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• Mobile News From CTIA And Beyond: InfoSpace, V-Enable, ZenZui
  Beyond the news of Yahoo's new mobile content and ad networks and Google's new mobile search upgrades, there's a good deal of mobile search-related news coming out of CTIA today. Among the announcements, InfoSpace has launched a direct-to-consumer version of its mobile local-search application Find It! for Blackberry devices. Previously...
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• Google's Orkut Gets Polls; Answers Next?
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• Yahoo Click Fraud Settlement Approved
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• PPC And Your Good Name: Sales From Brand Searches Aren't Incremental
  Hello! My name is Alan Rimm-Kaufman. I'm honored to be contributing a monthly column on paid search for Search Engine Land. The column will appear the third Tuesday of each month. My focus will be strategy, economics, and multi-channel. About me: I run a paid search agency based in...
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• How Not To Be Buried On Digg
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| Search Engine Marketing | 1031 Tax Savings | Counseling Debt Services | Credit Card Debt |

| Collegiate Funding Services | | Model In A Bottle | The OC Agency | Rehab Funding |

| Search Fast |

Labels: Google, Search, Search Engine, SearchEngine, SearchFast, Yahoo

- posted by SEM-SEO PRO @ 3:05 PM

 
Investing in Pay Per Click Marketing or Search Engine Optimization - a Company Decision

As click costs rise, many companies who are already investing in active pay per click marketing campaigns are looking toward hiring a search engine optimization company to supplement their marketing portfolio in order to increase their exposure and reduce their advertising spend. In some cases, frustrated by click fraud and increasing click costs, marketers are using search engine optimization to completely replace pay per click marketing. However, these companies will often try to evaluate search engine optimization using the same methodology that they had used for pay per click - by figuring out the cost per click.

In almost every case, a campaign created by a reputable search engine optimization company will eventually garner lower per-click costs than pay per click marketing for any industry. Yet using cost per click to compare the effectiveness of these two separate disciplines is comparing apples to, well, anything other than apples. The crucial difference between these two approaches is that pay per click marketing is more of an advertising investment, while search engine optimization is more appropriately likened to an investment in infrastructure. While both have their merits in terms of increasing a company’s online exposure, it is important to understand the differences in the respective investments and to determine why cost per click is not a fair indicator of the performance of a search engine optimization company.

Pay Per Click Marketing
Advertising investments of all kinds, from billboards to print ads to television spots to pay per click marketing, all share a common trait. They exist in the public eye for as long as a company is willing to pay for them. Stop paying, and they disappear. True, a print ad may continue to exist for a while after it runs (until the newspaper or magazine gets recycled, at least), and a television spot may get attention if it wins any awards (or winds up on YouTube). But a pay per click marketing campaign will simply vanish as soon as the budget is cut. This means that when a company reduces its advertising spend in this arena, it loses all of its exposure immediately.

What does this really mean? Well, for one, it means that figuring out the average per-click costs of a pay per click marketing campaign makes sense because everything happens in real time. A pay per click campaign will begin nearly instantly after a company signs up and pays, and it will vanish just as quickly when the company ceases payment. In other words, there is a clear delineation of when a campaign begins and when it ends.

This delineation is important, because it excludes many other potential factors that muddy the waters when you try to apply this same ROI analysis to a campaign created by a search engine optimization company.

Search Engine Optimization
As said previously, utilizing a search engine optimization company can be likened to making an investment in the infrastructure of a business rather than an investment in advertising. This is because with search engine optimization, there is no clear delineation of where the benefit from the campaign ends. If a business stops paying its search engine optimization company at any point after the campaign has been launched (presuming they have hired a decent search engine optimization company), there will continue to be results from that campaign for an extended period of time- usually many months or even years.

Of course, it is not recommended that any business actually quit an ongoing SEO campaign because a good search engine optimization company will always be expanding and honing that campaign over time to make it more successful over the long term. However, budgets get revisited and revised. Decision makers can change. And if the budget for SEO does get cut, a business will continue to see results for long after. How, then, can you determine value on a per-click basis? The simple answer is that you can’t.

