January 20, 2010
Why pay for clicks when you can get them for free?
This question often comes up when facing relatively inexperienced advertisers deciding between PPC and SEO. While I cannot refute any argument based solely on this logic (organic clicks are free and paid clicks are not), I can make a case for PPC even when SEO is at its best – which certainly is not the case for the majority of sites out there.
There are three distinct advantages that paid listings have over organic listings, and as a result these are the three most compelling arguments for integration of SEM into any marketing scheme:
1. If you don’t use SEM, your competition will poach your traffic. Read the rest of this entry »
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SEM, Trends, paid search, search engine marketing | Tagged: marketing, online marketing, paid search, PPC, query, SEM, SEO, Trends | 
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Posted by esearchvision
October 2, 2009
by: Joshua Krafchin
The beauty of paid search marketing is that results are highly trackable. We can trace revenue back not only to the keyword and match type level, but also by the hour or even by the geography of the original search queries typed into any search engine. This extensive tracking provides us the opportunity to understand not only revenue and cost implications, but a whole host of other criteria from visitor interaction with our website to offline conversions and gross margin. With this surplus of data and choice though, many marketers run into the dilemma of how exactly to define success. Shifting general business priorities outside of search, whether or not they relate to search specifically, can directly impact how we manage a search program.
One of the big tug-of-wars is between ROI and volume. Because search is so measurable and trackable, companies have come to expect hitting and surpassing ROI numbers. In turn, this ability to consistently hit ROI makes paid search revenue highly desirable, and executives will push for more and more revenue volume from paid search. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | SEM, Trends, eSearchVision General, paid search, search engine marketing | Tagged: business, client, goals, ROI, SEM | Permalink
Posted by esearchvision
September 17, 2009
Traditionally, search marketers base their search results on a “last click wins” basis. This means that the last click a consumer makes always gets attributed the sales revenue or conversion, regardless of how many other searches were made prior. The result is that brand terms often appear hugely profitable and costly generic terms appear to offer an extremely low ROI, if any at all. This makes it difficult to correctly classify “head” vs “tail” terms.
To combat this discrepancy, whenever we estimate performance for a keyword, we also calculate a confidence interval related to that prediction. When the confidence interval is too large, it means the prediction is useless (typical for keywords with very low traffic). We then need to aggregate in a relevant way (which is usually different from the way keywords are structured in ad groups) to get a critical mass of stats.
For this reason, we offer two different algorithms for automated bid management: Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | SEM, Trends, eSearchVision General, paid search, search engine marketing | Tagged: bid management, core, heads, long-tail, paid search, SEM, tails | Permalink
Posted by esearchvision
July 16, 2009
In the retail world there are two seasons: holiday and the rest of the year. Companies will host a few other sales that bring in significant revenue, but everyone knows the big money comes in during Q4. With the influx of search opportunity, competition, and new technology during the holiday season, when we talk about the future of search, it’s applicable to look at both the short term [holiday 09] and the longer term [2010 and beyond].
As we witnessed during the 2008 holiday season, consumers are shopping for a deal – even more so in times of recession. What’s changed since the last time around? Those big ticket items from last year are turning into the biggest marketing opportunities for 2009, namely smartphones (and other internet enabled portable devices such as iPod Touch). For SEM purposes, the biggest difference between a smartphone and a WAP enabled phone is a true (HTML based) web browser – as HTML mobile browsers can support standard ad copy. With the introduction of device targeting within Google AdWords, advertisers can isolate smartphones into a unique campaign and take full advantage of opportunities like geo-targeting and one-click purchasing. Imagine seeing an ad targeted to your zip code for the exact product you’re searching for at a store nearby, and instantly making a purchase with one click. read more about mobile and holiday…
Leave a Comment » | Mobile Ads, SEM, Trends, paid search, search engine marketing | Tagged: holiday, mobile, SEM | Permalink
Posted by mwendling
February 2, 2009
Google continued to dominate the industry with end-of-year results showing the search engine at 63.5 percent market share in the US, according to TechCrunch. Google continued to climb through 2008, while the other top tier engines remained relatively flat. With the number of search queries increased in 2008 from 2007, Google managed to capture the vast majority of these searches (90% of all growth).
While Google continues to lead in search queries, the article does point out that the growth are not necessarily new users, just more searchers per user.
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Posted by esearchvision
