Our coverage of the December search marketing conferences is now complete. We have extensive coverage, in raw-live format from SES Chicago and PubCon Vegas. Both conferences were a huge hit and lots of fun and learning took place.

Again, a huge thank you to our contributors and writers including Carolyn Shelby, Dave Rohrer, Chris Boggs, Justin Davy, Marty Weintraub, Avi Wilensky and Tamar Weinberg. Your hard work does not go unappreciated by the SEM community and industry - we all thank you.

We covered 28 sessions from PubCon and 24 sessions from SES. Here is a recap of the sessions we covered by conference:

PubCon Vegas 2007 Search Conference Coverage Recap:

1. Keynote Conversation with Craig Newmark
2. SEO 101 - The Timeless and Classic Hits
3. PPC 101 – Beginner to Intermediate Level
4. Monetizing Social Media Traffic
5. Reputation Monitoring and Management
6. Social Marketing 101
7. Link Building Campaigns and Strategies
8. Link Baiting - 96 Different Strategies
9. Optimizing Your Site for Contextual Ads
10. Content Creation - Cranking it Out
11. Link Buying
12. Domain Names and Trademarks - Legal Issues
13. Effective Domaining Strategies
14. Web Hosting Industry Overview
15. SEO Design and Organic Site Structure
16. SEO and the Big Search
17. Alternative Discovery and SEO - Feeds, PDF's, and Blog SEO
18. Brand Management
19. Keynote with Matt Cutts
20. Responsible Web Design
21. Effective Action Based Copywriting
22. CSS and HTML Coding Today
23. Ecommerce and Shopping Cart Optimization
24. Search and Blogging Reporters Forum
25. Competitive Intelligence
26. International and European Site Optimization
27. Organic Keyword Research and Selection
28. Tools of the Trade

SES Chicago 2007 Search Conference Coverage Recap:

1. Search Around the World - Part One: Asia/Pacific & Australia
2. Mobile Search Battle Royal
3. Redefining the Customer
4. Meet the Web Analytics Players
5. The Human Equation: Giving Back Internet Style
6. Orion Panel – Search, Privacy, and the Community in the Digital Age
7. Igniting Viral Campaigns
8. There’s Still Money on the Table!
9. Orion Panel - Universal, Blended, and Vertical Search
10. The Transformation of Local in a Search Driven World
11. Retailer Track: Shopping Search Tactics
12. Are Paid Links Evil?
13. Maximum Conversion in Retail: Raising the Bar
14. Actionable Social Media
15. Online Maps: Plotting the Direction of Local Search
16. Case Study: Moving from Paper to Online
17. Managing Automated PPC Bid Management
18. Your Marketing Program in Context
19. Calling All Clicks: PayPerCall and You
20. PPC Advertising on Influential Blogs and Social Media
21. Last Minute Holiday Search Tactics
22. Just for Fun Track: So You Want to Be a Search Marketer?
23. Fun With Dynamic Websites
24. Dealing with Difficult Clients

Our top five stories across both conferences by pageviews are:

• Monetizing Social Media Traffic from PubCon Vegas written by Tamar Weinberg
• Link Buying from PubCon Vegas written by Tamar Weinberg
• SEO 101 - The Timeless and Classic Hits from PubCon Vegas written by Avi Wilensky
• Shopping Search Tactics from SES Chicago written by Marty Weintraub
• Link Baiting - 96 Different Strategies from PubCon Vegas written by Dave Rohrer

That wraps up our coverage. See you all in February, for our next major conference coverage event!

Moderated by Jeff Rohrs, who states this this will hopefully be an Oprah-like therapy session (laughs).

First speaker is Michael Murray from Fathom SEO. Difficult clients - they want solutions to their problems and assurance. He suggests to avoid problems in the first place by framing expectations and conveying a consistent message. They use as many possible methods to amplify the points they are trying to cover. Being attentive to regular calls and conferences, even if the client is less-so. Keep thorough notes on clients. The requirements: signed agreements with specific terms – commitment time period specific, control methodologies in place, and collaboration channels are clearly identified. For example, they have to have full and immediate access to analytics in order to participate in the measurements.

Objections: what is the problem? What caused the problems? What are the possible solutions? What is the best solution? They ask these questions internally prior to the meeting/phone calls with the client in order to be well prepared. Handling concerns – be proactive about direct communications – no voice mail messages, etc. It is better to know we’re going to respond and then call within one business day. The more people we bring into meetings, the more they know we are dedicating a lot of resources towards solving their problems. A “show of force” like this can go a long way in making the client content. Be consistent and rapid in the communication.

Jeff asks the panelists about the idea of managing expectations. What are good ways to do this once the process has begun? Simon states that the initial thing as Michael said is the full requirements gathering clearly states the expectations. Kendall thinks it is a progression. Yes the first thing is a thorough scope. Typically, unless the person is already a friend, you have to get to know each other. As you do get to know each other, you have plenty of opportunities to more clearly define and continually revisit the expectations of the projects as well as the quality expected and the level of service desired. Michael insists on 6 weekly calls form the get-go, in order to get them in the habit of meeting with them. The first six calls really tell the client how serious they are. They are adamant about scheduling that immediately. Simon adds that you are maybe regularly dealing with someone in the middle level of management and used to managing to their expectations, and then discover a new level of expectations in a meeting with the C Suite.

Next up is Simon Heseltine from Red Boots Consulting. he will talk about the six types of difficult clients: 1. The “I want it yesterday client.” 2. “The Denier.” These people do not implement recommendations, and yet are taking times to second guess everything. They are sometimes only partially implementing. 3. The “sneak attacker / Invisible man.” They disappear for some time and then all of a sudden contact you and turn into the I want it yesterday client. 4. “The scope creeper.” Before you know it the one site audit turns into 3 site audits and a white paper on Bolivian dental services. 5. “The spy” they are trying to train their in-house staff when they are working with you. This is fine if it is a formal training situation, but at some point they may dump you. 6. The lack of internal process client. He describes a situation where IT teams sometimes simply copy stuff onto other pages, etc, making it difficult to understand strange changes manifesting themselves in the analytics. This leads to the discovery of recommendations that were either improperly implemented or reused erroneously.

Be proactive in dealing with difficult clients. Set expectations up front – use the contact for scope issues. Provide regular updates on a mutually agreed schedule. Identify the issues ASAP and then resolve them. If all else fails, you can fire them. You are in the business sot make money and to help clients. If you have someone that is an absolute pain, then you have to possible reevaluate the need for the relationship. He then announces that Red Boots will be rebranding in January as Serengeti.

Jeff asks about the differences in communications styles based on generations or other differences in demographics between the client’s makeup and the internal team make up (paraphrased). Kendall suggests asking up front to see how they like to operate/communicate, and fit into that. Jeff wonders if that should be documented specifically, and Kendall doesn’t necessarily do this every time. They do not want the client to think they are being so diligent about writing every single thing down and referencing it formally in email etc…this is not their style.

Kendall Allen from Incognito Digital. (She has no PowerPoint) They are a small agency and they want to focus on deep relationships with a few clients. Some of the things they think about from a positive front. They help clients with branding and conversions, which can be challenging since it is a dual metrics campaign. They are focused on developing long term engagements and long term planning, so they want to be in that process with the client along the way. It can be challenging with some of the types of clients that Simon talked about.

It is a constant progression/journey, not a one time event of setting expectations up front. They are focused on helping their clients with preparing reports to present internally. Then there is the component of good and bad ideas…some times the client’s ideas need to be carefully re-crafted. The idea of building a relationship with clients that would last even over multiple agencies is something she considers. If you think of that possibility instead of short term, you will likely have a better relationship.