It should be noted that while maintaining ongoing results after payments have ceased is a big upside to search engine optimization, the inverse downside is that an effective campaign put in place by a search engine optimization company can take some time to implement, and the results may not appear for weeks or months. A search engine optimization campaign takes patience, effort, and, most of all, time. If a business needs its marketing campaign to be up and running immediately, pay per click marketing is going to be a better short-term choice.

Conclusion
It is important to recognize the innate differences in pay per click campaigns and search engine optimization when trying to quantify results. A pay per click marketing campaign can have a definitive beginning and end, which makes cost per click a good way of determining ROI. Yet the results gained from the hiring of a search engine optimization company, although an SEO campaign can take much longer to implement, will outlast the results from a pay per click campaign if a business ever needs to cut spending. And this is where the notion of analyzing the effectiveness of a search engine optimization campaign on a cost per click basis breaks down.


- posted by SEM-SEO PRO @ 9:29 AM

 
Pay-Per-Click Not-So-Easy

Pay-per-click advertising is not as simple as it might seem.

Online marketers have taken to pay-per-click (PPC), and many use it, but apparently not everyone understands it very well.

Although online marketers have been investing in PPC search marketing for a number of years, a new survey of marketers — all of whom have been using PPC for at least two years — conducted by the e-tailing group found that managing PPC programs poses a challenge.

The fact that marketers use PPC was clear from the survey. In fact, with 44% of e-commerce executives surveyed saying they allocate 20% of their entire advertising budgets to PPC search ads, it constitutes a significant portion of online marketing budgets.

They agree on where to spend PPC ad dollars, too. Of the marketers who invest in PPC campaigns:

* 100% use Google
* 90% use Yahoo!
* 76% use MSN
* 27% use Ask.com

The problem is that 40% of the respondents reported that they manage more than 5,000 keywords. To accomplish the task, 59% manage internally, 18% outsource and 24% use a combination of internal and outsourced solutions.

Somewhat amazingly, 99% of those that manage PPC campaigns in house have three or fewer people working on the job.

A third of the executives spend 21 or more hours a week managing PPC campaigns, and a third spend five or less hours a week.

"It is clear that merchants see value in this marketing method," Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing group, told Internet Retailer. "However, resource constraints plus limited time availability and skilled personnel to dedicate to PPC were frustrations."

Even though ROI is the primary measure of success for PPC campaigns, 27% of the marketing executives said they did not know how their cost of conversion compared with the total dollar value of each sale.

For more, read eMarketer's Search Marketing: Spending and Metrics report.
- posted by SEM-SEO PRO @ 3:31 PM

 
PPC Management on the New Big Three

Pay-Per-Click or PPC is the fastest growing out of all segments of advertising including traditional as well as online media.With that in mind it is absolutely essential that you understand exactly which PPC advertising platform is best suited for your unique business needs or you may be left in the virtual dust. Throughout this article I will compare and contrast the three giants Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and the freshly launched Microsoft adCenter in order to shed some light on the unique aspects and features of each platform.I will cover three main areas of each platform consisting of ad distribution, demographics and tools. When you have completed reading this article you will possess the knowledge required in order to make an informed decision on which of these marketing platforms is the most beneficial for your company to launch a successful PPC campaign.

Google AdWords

Google Adwords is currently the most popular of the three advertising platforms.They continue to develop new tools and features that secure their footing upon the top of the PPC Marketing podium.

Ad Distribution:

The Google Network consists of thousands of web properties including search sites, content pages, email services (Gmail), newsletters and discussion boards.According to Media Metrics Data 80% of internet users in the United States will view an AdWords ad within the next month.You may choose to show your ads on the search network the content network or perhaps both depending on your custom needs.A few of the search sites that your ads will appear on when utilizing the search network are Google network consist of Google, AOL, Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves), Amazon and Shopping.com.Several examples of where your ads will appear when advertising on the content network are HowStuffWorks, New York Times, Washington Post and Forbes.

