“How do my ads compare to others in the search auction?” Have you heard that question before as a marketing manager? In the world of paid search, competition is everything, every click, impression, and conversion drives the business. As such, any marketer wants to know how they stack up against the competition.

A few months ago, Google Adwords and Bing Ads opened up their competitive metrics, to share insights into how your ads and keywords are performing against other advertisers in that same space. This is called, “Impression Share” or “Share of Voice” in Google and Bing, respectively. Impression share is the impressions you've received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Simply put, how much of the time was my ad being shown, compared to how many times it could have received an impression.

This is a great overall indicator of the performance headroom in each ad group and campaign. Allowing you to garner a high level overview of your performance, and see if there are opportunities.

Great, right? Well, yes, but it doesn’t tell you enough. That is where your “Lost Impressions due to Ad Rank” steps in. This is an actionable number, because you can control your ad rank through a variety of levers.

Quick recap, what is ad rank? How well your ad has performed overtime, in combination with Quality Score. Quality Score is the combination of a few metrics: Click Through Rate (CTR), Account History, Display URL performance, landing page relevance, and other “black box” numbers that Google and Bing won’t share. Keeping in mind, you can change these parts of your account through some hard work and analysis.

With Impression Share, you can get a quick glance to your performance, and making sure that each day, you’re getting the most out of your account, and the most out of each query. Bing and Google make it easy to view this metric now, so take advantage of it!

For other important pay per click marketing metrics, take a look at my other blog post!

Which metrics are best in SEM.

There are so many numbers and metrics available with online marketing and advertising. So much so - that marketing jobs are now considered to be the “new finance jobs.” The reality is that every dollar spent through online advertising can be tracked and accounted for. In SEM, what are the key top-level metrics that you should focus on for optimizing your adCenter or AdWords campaigns.

1.       Click Through Rate [CTR]: The basic.
CTR is simple, how many clicks per impressions did your ad/keyword receive.

Why it is important: CTR is a good measure of your ad’s effectiveness. How well does your ad catch the eye? This metric is good for testing ad copy. Learn to love it.

2.       Conversion Rate: The start of something good.
Conversion rate requires that you have conversion tracking enabled on your landing pages [which you should]. Assuming you do: Conversion rate tells you how many conversions occur per click received on your ad.
Why it is important: Conversion rate is indicative of your landing page’s performance. Does the user get the expected landing page when clicking on an ad served by their query? Your landing page is an opportunity to sell your company or service. Don’t go over the top, but be thoughtful on your content.

3.       Conversions Per Impression [CPI]: The overall indicator.
CPI is simple enough, per given impression – how many conversions were received. This tells you how well your:  keyword matches the query, which meets the user’s expectation/intent, that directs them to a landing page that resonates, and results in a conversion.

Why it is important:  By quickly doing this analysis, you can get an overall health check of your SEM campaigns. By itself, it isn’t indicative of any one symptom. But if measure overtime, you can tell if overall performance is improving or decreasing. Note: neither adCenter nor AdWords UI provide this metric, time to bust out the calculator.

4.       Exact Match Impression Share: Me vs. the World. 
Exact Match Impression Share is the percentage of impressions for an exact query that your keyword matches, and displays on the paid portion of the search engine results page [SERP].

Why it is important: This metric provides insight into how well your campaigns are faring against your competitors. If you’re below 100%, then you Quality Score or budget could be holding you back.

These are four extremely important metrics, but which is the best? Answer: All of them. No one single metric can diagnose if something is going well, or not. That is why all must be consider. If your CPI is low, and your Exact Match Impression Share is large, the CTR will likely be low, as such, you should change your ad copy or revisit your landing page. If you CTR in high, but your CPI is low, time to test new landing pages. In short, think of each metric’s strength, and how another metric can fill in the remaining gaps. In tandem, all of these metrics will ensure success.  

SEO your LinkedIn Profile

If you love what you do, it doesn’t stop after you leave work. I love search, and I’m always looking to try something new. As such, I turned to my LinkedIn profile.

I’ll be honest, since starting at Exsilio, I hadn’t really touched my LinkedIn profile – like most that aren’t looking for a new job, it gathered a little dust. I decided that I could test some techniques to increase my performance on LinkedIn search.

Here is what I did:

- Increased the use of industry keywords in my descriptions of past positions and personal summary. I researched by looking at profiles of people in mid-level roles [because they’re still looking to move up in a company and presumably care about their LinkedIn profile]

- Joined 40 groups relevant to my industry, and other’s that interested me.

