We’ve been noticing a big trend with paid search marketing innovations, particularly those aimed at shifting consumer click behavior from organic to paid.  It is important to understand the cost and benefits associated with these innovations and leverage this understanding to improve your search marketing strategy.

These innovations seem logical for search engines who are looking for ways to better monetize search traffic, but how can it impact advertisers and consumers? The recent influx of ad accessories – think product extensions, location extensions, etc - has directly influenced consumers’ interactions with paid search ads. One particular ad accessory now has data to support how it shifts the click allocation away from organic results:

Sitelinks.

The proof comes to us from SEOmoz, where they studied the effects of running AdWords’ Sitelinks on Branded keywords. This experiment compares click volume and click ratio for the same branded keywords earning top organic placement with “non-accessorized” paid ads activated against the same allotted time frame with Sitelinks activated.

The results deserve careful consideration. During their controlled experiment, the ratio of organic to paid clicks drastically shifted to approximately 58/42. Total traffic to the site increased a mere <1% when AdWords Sitelinks ran in front of its organic achievements. Even though paid search traffic increased while running Sitelinks upwards of 91%, organic traffic dipped 25%.

The annual impact of this shift in click behavior? $50,000. Imagine the implications of this shift in click behavior for branded campaigns generating $30,000+ monthly spend.

There are arguments to be made both ways, especially if post-click behavior was affected.  Regardless, if this trend continues, it could impose new considerations for paid search strategies when an advertiser ranks high organically and when they do not; we list a few below:

1. Generate awareness of new product launches, promotions, and cross-sell by leveraging this shift in click behavior among a loyal (branded) audience. Sitelinks allow a great amount of control and multi-benefit communication that organic simply cannot compete with today.

2. Increase Sitelinks’ show-rate on competitive, must-own unbranded searches that you rank poorly on within organic results. If this behavior continues across unbranded queries, this presents a great opportunity to lift engagement for your brand, while decreasing your competitors’.

How Search Engines Are Integrating Social

Most of the industry is well aware of the Social Influence Marketing movement by now, and if you are not check out the Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report published earlier this year.  We’ve all heard of Social Influence Marketing and its power in connecting your Brand loyalists and providing a forum to engage and communicate with your Brand.  Now we are seeing another powerful movement as top search engines begin to focus more on integrating Social Media aspects into their results through a variety of avenues; and this does not just reference Universal Search and the mere optimization of Social Media resources.

A few newer areas you will see Google and Bing integrate social applications or create a social space for follow below:

Google Sidewiki is built to “enable users to contribute helpful content alongside any page on the web.”  To view Sidewiki, you must opt in via the Google Toolbar to enjoy the new side pages of distributed consumer content.
Marketers and Website owners have been concerned with this tool because it opens the door to the risk of negative posts or complaints being read by anyone. Currently Google does not provide a way for web sites to opt out of Sidewiki‘s functionality, nor does it allow site owners power to delete or reply to the comments of other users.  However, Google does allow site owners to make permanent comments that stay in the top position within the Sidewiki pages as long as they have verified their sites through Google Webmaster Tools. All other Sidewiki comments are ranked according to Google’s own algorithm.  Note:  only a small portion of consumers are using Google Sidewiki, and no exact usage numbers exist.

Do you Google Wave?  Last month, Google released a Preview Edition to its Real-Time, Social, Communication and Collaboration tool called Google Wave.  (That’s a mouthful!)  Approximately 100,000 invites to Wave were released and I’ve had the pleasure of group “Waving” to my fellow Atlanta Search community.

Not all features are currently functioning. However, the ability to communicate in a “chat-like” way with a group, while sending documents, polls and watching others type in real-time is neat.  I am more interested in the Global features to be released that auto-translate messages; it could be useful in Global Search campaigns and speaking to local offices in their native languages.