Demographics:

The Google AdWords system allows you to target users in several different ways.You are able to target users by specific locations or by specific languages.This is achieved by determining a users IP address, search query location, internet domain or the users set language preference.

Tools:

Google AdWords comes equipped with a robust toolbox that can streamline your PPC campaign management.

The site exclusion tool allows you to block your ads from appearing on any sites that you feel may be irrelevant or inappropriate for your advertisement.The keyword tool grants you the ability to help you improve your keyword lists, estimate your individual keyword traffic or find new negative keywords.You may add your new keywords directly to your selected adgroup or download them to your computer.

You can best utilize the traffic estimator by utilizing it to estimate your position based on your max Cost-Per-Click (CPC), your daily spend, impressions and clicks as well as your keyword status.The My Chang History allows you to view any changes that have been made to your account within a particular time period.

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) is the pioneer of PPC advertising and a global leader in commercial search services.

Ad Distribution:

The Yahoo Publishers Network is a collaboration of web properties consisting of search web sites, content publishers, email clients and more.Much the same as AdWords you may choose if you would like to show your ads on search or content sites.Several of the search sites that make up the Yahoo! Publishers Network are Yahoo!, Excite, iVillage and Sympatico. A few of the content sites include Advertising.com, CNN, ESPN and National Geographic.

Demographics:

The Yahoo! Search Marketing platform in my opinion trails the pack when talking about audience targeting demographics.The option available to you are very basic, however Yahoo! makes up for it with their Local Sponsored Search options.

Local Sponsored Search allows users who have a brick and mortar location to participate in gaining business from internet users who prefer to research online but purchase locally.Local Sponsored Search allows you to target visitors by a specific territory or service area up to a 100 mile radius.

Tools:

Conversion Counter is Yahoo! Search Marketing’s tool to help you measure the conversions of your advertising campaigns.Simply install a small segment of code onto the conversion page of your web site.Yahoo! breaks the stats down into information that is truly useful for your online marketing success.

Easy Track helps you in distinguishing web site and search engine traffic that result directly from your Yahoo! PPC Campaign.

Search Optimizer automates bidding strategies based on your keyword performance history. Yes, this tool does have it’s time and place but is still no substitute for manual optimization of your PPC campaign.

Microsoft adCenter

Microsoft adCenter is the newest competitor to the PPC advertising arena.Although there are still a few glitches that need to be ironed out adCenter has the potential to be a real competitor.

Ad Distribution:

Unlike the previous two PPC platforms we have gone over Microsoft adCenter only facilitates advertising throughout the MSN Search Engine.There is still potential that your ad will be viewed by a large audience, 40 million people per month to be precise.Out of the 40 million people who utilize MSN search 93% shopped and 81% of them made online purchases in the US.I feel that it is safe to say that we may also expect adCenter’s ad distribution network to expand over the next several months.

Demographics:

With the Microsoft adCenter you are able to find out who the searchers are, identify their geographic location as well as time of day information.adCenter takes the time of day information to the next level with targeting of ads by day of week as well as a precise time of day.The adCenter platform is the first of the PPC search engines that gives you the ability to target a select age group and even the gender of the searcher can be determined.The age and gender targeting feature could come in very handy depending on your product or services. MSN is able to provide such precise targeting demographics by pulling their information on individuals from Microsoft Passport accounts.What that means is anyone out there who has either a Hotmail account or a MSN Messenger account is easily trackable.

Tools:

adTracker is a mechanism used by Microsoft adCenter to track all clicks from ads served throughout MSN Search.adTracker measures the effectiveness of an ad by tracking which clicks result in a web site visit.

Bid Boost is a very interesting tool that is exclusive to Microsoft adCenter advertisers.The Bid Boost tool raises the value of a bid by a preset percentage after it recognizes that the individual is from your optimal user demographic.

