paid search

45% of companies say content marketing is ‘highly integrated’ with their SEO strategy

Organisations are more likely to integrate content marketing with their SEO strategy than they are with any other digital marketing discipline. 

Nearly half (45%) of all companies say this area is ‘highly integrated’ with their SEO efforts, compared to just 24% for paid search marketing and 16% for mobile marketing. 

These findings come from Econsultancy’s State of Search Marketing Report 2013, in association with SEMPO.

It’s easy to see why content marketing is so appealing, as it essentially gives your company something to talk about. 

Instead of firing off the same boring press release to whichever journalists will listen to and parrot its dry copy, providing an audience with quality content means providing them with something they can engage with, share and ultimately do your own marketing for you.

Although your audience is only going to do that if your content is entertaining, useful or innovative.

10 blue links: are they dead or alive in search?

It’s a provocative question and heaven knows we all love one of those.

There are a lot of contradictory opinions out there surrounding the term ‘blue links’ and how many are to be found on your average search engine results pages (SERPs). 

While many proclaim the death of ’10 blue links’, other experts suggest their own research confirms otherwise.

Search is an ever evolving, constantly tinkered with playground that is almost impossible to ‘game’ in the long-term and second-guess in the short-term. 

As a producer of content myself, I’ve always believed that SEO best practice lies in the quality of the content itself. Creating entertaining, useful, relevant or engaging content is the number one approach and any ‘wins’ your content may achieve in appearing in organic search listings are a well earned result.

Of course I sound naïve here and I’m fully aware that good SEO involves more than just that, especially if organic search listings on the first SERP are becoming less visible. 

Let’s take a look at the current state of play for organic search and ’10 blue links’.

PPC-illustration

PPC agency payment models: fixed fee

Towards the end of last year, I started a series of posts digging into the mechanics of PPC agency pricing models.

The aim? To help buyers make more informed decisions when it comes to choosing a model that’s right for their business, whilst hopefully leading to some healthy debate amongst buyers and sellers alike.

If you haven’t already, check out the overview of percentage of spend and pay on performance models. And if you have, thank you for sticking with me. Here we go with the final post in the series, a look at fixed fee models.

The bread and butter of PPC ad testing

PPC ads are never finished. They should constantly be tested and refined to increase performance with the ultimate goal of increasing click-through rate (CTR).

An eye-catching and well-optimised ad will attract greater click-through which in turn will lead to a lower cost-per-click. The entire account will benefit from the improvement in these key metrics, so why settle for results that are just OK when you can test your ad copy and achieve PPC greatness?

However, before you drill into the finer points of testing your ad copy, there are a few basics to understand that will ensure your tests are giving you reliable data:

Global paid search spend increased in 2013: stats

Covario has just issued its Global Paid Search Spend Analysis for Q4 2013, revealing that global spend on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has increased by 13% from Q3 and 7% year-on-year.

Paid search on mobile also had an incredible 2013, with impressive numbers recorded for Android, iPhone and iPad activations. Total advertising spend on mobile grew 23% in Q4 2013 from Q3. This is 55% up from the same period in 2012.

Keyword pricing wise, the average cost-per-click (CPC) came down in Q4 2013, however the average CPC rose 10% versus the same period in 2012.

How Facebook news feed changes will affect your brand

Facebook has revealed that organic reach for brands will fall short, if it hasn’t begun to do so already.

In a recent tweak to the news feed algorithm, Facebook has begun to prioritise content from the people that users engage with the most, ensuring content from a ‘liked’ company’s Facebook page will become a negligible presence.

In a press release from December, Facebook urges marketers to buy ads instead of merely relying on the free content channel of running a Facebook page.

This ‘tweak’ signifies a dramatic change to the Facebook experience for users, brands and anybody else who may run a Facebook page, whether it’s for profit or not.

What will paid search look like in 2014?

In the paid search world, 2013 was as busy at it gets. Major changes to Google included the Enhanced Campaigns migration and rise of Product Listing Ads (PLAs) not to mention the maturing of Facebook as an advertising platform.

However, one of the biggest shifts was outside of paid search with Google’s move to [not provided] on SEO keyword data removing visibility for advertisers in the SEO channel, boosting paid search in the process.

This is fantastic for those of us who work in paid search, but what is next? Looking forward I’ve been thinking about what will be the hot search marketing topics in 2014.

Tablets account for a third of Boxing Day conversions and revenue from PPC

Tablet devices accounted for more than a third of conversions, revenue and spend from UK retail paid search on Boxing Day.

The data should come as no real surprise to anyone involved in ecommerce, however it is useful as further evidence of the continued consumer shift towards mobile devices.

It should also be noted that the festive period does present something of an anomaly in terms of site traffic, as data is skewed due to people being away from their work computers and also because tablets and smartphones are a popular Christmas gift.

Q&A: Confused.com on handling PPC in a competitive market

2013 has seen plenty of changes to paid search, mainly driven by Google. For a brand in a competitive market like insurance, little tweaks here and there matter. 

Changes include the addition of Google’s own comparison products to the SERPs, meaning less visibility for organic results, enhanced campaigns, and changes to the style of PPC ads. 

I’ve been asking Heledd Jones, head of search marketing at Confused.com (and an Econsultancy guest blogger), about the challenges presented by these changes, and her thoughts on how PPC will evolve in the next year.

Econsultancy Visual Search report

Four key search marketing questions we’re asking in North America

For the forth year running, we’ve been asking search marketers in North America to give us their views of the state of the industry.

Previously we’ve covered a broad area of concerns, from how search marketers set objectives and metrics, right through to budgets, resourcing and the integration of social media.

This year while covering similar areas to the previous, there are a few differences. Below are some of the things we are looking for, but better yet, take our survey before the start of next week and you’ll get a complimentary copy of the report worth $695 before anyone else gets a look!

And do feel free to share the link: http://ecly.co/SEMPO-2013

How to make money from AdWords without using the experts

Back in my early days of running websites and trying to forge a living online, I stumbled across PPC in the form of Google AdWords.

I liked the idea of driving traffic to a website nigh on instantly. That was until I ran a few of my keywords through the old Keyword Tool and saw exactly how much the estimated CPCs were: upwards of £5 per click!

I broke into a cold sweat because I knew all of my biggest competitors were using PPC, I just didn’t see how it could be profitable and I knew right there and then that my sites were going to fail.

I just couldn’t afford to pay £5+ per click.

pay-per-click-ppc

PPC agency payment models: performance based

Following on from my last article exploring ‘percentage of spend’, I now turn my attention to ‘performance based’ agency models.

In essence, any paid search program should be performance based i.e. the agency and client should agree the strategy, objectives and KPIs, of which the agency will then be measured against.

The distinction in this instance is when the remuneration of the agency is directly linked to the financial performance of the paid search campaign.

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