search marketing: strategies for seo and sem

Search Marketing Strategies: Optimising Paid Search and

Search Engine Optimisation to Maximise Site Traffic

by Chris Smith

General Manager, Digital

Direct Banking, NAB

chris.x.smith@nab.com.au

28 September 2010

Agenda

• Fundamentals of a search marketing strategy

• Trade-offs between search engine optimisation and paid

search

• Social media optimisation: Why it’s relevant for search

marketing campaignsmarketing campaigns

• Examples of NAB search marketing campaigns: Analysing

campaign strengths and areas for improvement

Fundamentals: Search Marketing Terminology

SEA

Search Engine

Advertising

• PPC Pay per click

• CPM Cost per 1000

• CPA Cost per action

• Display

• etc

SEO

Search Engine

Optimisation

• Content

• Links

SEM

Search Engine

Ongoing

Cost, AKA

Paid Search

Mainly upfront

cost, then top-up

AKA Organic Search

2

SMO

Social Media Optimisation

• Forums

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Blogs

• Etc

ORM Online

Reputation Management

• Monitoring Tool

• Manual monitoring

Search Engine

Marketing

or Search Marketing

Ongoing time

commitment

Examples of Organic and Paid Search

• Right side and sometimes the top of the page

are paid or sponsored search results

• Left side search results are the organic, or

natural results

• Publisher sites are eligible to display the same

text ads or display ads (CPM) aka AdSense.

Fundamentals: SEO in a nutshell

• Searchers type simple phrases (the

“search term”) in a search engine.

• Search engines index all pages they

have discovered (by following links)

• When the query is processed, the

search engine checks its index and

presents no more than 1000 results, presents no more than 1000 results,

typically 10 results per page.

• These results are ranked based on

their relevancy to the search phrase.

• The ultimate goal is optimise your site

to rank #1.

4

SEO involves many people

Technical

Hosting

Domain Name

Registration

Page coding

Design

Server

Efficiency

Security

Related

companies

Content

Management

Page markupURL length

ContentLinks

5

TRUST

RANKING

SUCCESS

Design

Usability

Publicity

News

media

Writing for

the Web

Product

Facts

MultimediaSocial networks

companies

Style guides

Fundamentals: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising in a nutshell

• Searchers type simple phrases (the “search

term”) in a search engine.

• The results page displays the most relevant and

most effective ads on the right and sometimes at

the top of the page.

• The higher-placed ads are clicked more than the • The higher-placed ads are clicked more than the

lower ads.

• A high placement can be achieved by:

> Compelling copy (attracts a click)

> A landing page that matches the search term

> Setting not necessarily the highest bid, but

enough to be high on the first page:

6

SEO vs PPC: Some interesting statistics

• Marketing Budgets: SEO

- 61% of companies surveyed spent up to

$75k/year on optimising content

- 28% of the largest companies (rev > $1

• Source of Clicks

- 92% of all clicks are from Organic Listing

- 8% of all clicks are from Paid Search.

- 28% of the largest companies (rev > $1

Billion/ year) spent nothing on SEO.

• Marketing Budgets: SEM

- 63% of companies surveyed spent between

$3-$5m on PPC

• Disconnect? A fraction of spend is used to

attract majority of “free” clicks, whereas >

30x spend to attract minority of “paid” clicks. * Source: SEMPO State of Search Engine Marketing Report - 2010

SEO vs PPC: Where to put your spend in 2011?

• The case for SEO

— Great opportunity exists local,

news, blog, video, image, product

feeds.

— Much better ROI based on overall

spend

— PPC is “easier” — PPC is “easier”

• The case for PPC

— Flexibility in spending, quick

results

— Ability to adjust quickly

— Less reliance on your Web/IT

teams

— Pretty straightforward

— Placement of results more reliable

•Good reasons to do both

—Learn which keywords are

performing well from paid search

—Good optimisation leads to

quality scores

—Own as much real estate as

possible, less for competition

—Multiplier effect

Social Media in a nutshell

• Social networks have been

around for over 20 years. Key

message is that only some of

them are relevant to banks.

