Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK - Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox

Search Marketing - The next battle ground for your brand?

In the UK just over 15% of of the total media spend is now spent on online advertising. This trend is set to continue with year on year growth expected at around 40%. By the end of this decade it is widely expected that online advertising will replace television as the leading advertising platform in this country.

The vast majority (nearly 60%) of the online budget is being spent on various forms of pay per click. The 800 pound gorilla in this market is obviously Google, other well know companies here include Yahoo and Microsoft. The attraction of pay per click as a tool for acquiring new customers or clicks to your site is incomparable. It may not be the most cost effective or scalable solution, however it certainly delivers the goods.

Currently, we believe that there is an opportunity for companies to reduce or compliment their pay per click campaigns with traditional search engine optimisation. We recognise that product launches and instant results can often only be accelerated with a pay per click strategy, however optimising for the search engines as well will reduce your customer acquisition costs, increase your branding, increase your traffic and hopefully positively impact your bottom line.

We’re starting to see the start of this trend now. Just this week MTV announced that they were going to concentrate on their search branding. They want to revamp their association with new and upcoming music and therefore improve their relationship with their core younger audience. They will do this by being associated in the search results for up and coming bands or via the names of their TV programmes. Basically, they want to increase their search engine presence as they have worked out that people who are searching for details of whatever new hip hop act is flavour of the day, do not use the search for MTV. This means there are hundreds and thousands of potential MTV clickers out there they currently do not reach.

Once this penny drops, companies will begin to leverage the natural search engine results and proactively try to influence them in different ways than today. Naturally, this could mean a slight reduction in the pay per click budget, however we think that the search budget will actually be increased and the pay per click budget will grow at a steady rate.

The great thing about search engine marketing is that in terms of cost it can be considerably lower than pay per click. Most if not all of it can be achieved in house if you had the right resources and skills. We run a number of Search Marketing Courses in the UK, our students tend to have the same skills requirements, below is a list of the most popular areas we cover:

- Do your keyword research, making sure you understand what your customers are using to search for you.
- Invest in your pages, have one for each product, service or solution that you have. Each of these pages can then be optimised. If you’re worried about how manageable your site might be, consider a web content management system.
- Make sure your site is search engine friendly, this is both on site and off site.
- Run monthly reports with your search engine consultants so that you can track the keyword success

If you do not want to take ownership of this inhouse, then you might want to work with an SEO consultancy. Naturally, we at Generate UK would be delighted to help, however this blog posting is not a pitch it is supposed to be a helpful guide. So we’ve listed below the key criteria that we use to help make our search engine marketing projects a success.

- Who owns the project. All projects require senior stakeholders and support, it is no different with search engine marketing and branding. If the project is supported, it can be strongly project managed.

- What are the objectives. This sounds like a no brainer but unfortunately often missed. This should involve; where you are and where you want to be.

- Target the right vehicle. By this we mean that you should focus on the search engine that means the most to you and offers the most potential to your business.

- Keywords and keyphrases. This is one of the areas we cover on our Internet Marketing course. our students will tell you how important we think keyword research is; without it, your project is doomed from the start.

- Content. The right content that is both search engine friendly, focused on your customer and includes the right number of keywords. It really is that simple!

- Pay per click. If you’re using pay per click make sure that you know what your bid prices are and have a budget. Agree beforehand what the maximum is that you will pay for a click.

- Landing Pages. If you’re spending lots of money on pay per click and search marketing, you have to make sure that your pages sell or capture or whatever it is that you decided was your objective.

- Analytics. One of the main reasons that online advertising spend will eclipse television is that it is immediately available to analyse, and it is very important you do.

- Was it worthwhile. Once you have analysed a campaign, you will be able to tell whether you had a decent return on investment.

- Review, review, review. Whatever campaign you send out, whatever keyword you are tracking and whatever new page you are creating it is vital that you have a culture of review. Constant tweaks and improvements can be the difference between sales and no sales.

As you can see, there is a real opportunity for companies to leverage the search engines in a different way to how they are currently doing it. It is a world of new prospects and branding opportunities, it is a world of proactive search management and a world that is still being defined.

We’d be delighted to hear from you if you have anything to add to this post, use the comments box below.

Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK - Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox

Online reputation management is all about protecting your brand and image online. Most companies go to great lengths to protect their reputation offline, unfortunately they are often slow to react to different pressures online. In this world of blogospheres and user generated feedback, one of the greatest challenges for services or product led companies is to manage unflattering or malicious listings in search results.

Imagine the scenario of Company A who have launched a new product. They spend a lot of money on above the line advertising, used their Internet Marketing Agency to create a successful viral campaign and even have a well thought out pay per click strategy. Everyone is happy with the progress and all is going well. That was until somebody spots a “review” of their new product on a search listing result. Unfortunately, the “review” is not a flattering one, in fact it is not very encouraging at all. More frustrating is that it ranks higher than you do for your product. What can you do about this?

This is a very real issue. Whilst, we would always recommend a proactive strategy for online reputation management, we also know that asking clients to spend money to prevent something from happening is very difficult. Remember the early days with virus protection, you only ever invested if you have had your fingers burned. So for this example, we’re assuming that most people do not proactive and do not as a part of their roles seek to protect their online footprint against unflattering results.

The challenge is a pretty simple one, how do you remove the unflattering listing from search results Or what strategy do you use to reduce its ranking and increase yours?

The first job to do is really understand what the unflattering page is all about. Is it from a competitor? a consumer? is it overtly malicious? Is there a case to report it to the search engines for breach of rules and therefore have it removed from the listings? (Keep in mind that this does not always work). Is it possible that you can encourage the page owner to remove the content? It’s important to know whether the page is being honest or whether the report is false, if so you might use your “right of reply” to set the record straight. Try to learn as much as possible about the keywords of the page and how it is ranking.

At Generate UK, we do not encourage or use any Black Hat methods. We appreciate that many of you might suggest one or two interesting alternatives to having the unflattering page removed. So for the purposes of this article, consider everything white hat.

If it is not possible to have the page removed, then unfortunately you are going to have to work with it. This is where your understanding of the page comes in. What you need to do is to rank higher and in larger numbers in order to move their page down the results. Again, there are a number of black hat methods to assist with this, however we will be using what is available to us, using white hat methods.

The key to this is to increase your footprint in the search results. If you understood what keywords the unflattering page is using and how it is coming up in the search results, then you must start to target those keywords.

We would look at the different social media options available and recommend a bespoke effort based upon the client in question. Using our new product example above, we would engage with sites such as YouTube, Digg and other elements of the Blogosphere. This might take the form of video content, new friendly reviews, how to guides and other complimentary information and content that will support the effort. We would also use search engine marketing PR and leverage the more well known news and media outlets.

By using the sites that already rank well in search results and doing your research, you’ll soon be able to list for the keywords and phrases that the original unflattering page targeted. A carefully tailored approach with the client will soon have that page away from the eyes of the masses who only click on one of the first three results.

Online reputation management is very important, ideally you will already have a proactive approach and be busy in this area already. If not, consider how you might react to negativity and how quickly you are able to address it. Then consider the brand and reputation damage you might receive for doing nothing.

We’re always interest in your views and feedback. If you have anything to contribute to this article, please contact us below.

Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK - Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox