Performics Performance Marketing Blog: SEM, SEO, Social & Display

It’s 95 Degrees Out…the Holidays Must be Near!

Posted by Michael Kahn, VP Account Management and Marketing

It’s an interesting coincidence that each year as the temperature rises outside we start to sweat inside as we think about the upcoming holiday season and the online sales numbers we will need to make. If you haven’t already, you should begin aggressive planning for the holidays so your plan is in place by the end of August.

For our paid search programs and with our clients we will be pinning down all the essential elements for their holiday plans including:

• Goals and objectives
• Products and landing pages
• Search promotional details
• Cross-Marketing/Media Plans

All research indicates that consumers start doing their holiday shopping research earlier and earlier (September is no longer an exception). Given a tough economy, this year may be unique as consumers do their research earlier but actually buy later waiting to find the very best deal they can. Make sure you are ready to launch your paid search efforts to be present for the upper funnel activity in the fall (when brand presence will be key) and the lower funnel sales rush as the holidays near.

Pin down your holiday plans now so you are not sweating them later.

Search and Purchase Behavior of Tweens

Performics’, in partnership with ROI Research, recently commissioned a study to better understand the online search and purchase behavior of seven key demographic segments.  In his July Chief Marketer byline, Performics’ VP of Search Operations, Stuart Larkins, analyzes the findings from the first demographic of the study: tweens.  The study offers actionable insight for advertisers on how tweens consume media, how they research the products they want to buy, and how they search and purchase across different product categories.

Read Stuart Larkins’ Chief Marketer byline.

The 4 Pillars of Natural Search- Pillar Number 2, Content Optimization

Posted by Sam Battin, Senior Search Specialist (Natural Search)

An effective content optimization strategy starts with solid keyword research.  Keywords that drive conversions must be determined before optimization efforts take place.  Keyword volume (e.g. the popularity of a search term as determined by the number of times it’s typed into search engines) plays a role in keyword research, but is not the most important aspect.  A keyword research methodology that produces lasting dividends seeks to uncover the keywords that distinguish a particular brand, along with the keywords that a Web site’s qualified consumers are actually using on the engines.  Understanding the competitive landscape, identifying a site’s audience profile, and interpreting the natural search needs and search habits of the intended audience is paramount to discovering keywords.  For example, even though a site may have a lot of good information about sneakers, the best keyword  for the site may not be “sneakers” but instead keywords that define a specific audience for the site and differentiate its content from the competition, such as “children’s sneakers” or “running shoes.”

Once the “right” keywords are determined, it’s time to focus on optimizing the site’s content for those keywords.  This includes optimizing the title tags, body content, ALT attributes, link anchor text, navigation, and Flash/video content.  For best results, high-volume keywords can be mapped to targeted landing pages that organize content by theme.  Sometimes new landing pages may have to be created to capture traffic for particular keywords.  Creating other hubs for content (such as a blog) is also helpful in driving natural search traffic.  This creates effective landing pages for searches with a very specific focus.  In addition, meta-description tags are an essential part of content optimization.  While these tags won’t help a site rank higher, they do act as a call to action on the search engine results page and can convince searchers to click on a site’s listing.

Performics’ Natural Search team uses content optimization to distinguish your brand from your competition, highlight your site’s appeal to your target audience, and increase valuable traffic from visitors who are searching for exactly what you have to offer.

Pillar Number 1: Indexation
Pillar Number 3: Link Building
Pillar Number 4: Distribution

Natural Search Reporting and Analysis: Best Practices

Posted by David Young, Natural Search Analyst

Actionable reporting and analysis is key to the success of a Natural Search Optimization campaign.  Tracking progress against benchmarks, reporting on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and gathering data to analyze strategies is best done with an accurate and clean reporting interface.  Performics recently rolled out a new reporting format focused around natural search reporting best practices.  The new Performics report includes:

• The Executive Summary – A virtual “one-sheeter” intro that gives an accurate, high-level snapshot of the engagement’s health.
• Average Keyword Ranking Report – An extremely legible report that shows month over month keyword ranking changes, complete with hyperlinks to the ranking URLs.
• Emphasis on Accurate Data Sources- Instead of reporting every indexation number or every link popularity number available, Performics now focuses on the most accurate data sources, such as Google for indexation, and Yahoo! or Google Webmaster Tools for link popularity.  This cuts down on erroneous, and often times confusing, data. Of course, additional sources can be added per the client’s request.
• Cleaner Aesthetics- A clean, uncluttered design, along with pages formatted to print correctly and easy-to-read graphs, makes for easier eye flow over the page.

Use YouTube to Help Get Your Video Content Indexed and Ranked

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager (Natural Search)

In his July Search Engine Land byline, Performics’ Director of Natural Search Eric Papczun discusses the benefits of custom YouTube channels in helping to get video content indexed and effectively ranked by the search engines.  Eric uses CBS, the Obama campaign, and the NBA to show the effectiveness of custom YouTube channels.  He also compares these sites to other publishers who don’t use YouTube channels to distribute their video content. 

Read the full article at Search Engine Land.

