SEO and SEM: A Two Pronged Approach to Generating Leads

Marketing Professionals

Rand Fishkin, CEO SEOmozBill Leake, CEO Apogee Results

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Our Amazing Speakers!

Rand Fishkin

CEO, SEOmoz

Bill Leake

CEO, Apogee Results

Rand FiskinCEO & Co-founder, SEOMoz

Dilbert Explains SEO

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-02-19/

Hopefully, Lots of You Went to MIT

http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N49/survey.html

THE SEARCH MARKET

US Search Engine Market Share

PPC vs. SEO in Clicks & Spend

~88% of clicks

(2009 - $1.5 Billion)

~12% of clicks

(2009 ~$18 Billion)

http://chitika.com/research/2010/the-value-of-google-result-positioning/

Probably Doesn’tGet 34% CTR

SEARCH ENGINES & USERS

We Search More & More Every Month

CRAWLING & INDEXING

The Difference Between Crawling & Indexing

The Crawl Selection Process

No, Really – Even Google Says So

PageRank: Links as Votes

The Flow of PageRank

PageRank is Split Evenly Between Links

PageRank is an Iterative Algorithm

Technically, Every External Link “Leaks” PageRank

PageRank is Important for Crawling, But…

Toolbar PageRank is neither precise nor consistent

PageRank is just 1 of 200+ factors for ranking

PageRank hoarding is probably bad for your site

There are Many Levels of Indexation

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/crawling-indexing-its-not-as-simple-as-just-in-or-out

You Can Measure Indexation via Analytics

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indexation-for-seo-real-numbers-in-5-easy-steps

Or Use Google’s Counts

SEARCH ENGINE ALGORITHMS

Crowdsourced “Guess”

Crowdsourced “Guess”

Ranking Model ~70% Accuracyvia machine learning at SEOmoz

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-algorithm-pretty-charts-math-stuff

Domain Trust & Authority

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-algorithm-pretty-charts-math-stuff

Page-Specific Link Popularity

Anchor Text

<a href=“http://twitter.com”> Tweet Central </a>

Anchor Text!(a strong influence on search engine rankings)

Google Bombing w/ Anchor Text

Google Bombing w/ Anchor Text

On-Page Keyword Usage

Registration & Hosting Data

User & Usage Data

Social Graph Data: Big News

http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389

Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?

Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article 

Google: We treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as we treat tweeted links. We have no personal wall data from Facebook.

What Might Be in a Tweet Algo?

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-bing-confirm-twitter-facebook-influence-seo

• Number of Unique Tweeting Sources (Diversity)

• “Author Authority” of the Tweeting Sources

• Time of Tweet (QDF)

• Connection Between Tweeter and Source Domain

• Quantity + Quality of Retweets

• Quantity of Clicks

Bill LeakeCEO, Apogee Results

Best Practices & Advanced SEM Tactics(a.k.a., Getting Far More of the Good Stuff from Your Digital $$)

William LeakeCEO, Apogee Results

leake@ApogeeResults.com@marketing_bill

More Arrows are Generally Good

VS

CRM

Integrated Search Methodology

Most companies stilloptimize to yield thelargest number of visitors or lead form submissions per dollar spent.

Look both further down the sales funnel AND across the funnel to maximize your ROI based on lead quality or closed opportunities.

Why we *might* NOT knowanything (aka Reality Slide)

Once you have something figured out, it is probably about to change on you

There are many roads to Rome Hubris (pride) is the beginning of humiliation What works for someone else, might not

work for you I’m not from California

• Sales?• Top Line Revenue?• Bottom Line Earnings?• Margin?• ROI?• Brand (building, maintenance and/or defense)

Most Likely, NOT WEB FORMS

Deep Thoughts? What does your company really want from your marketing efforts?

• Social Media• Partners• Channels• Press• Portals• Divisional efforts• Google’s “search within this site”• Universal / Blended Search

Shades of a paradigm shift …

Deep Thoughts? Are you too attached to your website?

Foundational SEM 1. ABT (Always Be Testing)

- Ad copy- Keywords- Landing pages / conversion

2. ABM (Always Be Measuring)- What matters?- How are you measuring it?

3. ABA (Always Be Asking)- What else can I learn from this?- PPC drives SEO keyword selection

THINK PROCTER & GAMBLE (SHELF SPACE)

Advanced SEM Strategies

Think P&G / Shelf Space (18-21)

Lead-Gen Triple-Serving, Positions 2, 7, and 10

IF YOU HAVE A CHANNEL, USE IT (THINK COOP)

Advanced SEM Strategies

B2C Channel Coop / Shelf Space Control (Dish)

CONSIDER EVENT- AND NAME-DRIVEN SEM / PPC

Advanced SEM Strategies

Event-Driven Paid Search

PUTYOUR

ADHERE?

61

House List / Direct Mail Tie-ins

Integrate online marketing with more traditional focused direct marketing: (think online mail-merge)

• Develop DB-driven microsite to dynamically generate offer• Offer can be specific to person who types it in• We’ve built this technology -- you can use ours or build your own

• Buy high priority names in Google so when they search their name, they get a specialized offer

• Google Paid Seach Ad will take them, upon click-thru, to the microsite, and preferably to the specific page on that website tailored for them

• Direct Mail campaign could also direct people to Google their name to enhance effectiveness of this campaign

• THIS IS GREAT FOR VERY FOCUSED MARKETS / MARKETING

Use SEM traffic with web analytics + your lead forms for list building & enhanced lead generation

Advanced SEM Strategies

More Advanced (b2b) Paid Search

Use SEM traffic with web analytics + your lead forms for list building & enhanced lead generation

- DemandBase- Jigsaw- Other list building

Integrate SEM data with other datasets, especially CRM and your customer purchase history list

Advanced SEM Strategies

• One of our B2B clients was spending 110K per month, with well understood and optimized CPL metrics

• We started doing our PPC optimization using human scrubbed lead data (not web forms)

• RESULT: 43 percent shift in PPC spend allocation, 31 percent software sales uplift

Improve Spend by Using Down-Funnel Data

Example Client: ROAS by WebsiteOne B2B client was testing a new site design

The new design had a slightly higher click to lead

conversion rate

Comparing sales data, found that the new design had a

lead to sale conversion rate of 1.34%, while the old design

was at 2.80%

The new design actually had nearly 2x the cost per sale

PHONE PHONE PHONE (MORE)

Advanced SEM Strategies

Example Client : Honey, We Shrunk the Conversion!!!!

B2C consumer healthcare client had a 23% conversion rate of clicks to web leads

Goal was to get a phone conversation with a sales agent

After testing multiple configurations, and different forms, we took the web conversion rate DOWN to 11%

Sales for our client more than doubled!!!

The new landing page / microsite configurations increased the # of inbound phone calls

Quick, Dirty and Effective Way to Get ‘er Done

Assign an ID # to each keyword or keyword category

Dynamically insert keyword ID #’s on your website

Have sales person ask for keyword ID # along with other info while on phone with prospect

Report on sales with keyword ID #s

Learn which keywords really make you money

Keyword = Chicago Dish Network = ID 5341

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Q&A (aka additional resources)

Apogee Results Blog (www.apogeeresults.com/Blog/) Apogee Glossary

(www.apogeeresults.com/Resources/Glossary/) Digital Point Forums (forums.digitalpoint.com) Google Webmaster Central

(www.google.com/webmasters/) John Battelle’s Searchblog (battellemedia.com) Daily SearchCast (dailysearchcast.com) Sphinn (sphinn.com) MarketingSherpa (marketingsherpa.com) ClickZ (clickz.com)

Advanced SEM Strategies(Grab Bag)

Rand FishkinCEO

Bill LeakeCEO

Question & Answer

SEO and SEM: A Two Pronged Approach To Generating Leads

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