Search Advisory   Brought to you by Prominent Placement, Inc.

By Star Bradshaw, Account Manager & Usability Expert

Are You Prepared for the Yahoo-Microsoft Search Alliance?

You heard about it way back when, maybe even forgot about it for a while, only to be jolted to awareness now that it’s begun. Yes, I’m talking about the Yahoo-Microsoft search alliance.

This partnership means that organic and paid search listings on Yahoo will be powered by Microsoft. So when you search on Yahoo or Bing, you will get the same results, though other content and elements of the search experience will remain unique to each engine.

This impending alliance shouldn’t be ignored – it will produce a significant change in the search landscape. Though Google’s dominance is undisputed, with more than 65% of the market, Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo combined hold a 30% share, which represents a viable alternative to the search behemoth.

Timeline for the Transition

The transition is now well underway with news last week that Microsoft began serving organic results on Yahoo in U.S. and Canada. (Now you’ll see “Powered by Bing” at the bottom of any Yahoo search results page.) The transition for paid search is slated for October. Optimistic timelines aim for the U.S. integration to be complete by the end of this year.

Protect your Organic Rankings

Since Microsoft will be powering Yahoo organic results, you’ll need to gear up your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts for Bing as this engine will be driving up to one third of organic searches when the transition is complete.

If your rankings on Bing were previously as good or better than on Yahoo, then you can breathe easy. If your past Bing rankings were lower, then you have to anticipate less traffic now and consider the impact to your business.

Take steps to mitigate any negative impact in your rankings by registering your site with Bing Webmaster Tools. To do this, you’ll first need to get a Windows Live ID and then go through the steps to verify ownership of your site. Once your site is authenticated, use Bing Webmaster Tools to set up XML sitemaps, track links, monitor impressions, traffic, indexing and crawl errors. When you first set up your account, it will not show any data, but you should begin to see stats in about three days. 

As for other SEO tactics, all the best practices for good rankings apply on Bing, including keyword-rich original content, search engine-friendly architecture and quality inbound links. So redouble your efforts in doing what works to maintain your rankings.

Here are some helpful links to further your SEO efforts for Bing:

Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Forum

Bing Webmaster Blog

Search Engine Optimization for Bing

Preserve your PPC Visibility

On the paid search side, big change is underway in preparation for the transition to the “unified search marketplace.”

After the transition, all paid search ads for Yahoo and Bing will be managed inside Microsoft’s  search advertising platform adCenter. Yahoo will handle account management for premium advertiser accounts while Microsoft will support self-serve search advertisers.

Post-transition, your ads will be shown across the unified network, so you will not be able to designate Yahoo or Bing exclusively for distribution. Though after the initial rollout, additional flexibility may be added for advertisers to select or deselect certain partner sites.

Here’s what you can do now to make the transition as seamless as possible.

First, review your ads and make sure they conform to adCenter guidelines including character limits of 25 characters for the headline and 70 characters for the body.  If you’re like me, you may have previously taken advantage of the ample 40-character limit for headlines in Yahoo. If so, then you’ll need to hack them back to 25 characters prior to the transition or else you’ll risk ads being truncated and marked inactive in the new system.

Also, a bit of good news is that adCenter will use the same match types as Google (exact, phrase and broad) so the confounding standard and advanced match types of Yahoo are a thing of the past. Be aware that this also means that singular, plural and commonly misspelled keywords will be treated as separate keywords, not aggregated as one version like they were in Yahoo’s system.

Be prepared for volatility in bid prices in the initial weeks of the integration.

Here are some links to plan your PPC efforts for the Yahoo-Microsoft unified marketplace:

Yahoo Transition Center

Microsoft Transition Center

Search Alliance Site

As with any change, we anticipate that some confusion and disruption is inevitable, but we welcome the fact that this search alliance represents a viable share of the market to bring at least some competition to Google. We wish you luck as you navigate the new search terrain!

Company Updates

Read about Stacy’s panel discussion for StartupChicks on “Digital Strategy – Got One?”

Don’t miss SEMPO Atlanta’s Advanced SEM Educational Event October 1.  An all-star lineup of pros from around the country will cover advanced SEO, PPC, social media and analytics.  Breakfast, lunch & parking are included for a fee so low it’s just plain wrong.

Planning to be in Baltimore in October?  Catch Stacy moderating a search marketing panel for The Power of eMarketing Conference.

Search Advisory Posts

PPC Data Can Make Social Media Smarter

Digital Future Study: Surprising Trends

PPC: Aggregator or Agency?