***Note this is “live” unedited blog coverage of SES Chicago 2007. Some typos, grammatical errors, or incomplete thoughts may exist.

It's extremely important for IT and Marketing to work together.  Kiss and make up!!!  IT guys do more than play quake.

First begin your research project by looking at:

• URL Structure How many variables are in that url?
• Search Engine Indices
• Current Rankings You have a list of phrases that you want to show up better on?  You need to look at historical numbers as well as current and future changes.
• Spider Activity How often are the spiders getting down to your 3^rd, 4^th or 5^th level content?
• Determine Target Terms What keyword phrases do you want to show up for?  You would want to rank for your highest converting keywords.
• Overcome technology, resource and/or
• Index, Optimize political challenges
• Monitor Improvements

Homepage titles really do matter.  What keyword phrases are really important to your site? 

Category page titles are important as well but its not enough.  Be sure to use an <h1> tag that reflects your title tag with your important keyword.  Use on page copy in a paragraph that is keyword rich.

If you've done all of this and your still not ranking what's wrong?  Many times your competitor has the particular keyword in the domain or domain name.  In this case make sure your important items or keywords are featured on your homepage.

Basic Optimization Principles

• Page titles
• Headings
• Navigational Text
• Content
• Metadata
• URLs
• Anchor text
• Links

Universal search- is it affecting your organic placement more off-site factors for competitive keyword phrases

Select keyword phrase improvements in Google, but takes longer to achieve top positions

Consider optimizing a Yahoo data feed

Robots.txt

Be sure to use robots.txt file Can you exclude files that would be considered duplicate?  The robots.txt is like a welcome mat at your house.  People are still going to come into your house if you don't have one.  Its like this with search engines, they'll still come in but your telling them where they can and cannot go.  Be careful when building out your robots.txt file, 1 “/” and you can disallow your entire site from the search engines.  You must educate yourself about the robots.txt file.  Google webmaster central can help with this.

Redirects

When doing any kind of redirecting it's recommended to use a 301.  It's not good to do this on the root level though.  Most of the time people link to the homepage of a site because it's the easiest thing to do, but what your telling the search engines when setting up a root level 301 is that none of my content is here but its somewhere else.

Architecture

Don't use javascript in your navigation unless you want to loose the search engines. 

Duplicate content

Everypage on your website should have its own address like your physical house that you live in.  you don't share 20 homes.  With duplicate content you basically have 20 mailboxes for one home.  You need to think about which “home” or page is the important page.  An example of who's doing this wrong is www.brookstone.com and the product level page (Maxell Batter, 9-Volt)  this page can be accessed almost 20 different ways through this one website.

Canonicalization

You can start with http://www.domain.com or http://domain.com  If so you have 2 websites with the same content that can be accessed two different ways.  How are you linking from your home button?  Are you doing something like this http://www.domain.com/index.html?  Now you've just created a 3^rd way.  You need to use a 301 and choose 1 way to link to your homepage.  When linking from your navigation be sure that you are consistent as well.

“Legacy” Spam

Does your site still have “invisible” text links from years ago?  If your doing this, you will be caught and your ranking will slip as well as the pages being indexed.

Be sure to take advantage of Google Webmaster Central and the offerings from the other search engines as well.  Fix your architectural problems instead of just trying to Band-Aid with a sitemap.

Contributed by: Justin Davy is a search engine marketing specialist for the E.W. Scripps Company and a guest writer for SER.

Ready to start your search marketing career?  This panel looked at ways fledgling SEMs can educate themselves to get started in this exciting profession. The session was moderated by: Kevin Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch

Dave Davies, CEO, BeanstalkThings to do: Get a great lawyer and accountant, stick to your strengths, pick your strongest skill and be excellent. Take care during growth and only hire what you need, not what you want. Watch your stats and keep researching your market position.

Things NOT to do: Don't be over optimistic you won't rank for "SEO-Your-City" in 2-3 months (sorry). Try not to do everything you are not an expert at SEO, and design and everything else. Hire friends. If they own part of the company, you're not hiring them. Don't rest on your laurels, they will get you crushed. ENJOY your business. If you don't then it's not truly success.

David Wallace, CEO and Founder, SearchRankToday we have many ways to learn about search marketing: Free Resources -SEOmoz's "Beginner's Guide To SEO, "multiple blogs and forums, eBooks -SEOBook.com, Small Business Guide to Search Marketing, Online Courses -SEMPO, Search Engine College, Bruce Clay, Conferences and Seminars -SES, PubCon, SMX. However, in David' opinion, nothing replaces a "hands on" experience one obtains when doing SEM for their own site(s).

Establish a website.  Choose your niche (Something that interests you but not highly competitive), something that may help establish your business. Secure a Domain Name If new, you then have the hurdle of "establishing" the domain, Old domain is better but can require some work and money to obtain, Establish Web Site. Three options -Design it yourself, hire a designer or use automated solution.
Applying a Search Marketing StrategyConduct keyword research. This lays the foundation for your search marketing effort. Techniques Involve applying what you have learned to date which should at least be basic SEO and link building techniques. Set up Paid Search Campaign (if applicable). Track Progress. Analyze visibility, traffic, even conversions where applicable. Most of all learn from successes and mistakes.

Network with others.  Whether working for an agency or establishing your own SEM firm, it is important to network not only with partners but other search marketers. Develop business partnerships traditional ad agencies, web design firms, etc. Network online with search marketers forums, blogs, social media, etc…  Network in "real life" with everyone. This can include this conference for example but even things like local business organizations or trade shows.

Brand yourself as an expert: There are many search marketers, there are few that really standout. Write informative articles. Participate in forums. Participate in social media. Start an informative blog.  Words of caution: Don't spam forums and/or blog comments. Don't steal other's content or sales copy. Don't come off as a know-it-all. Don't promise what you can't deliver. No matter what color hat you wear, don't be unethical in your business practices.

Nicole St. Martin, Search Marketing Analyst, HotGigs/Jobs2webSearch marketing is a great field to get into. It requires No College Degree, employment terms are extremely flexible, salaries are lucrative, skills are portable & global. Skills like patience and passion and problems solving are very important.
Learn search marketing from SEOMOZ, High Rankings.com, TopRank, SearchEngineWatch, SearchEngineLand, SMX, SearchEngineStrategies, and Search Marketing Standard.

David Hoffman, Search Smart MarketingFive Rules for Dating My Client: Partnering with Agencies, Web Developers, PR Firms and others:Rule #1: Sign a "PreNup, "including Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreements which should protect both parties. It will put the agency's mind at ease. You live under their roof and under their rules.

Rule #2: Don't Disrespect the Family meet deadline and live up to their standards. Establish guidelines for client contact.

Rule #3: Earn Their Trust. Exceed expectations. Provide education; lunchtime seminars, pertinent articles. Don't "nickel & dime."

Rule #4: Be Discreet About Dating Others. Working with multiple agencies can become dicey. Avoid client conflicts. Be wary of exclusivity.

Rule #5: Keep Everyone Happy. Make sure it's worth their while. Make sure it's worth your while

***Note this is “live” unedited blog coverage of SES Chicago 2007. Some typos, grammatical errors, or incomplete thoughts may exist.

Marty Weintraub writes for aimClearBlog, published by aimClear, a Duluth advertising agency specializing in organic & paid search as well as social media marketing (SMM) and blogging.

