Paid Search Archives - TheWayoftheWeb

Content is an amazing way of building up a business, but there are certain requirements you need to meet for it to be successful. I wrote a while ago about the time it can take to build up a content site organically, and a key part of that is adding content on a regular and consistent basis.

The good news is that your competitors are handing you a massive advantage every day, week, month or even year that they leave their website dormant, particularly when it comes to news sections and blogs.

And in an emergency or crisis, the days of being able to keep quiet until an official statement can be prepared are pretty much gone. You really need to have a crisis communications plan in place right now – you’ll understand why if something goes wrong without it, and the option of waiting for an official statement to calm everything down has gone the same way as the daily news cycle. Even if your staff can’t give out full details and solutions, they should be trained and prepared to acknowledge events and provide whatever assistance and information they can.

Obviously there have already been a number of examples, such as Eurostar, but technology companies are no better. Take for instance, the recent New York Times article covering the ‘secrets of search’ which led to JC Penney dominating Google results for lots of top product purchases in what appears to be the largest example of linkbuying and other ‘black hat’ practices.

The bottom of the second page reveals that JC Penney has terminated its search engine consulting, SearchDex.

‘PENNEY reacted to this instant reversal of fortune by, among other things, firing its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex. Executives there did not return e-mail or phone calls.’

So someone at the firm is theoretically aware that the NYT is doing a story on the events surrounding JC Penney, and that article was published on February 12th, 2011.

So when you visit the news section of the SearchDex website on February 15th, 2011, you might do a double take –

The latest news on the SearchDex website three days after the NYT published the JCPenney story online is the March 15, 2007 announcement that JCPenney has signed for a ‘an unprecedented 4th year of service’ – and goes on to say ‘JCPenney has trusted SearchDex to handle all of their organic search marketing efforts’.

That’s 4 years ago, and 3 days after a huge news story concerning the brand, with anyone involved in the search business taking a look. Just scroll down the first page of Google results for SearchDex and see what you find… #5, #7, #8 and #9 are discussing what is going on, and one of them is Doug Pierce, who shares all the data that uncovered what SearchDex was doing.

If SearchDex did decide to update their news, there are a number of routes they could take. They could deny all knowledge, blame a scapegoat, or debate the data.

Alternatively, and here’s where I’d really like your views, they could take a different tack. They could come clean and admit everything, perhaps referencing how competitive search rankings can be, the fact that they may have known they were being dishonest, but that digital marketing companies are often under pressure to deliver results and using dishonest tactics are hugely tempting. If that was followed by future transparency, would that alter your opinions of the company, in comparison to your views after reading the NYT piece?

In the last week or so, you’d be forgiven for checking the sky to see if it’s falling, with breathless updates from everyone on Ping, the new ‘social’ network from Apple, and Google new Instant search in amongst the usual technology and social media news.

In the rush to be the first to update, it appears that SEO may or may not be dead, the Long Tail of search may or may not be hobbled, and Ping may or may not drive sales, kill Spotify, or lead to Google Music overtaking iTunes when it eventually launches.

In the words of someone far more intelligent than me…

Don’t Panic.

Having played around with Ping, it’s obviously an initial first step which is quite likely to increase sales purely by allowing social recommendation within iTunes, and the simplicity of it at the moment is particularly useful on mobile devices rather than the desktop. And if it’s showing signs of early success, it might expand out to encompass more areas, including applications. But there are obvious limitations to what you can do at the moment.

And if it does expand out in terms of the social aspect, it’ll still conform to the same basic principles of reputation,engagement and gaining influence which have ruled all social interaction since we first emerged from caves.

Google Instant is initially more disruptive and scary. Suddenly you’re getting real-time suggestions and results as you type your search terms, and that will have an effect on the nature of how search is performed via Google (so around 75% of the search market in general).

This is going to have an effect on both natural organic results, and on the effectiveness of paid search campaigns. But I suspect even the employees at Google can’t quantify exactly what that might mean at the moment. It’s likely to improve the search experience for mobile, as the real-time changes will be easier to use than revising your search via a keypad/touchscreen, and we all know mobile is the biggest priority for Google these days.

But I don’t think Google has done anything which will have an enormous effect on CTR rates for paid search, which is where a significant amount of revenue lies. Impressions may change as search behaviour changes, but I suspect that campaigns on the eventual results page someone was searching for will remain the same as the paid search placements will still be located and displayed in the same way.

There may be an increase in overall clicks as you may find your advert is now appearing more times for a search, and could catch someone’s eye earlier in the search process, before they refine their search to their ultimate results, but all it means is that Google is doing more of the work on the fly. Impressions are likely to rise, especially in the early days of novelty, but that can only be a good thing as generally you’re only paying for a click-through.

Natural search is going to be more significant, but again, I’m guessing most of the people that currently rank for a term will still rank for a term, especially in a short timescale, and while it’s only available to those searching after they’ve logged into their Google account (I don’t know what the logged-in percentage of searches is – anyone know?). There’s talk of page titles becoming more important, but even if you change them today, you’ll have to sit on your hands while your page is re-indexed, so it’s worth spending a few days actually seeing some results before you start worrying.

And by then, we’ll have access to something which makes the digital world a fun place to experiment – real data on what people are doing.

So take a deep breath, and relax for a moment. The technology world will always be changing at a fairly rapid pace, but the biggest benefits from making changes to your paid and natural search set-up are going to come from the benefits of knowledge rather than trying to rush to be first. And if you’ve been sticking to best practice so far, it’s going to be a case of minor adjustments rather than rushing to make wholesale changes. I’d be far more worried about the disruptive nature of the digital world on traditional businesses and lifestyles than changes within the digital ecosystem. Technology changes are the things that make working in their world interesting and fun.