The Online Spend Disconnect - PPC And SEO

An interesting post over at SEOMoz highlights the spending disconnect that exists in the way that many companies allocate their online marketing spend.

Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013.
- Source: C|Net News, June 30, 2008

While the current spend on natural SEO?

SEO: $1.3 billion (11%)
- Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008

So, out of a total of around $10.4 billion spent on search, only $1.3 billion, or 12.5% is spent on natural search placement. Therefore you would expect the potential traffic from natural search to be the smaller piece of the pie, right?

Wrong.

Looking at the Google heat map we can see that it’s the natural results that catch the attention of users viewing the page.

This superior visibility is matched by the click through rate data,

The natural results in Google drive more than 70% of search traffic, though only account for 12.5% of online spend.

Why is this? Take your pick from any one or more of the following,

• PPC is an easier concept for people to understand, there is a general lack of education and understanding of the SEO process.
• PPC is quicker (almost instant) to get results and you only pay for traffic that you actually receive. There is a higher perception of accountability and control.
• Traditional marketers pay far less attention to SEO, column inches in the business press given over to SEO are far less than PPC. Again this may well be due to a lack of SEO understanding amongst journalists.
• There is a lack of trust in a segmented and unregulated SEO marketplace. A basic lack of understanding handicaps buyers and can lead to acceptance of poor advice and wrong buying decisions.

Google AdWords Keyword Matching Options

You’re probably aware of the quality targeted traffic Google AdWords can bring to your website through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, and if so, you should be aware of the importance of keywords.

Google provides several keyword matching options to enhance the exposure of your ads, which when used correctly, can pre-qualify visitors and maximise your advertising budget.

Google’s keyword matching options include: -

•    Broad Match
•    Phrase Match
•    Exact Match

Broad Match

Broad Match is the default keyword type where the advert runs on relevant variations of your keywords and phrases. This means your ad could display when the search term includes synonyms, singular/plural forms and other phrases containing your keywords.

Google’s example provides an excellent example of how this keyword matching option operates. In their example, if the keyword web hosting is used, the advert would display for the following search queries:

web hosting company
webhost
web site hosting

You can see that related synonyms also trigger the advert to display, along with additional terms within the triggering keyword (such as site in the last example).

As the keyword variations triggering your adverts change over time, Google continually monitors the keyword quality and performance, meaning you continue to display the highest performing and most relevant keyword variations.

Broad match has several advantages: - more visitors can be attracted to your site as your advert is displayed for other keyphrases which you may not have thought about targeting, but are still relative to the keyword you’ve chosen.

The disadvantage to broad match keywords is that unwanted search terms may trigger the ad to display (if not correctly managed using negative keywords, which will be explained later).

Phrase Match

The next keyword matching option is phrase match. Phrase match keywords trigger your advert to be displayed if the search query contains the keyphrase in the order specified, and phrase match keywords are enclosed in quotation marks (“ “). For example, the phrase match keyword “football boots” will display for the search queries such as:

football boots
buy football boots
football boots review

but would not display for search queries such as:

boots for football or football shoes.

Phrase match has the advantage of being more targeted than broad match, but also has the disadvantage of potentially displaying the advert for an unwanted search query if not correctly managed using negative keywords, i.e. for the phrase match keyword “football boots” the advert would also display for the search query free football boots. If your business is selling football boots and your ad displays for this term, you’re unlikely to make a sale from this searcher!

An important note: For phase match keywords, your keyword or keyphrase triggering your ad is not case sensitive to the search query.

Exact Match

The third keyword matching option is exact match. Exact match keywords will only display the advert if the search query is exact to the keyword.
Exact match keywords are enclosed in ‘[‘ and ‘]’ characters.

For example, for the exact match keyword [buy dog bowl], the advert will only display if the search query is buy dog bowl and would not display for any other search query.

Exact match keywords have the advantage of being extremely targeted if you know an exact popular term for your industry.

Negative Keywords

The final and equally important keyword matching option is negative keywords. Negative keywords are used to NOT display the advert if the search query contains the negative term. Negative keywords are used by placing a ‘-‘ character before the keyword.
For example, if your business is selling web templates, using the negative keyword
–free will not display your advert if the search query as free web templates.

Pay-Per-Click-Advertising - Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Dynamic keyword insertion is a little known trick that can really help to improve ad click through rates and help to reduce overall advertising costs.

When users search queries appear on the search results page they appear in bold text as in the adverts below.

This attention grabbing bold text helps to improve the click through rate of the advert. Sometimes it’s not practical to create 100’s of different adverts for combinations of different search keywords that searchers may use.

It’s possible to set your adverts so that they match the exact keywords that the search engine user has used to trigger your ad. This means that all of your adverts will display the exact search text used each time.

The correct syntax to use dynamic keyword insertion when writing your ad titles is: {keyword: } You can even add text before or after your keyword. Such as Buy {keyword: } or {keyword: } Cheap.

You can also use capitalisation,

{keyword:} will make the title small
{KeyWord:} will capitalize all the words in the Google AdWords ad title.

Imagine that you are running an ad for lots of different makes of cars, by writing an ad like this,

Will mean that a user searching for “BMW” will see this,

Or a user searching for “Ford Escort” will see this,

Notice that the dynamic keywords can be inserted into any section of the ad, the ad title, body text or even the URL.

What if a keyword is searched for that isn’t on your keyword list?

The text that is inserted after keyword: is your default ad text. So if someone enters a serach query that isn’t matched exactly to one of your specified keyword terms, then your ad will revert to it’s default,

Although dynamic keyword insertion can work really well at maximising the number of relevant visitors to your site, increasing click-though rate and keeping your cost per click low, it should be very carfully managed and monitored to ensure that you’re only bidding on terms that are relevant.

E-Bay is a good example of what can go wrong when dynamic keyword insertion isn’t monitored closely,