Moderated by Kevin Ryan, the conference’s organizer. He welcomes people and provides a brief introduction to the topic. He discusses that search is great since you do not have to have the campaign “in the can” months in advance. He cites the Aquadots story and how they are being recalled, and that many ads on Black Friday still featured the product in their creative since they could not remove it in time.

First up will be Matt Naeger from Impaqt. What did you learn from last year? It is important to understand this and is a good starting point for holiday planning. He feels you should actually be looking at last year every day. You should know exactly what percentage of your online sales occurred in December. He suggests following traffic and revenue by hour and day not week and month. Think “Cyber Everyday” – the biggest thing he has learned from Cyber Monday is that it is a starting point to the season. Typically there are 5 or 6 higher volume days than Cyber Monday (he did not mention which). He recommends that you learn from your competition, since they are smart too. Also, you should manage to your market, not your budget. Don’t worry about the budget, instead understand where the market is and react accordingly.

Pay attention! Keep your search in step with other marketing vehicles. Be persistent with your creative…don’t put it up today and take it down tomorrow. Many people get nervous too quickly. Don’t forget about organic – you will see these results sometimes change on a daily basis, and should react accordingly with paid search tactics. Build supporting messages and be prepared to launch at any time. Submit creative pieces early to get them approved, and then store them in the campaign ready to go right away. Test creative by time of day, especially with high volume terms. Differ the creative based on the audience that is likely more prominent during the particular time of the day, such as the “happy home makers,” for example.

Ongoing campaign refinement is important – don’t buy what you can’t sell and don’t sell what you can’t deliver. He suggests promoting delivery times by product. Use creative that states the typical delivery times, not just “last ship date.” Focus on products based on volume and margin. He recommends buying generic keywords on low position – he has seen a lot of benefits from a lower position for terms such as “gift for…” Lastly, learn from your customer – start looking at the actual full phrases that the customers search for instead of relying only on the broad match keyword.

Next up is Kevin Lee from Did It, and also a member of and past Chairman of the SEMPO Board of Directors. There has been significant growth in online holiday shopping year over year. Are you getting your fair share? Consider asking for some additional “slush fund” money to let you take advantage of opportunities. Conversion rates change sometimes on a fairly large basis during the holidays, so consider this in your planning. Don’t make decisions based on old inaccurate data. Monitor shopping cart sizes, lag times (reductions may be occurring) and the offline purchase behavior. Perhaps you have a ton of data which will support your request for additional budget.

He also feels it is better to pre-load campaign creative to be able to turn it on when you want, but that you should also create new campaigns and ads during the high opportunity seasons. He suggests using a cloned campaign instead of the main campaign for this. Offer shipping deals, promotional couponing, etc. Are you monitoring buzz indicators? Use Google Trends, Yahoo Buzz index, and your own top seller information. Knowing what is hot sooner lets you follow the trends more closely, and take advantage of the opportunity to make changes. Watch your competition spending – are your competitors or suppliers spending heavily both online and off? can you piggy back off their spending? There may be a halo effect around particular buzz. Search is often not spontaneous – people don’t typically wake up and say I need a new cell phone,” for example.

Some tactics to consider include home page takeovers, viral marketing, TV, and bug banner buys. It is never too late to execute new tricks for the holidays. Kevin also stressed the importance of using “free shipping” type verbiage, but recommends even using “free FedEx” in order to take the ambiguity away from some people that will wonder if they still have enough time to get it delivered.

Bill Tancer from Hitwise was supposed to be here, but got caught at the airport due to weather. Bill sent data to Kevin Ryan including the research that shows a 37% growth since last year. He suggests being culturally sensitive as well. There is a big timeline difference between Hanukah and Christmas, for example. People “go nuts” for gift cards, so he recommends keeping active in promoting these even after Christmas. Remember to take ads down after the holidays – this may seem obvious, but it happens often. Kwanza ads during June? This is a waste of time and money.

***Note this is “live” unedited blog coverage of SES Chicago 2007. Some typos, grammatical errors, or incomplete thoughts may exist.

Speakers:

• Todd Parsons, Co-Founder and CPO, Buzzlogic
• Jay Sears, SVP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc.
• Jason Weisberger, COO, Federated Media

Blog Statistics

• 65 million Americans read blogs
• 60% of those readers access blogs to explicitly get an opinion
• 65% of online “power shoppers” say they always read consumer generated reviews and spend more than 10 minutes engaging with UGC before they buy.
• 3.5 billion brand-related conversations per day

Who is directing traffic and attention to a particular post?

Who is the influencer linking out to for information?

What do these linking patterns tell me about consumer behavior?

Super engaged audiences are now going to targeted content via social media.  So if an iPhone is being blasted in a conversation about how it doesn’t work with corporate email then blackberry would find it valuable to advertise on that page.

There’s been a lot of media fragmentation over the past few years, with page views in the top 3 portals declining while total internet growth in page views is up 21%.

With that being said, media spend is lopsided with over 50% of media spend going to those big destination sites.

Scale vs. Control includes the need of a common denominator to bring scale.  Other important factors are demographics, behavior and targeting based on “social nets”

Control can mean a lot of things:

• Pricing & reliable volume projections
• Content adjacency (what type of content is my ad going to run against)
• Brand Association (if you have any brand based considerations you want to be in a brand safe environment)

Contextual is not search

• Readers are not searching for you
• More like banner or print advertising
• Blog readers are in research phase, not buying phase

Never run content while running on the search network at the same time.  It should be a separate campaign.

Algorithms look at the keywords and the ad copy and then picks a theme for that category in one of 594 themes.  No more than 30-50 keywords per ad group.  The lesser the better.

More on the structure of content campaigns

Match types are irrelevant (except negative)

Individual keyword bids are irrelevant

Negative keywords are necessary

Ad Copy Differences

Ads need to stand out

Yell, don’t whisper (your not punished for low quality scores like with search network)

Be more competitive – e.g. free shipping

Test, test, test

Ad Position Differences

Magic positions for search are 1-3

Magic positions for content are 1-4 since avg. pub runs ads with 4 spots

Watch Google placement performance reports.  It shows which sites your ads have appeared on as well as the metrics that you’re used to seeing in your keyword reports.

Sample Strategy

1. Setup separate content campaign
2. Run performance report
3. Use site exclusion to eliminate poorly performing sites
4. Move top-performers to a CPC placement targeted campaign
5. Rinse & repeat

Contributed by: Justin Davy is a search engine marketing specialist for the E.W. Scripps Company and a guest writer for SER.

Speakers:

• Marc Barach, Chief Marketing Officer, Ingenio, Inc.
• Dan Hight, Director of eCommerce Sales – Agency Division, Superpages.com

Pay Per Call is paid calls from search.

• Calls: A performance based advertising service and network that drives calls instead of clicks.
• Cost-per-action: Advertisers only pay for tangible results
• Bidding: An auction based marketplace where advertisers compete for top placement
• Targeted: A service that allows advertiser to target ads to specific categories and geographic locations
• Accessible: a marketing vehicle available to any advertiser whether they have a site or not
• Intuitive: A service that requires no change in customer behavior
• Disruptive – A revenue source beyond traditional media
• Multi-channel

Ad network includes: Internet Search, Internet Yellow Pages, Mobile Search, Directory Assistance, Text Messaging, and Podcasting

How it works: Toll free number redirects to actual customer number.  Consumer simply picks up the phone and calls. (This isn’t click to call)

Top 10 Categories for Online Directory Searches

1. Cable & Satellite
2. Internet Service Providers
3. Mortgage Refinancing
4. Credit Repair
5. Travel Agents
6. Substance Abuse Treatment
7. Auto Insurance
8. Cosmetic Surgery
9. Timeshares
10. Cruises

Why Pay Per Call works for Mobile

• Delivers timely relevant content to mobile customers.
• It’s intuitive
• It’s easy to advertisers to get started
• It makes sense for portals and publishers

Top 5 Search Categories for Mobile

• Food and Dining
• Arts & Entertainment
• Travel
• Shopping
• Family and community

This session echoed a common theme that consumers are searching online but primarily buying offline.  (3% buying online and 97% buying offline)

Cost Per Call factors include CTR, Bid Prices, Call Duration, & Repeat calls from the same number.

