to build a significant amount of traffic.   By its very nature, long-tail keyword traffic is scattered across a very wide landscape. 

Using the Lyris HQ demo website “Top 5 Flicks” (www.top5flicks.com) as an example, a very small list of possible long-tail keywords could be:

• ”action flick starring orlando bloom”
• ”horror movie without blood”
• ”buy romantic comedy movie”
• ”war movie about macarther in Japan”
•  “directed by martin scorsese”

When you factor in all the possible movie genres, subjects, settings, actors, directors, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, etc. can you imagine how many possible permutations of long-tail phrases there could be?  Oh, and then there are misspellings (yes, I spelled “macarther” wrong on purpose above) meaning that keyword phrases could easily go into the millions.  Some of those keywords will get a handful of searches each month; many of them will just get a single random search here and there.   But that’s the long-tail.  Individually, the keywords probably aren’t worth the effort of researching and plugging them in to your system.   But collectively it can account for a significant amount of high-quality traffic. 

To go after the lucrative long-tail, you must have an effective way to harness massive numbers of keywords. 

Following are five techniques that will allow you to do just that:
Website Content Mining
You know all of those websites that marketers have been working hard to optimize for years?  They can serve as a great source of valuable long-tail keywords.  But how do you scoop up the keywords that are just floating out there amongst all those websites?  Some people have created screen scraper bots—applications that scour the web extracting keywords from websites. 

But this method has been rendered obsolete by Google’s (relatively) new Search-based Keyword Tool .   Using the SK Tool, you can specify a particular website address and it will instantly produce a list of keywords found on that site.  Click on any of those words to go straight to a search results page where you can find other websites to enter into the tool.  In no time you’ll find a plethora of long-tail keywords. 

The tool also provides a way for you to organize these keywords into categories.  If you have an AdWords account you’ll also have the ability to store keyword sets so you can build lists over time.  Once you’ve got a big enough list you can easily export the list for import back into Google or any other search engine.  It’s a great tool.  And it’s completely free.

Search Engine Query Analysis
While the above method focuses on pulling keywords from content, this method involves analyzing what people are actually searching for in the search engines.   While there is undoubtedly a great deal of overlap between these two sources, analyzing what people are looking for may be a way of getting the jump on all those websites that have not yet picked up on the latest trends.

The Keyword Discovery tool in Lyris HQ mines query data from over 200 search engines world-wide, compiling nearly 38 billion searches.  When used with the Lyris HQ Search Marketing tool, researched keywords can be automatically dropped into your PPC campaigns with no export/import required.   The Keyword Discovery tool is included in the Lyris HQ fee structure, allowing Lyris HQ users the ability to easily tap into the most extensive database of keyword data on the planet.

PPC Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence tools take yet another approach to keyword research, focusing on the keywords on which PPC advertisers are bidding.   The idea here is that if companies are actually spending money on these keywords, they must be the most important keywords.  Two such “spying” tools are Keyword Spy and Spy Fu, with service fees ranging from $59 to $139 per month.

These services allow you to input the domain of your competitors’ websites, and it will return a list of all the keywords on which they are bidding.  In addition to the keywords, there is information such as how many searches are done on the keywords, how many companies are bidding on them, and what the cost is for the top bid position.   This allows you to easily focus on the least competitive keywords.

Permutation
If you want to bid on the keywords that no one else has even thought of, the tool for that job is permutation.  Permutation means assembling words together in various combinations form different sets of words.  Using the “Top 5 Flicks” example, our permutation may look like the three lists below:

List 1                List 2                   List 3  
movie              starring              keanu reeves
dvd                  featuring            russell crowe
flick                    with                   harrison ford

These three small lists can be combined into 27 (3x3x3) different keywords such as:
* movie featuring harrison ford
* dvd with russell crowe
* flick starring keanu reaves
* Etc.

Add just one more three-item list like genres (e.g. action, comedy, drama) and you’re talking about 81 long-tail phrases (e.g. “comedy flick with harrison ford”).  Adding more items to each list can grow the list to massive proportions very rapidly.

The key here is to save the energy of researching what people are bidding on, searching on, or putting on their website and just pump out the keywords programmatically.  Using this method you’re bound to generate a lot of phrases that nobody every searches on, but you’ll also catch a lot of those very low-volume searches that are missed with the previous methods–or even those that haven’t even been searched on yet.  

Unless you have unlimited time and patience, you’ll need a tool to pull this off.  The leader in the field is Boxer Software’s “The Permutator,” an installed software that cost about $50.

Web Analytics
If permutation is like casting a very wide net in order to scoop up all the stragglers, using your web analytics data is more like using a fishing pole with the perfect bait to catch exactly the right keywords.  Any respectable web analytics application has some form of keyword report that will show you what keywords visitors searched on in order to reach your site.  That is your prime list. 

Some keyword reports are more sophisticated than others.  The keyword report in Lyris HQ allows you to segment visitors and the keywords they searched on using a wide range of criteria, allowing you to focus on the highest value keywords. 