Here is why those two steps are important:

LinkedIn uses a modified character-based search [keywords], just like Google & Bing. To show up in a search related to your industry, you need to have industry terms. Simple, right?

Groups - who cares?!

Joining groups is important because it creates a connection to people outside of your network, regardless if you’ve ever worked or connected with them.

Example: A small business is looking for a SEM professional - they search for that term in LinkedIn. Because we both share “small businesses of Seattle” as a group on LinkedIn, I will show up in their search results, even though we have no other connections.

In addition, I chose to update my headline to reflect the accreditations that I have in the Search industry. Why? Because that is the blurb that people see next to my name in the search results page.

Up Up and Away!

Since implementing these changes, my appearances in LinkedIn search have increase by 283% percent! That is amazing! LinkedIn provides metrics of “How Many Times Have You Appeared In Searches” = your new best friend. Although the data is quite sparse, you can get a good idea of how well your changes are performing.

Since making these changes, I’ve continued to refine my keyword strategy, and am testing how apps and other LinkedIn features. Nothing conclusive yet, but I’ll keep on testing!

You’ve done the hard work, you’ve chosen the keywords, dialed in the targeting, and built the landing pages – Google & Bing are ready to serve your ad, and you’re ready for some new customers. But why should a user click on your ad as opposed to another, or even an organic result? Writing a PPC ad is like trying to get a date through a text message, you’ve got to be convincing, and you don’t have a lot of characters to spare. This is the art of SEM, and here are a three proven techniques that will help.

1.       In exact match ad groups, use keywords in ad headline

a.       Because you have spent the time to break down keywords into relevant ad groups, spent the time to make sure the ad copy is relevant. Not only will this increase your CTR, but it will increase your relevance, which will increase your Quality Score on Google & Bing.

2.       Use anxiety in your ad copy

a.       When testing ad copy on a high volume ad group, I tested the core message of that ad – one with anxiety, one without. Guess which worked better?

                                                               i.      “Don’t miss another customer”

                                                             ii.      “Reach millions of customers”

b.      “Don’t miss another customer” had a higher click through rate in all ad groups it was tested.

3.       Dynamic Ad Headlines with broad match ad groups

a.       If you have broad match ad groups, you recognize that your keywords are going to cover a large set of queries.

b.      To help increase CTR in these ad groups, use dynamic text. {KeyWord:PPC Advertising}

                                                               i.      Capitalize the “K” and “W” so that proper case is used when inserting the keyword.

                                                             ii.      Choose a relevant ad title in case keyword is greater than 25 characters. In this case, I used PPC Advertising as the ad title. Assuming that the keywords were relevant to that query.

Now it is time to test. Set both engines to even ad rotation [Google has “experiments” to aid with this], and watch the CTR and conversions. A key metric to understand the true effectiveness of an ad is Conversion Per Impression [CPI = Conversion/Impressions]. It is a true measure of your keyword choice, and ad copy, and landing page quality.

Keep in mind that testing is not a one-time event; it needs to be continually tested and optimized. Don’t be afraid to try something new or bold.  

In a recent move to make Google search results more personal, Google started push content that is shared with you on Google+ and public information related to your search and mixing them into standard web search results. They are calling it Search, Plus Your World (SPYW). Basically, if you were to search for, say “funny cat pictures”, you would not only see expected results like I Can Haz Cheezburger, but also any posts from Google+ related to funny cat pictures in your personal search results, promoted to the top.

As Melissa Parrish points out in her blog post, there are several opportunities marketers can take advantage of. One is, depending on how many circles your brand has been added to, you will be able to track the traffic to your site through Google+. This should give you an understanding on how relevant your Google+ content is and how your brand is being searched. Another opportunity being the more circles your brand is in, the higher probability of engagement with your target audience. This engagement should lead to an increase in Google+ members, leading to new circle additions.

These opportunities do not come without their challenges. While there are around 60 million Google+ users, many of them (including me) are not actively using the service. I received an invite soon after the service launched, built my circles, and haven’t used it much since. My problem? I really haven’t been able to find a use for it yet. I like the ability to control which people can see my posts with circles (I believe Facebook has a similar feature with Groups), but what do I post to Google+ that I don’t post to Twitter or Facebook?

Marketers will not be able to dump random thoughts and links on Google+ and hope to gain traffic like they could in Twitter or Facebook. If they want their posts to show in their audience’s personal search results, they will have to be relevant to what is being searched and add value to the searchers results. This could be difficult to do when you are dealing with hundreds of thousands people you’ve added your brand to their circle.

