Search Engine Marketing, Inc. — The Book

Paid Ranking Factors

Mike Moran — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 02:25:52 +0000

If you use paid search, you’ve probably wondered how Google decides which ad should be at the top, and what order the rest of them are shown in. In Chapter 9, we learned how a ranking algorithm with with a set of ranking factors sort paid search ads. While each paid search engine uses different algorithms for their paid search rankings, Google maintains the most complete explanation of how its algorithm, called AdRank, works:

Microsoft doesn’t regularly maintain information about its ranking algorithm but did publish a blog post a few years ago on BingAds ranking algorithm.

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Ranking Factors

Mike Moran — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 02:06:55 +0000

In Chapter 9, we discuss how search engines choose the #1 organic search result–it uses the ranking algorithm. Google and the other search engines each use different ranking algorithms with different weights for different ranking factors. Ranking algorithms are trade secrets for each search engine, so no one outside their respective companies actually knows the actual factors for their algorithms.

But that doesn’t stop us from speculation. Here’s an infographic for some 200 possible ranking factors.

Perhaps the most intelligent speculation come from an annual survey of professional SEOs conducted by Moz. Each year the publish the results of the survey, which can help you know the kinds of changes that seem to be appearing in organic search ranking factors. A separate survey for local search ranking factors is equally awaited each year.

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Local Search Venues

Mike Moran — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 01:42:13 +0000

Local search has become more and more important in recent years, especially as mobile has taken off. Google, Bing, and the major search engines all have their own local search engines, but there are other players in the local search game that you should consider in your marketing plans.

Yahoo Local

Yahoo Local should be on your local search listings and citations quest. You can add or claim a basic listing for free which includes the vital information (contact information, link to your website, hours, payment options, email address, products, and services) or you can choose the enhanced paid listing which allows you to add photos, coupons, a company descriptions, and a company tagline. You can also run a report to see the number of impressions and clicks you have received with an enhanced listing.

Yelp

Yelp is one of the most well-known local search directories. You can add or claim your business listing for free and add photos and lots of additional details beyond just your contact information. Business owners can respond to reviews on their page, which is a plus for demonstrating customer service skills. Yelp also offers pay per click advertising within their network so you can get your business listing in front of more people.

Merchant Circle

Merchant Circle is another popular local directory that allows businesses to add or claim free listings with an extended description, profile picture, and link to your website. They also offer free basic statistics about your listing including keywords driving traffic to your listing and the amount of visitors your listing has received in the last thirty days compared to average businesses and the top business on Merchant Circle in your category. You can click on the who is this link to find out who the leader in your category is to learn more about your competitor’s local marketing strategy.

Superpages

Superpages allows businesses to add or claim free listings that include an extended description of their business, multiple categories, a listing of products and services, one related business image, and a link to their website. You can add or claim your business listing here.

Yellow Pages

Yellow Pages allows businesses to add or claim free listings that include an extended description of their business, multiple categories, and a link. You can also add additional photos for the business listing.

Additional Local Directories

Looking for more? You can use tools like Whitespark Local Citation Finder which will help you find the best local directories for your business. You can also search for the names of your main competitors to see what sites they are listed on and make sure you get listed there as well.

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Search Marketing Conferences

Mike Moran — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:18:58 +0000

The quickest way to get up to speed in search marketing is to attend a conference. For a crash course, here are several excellent choices:

