When Nike wanted some artificial grass for its new advertising campaign, it entered ‘artificial grass’ into Google. Evergreens, a company that sells artificial grass to businesses, came out at the top of the listing, so Nike got in touch. This is just one new client that Evergreens has won through revamping its search marketing strategy.
It narrowed its set of search terms, optimised copy on its site according to the best performing search terms, and continually tested and evaluated results. Those results have been impressive. In the past three months Evergreens has seen an increase of 90 per cent in the number of visitors to its website, and an increase of 110 per cent in online sales.
This example shows how important it is to get search marketing right. Edward Foster, business analyst director at search marketing agency The Search Works, adds: According to Jupiter Research in August 2004, 88 per cent of online transactions begin with a search query. This is only one reason why marketers are so enthusiastic about it. They also like the fact that they only pay when customers click the links, and they like the way they can alter their campaigns instantly to respond to news and events, or internal changes such as more or less stock.
Search marketing is undeniably effective and popular, but it is also difficult to get right. Following these 10 steps will go a long way to ensuring that your website comes out near the top of search engine listings.
1. Know what you want to achieve
Firstly, you must have a clear strategy. Karen Wilson, marketing director at Yahoo Search Marketing in Europe, says: ìIt is imperative to set your campaign goals and objectives. Are you looking to sell something online, capture customer data or provide information for an offline sale? If seasonal demand affects your business, think about the times of year when people are most likely to be searching for your business products and services and adapt your budgets and search terms accordingly.
2. Ensure copy is search-friendly
The search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and Miva, all have their own criteria for how they rank search results. However, all of them rely heavily on the words used on the websites. Matthew Stibbe, writer-in-chief at agency Articulate Marketing, offers this advice on finding the right words: Include relevant, informative, non-salesy content on your site. Use properly tagged, non-gimmicky headlines that describe the content. Write well. Get a specialist to write your copy so that it avoids cliches, bad spelling, jargon, acronyms and waffle.
3. Create links to other sites
The other vitally important factor is to ensure that other, well-respected websites link to your site. This is particularly important to Google and Ask. You should keep a constant lookout for link opportunities from other well-established websites that are related to your market. Links from pages that have little to do with your website will do little to enhance your ranking, as will those that themselves appear at the bottom of rankings. Investing effort and possibly money into building this online community, will eventually pay dividends in the form of enhanced rankings.
4. Bid for basic keywords on Google
Approximately 70 per cent of all searches (B2B and B2C) are carried out on Google. This is why many companies are willing to bid for words on Google. Finding the right bid prices for your keywords is a balancing act between bidding high enough to ensure that you are in a strong position in the list of sponsored links, and low enough that you are making a profit on the leads that you generate to ensure the right return on investment.
Warren Cowan, CEO of agency Greenlight, says: Google’s introduction of a quality score system has turned the keyword bidding world on its head. Basically, bidding the highest amount for a keyword no longer guarantees that you will emerge at the top of the rankings. It is merely a factor amongst others, such as click-through rate (CTR), relevance and overall ad effectiveness. The net result is that marketers who know how to optimise their search are able to rank higher and pay considerably less for their position than their competitors.
5. Use analytics to understand your results
One of the best aspects of search marketing is its responsiveness. If something is not working you can stop doing it immediately and if something is working well you can do more of it. Using analytics can help you understand your results.
Mike Teasdale, partner at online marketing agency Harvest Digital, comments: You may be sending a tonne of traffic to your site, but without proper tracking and analytics, you don’t know your true return on investment. Using software like Google Analytics or Webtrends, will help you understand user behaviour whilst you can use tracking solutions like Atlas or Dart to track sales and provide justification for your spend.
6. Bid on the other search engines
While Google is by far the most popular search engine, it is not the only one. Recent research from Harvest Digital has revealed that 76 per cent of Internet users utilise more than one search engine, and 56 per cent regularly use two or three search engines. The online marketing agency surveyed Internet users who had been online for three years or more. Ninety four per cent of them said they use Google, 40 per cent use Yahoo, 39 per cent use Ask and 37 per cent use MSN.
Each search engine has its own system for ranking search results, so you need to adjust your strategy depending on which one you are targeting.
7. Use automated bidding
Grant Muckle, director of sales at online directory Touch Group, explains: The most effective way to manage campaigns containing thousands of keywords is to use automated bid-management software. This allows you to take a strategic approach, receiving regular updates and defining specific parameters. Most automated bid management software uses tactics such as bid shadowing, which is maintaining a bid position above or below a specified competitor’s bid.
8. Drive localised responses
According to Russ Cohn, head of B2B markets at Google, local searches are increasing in popularity all the time and account for over one-third of all searches.
Cohn comments: New mapping software is allowing customers to identify and contact local businesses. This is why we’ve launched Local Business ads. These make it easier for advertisers with several bricks-and-mortar locations to create campaigns for each location. Large chains can create campaigns that have a local dimension and this gets them in front of users who are located in close proximity to their outlets.
9. Integrate search with other marketing activity
Marketers are increasingly looking at how to integrate search with other forms of marketing. They are recognising that prospects are unlikely to remember the address of a website they have seen in another marketing message.
Research by Yahoo found that more than eight out of 10 consumers habitually use a search engine after having partially remembered site addresses. The same is likely to be true of business buyers and so it is important to ensure that search engines will capture words that prospects might pick up from the rest of your marketing.
10. Don’t cheat
Arjo Ghosh, chief executive at agency Spannerworks, says, “Google recently dropped BMW and Ricoh from its natural listings for using artificial search engine optimisation techniques, including redirecting search engine spiders to hidden content. The message was loud and clear the search engines will not tolerate unethical optimisation practices by anyone. You should always avoid things like hidden text, hidden links and doorway pages filled with gibberish words that carry out a sneaky redirect. The cost of following a natural search strategy based on established and acceptable best practice is small when compared to the cost of potential traffic loss and negative publicity a Google ban creates.”
