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THINK WORKSDIGITAL INSIGHT: SEARCH

MARCH 2013

PPC | SEO | SOCIAL | DISPLAY | ANALYTICS | AFFILIATE | ACADEMY

Welcome!There’s a good chance you will have heard about Google’s latest brainchild, Adwords Enhanced Campaigns by now. If you’ve missed the boat on the whole thing, don’t worry, because help is at hand. In our latest search report, we look at the impact of the upcoming changes on PPC campaigns and strategies as a result (while working hard on future-proofing the campaigns of our clients of course). With Easter just around the corner, why not grab a chocolate egg and take a minute to also read up on the latest developments in the world of Search Engine Optimisation. We’ve also collated a Facebook wishlist of tools we’d like to see introduced from a marketing perspective – let us know your thoughts on it.

Duncan FisherOperations DirectorLatitude Digital Marketing

“In our latest search report, we look at the impact of the upcoming Enhanced Campaigns changes on all PPC campaigns.”

02 The sun, the sea…. and Adwords Enhanced Campaigns

02 Get ready for June03 How the Latitude team will be

preparing for these changes…03 PPC in 2013 with Latitude

04 Google vs. Bing… Fight!05 Bing still a not-so-close second06 Opportunities with Bing

Contents05 New Google, new SEO05 Google then and now 05 A different approach

06 Title [NOT PROVIDED]06 It’s about privacy06 Can we do anything?07 What’s coming next?

08 Our Facebook wishlist

09 Contributors

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THINK WORKS | DIGITAL INSIGHT: SEARCH UPDATE | MARCH 2013

The sun, the sea…. and Adwords Enhanced Campaigns

“Adwords Enhanced Campaigns may be the most significant change to take place in Adwords for many years.”

Get ready for June2013 will be known as ‘the year of Adwords Enhanced Campaigns’ for most PPC marketers. While Google’s Penguin and Panda updates have caused headaches for Search Engine Optimisation professionals throughout the last few years, PPC marketers have been letting out quiet sighs of relief, hoping to avoid radical Adwords updates from Google. These times are now over. The Enhanced Campaigns update may be the most significant change to take place in Adwords for many years. The changes will come into effect at the end of June 2013 and will include (in summary):

Negativesl Removal of options to target tablet devices

separately from desktopl Removal of smartphone-only campaigns (can’t

target smartphones without targeting desktop at the same time)

l Removal of operating system targeting options

Positivesl Stackable bid multipliers for geo-location, time and

devicel Sitelink schedulingl Improved sitelink reportingl Calls and app download reporting optionsl Cross device tracking

Over the past two years, advertisers across all sectors have developed separate strategies for desktop, tablet and smartphones. Top tactics have included:

l Segmenting campaigns and micro-managing budgets for each device type

l Fine-tuning keyword level bids separately for smartphones and tablets

l Producing ad creatives that are specific to the type of device and operating system being used

l Installing customised day-parting schedules that reflect the different time-of-day usage trends for tablets, smartphones and desktops

As of June, these tactics will no longer be effective. Enhanced Campaigns have the potential to become a major stumbling block to campaign performance. Here are some of the tactics that we’ll be deploying to keep our clients ahead of their competition.

“Enhanced Campaigns have the potential to become a major stumbling block to campaign performance.”

2013‘THE YEAR OF

ADWORDS ENHANCED CAMPAIGNS’

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The sun, the sea…. and Adwords Enhanced Campaigns

THINK WORKS | DIGITAL INSIGHT: SEARCH UPDATE | MARCH 2013

How the Latitude team will be preparing for these changes…The removal of the ability to target each device with separate campaigns will be seen as a backwards step by many advertisers. The change will certainly require a change of tactics in terms of account structure and bid/budget management. Here’s some inside information from our experts:

1.You need to test first. The forced migration does not come into effect until the end of June 2013. This allows us time to experiment with new campaign structures while maintaining our current device-optimised campaigns.

2.New campaigns will need to target desktop, tablets and smartphones simultaneously. Smartphone targeting can be refined with “bid multipliers” and “customised messages”.