The 4 Pillars of Natural Search- Pillar Number 1, Indexation

Posted by Sam Battin, Senior Search Specialist (Natural Search)

Before a Web site can hope to drive qualified natural search traffic from targeted keywords, it must be ensured that search engine spiders are able to index the most important pages of the site.  That’s why indexation is the first Pillar of Natural Search.  Indexation problems have to be cleared up at the start of any Natural Search Optimization campaign.  Search engine spiders generally encounter two main problems relating to indexation: (1) URLs with too many parameters (2) Design platforms that are difficult to crawl.

Complicated URLs

Search engine-friendly URLs are unique and generally consist of three parameters or less.  If a spider sees a URL that has multiple parameters and session IDs, it runs the risk of getting caught in a “spider trap” indexing duplicate content.   If each new visit to a page is associated with a unique session ID, a search engine spider can become trapped in an endless loop indexing pages that it has already crawled. This is because each time the crawler returns to a site and finds a page, whether it has already crawled that page or not, it gets assigned a new session ID and the URL changes. 

20 Questions to Ask a Prospective Paid Search Agency

Posted by Natalie Brumley, Product Marketing Manager (Paid Search)

1.       Is your paid search solution full-service? If yes, how do you define full-service?

2.       What technology supports your full-service solution? How often is it updated?

3.       Does your technology have direct API integration with the top engines?

4.       Do you use API data or referral data for reporting purposes?

5.       Is the technical support team separate from my account team? Is support 24/7?

6.       Who will be managing my accounts on a daily basis?

7.       Is the account manager responsible for bid, keyword, copy and landing page management or do separate teams manage these efforts?

8.       What is your methodology for successful search campaigns including bid management strategy?

9.       What types of resources does my account manager have?

10.   Do the account managers have vertical expertise? Which verticals?

11.   What is the typical launch timeline?

12.   How do you optimize my campaign once it is launched?

13.   What metrics do you use to define success?

14.   What is the typical account manager’s background?

15.   Is your search team certified by the engines?

16.   What is your relationship with the top search engines?

17.   How has your company shown leadership in the SEM space?

18.   What kind of opportunities will I have to network with other clients?

19.   How will you align my search campaigns with other online marketing efforts?

20.   What other digital marketing solutions do you offer?

Internet Retailer has more information on how to ask the right questions to find the right SEM.

Paid Search Copy Testing Should be a Reoccurring Event

Posted by Michael Kahn, VP Account Management and Marketing

In optimizing paid search campaigns, Performics recommends robust testing of all the elements that impact conversion. This includes bid position by type of term on the front end and landing page user experience on the back end. Right in the center of the conversion funnel is ad copy.  We work with our clients on ongoing testing surrounding this variable.  It is where the query meets the brand.

In terms of best practices, here are our guidelines:

• Identify ad groups that are underperforming versus the averages across your search campaign
• Focus on mid-to-higher volume level ad groups to make sure you can gather enough data to draw conclusions from testing
• Review the existing copy in these ad groups for its relevancy as related to the keyword and landing page user experience

20 Questions to Ask a Prospective SEO

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager (Natural Search)

1.       What is your SEO methodology, including strategies for indexation, copywriting, link-building, and distribution?

2.       How has your company shown thought leadership in the SEO industry?

3.       Who will be managing my account on a daily basis and how often will they be communicating with me?

4.       What types of resources are available to my account manager?

5.       Do you follow generally accepted search engine guidelines?

6.       Have any of your clients been penalized in the search engines results as a result of your work?

7.       What is your methodology for keyword research?

8.       How will you go after the most competitive keywords for our business?

9.       Will you perform an analysis of our competitors’ websites?

10.   What will be expected from our end (in terms of resources) in order to implement the program?

11.   What is your strategy for working with clients who have limited IT resources?

12.   What is the typical launch timeline and how long will it take before I see results?

13.   Are you using Web 2.0 platforms such as social networking sites, blogs, and social bookmarking sites to improve search engine rankings?

14.   What will you do to help our video, image, local, and news content appear in search engines?

15.   Will you be able to optimize our Java Script/Flash-heavy pages for natural search?

16.   What types of reports on ROI and Key Performance Indicators can I expect from you and how often will I receive these?

17.   How will you continually track, analyze, and optimize my campaign post-launch?

18.   How do you keep on top of changes in the industry/potential changes in the algorithms?

19.   How will you align my SEO campaign with my paid search (and other online/offline) marketing efforts?

20.   What other digital marketing solutions do you offer?

Using CPC Caps to Limit Expensive Broad-Matching

Posted by Chris Beck, Program Manager (Paid Search)

CPC caps act as a precaution for overspending on expensive paid search keywords.  Brand specific click stream data can be very helpful in identifying CPC caps for your campaign.  Many instances of broad matching come from queries not indicated in search query reports.  These queries are listed in the “other” category and it’s possible that CPCs for these unidentifiable keywords are excessively high.  Using known CPC information from the search query report and the live keywords in the brand campaign, it’s possible to determine a CPC limit that eliminates instances of broad matching for queries with excessively high CPCs.  This includes keywords within the “other” category of the search query report.  Setting appropriate CPC caps for broad-matched keywords can make a significant difference in terms of ROI for your paid search campaign.