You can even take it a step further and capture the data from a search form on your own website.  This way you not only know what people searched on to reach your site, but what they are searching for after they reach your site.  Now that is targeted!

Summary
Implement all five of these techniques and you won’t miss any high-value long-tail keywords.  And you may actually find that you have no more use for the big-head keywords at all.

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Dane Christensen is the Search Engine Marketing Manager at Lyris, Inc. where he uses the company’s integrated online marketing suite to manage a six digit monthly marketing budget over seven different search engines.  He has been involved in the Internet industry as a trainer, web developer, webmaster, online marketer, web analytics specialist, product manager, and entrepreneur since 1994.

Article 2 of 3: Drive Best-in-Class Results by Integrating Your Pay Per Click (PPC) with Other Online Marketing Channels

By Mary Huffman, Executive Vice President, Ionic Media

In the first article in this series, we reviewed the workhorses of online advertising:
* Pay-Per-Click search marketing (PPC)
* Search engine optimization (SEO)
* Display advertising (e.g., banners)
* Email (to house list)

Each marketing channel has a sweet spot for the type of product or situation in which it performs best.  The same is true for the six marketing channels we are exploring in this article:
* Mobile 
* Online PR
* Blogging
* Viral /social media
* Email (to rented list)
* Affiliate marketing

In this article, we will explore relatively new media options along with tested media vehicles like email to rented lists and affiliate marketing.  At this time, the new marketing choices are riskier than the ones we reviewed last time, but there are some stand-out results that cannot be ignored (especially among the adventurers out there).

First, let’s review how the six marketing vehicles we are focusing on perform on the “Branding” vs Direct Response” two-by-two matrix.

The six marketing vehicles we are reviewing in this paper are spread out across the branding vs direct response spectrum.  Now let’s review the summary and then we can dig into the detail on each of these more newly-minted marketing vehicles.

Now let’s look at each of these marketing vehicles in more detail.

Mobile Marketing:
The mobile marketing umbrella includes a number of different marketing vehicles.  Let’s look at each one individually.

Banner/Text Ads On Phones:
* Using a mobile ad network, marketers can place display or text ads on websites viewed with phones or on content sent to mobile phones (like daily weather updates)
* Allows you to reach a young, tech savvy audience
* Also allows you to reach older audiences, though at lower volume
* High response rates currently (likely because the technology is newer)
* As mobile coupon technology improves, this will be a great way to push coupons to users who are in-store and more likely to purchase

SMS Messaging Campaigns:
* Using a mobile service provider who furnishes a short code, you can entice people to “Text sweepstakes to 22456 for a chance to win a new car.”  It is the beginning of a mobile or email communication that must be managed carefully
* Most mobile service providers have a relatively high monthly minimum cost so it is not easy to test these types of campaigns unless you go through an agency (like Ionic Media)
* While the largest population using messaging is younger, don’t count out the 30-54 year olds, as they are the fastest growing segment for mobile messaging

Mobile Search:
* Using existing search engine ad interfaces as well as those from new companies, a marketer can choose to display a paid listing within the results when mobile users make a search
* Costs little but often delivers few leads

Mobile Applications:
* This can involve either developing a custom application, or sponsoring an existing application
* The trick is aligning the brand with an application that addresses what users care about and want to do while mobile

Mobile Website:
* Note that for many of these campaigns, you need a mobile website
* Some smartphones (e.g., iPhone, G1, Blackberry Storm) can render “regular” websites pretty well
* But most phones require a scaled-down mobile site

Online PR:
* Online PR is an easy and effective way to drive more buzz about your company
* Existing press releases can be uploaded to syndication sites that drive the story across online press sites
* Each time you upload a press release, the syndication site charges a fee (up to $200 depending on the site and the package)
* This can be an effective way to drive authority for your site (lots of relatively good inbound links) which helps with organic ranking

Blogging:
* Using easy-to-install blogging software, a marketer can create an on-site or off-site blog where one or more people can chronicle their thoughts and opinions
* A good blog with lots of followers can drive organic ranking and therefore organic traffic
* To ensure good pickup, blog often and reach out to potential readers to become loyal followers
* This marketing vehicle takes a commitment to the activity.  Blogs should be updated at least once a week and better to be updated every other day or even everyday.  That takes a high level of commitment

Viral Marketing:
* Viral marketing is a catchy name for an ill-defined group of marketing tactics.  For example, all of the following would be considered viral marketing:
     * An on-line widget that lets you upload photos to turn your friends into dancing elves a la Chorus Line
     * A video of claymation bunnies frolicking in New York City to advertise the Sony Bravia television
     * An email message you send to a friend with Bob Dylan holding up cue cards that display your message and which    ends with a plug for his latest album
     * A video of preppy white boys doing a rap about throwing a tea party (to advertise Smirnoff)
     * A widget with a man dressed in a chicken suit who performs whatever action you command him to (Burger King’s Subservient Chicken)
     *  These are all wildly popular examples of viral campaigns.  There are 2,356,744 other campaigns that companies tried to make popular but did not, in the end, “go viral.”  Note: That number is approximate and might be off by a lot
     * MarketingSherpa reports that the most experienced viral marketers report that only 50% of viral campaigns break even and only 1 in 80 are home runs
     *  So, the message when you are starting a viral campaign is to be creative, turn to the experts and run 80 campaigns at a time so you can get one home run (that would work, right?).  Actually, just be thoughtful when you are planning your viral campaigns and watch your costs as most do not deliver on the hype