3.“Customised messages” are a separate set of mobile-specific ads that are installed in the campaign alongside your regular desktop ads. You will be able to flag the ads you wish to display if the user is searching using a smartphone.

4.“Bid multipliers” for mobile are set at campaign level. This will allow a percentage increase or decrease of your default desktop bid. The bid multipliers range from -100% to +300%. If you need to opt out of displaying ads to smartphones (for instance, if your landing pages are not mobile-friendly) then a -100% bid multiplier effectively reduces your mobile bid to 0.

5.Since it is not possible to customise mobile bids at keyword level, you will need to consider the impact on your campaign structure. A possible solution might be to separate your best mobile keywords into their own campaigns as you won’t want a +300% multiplier for your top mobile keywords to apply to weaker performing keywords at the same time.

6.Adwords Enhanced Campaigns will not let you opt out of appearing on desktop devices. If your product is specific to smartphones, consider how you will deal with having your ads appear in desktop paid search listings too.

PPC in 2013 with Latitude1.It will still be possible to use smartphone and tablet segmented campaigns up until the end of June 2013. We will use this time to plan effectively and think about when the best time to enhance campaigns will be bearing in mind factors such as the readiness of client website properties and any upcoming events that are strategically important to your business.

2.We will take advantage of the demographic targeting beta for smarter campaigns. An estimated 30% of users are signed in to their Google account giving advertisers the opportunity to modify bids for different genders and age brackets. There is also great scope for testing how different demographics respond to your ad copy and landing pages, providing valuable information for developing an advertising strategy across all channels.

3.We’ll be developing bid multipliers to make campaigns work hard for our clients. Reviewing the performance of geographic locations provides a great opportunity to increment bids up or down for areas that work well or are strategically important. Combined with our clients’ ad schedules, their bid multipliers could stack up nicely to ensure your ad is ready to drive increased conversion volume during peak times and in key locations.

An estimated

30%of users are signed in

to their Google account giving advertisers the opportunity to modify

bids for different genders and age

brackets.

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Get In TouchIf you’d like to know more, feel free to drop us a line. If our team isn’t already looking after your PPC campaign, contact us for a FREE audit.E: info@latitudegroup.comT: 08450 212 223W: www.latitudegroup.com

Bing still a not-so-close secondLike any other agency, we like to keep a close eye on where our PPC budget is spent. Each campaign we run is managed to its individual targets and bids are adjusted accordingly on both Google and Bing Ads. However, we are always interested in looking at trends across all of our campaigns and comparing this to the industry as a whole. Google has always been where the majority of our clients’ budgets have been assigned and since the Search Alliance of Yahoo and Bing in April 2012, we have been waiting to see a significant increase in Bing traffic and, well… we are still waiting.

Bing has tried to seduce users away from Google through a variety of marketing campaigns, with varying success (remember the ‘Scroogled’ anti-Google campaign?) Their ‘Bing It On Challenge’ campaign from last year compared Bing and Google search results side by side and claimed “people preferred Bing web search results nearly 2:1 over Google in blind comparison tests”. While we have seen higher conversion rates through Bing for a lot of our clients, frustratingly, the traffic is still lacking in volume.

Google vs. Bing… Fight!

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As we can see in the chart opposite, Bing spend is still in the minority. The 7% spend in December was by far the highest percentage we have seen from Bing in some time. This is likely down to consumers receiving a Kindle Fire or a Windows Phone for Christmas and using their default search engine Bing for browsing the web. With the launch of the Windows Phone 8 platform in November, Bing is expected to experience a boost in their active user base, initially at least. The decline in spend from 7% in December to 5% in January suggests that many new users, whose devices were set to Bing over Christmas, will have changed their default search engine to Google by February. Perhaps things are about to change for Bing as new devices that are set to default to Bing hit the market in 2013. It remains to be seen whether Bing’s efforts will help them emerge from Google’s shadow, which, as it happens, is very large at the moment.

