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Introduction
This month we continue our exploration of the latest developments in how digital
marketing communications tools can be used for customer acquisition.
We will explore search engine marketing over the next three issues of What’s
New in Marketing since for many companies it is the very best method of gaining
new customers online. It is also an often complex and fast-moving area of digital
marketing which is proving challenging for many marketers. In these articles,
which are briefings on these techniques, we will discuss the main options for
search engine marketing, the main challenges faced by marketers and success factors
for implementing search engine marketing.
How important are search engines for web site promotion?
A good starting point for any search engine marketing initiative is to ask
how relevant search engines are for marketing today. Typically, the answer is
'very important'. The reason? They are the primary method of finding information
about a company and its products. Over 90% of web users state that they use search
engines to find information. Of course if your organisation is not registered
or visible within one of the main search engines, you then make it very difficult
for a prospect or customer to find you unless they know or successfully guess
your web address.
If you listen to pitches from search engine companies, you might gain the impression
that search engine marketing is the only form of marketing that matters for acquisition
online, but this is rarely the case. Search engine marketing is only one of the
six main online digital communications tools shown in Figure 1. The full range
of offline communications can also be significant in driving visitors to a website
to support online acquisition. We have discussed other key e-communications approaches
such as online sponsorship, affiliate marketing and interactive marketing in recent
articles.
Figure 1. The six key digital marketing tools. Source: Smith and Chaffey
(2005)
For established brands, we commonly see from web analytics that more than half
of site visitors arrive at a site, not through search engines, but direct through
typing in the web address or following a bookmark (web analytics tools label these
as ‘no referrer’).
This volume of direct visitors shows the power of branding, PR and offline
communications in driving visitor traffic. In 2003, Statmarket (http://www.statmarket.com/)
reported that such direct navigation accounted for 65% of site visits worldwide,
with 21% following links and just 14% arriving by search engines. For first time
visits, however, search marketing is generally found to contribute at least 20%
of site visitors and in some cases, where brand awareness tends to be lower, 80
or 90% of new site visitors.
What are the options for search engine marketing?
There are two main search engine marketing approaches for making a company
and its services visible through search engines. We will explore in more detail
in the next two articles:
1. Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimisation involves achieving the highest position or ranking
practical in the natural or organic listings on the search engine results pages
after a specific combination of keywords or (keyphrase) has been typed in.
In the main search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search, the natural
listings are on the left, although there may be sponsored links above these.
For example, try a search such as ‘Internet marketing training’, http://www.google.com/search?&q=Internet+marketing+training.
You will see the natural listing on the left including, hopefully Dave Chaffey’s
site http://www.marketing-online.co.uk/
since this is optimised for this keyphrase.
There is no charge for displaying these listings or when a link relevant to
your site is clicked upon. However, you may need to pay a search engine optimisation
firm to advise or undertake optimisation work to make yours appear higher in the
rankings.
As we will explore further in next months article, the two most important factors
which are essential for good ranking positions in the natural listings are:
1. Matching between the copy on the page to the key phrases typed in. The main
factors SEO companies tend to optimise on are keyword density, keyword formatting,
keywords in anchor text and page title tags. However, some changes to the site
structure and layout of the pages may also be necessary.
2. Links into the page (inbound or backlinks) from other pages, especially
on other sites which are deemed to be of a good quality by Google, since they
have many links into them and Google judges them to be popular for a particular
topic. Google counts each link to a page from another page or another site as
a vote for this page. So pages and sites with more links-in will be ranked more
highly.
Both factors are important, but in competitive markets, the second factor can
be very important.
2. Pay Per Click (PPC) or paid listings
Pay Per Click (PPC) search marketing is perhaps more similar to conventional
advertising than SEO in that you pay to advertise in ‘sponsored links’. But there
are big differences.
With PPC, a relevant text ad with a link to a company page is displayed as
one of several ‘sponsored links’ when the user of a search engine types in a specific
phrase. A series of text ads, typically labeled ‘sponsored links’ are displayed
as is shown above or to the right of the natural listings.
So, the first difference to conventional advertising is that it is highly targeted
– the ad is only displayed when a relevant keyword phrase is typed in.