Previous Issues

July:  Why Run PPC When You Rank High Organically?

June:  The BP Oil Spill and Search Engines

May:  The Latest & Greatest on Social & SEO

Client Testimonials

“The strategic search engine optimization program implemented by Prominent Placement quickly increased our year over year conversions. They provided a cost effective means of driving qualified traffic to our site that exceeded our goals and expectations and provided the maximum ROI for our business. Partnering with Prominent Placement has clearly proved to be a solid investment for our company.”  Jimmy Park — Radiant Systems, Inc.

“PPI has been our trusted partner since 2001.  They take our business as seriously as we do.  They’ve shown a steady commitment to staying ahead of the internet marketing curve and finding new ways to make sure our message is heard.”  Errol Siegel — Serengeti Systems, Inc.

About Us

Prominent Placement, Inc. is an award-winning, full-service search engine marketing (SEM) firm, delivering ROI that traditional marketing channels can’t touch, with a level of service that raises the bar. Since 2001, Prominent Placement has managed the entire SEM process for clients across the U.S., empowering businesses to focus on what they do best. Prominent Placement’s customized solutions are backed by hard numbers, giving decision makers the confidence they need to make smarter decisions.

For more information, visit our website or call 888.SEM.MKTR (888.736.6587).  If you’d like to learn how Prominent Placement can drive more leads for your business, contact Christine Verska at x713 or christine@prominentplacement.com.

Follow us on Twitter

Become a Fan on Facebook

Connect with Stacy on LinkedIn

Read our blog “Search Advisory”

I was privileged to appear on a panel last night with Toby Bloomberg of Bloomberg Marketing, Erika Jolly Brookes of Vitrue (also a client of ours), and Collen Jones of Content Science.  Our moderator was Julie Gareleck of Junction Creative.  The event was put on by StartupChicks, led by the inimitable Jen Bonnett.

StartupChicks Digital Strategy Panel

We talked about the importance of a digital strategy – what it is, common misconceptions, how to approach it, value it’s provided, tactics that worked and didn’t, results, and recommendations for new business owners.  We were fortunate to have a good amount of time to delve into the topic in depth, and got some great audience questions.  Some of the points that seemed to hit home for the audience included:

• Everything starts with content.  You’ve got to have content to optimize (SEO), as well as to publish via social media, in an enewsletter, etc.  Have a strategy as to what kind of content your target audience wants, and how to get it to them.
• It’s best to own the platform your content is on, so you control it and it doesn’t just disappear one day (this was my point – I’ve written about this before).  This is a concern with blogs hosted on Blogspot, etc., and note that you’re just renting space on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• In terms of measurement, worry about quality as well as quantity.  It doesn’t do you any good to have a ton of Twitter followers or Facebook fans if they’re not your target audience.
• While digital media is very measurable, don’t forget the “unmeasurable” benefits, such as branding impacts and becoming a thought leader through blogging or social media.
• It’s great to follow best practices, but test and measure everything, because you’ll be surprised as to what works!
• Non-digital marketing efforts that the panelists still use include public relations, speaking engagements, and attending conferences/trade shows.
• We had a long conversation about business versus personal personas online.  It’s uncomfortable to many to blend the two and let the business audience know about you personally.  But it often works to your advantage – business people are people and they prefer to do business with people they like and trust.

This is just a small sample of the discussion – I’ll link to additional blog posts in the comments as they’re published (and feel free to do so yourself).  Live tweets can be viewed here or here, and more photos are on Prominent Placement’s Facebook page here (please “like” us while you’re there!).

Bottom line, it was energizing to have so many entrepreneurial women in one room!

(And props to one of my favorite restaurants, MetroFresh, for the amazing catering!  Speaking of digital strategy – sign up for their daily enewsletter.  It’s so entertaining that I read it every single day, and you can bet I eat there more often as a result.)

Love this article by my friend Brad Geddes: “Google’s New Forced Transparency: Is Your Agency Ready?“  We’ve been watching over the years as “aggregators” selling pay-per-click services get more aggressive.  Think companies like ReachLocal, Network Solutions, AJC Media Solutions, ValPak, AT&T and various Yellow Pages companies.

A couple of times, we’ve lost PPC clients to these types of aggregators, who offer a simple pricing solution (usually a flat per-click fee that covers everything), which appears on the surface to be less expensive than paying an agency (us) as well as the media costs (the per-click amount paid to the search engines).  But, as with most things in life, you get what you pay for.