Email to Rented Lists
* Historically this medium has delivered poor performance to marketers
* It can be used effectively to drive awareness and action if you carefully select the list provider of the leads

* When looking for a rented list to email with your message, check for the following:
* How was the list assembled?  Did they scrape websites or did people sign up for a special offer for information one individual at a time?
* Is the list single or double opt-in?  Double opt-in is the gold standard.  If it is opt-in, what do the people think they opted in for (information from a certain vendor, information for a series of vendors in a category or a chance to win a long-past sweepstakes)?
* How old are the names on the list?  If everyone opted-in to the list within the last 30 days, you should be willing to pay more than if the list was built over 5 years ago
* How often do they mail to this list and what are the response/opt-out rates?
* Consider a co-branded email campaign with another, more established brand.  Use that brand’s email list and send a dedicated email that has an implied endorsement from that brand

Affiliate Marketing:
* Affiliate marketing includes the broad reach of affiliate networks such as Commission Junction as well as working closely with a small number of “super affiliates” who carefully drive leads and sales to your business
* Working with affiliate networks such as Commission Junction and ShareASale makes affiliate recruitment easier (as they have hundreds of thousands of members) but you have less control over the quality of the affiliates and the messages they are putting out to your target market in your name
* Creating super-affiliate relationships with a handful of sites is more work but can deliver a better end result in terms of volume and quality of leads/sales
* And the bounty is often a key driver here.  If you are willing to pay more per lead or sale, more affiliates are going to give you more attention and drive more volume

While these six marketing vehicles are not the online marketing staples from the first article in this series, there is a lot to be said for testing these media.  Each medium listed above requires either time or money to make it happen.  For any given company only two are likely to be a strong fit with the target market of that particular product.

In the last in our series on the online marketing landscape, we will be looking at how to intelligently integrate your PPC marketing with other online vehicles for maximum effect.

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Mary Kingsley Huffman is a co-founder and Executive Vice President at Ionic Media, a firm with deep experience driving bottom-line results for clients using search and online marketing. Previously, she was Director of Marketing at Overture Services where she was responsible for the acquisition marketing and communication departments, leading all advertiser acquisition efforts and customer communications. Prior to Overture, Mary was an Engagement Manager in the London office of McKinsey & Company, specializing in marketing solutions. Mary has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA from UCLA.

By Heather F. Lutze – review by Mary O’Brien, Founder of PPC Summit

Many small (and larger) businesses put up a website and assume that the “If you build it, they will come” concept applies. Unfortunately, this wasn’t true when the internet started and it’s even less so now. Successful businesses get the fact that your website is now a critical part of your marketing campaign. It needs to be designed to attract search engines AND customers to be successful and Heather does a great job in this book of explaining why.

“Findability” in the title of the book refers to the critical need of every business to be visible on the internet (and particularly in search engines) at that crucial time when their prospect is ready to buy from them. Basically, it’s so competitive now that if you are not on the first page of search engine results you are wasting your time. And -  if you’re NOT there you can be sure your competition will be.

Heather has a great ability to translate quite technical marketing concepts in to terms that beginners and experienced users alike can relate to. I have seen her explain these concepts accepted time and time again, in training she has given at our Pay-Per-Click Summits, and I’m delighted to see that she has used this same relatable quality to get her points across in the book.

Search Engine Marketing can be a complicated subject, particularly for the beginning marketer, and this book does a great job in translating the technical jargon into actionable concepts that you can follow.

Heather describes it as a non-technical guide, but the basics are all covered in an easily readable way that allows a beginner to easily implement a successful Search Engine Marketing campaign. Readers will learn the basics of Pay-Per-Click and also how Pay-Per-Click and Organic Search work together to give you better search engine visibility for your business.

Advanced users might find it a bit basic, but that’s not who this book is designed for. This book is designed for those new to internet marketing who also know that Search Engine Marketing is an important web traffic driver for their business, need to get up to speed fast, and want someone to explain it sequentially.

There are more advanced books out there for those who need to delve into the nitty-gritty, but if you are just getting started, and are a non-technical person who wants easy to follow instructions, then this book is a must read.

You will learn:
•    A complete step-by-step approach to search engine marketing applicable to any product or service, in an easy-to-follow instructional style.
•    How to avoid common search marketing mistakes that cost big money.
•    How to set up campaigns in a smarter way to get better search engine visibility.
•    How search engines work, how search engine marketing works, and how to take advantage of both.
•    The online tools to use that make campaign management easier