Spending spree on paid search

Search might not be as sexy as other marketing channels, but it’s only going to get bigger

By Simon van Wyk

The art and science of search engine marketing (SEM) is developing at a rapid pace. According to JupiterResearch, the vast majority of marketers will increase paid search spending in 2007, even though more than 60 per cent of advertisers say rising keyword prices are a problem.

As more and more consumers are using search engines as their first port of call in making a purchase decision, searchers are a marketer’s low hanging fruit. These searchers have identified themselves as being interested in something you offer and are looking for more information to make an informed decision.

Indeed, Yahoo! Search Marketing’s 2006 Long and Winding Road study found that 35 per cent of consumers interested in banking and finance-related products used search prior to purchase.

So while more than a third of consumers are using search before purchasing, a Hitwise study in October last year revealed that banks’ and financial institutions’ online paid traffic lagged significantly behind other online commerce industries in Australia, with 2.3 of visits to the top six corporate banking websites coming from paid traffic. Hitwise’s Sandra Hanchard writes, “It remains vital for marketers in this industry to instigate effective SEO strategies as the pool of generic terms diminishes, and secondly to leverage SEM to acquire potential customers on the generic search terms that are available for legitimate SEM traffic”.

As search engines such as Google change their search algorithms daily to stop unfair manipulation of search terms, there is a growing and bewildering array of techniques that need to be mastered in order to stay ahead of competitors in the fight for relevant traffic.

Meta tags, keywords, image tags, niche directories, link building, pay-per-click and AdWords are some of the simpler terms that are taking up space in marketers’ brains.

And the amount of brain space required for search-related thinking grows every year. Search expert Greg Jarboe, one of the speakers at this year’s Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in New York, pointed out in his ClickZ column that this year’s conference included 33 per cent more sessions than the 2004 conference. Meanwhile, only about 10 sessions had the same title as sessions in 2004.

Jarboe writes, “This means that more than 80 per cent of what we learned in 2004 [about search engine marketing] is no longer being taught in 2007. Or, to put it another way, less than 20 per cent of what you need to know today is something that you could have learned three years ago”.

So what do marketers really need to know? The first thing is to be familiar with the new language and acronyms being thrown around. For example, you need to understand the difference between search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). You need to do both, but you need to get SEO right first. Once your site is optimised for searching by the major engines, then you tackle the marketing issues.

Successful SEO comes down to balancing the needs of three disparate groups – your company, the search engines and your customers. The main business of search companies such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN is to sell their advertising and other business programs. If they have more users than their competition, they will be able to attract more advertisers and more business partners.

So what are the most important things to get right in SEO? Seattle-based search marketing consultancy SEOmoz recently surveyed 37 global SEO experts and came up with the most important factors for top SEO results. They were, in order:

Keyword factors

• Making sure the optimal targeted search term or phrase is placed in the title tag of the web page's HTML header.
  
• Using the targeted search term in the visible HTML text of the page.
  
• Ensuring topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords.

Top page attributes

• Making sure that all links on a page point to high-quality, topically related pages, both internally and externally.
  
• Finding the balance between the ages of pages – older pages are seen to be more authoritative, but younger pages may be more temporally relevant.
  
• Securing the right amount of indexable content – or how much visible HTML text is on a page.

Site/domain attributes

• Obtaining high global-link popularity for a site.
  
• Having a higher percentage of older content on a site: the more older content, the better.
  
• Ensuring that inbound links to a site are topically relevant.

That’s just scratching the surface of SEO. SEM then takes you to a whole other level of activities and reports. It’s a metrics-driven, pragmatic marketing approach that is not nearly as intuitive or creative as pumping out TV ads. You could call it the revenge of the left-brainers!

If you’re having trouble getting your head around SEO, SEM and their intricacies, professional help from a specialist search expert may be a worthwhile investment.

Simon van Wyk is founding partner of HotHouse Interactive. Comment on this story at the HotHouse blog at http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog