I bought a car the other day. I had sized up the market, sussed out the dealer and was ready to trade. I had even left it until the last few days of the quarter, hoping the imminent end of the salesman's bonus period would give me leverage.
I made my move then, setting out a list of demands I never thought he would sign up to, mentally checking off the ones I'd be prepared to concede, and emailed the list to him, thinking 'let the battle commence'.
His email back caught me entirely by surprise. 'Fine,' he wrote. 'When do you want to come in and sign?'
It has entirely taken the gloss off getting a new car. Getting a good deal was important to me, and I can't help thinking I've paid more than I should. The reality is, though, I got a great deal - better than two other people I know who've bought recently, and far better than I thought I'd get. I should be counting the value I got, not the value I didn't.
I see this in the search market every day. Some search you have to pay for; some is free. Which should you use? Should you do as much of the free stuff as you can, then top up with paid? Or do both at the same time? Nobody wants to pay for something they think they can get for free. So what's the right answer?
Pay-per-click (PPC) search and search engine optimisation (SEO) have different purposes, but support the same goals. The starting point is to make them work together so that they complement one another. The basis for this is to measure them both using the same tracking system. This way, you can make like-for-like comparisons and understand whether each adds value to your activity, and how.
Most marketers either persist in the outdated view that SEO is unaccountable, or do not track it on an apples-to-apples basis.
Once it's measurable, we can start to develop the different roles for SEO and PPC, and see how they interact.
Generally, SEO has three roles: always-on messaging, cost control for PPC, and maximising visibility.
In the short term, SEO is slower to respond and better suited to long-term interaction. This is where your core messages can be communicated, providing the backbone of your relations in search, and allowing you to build tactical and time-sensitive messaging.
The amount you pay for keywords in Google depends, in part, on your quality score - and this is largely driven by the optimisation of your site using SEO. If you perform well in SEO, your paid search will be cheaper. Finally, using a combination of SEO and paid search increases the impact of your brand on the search engine results page, and recent research shows that so-called 'dual visibility' increases clickthrough - the 'second opinion' effect.
But if you've got your metrics sorted, this isn't a matter of faith or third-party research - you can just ask the data.
We've seen how paid search enables tactical messaging, such as 'prices cut', and time-sensitive messaging, such as 'sale starts tomorrow', to be layered round the SEO backbone, while reinforcing it in dual listings. Paid search also forms a useful development zone, allowing copy, propositions and keyword lists to be tested and honed before being fed into SEO.
In addition to unified metrics, this dynamic relationship between SEO and paid search requires short lines
of communication. From strategy to execution, the management of both has to be done in one place.
To compete effectively, you need both - and what's more, an integrated strategy that builds on the synergy they offer. What counts in search is not just what you pay for it, but the value you get.
Andrew Walmsley is co-founder of i-level
30 seconds on... price-comparison services
- Price-comparison services began in the late-90s as browser add-ons.
- They were some of the first sites on the web to use pay-per-click advertising.
- Many allow online retailers to pay for higher rankings on their 'search results' listings.
- European site Kelkoo.com was the first to launch internationally, which it did in 1999. It subsequently merged with Yahoo! in 2004 to become Yahoo! Shopping.
- Price-comparison sites have made an opening for comp-arison site optimisation specialists, who increase brand prominence using techniques similar to search engine optimisation.
- Comparison sites often get their data from third-party affiliate networks which provide lengthy data feeds.
- The first price-comparison sites relied on retailers to provide information, but today's sites search for pricing data directly, which allows both better accuracy and real-time updates.
- BizRate.com is the category's most-used site, with more than 17m monthly visitors.