Electronic Retailer - December 2011 - 30

What’s New in
Search engine marketing is a rapidly evolving discipline. New complexities pop up every day. Here are just a few.
BY JACK GORDON

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How would you define the basic goal of search engine marketing (SEM) and its sub-discipline, search engine optimization (SEO)? Would you say that the point is to ensure that links to your company or your product appear as high as possible on the lists of paid advertisements or “organic” hits that appear on internet search engines in response to certain keywords? That description, though reasonable enough, always would have drawn some quibbles from online marketing agencies, especially those specializing in the direct-response industry. For instance, Timothy Seward, CEO of marketing agency ROI Revolution in Raleigh, N.C., notes that no rightthinking DR marketer would pay for the top spot in the paid-ad listings for every relevant keyword. In paid search, as in any other kind of DR advertising, success is all about cost per order and return on investment, Seward says. “For some keywords, you might want to pay a premium to appear first or second. But for others you might want to show up fifth because that’s where your ROI comes in.” That observation is as valid now as ever. But today, experts agree, there are many other reasons why it pays to develop a more nuanced understanding of search engine marketing. Like

everything having to do with the internet, SEM is evolving fast. Practices that were adequate yesterday won’t necessarily cut it tomorrow. And that is true even without considering the galaxy of new challenges that arise when searches are conducted on mobile devices such as smartphones.

Accuracy is Key
“We would say that the ultimate goal of SEM is to meet the consumer at the moment of relevance,” says Ed Kats, president of New York-based online marketing agency MediaWhiz. “Search is about users asking questions and getting answers. [A marketer’s] job is to make sure that the answers they provide are as accurate as possible.” Accuracy, in the sense Kats intends, is a multifaceted term, and it becomes more crucial as search engines evolve. To begin with, he means that the marketer’s search-engine ads should appear only when they point toward products or services that the searcher is actually seeking or has an interest in. Accuracy determines how often an ad will be clicked on, which in turn determines the viability and success of a SEM campaign. While paid search advertising works on an auction basis, with advertisers bidding against one another for keywords, the highest spots in the ad

rankings do not necessarily go to the highest bidders. Since search engine providers like Google, Bing and Yahoo make money on a per-click basis, they determine ad positioning with algorithms that consider not just what an advertiser offers to pay per click, but the number of clicks an ad is likely to get. In other words, as Kats puts it, “You can’t just win with your wallet. Google rewards advertisers who are more likely to be clicked on. So you need ads that provide accurate answers to the questions users are asking.” This has wide-ranging implications, especially for advertisers who sell a number of different products. Accuracy has to do with which keywords to select, how the ad copy should read for each keyword and which page of the advertiser’s website each ad should link to. For example, says Adam Riff, general manager of MediaWhiz’s search division, a marketer’s ad for the keyword phrase “work boots” should specify work boots, not

electronicRETAILER | December 2011

Electronic Retailer - December 2011

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