Search Engine Marketing: Bing Review

Well – we’re early into Microsoft’s release of their latest search engine Bing (code name Kumo, formerly known as Live Search, formerly known as MSN Search, etc, etc), but I wanted to give my 2 cents on the early launch.

I’ve found some interesting things, such as try searching on the words “google”, “yahoo”, “aol” or “ask” (all competitors to Bing), and what you’ll get is one single result found for each. At first, I thought that was very impressive and nice of them – but then I realized, it is completely eliminating all of the other components to those such as eliminating their analytics, or eliminating companies that offer Google services, etc… I still haven’t decided whether this is good or bad – just interesting. Now do a search on “bing” – and you get a little bit of everything. One has to imagine that because you’re on Bing already, you’re probably searching for something other than Bing – but who knows. So I did a search on “MSN Search”… Interestingly enough – Live.com was there – but no bing?

Of course the thing I’m interested in the most, is searching on “Media Two”. As you can see from the screen shot – we didn’t quite make the number 1 spot. This is interesting to me, as I know our traffic numbers are greater than the first one (according to Compete we have more than 10x the unique visitors), the name is used in our title tags, description and our URL – whereas the person in the number one spot is missing it in their description… So just another interesting observation, but it appears that a “.com” address holds more weight than a “.net” address.

One feature I do like is the mouse-over effect on the right of the listings… It continues the description from the meta description into a convenient pop up window. This however, is not new technology as places like Ask.com have been doing it with preview windows that even include imagery for a while now. And I do like that the results seem to be fast, and for the most part pretty relevant – but I think that’s been established in the industry for a while… So what is new and great about this search engine called Bing? In their current preview stage, it just doesn’t appear to be the next best thing in search, and until someone comes out with that, they’re still going to called acronyms such as the one I’ve heard twice already this morning: “But It’s Not Google”.

Times are tough. Search shouldn't be.

Despite the bad economy, computers are still popular and Google is still in business. Imagine that…any way, here are some tips to make the most of your search campaigns no matter the current economic condition. These tips are not inclusive nor are they groundbreaking, but hell, our clients aren’t complaining.

Monitor your accounts…every day

Again, probably a no brainer, but with all the automation that Google offers it can be easy to ‘set it and forget it.’ For instance, Google offers an ‘optimize’ ad serving option that automatically shows your ‘best performing’ ads. Google determines performance by CTR. So what if your campaign needs to back to a certain CPA, but some of your highest converting ads have low CTRs? They won’t show. You can’t ignore the human element.

Keep your ad copy fresh and keywords relevant

This suggestion isn’t to say that you need to be changing your ad copy constantly. Let your campaign gain some traction then analyze which ads are not delivering according to your performance metrics. It’s surprising what a few minor changes can do. For example, for one of our clients, I just changed the headline in the ad and left the body the same. It is now the best performing ad in terms of conversions for the month. As for keywords, make sure they are backing out to your goals (clicks? conversions? cpc?). Those goals will determine how you go about optimizing your keywords. General keywords have a tendency to negatively skew metrics, make sure your keywords are relevant to your audience.

Adjust your bids

The search landscape is constantly changing, it’s important to keep a close eye on your keyword bids as competitors are always making moves to secure that prime real estate. So with your performance metrics in mind make the necessary adjustments to remain competitive, but efficient. Another area where Google provides automation, but again, if you’re in your accounts everyday there’s no need.

Ongoing Research

Google offers a variety of helpful research tools when it comes to mining for new keywords. So use them! It may spark new ideas for your campaign. Think about what themes you may be missing from your target market. It’s rare to see a campaign go from start to finish without needing an infusion of ad groups and keywords. You never know, it could save your campaign.

Search Engine Strategies New York (#SESNY)

What an incredible first day at SES – and for none of the reasons I expected. The day started off with Guy Kawasaki telling us how he spams everyone, yet people love him. The woman 2 seats over from me fell asleep in her chair and was snoring loud enough for 4 rows over to hear. 30 minutes later I found out that she was the lead speaker in the next session I sat in on! Then the first three session breakouts I attended talked about Twitter twice as much as they did search strategy (I proposed a name change to TES over lunch – but the conference went on as SES). I watched a panel on Universal search that included Ask, Yahoo, Live Search and more – but Google was no where to be found. The final session I sat in was incredible – and it was led by CMO’s discussing do’s and dont’s of search…