Google and Bing’s Twitter Integration.   In late October 2009, both Microsoft and Google announced deals with Twitter and planned to integrate status updates into search results.  Taking a deeper dive into the social pool, Bing also penned a deal with Facebook, whose status updates will also appear within Bing’s search results.  These partnerships of personalized and “socialized” search results make for an interesting evolution.

While this deal is still new, it could be the true beginning of that thing called “Social Search” you’ve heard so much about.

As Razorfish’s Justin Scarborough so accurately pointed out in a recent SMTrends article on this topic, “nobody has to this point been able to find a way to give users and consumers a centralized way to access the opinions, thoughts, and sentiments of web users.”  This is the first inning of the ballgame that will settle which search engine does the best job of integrating the consumer voice into real-time search results.  I’ll be interested to see Who’s on First?

Article by Lindsay Blankenship
Follow Me: @lcblankenship

New Guidelines for Endorsements and Testimonials

Recently the FTC made changes their Guide Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.  These guides haven’t been updated since 1980, long before Al Gore invented the Internet. As you can imagine, a lot has changed in the way marketers advertise since then, so it’s quite amazing such a long period of time was allowed to pass between revisions.

The new revisions will require writers on the Internet to disclose any payments or free products they receive from companies whose products they are reviewing.  The FTC has not specified any standardization as to how writers are to disclose this compensation information, only saying that the disclosure needs to be “clear and conspicuous.”  The Commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren’t typical.

These new guidelines could deal a blow to the blogging industry; many bloggers have built a reputation for reviewing products and services.  What hasn’t been apparent to consumers is that many of these bloggers are compensated for their reviews.  Having to disclose payments or gifts given in exchange for reviews may compromise the validity of a blogger’s reviews and will likely affect their following.

From a search engine optimization perspective, blogger outreach has been a powerful tool for influencing search engine rankings because most of these reviews contain a hyperlink back to the product or service.   Disclosure of compensation for reviews makes it easier for Google to discount links, since compensated reviews are essentially paid links. But without standards, there will be quite a bit of variation in disclosures, so it will remain a challenge for Google to pinpoint compensated reviews.

At last count Technorati claims to be tracking over 133 million blogs.  While it’s unclear as to how bloggers are going to conform to these new standards, it’s even more unclear as to how the FTC plans to police these new guidelines.  With the amount of time it took them to update these guidelines, I’m guessing they may have a solution by 2038.

Article by Ray Rosti

Google’s New Comparison Ads Could Impact Lead Generation Sites

A few weeks ago, Google quietly unveiled a new feature within AdWords that could have a major impact on advertisers in the lead generation business. The feature, called Comparison Ads, allows searchers to compare offers from different advertisers more quickly and easily. Upon searching a keyword like “mortgage,” a promotional ad from Google may appear prompting users to provide more details around the nature of their search, and will ultimately compare rates from different companies. Those who click on the promotion are driven to a page with sponsored results. There, they can then either choose from one of the offers presented on the page or provide additional information in order to further refine their search. Should they select an offer, they have the option of either calling the advertiser directly or clicking on a button to request a quote. Similar to PPC, the advertiser only pays when a user takes either of these two actions.

Google claims this feature further evolves the engine’s ability to provide the most relevant results to the user and, in turn, deliver more valuable leads for the advertiser. Indeed, the offering could end up being beneficial to advertisers for a few reasons. Comparison Ads provide an opportunity for advertisers to show very targeted offers to users without requiring the user to fill out the lengthy forms that often result in high bounce rates. Google promises full transparency as well as privacy – only real products will be shown in the Comparison Ads results– and no user information will be sent to the advertiser unless the user opts in for more information.

However, there are certainly drawbacks to Comparison Ads, specifically for lead generation advertisers whose entire business model is built around offering free comparison tools to the user – once they click through to their  site, that is. What incentive will a user have to click on the traditional PPC listings from these companies now that Google is offering a quicker and more transparent way for the user to get exactly the level of information they need without ever leaving Google? Because many of these lead aggregators are also major PPC advertisers, it will be interesting to see how they react to the addition of Comparison Ads.

