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

Google has rolled out a lot of new stuff lately and two pay-per click platforms (adCenter and Facebook) control significantly more advertising inventory than they did when we rang in the new year in 2010. The pace of innovation and the way that the pay-per click space is evolving means it’s imperative that advertisers evolve their approach for 2011 as well. We’ll walk through five ways you should consider altering your approach in 2011:

1. Be Less Google-Centric
2. Leverage New Features (But Not ALL the New Features)
3. Think Local
4. Add Context to Your Data
5. Don’t Forget to Be a Marketer

1.    Be Less Google-Centric

The adCenter platform now has a significant amount of search traffic running through it (particularly in some verticals) and limited competition. Not only that, but the management costs of getting access to the same ~25% you used to have to wrestle with YSM and adCenter to tap into is significantly lower. The new year is a great time to start to think more seriously about leveraging adCenter more in your paid search campaigns.

And what about Facebook? The site gets more traffic than Google and offers a unique set of controls for advertisers that you can’t get on many of the sites available via Google’s content network. If you’re running content network campaigns through AdWords because your campaigns are already there, you may be leaving a lot of prospective traffic, leads and sales on the table by not leveraging Facebook PPC.

2.    Leverage New Features (But Not ALL the New Features)

AdWords in particular has been pushing out a ton of interesting new features, and as the Facebook PPC platform matures and adCenter becomes a more formidable #2 player in the paid search space you can expect a lot of new options from those platforms as well. It’s important to stay up to date with new innovations so that you can make the most of valuable features, so blogs like:

• The Official AdWords Blog
• The Google Ad Innovations Page
• The Official adCenter Blog
• The Inside Facebook Blog
• The All Facebook Blog

Can be great tools for generating more and better qualified traffic, but it’s equally important to sort the signal from the noise. While things like AdWords Campaign Experiments can be help you to get the most out of your campaigns, seemingly helpful options like the AdWords opportunities tab may be more of an opportunity for Google than for you. Understand the new tools available, but be sure to focus on the specific tools that can help you to move the needle in your campaigns and ignore the lower impact features and those that are more advantageous for the platform than your account.

3.    Think Local

Google has been focusing pretty intensely on local search and local advertising – you probably should too. Even if your business doesn’t seem local, there are likely opportunities in certain markets and you should understand the geo-targeting opportunities available to you and the impact that Google’s focus on local will have on your paid search accounts.

4.    Add Context to Your Data

Being data-driven certainly shouldn’t  be a new focus in 2011, but better understanding the context of your data should be. As online advertising evolves being able to understand data not only in relation to multiple channels, but also being able to understand PPC peer calculations will be crucial: having a solid grasp on how your keywords, dimensions, and ads are performing in relation to different time periods and the rest of your account is the only way to make genuinely informed decisions within your PPC campaigns.

5.    Don’t Forget to Be a Marketer

While understanding data is certainly important, with the increasing number of metrics available to PPC advertisers, it’s important to remember to be a marketer in the midst of all of the analysis. Successful pay-per click is still about great creative, effective headline writing, and persuasive messaging as much as it’s about strong analytical skills and effective data analysis. Understand the intersection of data and creative, as well, and focus on when to test and what to test in your ad copy, landing pages, and even account structure.

Being data-driven in 2011 will be great for your ROI, but understanding when to be driven by traditional marketing techniques and creative messaging will be even better for your bottom line.

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David Greenbaum is the CEO of BoostCTR. BoostCTR is an ad text service that guarantees improved ad performance. The platform is like Mechanical Turk for expert pay-per click copywriting: Boost makes its marketplace of high-quality copywriters available to advertisers risk-free by guaranteeing improved performance. You can learn more about how Boost CTR works here.

If you were invited to a beach party, you would not show up in a tuxedo, would you? Nor would you go to a wedding wearing your swimsuit? Then why are you running your search pay per click (PPC) ads on Facebook?

If you are an experienced PPC marketer, you understand the connection between your keyword and your ad copy.  If customers are actively looking for blue widgets, then you tell them about your blue widgets! Tell the customer that you have the biggest selection, lowest prices, and friendliest service. In fact, here is a 25% off coupon!

