Performics Search Engine Marketing Blog

Pretty Pretty URLs for Pretty Pretty AJAX Search Engine Visibility

Posted by Sam Battin, Senior Search Strategist

Do you want to optimize your site's AJAX content for visibility on search engines? Here's Google's grand plan explained!

Recently, Google announced a new technique that will allow better visibility for your site’s AJAX applications.  AJAX is a usability technology that delivers instantly updated information to your visitors; it’s like being able to deliver the speed, power and accessibility of a desktop application through a browser.  When you use AJAX well, you can encourage longer visits and keep your visitors coming back again and again.  To see the potentials of this new technology, try searching for “Good examples of AJAX” on Google.  No, seriously, you should do this.  Here’s a link:

See good examples of AJAX

All right – now that you know what AJAX is, you probably also know that all that awesome stuff it delivers is very tough or even impossible for search engines to see.  While your visitors may know that your site offers a fantastic interface that speeds things up beyond what was even conceivable a couple years ago, a search engine won’t send new visitors your way because AJAX is really difficult to crawl.

Search Happenings: Weekly Search Headlines

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager

From the Engines:

• Facebook granted patent on the news feed.
• Google launches new Android Shopper app: find product information by taking pictures of books, CDs, etc. or scanning bar codes with your phone.
• Facebook becomes #2 most popular site in the United States.
• Yahoo! partners with Twitter to bring real-time search to the Yahoo! SERP.

Other Topics of Interest:

• One in five search results are personalized by Google.
• Fortune 500 still lagging in SEO.
• 50 million tweets per day.  Only half are in English.

Some Fun Stuff:

• Vending machines that wash dogs gain popularity in Japan.

Performics Boosts Revenues for Client up to 20% with the Google AdWords Bid Simulator

Originally posted by Google in its Consumer Technology Industry Knowledge Center:

Decisions, decisions
As a top search and performance marketing agency, Performics provides marketing solutions to more than 125 of the world’s top brands.  The company’s search marketing experts know how vital it is to focus on the right keywords in any search-based advertising campaign and adjust maximum cost-per-click (CPC) accordingly. With this in mind, Performics has developed its own bidding algorithm that it uses on all of its accounts.  Performics also has a team of dedicated Bid Strategists.

“Optimizing keyword bids is a critical ongoing decision we make for clients,” says Jeff Licciardi, Account Managerat Performics. “We’re constantly looking for ways to increase visibility into keyword performance to see areas where there is strong ROI and room to grow impressions.”

The devil’s in the details
In its constant quest to improve campaign performance, the agency saw a major opportunity when it learned about Google AdWords bid simulator. While it can’t predict the future, the bid simulator allows Licciardi and his team to explore what could have happened if they had set different keyword-level bids. Using data from the past seven days, the bid simulator re-calculates the number of impressions for which their clients’ ads could have shown had they chosen a different maximum CPC, how many clicks the ads could have gotten for those impressions and how much those clicks would have cost. The feature provides increased visibility into the AdWords auction and gives the Performics team the insight to make more informed bidding decisions to meet clients’ advertising objectives.

The Search Engine Results Page (SERP) of the Future

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager (Search and Perf. Media)

The search engine results page (SERP) is evolving before our eyes. Most importantly, the SERP is continually becoming more relevant to consumers—its content is more integrated, social, mobile/local and personal. Advancements in usability and relevancy that are driving these SERP changes can be grouped into three content categories:

• Paid Content-paid search ads
• Owned Content-native website, video, social, local and blog content
• Earned Content-user-generated content (UGC) like YouTube videos, tweets and consumer reviews

  
Performics has reviewed and weighed in on many of the influences that are either already changing the face of the SERP – or will change the SERP within the next couple years. As brands implement SERP domination strategies, it is important to consider these eight key trends:

1. Embedded Rich Media
Image and video search results increase user engagement. For instance, a Performics’ electronics retailer client using Yahoo! Rich Ads in Search (RAIS) saw a 774% clickthrough rate increase (CTR) and a 504% increase in conversions over traditional paid search ads. We believe that the SERP will continually incorporate more rich media—video paid search ads, product ads with images, more video natural search results, and more image natural search results. Going forward, brands must leverage all their rich media assets in paid and owned SERP listings.

Search Happenings: Weekly Search Headlines

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager

From the Engines:

• Schmidt- Google decided to do Super Bowl ad because of the positive reaction the ad got on YouTube.
• Facebook’s revamped social search engine.
• Google acquires Aardvark social search engine.
• Google to become an ISP.

Other Topics of Interest:

• User-generated ads score during the Super Bowl.
• Many top web retailers have no presence on Facebook.