Currently the offering is only available to a select number of advertisers in the mortgage/refinance space. According to a recent AdWords blog post, Google does intend to roll Comparison Ads out to additional verticals in the near future. We’ll continue to monitor both advertiser reactions to the feature as well as Google updates on the rollout, and will provide further insight once we have something to share.

Article by Krista Gaedtke

Introducing Google Commerce Search

Earlier this month Google launched a new product specifically targeted towards e-commerce web sites. The service, which is called Google Commerce Search, will use Google’s patented technology to improve a user’s search experience while seeking products on a site.

Commerce Search is a Google search engine that retailers can install on their web sites. It utilizes Google’s speed and ease of use to create a more efficient shopping experience for users. User-friendly features of Google Commerce Search include built-in spell check, synonym recognition, parametric product search and query stemming.

According to Marketing Sherpa, 43% of visitors to e-commerce web sites say that the very first thing that they do when visiting a site is type a product name or category into the site’s search feature. Visitors spend an average of only 8 seconds on a web site before deciding whether or not to remain, so a quick and easy search interface is crucial to visitor retention.

While Commerce Search is advantageous to the user, it is also extremely beneficial to the retailer. It’s easy and quick to deploy and use – retailers just upload their product information to Google, and the Commerce Search technology will optimize the product feed and provide the site with search capabilities. Commerce Search is integrated with other Google products like Google Analytics and Google Product Search. Using Commerce, retailers can measure clicks, transactions, conversions, average order value and other useful data via their Google Analytics account.

Birkenstock USA will be the first retailer to adopt Google Commerce Search for their web site. Pricing for the product depends on the number of search queries and the number of products in the website’s data feed.

Article by Dana Forman

Moving On After Paid Inclusion is Gone

A few weeks ago SMTrends mentioned some sad news for those of you who have come to rely on Yahoo Paid Inclusion – beginning January 1, 2010, it will no longer be available.  Businesses will have marketing budget to reallocate and new opportunities to explore to help replace the tool many search marketers have counted to generate traffic, branding, leads or even orders since 2003.   But no matter how you generate traffic now, you can be hopeful this transition period will have a beneficial impact on your accounts, across all engines.

To help out, here are five suggestions to help you through the end of PI:

Improve Your Search Engine Friendliness
Make sure your site is search engine friendly and don’t be afraid to reach out to your reps for suggestions; as PI disappears, the value of best practices search improvements become more valuable

Expand Your Keyword List
Most engines seem to perform best with terms on exact match (standard match for Yahoo).  Review your current terms and make sure you’ve build out the long-tail terms far enough. Once additional keywords are identified, build out your pages so they occur naturally within site content.

Pick the Best Landing Pages
Ensure that the landing pages organically targeting your long-tail terms are as relevant as your PI pages were.  Paid inclusion focused on relevance and your paid search accounts should also.  Make sure you have the right balance of relevance and call-to-action on any page.

Generate More Content in a Great Content Management System
Fresh content can open up a whole new world of possibilities … and traffic.  New, relevant content written with search in mind is great for organic search, but also may help you expand your existing PPC keyword set while helping you improve your quality scores.

Generate Content in Other Venues
Branch out to places where your content is best suited.  Sometimes great content should reside where it can benefit from a publisher’s promotional efforts, as well as great organic positioning.  Blogs and industry-specific vertical publishing opportunities may be the key to your success.

Try branching out into one or more of the following:
•    Mobile
•    Search Re-targeting
•    Super-targeted “CPC” display
•    Ad exchanges
•    Content and placement networks

Whichever way you go, there are clearly many opportunities to help minimize the impact.

Article by Jamie Jones

Integrating Search, Part 2

This article was previously published in Search Engine Watch on November 6, 2009.