If you aren’t following me on twitter, you can do so at http://twitter.com/mediatwo and I’ll be live tweeting Day 2 as well. But here’s a few more details on first and last sessions I sat in on:

SES NY Key Note: Guy Kawasaki
Guy kicked off the day with the keynote speech. As he was speaking I was twittering and noticed that he was too… Only he wasn’t near his computer??? As he spoke deeper, he revealed that he spams people, he uses ghost writers, he doesn’t pay attention to anyone that follows him unless they D or @ him. He also revealed his ultra scientific way of coming up with his “non-automated” post-topics: randomly grab links that sound interesting from a couple sites (one being Alltop.com – his own). With all of this information in the palm of my hand – I still choose to follow him on twitter (as do 90,000+ others). I know – it sounds crazy – but you know what – he’s a very likable guy. That, and he revealed some very useful tools that I re-tweeted earlier in the day including:
• www.Twibs.com helps you monitor companies
• www.Retweetist.com Good gauge of how many people are RT you.
• www.epenis.nl. Check out that site! It's your twitter penis size!
• www.adjix.com it shows stats for your links
• www.Twirl.com allows you to monitor multiple twitter accounts in the same window.
• www.cotweet.com is for multiple tweeting companies.
• www.Tynt.com quotes the original source when copied.
• www.Twitterhawk.com "the ultimate spamming tool". Looks for keywords and auto tweets content.
• www.twitterfeed.com allows you to post to others twitter - huge opportunity to build affiliates. It is a custom feature "beg Mario"

Dozen most common search engine mistakes that CMO's make
I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised by this panel. My objective from this conference was to get a pulse on what CMO’s thought of search and interactive. As immersed as I am personally in interactive strategy, I sometimes find myself talking over clients – and in particular, C-Level types. I went to this session because the panel consisted of top-level marketers from brands such as Ameriprise, World Travel Holdings, Constant Contact, and more – and I felt like this would be a great representation to CMO’s everywhere. Well – if it is – then congratulations CMO’s – you get interactive! The reality is, this was a group of seasoned veterans that understood their marketing mix, and there is a lot that can be learned from them. Below are the 12 mistakes that they pointed out during their session:
1. Failing to set measurable goals.
2. Failing to assign monetary values to each action
3. Assessing the SEM success Solely on a direct marketing model
4. Treating SEO as a project rather than a process
5. Making a #1 ranking your most important objective
6. Focusing on big keywords and forgetting the long-tail
7. Engaging in paid or natural but not both
8. Using your language and not that of your customers
9. Optimizing your web site but not other digital assets
10. Integrate SEM with your other marketing initiatives - don't silo it
11. Failing to bid on terms for which your site already organically ranks high
12. Bidding solely on branded terms

All-in-all – I’m looking forward to day 2! I’m not sure what to expect, but I’m looking forward to it…

Me vs. Adwords

I thought tests were a thing of the past when I graduated college over 2 years ago. Seeing as how I have successfully eluded tests since that time I figured I was in the clear. I was wrong. This coming Tuesday I am scheduled to take the Google Adwords Certification Exam. A test I am told that was forged in the belly of a Pacific-Rim volcano by a breed of Googlers that can only be described as, well, EVIL. A test of might, will and the ability to click on the right radio button enough times to merit a passing percentage. Survivors have told me that if the test does not strip you of your soul it sure as hell will try.

So how have I prepared for my battle with the almighty of online you might ask? I’ve been studying. Totally lame I know, but repeatedly sticking oneself in the abdomen with a cattle prod apparently has no correlation to helping learn search, it just makes one badass. Instead, I’ve been perusing Google’s learning center each day in hopes that my brain can retain enough search data before Tuesday’s throw-down. Not to mention managing a bunch of campaigns. The learning center is a great resource and a good place for reference, but I’ve found the best cerebral saturation, like with most things, comes from hands on experience. Everything from setting up a sensible campaign structure to developing optimization tactics tailored to each of your campaign’s goals. I have really benefited from being exposed to multiple campaigns. I can use methods or tactics associated with one campaign, and either build off those or cultivate a new approach on another.

A general explanation I know, but there are so many ways to achieve your goals in SEM it’s hard to point out one part of the whole. My time is limited, IT nears. Come Tuesday I will awake a common man and hopefully go to bed as a Google Adwords certified man.