While I can see most people ignoring this new feature in Google Search and leaving it turned on, I see many more people turning it off and keeping Google Search relevant and clean. I know that I will.

Source

Data, it makes the world go round. In the realm of SEM, it is the lifeblood that justifies the changes I make, the improvement I seek, and the outcomes I chase.

Here is the catch - when a new account is established and you are launching into the dark with a new set of keywords, ad copy, and targeting – data is a little hard to come by. Sure, there are tools to estimate keyword traffic, bid amounts, and competition. But SEM is based a human element of resonance with an ad. Computers don’t click the ad, humans do. As such, the first shot at launching an account is shooting into the dark with confidence that “the data” will arrive shortly.

Now we arrive at one of my first projects on the job: optimizing an account that had impeccable structure, logical organization, and a substantial keyword list. On paper, this account looked like it should exceed.

But “the data” said otherwise. This account had a high impression rate, low click through rate, and minimal conversions. When diving into the performance of the account, it was clear that there were some keywords that were generating conversions – and others were pulling from budget that should be focused on the keywords that actually had positive performance.

Additionally, there were ads that had a high impression volume, but a shockingly low click through rate, and no conversions. What does that mean? – The human element is not resonating with the ad copy before them on the screen.

The symptoms had been identified, and the solutions are relatively simple:

1.       Build out more experiences surrounding the keywords that are working well.
2.       Restructure account to accommodate for these new experiences.
3.       Shift budget from ad groups that are not performing, to ad groups that are driving conversions.
4.       Develop and test ad copy based on the top performing ads in each ad group keeping in mind the relevancy between both keyword and ad title.
5.       Stop spending money on terms that are not converting.
6.       Build out negative keyword list to include terms that do not convert.

How are things performing now? – Glad you asked. Within 24 hours of making these changes, impressions have doubled and click-through-rate has tripled. No word on conversions yet, but I am confident those results mentioned previously will increase conversions.

If not, this process starts again.

For those running SEO campaigns and need help constructing a landing page that drives users to your site and/or goal, Formstack put together a really nice infographic on the Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page. It covers everything from layout, trust indicators and use of links, to which color you should use for your specific site. I think it’s a good, concise “cheat sheet” and something I wish I had on the recent campaigns I was running.

My name is Chris and I started working at Exsilio as a Marketing Manager about a month ago and love it. From my first day, I have witnessed firsthand the energy and excitement of Exsilio that came across during my interview. I have also noticed the value they take in each employee to grow personally and professionally…something I have always heard about, but have never experienced. I am looking forward to growing within Exsilio and sharing my passions in marketing, technology and maybe a few “off the wall” topics in these posts. 

I recently read an interesting article in Wired Magazine (one of my favorite journals) on today’s students and how they use online search. A study conducted found that most of the time, students relied on PageRank results (even when the order of the results was changed) and almost never checked the author’s credentials. Educators are now teaching students to use critical thinking when conducting a search and to examine the tone of the web page, the author and their sources, and also how to use the advanced settings of a browser. I remember this type of source citing education during my high school days and how I would use nearly every search engine I could to find what I was looking for; as search engine’s algorithms were not as powerful back then as they are today.
As a marketing professional, we need to be more aware of how we write copy for websites, SEO campaigns and other searchable materials as it will be analyzed for authenticity by the web searchers of tomorrow.

The New Guy

Everyone has a first day, whether it is the first day of existence in the world as a child, first day of school, or first day of work at a new job. Being that I am writing this blog for Exsilio, it should be reasonable to conclude that I have arrived at the new-job “first.”

Here are the things I know for sure about my first day:

1. Traffic in Seattle fluctuates like crazy. The same commute that took 45 minutes one day took 15 the next; I arrived 45 minutes early – too early.

2. Anthony has an affinity for cars. I like that.

3. You are judged by the size of your coffee cup.

Regardless of the facts, I am now cooking along at full speed and feeling comfortable and feeling welcome here at Exsilio.

But what will I be doing?! Glad you asked. I am a new Marketing Manager at Exsilio focusing on Paid Search and landing page Search Engine Optimization. By focusing on this form of marketing, I hope to bring a valuable asset into the Exsilio family and provide knowledge to help all of our clients meet their marketing needs.

