Search Engine Marketing Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ's)
General Search Marketing Questions
Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Paid Inclusion Feeds
General Search Marketing Questions
- Which is better, PPC (paid search) or SEO (natural search)?
Ideally, both should be used simultaneously. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) generates rapid ROI and is useful for split-run testing creative, price points and other variables - learnings which can be applied to other channels. Search engine optimization (SEO) takes longer to see results (6 months in most cases), but over the long-term can be more cost-effective than PPC. The ideal search marketing company is an expert at both PPC and SEO.
- Should I hire a search marketing company or an in-house search marketing professional?
Many companies try to recruit a search marketing "pro" onto their staff. This can be tough for two reasons.
First, search marketing requires a multitude of skill sets: keyword research, copywriting, XHTML coding, server administration and metrics - and above all, strategic marketing savvy. It's very rare to find one individual who has all these talents. Second, search marketing professionals are in very high demand, and it may take longer than expected to find the right person.
In contrast, retaining a search marketing agency will be: Less expensive than hiring a whole team in-house; more reliable than hiring an individual; and easier to evaluate by reputation. Search marketing firms are also specialists who take time to study the complex, fast-changing search landscape and share their knowledge among the team, making them more effective and inter-operable.
Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising
- What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search advertising?
Pay-Per-Click search is the fastest-growing advertising tactic in the world today. PPC places your text ad in a privileged spot on the search results page for keywords of your choosing. About 25 to 40% of searchers will click on such ads (see the "Sponsored Results" on your favorite search engine to see what they look like). PPC costs you a certain price every time a visitor clicks on your ad. Uneducated PPC advertisers bid on the price they'll pay per click and are forced to pay the full price of their bid. Educated PPC managers, on the other hand, know which factors will help them get superior ad placement and ROI, while paying less than the market rate that their competitors pay.
- What is Contextual PPC advertising?
Contextual PPC ads work in much the same way as search PPC ads, except that instead of appearing in search results for your keywords, your ad will appear on third-party sites that are deemed to have some contextual relevance to the keywords you have chosen to bid for. Contextual ads allow for non-text formats such as video and graphic banners to appear on a variety of sites, from large respected portals to blogs. It does take more expertise to make contextual advertising ROI-positive, as contextual campaigns have to be more carefully managed than search PPC campaigns.
- When I run a PPC campaign why don't my ads always appear?
There may be a number of reasons: Perhaps you're geo-targeting your ads to an area different from the area you're searching from; or you've run out of your Daily Budget for that day. For more details see our Big Green Blog post on this topic at http://www.biggreenblog.com/2005/02/why_cant_i_see_my_search_engin.html.
- How can I improve the ROI from my PPC campaign?
There are hundreds of factors that can influence the profitability of a Pay-Per-Click campaign. Contact us for a free initial evaluation of your PPC campaign and we can help point you in the right direction.
- My site doesn't sell any product directly; why would I consider PPC?
In fact only half of all PPC ads are for products sold directly through e-commerce. The other half of PPC ads are B2B sites seeking business leads, pharma sites seeking consumer leads, promotions for offline sales, pure brand sites, and portal sites just trying to build quick traffic in order to sell to more advertisers. In most cases, there is a way to generate positive ROI for all of these purposes. In each case you'll need to assess the monetary value of a visitor to your site, in order to determine what price point you'll be willing to pay per click.
- Google and Yahoo can help you set up your campaign, so why would I need to hire a PPC manager?
The fact is that Google and Yahoo have little incentive to keep your costs low. They may do their best to set it up for reasonable results, but they don't manage campaigns on an ongoing basis unless your budget is very high (tens of thousands of dollars per month). Without ongoing management, the campaign they set up for you will burn through your budget before you have the chance to improve and adjust for maximum ROI.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization is the modification of a web site specifically for the purpose of helping it to rank well in the natural / organic search results of search engines for high-value keywords. SEO involves many skill sets, from marketing strategy to keyword research, to copywriting and programming (using CSS/XHTML and W3C-validated HTML), to metrics and analytics.
- Isn't SEO an unethical tactic frowned upon by the search engines?
Not at all - but there are good and bad SEO providers and it's important to know the difference. You may have heard of "white hat" and "black hat" SEO. "White hat" SEO techniques are directly sanctioned by the search engines and involve techniques that enhance the user experience. Improving usability, using clean HTML code and best practices sanctioned directly by the search engines webmaster guidelines, are considered "white hat."
"Black hat" techniques, on the other hand, are sketchy techniques that try to fool search engines and/or human visitors in a bait-and-switch fashion. Cloaking, keyword stuffing, and redirect hijacking are chief among dozens of shady tactics. Even if these tactics work at first, in the long-term they can devastate your rankings when the search engines find out and penalize your search rank for months if not forever.
- How can I rank on the first page of search results for "blue widgets"?
There are literally hundreds of factors that can help your site rank better for your keyphrases. Identifying and adjusting these factors is our core competency. Contact Green Media for a free site evaluation so we can help point you in the right direction.
- What can I do if I used to rank high in search results and now my rank has dropped?
The major search engines have been tweaking their search rank algorithms quite aggressively in 2006. Google launched a major overhaul of its search results called "Big Daddy" last spring, and Yahoo and MSN have been trying to keep up with the shift. The end result is that the search engines' evaluations of your site "quality" may have changed and your rank may have dropped for certain keyphrases.
The solution varies based on your site content, your keyphrases and the competitive landscape. Contact Green Media for a free site evaluation so we can help point you in the right direction.
Paid Inclusion Feeds
- What is Paid Inclusion?
Paid Inclusion is the process of paying to be included in a search engine as part of its natural (organic) search results. Your search rank is not guaranteed, but you can improve your natural rank by using Search Engine Optimization techniques. Paid Inclusion is also the name given to providing product listings to shopping comparison engines such as Shopping.com and Shopzilla.
- How can Paid Inclusion benefit my business?
Paid Inclusion guarantees inclusion of any pages of your site that the search engines might have missed due to dynamic URLs, lack of inbound links or other barriers to search spiders. The major benefit is that it ensures your Web site title and description are regularly updated, so users will always see your most up-to-date listing.
- What is a "feed"?
A "feed" is a text or XML file, with information about each of your web pages formatted as a record in a database, with fields defined in a particular format. The format is determined by each search engine's particular preference. Usually, a unique feed has to be created for each search engine or shopping comparison site. The most common language used for such feeds is XML. Search engine feeds generally require a programmer in order to create and format correctly, and the formats are different for each search engine. For this reason, the vast majority of advertisers outsource search engine feed creation to search marketing specialists who are familiar with the formats required by each of the search engines.
- Does Google offer Paid Inclusion like Yahoo does? What are Google Health and Google Finance?
Google actually offers free inclusion through its various feed services: Froogle, Google Base, Google Co-Op, Google Health, Google Finance and Google Reader. Froogle is a shopping comparison engine but is not used by many consumers - because it is free, its contents have become choked with spammy content.
Google Base and Co-Op hold a lot of promise since sites included in these databases are recently being moved to above the top results in Google's regular results. Submitting the data is very complex and Green Media is one of the few search marketing agencies able to create Google Base and Google Co-Op feeds. These are especially important for healthcare and financial services companies because Google Health and Google Finance are based on Base and Co-Op content.
Click here to find out how to implement Google Base and Google Co-Op data feeds.
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