Search Synergy –Maximizing Your Online Shelf Space

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Reasons You Should Belong to SEMPO• Expand Your Knowledge• Engage With Industry

Leaders• Maximize Your Career Growth• Grow Your Business• Save Money

About Our Sponsors

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Covario is a leading provider of SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) agency services and management solutions. 

Kenshoo is a digital marketing technology company that engineers premium solutions for search marketing, social media and online advertising.

Housekeeping

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Today’s Presenters

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Kelly WratherMarketing ManagerKenshoo

Mel WhiteSpecial Projects EditorClickZ

Alex FunkDirector of Digital Media Strategy Covario

Agenda

• State of the SERP• SEM Landscape• Implications for Marketers• SEO + SEM Synergy• Goal-Setting• Budgeting• Key Takeaways

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The State of the SERP

Kelly WratherMarketing Manager

Kenshoo 7

The SERP of 2011

The SERP of today

• More real estate– Product Listing Ads

(PLA)– Enhanced Sitelinks– Ad Extensions– More screens to

consider• Convergence: Paid,

Owned, and Earned

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And it’s not just Google…

SEM Landscape

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SEM: Competition’s heating up• Search Ad Spend up 52% since Q2 2011

Note: Volume metrics have been normalized to a factor of 1 based on the initial quarter of data. Data points from subsequent quarters are based on a multiplier from the first quarter – for example, 1.52 means that volume is 52% greater than volume in initial quarter measured (Q2 2011).

Holiday snapshot

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• Search Ad Spend up 51% for Cyber Monday 2012

Implications for Marketers

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What does this mean for the marketer?

• Raising budgets isn’t enough, need to get more creative to maximize shelf space

• Challenges overcoming structural silos• More touchpoints to consider and account for in a

consumer’s path• Integrated approach needed to understand the full

search picture

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Get creative with shelf space

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Overcome silos

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1Connect your product

feed in the Google Merchant Center

2Connect your Merchant Center account to your

AdWords account

3Sync Kenshoo and AdWords

4Manage, optimize and

report on PLAs

Account for touchpoints

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Social Ad Click

Search Text Ad Click

Product Ad Click

Purchase

Take an integrated approach

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Poll 1

Do Paid and Organic Search have equal priority in your organization? 

• SEO/PPC – equal priority • SEO – greater priority• PPC – greater priority

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Shedding light on SEM + SEO opportunities

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Keyword expansion

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Understand program cannibalization

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Attribute actions

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Paid and Organic Search Synergies

Alex FunkDirector of Digital Media Strategy

Covario 25

Poll 2

Do you feel your Paid and Organic Search programs work together or compete against one another?

•  Yes, highly integrated•  Moderately integrated, need more focus•  No, not integrated, need help

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Understanding The Problem Statement

• What keywords are we really talking about? 

• What are we actually trying to compare? 

• What phenomena are we trying to measure? 

“Why are we buying our brand keyword when we already rank #1 in the organic results?” 

“Why are we paying for traffic if we’re already getting it for free?” 

Without Data, Assumptions Are Just That

Clicks on Paid Ads are Incremental to Organic

Source: Incremental Clicks Impact of Search Advertising. Google. July 2011

SEO/PPC Synergies

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More Data, Better User Experience = Higher Performance

Unified Search ReportingComprehensive Sharing of

Search DataSearch Traffic Forecasting Investing in Long Tail vs

Head termsCannibalization or click

assistance?

Ad copy performance Landing Page performanceSearch results user

experienceManagement efficiencies

for entire search programMitigate loss of organic

traffic with paid

Poll 3

Have you seen uplift by having a Paid and Organic strategy that work to support one another?