However, on Facebook, people are not searching!  They are merely “surfing.”  Your customers are flipping channels on the new TV, to be entertained by their friends.  Like your display ads, you are interrupting them. Therefore, since you are interrupting your ads must be credible, friend-based, and engaging.

The customer on Facebook is not in the process of shopping, so coupon codes and sales are usually ineffective.  Remember, the customer is not researching, so ebooks and free articles do not catch their attention.

Your customer, on Facebook, is among friends socializing, so YOU must fit in.  Imagine your target is having dinner (virtually, of course) among a group of friends.  He does not know you.  Would you just barge into the discussion, arms wildly waving, proclaiming a sale on widgets?  Absolutely not! But what if you have a mutual friend at the table and were able to ask for an introduction?  This is friend-of-fan connection targeting in Facebook.  What if these friends were discussing their favorite TV show and you had some interesting insight about that? Maybe you are Rosetta Stone and can tell them the translation of that foreign phrase in that TV show.

Not engaging users is the fatal mistake made in Facebook advertising. Your Ads MUST BE SOCIAL, as if you are having a one-on-one conversation with a friend. To become a fan, those ads MUST lead to an engagement activity -”watch a video, take a quiz, create a badge, spin the wheel, or some other intermediate activity prior to a lead or sale.”

Facebook lets you know at what stage of relationship you are with the user: whether they are already friends with you or not (fan targeting), whether they are aware of related interests (interest targeting), and whether you have friends in common (friends of fan targeting). Would you say the exact same message to a lifelong friend as to some random stranger?  Then do not run your Google PPC ads on Facebook.  Divide your messaging not by keyword, but by stage of engagement and interest target.

Consider that keywords and interest targets are not the same thing. The term “cars” on PPC will yield ads for car dealerships, auto insurance, and auto parts.  The “interest cars” on Facebook will yield folks who like the “Pixar movie, Cars” and the “rock group Cars.” You will not find discount car insurance as an interest target on Facebook, anymore than you would wear a t-shirt that has this as a slogan across your chest.

So, please DO NOT make that fatal blunder of waltzing into a beach party with your suit and tie on; people will look at you funny!

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Dennis Yu – Chief Executive Officer, BlitzLocal

Landing page optimization can potentially be far more powerful than an increase in traffic when it comes to generating more conversions.  In order to optimize your landing page successfully, the key is to use a scientific, data-driven approach.  While you may have gut instincts about what will and won’t work, the only way to tell for sure is by carefully collecting and analyzing the data.  Following are some of the most important tools to take a look at in order to optimize your landing pages and increase conversions.

Google Analytics: The Standard in Analytics

Google’s analytics software has become a de facto standard in the web world.  It is available for free and is relatively easy to install, although, some instances, like cross-domain tracking, are a bit more complicated.  Google Analytics gives you insights into where your visitors are coming from, what pages they’re looking at, how long they’re staying on your site, and so on.

Tip: Define Your Goals and Sales Funnel in Google Analytics

While Google Analytics is already a powerful platform, the real key to using it to optimize your landing pages and maximize conversions is by defining goals.  In your Analytics profile, you can define a goal based on a specific URL visited, the amount of time spent on site, or the number of pages in a visit.  For landing page optimization, you’ll probably be using a URL visit.  You can also define a goal value in dollars, which can be helpful in calculating ROI for your website conversions.

Another optional but important step is to define a sales funnel.  This allows you to list multiple pages leading up to a conversion – for example, if you have a multipage shopping cart check out process.  This can help you determine when visitors are leaving your site and highlight pages you may need to change or simplify.

Google Website Optimizer: Scientific Testing of Landing Pages

Another Google Tool on this list? Yes – Google’s Website Optimizer is that important.  A tool that exists outside of Analytics or AdWords (though accessible through the AdWords interface), many users overlook this valuable tool.  Website Optimizer allows you to perform A/B or multivariate tests on your landing pages to determine how different configurations of text, images, headlines, and so forth impact your conversion rate.

Relatively easy to install, you just need to prepare your different page versions or configurations and drop in snippets of Javascript code.  When it has collected enough data, Website Optimizer shows which page, statistically, is most effective at generating conversions.