>Audio, e.g. Podcasts

>Video, e.g. YouTube, Vimeo

>

>Social Networks, e.g. Forums

(discussion groups), Facebook,

MySpace, LinkedIn

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>Video, e.g. YouTube, Vimeo

>Aggregators, e.g. my.yahoo.com,

Google Reader

>Bookmarking/recommendation

tools, e.g. Delicious, StumbleUpon

>Ratings & Reviews, e.g. Digg

>Photo Sharing, e.g. Flickr

>Wikis, e.g. Wikispaces, MediaWiki

MySpace, LinkedIn

>Blogs

—Comments

—Promotion tools, e.g.

Feedburner

—Blog search tools e.g.

Technorati

—Blog communities, e.g.

BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog

—Microblogging, e.g.

Twitter

Social Media in the Search Marketing Mix

• Everyone seems to have embraced social media (SM).

• Is your SM campaign integrated with the rest of your search marketing

strategy?

Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

• Simply using various popular social networks is

half the journey.

• You can optimise each in different ways, e.g.

— Facebook Pages are the only part of Facebook

that is crawled and indexed by Google

— Videos can be optimised to benefit SEO

— Customers have conversations at social — Customers have conversations at social

networking sites and references to a company

serve as “Citations” to their website even

when there are no clickable links.

• You can be proactive in maintaining a good

reputation by educating your marketing and

corporate affairs department.

Press Release Optimisation (PRO)

• Press releases are now known as Media

Releases and some companies have Social

Media Releases

• Submit to various online distribution services

such as PRWeb and PRNewsWire

• Apply standard SEO principles:• Apply standard SEO principles:

— Use plain English

— Insert deep links to a specific part of your

website

— Provide links to relevant supporting media

such as images and videos.

— Provide links to your profiles at various

social media outlets e.g. Twitter, blogs

• See http://schools.nsw.edu.au for local example

Search Marketing Strategy: Pulling it all together

Relevant Content

Website Success

Credit card

Keyword

researchWrite

content

Social Network

page(links)

Rank #1

Relevant Deep Links

Success

13

Credit card

comparison site

Credit card

info site

(link)

(link)

Article about

personal finance

(link)

(Word of mouth,

viral effect)

Case Study: Optimising Your PPC Spend

• If you are not happy with your Google or Yahoo PPC results, your

campaigns might simply need a tweak.

• Clues:

— You are paying too much per click.

— You are not getting enough conversions.

— You don’t know if your ads are working for you.

Case Study: Improving your Google Quality Score

The Quality Score is fairly simple to grasp:

• Scale from 1 to 10 (10 is best)

• Are the keywords in your ad group present on the landing page?

• Are the keywords in the ad copy?

• Does the landing page load fast?

• Is the landing page a quality page?

— Is it relevant to the keyword?

— Is your business transparent?— Is your business transparent?

— Is the content original?

— Is it navigable?

Yes, a high Quality Score is achievable

Case Study: Lowering the cost per conversion

• Comparing two dissimilar ad groups, one being non-competitive and the

other being very competitive, we can see not only the difference in the cost

per click, but also the lower cost per conversion.

Non-competitive, High Quality Score

Competitive, Low Quality Score

Wrapping it up

To summarise:

— Effective search engine marketing is a blend of SEO, SMO, PRO and PPC

— SEO is the cheapest to implement but it involves your own organisation

on an ongoing basis, not a short engagement with an agency.

— PPC is essential to fill gaps in search engine visibility and gives instant

results and gratification.

— Social media needs careful planning and splendid implementation. It is — Social media needs careful planning and splendid implementation. It is

not for everyone, but for consumer brands it is essential and should be a

long term commitment.

Questions?

Thank you.

— Chris Smith

— General Manager, Digital; Direct Banking, NAB

— Chris.x.smith@nab.com.au

— http://www.nab.com.au