Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
time community engagement
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Google’s quest for taking over the Internet is continuing. They have released a public beta of its Website Optimizer, a new service that allows marketers to test various versions of landing pages to determine which one has the most effective conversion rate. The Website Optimizer allows marketers to test different variables on a landing page (i.e. different headlines, product features, copy, and creative to determine which configuration has the best conversion rates based on revenue or other metrics. According to ClickZ, Google is providing the beta service “on an acceptance basis” to AdWords and Google Analytics account holders who’d like to sign up.
Technorati Tags: website optimizer, google, conversion rates
Awareness and consideration are fundamental metrics used to measure the effectiveness of paid search. One of the most common ways to measure these two metrics is to simply monitor the impressions and clicks. Impressions are usually associated with awareness and clicks are associated with consideration. But using this methodology can be deceiving. Assuming that when a particular search campaign generates 100 million impressions, that 100 million eyeballs actually see the ad is misleading. There are, however, tools that can help measure the level of engagement with consumers when they click on the ad and arrive at your website; which I believe tell a much more compelling story of your search campaigns. One tool is called SEM Director. This tool allows marketers to assign values to particular actions on the website. For example, one page view can equal 1 point; signing up for a newsletter can be 2 points, watching a [...]
Many times, I read in various blogs and forum posts that a solid SEO strategy (with good rankings) is good enough to attract visitors to a website. I completely disagree with this view. While SEO is an important component of any integrated marketing campaign, paid search must not be overlooked when implementing an online strategy. According to Clickz, the paid search market generated approximately $10 billion in revenue in 2005 and is expected to grow 41 percent in 2006. How can any organization, marketer or blogger ignore these astronomical figures? Additionally, according to a study by WebSideStory that monitored twenty B2C e-commerce websites, paid search had a median order conversion rate of 3.4 percent, while organic search results produced a conversion rate of 3.13 percent. The data set included more than 57 million search engine visits.
Technorati Tags: paid search, search engine marketing, seo, search engine optimization, organic search
The question often arises for many marketers whether or not to bid on branded terms, especially if they already rank number one in the natural search results. While this argument may hold some ground on the surface, bidding on brand related terms enables marketers to occupy more search engine real estate and have greater control over the brand messaging.
Trust and credibility are also factors to consider. When a consumer searches for a branded term, and other search results are returned (perhaps retailers or affiliates), a customer can loose trust in that brand; and the company image loses credibility.
In my opinion, brand related terms are the most valuable terms in any search campaign. They are the most likely to attract the highest levels of relevant traffic because consumers are already interested in the company’s value proposition. The result is higher conversion rates and a more positive customer experience.
Okay, I know this [...]
I just read that Danny is leaving searchenginewatch.com and will no longer be hosting the search engine strategy conference. Too bad. Here is the article straight from his blog.
Technorati Tags: Danny Sullivan, ses, search engine watch, search engine strategies
I was recently at SES last week in San Jose and attended a click fraud session with representatives from Google, Yahoo, Ask, Click Forensics, Click Tracks and a few others.
From the beginning, the gloves were off between one of Google’s Product Manager’s Shuman Ghosemajumder and the third party click fraud auditing firms.
To make a long story short, Google released a report that they claim debunks the methodology (rather, the way some of the auditing firms count clicks). What irritated me and many others in the session was when Shuman said, “there are NO flaws in the way Google tracks click fraud — invalid clicks). It’s wasn’t just his words but his arrogant tone of voice. Here is a great article that explains in more detail.
Technorati Tags: ses, search engine strategies conference , click fraud