• Yes, significant uplift• Somewhat, moderate uplift• No, little to no uplift

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ORGANIC RESULTS

Organic results account for just

15% of the above the fold

pixels

On average the top 3 spots take >40% of the clicks on this

page

Sponsored Ads on high commercial intent

keywords take up 86% of the above the fold

pixels

GOALS OF A COMPREHENSIVE SEARCH PROGRAM

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Achieving your Goals

Increase Efficiencies

Maximize Visibility

Optimize to KPIs

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Cross Capability Collaboration• Working as a team to share learning and best practices across capabilities with agencies to drive time and cost efficiencies

Keyword insights used to inform website content, paid search creative, and metadata

Best practices for search engine optimization are shared with technology

Learning from strategy and analytics are used to inform and refine the search engine marketing campaign and drive business results

Media drives searches for targeted keyword phrases Keyword research informs media buys and creative

Capability

Creative

Technology

Strategy and Analytics

Media

Search Engine Marketing

HOW TO SUPPLEMENT SEO WITH PPC

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Company doesn’t rank within the top 100 organic listings for this highly relevant and competitive term

While organic optimizations are formulated and implemented, multiple paid listings can be implemented and tested, driving traffic immediately to the site.

– Company is ranking beyond the first 30 organic listings for 14 gold keywords - primarily competitive, non-branded terms with high search volumes

– Company could increase search visibility by bidding on these terms.

– Testing performance of competitive paid terms can indicate which keywords merit link building budget, which can take several quarters of SEO efforts to realize results.

Increase web visibility with PPC for Non-Performing SEO Keywords

UTILIZE PERFORMING PPC DATA FOR SEO

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Leverage performing keywords and ad copy CTAs for SEO on-page optimization whilst

adhering to brand and legal guidelines:• Meta Title• Meta Description• Header tags (H1, H2, etc.)• Webpage textual Content• Image alt tags• Internal Linking• Link Development

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If this ad has a high CTR, it’s description line can be added to

the meta description of the organic listing(s) below to increase organic

CTR.

Consistent MessagingMessaging in paid and organic listings should work together to drive CTR.

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Messaging for paid and organic listings on Google are all consumer focused and describe features and available models.

Although descriptions are different, they are thematically cohesive, attempting to drive user to the site to make a purchase.

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Search Reports: SEM/SEO

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Brand 1Brand 1 Weekly Report

Don’t forget about Mobile

45 / ©2012 Covario, Inc. All rights reserved.

TIMING AND BUDGETING CONSIDERATIONS

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Timing Considerations

• SEO optimizations often take time to capture traffic while paid placement can provide quick gains.

• Utilize PPC to drive traffic to new site pages while SEO builds content, optimizes pages, and acquires links.

• Also, react to shifting organic results (Google Panda updates, website updates etc.) with PPC to minimize loss of visibility and traffic.

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Budget Program to Purchase Funnel

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Early Stage

Queries

Conversi

on

Intent

Considera

tion

Queries

–Generic, broad keywords –High search volume / traffic–High costs associated with:–Very competitive (high CPCs)–Generally lower conversion rates

–Mix of multi-string queries and brand terms–Low search volume on ‘tail terms’–High search volume on brand terms–Specifically targeted (brand, product, action)–Higher conversion rates

–Mix of generic, branded, and targeted keywords–Consumers engaged in select group of brands for

consideration–Potentially less volume / traffic–Higher conversion rates

Key Takeaways

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• Understand the landscape and its implications• Determine program synergies• Uncover opportunities for program optimization• Back it up with data

…Ultimately, maximize search ROI!

Questions

Kelly WratherKenshookelly.wrather@kenshoo.com

Alex FunkCovarioafunk@covario.com

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Join us Next Week

Best Practices for 2013 from the ClickZ Academy FacultyThursday, December 20, 12 pm EST

Moderator - • Thom Craver; Senior Technical SEO Manager, TopRankSpeakers - • Simon Heseltine; Director of SEO, AOL Inc.• Lisa Buyer; President & CEO, The Buyer Group• Sundeep Kapur; Digital Evangelist, NCR Corp.

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