Search marketing can be confusing enough for a brand trying to get to grips with its intricacies without having to choose between relying on search-engine optimisation (SEO) or paid search. But this decision is critical, as getting it right can dramatically improve the performance of a brand online - whereas getting it wrong can be disastrous.
It is not a simple choice between one or the other, however; they are two different techniques and are used for very different reasons. While SEO is concerned with the nuts and bolts of a website, from its build and database through to the text content of its pages, paid search helps businesses remain above rivals on listings - and thus at the front of consumers' minds.
The skills of a search-engine optimiser are often referred to as 'dark arts' by the traditional marketing world, but this belies a lack of understanding of the medium and the all-encompassing reach of what SEO can do for businesses. While the skills used as part of SEO may seem baffling to the uninitiated, it is vital to ensuring that a business is visible to consumers searching for products and services online.
Arjo Ghosh, chief executive of Spannerworks, one of the UK's best-known SEO specialists, says that an internet-savvy brand will already be using the practice and linking it to all its other marketing efforts. 'The smart money is on developing a broader view on your search. You must not focus too much on it as one discipline - SEO is not niche; it should be connected to all your marketing efforts,' he says.
How SEO works
SEO uses an array of techniques, from the structuring of a website's database so search engines can access it to ensuring that the site's pages can be read and contain as many keywords as possible that relate to its offering.
The primary focus of SEO is to get a business to the top of the natural search listings, but poor practice can lead to big problems. The recent negative publicity surrounding BMW's expulsion from Google's listings in Germany shows just what can happen when a company gets SEO wrong. BMW's SEO agency Netbooster created a 'doorway page' containing keywords for search engines to find the site. Google objected, as it believes it is unethical to have one site that can only be found by search engines and another that can be found by the consumer typing in the URL, and removed BMW from its engine for a short time.
Ghosh believes there will be more high-profile cases in the future, adding that pages are often pulled from search engines for having bad SEO - although not usually belonging to such a high-profile brand. 'There have been a few sites penalised lately. The rush into search means that there aren't many people who know what they are doing. In SEO you cannot just hire in people to do it for you, as the skills aren't there,' he says.
Danger in search can come from any angle. Last year shipping company FedEx received negative publicity after threatening legal action against a man who made furniture out of its delivery boxes and displayed his work online. As he was getting better visibility on search engines than FedEx's own site, the company tried to sue him, leading to a big PR backlash, especially from the increasingly influential blogging community. Observers believe an effective SEO strategy would have probably prevented this situation arising.
Ghosh says that this area of brand protection will become a more important part of the SEO mix. 'Over the next two to five years we are going to see marketing and PR communications overlapping online,' he says. 'I see the ability to build a community around a brand where PR, communication, user-generated content and RSS all play a part in helping the brand online. Nobody is doing this yet as they have enough worries about normal search, but it is the future.'
Paid search is a very different technique and is more commonly seen linked to offline campaigns, although it is also an ongoing practice because of its revenue-generation potential. Georgie Harmel, head of search at Zed, part of the ZenithOptimedia Group, says that carrying out paid search is vital for marketers to protect their business. 'You must secure your own brand online. It is vital to any search campaign to secure your intellectual property and make sure nobody is stealing your customers.'
Harmel, who works with Zurich, Lloyds TSB, BMW and Toyota on paid search, says that even with an effective paid search strategy in place there are still dangers brands need to be aware of. 'We still have to check on Google,' she adds. 'Even if you have registered brand terms, others can get around it with different spellings or the use of capitals, and there are a number of bid-management software tools that allow you to select the competition that you want to outbid.'
In-house or outsource?
As there are numerous techniques in the highly competitive paid search market, marketers have to constantly monitor keywords, the rates they are paying, how often they are used and the return on investment.
It is a confusing market for newcomers and there is a strong argument for getting an agency to handle all a brand's search marketing, even though paid search can be dealt with in-house using tools provided by the search engines themselves.
Whether to allocate search marketing in-house or outsource to a third party can be critical to the long-term success of a brand's search marketing strategy.
Jo Burman, e-business manager at Best Western Hotels, says that the chain of independently owned and run hotels never thought of handling its own search marketing and instead uses Spannerworks. 'We have been educated by the agency and pass on what we have learned to (our 300 UK member) hotels. It would be very easy to find yourself in BMW's position. You have to have someone guarding your brand online at all times.'
The argument for outsourcing SEO is straightforward: many companies simply do not have the skills in-house to handle the task. Paid search is a different matter, however, as there is a fierce battle for brands' business raging between the search engines and agencies.
Paul Doleman, chief sales and marketing officer at search agency Latitude, says that it does not make sense to go straight to a search engine and use its tools because, being the media owner, it won't offer the best deal. 'By going direct to engines you are letting the people who are charging you money tell you what to do,' he adds.
Last year Google launched the Google European Third Party Programme, which ended agency commission for paid search for all but the top billing agencies in Europe, which bring in significant volumes of business. It meant agencies had to work harder to attract business and shoulder the loss in revenue.
Google was slammed at the time for forcing third-party agencies out of the market and for increasing its dominance over the nascent sector, but Doleman says when it comes to paid search the argument for going to an agency should be based on service and not cost. 'The service element is key,' he says. 'Most engines are a global business and have scalable goals. They make advertisers' tools easy to use and so are geared toward self-service based on technology. Agencies take time to take into account clients' needs and their other offline channels; you won't get that human element from search engines.'