“Integrating Search, Part 1” focused on why search is sometimes separated in an agency and how to begin addressing it. The goal was to convey that, while search is a specialty like media and creative, there are organizational and client benefits to channeling your inner Reagan and demanding to “tear down that wall.” Search should:

• Translate how it fits into everything an agency does.
• Avoid beating up the other tactics in order to sell itself.
• Use data properly to make a case.

Now we’ll focus on some of the harder aspects of integrating search: storytelling, getting a “seat at the table,” and tearing up those multiple business cards.

Search is Part of a Consumer Story
Within the search industry, the leaders in many organizations often started at the bottom. It’s a great testimony to how one can grow in a field, but such a background isn’t without its limitations.

Growing up in search can lead to an individual being tactically driven — making subtle changes based on budgets, ROI, link opportunities, and other data. While certainly complex work, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds of data and analysis. And pursuing tangential tactics that may not actually solve a business problem can confuse internal teams.

This is also the type of approach that doesn’t excite a CMO, sell an idea, or win business. You can talk about optimizing campaign spend and meta tag structure until you’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t explain why the problem should be fixed. This is where storytelling becomes a differentiator.

How to be a Storyteller
I recently worked with the team on a pitch in the travel space; anybody familiar understands that this industry has taken a bit of a beating over the past year. Instead of diving in with a bunch of slides on how their current campaign is structured (poorly) and how their Web site is optimized (it’s not), we created a story around their problem and how search solves it. They didn’t have a bad search plan; it just didn’t allow them to capture tinier pools of travelers. And we built this integration story using the recommendations from my previous article.

Despite the economic climate, people still travel. The difference is now they’re looking for day trips, weekend getaways, and cross promotions with local theme parks (which is what the data told us). TV spend was down and proving less effective than before but could still function symbiotically with search.

Data on user search interest could inform offline efforts while search efforts could be aligned with what’s in-market (see how we didn’t beat up offline to sell search?). We also talked about how search will touch everything in our plan from Web development to media (translating how search fits into everything). While this may yet sound tactical, we explained it all under the following voiceover (cue Don Draper in “The Wheel“):

“There’s gloom and doom all around us. Economy. Job Losses. War. People feel overworked.

It wasn’t but a few years ago that things were great, and we were out there doing what we wanted when we wanted. But even with these problems, life hasn’t stopped. Life is about creating memories. People still want to create memories for themselves and with their families. They remember going on the family vacation or getting a way for a few days down to the Jersey shore. How, no matter what was going on, everyone stopped, came together and disconnected. They still want this. They still want to get away from the stress of the job and enjoy an ice cream cone on the boardwalk while looking out over the ocean. Sure, there are less of them, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is their use of search to find information.

This is why we need to refine our strategy around what is important to them now. Your resorts offer discounted theme park passes; you need to promote that. You’re all about creating family memories; you need content to explain that to people and search engines.”

This is a story. This makes a client want to work with you because you understand what drives their customers.

Don’t Let Search Take a Back Seat
How many times have you been asked to create your search story in less than five slides? It can’t be done. But if you use my process you can make 20 slides and nobody will care because you have a compelling reason to be there.

When search breaks, it breaks big. When search is a small part of the conversation, you can’t provide the proper education to your internal teams and clients so that when something breaks they can respond without panic.

All of us have gotten the frantic call from an account director that the client is angry because the “CEO asked why we aren’t number one for [insert keyword here].” If search has a proper seat, you’re able to educate everyone about keyword competitiveness and approach. Through education and more search-focused conversations, you can prepare clients for the challenges of vanity and highly competitive keywords, re-focusing their interest on more conversion-oriented terms.

You don’t need to prepare a crash course in search for the CMO. You can set up the challenges and manage expectations simply by telling a story properly. Your client teams will love you for this.

Tear up that Card
This is the hardest part. In recent years, more search agencies have either been acquired by larger agencies or created as a separate discipline. As those independent brands are allowed to behave, well, independently, there are fewer shared beliefs on how to leverage search within the larger group.