The second big difference is that you don’t pay for the number of people who
see your ad, but you only pay for those who clickthrough to your web site (hence
Pay Per Click).
The third difference is that the company who bids the most for a particular
keyphrase is listed top in the sponsored listings (although in Google, the relevance
or popularity of the ad, judged by its clickthrough rate (CTR) is also taken into
account).
The three main options for PPC marketing are:
- Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.co.uk/)
– you can go direct to Google who are not affiliated to any ad networks
to place ads on their sites and partner sites. However, they do enable ads to
be placed on third party search engines such as AOL and Ask Jeeves
- Overture PPC ad network (http://www.uk.overture.com/)
– you can go to Overture to place and manage ads on Yahoo!, MSN and other partner
sites such as Wanadoo.
- Espotting PPC ad network (http://www.espotting.com/)
– Espotting manage ads on specialist portals.
For example, try the search ‘Internet marketing training’ again, http://www.google.com/search?&q=Internet+marketing+training.
You will see the paid listings on the right.
Tip
Don’t limit your search initiative to PPC since it is much quicker to obtain
results. As we will see later, significantly fewer people tend to click on the
sponsored links than the natural results, so if a company focuses on PPC only,
results will be more limited.
Which search engines do I need to be listed in?
As you will know, search engines are web services provided by Google, Yahoo!,
MSN and other companies which provide links to relevant pages on websites for
keyword phrases typed in by their users.
Reference to audience data on Searchenginewatch.com compiled from online audience
analysis services such as Hitwise (http://www.hitwise.com/),
Netratings (http://www.netratings.com/)
and Comscore (http://www.comscore.com/)
will show that these are the main three search engines in most countries which
will account for the majority of the audience. For consumer sites, others such
as AskJeeves, Lycos and AOL will also drive visitors.
Tip
While some unscrupulous search marketing companies offer to register you on
the ‘Top 1000 search engines’, in reality registering or advertising on the top
10 to 20 search engines in the countries you operate will account for more than
95% of the potential visitors from search.
A great summary showing the most important search engines in the UK and how
they relate to the main PPC ad networks are available at http://www.bidbuddy.co.uk/engines.html.
Don’t forget the directories!
Directories are distinct from search engines. Remember that search engines
such as Google, MSN and Yahoo! also have a separate directory service such as
http://directory.google.com/ and http://uk.search.yahoo.com/dir
where sites are grouped in categories similar to a business directory. Directories
are searched to varying degrees by search engines when you enter your query. It
is also important to be displayed in these directories and also count as good
quality links in to your site.
Web directories or catalogues are constructed and presented differently to
search engines. Directories are not constructed automatically by robots and spiders,
but are human generated. A human being will place each reference to a site in
a category. After you submit your URL to a site such as Yahoo! (for which a fee
is payable) or the Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org/
– associated with Google) (which is currently free) it will be reviewed by a human
and then included if it is thought to be of a suitable standard.
Inclusion in both of these directories, others such as Business.com and specialist
directories relevant to your market can assist in boosting position in search
engine optimisation as these are counted as a sign of relevance by Google.
How important is my position or ranking in the results pages?
It is widely thought that it is essential to be top or in the top three sites
listed in the results from a search, but the figure shows some visitors can still
be delivered from lower rankings. One well known search engine marketing company
is even called ‘MakeMeTop’.
It is true that the higher ranking results in the search results page do get
more clicks. Research from Atlas DMT (2004) shows that in Google sponsored links,
position four may get 40% of the clicks compared to position one (although this
depends on how effective the call-to-action hyperlink is). Position 10 only gets
around 10% of the clicks.
However, it is not this simple, customer research by IProspect (2004) showed
that 22.6% try another search after the first few results if they can’t find a
relevant link; a further 18.6% after reviewing the first page (41.2% cumulative);
25% after checking the first two pages (67% cumulative) and 14.6% the first three
pages (81.7% cumulative). Of course, if they find what they want straightaway
they will not look further down the list.
Tip
The call-to-action hyperlink in the Google natural search listings is also
a key to gaining clickthroughs. If site is listed top it won’t get as many clicks,
if the call-to-action is not relevant. This call-to-action is based on the title
tag on your web page which appears at the top of the browser window – it needs
to say ‘click me’ (not literally) and relevant to the search entered – check yours.