Media Two Interactive joins SEMPO

Media Two Interactive is now a Circle Member of SEMPO... In our never ending quest to stay on top of everything search and how it plays well together in the media mix, we have joined the leading professional Search Engine Marketers organization. Coupled with our IAB membership and search committee participation as well as our corporate certification with Google, Media Two is in the enviable position of being able to help define the search engine industry and how it affects the online and offline marketing universe.

Although this is starting to sound more like a press release than a blog post - I really just wanted to keep everyone in the loop of our continued drive to not only educate but to be educated. Too often people put search in a vacuum and assume nothing else matters - when the reality is, there are online and offline events that happen every day that shape the way people think, and ultimately search. Media Two published a case study about a year or so ago that talked about how display advertising can lift your search conversions by over 20% (go to http://www.mediatwo.net/mediatwo-casestudies.html#/Case%20Studies/ and read the one titled "Increase SEM Results"), and just recently, Microsoft Advertising's Atlas division posted a very similar case study for Alltel.

Search is being looked at in all new lights, and there are more and more opportunities for companies that continue to grow and learn - and I'm proud to say Media Two continues to strive to be a leader in the Interactive Media industry with it's dedication to Search Engine Marketing.

Search Strategy for a Struggling Economy

Search Engine Marketing – for all of the hype (and rightfully so) – is finally being affected by the economy. Although we still consider it the best converting online platform, we are definitely seeing the indirect results of clients pulling back budgets. We’re seeing it easier to spend a lot of money. We’re seeing conversion rates slipping a little. And best of all – we’re seeing clients moving more money to search in hopes of a strong end to the year.

Without going into a long explanation about how search is not a stand-alone medium, I wanted to simply explain a changing strategy that we’re implementing here at Media Two that could save a lot of others money and headaches. Get back to the basics.

We’re getting back to manually changing ads out in the engines. Regrouping keywords into appropriate ad groups that have ads that match the content . Lowering our bids on keywords. Limiting the keywords we’re bidding on. And most importantly, turning off the bid managers. Why? Because we’re after the short-tail conversion.

The value in the long-tail conversion goes without saying, but in a time where clients are cutting back Broadcast, Print and everything that doesn’t answer to the bottom line, search engines can start to jumpstart a clients marketing again when focusing on the short-tail. Think of it in these terms… The long tail terms are still being bid on because of the eventual value. But with overall marketing budgets being cut, if an agency or client doesn’t scale back on these, then they’ll start to be short on budgets. This shortfall on budgets is the perfect supply and demand equation for a client that focuses their time and effort on the here and now.

I’m not saying that cutting off your conversion funnel is the right thing to do, but let’s face it – these are tough economic times and when the client dictates that you spend less and convert more – you need to focus on what will give the client the biggest bang for the buck right now. Once you’ve proven that this philosophy works, there will then be more marketing dollars to expand on your strategy. But right now – stay focused on cutting your costs, and maximizing your conversions.

Interactive Media Buying Tips

As I sat on the IAB’s search committee meeting the other day, I started to think about all of the little things that REALLY need to be involved in an interactive media buy that seem to get overlooked. The bottom line I think is that agencies still don’t have enough bodies to do them all as interactive takes a lot more time and effort than a print or traditional campaign – so that being said, I thought I’d point out some of the top things that buyers should be looking to do, starting with incorporating search:

1.Incorporate Search into Everything (AND incorporate Marketing into Search). Agencies still are outsourcing their search to contractors, and although those contractors know how to do search engine architecture, they don’t often understand the basic marketing principles. This is where a traditional agency should be able to accelerate, as they’ve always known marketing – but just couldn’t wrap their arms around interactive. Yet what seems to happen is they follow what their search person tells them to do. Let go of your auto bid optimizers and start analyzing the data. Don’t silo search, and just as important – don’t silo marketing to everything but search.

2. Negotiate your media buy. Sorry sales reps, but right now – we’re pretty sure we have the upper hand. If a client has money to spend, just know that there are 100’s if not 1,000’s of websites that meet your demographic data. Negotiate your media buy to meet your clients objectives. And oh yeah…

3. Know your clients objectives! It’s great to negotiate and get a better deal, but make it a win-win relationship. Publisher reps and vendors want fair value just as much as your client does. Negotiate a deal that hits your client objective and satisfies your publisher. If you can find the sweet spot, then both client and publisher will be happy and continue to grow. In order for that to happen – the media buyer needs to know the publishers metrics, how the clients ads will respond, how they’ll convert and more. So educate yourself before you negotiate. If you don’t know how your clients ads will perform, then you probably need more coordinator experience before taking on a senior media buyer title (Don’t even get me started on agencies that throw around senior level titles so a client feels all warm and fuzzy. Your media buyer either gets it, or they don’t – and yes, it’s that black and white.)