Click & Scroll Heatmaps: Understanding User Behavior

The overall data provided by Analytics and Website Optimizer is great, however, it leaves you wondering what is actually happening when a visitor is looking at your page.  A service like ClickTale, which ranges from about $900 to nearly $9,000 a year, is capable of recording users mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and scrolling behavior.  You can even play back movies of an individual user’s browser session. Data is also aggregated to show mouse and click heatmaps based on a large number of users.

Similar services include Mouse Eye Tracking, Crazy Egg, clickdensity, and Codynamix (open source).  Most provided a no cost option with limited functionality and a professional or enterprise solution.

Form Analytics: Why Aren’t People Filling Out My Forms?

Have you ever started signing up for a product or download, but abandoned the site, because the form was too demanding or complicated?  Form analytics gives you insight into how users are interacting with your forms and can help you improve or streamline form questions to improve your conversion rate.  Form analytic software can help identify why users are abandoning forms, browser compatibility issues, and even reveal detailed information about form abandoners.  Examples of form analytics software include ClickTale (mentioned above), Revenue Expect, and Form Alive.

Get the Most Out of the Traffic You Already Have

Why focus only on increasing traffic with advertising or SEO, when you could be getting more conversions from your existing traffic?  Landing page and conversion optimization tools allow you to carefully and scientifically analyze what is happening on your landing pages and take steps to improve them to increase the number of visitors who convert.

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Jason Mikula works as a freelance search engine marketing and social media marketing consultant.  He has experience working with pay per click, search engine optimization, and email and web marketing.

Although paid search is typically associated with quick wins and guaranteed conversions there is still an element of doing things right (the first time) from a long term sustainability approach that needs to be followed. Designing paid search programs for sustainability takes time and patience but it is well worth the effort. In doing so you are building efficiency into your program, setting yourself up to pay a lower average cost per click, and helping grow your business. Otherwise, not designing paid search for sustainability affects all paid search programs, frustrates parties involved, and fails to move the industry forward.

And finding the right instructions for designing paid search for sustainability is not hard to come by. Google makes it painfully clear how to design and manage paid search programs to ensure that you are paying the lowest possible amount for a click. And I would say that 95% of Google’s advice and policies are valid. I know that Google and the other platforms are in this business to make money, but I also know that Google and the others will reward you, over time, for doing the right things when it comes to well planned and designed paid search programs.

Paid Search Design for Sustainability

So how does one go about designing a paid search program for sustainability? First, I want to clarify that we are discussing mostly pre-click and traffic related tactics of a paid search program. Obviously, there are post-click analytics that influence pre-click actions. Also, from a systems thinking perspective, there is a broader scope of how a paid search program fits into the mix with other online marketing channels, but for now let us just focus on the task at hand - paid search design for sustainability.

1. Plan. And plan again. Based on the problem solving process P-D-C-A (plan-do-check-act) made popular by W. Edwards Deming, planning is the most important and critical step. If starting from scratch, map out your campaign structure by using something as simple as your website navigation or site-map. For more advanced planning, use mental model or affinity diagram methods. While mapping out your campaign structure,  think about what you have to offer and how it provides a solution for your customers.

2. Campaign naming. This is often over looked, but assuming you are running a paid search program on multiple platforms, you will want to name your campaigns and ad groups accordingly. This does not tie into Quality Score directly, but it does help when managing and reporting on the program performance. For example, if you are running a paid search program in Google, MSN, and Facebook and you have the same campaigns with the same name in each account, third party tools may roll-up all three campaigns into one view. Naming your campaigns and ad groups specific to the engine in which they live reduces the time wasted in guess work and work-arounds to solve the problem otherwise.

3. Develop highly targeted keyword sets. Once you have thoroughly mapped out your campaign structure, you should now have a foundation to bucket your keywords in a way that each ad group is unique. Beyond advanced match type tactics, each ad group should contain keywords highly relevant to each other. The number of keywords in an ad group is irrelevant. At a certain point you will know when enough is enough.

4. Create relevant and persuasive ad ad creative text. Text within an ad creative should in some way reflect the keywords being targeted. When possible make sure that at least one keyword (phrase) in your ad group is in the ad creative title and in the body of the ad. Three to four ad creatives is recommended unless you are multivariate testing.

5. Landing page relevancy. Technically, the landing page comes into play post-click, but it is a component of a paid search program that ties into Quality Score. Just as keywords and ad creatives are required to be relevant to each other, the landing page also is required to be relevant to the preceding components. Landing pages should be as relevant as possible to what the ad creative messaging is about.