In conclusion as you have read through this article you can see that there are pros and cons that come along with each one of these PPC advertising platforms discussed.The goal of this article was to arm you with a few facts that lend a hand in helping you to deciding on which PPC advertising platform is the most beneficial for you to launch a winning advertising campaign that produces highly qualified relevant traffic at an optimal return on investment.
- posted by SEM-SEO PRO @ 8:10 AM

 

- posted by SEM-SEO PRO @ 10:23 AM

 

Pitfalls and Potential Ahead for Search Marketing Industry

The search industry still has growth potential, particularly away from the top tier in the local arena and in specific verticals. But to take advantage of those opportunities, search players big and small will have to do something substantive to settle their click fraud and search privacy issues, and will also have to find a way to make search marketing easier for advertisers.

Those are some of the top-line conclusions of a pair of studies on the future of search engine marketing (SEM) from market research firm eMarketer. Published in two parts in late February and then earlier this month, the study finds that while Google and Yahoo! may be grab most of the spotlight, the growth in spending and usage is more likely to come from niches such as local search.

The first eMarketer study, focused on spending and metrics, reports that paid search ad spending can be expected to grow by 26.2% this year, and then by smaller annual increases through 2010: a 16.4% boost in 2007, 16.3% in 2008, 15% in 2009 and 11.8% by the end of the decade.

Those diminishing growth rates compare to much larger spending increases in search marketing’s early years: a whopping 174.3% jump in 2003, 51.4% in 2005, and 33.2% last year. Obviously, as Google CFO George Reyes pointed out in February, the law of big numbers applies, and the fast-growing search marketing industry is in for lower growth. And eMarketer projects that total paid search ad spending will remain very healthy, reaching $6.5 billion this year and $11.3 billion by 2010.

Those spending increases still represent healthy growth that any other ad channel would love to see, says eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman, who authored the two reports. “Reyes’ comment is really on target and a good thing,” he says. “When paid search appeared at the beginning of the decade, it seemed like a fad. Growth is leveling off but at a really nice level, and healthy growth—rather than outlandish growth—is a good sign.”

The law of large numbers also will apply to the proportion of online ad spending that paid search will attract. While that dollar figure will remain high, its rank as a percentage of online ad spending will sat flat to slightly down, from 41.5% this year to 39.5% by 2010. Meanwhile, spending on rich media will grow from 11.5% of online ad budgets today to 18.5% in 2010, according to eMarketer’s projections. Rich media will see a 46.1% spending increase this year, and slightly smaller annual increases heading out of the decade to reach 25.3% in 2010—most of that due to the advent of online video ads.

Nevertheless, even with growth like that, rich media spending will only hit $5.3 billion by 2010—less that half the total outlay that paid search will attract in that year.

Low growth ahead will drive search engines of all types to concentrate on improving the search experience with better targeting and more relevant results, Hallerman says. He points out that 20% of Internet users now don’t use search—a market pool of new users that the engines could tap into with better products or services.

And as more users spend more time looking for content online, their needs will become more complex, and search marketers will expand their keyword campaigns to accommodate that growing complexity. “People learn from experience that their searches have to become more detailed and more refined,” Hallerman says. “For that reason, the bidding on keywords ahs to become more detailed and more refined too. That’s why the average number of keywords in campaigns has been on the rise, and it’s also one reason why search engine marketing might be the single most complex form of advertising around.”

Branding campaigns will also grow to include a search marketing component—either paid search ads or at least enough optimization to make sure a brand’s Web site ranks high in search results for its product categories. Part of the driver here will be increased Web traffic and awareness, but Hallerman points out that brand protection will also play a part. The more likely your competitors are to have an optimized Web presence and paid search ads, the more it behooves you as a marketer to make sure customers can find you, too.

The second half of the eMarketer industry report looks at search marketing’s major players and potential issues. Among the players, Google grabs the lion’s share of paid search spending in the U.S.—57.2% of the market this year, minus traffic and acquisition costs. That’s way beyond the 27% eMarketer predicts runner-up Yahoo! will command.

