Digital Marketing: Optimise your search

But with search engine advertising, a brand can cut to the chase. The
customer has declared that they are in buying mode, so it's vital that
the company's website is prominently displayed. The task is how to
achieve this visibility in a market that has grown exponentially in the
last two years and is becoming more competitive with each passing
month.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau estimates that spend on search engine
marketing rose 87 per cent last year, and this year will account for 65
per cent of all online advertising spend. This meteoric growth curve is
supported by figures from Forrester Research. It predicts that by 2010,
European marketers will spend almost EUR3 billion on search
marketing.

No company with an online presence can afford to ignore this new source
of website traffic. But optimising your web presence calls for a
long-term approach that takes into account all the options
available.

Pick your search option

First - and most straightforward - is paid listings. This approach was
pioneered by Overture in 1998 and enables advertisers to bid for search
result placement on specific keywords relevant to their business. The
two companies with the lion's share of this market are Google and
Yahoo!, which bought Overture in October 2003 and has already re-branded
to Yahoo! Search Marketing in the US.

"It is a controlled environment that gives a company guaranteed
visibility," says Nick Hynes, CEO of The Search Works and founder of
Overture Europe. The benefits of this approach are manifold. For a
start, costs won't spiral out of control, as spend can be capped and the
advertiser only pays on a per-click basis. Secondly, it can be switched
on immediately, making it ideal for online firms that want immediate
visibility against certain terms. And thirdly, it is entirely
measurable, with resulting orders tracked back to the relevant search
engine and search term via code embedded on the website. This enables
brands to upscale or downscale their activity on a daily or even hourly
basis according to results.

But that's not to say there aren't downsides to this approach. Ashley
Friedlein, CEO at E-consultancy, says: "It's getting increasingly
expensive, to the point that some advertisers have stopped bidding on
the most competitive terms."

This is particularly true in travel and finance - the two sectors that
have so far invested the most in search engine marketing. "Broad,
generic search terms, such as 'cheap flights' or 'home insurance', have
experienced such crazy inflation that companies have had to look at
other options, such as natural search or contextual, to de-sensitise the
cost," says Richard Davies, planning and client services director at
Equi=Media.

Another way of cutting the cost is to identify more specific keywords
that don't carry such a high price tag. "There's no point bidding just
on big keywords," says Charmaine Oakley, business director at direct and
media agency Zed. "Niche words can also work well, at a lower cost."

Oakley gives the example of car retail company Autobytel, which as well
as bidding on generic words such as 'new car', also bids on
model-specific search terms that are less costly. Lateral thinking is
important, but don't stretch the boundaries too far. "You can't make a
claim for a keyword that is not substantiated on your site," warns
Oakley. "The search engine editorial teams can be quite strict about
this, as they still want the user to have a good experience, whether it
is a paid-for listing or not."

Unlike other forms of advertising, paid listings require almost
day-to-day attention. Companies bidding on only a few keywords can
manage this process themselves, and both Google and Overture have
user-friendly account management systems. But most companies use a third
party that will first advise on a search engine optimisation (SEO)
strategy, then manage the process of measuring and maximising the
results.

The more money being committed to SEO, the greater the need for a
third-party specialist. First Choice Holidays, for example, has a
staggering 30,000 keywords under management by The Search Works, which
uses its BidBuddy bid management software.

Choose your agency carefully

But lots of companies are now muscling in on this space offering SEO
services, so it's important to work with an agency with proven
experience in this area. Ask to talk to existing clients and look for a
company with broad digital expertise. This is vital, because there is
much more to search engine marketing than simply paid listings.

The other key area is the more arduous challenge of optimising your
website, so it ranks high in the natural search results, or algorithmic
results as they're known. This should ensure a high volume of traffic
without the clickthrough cost accrued with paid listings.

"The majority of companies are not doing enough to optimise their own
sites," comments Karen Salamon, director of marketing and small business
for Overture Northern Europe. "My advice to companies is to do sponsored
search without doubt, because it is so cost effective, but alongside
that they must optimise their own site."

Not everyone agrees. Hynes says: "The trouble for marketers is that
there is no guarantee of placement. You could disappear from one day to
the next as the search indexes of the search engines are fiddled around
with."

Natural search is certainly as far removed from the instantaneous appeal
of paid listings as it's possible to get. There is no guarantee of a
ranking, even once all of the tricks, such as optimising the meta tags,
content and external and internal links, have been carried out. And
having achieved a good rank, the ongoing game of cat and mouse between
the search engines and the website optimisers means that this can change
in an instant.