4. Get Flexible. Ask for flexible terms on the media buy. I totally understand that if you cancel the buy outright, you’ll have to find more placements – but if that’s what it takes to meet the objectives, then put the elbow grease into it. We move media buys around several times within the websites before canceling them outright – but you need to have the flexibility from the publishers to make that work, and if it still doesn’t, you need to be able to move on. In the long run, you’ll save the publisher time and money as well – as they’re after the long term relationship just as much as you are.

If you can incorporate from a very high level these four items into your interactive media buy, then when you get into the details and the optimization standards and objectives, you’re going to have at least a leg to stand on.

Why don’t you care about your brand?

Re/Max – you do care – so you’re off the hook (but contact us anyway – as we want to work with you on your interactive advertising). But the other 100 companies – I’m very intrigued by.

What happened over the last month was extremely interesting here at Media Two. We embarked upon an online ad campaign on an unnamed search engine (ok – it was Google) that not only showed that advertising agencies believe in using search, but that we are creative masters at using it for ourselves as well as our clients. I don’t want to spoil the results of our campaign as we have a soon-to-be-released case study (AdWeek – AdAge – any interest?), but let’s just say that we targeted 101 potential clients with our messaging. In addition to the results of the campaign, we found another interesting phenom… No one was protecting their trademarked brand name.

Of the 101 Brands that we targeted, only Re/Max didn’t allow us to market towards their name. One other client politely said “OK – you got my attention; now get off my brand names”. An even more interesting occurrence happened with the Bank of America. I’m not claiming it’s someone in their marketing department, but I am claiming it smells like a funny way of watching your brand. Instead of contacting us, or filling out the appropriate Trademark complaint/protection form with Google (FYI Brand Marketers - REALLY easy if you simply go to http://www.google.com/tm_complaint_adwords.html), what happened was “someone”, located in the city of Charlotte, repeatedly clicked on our ad over a short time period (minutes), and spent less than 1 second on our landing page… Hmmm… Yes, it eventually depleted our perceived budget, but then Google replenished it when it noticed the blatant click-fraud (all without us asking – so thank you Google and your supposed non-existent click fraud protection group) and we were back online again.

So my question is – if you’re not watching your own brands – who is? More importantly, if you are watching your brand, what are you doing about it… I can assure you we’ll have a case study on this as well.

Microsoft’s new SEM toolkit

I might be Johnny Come Lately on this, but I just downloaded Microsoft’s adCenter Ad Intelligence Plug-in for Excel. This is hands down, the best Keyword research tool I have ever seen. I have used them all: Wordtracker, Overture, Google…oh yeah and my own two hands. But rather than exporting lists, searching for dupes, copying and pasting them into Google’s Traffic Estimator to gauge cost, then compiling and formatting them for your own use within each engine UI but also any client proposals, Microsoft (for the first time that I have experienced) has come to the forefront in SEM research tools with their latest excel plug-in, Ad Intelligence, that outperforms any of its competition. It’s one of many new tools they recently unveiled to assist online marketers make more informed, strategic decisions (http://adlab.msn.com/alltools.aspx).
The search keyword research tool utilizes a simple wizard to allow you to generate not only keyword recommendations based on root phrase, site domain or topic, but it also generates estimated impressions, clicks, avg. position, CTR and Monthly Cost! If that weren’t enough you can also select keywords you’d like search query volume for by geographic area and basic demographics.
The days of researching and launching keywords and messaging without much communication with the client are slowly coming to an end. With more and more client-side marketing personnel familiar with search engine marketing, we have been tasked with presenting our research in a more traditional manner…outlining keywords, their potential ad group designation, target demo’s, spend potential, and more… And finally a tool is in the marketplace to help us accomplish this.

SEO

There are a few aspects of SEO that I tend to feel are either misunderstood or not communicated to clients properly:

There are more factors than keyword density that go into how realistic it is that a clients site can appear in the top 10 organic search results:

# of Competitors
Clients rarely look to see how many of their fellow competitors are vying for the same real estate…obviously, the more there are, the more difficult it is to rank highly.

# of Quality Links
Your site must link to and from quality partners relevant to your product/service
Some sites don’t want to divert traffic to another site because they “don’t want to lose traffic”. Trust me, if someone wants to bail, they’re going to bail. Just because you have an external link doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to lose sales. Quality links will always help you.