Advertisers can prefund their account on a one time or reoccurring basis or for larger advertisers they can sign up for invoicing. 

Contributed by: Justin Davy is a search engine marketing specialist for the E.W. Scripps Company and a guest writer for SER.

Speakers:

• John Squire, SVP, Product Strategy, General Manager, Search Services, Coremetrics
• Bob Heyman, Chief Search Officer, Mediasmith
• Isabel Sopoglian, VP of Search Marketing, Cars.com

John

Think about your marketing in terms of how we get the right visitors and what the right pages are to land on.  Also how do we get the right measurement to validate our decisions? 

Think about where you should invest your marketing dollars.  Over 50% of customers interact with more than 1 ad when making a conversion.  A little less than 50% click on one thing and then take some sort of action.  When you look at the data though nearly 25% are touching more than 30 channels over a 25 day time period before making a conversion.  Its important to look at all the influencers all the way through the sales process instead of just looking at the final conversion and believing that that was what made the sale.  Multi-touch increases a marketers decisions whether to eliminate an investment, invest in more 3^rd parties linkages, or bid up a particular keyword.

• Use attribution reporting across all sessions to gain an accurate picture of the paid search terms
• Identify critical groups of low cost per click keywords that precipitate sales

Bob

 

Search works with all the other branding activity that you do.  When Napster did a Super Bowl spot, search activity went up. 

Whether it’s an email or banner ad, it’s important to watch the click trail leading up to the last click.

There are instances where you try to be so efficient like just running search that you’ve eliminated all of your volume.

Isabel

 

What counts as a conversion on your site.  (sale, signup, traffic)

What is the value of that assigned conversion.  Are you tracking on keyword level?

Internal Key Factors to Conversion

Keywords, Ad copy, Landing Page, Conversion Path, Negative Keywords, URL Blocking

External Key Factors to Conversion

Traffic quality, click fraud, behavior of searchers, algorithmic changes, SERP changes, search engine testing

Example: Impressions up almost 300 percent for particular ad on Yahoo.  This decreased CTR’s.  They called Yahoo and Yahoo said they had been running “tests” Sometimes results are out of your hands.

Important to track

• Ability to track on keyword level
• By search engine
• Match type
• Ad copy
• Landing page version

Simple Strategies to Convert

• Only select keywords that are relevant to product
• Extensive negative keywords
• Use appropriate keyword match types
• Don’t mislead searchers with your ad copy
• Optimize your landing page and lead path to convert

Advanced Strategy to Convert

• Detect international clicks and demand search engines to block source or refund money
• Block non-performing domains
• Score traffic quality by source and implement into your bidding
• Check traffic for click fraud and provide search engine w/proof

Judge carefully when just looking at pure conversion data! The higher the quantity of traffic, the more statistically relevant becomes the results for your conversion. Once they were able to get more traffic from the Yahoo network they expect the conversion percentages for Google and Yahoo to even out!

Contributed by: Justin Davy is a search engine marketing specialist for the E.W. Scripps Company and a guest writer for SER.

Kevin Heisler, Executive Editor, Search Engine Watch moderated the panel.

Managing PPC without automation is becoming impossible to do by hand. Tools at different price points are becoming more prevalent and require serious expertise. This SES session discussed using API bid management applications to increase ROI and gain a competitive advantage.

Anton Konikoff, Founder and CEO, Acronym MediaEduardo Llach kicked off the discussion of automated bid management. “Automated bid management is outdated” and is just one of many functionalities search marketers need to run campaigns. “Campaign management” is what it’s really about.

First decide what you actually need. Do you need a solution for campaign syndication? Optimization? Reporting? Customer insight? Regardless, can you trust automated systems to make good decisions? Data-driven automation is not a substitute for granular web analytics. He recommends Omniture because it has strong web analytics integrated with bid management.

Pretty looks can be misleading but flexibility trumps good interface design. DoubleClick has the ugliest interface but the most powerful solution. Will automation actually save you money? Don’t forget keyword research, copy testing, user and user experience.

A good rule of thumb is to automate what you already know. He suggests optimizing campaigns by hand and then turn what you know works over to the machines.

Drive your friendly technology vendors mad by understanding the system and pushing it to the limit. Do not hire statisticians. Campaign automation needs smart search marketers because automated tools don’t ask deep questions, YOU should. Finally, campaign tracking is not a substitute for full web analytics. You need sophisticated, granular, and real-time technology to track user behavior.

David Szetela, CEO, Clix Marketing
At first Clix was skeptical of automated tools. Even after they became convinced, their interest was further piqued by the “campaign management’ features of API tools. Clix asks, “How complex are your bidding requirements” and chooses tools based on needs.

Are they simple or complex? If simple, just use Google. More complex applications require dealing with variables like multiple publishers, tracking conversions and revenue, episodic flight based programs, inventory linkage, and keywords that are competitive.

Google offers free (of course) Google Conversion Optimizer for campaigns > 300 conversion / month, you can specify maximum cost per acquisition, and Google manages the bid price. It automatically manages your bid to manage a cost per action business rule. TIP: if you don’t meet the criteria by generating enough conversion, Google recommends that you “game” the system by placing the code on a non-conversion page.

Google has data that third party vendor do not have including geographic location, publisher site conversion history (content campaigns) day/time, and “other factors.” You get to campaign optimizer by “edit campaign settings.”

CMO and Founder, SearchRev discussed advanced techniques for paid search. He recommended putting together complex campaigns and then turning them over to tools to manage the campaigns.

What is common about all rules based tools are that the use one bid per keyword. SearchRev believes in multi-variable targeting + syndication, for instance separate bidding for the same word in different geo-graphic locations, times of day, and platforms. “How is the keyword doing in New York on Monday morning on Google as opposed to MSN in Massachusetts at 6PM in the afternoon on Friday?”

Track the results for each day, focus on the conversion rate and CPO, and bid according to conversion rate and CPO. In Google you can do accomplish day-parting right in the standard interface.

***Note this is "live" unedited blog coverage of SES Chicago 2007. Some typos, grammatical errors, or incomplete thoughts may exist. You can find Marty Weintraub at aimClearBlog, published by aimClear, a Duluth advertising agency focused on organic & paid search along with social media marketing.

How ThomasNet reinvented itself after 100 years

A little history

ThomasNet was a print directory company who turned into a giant online marketing force.  They connect industrial buyers and suppliers. They’ve been online since 1995; 100% focus on industrial marketplace.  They cover a wide array of areas and Linda assures us that the lessons they’ve learned will benefit all of us.

There are new authority sites popping up like Travelocity, Amazon’s and Expedia. 

Years ago there were only a few options in terms of television; they were NBC, ABC, and CBS.  This shook things up and made the marketplace competitive.  Linda compares this to sites like Travelocity, Amazon’s and Expedia’s that are focused on categories which compete with the Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

To be a destination site, you need to be a trusted authority.  They moved their directory from print to online but it’s more than that.  You need to reinvent yourself and listen to your buyers.