This ends up diluting the integrated offering and creating internal competition. Typically, search gets “value added” or underfunded and, therefore, not able to deliver properly. It’s not easy or popular, but it’s time to tear up those business cards and look at folding the brand into the agency offering.

Razorfish has had success because search was born in the agency. We didn’t buy a separate brand, and even when we acquired other agencies we made sure everything was done under the Razorfish brand. When you do this competition goes away, revenue confusion goes away, and people start working more collaboratively. It reinforces that they are part of the same team.

If you can’t tell, I’m pretty passionate about how search integrates into the larger picture. I’m also not bitter that sometimes it’s forgotten.

Responsibility lies on both sides. Agency teams need to better learn the value we can bring, but we need to be able to do it in a way that educates partners and tells a story. Integration can be tricky, but stepping out of your comfort zone and embracing the larger world around you can mean the difference between winning a client and walking away empty-handed.

Article by Joshua Palau

Mobile Drives Efficient Conversions

Congratulations to the Razorfish team on this newly published case study!

The Opportunity
Razorfish is a global digital advertising agency founded in 1995 that has driven the online marketing efforts of many of the world's biggest brands. In the past three years, Razorfish has consistently ranked as one of the top five top search advertising agencies in the country, by Ad Age magazine. According to Danny Huynh, associate search director for Razorfish, their goal is "to treat search as one of many consumer touchpoints and explore new opportunities that can help our clients to be ahead of the curve."  
 
With more and more people searching the internet from their phones, mobile advertising has become one of these new opportunities. "Mobile advertising seems to be a well-kept secret," says Huynh. "Some clients have initial concerns that mobile won't deliver results on par with the same online ads on desktop and laptop computers, but we're finding that mobile can actually deliver a lower cost per conversion than desktop targeted ads."

One client, a retailer, was looking to reach more potential customers. Huynh and his team had been managing the client's Google AdWords account for about two years, but they had never tried mobile advertising before. “There was previously no mobile website built out for this brand,” Huynh recalls. “However, phones have evolved to include full internet browsers, meaning that a separate mobile website isn't necessary to creating a good experience for users. As a result, mobile advertising really became possible for this client.”  
 
So after Huynh and his team suggested testing mobile advertising, they set out with the goal of maximizing the volume of conversions in a campaign targeted to users of high-end mobile devices.   

Mobilizing
Huynh explains that getting started with Google mobile ads was easy – they simply duplicated the regular online ad campaigns in their AdWords account but switched the settings to target high-end mobile devices. The team started with their branded keyword terms, so that they would be able to learn quickly from significant levels of traffic. To measure performance, they tracked several conversion metrics including whether a mobile user looked up the brick and mortar store location or downloaded a coupon from the site.

Brian Bartek, search manager at Razorfish, performed the campaign analysis. "We were pretty surprised with what we were seeing," says Bartek. "There wasn't a lot of competition, so our CPCs were lower than what we saw in the same campaigns on desktop. Even more impressive was the cost per conversion– it was 7.5% more efficient!"

Encouraged by the results, Razorfish and the client decided to test ways to optimize the mobile campaigns. First, they tested whether variations in the campaign's landing page would affect conversion rates. The team hypothesized that there might be a few targeted actions that their customers seek out to complete on their mobile devices. By starting the experience closer to that action, the client would see better results.

"For this client, conversions were much higher when customers arrived directly on the webpage that shows them nearby store locations," explains Bartek. "By taking people straight to what they were looking for, our campaign performance improved significantly."

The Results
Having identified the optimal landing page, Huynh's team set out to test the ad text. Four versions of ad text were tested. The first matched the text in the online ad campaigns for desktop computers; this served to provide a set of control data. Two other versions mentioned a specific mobile action: find a nearby store location or download a coupon. The fourth version mentioned a specific mobile device (e.g. iPhone) in the ad text to communicate that the ad was user-friendly on mobile devices.