Each time a client has left, we’ve been able to compare our results in an “apples-to-apples” scenario against theirs, and we’ve overwhelmingly generated more leads at a lower cost per lead than the newcomers to the field.  And our clients have told us that our service and reporting are vastly better.  So, every time, our clients have come back.

I’m glad to have the different methods of handling PPC spelled out so clearly here, and the issue of Google’s transparency explained in a balanced way.  This should be mandatory reading for any business considering using a PPC aggregator.

I’ve written before about how SEO and social media work well together (most recently here, also a long series here).  There hasn’t been much discussed about how PPC and social media can help inform each other.  An excellent article by Rob Birgfeld passes along some worthy suggestions:

1. Identify top performing keywords from PPC (as well as SEO) and use them in blog posts, tweets, etc.
2. Use PPC data regarding when people are searching for your products and services, and time your tweets and social media posts to coincide.
3. While social media is global, if your PPC data shows that you’ve got some hot markets, find influencial bloggers, Twitterers, etc. in those areas that you can connect with.
4. Do a rough measure of social media ROI by comparing time spent on social media to results yielded.  Compare this to your PPC ROI baseline.
5. While the social media team is gathering data from the SEM team, they should be providing information too.  Tag clouds and reports on what folks are tweeting and sharing can help guide PPC strategy.

Here’s the complete article again.

Love this graphic showing the The History of Search!  I didn’t know this was going on during the first year listed (1994), as I was still working in traditional advertising then (plus waddling around being pregnant…um, yeah, she’s driving now).

But so much of this is so familiar…explaining the difference between directories and search engines…running ranking reports on 20 different search engines (don’t forget AltaVista, HotBot, Inktomi, Lycos, Excite, Webcrawler, Dogpile and Northern Lights!)…focusing only on rankings (that’s all we could measure!)…hearing this concept from GoTo.com that companies would PAY for a searcher to click on an ad – what a nutty idea!…going through contortions to get sites added to the Open Directory Project (dmoz)…

Ah, good times!  In some ways, those truly were the “good old days” because search marketing was more straightforward, and it was so much easier to get results than it is today.  Now we have billions more web pages to compete against, and countless other SEM experts battling it out for rankings, traffic, and conversions.

But I do enjoy how this industry has evolved to focus on what really matters in terms of customer interactions and retention, leads, sales, and ROI.  I can’t imagine what the next 15-16 years will look like!

Infographic by the PPC Blog.com

Thanks to Mark Sink for bringing this to my attention.

I’m really excited to announce SEMPO Atlanta’s first half-day educational workshop.  Several of my fellow board members have been working really hard to bring top talent to Atlanta.  Here’s the lineup:

7am – 8am – Breakfast & Networking
8am – 9am – Advanced PPC; Dave Szetela, Clix Marketing
9am – 10am – Advanced SEO; Stephan Spencer, Covario
10am – 10:30am – Break
10:30am – 11:30am – Advanced Analytics; Matt Bailey, Site Logic
11:30am – 12:30pm – Advanced Social Media; Adam Proehl, NordicClick Interactive
12:30pm – 1:30pm – Lunch

I’ve heard the first three speakers numerous times at national conferences, and they’re all outstanding!  We’re fortunate to be able to bring them here so Atlantans can hear them without traveling.

The board had quite a lively debate about what to charge for this event – this all-star lineup would cost probably $1000 or more at the national conferences, but we decided to keep the fee as low as we could so as to share this valuable learning among as many people as possible.

The event is FREE to members of SEMPO Global, and only $60 for non-member in advance ($85 at the door).  The fee includes parking, breakfast, a coffee break, and lunch.

Details:

Date: Friday, October 1, 2010 

Venue: Goizueta Business School at Emory University – Boynton Auditorium – Room 130

Time: 7am – 1:30pm

REGISTER HERE

Every year, the Annenberg School for Communication (one of my alma maters) at the University of Southern California runs a study on the impact of the Internet on Americans.  This year’s Center for the Digital Future 2010 report results had a few surprises, along with plenty of expected findings:

• While Internet usage has hit a new high in the U.S. (82%), a full 62% of those who are not online say they’re not likely to start anytime soon.  Reasons given have evolved over time from “no computer” or “no Internet connection” (which are rarely given anymore) to “no interest” or “not useful.”  So while a large majority of Americans are online, many of those who are not don’t see a reason to join the party. 
  
•  The average number of hours spent online per week has more than doubled in the past decade, from 9.4 in 2000 to 19 in 2009.  The largest year-to-year increases in weekly hours online have been reported in the past two years (personally, I blame Facebook!). 
  
•  Although nearly 80% of web users rely on the Internet as an important source of information, the percentage of people who say that most or all of online information is reliable has dropped from 55% in 2000 to 39% in 2009.  (Are we getting smarter, or just more cynical?) 
  
•  The death of printed newspapers has been reported for years, but this study showed that 62% of offline newspaper readers would miss the print edition if it ceased to exist (that’s an increase for the second year in a row).  On the other hand, 18% say that they’ve stopped a subscription for a newspaper or magazine because they get the same content online.  Still, the apparent fondness for print newspapers heartens this longtime subscriber. 
  
•  Text messaging by cell phone users has more than doubled in only two years.  Not surprisingly, the number of messages sent each day is by far the highest among those under 18, with an average of 81 messages.  (Apparently my 15 year old daughter is pulling the average up – she’s at around 3500 per month!) 
  
•  Almost two thirds of Internet users buy online, recession or no recession (no change from 2008).  Interestingly 75% of people have browsed in stores and then bought online.  Sometimes it’s good to touch and feel something, and then search for the best price. 
  
•  Nearly half of those who go online have used free microblogging sites such as Twitter.  Zero percent of these people said they’d pay for Twitter, which hints at the challenge they’re facing to monetize. 
  
•  That said, although 70% of users claim to find web advertising annoying (and yet…they click on pay-per-click ads all the time!), a growing percentage prefer viewing ads over personally paying for content. 

You can read highlights from the report here, or purchase it here.

I’m excited to be appearing on a panel discussion entitled “Digital Strategy – Got One?” with some of my favorite fellow marketers:

• Erika Jolly Brookes is a brilliant marketer who’s with Vitrue, a social media management company (and, by coincidence, one of our newest clients).
• Toby Bloomberg of Bloomberg Marketing  is a longtime friend who turned me on to the power of blogs and social media before they were cool.
• And I met Colleen Jones of Content Science more recently at a conference – she has some smart things to say about content strategy and user experience.

The event is being put on by StartupChicks (but male “Friends of Chicks” are welcome too).  It’s Wednesday, August 18 from 6:30 – 9:00 pm at the ATDC, Hodges Room (75 5th St. in Midtown). More info and to register.

The Top 10 Answers To A Common Question

It’s a legitimate question, and one that we answer often.  Here are the top 10 reasons marketers should continue to run pay-per-click ads on the search engines, even for keywords where their site ranks high organically.

1. Surveys have shown that roughly 20% of searchers click on the paid listings versus the organic links.  So why miss out on that traffic and those potential customers?  Twenty percent may not seem like a lot, but it often makes the difference between profitability and losing money.  As the old saying goes, “Fish where the fish are” and ensure that you’re prominently placed everywhere your prospect may be looking.

 

2. Running a PPC ad takes up one paid listing that could otherwise go to a competitor.  Don’t you want to squeeze competitors out and leave less room for them?

 

3. When one company is seen in both the paid and organic listings, they automatically appear to be the market leader, and their credibility rises.  (We like to take this one step further and take up more than our fair share of organic listings with web pages in addition to the corporate site – we are greedy when it comes to real estate in the search engine results pages!)

 

4. Due to both having more real estate and appearing as the market leader, click-through rates for both paid and organic listings typically rise when both appear for the same search.  The sum is greater than the total of its parts.  This means more website visitors from both channels.

 

5. Similarly, there’s often a lift in online conversion rates when the same company appears in paid and organic listings.  It’s thought that the credibility boost may make searchers more comfortable making a purchase or filling out an online form.  More conversions = more revenue.

 

6. Sometimes you can control the description that the search engines display in their organic listings (via the description meta tag), but not always.  Sometimes they display a snippet of text pulled from the web page’s copy, which may or may not be ideal.  With your pay-per-click ad, you control all the copy that’s displayed, and can accurately convey your marketing message.

 

7. Sometimes you can control which web page ranks high for a particular keyword in the organic listings, but not always.  We’ve all had random web pages rank high for terms they weren’t actually targeting.  With PPC, you determine what the landing page is, and you can even develop custom landing pages where the visitor can convert right there, boosting conversion rates.  There aren’t many websites that offer a conversion point on every page that shows up in organic results.

 

8. It’s ideal to achieve high organic rankings, and it’s something we strive for every day.  But we can’t control what these rankings are, and they fluctuate constantly.  Search engines change their algorithms and indices, new sites enter the marketplace, and competitors get more savvy with their own SEO efforts.  Should your site’s organic rankings take a dip, your PPC presence can continue to build your visibility, site traffic and conversions.