It's a time-consuming and frustrating task, but most would agree it's
worth the effort. The long-term rewards of low-cost, high-volume traffic
are too great to ignore. Much like paid listings companies can opt for
the DIY approach, but most companies work with a third-party who live
and breathe search engines. Be wary of any firm that guarantees a
page-one ranking though. The very nature of this fast-changing
environment makes it a questionable claim - and the chances are they're
just trying to make a fast buck.

Get yourself noticed

One area that offers greater reliability for brands looking to get
noticed on the web is contextual search. Warren Cowan, CEO of search
marketing agency Greenlight describes this as a subdivision of paid
search. But he adds: "I'm loathe to call it that though, as it's more
contextual advertising and has no real search in it."

Unlike search, where the user actively requests information on a
subject, contextual search scans the content of a web page to ascertain
its keywords. Companies offering this service have a network of partners
that accept adverts linked to the content of the pages being
displayed.

Because this approach is less targeted (the online user is visiting a
page rather than actively looking for something via a search engine),
the clickthrough rate tends to be less than for sponsored links, and the
cost per click is correspondingly lower.

But it does have its place, and is particularly good for brands that
don't obviously lend themselves to key words, says Cowan. He gives the
example of an anti-dandruff shampoo. "You are unlikely to shop online
for such a shampoo, but you might read an article on hair care. If a
keyword such as 'Head and Shoulders' is in the article, it would pull in
the ad for the anti-dandruff shampoo."

Overture's contextual advertising product, Content Match, embeds
relevant search results on content-based pages, marked as 'Advertiser
Links' or 'Sponsored Links'.

Other firms are getting in on the act too. Search software provider
Mirago launched its new contextual product, Context Stream, this year.
It detects and prioritises the theme of a web page from a partner site
and delivers related adverts.

This is an extra way for brands to get web exposure, but few focus on
this. "From the advertisers' point of view, the key is to cast the net
far and wide," says Julie Pritchard, media products manager at Mirago.
"You could miss out on traffic that your rivals are benefiting from, so
make sure you're on as many platforms as possible."

So long as marketers are open to new opportunities, keep testing and
keep a close eye on ROI, they can't fail to take advantage of this new
marketing environment.

CASE STUDY: ENDSLEIGH

With more than 50 per cent of UK car insurance business conducted
online, it's little wonder that it's such a fiercely competitive
environment for brands.

Pay-per-click advertising quickly becomes very expensive, so insurance
firm Endsleigh recognised that it needed to achieve a high ranking on
the natural listings. Working with interactive media agency Tamar, which
had designed its website, Endsleigh's aim was to achieve top-five
ranking for three search terms: 'car insurance', 'home insurance' and
'landlord insurance'.

"Because the company doesn't advertise on television, it doesn't have
the instant name recognition associated with other brands," says Neil
McCarthy, commercial director of Tamar. "So it's very important that it
achieves a high natural ranking to drive traffic."

Tamar followed a three-step process to optimise the website. Google
enjoys around a 70 per cent share of the search market, so it's vital
that the Google 'robots' - which scour the web looking for relevant web
pages - can see all the pages on the Endsleigh site. "Frequently, the
way a website is set up means that the robots can't get into the detail
of a site," explains McCarthy.

The second step was to examine the content of the website to ensure that
the search terms Endsleigh was looking to optimise appeared frequently -
but not too frequently or this can actually penalise a company. Search
engines have now got wise to tricks that might have worked in the past,
such as burying a page deep within a site, which simply repeats the
words "car insurance".

The final area that Tamar focused on is incoming links to the website.
Search engines gauge a website's popularity by the number of companies
that link through to them. Crucially, these companies must be relevant
to the search term to be of value. "The skill of the practitioner comes
down to knowing what represents a good link," says McCarthy.

As a result of this optimisation process, Endsleigh has not been out of
the top five rankings across Google, MSN and Yahoo! for all three
phrases this year. For 'landlord insurance' it has enjoyed the top slot
for 95 per cent of the time.

"The results have given Endsleigh an extremely cost-effective CPA (cost
per acquisition)," says McCarthy. "The brand identity is developed
online, the customer journey is straightforward and the listings are
more trusted than 'pay-per-click' search engine marketing."