But why are SEM and SEO important? According to Netcraft, as of this month, there are over 555 million websites world-wide. With 29.5 million created last month. Though getting a dance to high school prom was difficult, try standing out in this crowded digital world. This is where SEM and SEO become even more valuable. They are the tools that businesses can use to make sure they are at the top of search queries for potential customers.

Having a good website is no longer enough – firms need to grasp these tools firmly to ensure that they can get the exposure they need. We need to think about this in terms of a storefront to a business that has the answer to life. Having a nice sign that has the “key to life” message on the storefront, maybe even a flashing “open” sign in the window, and a sandwich board outside the front door are a good start, and will likely generate some good foot-traffic. But foot-traffic is not enough. Everyone wants the answer to life, so we need to provide a roadmap to the business. This is where SEO and SEM step in. They are the roadmap that brings in customers from all over the country to this store – and in the digital world, this is possible.

This is why SEM and SEO are important. They help to ensure that a business can stand out to their desired customer and provide the exposure they need on the internet.

From this point out, you’ll be able to find me with a big coffee cup, arriving at work no more than 15 early, and learning the “ins and outs” of SEO and SEM.

Search has dominated content discovery and research for the last 10 years. However, the advertising and traffic dominance leveraged by Google’s search algorithm excellence has slowly been subsumed in the last 5 years by Facebook and a rise in social signals to drive traffic around the web. In 2009, Google reacted to this trend with a “personalization campaign,” a shotgun approach to algorithmically providing Search Engine Results Page (SERP) relevance by 57 signals around the user’s identity, rather than simply semantic language queries. There is no “standard Google” any more. Eli Pariser’s recent work indicts this trend, and suggests problems with information retrieval in an algorithmically-personalized filter bubble. There are implications for search engines, for users, and for brands; but I want to focus on the implications for anyone who creates and curates content for online distribution. Journalists, editors, and content strategists.

For those of us that create and curate content, search is something we recognize as a foundational commodity. Our job is generally cultivating a long-term relationship with the customers/audiences, punctuated by elements of transactional marketing. The process as I’ve generally participated in it involves SEO as an integral part of the planning process, but deprioritized in favor of clickstream and referral data as the pages mature. This is an “exploratory search” perspective, so it’s helpful to provide some historical context before talking about the impact of some of the recent social shifts in search results.

There are a couple of different ways to talk about search as it’s evolved over the years. These are really organized by task and query depth. The task is really “what do you want to know?” In the early days of the web, the type of answer you wanted determined not just the type of query but also the engine. “Exploratory search” really answers the “what do you want to know” question with “I don’t know – just give me everything on this topic.” This is generally unstructured data (lists of results organized only by relevance) in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Faceted search, is a more recent entry into the online search space. Rather than offering the black box experience of a Google or Bing front page, users can filter and pivot the query, personalizing the relevance. A good example is Yelp, which focuses its search results around user-queried local business. There are filters for business types, rating, neighborhood-specific proximity. Parallel to this rise is the growth of folksonomies, do-it-yourself classification strategies that are multi-topical and not necessarily hierarchical. Witness the power of Delicious – a social bookmarking site – that allows you to discover other user’s relevant bookmarks through culturally common “tags.” Click on one of those tags in my tag cloud, and then look at the tags in the right nav that are related to that tag. This can be a method for both filtering and discovery of new topics around a given concept.

In the examples of faceted search above there’s a heavy leveraging of social media, which is mostly unstructured data. But faceted search can also be a wizard-oriented approach to structured data. The rise of mobile and its virtualized search box without regard for the computer desk has resulted in narrowly focused task- and location-based faceted querying. Queries are action-oriented and one answer in scope. An example is “Seattle Weather.” You don’t need 15 pages of results, simply 1 page of authoritative sites with accurate forecasts. Bing’s marketing campaign for the last year or so has attempted to differentiate its results offering as a “Decision Engine.” Another example is CNet’s Cell Phone Finder.

What’s the important editorial takeaway for this differentiation? Search intention is different than it was 5 years ago, and information architects need to bear in mind the importance and implications of search as a foundational commodity. We once only wanted to discover. Now we also want to accomplish. What intention does your content surface? Is your content transactional and static? If so, traffic will be from well-defined sources (company home page, exploratory search, etc.), and keyword strategy becomes key. For content that’s technically deep, relying on multiple pivots to slice and dice particular topics, faceted searches become a lot more important to discovery, and social media along with strategic linking strategies will prove more impactful to customers. In the next part of this series, I’ll focus a little more on influentials and curation as a new signal for search engines (and enterprise search) to incorporate.