The client’s favorite keyword isn’t always the one to focus on. Often times, a clients primary keyword list are not the keywords actually searched by their consumers. That’s why we must research keywords and find those that have a balance between search volume and competitiveness: you want to focus on keywords that are moderately searched and don’t have a ton of competition. If you focus on just high volume keywords you will run into a lot of competition which will make it difficult to rank. So stuck with a moderate balance.

Size does NOT matter
Just because a company/website may be a huge leader in an industry does not mean that they’ll rank well organically. If a tiny advertiser has a site with lots of content, that small business owner will rank higher than the dominant company with Flash intro’s, lots of images, and even a better site experience. SEO doesn’t care about how flashy the site is…it’s just the nature of the beast. This actually leads to the next issue….you ALWAYS have to determine what the goal is. If the goal is the build a killer site with great design, imagery and an overall user experience, you are going to have to sacrifice organic listings….that’s just how it goes. So sometimes if a client wants great graphics and other interactive components, you have to put SEO aside and not worry about it.

“Full Service” Search Marketing

For a couple years now, I have seen a pattern of business/site owners focusing solely on Google AdWords. There are even firms out there (who call themselves a “search engine marketing agency”) that only do Google PPC. If you only manage AdWords accounts, then you can’t really call yourself or your agency a Search Engine Marketing professional(s).

A true search engine marketer understands the value of making sure your business is visible across the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) both organically and paid. Google AdWords is not the end all be all. Now, I do understand is it between 70-80% of the market; however that 20-30% that is made up of Yahoo and MSN still contains millions of searches per day…and quality searches at that…I’ll bash Ask, Looksmart and the other 2nd & 3rd tier engines regarding their click fraud in a later blog maybe ;-)

What marketer would ever say, “I don’t feel like being visible to everyone who actively looks for my products”? Well, if you only run AdWords, that is exactly what you’re saying…that the Yahoo and MSN consumers aren’t worth your time. Assuming you run campaigns across the engines, a benefit is that you could even pick and choose which campaigns you run on which engines. You may find that some product campaigns perform differently on one engine than another…you can then take that information and run search engine-specific campaigns…that is when you have true search engine marketing strategy running on all cylinders.

Also, I realize that along with Google being the leader in the industry, they also have tools for PPC managers that make researching, implementing and optimizing campaigns MUCH easier than their competitors. For that I highly recommend using Google as your sandbox for new campaigns or test initiatives; however don’t just stay inside Google’s world (no matter how bad they are trying to rule it)… once you have the campaign structure set up, move right on into launching on Yahoo and MSN as well. You won’t get the same amount of traffic you get from Google but you’ll ensure your market coverage. Never put all your eggs in one basket…with search engine marketing, you always want to diversify. We preach keyword diversification…so why not preach search engine diversification.

Search Account has “Hit its Limit”?

Some people will tell you that that can never happen…but anything is possible…and exhausting your keyword universe is definitely possible. People only use certain keywords…and only so many of them…and if you have a high enough budget to test ALL of them, you could find yourself at the end of your rope, not being able to drive anymore traffic (or should I say…relevant traffic).

If you have ever found yourself researching keywords that are as far-fetched as your budget or CPA goals can often be, here are a few initiatives you can test that will help in growing your search marketing campaigns, at the very least allowing you to increase visibility in the hopes of driving additional traffic and, in turn, conversions:

1. Create separate campaigns for content-network targeting:

This will place your ads on sites related to your product/service. You'll typically see a large increase in impressions, but as long as you use your best ads (from a CTR standpoint), you should generate an increase in traffic as well.

These campaigns should mirror your existing sponsored search campaigns and only use your top 30-50 keywords (based on conversion volume)

2. Create a separate placement-targeted campaign:

Generate a list of sites based on category, demographic, topic, etc straight from AdWords. Within this campaign, you are able to use image ads and video (depending on the site) for enhanced branding.

One campaign should target your demographic profile and the other should target sites relevant to your product “topic” or category.

3. Yahoo Search Submit Pro (aka. Paid Inclusion):

This is a cheap and relatively painless way to get your site indexed in the organic search results on Yahoo.

4. Ad Text testing:

I know this is like beating a dead horse, but if you can manage to alter your ad verbiage to garner more consumer interest, you will drive traffic and increase your spend without too much effort. Of course, there is no guarantee (as your new ads may actually turn consumers off), but it’s always worth a shot.