 

9. If you leave the PPC auction for selected keywords, and later decide to bid on those terms again, you may have to pay more.  During your absence, your competitors have presumably been continuing to hone their campaigns and improve their Quality Scores, making it harder for you to come back and compete.

 

10. Pay-per-click’s immediacy, flexibility and control makes it a perfect test medium.  Want to know which keywords prospects respond to, which title and description generates the most clicks, which landing page drives the most conversions?  That’s easy and fast to do with PPC, much slower and more cumbersome with SEO.

We don’t intend to bash SEO here – we are big fans (and providers) of search engine optimization!  There’s certainly nothing wrong with the listings that 80% of searchers click on, which don’t cost the advertiser anything on a per-click basis.  But dropping paid search for keywords where you rank high organically is short-sighted at best, and worst case, could have a negative impact on your bottom line.

Related blog posts:

• Search Marketing Smackdown (advantages and disadvantages of PPC vs SEO)
• Why You Should Bid on Your Own Brand Name With PPC
• More Reasons to Bid on Your Own Brand Name With PPC

Company Updates

Listen to Tim Goleman’s interview of Stacy speaking about “Top SEO & PPC Mistakes.”  Podcast available on Tim’s Marketing Elements Blog (scroll down) or in iTunes.

Mark your calendar – Stacy will appear on a panel discussing “Digital Strategy – Got One?” for StartupChicks on August 18 (dudes are welcome too!).

Prominent Placement was featured as a case study for Trillium Financial.

Happy 10^th Anniversary to our client Abacus Solutions!  We’re grateful to have partnered with Abacus since 2001.

Search Advisory Posts

Integrate search and social to boost your conversion rate by 10 percentage points (recap of MarketingSherpa’s 2011 SEO Benchmark Report)

Blogging: No Longer Sexy But Still Effective

Google AdWords: Quite Taxing (new users pay, in effect, an AdWords tax)

SEO for the New Google (OMS session recap – don’t miss the point about the rich getting richer!)

Power Triumvirate: Social-Local-Mobile (OMS session recap)

Previous Issues

June:  The BP Oil Spill and Search Engines

May:  The Latest & Greatest on Social & SEO

April:  Eating My Hat (But It’s a Tasty One!)

About Us

Prominent Placement, Inc. is an award-winning, full-service search engine marketing (SEM) firm, delivering ROI that traditional marketing channels can’t touch, with a level of service that raises the bar. Since 2001, Prominent Placement has managed the entire SEM process for clients across the U.S., empowering businesses to focus on what they do best. Prominent Placement’s customized solutions are backed by hard numbers, giving decision makers the confidence they need to make smarter decisions.

For more information, visit our website or call 888.SEM.MKTR (888.736.6587).  If you’d like to learn how Prominent Placement can drive more leads for your business, contact Christine Verska at x713 or christine@prominentplacement.com.

Follow us on Twitter

Become a Fan on Facebook

Connect with Stacy on LinkedIn

Read our blog “Search Advisory”

Gillian Muessig of SEOmoz tackled the formidable task of synthesizing the three hottest Internet marketing trends at the Online Marketing Summit’s Atlanta conference.  Her presentation, entitled “The Power Triumvirate of 2010: Social-Local-Mobile” reinforced how quickly these spaces are moving, as well as how much they’re overlapping and converging.  Key points included:

• In 2007, social media officially became more popular than pornography (that’s huge, people!).
• According to a study, mobile users most want from marketers (in order of popularity): (a) mobile coupons, (b) status alerts about their account or product, (c) special sales, and (d) location-based information.
• Car manufacturers are beginning to build local search into their cars alongside their GPS systems.
• Deep databases power this triumvirate of social, local and mobile.  Facebook is an example of a deep database.  Think of everything Facebook knows about you, from your friends and preferences to what you did yesterday.  You don’t even have to participate directly in supplying data, since your friends may mention you!  Deep databases are the power, promise and fear of the web.
• Advertising on video games is becoming more prevalent, in addition to product placement.  The Mustang you’re driving in a game may be product placement, but now there are even billboards along the virtual road, advertising real products.
• ARG = Alternate Reality Gaming.  This can include treasure or scavenger hunts in alternate reality worlds or on social media platforms.  Or collections of any kind – people love playing games, hunting, and collecting – adding these elements to your online marketing can really pay off.

Gillian’s takeaways include the fact that local search is increasingly mobile, customers are social creatures, and people love games, which are social affairs.  Social media is fundamentally changing consumers’ purchasing processes whether we like it or not, and lack of engagement is more dangerous than anything.