6. Negative keywords. Use them and use them deliberately. At a minimum they should be used at the campaign level and when required they should be added at the ad group level.

7. Search Queries. This is really what it’s all about – matching your keywords to the search queries users are actually typing. If you are not analyzing search queries for keyword expansion and negative keyword implementation, you are missing out on conversion and cost reduction opportunities.

This is not an exhaustive list of paid search design for sustainability tactics, but it is a good starting point. Besides aligning your program with Quality Score requirements, following these steps has implications outside of the components of a paid search program. When you do this part right, you have more time to analyze the post-click data. You will also spend less time reorganizing mega lists of keywords from one ad group to multiple ad groups and spend more time ad creative testing. Following the Quality Score requirements and designing for sustainability also allows for more accurate bid testing.

Overall, if you do things right and design for sustainability there is less time being spent on the things that do not add value and your program has much better chance of out lasting the competition while continuing to maximize its return.

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Matt LeVeque is the Founder & President of SEM Science Consulting, LLC and Senior Member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ).

Did you know there were nearly 16 billion core searches during August 2010 in the US? According to comScore recent data reports, Google led the US core search market in August with 65.4% search market share, followed by Yahoo at 17.4% and Microsoft Bing with 11.1%.

Looking at the search market share data from 2009 compared to 2010 (chart below), the numbers show that Google has remained relatively flat over the last year. However, recent September 2010 data reveals that Google search shares are showing modest gains. Meanwhile, Yahoo continues to drop in search share, and Bing shows only slight gains in search growth year over year.

The chart below shows data for search market share (August 2010 versus 2009) in the US for: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask and AOL, provided by the Silicon Valley Insider.

(Source: Silicon Alley insider)

Search Market Share: Google and Bing Upward Movement in September 2010

• Google remained flat from August 2009 to August 2010, but in September 2010 showed modest gains 66.1% up from 65.4% in August.
• Yahoo! continues to lose ground with 16.7% in September 2010, down from 17.4% in August 2010.
• Bing has grown year over year, and continues to increase slightly to 11.2% in September from 11.1% in August 2010.

Taking a look at the latest numbers from September 2010 search share comScore data, Google gained while Yahoo took a hit and Microsoft Bing shows slight growth. The Google share gains reflect the impact of Google Instant Search (the new feature that provides results in real-time while users type their search words). And Bing has managed to slightly increase market share in spend and in clicks partially due to the Yahoo-Bing integration. The new Facebook Like social data stands to improve Bing search results and help increase Bing market reach as well. However, Bing Marketers are waiting to see any real boost in search marketing results.  Make no mistake, Google is the dominate player with nearly 66% of the market share.

The upcoming online shopping season should spur stronger search marketing ROI.  We’ll be watching the search market trends to see how they pan out during the–fast approaching–holiday shopping season!

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Kelly Larsen, Director of Marketing at PPC Summit and Landing Page Success Summit, the Web’s largest conversion conference coming up on November 3-23, 2010.

As Paid Search advertising continues to grow and the industry continues to expand, its processes are becoming overly complex and complicated. With added keyword competition, seemingly endless enhancements to Google AdWords, the merger of Yahoo! Search and MSN adCenter and other platforms like Facebook Ads and Linkedin getting into the mix, it has become increasingly difficult to effectively manage the paid search suite of products in a way that consistently produce desired results.

Producing consistent ‘up-and-to-the-right’ results takes time and when you add to the mix countless blogs, tweets, diggs and sphinns you read to keep yourself updated on paid search, affiliate marketing, SEO and other channels to your list of daily responsibilities, there is less time to focus on doing things that add value and, ultimately, that the customer really cares about.

So how can you become more time efficient and take time out of processes so your daily routine becomes more balanced with the things that add value for the customer? One proven approach is performing a value added flow analysis of your processes to understand what value is and what waste is.

But how do you know what adds value? According to Ed Hay and John Guaspari in their video “Time: The Next Dimension of Quality” there are three basic questions you can ask to validate whether or not value is being added at each step of the paid search advertising process:

1. Does the customer care? If the customer doesn’t care then there is no point in proceeding with whatever it is you are doing.

