A lot has been written about how Google Instant could transform Search Engine Optimization results. But very little has been performed to analyse its implications on Pay-Per-Click performance. Marin Software, a large provider of Pay-Per-Click management software has just released an extensive study.

Here are the key findings:

1. Search users have responded positively to Google Instant as evidenced by increased engagement with search. Marin found that overall impressions for paid search ads increased by more than 9%, while clicks increased by more than 5% – implying that people are actually searching and clicking more as a result of Google Instant.

For advertisers, this implies budget should be increased to cope with the larger demand. Marin has found that advertisers that will first jump on the bandwagon will be rewarded with decreased Cost Per Click (initially).

Instantly popular for customers and advertisers

2. Short form queries (less than 3 keywords) have increased a lot faster than long form ones. This is due to Google Instant’s ability to make queries more relevant to the user earlier in the search process.

The predictive nature of Google Instant may be biasing users towards searching for common phrases. The implications for the advertisers are to optimize for generic keywords. This was widely anticipated.

3. Finally the study is showing match types still matter a lot. As users search for shorter queries, emphasis should be made on optimizing for exact match, which perform better and also tend to be more cost effective.

Overall, it concluded: ”“Google Instant was seen as a big gamble for Google when the company announced it, but it’s proved to be a positive change for the industry,” said Matt Lawson, vice-president of marketing, Marin Software. “Google has pulled off the elusive win-win-win with the release of Instant, driving increased usability for consumers and increased volume for advertisers, while managing to increase their slice of the overall search pie in the process.”

First off, what are today’s Social Media campaign trends? What makes a social media campaign? Even better, what is a social media campaign?
Very often, when somebody decides to market their product online, be it a FMCG product or an online service, they start to think about online marketing like your regular marketing efforts. Which is to put in your money, milk your resources, push your product to as much people as you can in the earliest possible time period.
Is this a wrong approach? Hell no. How could it be wrong when marketers have been successful at this time and again?
The truth is, this strategy isn’t wrong but, it possibly isn’t the best one, you could’ve used.
Online marketing is no longer about trying to engage your “audience”. And social media is no longer a marketing tool for your product.

Successful Social Media Campaign

I wish it was, in fact it might have been for some time (and also even now), but the fact is that it isn’t working and we’re still in a transition period, learning new things, experimenting newer strategies, and learning from mistakes.
So, what are social media campaigns?
They’re not any longer your average, on the face advertising, not even are they about “engaging customers” through social media channels, and most definitely, social media campaigns aren’t about using a set of tool like facebook and twitter – just because they are available.

Social Media Campaigns today are about creating experiences. Rich, memorable and engaging experiences.
I’m not trying to say that they aren’t about brands or selling. No, they are indeed about “selling stuff online”, but we’ve evolved, we’ve learned from our mistakes, we’ve gotten clever and we’re no longer in the era of persuasive buying. We’ve moved on to a new era of experiences and relationships.

We buy what we like, not what we actually need. We share, because we enjoy, not because you were asked to.

Now, where does this bring us? Does it make online marketing easy?

I think not. It has moved up further more levels, and things could get complicated if you don’t understand or try and learn about the environment.

Article from Daily SEO Blog

Read the full article here

Today, Yahoo announced a new tool named Yahoo Clues. Yahoo Clues basically gives you insight into the types of people searching for specific keyword phrases and shows related terms based on those searches and searchers.

The tool allows you to plug in one or two keyword phrases and it then plots the search trends of those keywords on the page. It shows you keyword popularity over time, searches by age and gender, income level, geographic location, “search flow” and related searches.

Let me take you through each metric for a comparison of iphone vs android on Yahoo Clues.