The results were impressive. "Each of the three new versions provided over 9.3% lift in conversion rate over the strongest performing copy in their desktop campaigns," Bartek notes."And when the iPhone was specifically mentioned in the ad text, the ads saw more clicks and higher conversions."
 
With data in hand proving that mobile advertising can yield new conversions with lower CPCs and higher conversion rates, Huynh and his team are making Google mobile ads a regular part of this client's media mix. “We don't just look at search on desktop," explains Huynh. "We look at the whole experience across any platform. And going forward, we'll be looking closely at how we can leverage Google mobile ads to benefit our other clients as well."

Integrating Search into the Agency – Part 1

This article was previously published in Search Engine Watch on October 23rd 

What are the pros and cons of specialty agencies versus integrated ones? Some believe that, while they may deliver subject matter expertise, specialty agencies may be less focused on the bigger strategic picture. And while integrated agencies provide a one-stop shop, their different specializations or operating units may work in silos.

So, what's the best way to integrate search as an operating standard? From a client perspective, a standard means that your agency's work will be ensured a degree of effectiveness. From a search practice perspective, having an operating standard ensures the search discipline gets its seat at the table.

Developing this standard is a shared responsibility, and this presents a challenge when agency and specialty fail to see eye-to-eye.

The agency argument is that search:
•    Is too tactical.
•    Is too technical.
•    Isn't creative.
•    Takes credit for all client success.

The search argument is that the agency:
•    Ignores search.
•    Wants to sell pretty work.
•    Just doesn't get it.
•    Wants all the money.

Ultimately, search works best when integrated into the larger set of agency services. One voice, one team, one strategy. Sounds easy, but what are the rules for integration?

Translate How Search Fits into the Agency Disciplines
Search touches everything, but not everyone understands how. You need to know how to translate search into the language of other services. Explain how search can benefit the other marketing disciplines.

Make the strategy team aware that keyword research can be used to help gauge user intent, which will influence the content strategy. People who search for "family vacations" may also be searching for "babysitting services" or "toddler activities." While a vacation resort may offer these services, they might not highlight them on the Web site. The search interest findings should be incorporated into the site recommendations.

Design should understand that the client's site receives about 40 percent of its incoming traffic from organic search and that a full Flash home page design will impact search performance. The search and design teams must work together to present a solution that balances design and performance.

Media should understand the relationship between search and display, but also the additional opportunities that exist. Synching display and search messaging is important, and the media team can apply knowledge of what sites rank well for competitive keywords when considering them for placements.

This integration needs to be handled through education. Let the other services know how search can enhance their offerings and why the client will care.

Don't Position Search by Insulting Other Tactics
Search people often expect search to be highly considered, but too often we sell the service by beating up on other media tactics. Search has been relegated to a corner for so long that we've come out swinging.

"Nobody watches commercials." "Who reads magazines?" "Your click-through percentage is what?!"
Who wants to hear someone crow about how great they are at the expense of colleagues and sister agencies? If search is going to come in and disrespect the work of others, why invite them to the party?

The recent economic downturn has really brought the message home that search can't exist in its own silo. It's also not flashy enough to be the leading agenda item for Fortune 500 CMOs. Search needs offline and display.

Kill 'em With Data
Instead of bashing other service offerings, use your data appropriately to build a case for search. Focus your discussion of search data around the specific industries, verticals, and tasks at hand.

Stay away from generic data, too. Sure, 70 percent of all Americans search for health related topics, but that type of general statistic isn't going to sway a client that's concerned with a specific product type.
A presentation of trend data showing more people searching for "childhood obesity and diabetes" and it's relationship to that client's product might be more useful. Another good tactic: explain when search marketing doesn't make sense.

These are easy things that your agency and search teams can start doing today in the pursuit of better integration. In part two, we'll talk about search storytelling, training, and how not to let search take a back seat.

Article by Joshua Palau