Staying true to core business adjectives

They stuck to what they had done best and that was bringing together buyers and sellers.  They didn’t just build a web component for the heck of it.  The important thing is to understand your buyers and users and this will help you to build relevant results and how to fill that need. 

Buyer Centricity

Building and improving products & services

Measure everything

Promote and marketing

Continually improve w/ testing

 

Questions to Consider

1. Where do they currently look for products/services?
2. What information is important to them when sourcing?
3. What level of detail are they looking for?
4. What frustrates them?

Older vs. Newer Methods

Direct Mail vs. On-site/online and email surveys

Focus groups vs. Online Focus groups

In-person surveys (one-on-one) vs. Webcast Surveys

Key benefit: rapid proto-typing – faster to market

9 out of 10 buyers start with the Internet to source products and services.  Their buyers were going online faster than the suppliers were putting their products online.  Less than 5% of their 20,000 clients were performing e-commerce actions on the site.

Situation -> Opportunity

Spending more time sourcing online -> Increase speed & efficiency of site

Sourcing online is not easy when looking for complex information -> Provide more company information in relevant categories

They reinvented themselves but developing products/services that enable suppliers to help buyers display information and easily navigate.

The website now has to serve the purpose of answering questions and asking questions back just like what a typical sales person would have done if talking to the buyer in person.  Your site has to have the ability to do that.

Situation -> Opportunity

Knowing key places buyers’ source online -> Educate suppliers on where buyers go first – reps, workshops, etc.

Website falls short of detailed specs and navigation -> Help supplier build websites, catalogs and CAD drawings that buyers want.

Proving ROI – understanding metrics -> Produce tool to help suppliers identify conversions actions and measure activity.

Constantly think about what user action you would want to take place.  (phone call, email)

Additional growth areas….

They post about 100 new product articles on a daily basis (many of these are press releases on new products).

Available via RSS feeds

Daily, weekly, monthly product alerts

Bi-weekly blog

Bi-weekly industry newsletter

Expand internationally, site translation

What they offer

Website Design & Development

Online Catalog Tools

Online CAD Drawings

Website Tracking

Measure Everything

1. Quantitative user online surveys
2. Traditional and online user focus groups
3. Web analytics

Contributed by: Justin Davy is a search engine marketing specialist for the E.W. Scripps Company and a guest writer for SER.

Speakers:

• Jeremy Kreitler, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Maps
• Ian White, CEO, Urban Mapping
• Jim Schoonmaker, CEO, Everyscape
• Ziya Genceren, LiveSearch Maps Product Manager, Microsoft
• Gary Price, Director of Online Information Resources, Ask.com

 

Gary Price – (This presentation was taken directly from a url provided at the conference)

 

Defining local is key

• Local is more than maps and business listings 
• Local is not always where you live, drive, "hang out"
• In fact, local is potentially more important other places, away from home turf
• Think about "local" and Chicago for those attending the conference

 

Will they be used by the masses or are we in a "geek only" mindset

• Is the user able to get more (better, more specific answer)
• User friendly
• Value proposition (will they save the user time, effort, aggravation) 

 

A Historical Perspective 

• TerraFly (More than six years old)
• Pages Jaunes (Street-Level Imagery of Cities in Spain and France)
• SuperTours (360 Tours of Several Areas including Las Vegas Strip)

 

What We're Up to at Ask.com

• Ask Mobile GPS (with Sprint)
• Lifestyle application combining Evite, CitySearch, Directions (spoken directions), etc. 
• Search geo-location

 

Ask Maps

• Walking and driving directions
• Aerial imagery
• Drag and move with dynamic recalculation
• Highlight new locations to map with simple one-click--no typing necessary

 

Ask Mobile

• No downloads necessary with all features
• Maps with visual cues
• Driving AND walking directions
• Satellite imagery 

 

AskCity

• Local search, buy tickets, movie info, reviews, restaurant reservations
• "Search inside" or "search along" a specific area with map mark-up features, save and share
• Neighborhood other sugggestions suggestions often listed in left rail

 

Ziya Genceren

 

When many think about local search they think of YellowPages but that’s a very limited way of thinking.  You should define local search as any query that involves location or geographic property.  For example what is the name of the Fountain across the street from the Chicago Hilton.

 

Local search has basically 2 touch points to mapping.  A map is a canvas and a rich mapping platform is important.  It can be done on the fly or in a custom way.  An advanced mapping platform allows the users to get much more information out of you like what Microsoft has done with 3d mapping.  He also gave us an example of how he brought up the fountain from across the street here at the Chicago Hilton and how that was the fountain that was used in the tv show “Married with Children” Microsoft has the ability to go out and pull geo information from the web which is then tied back to the photo.

 

Ian White

 

To API or to not API?

 

Ajax, tiles, rendering factory.  Their then cached and made available on demand.

 

How free is free though?  Free API’s virtually have no cost like with Google and its free up to 15,000 geocodes per day.  With paid solutions however you get additional functionality that is baked in as well.

 

Service-based businesses

No (meaningful) business address: cellphone + automobile – I come to you (nanny, plumber etc)

 

Defining multiple service area

Multiple ‘offices’

‘We serve Colorado’

A cold ware service-based business search

How to deescalate from MAD

 

For local search Ian says that IP targeting sucks.  For national targeting it works pretty accurately.

 

Jeremy Kreitler

 

Online maps are a central part of how users search today.  Over 60% of the internet audience is performing local specific queries.  41% of local searches are within a user’s home location.  Maps have a 88% reach on the internet in the US 3^rd after search and email.

 

Maps offer a geographic and visual way to organize different information.  It allows you to organize information from across the web into a visual format.  Local searches are growing as a portion of overall web searches.  Local is extending beyond business lookup including social media, local news and more.

 

Jim Schoonmaker

 

Map platform lack benefits to advertisers

 

Many features to the user experience

Street Imagery

Satellite Imagery

Directions

Maps

 

And Adwords do not meet their needs.  While the new search environment may suit some of the needs its not meeting the advertisers needs, particularly the smaller ones.

 

Now small businesses want people to be the interiors of their stores, restaurants, museums, dentists etc with Everyscape offers.

Contributed by: Justin Davy is a search engine marketing specialist for the E.W. Scripps Company and a guest writer for SER.

Moderated by Anne Kennedy from Beyond Ink, who introduces the topic and panelists. She asks how many are actually using social media tools, and a fair amount of the nicely filled room raises their hands.

First speaker is Todd Parsons from BuzzLogic. BuzzLogic is an on-demand platform for social media marketing. They help identify influencers leading conversations on certain topics, and can also engage them. Blogging is hardly dead…65 Million Americans read blogs. Of them 60% are going to a blog explicitly to get an opinion. 65% of “online power shopper” always read user generated content (UGC) like reviews and spend an average of 10 minutes engaging with the UGC before they buy. 3.5 billion brand-related conversations are occurring per day. He gives an example of the linking behavior and dialogue that was fueled online by people talking about the recent news that the Toyota Prius could not pass the state of Georgia emissions testing.

Linking “gets a bit of a bad rap these days.” He feels this is wrong. He distinguishes between editorial and acquired links. Acquired links are engineered by marketers to gain search engine exposure. Editorial links are the organic result of producing great content, but harder to control. These types of links are rooted in trust. He states that search engines are getting much smarter at sniffing out manipulation. He talks about SE’s targeting bloggers associated with Pay per Post and devaluing their outbound links.