Here you can see the two search trends plotted over time:

Yahoo Clues

Here is a break down by age and gender:

Yahoo Clues gender

You can then click on a specific age/gender segment to see that women are more about searching for white iPhones while men are more about searching for jailbreaking iPhones

Article by Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land

Read the full article here

Did you know that bids in themselves can not determine your overall rank in Google sponsored results? The second ingredient which tends to be overlooked by many advertisers is the quality score. Quality scores range from 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest. The quality score has been introduced a few years back to create a stronger customer experience, i.e. more relevant ads and landing pages vis-a-vis the keywords advertisers are bidding on.

The way Google once described it to me was that ”if you double your quality score, you double your rank”, regardless of your bid. Google then advised to clean-up all keywords that have a quality score below 3. Watch the short video below for a quick intro from Google.

There are many elements that determine how your quality score is being calculated. Below is a good summary Red Fly marketing put together:. The short summary is the largest element of your quality score is made up by the historical click-though of your ads. This explains why some advertisers choose to bid high to boost the CTR over the first days of the campaign.

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Quality time will be rewarded

Now how can advertisers improve their quality scores. Here are a few tips we have learnt over the years:

1.  Boost your historical Click-Though-Rate for large traffic keywords

Small adjustments include:

• Creating more compelling ad copies
• Organize keywords by tighter ad-groups (5 to 30 keyords per adgroup)
• Use dynamic keyword insertion
• Add negatives keywords as you go along

2. Increase overall Click-Though-Rate

Google seems to look at your overall CTR across the multiple campaigns. To address this, you an bid high on branded keywords that tend to see much higher CTR. I would also increase bids for all keywords that have 20% CTR. Finally, you may want to consider removing those keywords that have less than 1% CTR.

3. The relevance of the keywords with the search  query

This is where the use of negative keywords and dynamic keyword insertion can make a great difference. Make time to go through the query report to uderstand fully what customers are searching and adjust your canpaigns accordingly.

4. The relevance of the keywords with the landing page

Here are a few thoughts:

• Match the destination URL with adgroup overall theme
• Ensure that H1 and H2 titles reflect the adgroup theme
• Titles tags, meta tags to some extent should be consistent too
• Add strong call-to-action on your landing page. The call-to-action should be similar than what you have in the ad. If you offer a 20-% coupon in the ad, make sure it’s included on the landing page too.

While there is so silver bullet answer to this question, we have learnt (sometime the hard way) there is a number of principles that can help you increase your conversion rate.

1. Watch out for your Paid Search campaign

At SEM Valet we specialize in driving qualified customers to our client’s web sites. This means we spend a lot of time understanding our customer’s business, create a robust keyword list and continue optimizing for both traffic and conversions.

What we have seen is generic keywords tend to drive less valuable customers than longer-tail keywords. People looking for ‘silver custom jewelery’ are further down in the sales funnel than those searching for ‘jewelry’.

Another thing we have noticed is ads should be written for those long tail keywords and include a compelling call-to-action. Finally a great customer experience that reflects the customer intent from the search query to the ad impression and finally arrival to the landing page is critical to eliminate customer leakage.  If your customers are in fact searching for ‘silver custom jewelery’, those same terms should be included in your ad and the title of your landing page.

2. Is your website optimized for conversion?

Your website can be pretty and engaging. It does not necessarily mean it has been designed for conversions. We have seen instance where bounce rates can be as high as 80%. This meas that most customers only visit one page (typically the homepage) and then leave. Home pages that tend to perform poorly often share the same attributes:

- Too much text > Images help customers to have a quick read into your product offering.

-  Long and confusing headlines > Short and straight to the point headlines are more engaging

- Lack of authenticity > Real images with real people reflect a more genuine web site. Avoid stock-photography when possible

- Content does not  meet a customer needs > Can you content answer the following questions (How can you help me?)

In addition to those pointers above, one area that we have seen under performing for retailers is the shopping cart experience. Think about it from a customer standpoint, are they really going to go through 4 or 5 steps to buy a product. Unless this is something that they can;t find anywhere else, they are very likely to quit. Below is an analysis we produced for a client of ours. It shows the various leakages in the process.