Part of Google’s dominance in the search marketing space comes from its talent for monetizing search. Data from comScore Media Metrix shows that Google had about 75.3 million unique visitors in October 2005, while Yahoo! had 68 million. Those comparable totals suggest that Google’s strength lies in getting its visitors to conduct more searches per visit than its competitors and thus see more paid ads per visit—and thus again, be more likely to click on those ads, earning revenue for Google.

“As [analyst] Charlene Li of Forrester Group said, Google is a one-trick pony,” Hallerman points out. “But it’s a helluva cute pony, and they’re riding it well.”

But that doesn’t make Google synonymous with the search industry. Twenty-eight percent of U.S. adult Internet users use only Yahoo!, MSN or AOL for their searches. And Nielsen//NetRatings figures show that in December 2005, 954,000 U.S. searches took place outside the Big Three of Google, Yahoo! and MSN—a 37.7% increase in small-engine searching from December 2004.

So even small marketers should not overlook the added reach that they get from advertising outside Google and its ilk, Hallerman says. Those smaller engines, including Ask.com, Miva and Kanoodle, can drive traffic at lower costs than the dominant players.

Meanwhile, for reasons of corporate strategy, Google will have to find ways to grow its revenue beyond the classical paid search model. They’re doing so by bulking up their offerings in local search, online classifieds and video marketing.

Local search in particular will grow to be a bigger proportion of paid search spending; eMarketer projects that by 2010, nearly one in every five dollars spent on paid search will go local, up from only 8.8% of spending this year. Local search ad spending will break the billion-dollar barrier in 2008, Hallerman says, reaching $1.27 billion.

But while the search engines are working to roll out products that will appeal to small businesses on the Internet, most notably pay-per-call features, still much of that local search spending will come from deep-pocketed national or regional businesses with local presence, such as retail chains that want to be found in local searches, Hallerman says.

So much for the primary growth drivers. When it comes to growth inhibitors and the search marketing industry, eMarketer spots two on the horizon. One is click fraud, which Hallerman says can be a stumbling block to getting advertisers to commit to more search marketing.

“If not brought under control, click fraud could challenge the basic business model of paid search,” Hallerman writes in the second half of the eMarketer report. “Disenchanted search advertisers would follow, leading to lower bids, smaller paid saerch campaigns and –among savvy marketers—greater investment in search optimization.” The report points to recent findings by the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) that 42% of all online advertisers and agencies say they have experiences click fraud, and that 22% of those who’ve fallen victim say they were not recompensed by the paid-search provider for those bogus clicks.

The answer may be for the search engines to find ways to alleviate the pain by making their compensation processes more transparent. “[Click fraud] is going to be an ongoing problem, like e-mail spam,” Hallerman says. “I think the pressure from advertisers for more give-back will teach the engines that they need to be more responsive to advertiser problems.” In Google’s specific case, he says, the company may have to forego its penchant for a tech solution and incorporate more human monitoring of clicks to spot fraud.

And if click fraud threatens advertisers’ trust in paid-search marketing, privacy concerns could erode public faith in general search, Hallerman says. How big an issue keeping one’s searches secret becomes depends in part on whether the story develops media legs, he admits. If the recent court decision to deny the Justice Department access to Google keyword logs damps down future attempts to subpoena massive search databases, the problem might not flare up again. But in any case, Hallerman says, the public has a low-level concern that its search traffic might be made public. He cites a June 2005 survey by The Conference Board and TNS NFO which found that 57.8% of U.S. online households said they were “somewhat” or “extremely” concerned about their security when using search engines.

“This may not be an active problem today, but the seeds for long-term erosion have been planted,” Hallerman writes. If some portion of those searchers opted to reduce their online search behavior as a result of a high-profile exposure of their data, that could put a serious dent in the growth of the search marketing industry.

Fighting it out in the courts is one way to protect that growth potential, he adds. “But having no data connected to individuals (and their IP addresses) would be an even safer way for the Googles of the world to protect privacy, and their bottom line.”

- posted by SEM-SEO PRO @ 3:41 PM

 

Study: Search engine marketing up 44% in 2005

- posted by SEM-SEO PRO @ 3:38 PM