Social media tools (voting, comments, reviews, rankings) make it easier to foster SEO through authentic means., New technologies make is possible to locate important linking hubs. He was going to go into another case study but ran out of time.

Next up is Adam Lavelle from iCrossing. he says he has 5 minutes and 35 slides so bear with him. He goes through some illustrative slides that show how we are social animals that create connections. Content is the fuel that we sue to connect to each other. We have great devices to capture content, incredible software to shape it, and more ways to share and distribute it than ever before. What makes it social is out personal networks. LinkedIn, buddy lists, contact lists in Outlook, etc.

What does this mean for clients? Within three years 70% of the content online will be UGC. He quotes Clive Thompson who claims that Google is a reputation management system rather than a search engine. He shows the search “using post it notes” and how UCG has come to the top. Listen and be useful – this is all you need to do. Many opportunities exist to leverage social media ( a cool slide depicting these).

He shows a tool that they developed at iCrossing which maps links and sites that talk about 3M. This is a map that shows a clear ownership of the conversation about 3M by the actual brand. But if you look at the buzz/links/weight of the content around Post-It notes, 3M does not own that. Shows examples of other sites that are really dominating the talk about that brand, and ironically YouTube is near the top since so many people with time on their hands have uploaded videos of post-it note art. He then goes over another case study about Symantec, which indicates success in tracking this kind of information. He actually got through all 35 slides in 5 minutes!

Next up is Jennifer Laycock, from Search Engine Guide. She will be getting more specific and give examples from one social networking platform – Flickr. “Flickr – Say it with a Picture.” Why use it?> What you need to ask is why it will impact positively. She shows an example of some plain text content and how it get’s more interesting through the addition of a picture. Walt Disney said that pictures are the universally most understood medium. (something like that). She then shows a Yahoo! image search with a ton of Flickr results in the top page.

Another benefit of Flickr is the community. these people are very engaged since they actually add pictures to the site instead of just engaging in conversation. Shows a group example “Edible Gardening” and leads to the link at the bottom “Discuss.” She shows a person that came to the specific topical forum to get information.. Two ways to “play:” one is that you can be the person that has the knowledge to appear as an expert, but you can also encourage brand evangelists to speak. Another benefit of Flickr is links, both direct and indirect. She shows an example of the profile “Bento Yum” and how she drives traffic to the Bento Yum blog from there . Use the 80/20 rule, and don’t always use the site to build links.

Recommends that if you are going to use Flickr in this manner, you should learn about: tagging and adding notes, finding and joining communities, geo-tagging images, subs cribbing to RSS feeds, using Flickr widgets, creative Commons Licenses. these are all ways to get on other people’s radars.

Tamera Kremer from Wildfire Strategic Marketing. She will discuss Del.icio.us and how to leverage it. Del.icio.us is one of the most popular social bookmarking tools out there, and you can use it to share as well as vote on topics’ popularity (folksonomy). The ability to tag the articles: can be tagged as an individually relevant, or group them by “wishlist.” you can browse other users tags by keyword, and you can share your links with other users in your network. What really gets interesting and gets to the whole folksonomy is that you can add comments/descriptions.

She goes through a brief case study for a B2B client. It did not take off right away…was slow growth. The problem was that many people didn’t understand how to use it effectively, so they developed a “quick start guide” for the client’s employees, who would be helping with creating content to support this tactic. once developed, the participation increased tenfold. They learned that you have to limit the number of keywords, which made the tag cloud grow too large, this caused them to develop their own set of keywords for AIMS Canada. You cannot always have every member of the organization keep up with the latest stories and information around a particular subject, and Del.icio.us helps to keep this kind of information combined in one area.

last speaker is Steven Marder from Eurekster, who will introduce the product “Swicki.” He discusses the trends in the space, leading from Search and Media 1.0 to Social Media and Search 2.0 (algo + humans (publishers and users). Social media is about participation, and an opportunity to allow your users to build your brand for you. Looking at acquiring or retaining users through the online channel, you have to consider how to leverage what you already have. This is about providing a tool or application, for example, to help build interest. (I hope to get a copy of his deck and include it in a follow up, since he has lots of interesting content but due to time limitations has to speed through them)

A Swicki (Social Media Widget) can be about anything related to the site and brand. The syndication opportunity is dramatic, and this further reinforces the brand and provides something useful. He shows a couple screenshot of select client example3s. over 100k of the Swickis have been built to date, and the other feature (custom search portals) have been created by over 25000 people. Anne Kennedy tells the audience that one of the best things about Swicki is that is absolutely free, and “it can make you money even.”

Anne asks the panel what the biggest issues they see with this area. Jennifer says that one problem is people that go into this with a plan to market, and this won’t work. If you are going to get involved, you have to determine how long the project will last and what the goals are. Tamera agrees and says that people have become pretty adept at quickly picking out the spammers. The problem is when you have sucky product and are not being authentic or useful, according to Adam. You have to make it fit into your framework…there is a lot to do behind the scenes and not just “going out and posting ona forum.” Todd concurs, saying that the investment of time required is significant for it to work well, if proper prior planning is performed. He stresses the importance of the authenticity as well. Steven adds that you can be overly strategic in the communications, but at the base it is respect for the customer. Anne says it is like Aretha said :r.e.s.p.e.c.t. (laughs).

“Hugg” is a site like Digg but focused on “green” stuff (environmental causes) that Jennifer shows as an example of a relevant community.

***Note this is “live” unedited blog coverage of SES Chicago 2007. Some typos, grammatical errors, or incomplete thoughts may exist.

Speakers:
* Jennifer Doss, E-Commerce Marketing Manager, Lids.com
* Jamie Smith, CEO, Engine Ready
* James Beriker, President, Efficient Frontier
* Chris Leggatt, Senior Account Executive, Moniker


Jennifer Doss

Lids.com is real-time they sell hats from colleges and other sports teams.

Goals
* Triple monthly revenue at max CPA of $7
* Boost sites sear visibility on keyword hats
* Double revenue #’s from natural search

Challenges
* Over 10,00 pages and 20,000 sku’s
* Pages not optimized for indexing
* Not enough copy
* Keywords not properly targeted
* Content not targeting visitors
* No sitemap

Paid Tactics
* Manual management replaced
* Expand participation in other search programs
* Optimized paid search ad copy
* Increased keywords from 500 to 13,000 terms
* Revised monthly PPC budget (spent more in Nov & Dec based on season. About 30% of sales done that time of year)

Organic Tactics
* Dynamically generated optimization tags (code auto populated meta tags)
* Blog strategy targeting specific keyword phrases (sports and specific teams)
* Dynamic Google Sitemap file

Paid Campaign Results
* CPA decreased by 50%
* Monthly conversion increased 1,294%
* Monthly revenue increased 1,244%

Organic Campaign Results
* Achieved #1 ranking in Google
* and two others that I wasn’t fast enough to catch J

Jamie Smith

3c’s for success
* Conversion drivers (credibility security value)
* Conversion inspiration
* Nearly Customers – 1st Tier Closest to converting. Address these customers to have an immediate impact
* Non Customers – Came to site and didn’t add item to cart etc..
* New Customers

The 3 C’s for SEM Success
Develop a VISIBILITY strategy based on your target market, goals and objectives
* Creative
* Continuity
* Conversion

Visibility (Broadest View) In PPC Visibility=Impressions

How do you measure your success?
* Creative - Highest possible CTR
* Continuity - Lowest possible bounce rate
* Conversion - Maximum possible ROAS

If over 20% call to order…. Call Analytics?