Opportunities with BingDespite the lack of volume, Bing is still an important channel delivering incremental sales at higher conversion rates and lower acquisition costs for many advertisers. Bing have been busy aligning their offering with Google’s, so that the best practice recommendations for each are converging, making it easier than ever to develop an effective Bing Ads strategy. However, now that Google are enforcing significant changes through enhanced campaigns, advertiser can start expecting the account structures to differ between the two engines – perhaps another clever move from Google to ensure that the advertisers’ focus is very much on Google! Nonetheless, as the enforced changes cause headaches for many advertisers, trusty old Bing could provide an alternative for those who still want, or even need to, separately target activity by device. At Latitude, we ensure that our clients’ Bing accounts are structurally aligned with their Google accounts before enhancing campaigns, as the structural considerations for Adwords accounts may change significantly.

“While we have seen higher conversion rates through Bing for a lot of our clients, frustratingly, the traffic is still lacking in volume.”

THINK WORKS | DIGITAL INSIGHT: SEARCH UPDATE | MARCH 2013

Google and Bing spend

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%Oct-16

n % Google spend n % Bing spend

Nov-16 Dec-16 Jan-17

92% 91% 92% 94%

4% 6% 7% 5%

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New Google, New SEO

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THINK WORKS | DIGITAL INSIGHT: SEARCH UPDATE | MARCH 2013

Google then and now Larry Page thinks big and he thinks differently. Back in 1996 when he and Sergey Brin were working together on a project at Stanford University, he recognised that the research they were carrying out to categorise information in libraries could be applied to the web, and that the graph of citations that connected information in books was analogous to the graph of links that connected pages of websites. This realisation developed into PageRank, PageRank developed into Google, and Google became the dominant power in the online space.

Fast-forward a decade from those tentative first steps and the same lateral thinking was displayed again as Page and his team began to recognise that there was a second layer of connectivity on the web; people. ‘Networked people’ displayed many of the same traits as networked pages, and PageRank once again provided the ability to make sense of a highly complex map of relationships and provide the ability to personalise the experience that people had and make the web more relevant.

Pretty much every change we’ve seen coming out of Mountain View since Larry Page took over as CEO in April 2011 has been about building a social graph to supplement the link graph so that Google could provide answers to questions that weren’t just the generally most relevant answer, but were also the individually most relevant answer.

Page’s challenge to Googlers to make social products climaxed with the launch of Google+ and a combined privacy policy across products. This gave the search engine the ability to accurately profile users throughout their online life and connect the dots between different elements of their behaviour.

“There is a second layer of connectivity on the web: people.”

A different approach The Page era at Google requires a different approach to SEO. Historically, SEO was confrontation and now it is all about collaboration. The focus has moved away from the algorithm and back to the user. As Google collects more information about each user, they’ll be capable of taking their network relationships and individual interests and overlaying this information onto the baseline provided by the algorithm. Search results are no longer for everyone; they are for each one.

Google’s guidelines for webmasters have always been to create content for users. Their algorithm has now caught up with this ideal. If you want to be successful in natural search in 2013 and beyond, it’s no longer enough to build links, you need to build relationships with your audience through engaging, rich experiences that people will want to share naturally. Organisations with a clear understanding and appreciation of their audience, the ability to create an experience that appeals to their expectations and an SEO strategy that creates content focused on the social graph will increasingly find that they are successful in natural search.

This is a good thing.

“Search results are no longer for everyone; they are for each one.”

“If you want to be successful in natural search in 2013 and beyond, it’s no longer enough to build links, you need to build relationships with your audience through engaging, rich experiences that people will want to share naturally.”

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Title [NOT PROVIDED]

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THINK WORKS | DIGITAL INSIGHT: SEARCH UPDATE | MARCH 2013

Great data helps us do our jobs. Data informs our decisions. Because data is so important to us, we invest a massive amount of time in making them easier to understand and analyse. When we find a hole in the data we use to make campaign decisions, it hurts.

When Google decided to stop passing through keyword level referrer data from natural search back in 2011, it made us a little bit nervous. Over time we’ve seen the amount of traffic where the keyword is [not provided] grow from an insignificant number to something much more substantial. In fact, in January 2013, it represented 46% of traffic to our own website.

Can we do anything?The digital marketing industry is nothing if not adaptable. We’ve not been around for long enough to get set in our ways, and we’re used to rapid evolution and scale. In many ways, the level of detail that we’ve had for the past few years has been an embarrassment of riches, as not so long ago I relied on using a hit counter and log file analysis to understand traffic to websites. Right now, there are two main options for search marketers who want to make actionable decisions based on data:

1. ExtrapolateWe can estimate what we don’t know by working with what we do know. If we know that 50% of traffic that we can break down to keyword level was referred by a specific keyword, we can conclude that 50% of the visits where keyword is [not provided] were also referred by the same term. That’s not going to be 100% accurate, because it doesn’t take into account how traffic is distributed through a site.

We can extrapolate better though. Custom filters in Google Analytics and on other platforms allow us to break down [not provided] traffic at a page level and then we can use the data for that page to refine our extrapolation. This can provide a more accurate picture of visits to a site, and also help us to improve our future targeting.

Extrapolation ignores the elephant in the room though. The share of [not provided] traffic is growing. Fast. When you’re basing conclusions on having 75% of the data available as is the case now, you can be quite confident in your decisions. What happens in the future when this approach means you need to base your strategy on having 25% of the data available, or 10%, or 1%?

“Over time we’ve seen the amount of traffic where the keyword is [not provided] grow from an insignificant number to something much more substantial.”

It’s about privacyOne thing that’s really important to remember is that Google didn’t stop passing keyword data through to websites simply to annoy the SEO community. The change was all about protecting user privacy. Google personalise your search results based on previous history. Sometimes, your previous search queries are passed through to a website via the Google search URL. While it’s handy for me as an SEO expert to know what an individual searched for before they searched for the term that referred them to my site, I don’t think many users would be terribly comfortable with this.

“Custom filters in Google Analytics and on other platforms allow us to break down [not provided] traffic at a page level and then we can use the data for that page to refine our extrapolation.”

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Get In TouchTo talk about your SEO campaign and arrange a FREE audit, contact us:E: info@latitudegroup.comT: 08450 212 223W: www.latitudegroup.com

Title [NOT PROVIDED]

THINK WORKS | DIGITAL INSIGHT: SEARCH UPDATE | MARCH 2013

2. Other sourcesGoogle Webmaster Tools tell us how many clicks we get from natural search. Or rather it doesn’t, it tells us what our click-through rate was and an estimate of the number of searches. Then it calculates the number of clicks. At first glance, the GWT numbers look pretty good. For most sites we looked at there’s less than a 10% variation in the overall traffic volume predicted by GWT compared to what we see in Analytics. That’s not so bad: Especially when you take into account that the data only includes the top 1000 keywords. For really big sites, you see a bigger variation, but it’s still pretty good.

However, when we looked at the keyword level data it was less promising. Even when you take into account seasonality in search volume, there are pretty big variations between what’s reported in GWT compared with what we see in Analytics – even when we extrapolate visitor numbers. On average, we saw a difference of around 40%. That’s too big to be acceptable right now.

What’s coming next?While we may no longer have as much data as we once did, we still have plenty. We have enough to make decisions, and while the GWT data right now isn’t good enough to replace analytics in most cases, there will come a time when it will need to – simply because the margin of error that it represents is less than the alternative.

Search marketers are privileged to work in a discipline where very rich analysis is possible. In our industry things change pretty quickly. They always have, and they always will. Right now, things are changing to make our jobs harder and a harsh environment forces rapid evolution. The data will become better. In the same way as it was possible to refine the view of the Hubble telescope through the use of better lenses, we’re building adaptive technology that will allow us to build a much clearer picture based on the blur of available data.

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“We’re building adaptive technology that will allow us to build a much clearer picture based on the blur of available data.”

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Get In TouchInterested in learning about newly launched tools and applications on Facebook? Contact us for your FREE copy of our latest Facebook review and to discuss best practice guidance on your social campaigns.E: info@latitudegroup.comT: 08450 212 223W: www.latitudegroup.com

Our Facebook wishlist

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THINK WORKS | DIGITAL INSIGHT: SEARCH UPDATE | MARCH 2013

Facebook have been busy in their development department over the last six months, with the launch of Custom Audiences, Mobile App install Ads and much more These tools have opened up a wealth of opportunities for advertisers. While many thought of Facebook as predominantly a branding tool, new developments are shifting the social networking site to perform as a hybrid platform for branding and direct response generation. Inspired by the new changes at Facebook, we have put together our own wishlist full of ideas that if implemented, could improve the advertiser and user experiences on Facebook.

1. Negative location targetingNegative location targeting may not high up on everyone’s wishlist, but it could certainly be a handy tool for advertisers who might want to break out one region into a separate campaign, whilst targeting the rest of the country in another campaign. For example, a company may be running an event in Manchester and they might want to promote the event in its own campaign, targeted to Manchester. With negative location targeting, the advertiser could simply negate ‘Manchester’ in the original campaign.

2. Data segmentationFacebook must hold a lot of information on its users, yet we don’t have much visibility of this data. In fact, all we can see for each campaign is the percentage of impressions and clicks by gender, age group and region/city. It would be far more insightful for advertisers if we could see the exact ages of users, relationship status, education level and even a top level view of interests. We’d love for this report to also include conversion data for each of these demographic categories. With this insight, advertisers could refine and optimise their targeting based on conversions, not just click-through rates.

3. Similar user targetingMany marketers may already be familiar with similar user targeting on the Google Display Network. This tool allows Google to display your ads to users who share similar online behavioural activity to users who have already visited or converted on your site. The assumption behind this is that these people will also be interested in your products or services. With Facebook’s new tracking pixel, there is an opportunity to launch Similar User targeting to allow domain ads to be shown to users with similar interests as other users who have converted on your site.

4. Ad scheduling with bid multipliersHave we still not got ad scheduling? Marketers across the board have for a long time been hoping for a tool to help maximise exposure at certain times of the day, on certain days of the week. This would be especially useful for restaurants and takeaway businesses, who might want to increase bids between 4pm and 8pm on a Friday and Saturday night.

5. Status keyword targetingIt is unlikely that advertisers will ever be allowed to target status updates of Facebook users, but it would provide incredibly accurate, real-time, interest targeting. It would allow advertisers to be timelier about what they advertise, when they advertise and who they advertise to. For example, a travel insurance company could target users with status updates containing the words “booked” and “holiday”. This type of targeting would not win any fans for Facebook, considering the company’s already controversial privacy policies.

6. Check-in targetingEver heard “I’ll check us in”? Some people despise location check-ins on Facebook, and others do it far too much. For advertisers, check-in targeting would be a fresh, new way to target users based on the places they have visited. For example, a beauty retailer could target users who have recently checked-in to a hair salon with hair treatment products. Companies could even target users who have checked-in to competitor locations.

7. Event targetingFacebook is a great hub for organising events. Event targeting could provide a perfect opportunity for advertisers to target users based on the theme of the event are attending – for example, a fancy dress retailer could advertisers to users who are attending a Halloween party.

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ANDREW MCCOYSENIOR PPC STRATEGIST

BEN WIGHTMANHEAD OF PPC

HELEN PRICEQUALITY & INSIGHT MANAGER

Contributors

Part of the Callcredit Information Group

AboutLatitude Digital Marketing has pioneered the use of digital channels in the UK and internationally for 11 years. Areas of expertise include search engine optimisation (SEO), pay- per-click (PPC), social media marketing, online display advertising, affiliate marketing and conversion analytics. The agency works across a range of sectors including retail, gaming, travel and leisure with clients such as Post Office, bet365, Fitness First and Haven Holidays.

Latitude is an international agency with native speakers in 20 different languages managing campaigns across the world. They also deliver the thought leadership series “Think Works”, which brings cutting edge knowledge and ideas via reports, seminars and email updates to clients, contacts and the wider industry.

Get in touchTo talk about your search strategy, contact us:

E: info@latitudegroup.com T: 08450 212 223

W: www.latitudegroup.com

Search Analytics

Social Affiliate

Display Academy

DUNCAN FISHEROPERATIONS DIRECTOR

THINK WORKS | DIGITAL INSIGHT: SEARCH UPDATE | MARCH 2013