Some Fun Stuff:

• Vicious pheasant holds entire town hostage.

Super Bowl Advertisers Support Campaigns by Bidding on Themes in Paid Search

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager

It’s always important to support major offline ad campaigns with paid search.  This means bidding on your brand and product name, as well as the themes around your campaign.  Bidding on campaign themes is particularly important because you’re not likely to have coverage on those themes in natural search, like you would on your brand or product names. 

For instance, E*TRADE supported its baby commercials by bidding on the term “milkaholic,” a term that ETRADE.com is not likely to rank for in natural search.  By bidding on “milkaholic,” E*TRADE was able to capture the search demand created by its ad by helping consumers easily find what they were looking for through paid search:

 

Search Happenings: Weekly Search Headlines

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager

From the Engines:

• Google updates patent filings: gives us view of the future of online profiling, video advertising, and real-time ads within Google Street View.

Other Topics of Interest:

• Google wins street view lawsuit—for now.
• Facebook adds 5 million US users in January.
• Compete: In-store pick up stats for holiday.
• Pepsi skips Super Bowl, dedicates dollars to social media.

Some Fun Stuff:

• Top 10 Super Bowl commercial animals.

Support Guerilla Marketing with Paid Search

Posted by Jeff Licciardi, Account Manager & Brian Aubert, Account Director

Paid search is an important tool for maintaining the buzz of guerilla marketing efforts.  Specifically, four paid search opportunities nicely complement guerilla marketing campaigns.  These include mobile, local, the Content Network, and Facebook cost-per-click (CPC) ads:

Mobile
Guerilla marketing is often place-based—a stunt, an event, a surprise appearance.  If people exposed to the guerilla campaign want to learn more, they often search Google on their iPhones, Blackberries, or other mobile devices.  Search engines are the first place consumers go to get information, and mobile is immediate gratification.  For instance, if a person is walking down the street and sees a crazy stunt, they’re likely to turn to their phone and start searching for keywords associated with the stunt to see exactly what’s going on.  Mobile search allows advertisers to capture this consumer interest where and when the stunt occurred.

Local
Guerilla marketing is often location-based.  Therefore, advertisers can use paid search geotargeting to ensure that only people within the vicinity of the guerilla marketing campaign are exposed to search ads.  Advertisers should set geo parameters on their search campaigns prior to the stunt to better target their ads.  This ensures budget is not wasted in locations where the guerilla marketing campaign does not reach.

Content Network Domain Exclusion Strategy

Posted by Matthew Roderick Eschert, Account Manager

The Content Network can be a cost effective way to increase visibility for your brand and conversions for your products.  However, Content Network traffic must be closely monitored in order to uncover which Content Network sites are driving conversions and which are not.  Advertisers can then opt out of lower-performing sites to increase the quality of Content Network traffic.  This also decreases costs as you are excluding low quality traffic from certain Content Network domains.

One of the best ways to evaluate Content Network traffic is to look outside the search management platform (i.e. DART Search) to your onsite analytics (i.e. Google Analytics).  Site analytics can be used to proactively help optimize the paid search channel in several ways, especially by segmenting visitors from the Google and Yahoo! content networks.  User segmentation allows you to identify poorer performing sites that Google and Yahoo! farm search traffic out to.

2010: Performance Marketing in a Search-Centric World

In 2010, brands must integrate their paid search,SEO, social and display media campaigns and move towards a universal brand management approach on the search engine results page (SERP). More reliable cross-channel data collection and analysis techniques will also aid them in making highly efficient and dynamic media buying decisions.  Subsequently, brands will be better able to specifically target qualified customers—at scale—through innovative search, social and display micro-targeting solutions.

Trend #1: The Move towards Universal Brand Management
We live in a search driven world. The SERP influences how consumers perceive a brand and, ultimately, whether they buy from a brand or its competition. Traditionally, brands have used paid and natural search text links to control their message on the SERP. However, the SERP has changed—incorporating news, maps, videos, blogs, tweets, images, product reviews and even audio clips. This means marketers can control more aspects of the SERP for brand queries by leveraging online assets beyond a brand’s native site. It’s helpful to think of online assets in three buckets: (1) owned, (2) earned and (3) paid.

(1) Owned content
Owned content used to be a brand’s native website. However, a brand’s native Web site can only achieve two search results per query in natural listings. This leaves eight firstpage results (in addition to news, images, maps, etc.) open. A significant social media presence gives brands the opportunity to control more SERP content, especially as real-time search results become more prevalent. Brands can use their Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linked In, YouTube, Flickr and other owned social content to take up more valuable SERP real estate, better engage consumers, stifle competitors’ listings and improve reputation management.