Search Marketing Expo (SMX). Run by the most experienced search conference organizers in the business, Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, SMX is the most popular search conference. You’ll find numerous events each year at a city near you, aimed at newbies and veterans alike.
PubCon. More technical than SES, catering more to Web developers and affiliate marketers, PubCon (now officially called “WebmasterWorld’s World of Search”) grew out of after-hours networking at the various search conferences into a three-day event that stands on its own, held a couple of times each year, with one always in the United States. For Webmasters and other technical experts, this event is the valuable one for solving problems, learning new techniques, and keeping up with where the search marketing is headed.
Search Insider Summit. MediaPost offers a smaller conference focused on the business side of search held in resort locations a couple of times a year. This conference is a great way to combine business and pleasure.
Search Engine Strategies (SES). The longest-running search marketing conference, SES is held every few weeks throughout the year in cities around the world. Each conference lasts two to four days and features sessions for both novice and expert search marketers. Many of these events are now moving to the ClickZ name and are becoming broader digital marketing conferences.
ad:tech. A very large event devoted to online advertising, ad:tech has added search engine marketing segments in recent years. These introductory sessions are targeted at marketing managers and advertising agencies that want to start learning search marketing. ad:tech is held for three days several times each year in cities around the globe.
eMetrics Summit. Jim Sterne holds the definitive conference on Web metrics and analytics in several locations around the world throughout the year. This conference is broader than just search marketing, but all search marketers must understand metrics to be successful.

Any of these conferences is a great way to learn more about search and related areas–and they usually include a vendor area that helps you to find companies that can help you with your search marketing efforts.

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Using Merge Words

Bill Hunt — Wed, 06 May 2015 16:27:02 +0000

As you progress in your keyword research, you’ll soon find the need to organize keywords as your lists get longer and longer. As you do, you’ll be concatenating one keyword with another to form longer keywords. (One example is to merge the names of your products with our list of buy cycle modifiers to create longer tail keywords, such as buy product x). Several tools attempt to solve this problem, but we have a favorite.

MergeWords

MergeWords is a free tool that allows you to combine multiple segments of keywords. In the example below, we took a list of all of the Scansnap models and merged them with the word buy and the word ScanSnap (the brand).

The output makes quick work of merging long lists of words with buy cycle or descriptive modifiers easy.

There are a variety of options to use for setting up your paid search accounts for exact and phrase match.

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About Bill Hunt

Mike Moran — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 13:02:03 +0000

Bill has been a pioneer in search marketing. He started optimizing pages in 1994 and is considered the top thought leader on enterprise and global search engine marketing. Bill is an internationally recognized search marketing expert who has spoken at conferences in over 30 countries. He is the co-author of the best-selling book on search marketing, Search Marketing, Inc.

Press, industry analysts, and corporate leaders frequently seek Bill’s advice to effectively leverage enterprise and global search marketing. Bill is the CEO of Back Azimuth Consulting. At Back Azimuth, Bill oversees the innovation for developing cutting-edge keyword data mining models to identify missed opportunities and ways to increase revenue based on understanding consumer needs. Bill is also responsible for Back Azimuth’s search marketing thought leadership and for developing global search marketing strategic roadmaps for multinationals such as Absolut Vodka, Cisco, HP, MGM and Pernod-Ricard.

Bill is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, and he earned a B.A. in Asian Studies/Japanese from the University of Maryland, Tokyo Campus, and a B.S. in international business from California State University, Los Angeles. Bill can be reached through his company website or his blog.

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Paid Search Agencies

Mike Moran — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 02:58:55 +0000

Many large companies use search marketing agencies that handle both paid and organic search campaigns. Some of the best-known agencies are:

360i. Starting as a search agency, 360i is now one of the larger full-service digital marketing agencies, based in New York City.
iCrossing. Like 360i, iCrossing began as a search marketing agency, but now covers all areas of digital marketing.
Performics. Acquired by DoubleClick in 2004, Performics is well known for its ability to integrate reporting with tags used by DoubleClick for banner advertising.
iProspect. One of the oldest names in organic search agencies, iProspect has added paid search and explanded over the years, including its acquisition of Covario, another leading search agency.
Merkle | IMPAQT. Owned by Merkle, the large customer relationship marketing company, Impaqt is one of the larger paid search agenecies.
Merkle | RKG. Another Merkle company, Rimm-Kaufman Group started as a paid search agency but has added organic capabilities over the years. Still well-known for its expertise in eCommerce, but has branched out into other industries also.
Did-it. The co-founder of Did-it, Kevin Lee, is one of the pioneers in paid placement search marketing. He’s built a full-service paid search management offering based on customizable technology that uses proven strategies and metrics to optimize your campaigns.
3Q Digital. Referring to themselves as a “holistic Search Marketing Agency” they work to bring together the synergies of paid and organic search into a single ecosystem. Now owned by Harte Hanks, the large customer relationship marketing firm.
Page Zero Media. From its roots as a leading paid search agency founded by industry luminary Andrew Goodman, Page Zero Media has added organic search and social media services to its longstanding paid search work.

