Search marketing can be a confusing and misunderstood marketing tactic for businesses. Many have heard of the term but aren't sure what it means; others have an idea of what it's about but need to know how to get started.
This article will walk you through the definition and types of search marketing tactics available to improve your online marketing efforts.
Search marketing is a diverse collection of online marketing techniques designed to bring qualified visitors to your Web site at a reasonable cost.
Search Marketing Overview
Search marketing falls into three broad areas:
- Natural search optimization (NSO)
- Paid keyword search
- Search feeds
NSO
NSO goes by many names and acronyms: search engine optimization (SEO), natural search, unpaid search, free search and organic optimization. NSO consists of ensuring that search engine "spiders" find your site, visit all your pages, and then present your site prominently when people search for products, services, or information that your site provides. (Spiders is a nickname for the search engines' automated Web-page retrieval programs, aka crawlers, robots, and bots.)
NSO is sometimes called free or unpaid search because you don't pay a per-visit charge to the search engines for the traffic your Web site receives. These labels are misleading, since it may be in your organization's best interests to invest time and money in natural search. It's like public relations: Though the media attention is free, organizations often invest in PR campaigns, using in-house resources or an agency.
Paid Keyword Search
Paid keyword search consists of paying the search engines to show advertisements for your site when search engine users make relevant queries.
The three dominant search engines in paid search are Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. There are others, but even in aggregate they are not as significant.
Paid keyword search traffic is typically bought via a pay-per-click (PPC) arrangement. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft use real-time auctions to sell clicks, so advertisers can choose to bid more per click to drive more traffic to their site for a given keyword or search phrase. Other keyword search providers sell clicks for fixed PPC rates. Click fees range from a few pennies per click to many dollars per click, depending on the competition for that traffic.
Search Feeds
Search feeds consist of sending data to search engines and product comparison sites that describe the pages on your Web site. (Feed is short for data feed.)
One class of feeds is called paid inclusion. You pay to ensure that the pages of your site are included in a search engine's index. Yahoo SiteMatch Exchange is an example of a paid inclusion marketing product. Search engines typically charge for paid inclusion on a per-click or per-URL basis.
Another class of feeds is called shopping comparison engines. Retailers provide stock keeping unit (SKU)-level product information to shopping-comparison sites such as Shopping.com or PriceGrabber. The shopping sites use such data to help users find products, and they typically charge retailers a per-click fee for the resulting traffic.
Pricing and pricing models vary widely across the industry. For example, GoogleBase is free to retailers, whereas Amazon takes the sale for the retailer on its site and typically charges a revenue-share fee.
Is Natural Search Marketing Right for My Company?
NSO, in some form, makes sense for nearly every organization with a Web site. Increasing site traffic is important to direct marketers, store retailers, manufacturers, service providers, information services, government agencies, and nonprofits.
For many types of businesses, natural search may be the only wise search marketing investment.
Consider a management consulting firm that sells substantial long-term consulting engagements to C-level executives. A CEO would not choose such a firm—for a six- or seven-figure engagement—by following a $2 paid-keyword Google click.
However, a solid NSO project could prove effective. Suppose the management consulting firm placed large amounts of well-written, authoritative, relevant content on its site, and ensured that the engines could find and understand that content. It is entirely plausible that a CEO could stumble onto those pages via natural search—and then contact the firm about a project.
Is Paid Search Marketing Right for My Company?
Paid keyword search makes sense when there is a clear, trackable, and direct-response mechanism on your Web site. If your Web site takes orders or generates leads, you can quantify the value of that revenue or those leads and determine the amount you could pay in advertising to generate them and still meet your profit goal.
Large organizations accustomed to brand marketing often find paid keyword search marketing so inexpensive compared with their national television and print budgets that very little justification is necessary.
Paid keyword search works particularly well if you sell products customers already know they want. Paid keyword search is also effective if you sell well-known products, products with unique names, and products made by well-known brands. Because users drive the process by seeking information of interest to them, paid keyword search can be less effective when launching new products or promoting novel products.
In-house vs. Outsourcing
Some organizations prefer to do as much work as possible themselves, while others prefer to outsource functions outside their core competency. Some aspects of search marketing can be done effectively in-house, while other aspects may require working with agencies.
If you write and host your own Web site, it makes sense to train your internal writers and programmers on NSO best practices. It is easier to build your Web site, or at least build additional pages going forward, to be search engine-friendly rather than to retrofit it. Thus, it might be a wise investment to hire a reputable search marketing firm to evaluate your current Web site, suggest improvements, and train your staff. This could be a short-term project, or you might establish an ongoing retainer relationship.
If you are running small paid-keyword search programs—with a small number of terms, limited ad expenses, limited complexity, and infrequent changes—you should consider running these programs in-house.
Is Outsourcing Right for My Company?
Many retailers start out with small paid keyword search programs, but at some point their paid keyword search programs reach a scale that makes outsourcing a good choice.
If one or more statements describe your organization, you may want to consider outsourcing:
- Your monthly paid keyword search advertising expense exceeds $15,000.
- Your term list exceeds 5,000 terms.
- You are in a highly competitive market, with an average cost per click (CPC) greater than 60 cents.
- Your internal staff spends more than 20 hours per week managing your programs.
- You change ad copy frequently, with more than 15% of your ads changing copy each month.
- Your term list changes frequently, with more than 15% of your phrases changing each quarter.
- You wish to run head-to-head tests of copy and landing pages on a monthly basis.
- You are frustrated with your in-house reporting system, as reports take great effort to build; they are not as accurate or informative as they could be.
- You are frustrated with your in-house systems for determining appropriate bids.
- You are frustrated with your in-house systems' ability to change bids frequently—either daily or more frequently.
- Your in-house staff lacks the time, expertise, technology, or interest in managing paid keyword search.
Search Feed Programs
Though some advertisers run their search feed programs in-house, more tend to outsource this function. There are various reasons for this:
- Some search feed venues accept direct feeds only from certified agencies.
- Advertisers may lack the IT resources to create, maintain, test, and optimize feeds.
- Advertisers may lack the specific marketing expertise needed to fine-tune search feed campaigns.
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For many companies, the use of search engine marketing is still a new, "unproven," and confusing channel. By applying the information gained from articles such as this one, you can begin to incorporate search marketing tactics into your business processes and improve your bottom line.