There is light at the end of the funnel

For more information on web site optimization and useful tools  read this blog post from the conversion rate experts.

3. Are you making full-use of re-targeting

Customer don’t necessarily convert the first time they visit your site. Sometime hitting them again with display or text adverting can produce good results. Read this previous post on the various type of re-targeting for more details.

This week, we welcome our second retail customer. PrivateStyles provides today’s fashion conscious woman seeking cutting edge trends with a simple and convenient shopping experience.

Privately yours ... on Google

If you are in need of a new wardrobe and wants to enjoy a seamless online experience, check out their web site.

In a  previous post where we defined re-targeting, I addressed how re-targeting works and some of the benefits for advertisers. Let’s go a bit deeper by outlining the 3 types of re-targeting available today.

1. Site re-targeting

This is the most common one. The idea is to display an ad to a customer who has already visited a company web site. Most likely a company has spent marketing dollars to get a customer to their site in the first place, so the term re-targeting is derived from the concept of marketing to them again, however in a different manner.

As an example, site re-targeting can be used by e-tailers to target customers who have browsed their products, added them to the shopping carts but have not completed the sale. In this case those customers may be shown an ad showiing the product they have not purchased yet. Mots ad networks and the Google Display (formerly content network) offer some type of re-taregting capability to their clients.

Who wants some cookies?

2.  Search re-targeting

I believe Yahoo! is the only large search engine which offers this capability at this point. According to Yahoo!’s announcement, ”Search Retargeting is a customized display targeting solution that lets advertisers capture user interest from search terms and retarget the user with display ads in the Yahoo! Network.

For example, if a user searches for the keyword “sandals,” indicating strong purchase intent, an advertiser can target that user with a tailored display ad for footwear.

It remains to be seen whether Bing will integrate this functionality as the Bing and Yahoo! alliance moves forward and Bing manages all organic and paid search for both platforms. More on this topic next week as I will write about the alliance and timeline in more details.

3.  Social re-targeting

This is a rather new and no less exciting form of re-targeting. When customers visit a web site, advertisers identify those who have converted (or engaged in a positive brand experience online such as the download of a video or a newsletter sign-up). Third party platforms then look at those customers social network and determine their closest 10 friends or colleagues. This is done by assessing the strength of the bond between the customer and his or her network of friends and colleagues across Facebook, LinkedIn etc … Elements like the number and strength of interactions across the social networks are considered.

The assumption is those 10 closest friends or colleagues have common needs and will behave somehow similarly online. The final piece of the puzzle is when this network of friends will go online, they will see the ads that show some products and services that the customer bought or signed-up for in the first place. This is a fascinating way to target customers based on their friends behaviours. More information is available in this great webinar from iCrossing.

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We are proud to announce Successful investment joined our fast growing list of customers in the financial industry.

Investing today is possibly more perilous than it has ever been before. While never really predictable, the contemporary investment market certainly seems to have a mind of its own, unresponsive to the usual factors many investors have come to rely on.

If you’re like me like Ulli Niemann , you’ve worked too hard for your money to take unnecessary risks with investing. He”ll make sure you are getting a good return when you do invest, whether it’s with your discretionary funds, your retirement investments, a 401k, or IRA. for more information meet Ulli and sign-up for his free weekly newsletter.

One of the great challenges with search engine optimization (SEO) is getting people to understand what is involved in obtaining links to a web site. Too many times, they expect that an SEO will “just go get links,” without involving any investments of marketing time, development time, or cash (collectively, the “internal resources”).

The problem: it just doesn’t work that way. Website publishers must expect to be integrally involved in the process. If they aren’t, it will result in a bad link building campaign. Let’s look at a few different ways that an SEO could attempt to independently acquire links, and discuss the flaws with each.

Abstract model of Backlinks

Article by Eric Enge from Search Engine Watch

Read the full article here