Watch Path Analysis

* Navigation, Usability and Site Design
* Robust Site Search
* Complete Shipping

Chris Leggatt

What makes a good domain?
* Natural generic brand
* Easy to remember
* Clear, concise and descriptive
* Industry segment
* Visually pleasing
* Existing type in traffic

70% of internet users use direct navigation up 53% from 4 years ago
Direct navigation currently on track to surpass $1.2B this year
Direct navigation comprises 8-10% of us and us
More than 43% direct navigation traffic is willing to purchase product

Think about generic domain names being an expenditure. Are there other domains that can accomplish same results. Are there related domains whose acquisition would increase current traffic? How much am I spending for search adv. Vs how much would it cost to just buy the source?

On the other hand
Ex of Asthma.com
It’s an $11b dollar industry – 60% going to prescription drugs. Now 1 company controls that. So is it valuable enough for your company to own that domain?

Movie companies are converting better from film merchandise through direct navigation.

James Beriker

Most categories are growing and people are willing to spend more online. Consumers are also willing to pay for premium services like premium delivery etc.

Retail spend doubled year over year. Google search spend grow 134%

Google most effective at driving conversions for retailers
Spend preferences show MSN has higher conversion rates relative to yahoo

Conversion Best Practices
* Quality Score: User experience (conversion funnel) & Account Structure
* Higher quality score – more clicks @ lower cpc – more conversions – more revenue at lower CPA/higher ROI
* User experience determined by 3 things that must be congruent (search query, ad copy, landing page)

Search queries must be relevant
* Make sure title and description is relevant to that keyword and then make sure your landing page actually offers that

Account Structure Rules
* Organize Campaigns by product type
* Create ad groups based by product
* Inventory-based advertising (if your ad groups are organized by product, you can easily pause a group for out of stock product

Promotions
* Offers increase click-through rate in ad copy
* Offers only increase conversional rate. Is message is reinforced on landing page?
* Align print and online campaigns

Landing Pages
* Motivation
* Value proposition (clarity of value proposition)
* Friction (are u setting up resistance or clutter on your page)
* Incentive (counteracts friction)
* Anxiety (are there reasons on page not to buy)

Contributed by: Justin Davy is a search engine marketing specialist for the E.W. Scripps Company and a guest writer for SER.

Google is on a rampage to devalue sites who engage in link buying and selling. Do paid links ruin the integrity of search engine results? Are they evil? From the conference description: “Search engines, especially Google, say don't do 'em. But some search marketers say paid links work. Are paid links subverting search quality? Or are they simply a fact of life, here to stay?”

Moderator: Chris Boggs, Manager, Search Engine Optimization, eMergent Marketing/BRULANT, Inc.
[Chris provided background information for SEO newbies: Inbound linking is the method by which search engines judge the importance of any given pages. SEOs use “unnatural methods” including buying valuable links. Chris also explained “NoFollow” which means that you don’t actively endorse the page you’re linking to.]

Speakers:
William Leake, Founder and CEO, Apogee Search
This topic has flared up quite a bit over the last 72 hours and over the last few months. It’s important to disclose to clients whether or not linking strategies, which may include paid links, are high risk. Do paid links work? They do. Google’s attempts to discount paid links have had moderate success at best.

New link discounting practices only lead to new types of link building. For example, eco-system-wise, we’re seeing that directory links don’t have less value than they did previously, but paid blog posting is becoming more pervasive. While paid links are effective, they are just one component of a successful SEO campaign.

In hypercompetitive spaces (like mortgage, insurance, and dept consolidation), paid links are a necessity to survive. Compare that to negative political ads that are also necessary. Competitive forces have more influence on marketers than Google preferences. I.E. ROI is more important than a Google blessing for most advertisers. Balanced SEO campaigns are the best. Paid links should never be the only strategy. You need a well rounded approach.

Advertising without disclosure is a deceptive practice and the FTC has spoken out against it. All paid links are not necessarily deceptive. Google does not determine ethics for the industry and Internet. Yes, there are likely cases where search result quality is subverted but the impact is not significant. Overall, Google still provides high quality listings.

Sage Lewis
All link campaigns must start with content which is the “horse.” Sage says not to put the cart before the horse. The cart is the links and the horse is the content. In order to develop a link campaign you must have some appeal for liking sites. “What’s in it for the users?” Link worthy sites are hard to come by. They require time and dedication.

Here are some value propositions for building organic links from great content: Integrate the community into your corporate events. Promote the good work you are doing in your community. Help your audience succeed. When you build a site that has value, is worthwhile, then building links becomes easier.

Brian Boland, Director-adCenter, Microsoft Corporation
Search engines see paid links as a technical problem which MS is “not throwing in the towel on like some other engines” The average search takes over 11 minutes to find appropriate results and paid links are an algorithm problem which can be solved. He discussed how easy it is for search engines to dissemble the linking universe for any site and that MS will solve the “technical issue” of paid links.

Their goal is to “100% protect user experiences.” The statements surrounding the “ethics” of paid linking are fascinated and should not be couched in terms like “good and evil.” MS cares ab out quality. Users who have a lousy experience try another engine. There is no cost to switch engines.

***Note this is “live” unedited blog coverage of SES Chicago 2007. Some typos, grammatical errors, or incomplete thoughts may exist.

Marty Weintraub writes for aimClearBlog and is President of aimClear, a Duluth advertising agency specializing on organic / paid search along with social media marketing.

This session offered research and methodology for ecommerce and merchant sites “can and should” be included in shopping search engines. The Moderator was Kevin Heisler, Executive Editor, Search Engine Watch.

Speakers:
Heather Dougherty, Analyst, Hitwise
The holiday season started well ahead of the traditional trends this year. The patterns have changed in that growth this year has been far more significant than the last few years with traffic steadily increasing since May-which is really early. The growth will continue for the next couple of weeks.

The surge is sending traffic to a wide array of retailers and product categories including house and garden, appliances and electronics, apparel, computers, sports and fitness, toys and hobbies, video and games, and health and beauty.

For shopping comparison engines, the audience is aging with significant growth in users 55, an increase of 56% over last year. Use of comparison engines for the age groups 18-24, 25-34, and 35-44 have decreased as customers migrate to search.

The breadth of search terms driving traffic to the engines is declining. That’s the weekly number of unique search terms driving traffic to the comparison shopping category over last year. More visitors are conducting exploratory product-specific research. 27% for branded products, 24% were for generic products, and 23% were looking for shopping tools. 11% were looking for a specific retailer.

Comparison shopping engine brands themselves and generic products are the most common search terms. Top search terms by volume are Shopzilla, Pricegrabber, and Bizrate. Ninendo Wii was the only branded product in the top 20 search terms. Target and JC Penny were the only retailers in the top 20 search terms.

The holiday season continues to start earlier each year so it is critical for retailers to make sure that their feeds to comparison shopping engines are accurate and dated well ahead of time. Searches are becoming more specific and that must be taken into account with feed detail.

Brian A. Smith, Analyst, ComparisonEngines
DFO (Data feed optimization) = intelligently manipulating your data feed to achieve a desired marketing goal. You’re in control. Shopping feeds are incredibly dynamic, help with SEO/PPC, and the algorithms are simpler to figure out than SEO.

Engine setup means getting your products listed on the shopping engines and is the first step in data feed optimization. Without a proper feed, many products or an entire feed may be rejected. Remember that each shopping engine has a unique data feed specification.