Many other great paid search agencies are out there, but this at least gives you some strong companies to start with.

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Search Marketing Vendors

Mike Moran — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 02:19:13 +0000

If you’re looking for a search marketing agency or consultant to help with your needs, your best bet is to ask other search marketers with similar problems–such as companies your size. If you don’t have anyone whose recommendation you trust, a great place to find search consultants is the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (www.sempo.org). You might also check out the vendors who present at the leading industry conferences, such as:

Search Engine Strategies. The longest-running search marketing conference, SES is held every few weeks throughout the year in cities around the world. Each conference lasts two to four days and features sessions for both novice and expert search marketers.
Search Marketing Expo. Run by the most experienced search conference organizers in the business, Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, SMX is held numerous events each year at a city near you, aimed at newbies and veterans alike.
PubCon. More technical than the other conferences and far less structured, PubCon grew out of after-hours networking at the SES conference into a three-day event that stands on its own. For technical experts, this event is the most valuable one for solving problems, learning new techniques, and keeping up with where search marketing is headed.
Search Insider Summit. MediaPost runs a well-regarded conference that is more intimate than the others, with many larger brands in attendance.

Regardless of how you make your vendor list, there are no shortage of ways to compile the candidates and check them out. The leading vendors appear at these conferences and more, so you can easily hear their viewpoints on the industry.

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Referrals

Mike Moran — Sat, 25 Apr 2015 02:19:34 +0000

Over the last few years, search engines have systematically reduced referral data available to analytics engines. In the past, each search keyword that sent traffic to your website would be passed in the referrer to your web page, and you analytics system could count each one.

Those days are gone.

There are basically two ways to substitute for this missing data:

Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools both provide the data for the most popular keywords that send traffic to your site. Neither is a complete substitute for all of the referral data that you once received, but it is better than nothing.
Search Tools. Some search optimization tools, such as Conductor, and Searchmetrics, provide dashboards with some referral data by compiling data downloaded from webmaster tools. BrightEdge, seoClarity, and some other vendors simulate referral data based on the text on the landing page.

Regardless of how it’s done, there are ways to fill the referral data hole if you need to.

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PPC Vendors

Mike Moran — Sat, 25 Apr 2015 01:54:18 +0000

If you engage in paid search advertising, chances are you advertise on Google and Bing. That makes sense, because they comprise over 95% of the market in the US, and sometimes just as much in other countries. But, depending on the countries you market in, you might consider other paid search engines, also:

Baidu. If you market in China, Baidu is a must, because it is the leading search engine in that country.
Yandex. Russia’s leading search engine is a no-brainer if you market in that country, and also has significant share in some other former Soviet bloc countries.
Yahoo. Until recently, Bing presented the great majority of ads in Yahoo Search, but a recent change in the Microsoft-Yahoo deal allows Yahoo to sell its own ads in many situations, so search marketers need to consider using Yahoo ads in addition to Bing and Google.
7search. Especially if you market to the financial services industry, 7search offers paid search opportunities that some companies find profitable.
Superpages. A long-time Online Yellow Pages (OYP) vendor, Superpages offers many types of advertising opportunities, including PPC.
Looksmart. A longtime paid search vendor (founded in 1997), Looksmart continues to serve paid search ads and some advertisers continue to find return on their investments.
Brain-box Digital. If you advertise in Europe, Brain-box Digital syndicates paid search ads to Yahoo and other search engines.

If you are looking to maximize your paid search results, you should experiment with some of these search engines to see if they work for you.

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