Developing skills
Not all brands are swayed by the agencies. Figleaves, the online underwear retailer, has used Google's tools for paid search in-house for more than three years. Richard Brooks, Figleaves' search manager, says he would recommend the practice to any company, as long as it has the necessary skills to handle it. 'In the early days it was a default decision because search was a small concern and it did not justify hiring a separate agency to handle it,' he says. 'Later it became (a bigger part of our operation), but by then we had developed the skills (to handle it properly). Doing it in-house gives you more control and a better ability to react quickly.'
Whichever route marketers choose to take, it is becoming clear that both search-engine optimisation and paid search are growing in importance and can both play a critical role in a marketer's armoury. There is now a concerted effort by the online search industry to make the practice more mainstream, and with marketers keen to protect their brands online, the prospects for both agencies and engines are distinctly rosy.
SEARCH AGENCIES Ambergreen: www.ambergreeninternetmarketing.com Bigmouthmedia: www.bigmouthmedia.com Cheeze: www.cheeze.co.uk ClickThrough Marketing: www.clickthrough-marketing.com DGM: www.dgm-uk.com Greenlight: www.greenlight.co.uk i-level: www.i-level.com Koded: www.koded.co.uk Latitude: www.searchlatitude.com MediaCo: www.media.co.uk Netbooster: www.netbooster-uk.co.uk Netrank: www.netrank.co.uk Outrider: www.outrider.com Receptional: www.receptional.com Sitelynx: sitelynx.com Site Visibility: www.sitevisibility.co.uk Smart Interactive: www.smart-interactive.co.uk Spannerworks: www.spannerworks.com Tamar: www.tamar.com The Search Works: www.thesearchworks.com Unique Digital: www.unique-digital.co.uk Vertical Leap: www.vertical-leap.co.uk Web Diversity: www.webdiversity.co.uk Weboptimiser: www.weboptimiser.com Zed: www.zedmedia.co.uk
CASE STUDY - SEO - CONFUSED.COM
Confused.com, the car-insurance site, wanted to increase its traffic through a natural search strategy and establish itself as a leading brand in the online motor insurance market. Having hired agency Spannerworks, it identified four key objectives:
- Accurate targeting of key motor insurance and online markets.
- High visibility within organic listings in the major search engines.
- Increase in search-engine referrals for targeted search terms.
- High number of conversions from the website, at the lowest cost-per-customer acquisition.
Spannerworks created a natural search strategy, recommending changes to the site structure to make it more accessible to search engines. It optimised the site's content, tailoring pages to the most popular car insurance quote search terms, and helped build and acquire relevant high-quality incoming links.
Since 2004, the site has achieved consistent top 10 results in Google UK (its biggest traffic provider) for top search terms such as 'car insurance' and 'compare car insurance'. Hitwise ranked Confused.com the seventh most-visited site out of 681 'immediate competitor' sites in its sector from July-September 2005; in 2005, 413% more quotes were delivered than the year before. January 2006 delivered the highest number of quotes generated so far from natural search-engine listings - 238% up on January 2005. Natural search now delivers more than 15% of the site's quotes.
Higher-quote volumes generated an average cost-per-quote of less than 10p in 2004, much lower than Confused.com's other marketing channels such as pay-per-click, TV and radio. The average cost per quote fell by 63% in 2005.
Due to the success of the strategy, Confused.com has expanded the campaign to include home insurance and more search terms.
CASE STUDY - PAID SEARCH - BRITTANIA HOTELS
Britannia Hotels is a privately owned group that has 28 hotels and about 4000 employees across the UK. In 2004, it appointed Latitude to handle its search marketing activity, specifying seven objectives:
- Increase online bookings by 20% year on year. - Produce a 1000% return on investment. - Increase brand awareness, measured by site visits. - Achieve a specified target cost per click. - Install software to monitor campaign performance. - Create URLs to support regional hotel searches. - Increase relevant internet traffic.
The campaign strategy was primarily focused on driving traffic to www.britanniahotels.com to maximise bookings, improve capacity levels across the hotel group, and provide return on investment. Latitude installed tracking software on all the group's URLs to monitor performance.
Once the campaign had been formally implemented, relevant online traffic began to rise significantly. The agency used a technique known as 'deeper keyword buying' to drive down the cost-per click while increasing web traffic. Online sales began to rise in line with traffic levels.
In the first month of the project, an additional 1800 visitors to the site were recorded without compromising Britannia's budget. Similar results were achieved in the second month, when the managed campaign drew an additional 12% traffic above forecast levels, again within budget.
The tracking software allowed the agency to refine the campaign and distribute the budget according to the best-performing keywords and search engines. The achieved cost-per-click level ran at 12.5% below target, providing Britannia Hotels with significant savings.
From the beginning of January to the end of March last year, Britannia's bookings increased by 44% compared with the same period in 2004, and in direct correlation to the paid search marketing activity.
The three-month campaign produced a 43.7% year-on-year increase in online bookings, with an overall return on investment of 1323%; 162,677 unique visits to the site were recorded during the activity, 12.5% higher than expected.
Britannia Hotels' site achieved an additional 24,400 clickthroughs through the campaign. The activity was such a success that the company extended it into 2006.
STRATEGIES - PROS AND CONS
For SEO
- It can have a positive effect on the amount of business you do online
- It improves brand visibility online
Against SEO
- You risk being delisted by search engines if you use banned practices
- It can be very complex and confusing
For paid search
- It can protect your brand online so others cannot hijack your trademarks
- If you don't do it, your competitors will and you will miss out on business
Against paid search
- It can be a confusing market
- It does not work for every sector and may not be relevant to your business.
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