Are all your SKUs listed? Did you include all the optional info? Did you send the right information? Did you send a unique data feed to each shopping engine? Uniqueness, attribute headers, HML/JS, image links/product links, no commas in the URL string for images, no “$” sign, correct FTP info, mapping, etc…are important attributes.

Qualitative: Once a data feed is up and running you’ll immediately look at the numbers and want to cut your listings. Before you do that you need to understand why your listings are not performing well. Run tests to see if the quality of the data is good enough to achieve desired results.

Watch categorization, titles/descriptions, and product attribute comprehensiveness. Add as much information as possible, use the optional attribute fields, do not spam or make things up, always include whatever unique IDs you have. If manufacture is not listed on shopping engine, tell them to add it. Google base custom attributes for specialized products can make a huge difference.

Quantitative: Determine profitability of the channel of individual engines and individual SKUs. Do not just cut SKUs from your product fee “MasterCard”, not “master care” - be careful.

Get to work! If you invest time and resources into the channel it can work.

Scot Wingo, President and CEO, Channel Advisor Corporation spelled out a list of serious conversion analytic formulas.

How do you impact CSE ROI? At the data feed level, measure each product’s ROI, nuke those that don’t convert, keep those that do. SKU level bidding which is not available on all engines is a useful tool. ETR = sales/cost of sales and sales = clicks * CR*AOV.

ROAS = (AOV*CR / CPC
CPC-“floored”, but you can bid up
AOV – use price filtering to impact
CR – the biggest variable you can impact
CSE level – make sure the data feed is optimized
Site level – entire industries available to help with CR

Price, website optimization, on site search, up-sell, cross-sell, rich images, reviews, etc…are all helpful.

***Note this is “live” unedited blog coverage of SES Chicago 2007. Some typos, grammatical errors, or incomplete thoughts may exist.

Marty Weintraub writes for aimClearBlog and is President of aimClear, a Duluth advertising agency specializing on organic / paid search along with social media marketing.

The Transformation of Local in a Search Driven World

Moderator:

* Michael Boland, Analyst, The Kelsey Group

Speakers:

* Bob Armour, Chief Marketing Officer, ShopLocal
* Scott Dunlap, CEO, NearbyNow
* Manish Patel, CEO, Where2GetIt
* Richard Rosen, CEO, FastCall411

Richard Rosen

FastCall411 started off talking about how they connect consumers with local service providers faster, easier and more reliably than any other search platform.

Consumer Expectation / Current Market Reality

* Of 250,000.000+ calls per month, 2 out of 3 sent to merchants who are not “available”
* 87% of consumers say availability is an important factor when hiring a local vendor
* 10,000,000 merchants are not relevant to the customer
* Proximity is the wrong approach to local search. Meta data is poor

Local search is frustrating for the customer; an effective business model hasn’t been materialized

* Bad base data (old listings, no relevant, poor meta data)
* Not enough user generated content “reviews”
* Difficult prospecting and selling local merchants
* Poor match of “leads with needs”
* Poor concentration of lead volume to individual merchants

Identify “availability” as part of a completely new approach to local search

Connect consumers to relevant available local merchants

Think outside the “web”

Manish Patel

Consumers want choice

* Where 2 buy
* When to buy
* How they buy
* They want basic questions answered
* Where is the nearest?
* Where is it available?
* How do I get there?
* What is the price?

Consumers have adopted search but other very relevant mediums still exist

* Search engines
* Retailer websites
* Manufacturer websites
* Vertical directions
* Comparison shopping engines
* Social media

Getting found = retailer website

Most visited section on their clients websites

Consumers are much more savvy

Filtering functionality

Move ready to buy customers from the product page to where to buy

Answer questions like:

* Where is the product sold?
* What price?
* Is it in stock?
* Can I buy from you directly?

Getting found using search

* Organic
* Vertical
* Paid Search

Get found in emerging media

Even Adidas has a MySpace page

Consumers are in control and you have to be found everywhere whether selling a product or service

Nearly 80% of online searches follow up offine via in sotre visit or phone cal. Of these 66% go on to make a purchase

Engage with Relevant information

If your are selling a product or service today

* Add Local Content to your Website
* Add Mobile Extensions
* Add Registrations

Scott Dunlap

Example – Mobile Targeting

* Shoppers see signs for service on mall directories
* Opt-in by texting “NEARBY”
* Retailers can target nearby customers in real-time
* Limit 2 ads per hour
* Service shuts itself off after 90 min

Mobile can extend existing media

* Can be used to extend in-mall advertising
* Shoppers choose preferred retailer
* From emotion to action
* Make existing media more measurable

Ex: Text “ng1” to NEARBY to find the nearest store that carries this “widget”

If you have buy online pickup in store option, it quickly becomes about half of your online sales

If you put the ability to get a mobile receipt about 35-45% of online sales will use that

Bob Armour

ShopLocal helps advertisers drive in-store sales using the web

Driver #1

The Internet is being used more as a research tool than a buying too

92% of shoppers use internet to do product research but 95% of retail sales happenin store

Driver #2

The web’s influence on offline sales will continue to grow to almost half of all retail sales by 2011 (over $1 trillion)

Driver #3

Advertising spend will follow consumers media time

On advertiser’s sites:

- Smart Circular (The web version of what you get on your Sunday paper)

- 53% of shoppers visit store within 1 week; 95% within the month

- 267 milion page views on Black Friday 2007, up 84% over last year

All across the internet:

- smart media (Local promotions in rich media)

- “close the loop” test: CPG retailer + Large publisher + consumer tracking panel – test produced 2x planned lift. Results were “too good”

- Interaction time: 17 seconds vs 10.7 seconds for standard rich media

On ShopLocal.com:

- 56% of shoppers bought the items they saw on the site in a store

- Over ½ of purchasers would not have bought if they didn’t see the ad online

Contributed by: Justin Davy is a search engine marketing specialist for the E.W. Scripps Company and a guest writer for SER.

Co-moderated by Kevin Ryan and Kevin Heisler from SEW. Panelists include Mike Grehan from Searchvisible Ltd. (congrats Mike on the new company), Andrew Goodman from Page Zero Media, Brad Goldberg from Microsoft Search Business Group, James Lamberti from Comscore, and Jim Muller the tech lead for Google Universal Search.

Mike Grehan briefly introduces some searches at Google to demonstrate the new Google Universal Search layout. He uses the term “Dove beauty workshop,” and describes how some of the results are especially desirable, and that someone would wish they could pay Google for it. The next example is “Bourne Ultimatum” which has “Google Promotion” paid ad and some other results including a “Get Showtimes” “One Box.”

Then Kevin Ryan airs the video of one of the latest ask.com commercials, and pulls up a slide from Comscore, which James presents. He starts off by describing the integrated search and how it is often dominated by engine owned content. From a consumer perspective, the value proposition is changing, but you have to be retrained on how to view the search engine result page. In terms of the data, the most exciting stat is the growth of search: in 2006 20B more queries were conducted than 2005, has grown by 35B queries since 2006.

Integrated search also will have more creative options for Search Engine marketing. The downside is that there will be more competition. 2005: 40% search engine results pages (SERPs) had at least one Google paid ad presentment. 2006: 70%, down to 50% in 2007. On another chart, Yahoo! has remained somewhat flat but the other engines are showing less ads in total, which are still generating more total clicks. Comscore will measure this space by “success rate.” Lastly he pulled up a slide which was down too quick for me to catch but showed the number of times that people actually clicked on a result of the first page. Google led the