The call-to-action hyperlink is of course equally important in Pay Per Click search
marketing.
Significantly, the iProspect research also showed that users tend to choose
the natural search results in preference to the paid search listings. Sample figures
for selection of natural search were 60.8% for Yahoo! and 72.3% for Google. This
figure increases for experienced users. This suggests that companies who concentrate
on paid listings only are limiting their visibility.
Keyphrase analysis
The key to successful search engine optimisation and Pay Per Click is achieving
keyphrase relevance since this is what the search engines strive
for – to match the combination of keywords typed into the search box to the most
relevant destination content page. Notice that we say ‘keyphrase’ (short
for keyword phrase)’ rather than ‘keyword’ since search engines such as
Google attribute more relevance in SEO when there is a phrase match between what
is typed in and what is on web page. Despite this, many search companies and commentators
talk about optimising your ‘keywords’ and in our opinion pay insufficient attention
to keyphrase analysis.
It is very common that companies have not optimised for sufficient keyphrases.
For example, a company advertising for an adhesive product was using this word
for search promotion, but in fact many customers referred to the product simply
as ‘glue’. It is important to get inside the customers mind – to think ‘like the
customer’.
Tip
Don’t underestimate the value of detailed keyword phrase analysis. Don’t rely
only on automated tools or leave it just to the agency, but also use your business
judgement to decide the potential value of customers who are likely to visit the
site and then convert to outcomes relevant to you.
For relationship-building websites, to maximise visitor numbers, identification
of hundreds of keyphrases will be appropriate. For transactional e-commerce sites,
the sky’s the limit. Some banks have thousands of keyphrases while some e-retailers
have tens of thousands and I know of a shopping comparison portal that has over
one million keyphrases – that’s 1,000,000 phrases! Welcome to the weird and wonderful
world of search marketing.
Keyphrase analysis tools
Fortunately there are many approaches and tools to help marketers and agencies
identify the keyphrases, if you know where to look.
Approaches commonly used for keyphrase analysis in rough order of importance
are:
1. Keyphrase suggestion tools
These are the most important tools since these are based on the actual behaviour
of customers – i.e. what they type into search engines and how popular these phrases
are.
Keyword suggestion terms are available from the main search ad providers such
as Google, Overture and Espotting.
Updated links for these tools maintained are
here.
For example, at the time of writing, the volume of searches for the top keyphrases
related to credit cards in one month in the UK from Overture (which excludes Google)
were:
- 43480 apply for credit card
- 21228 credit card balance transfer
- 15275 credit card rate
- 13013 credit card uk
- 12961 credit card application
- 10303 credit card processing
2. Web analytics tools
Your web analytics tool used to capture site ‘visitor statistics’ such as Webtrends,
Clicktracks or Indextools will not only tell the source of visitor or referrer,
but if it is a search engine, the keyphrase typed to visit your site. This is
useful as a way of starting to identify keyword phrases to use with the keyphrase
analysis tools.
Tip
These tools won’t, of course, show you what customers type in, but isn’t currently
included on your site pages or PPC adverts since they will never reach your site!
Hitwise (http://www.hitwise.com/) is
very useful for keyphrase analysis since it shows search term popularity for a
sector or an individual company.
3. Internal site search tool.
If your site has an internal (on site) search engine, then this can be very
useful since it shows what visitors to the site can’t readily find.
4. Competitors' sites
If competitors have undertaken keyphrase analysis, you will be able to view
some of the main keyphrases they have identified in their meta tags.
To view meta tags for a site, select View, Source if you are using the Microsoft
Internet Explorer web browser.
For example, if you were completing a keyphrase analysis on credit cards, the
relevant keyphrases from the Capital One site (http://www.capitalone.co.uk/)
are:
<meta name="description" content="Different
credit cards for different people. Looking for a great rate?
Had trouble getting a credit card in the past? Either way we could have the card
to suit you!