2. Does the process step physically change the thing you are working on? If the thing, in this case say your Google AdWords campaign, does not physically change then everything you do up until you add or remove new keywords, ad group or text ads to the campaign is considered a form waste.

3. Is the thing you are doing completed right the first time? If you implement a task but it requires review before launching or rework afterward, you are not adding value to the process.

By asking these questions it is possible to take as much as 75% of time out of any process. Taking time out of any process adds quality to what you are doing. Beyond that, taking time out of a process allows you the ability and flexibility to add value to your clients in ways you may not have even begun to imagine. It helps you to be more responsive, innovative, build better team collaboration and be more competitive.

Value Added Flow Analysis of Paid Search

So how do you do a value added flow analysis of a paid search process? The first thing you need to do is to get rid of the old mind set of ‘this is how it’s always been done’. Because people are busy does not mean the process is efficient. If nothing is happening to the thing in the process then you are wasting time. You need to change the way you think about a process or you’ll never perform at the level that keeps you competitive and your customer satisfied. Changing the mindset is the hard part.

The easy part is actually doing a value added flow analysis. The trick to doing the value added flow analysis is that you need to it as the thing going through the process. If you do the analysis from your perspective you may have a biased view of the entire process. If you work on a team you may only truly understand your part of the process but since the thing going through the process is touched by many people it is better to do the analysis from the things point of view.

For example, say you’ve been tasked with adding a promotional campaign to your customer’s AdWords account. Think about all the steps involved to complete this one seemingly simple task. Consider everything from the initial meeting with the customer, to the internal discussions, to the layout of the campaign and its ad groups, the keyword research, the ad creative writing, the URL tagging, the bidding strategy all the way up to the launch of the campaign and ask yourself, as the thing going through the process, Does the customer care? Does the thing change? And was it done right the first time? As you do this and put time against each step in the process you may begin to see an ugly picture unfold. Typically only 10-15% of all steps in a process actually add value which translates into 1% of the time you are actually doing work that matters!

When all is said and done, all of these steps I’ve mentioned will have multiple sub-steps most of which may be necessary but do not add value to the process. The reality is, of the multiple steps there are to adding a new campaign there are only two the customer should truly care about – taking their ‘request’ for the new campaign and launching the campaign in active status. The customer cares, the account physically changes – hopefully for the better, and the launch was completed right the first time. Everything else to the customer is non-value added and takes valuable time away from doing things that matter.

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Matt LeVeque is the Founder & President of SEM Science Consulting, LLC and Senior Member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ).

Paid search marketers love to track everything – sales, geography, demographics, time of day – if we can measure it, we want the data! Data, however, can sometimes lead us to make wrong decisions, especially if that data is easy to misunderstand. To quote Mark Twain, “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

I’ve recently noticed an alarming trend whereby marketing partners are stretching the truth in an effort to give themselves too much credit for my conversions. The primary culprit of this “conversion land grab” is the concept of “view-through” conversions. Most people are familiar with “click-through” conversions – when someone clicks on your PPC ad and converts on your Web site, you count that user (and the keyword they rode in on) as a conversion.

A view-through, on the other hand, occurs when a user simply lands on a page where your ad was served. They never actually click on your ad, but – the theory goes – because they saw your ad, if they later convert on your site, the ad should get some credit for this conversion.

In theory, this isn’t an absolutely ridiculous metric, because we know that people respond to brand advertising on TV or billboards, and that this sort of advertising can drive sales. The problem with view-through conversions, however, is two-fold. First, most paid search advertisers don’t know the difference between a view-through and a click-through and thus don’t know how to value each. For example, did you know that your view-through conversions on Google include “views” of ads that are below the fold (require scrolling), whether a user actually scrolled below the first page or not? That’s like having a billboard facing one way on a highway but counting all the cars that go by in both directions!

Second, the reporting from many marketing partners completely muddles the distinction between a view-through and a click-through. Facebook’s reporting, for example, gives users a high level “Advertising Performance Report” but makes no mention of the fact that the conversions listed in this report are both view-through and click-through data. And Facebook’s misleading reporting pales in comparison to standard practices in the display (banner ad) space. As PPC and display ads become more and more intertwined, search marketers will need to tread cautiously into this new category.

Josh McFarland, CEO of TellApart, recently provided a scathing critique of rampant view-through counting in the display space, in particular with respect to “retargeting” (which Google AdWords calls “remarketing”):

“We all agree online advertising needs a more comprehensive metric than the click.  But the view-through (or post-impression) conversion is not it — especially for your retargeting campaigns.  In fact, if you’re being billed for view-through conversions from your current provider, you are massively overpaying for events which were going to happen anyway.”

My advice – at least for now – is simple: ignore the view-through, the multiple-conversions-per-click, and anything else that looks like an attempt by a search engine to give itself more credit. Over time, we’ll all figure out a way to give some credit to these non-click-through metrics, but until there are established standards and clearer explanations, it’s best to err on the side of caution!

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David Rodnitzky is Founder of PPC Associates, a leading SEM agency in San Francisco. To learn more about full service AdWords management from PPC Associates, contact David at david@ppcassociates.com.

On the 8^th of September 2010, Google launched its Instant Search interface, which shows results as you type, in real time. Searchers, particularly from the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) industry, have reacted sharply to the new interface. Many users find the new interface distracting, even annoying.

Google Instant is being sold as a faster and better User Interface

Matt Cutts from Google says that the change is more about rolling out a new User Interface (UI) rather than an algorithmic change. Matt attempted to allay the fears of the SEM industry by suggesting “SEO is not dead” but may change due to instant search query feedback to users, which in turn, may change their search behaviour. He believes that the searchers will diversify their queries within the scope of the original intent.

The effect of predicted query suggestions on user behavior

While Google claims that the Search Ranking Algorithm remains unchanged, the new feature will surely change search behaviour of users due to instant feedback mechanism. A lot of users are likely to select the predictive results, which fulfil their original intent, and stop typing further. Some users may get distracted from their original intent as ‘irrelevant but interesting’ results may lead to unintended searches. For example a user may digress into “home improvement loans” after typing “home improvement” instead of following his original intent of searching for “home improvement ideas.”

As more and more search users select “predicted query” suggestions, it would increase the traffic on the “head” keyword terms and lead to keyword aggregation. In essence, they would be searching more of what “other users” are searching. This usage trend would create a loop-back effect and drive out the long-tail keywords from the popular suggestions. Consequently, over a period of time, the long-tail keywords search count may diminish significantly. Where possible, Google is pushing local results for terms having local context like weather, pizza, movies, jobs etc.

The change in usage trend will throw new challenges to SEO & PPC professionals. They will need to focus their campaigns more on lead terms, creating a fiercer battleground.

How will PPC campaigns get impacted?

As per Google the AdWords impressions are counted in the following situations -

• The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search).
• The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries.
• The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds.

For PPC campaign managers, this is bad news. The AdWords impressions would unnecessarily increase due to ads display even during partial typing process. Ads would sometimes be displayed for irrelevant or partial keywords. For example, search intent for “Car Insurance” displays ads for “Car Rentals” just after the user has typed the word “car.” This means that the “Car Rentals” PPC campaigns will waste impressions, reducing their CTR.

Predictive query push of popular terms will diminish the long-tail keyword opportunities for PPC managers. Pressure will mount on the “head” terms of their campaigns; pushing up their CPC costs while wasted AdWords impressions will make their CTR poor. Since the CTR is likely to be affected across the board for most users, it is not clear how Google will treat the fall in the “Quality Score” of the ad campaigns.

In any case, PPC campaigns are likely to become costlier to run and the campaign managers will need to make frequent updates in their campaigns to target newer and popular keywords to keep up with the changing trends of search users. Some website owners may even consider diverting part of their PPC funds into SEO campaigns in order to get some traction of natural traffic and mitigate their long term investment risks.

How will SEO landscape change with Google Instant?

Challenges for SEO managers will not be easy. With diminishing long-tail inventory, SEO will need to focus on popular search terms, which, by no means is a mean task. Changes in SEO will also need to be made frequently, in line with the changing keyword trends. Where relevant, optimization for local search terms will help. Due to the instant display of results, fewer users will need to scroll down the page. This means that “above the fold” results will become prime property. Clients would no longer be happy with the top-10 ranking and may demand top-4 rank instead, making the SEO’s job even harder.

Gaming the Google Instant Predictive Search System

It is important to note that the predictive search suggestions of Google Instant is not about suggesting important terms, but suggesting “popular” terms. For search terms, which do not have a high search volume (or for long-tail keywords), it is easy to “game the system” by artificially inflating search terms popularity.

Several years ago, we ran a test on WordTracker keyword research tool. At the time, WordTracker used to fetch search data from only Dogpile & MetaCrawler search engines, which had a miniscule search market share. Since it was easy to game these two ‘low traffic’ search engines, we artificially inflated a ‘test query string’ search in these search engines and discovered that the test search term indeed appeared ‘high’ in WordTracker’s keyword search count, just a few weeks later. Similarly, search terms for low-volume searches can be pushed up in the Google’s predictive suggestions. This manipulation of Google Instant was successfully tried for the term “Nathan Deal Ethics” to highlight the allegations against Nathan for corruptions.

As the dust settles down, the users will get more comfortable by evolving their own techniques of narrowing down their search queries. Perhaps over a period of time, a new usage trend may emerge. How the PPC & SEO landscape will shape up over the next one year may be difficult to predict. However, one thing seems to be clear – with one masterstroke, Google has ensured higher revenues from PPC advertisers; made SEO a lot more difficult and with increased search pattern of distracted searchers, increased their page-views (read market share.)

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Atul Gupta is the Co-Founder & CEO of RedAlkemi.com, a company specializing in Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing. Atul is a thought-leader in Online Marketing industry and has been working in this field since 1996. His company has helped over a thousand clients succeed in their online businesses. Atul is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has published several articles about SEM industry.

Are your web statistics revealing that more people are finding your site via social media channels? It’s no secret that social sites – Facebook and Twitter – are now significant players when it comes to search market share. Marketers are finding themselves investing more time and resources into social media marketing and with good reason–your potential customers could be among the Facebook and Twitter masses. Now more than ever, consumer decision making patterns are based on the correlation between search and brand discovery through social media.

A search and social media industry study revealed that searchers exposed to a brand via both Social Media and Paid Search are more willing to take action. These findings are proof  that consumers exposed to social media are more likely to click on a brand’s paid search ad compared to those exposed to the brand’s paid search alone. When users searched a brand’s product name, the CTR nearly tripled (from 4.5% up to 11.8%) from being exposed to a brand in social media and paid search.

Search and Social Media Survey Shows Consumers are Taking Action:
>   2.8x more likely to search for a brand’s products compared to users who only saw paid search
>   50% increase click thru rate (CTR) in paid search when exposed to both social media and paid search
>   42-point lift in searcher penetration for brand terms when consumers were exposed to social media and paid search
*Source: Research study by comScore, GroupM Search & M80.

Delivering Effective Social Media Marketing Communications on Facebook & Twitter
There is no question the interplay between search and social media will impact your search marketing ROI. And more importantly, how you  communicate your message via social media makes the difference.

>   Do: Approach social media marketing with the mindset of “sharing quality content” to inform and to offer relevant information.
>   Don’t: Use “push-marketing” tactics–avoid direct and blatant sales messages around your products or services.

An essential component in helping your customers find you in search and social media is about creating and sharing quality content. Providing relevant information, keeping content fresh, and making it easily accessible to your potential customers is key in increasing your online marketing results. Since just about everythig begins in search, an important element in both disciplines – search and social media marketing - is offering your customers relevant information to help them answer questions and address their needs.

For example, in Facebook, people ”like” content–and the more compelling your content is, the more potential there is for your message to be read and shared across unlimited social networks. Did you know a Facebook ‘liker’ clicks on 5x more links to external sites than typical Facebook users? This is great news if you are looking to increase your social media click thru rates! The same goes for Twitter–the new sharing of content capabilities on Twitter allow for more creative marketing. The chances of your message going viral is even greater as Twitter becomes more of an information channel.

With over 500 million Facebook users and 160 million Twitterers, the customer outreach potential is unlimited. Social Media’s upside over Google is the ability to take your message viral. The more ‘likes’ or ‘retweets’ your message has, the more visibility you gain, thus increasing your viral chances. New search mindsets are evolving with ‘Facebook Likes’ being compared to page rank due to the direct connection between likes and search. The search and social possibilities are endless as people turn to Facebook as a more common place to search and people use Twitter for more than just tweeting.

