how companies should really use search
DESCRIPTION
A guide to search marketing and how online businesses can maximise the benefits of search to increase conversions and ROITRANSCRIPT
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How companies should really use search?
byAnn StanleyApril 2013
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Agenda
Part 1 – Introduction to searchPart 2 – Quick Wins!Part 3 - Search engine optimisation (SEO)Part 4 - Importance of Social
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Growth in Digital
IAB/PwC - Total Market Size First Half 2012 (Oct 2012)• Digital Ad spend in H1 2012 reached £2,591 million (£2.6 billion); this is a record• Spending on digital advertising grew by 12.6% year on year.
AA/Warc Expenditure Report (Jan 2013)• The size of the annual UK online advertising market is expected to reach £5.3bn (year ending
2012), more than 31% of all UK advertising • Q3 growth still at 10% (year on year)
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The importance of search!£1,527 million was spent on search in the first half of 2012. Source: IAB/PcW
Advertising spend by category
SearchDisplayClassifiedOthers
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Google results for [luggage]
Pay per click ads
Pay per click ads
Organic or natural search
results
Product Listing ads
Local business listings
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How to get into the Google resultsFree• Map – create a free Google Places listings (also in Bing) – this is now part of
Google Plus• Images & videos – make sure these have keyphrases in the file names and
tags• News, blogs and author results – create ongoing blog content on your site or
via news feed sites (PR) • Organic or natural listings – search engine optimise your website i.e. SEO
Paid• Ads – set up an AdWords pay per click account – where you bid on relevant
phrases and you pay if they click on your ad• Shopping results – feed your ecommerce database into Google Merchant
Centre and use Product Listing ads in AdWords
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Listings dynamicallyordered bybid price & relevancy
2
User submitssearch
1
Pay Per Click in Action
User clicks on paid link, triggering payment to Google
3
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Ad Extensions, Local Listings (map) and new Product Listing ads
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Summary of different shopping results in Google
Keywords =Samsonite luggage
Organic shopping results
(Merchant Centre)
AdWords Products ad extension Product Listing ads Map and
Local listings
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PPC Account Hierarchy
Ads1 or 2 per ad group
Keywords3-9 per ad group3 x match types
Ad Groups 20-100 per campaign
(each has its own ad copy and landing page)
Campaigns (<20)(set a budget and targeting)
Estate agent
Local estate agent
Local estate agent
[Local estate agent]
Ad 1 Ad 2
Professional estate agent
Professional estate agent“Professional estate agent”
“City” estate agent
[Bromsgrove estate agent]“Bromsgrove estate agent”
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Typical PPC results
GlossaryImpressions = number of times your ad is seenClicks = number of times searcher clicked on your adCTR = click through rate is clicks divided by impressions (>2% indicates a more relevant keyphrase and ad combination)Avg. CPC = average cost per click (amount paid when users click on your ad)Cost = total spent in period (clicks times average cost per click)Avg. Position = Average position achieved in resultsConversions = completed sales or completed registrationsConversion rate = conversions divided by clicksCost per conversion = total cost divided by number of conversions
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Managing PPC – what’s important• Quality Score – Google’s measure of relevancy – it affects
your position and how much you pay (e.g. QS of 8/10 you pays half as compared with 4/10)
• Click through rate – pause phrases and ads with a CTR below<1%, otherwise this drags down your QS
• Position and bidding – you may have to bid lower (cost per click) and settle for position 3-6 to avoid the bidding war of position 1-3, where the CPC will be too high!
• Cost per acquisition (CPA) – most sites have a typical conversion rate of 1%. Your cost per sale or lead will be 100 x your cost per click – can you afford this?
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Remarketing (Google)• Set-up Remarketing in AdWords• Visitors to certain pages on the website (from all
sources) have a Cookie added to their PC• They are then shown an ad when they visit another
site on the Google Display network• Ideal for targeting customers that came to your site
but did not convert• Ad Serving Networks outside of Google offer a similar
technology (called Retargeting) – including Facebook Exchange
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A search engine is made of three basic components:
A Spider or RobotAn automated browser, it searches the web for new websites and changes to websites then views the web pages and strips out the text content
A Storage System or DatabaseA record of all the pages viewed by the Spider
A Matching Process or Relevancy AlgorithmThe rules that tell the search engine how to determine what would be relevant to your search
How Search Engines Work
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Check that your site is indexed?