Apply online, service your account online.">
<meta name="keywords" content="Capital One,
Capital One UK, Capital One, credit cards, credit card, platinum, uk credit cards,
MasterCard, Visa, low apr, 0% , purchase teaser, online banking, internet account
servicing, online account servicing, e-banking, sixty second decision, apply online,
apply for a card, safe shopping, internet shopping, secure shopping, fraud guarantee,
rebuild credit, bad credit, debt consolidation.">
We will return to meta tags in next months article. It is often suggested that
they are vital to SEO, but this is far from the case.
5. Your knowledge of your market
You will be able to identify some keyphrases that you think customers will
type in as you know from talking with them about your services.
As with competitor sites, this may be useful for identifying keyphrase groups
which are then used to seed the keyphrase suggestion tools.
6. Focus groups or surveys
Different forms of market research such as these could be used, but are unnecessary
given the existence of keyphrase suggestion tools which show actual behaviour.
What variants of a keyword need to be considered?
When completing keyphrase analysis we need to understand different qualifiers
that search users type in. For example, this list of seven different types of
keyphrases is taken from an Overture representative talking at Search Engine Strategies
in 2004 in Stockholm. I have added examples for ‘car insurance’:
1. Comparison/quality - compare car insurance
2. Adjective (price/product qualifiers) - cheap car insurance, woman car insurance
3. Intended use - high mileage car insurance
4. Product type - holiday car insurance
5. Vendor - churchill car insurance
6. Location - car insurance UK
7. Action request - buy car insurance
You can see some of these types of keyphrases by using the Overture keyterm
suggestion tool. For example for a single month in the UK, the most popular phrases
related to car insurance were:
1. Car insurance, 1423350
2. Cheap car insurance, 71979
3. Car insurance quote, 32857
4. Woman car insurance, 21087
5. Young driver car insurance, 17175
6. Performance car insurance, 12379
7. Car insurance uk, 11719
8. AA car insurance, 7956
9. Online car insurance quote, 7423
10. Car insurance company, 7186
This data shows the importance of ranking well for high volume keyphrases such
as ‘cheap car insurance’ and ‘car insurance uk’.
Next month's article
In next month's article we look in more depth at the issues involved with search
engine optimisation (SEO) today. We will see how search engines determine the
ranking position and how the position of a site in the web pages can be boosted
through search engine optimisation. We will also look at the advantages and disadvantages
of this approach in comparison to PPC.
References
Atlas DMT (2004). Atlas DMT Research. Atlas DMT (www.atlasdmt.com/insights)
Iprospect research, Search behaviour research. Spring 2004 (http://www.iprospect.com/)
Seda, C. (2004) Search Engine Advertising. Buying Your Way to The Top.
New Riders. Indianapolis, IN.
One of the leading books introducing PPC.
Mill, D. Content is King. Butterworth Heinemann, Elsevier, Oxford,
UK.
Good chapters on developing the copywriting skills needed for search engine marketing.
(http://www.writingediting.co.uk)
Smith. P. and Chaffey, D. (2005) E-marketing Excellence: At the Heart of
E-business. Butterworth Heinemann, Elsevier, Oxford, UK. Second edition.
Thurow, S. (2003) Search Engine Visibility. New Riders. Indianapolis,
IN.
One of the leading books introducing SEO.
Links
The single best portal for finding out about search engine marketing is: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/.
Other portals for an introduction to search engine marketing are:
I have collected together a list of the most
relevant keyphrase analysis tools.
Mike Grehan, a UK Search marketing specialist has updates on search marketing
and a useful overview of the topic including fascinating interviews with the engineers
who create the search engines:
http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/.
About the author
Dr Dave Chaffey is workshop leader for a range of one-day e-marketing training
workshops from the CIM:
Go to http://www.cimtraining.com/
for course details and online booking.
Dave Chaffey is trainer and consultant for Marketing Insights Limited (http://www.marketing-insights.co.uk/)
and E-marketing Director at Ripe (http://www.ripe.co.uk/).
He is a prolific e-business author whose books include ‘E-marketing Excellence’,
‘Total E-mail Marketing’, ‘Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation
and Practice’ and E-business and E-commerce Management.
Read Dave Chaffey’s blog (http://www.davechaffey.com/)
for E-marketing Essentials – the five “must-read” articles about online marketing
from the hundreds Dave reads each month.
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