It boils down to helping your customers find you across both search and social media channels–and how you gain their attention is key! How are social networks (Twitter and Facebook) impacting your search marketing results? Share your thoughts.

Interview by Kelly Larsen, PPC Summit Director of Marketing

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing An Hour A Day
Authors: David Szetela and Joseph Kerschbaum, with Michael Flores

We recently had the opportunity to talk with David Szetela about his new book 
Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing An Hour a Day and learned some exclusive insights into how Search Marketers can better leverage Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing channels and tools. From the search engines to social media, David’s new book offers some invaluable tips that every Search Marketer should know.

A regular speaker at our PPC Summits, David Szetela is a master of the art in PPC Advertising. He has a unique ability to share his wealth of Search Marketing knowledge in a no-nonsense, easy-to-understand format. And in the new book, Szetela and co-writers do a great job sharing their PPC wisdom including everything from the basics to rules and best practices. The book covers it all from campaign development, management and measurement–offering many important takeaways for PPC success. 

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing An Hour A Day provides clear guidance for improving campaign architecture and creative execution. *****************************************************************************************************************

1. What led to the book’s creation and why are these lessons important for Marketing and Advertising Professionals?

Szetela: We decided to write the book because we wanted to provide a soup-to-nuts instruction manual for new PPC advertisers–even those with no formal training in marketing and advertising. The excellent books already on the market seemed to assume some familiarity with PPC advertising. We took a different approach: the book covers basic advertising and marketing topics before diving into the skills necessary to become an expert PPC campaign manager.

2. Tell us about your background and experience managing PPC/SEM campaigns?

Szetela: Even though I started gaining expertise in PPC advertising a few years after it became available, I had a head start by virtue of my 30 years of experience with direct response advertising.  When I discovered PPC advertising in 2003, I realized that it was classified advertising on steroids–a challenge to write persuasive ads using a small number of characters and an opportunity to improve performance over time by testing and improving ad copy.

3. Name the most important thing every PPC advertiser should do when setting up and managing a campaign?

Szetela: The most important thing is to fully understand your customers. Usually the set of a company’s customers can be broken down into separate sub-groups–each with its own unique jargon and perceptions of benefits. Understanding these differences are important in crafting persuasive ad copy and advertising on sites that are frequented by the customer sub-segments.

4. Sum up your top 3 tips for being a more effective SEM/PPC advertiser and maximizing your results? 

1. Understand that the creative aspects of the job – ad copywriting and landing page design – are as crucial to success as the scientific aspects like ad group and campaign structure, keyword bids, etc.
2. Adopt the philosophy that continual testing and optimization will produce continual improvement in sales volume and conversion rates
3. Learn how to spot the early signs of campaign problems like falling click-through-rates and rising costs

5. What is the most challenging piece of PPC/SEM (from your own experience), and what is your advice on how to tackle it?

Szetela: Over the years, as more and more companies have realized that PPC advertising provides the best ROI of any kind of marketing, the competition has steadily driven average click prices up. To counteract this, expert PPC campaign managers use exact and phrase match versions of popular keywords and continually test ad copy to obtain progressively higher click-through-rates. This improves keyword quality scores which helps advertisers obtain higher ad rank than their competitors at a lower average cost-per-click.

6. In this industry it is tough to stay current. How do you stay up to speed with current industry trends?

Szetela: I read every article that I can find on: Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, MediaPost, MarketingSherpa etc. I also Tweet about the most important developments in the PPC world so people who follow me on Twitter can keep up (@ Szetela) or http://twitter.com/szetela. I also moderate a PPC discussion group on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=1217347.

Overall the book covers many facets of search engine marketing—going beyond Google and much more than just AdWords. It takes you outside of the search engine results, into content networks and on to social media (Facebook). It’s a must read for all marketers!

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About the Author: Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing An Hour a Day
David Szetela is Owner and CEO of Clix Marketing and specializes in PPC advertising: Google AdWords, Yahoo! and Microsoft. Szetela’s 25+ years working for small magazine publishers, Apple Computer and Ziff-Davis Publishing has provided him a deep experience in direct response marketing. David is a frequent speaker at industry conferences like Search Engine Strategies, PPC Summit and  MarketingSherpa Summit.