Do you have keyphrases in your url, title and description?
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Page plan with levels of monthly searches vs. competition (results in Google)
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• Title Tag• Content• Heading content• Frequency of phrases (how many times they are
mentioned)• Density of phrases (proportion of the text)• Internal Link structure with anchor text)• Image optimisation (file names, Alt tags)• Avoid Spam techniques and over-optimising• Create new ongoing content on your site e.g. a blog
On-page factors
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Checklist for optimising your website• Carryout keyphrase research• Prioritise your keyphrase by high search volume and low
competition (use pay per click data if you have it?)• Produce a topic and a page plan (i.e. which pages are to be
optimised with which phrases)• Write new optimised content on existing and new pages, (URL,
title, description, headers, body copy, anchor text, image optimisation)
• Upload your content through your CMS and add new links from the homepage for new pages
• Add new optimised content every week via a blog • Review results using Webmaster Tools and Analytics
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• Domain age• Domain name• Filename/full URL• Directory listings• External Link Structure• Anchor text of inbound links• Page quality of inbound links• Social bookmarks• Reviews and testimonials• Social indicators especially Google +1 and Facebook
“Shares”
Off-page factors
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Key to Google’s algorithm:• Indicator of value: PageRank• Indicator of relevance
Best links from:• Highly trusted sites (high PageRank / Domain
Authority)• Pages with relevant content
Why are Links important?
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• Content that people will want to link to• Free stuff• Blog posts• Useful documents/articles• Online tools• Video and audio• Funny or entertaining content
• Your content on other sites• Guest blogging• Online PR• Directories• Social networks
Getting Links
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Importance of social• Direct sales e.g. Facebook commerce • Direct traffic e.g. Brand pages (Facebook, Google Plus,
Twitter, LinkedIn) • Community, loyalty and word of mouth (Facebook
Likes, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Delicious) and social shopping sites e.g. Kaboodle
• Referrals, links and SEO benefit (Google Plus, Facebook Shares, social bookmarking)
• Paid social – PPC advertising in Facebook and LinkedIn
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Social networking for businesses (personal vs. company profiles)
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PPC Case study – Experian
• Started: Dec 2012• Restructured with exact and phrase matches with negatives• Feb 2013 conversion rate >10%
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PPC Hair Supermarket
• Project Started May 2012• Account restructure + keyphrase expansion• Optimisation on CTR/Quality Score and conversion rate
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SEO case study – The Theatre People
• TheatrePeople.com was a brand new site selling tickets for West End shows online.
• Brief: to drive targeted organic search traffic to the site in a highly competitive sector.
• Approach: – On-page optimisation - technical SEO, tabbed theatre pages for more
content, >650 keywords, optimised content and blog, Off-page optimisation – link building and online PR.
• Results from natural search (6 months): – Traffic has increased by 900%– Conversions up by 250%.
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Monthly KPI trackingKeyword Google UK start
positionGoogle UK
position - MayGoogle UK position
- AugustGoogle UK position
- NovemberGoogle UK position
- Decembertheatre tickets
London 100+ 49 44 40 31west end theatre
tickets 100+ 22 11 6 6
theatre tickets 100+ 100+ 31 15 11
London show tickets 100+ 22 100+ 69 25
west end show tickets 100+ 25 20 16 13cheap London theatre tickets 100+ 100+ 82 45 37
cheap theatre tickets London west end 100+ 32 22 23 23
cheap theatre tickets 100+ 84 71 34 23discount theatre
tickets 100+ 100+ 89 80 61theatre and dinner
deals London 100+ 15 14 6 7dinner and theatre
deals 98 14 1 2 2London theatre
breaks 100+ 44 67 14 16theatre packages
London 100+ 41 66 27 26
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Summary• The digital landscape is more competitive with many ways of
promoting your business• You can get quick wins with local listings, Google plus, and paid
search (PPC)• Paid search continues to offer new ad formats, particularly, ad
extension, clicks to call, Product Listing Ads (integrating with Google Merchant Centre) and Remarketing
• SEO is a long term technique that involves both on-page and off-page optimisation
• Social is important to generate direct traffic and sales; but also indirectly due to the importance of social indicators in SEO
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Thank You
Ann Stanley@annstanley
www.anicca.co.uk