1. Search Marketing Strategies: Optimising Paid Search and
Search Engine Optimisation to Maximise Site Traffic
by Chris Smith
General Manager, Digital
Direct Banking, NAB
chris.x.smith@nab.com.au
28 September 2010
2. Agenda
• Fundamentals of a search marketing strategy
• Trade-offs between search engine optimisation and paid
search
• Social media optimisation: Why it’s relevant for search
marketing campaigns
• Examples of NAB search marketing campaigns: Analysing
campaign strengths and areas for improvement
3. Fundamentals: Search Marketing Terminology
• PPC Pay per click
SEA • CPM Cost per 1000 Ongoing
Search
Engine
• CPA Cost per action Cost, AKA
Advertising • Display Paid Search
• etc
SEO Mainly upfront
Search • Content cost, then top-up
Engine • Links
Optimisation AKA Organic Search
SEM
Search Engine
Marketing
or Search Marketing • Forums
SMO • Twitter
Social Media • Facebook
Optimisation • Blogs
• Etc
Ongoing time
commitment
ORM
Online • Monitoring Tool
Reputation • Manual monitoring
Management
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4. Examples of Organic and Paid Search
• Right side and sometimes the top of the page
are paid or sponsored search results
• Left side search results are the organic, or
natural results
• Publisher sites are eligible to display the same
text ads or display ads (CPM) aka AdSense.
5. Fundamentals: SEO in a nutshell
• Searchers type simple phrases (the
“search term”) in a search engine.
• Search engines index all pages they
have discovered (by following links)
• When the query is processed, the
search engine checks its index and
presents no more than 1000 results,
typically 10 results per page.
• These results are ranked based on
their relevancy to the search phrase.
• The ultimate goal is optimise your site
to rank #1.
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6. SEO involves many people
Server Hosting
Efficiency
Domain Name
Security
Registration
Page coding
URL length Technical Page markup
Content
Management
Related
companies
Design
RANKING
Publicity SUCCESS Writing for
the Web
News
media Links TRUST
Content Style guides
Product
Facts
Social networks
Multimedia
Usability
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7. Fundamentals: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising in a nutshell
• Searchers type simple phrases (the “search
term”) in a search engine.
• The results page displays the most relevant and
most effective ads on the right and sometimes at
the top of the page.
• The higher-placed ads are clicked more than the
lower ads.
• A high placement can be achieved by:
> Compelling copy (attracts a click)
> A landing page that matches the search term
> Setting not necessarily the highest bid, but
enough to be high on the first page:
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8. SEO vs PPC: Some interesting statistics
• Source of Clicks
- 92% of all clicks are from Organic Listing
- 8% of all clicks are from Paid Search.
• Marketing Budgets: SEO
- 61% of companies surveyed spent up to
$75k/year on optimising content
- 28% of the largest companies (rev > $1
Billion/ year) spent nothing on SEO.
• Marketing Budgets: SEM
- 63% of companies surveyed spent between
$3-$5m on PPC
• Disconnect? A fraction of spend is used to
attract majority of “free” clicks, whereas >
30x spend to attract minority of “paid” clicks.
* Source: SEMPO State of Search Engine Marketing Report - 2010
9. SEO vs PPC: Where to put your spend in 2011?
• The case for SEO
— Great opportunity exists local,
news, blog, video, image, product
feeds.
— Much better ROI based on overall
spend
— PPC is “easier”
• The case for PPC •Good reasons to do both
— Flexibility in spending, quick —Learn which keywords are
results performing well from paid search
— Ability to adjust quickly —Good optimisation leads to
— Less reliance on your Web/IT quality scores
teams —Own as much real estate as
— Pretty straightforward possible, less for competition
— Placement of results more reliable —Multiplier effect
10. Social Media in a nutshell
• Social networks have been
around for over 20 years. Key
message is that only some of
them are relevant to banks.
>Social Networks, e.g. Forums >Audio, e.g. Podcasts
(discussion groups), Facebook, >Video, e.g. YouTube, Vimeo
MySpace, LinkedIn >Aggregators, e.g. my.yahoo.com,
>Blogs Google Reader
—Comments >Bookmarking/recommendation
—Promotion tools, e.g. tools, e.g. Delicious, StumbleUpon
Feedburner >Ratings & Reviews, e.g. Digg
—Blog search tools e.g. >Photo Sharing, e.g. Flickr
Technorati >Wikis, e.g. Wikispaces, MediaWiki
—Blog communities, e.g.
BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog
—Microblogging, e.g.
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Twitter
11. Social Media in the Search Marketing Mix
• Everyone seems to have embraced social media (SM).
• Is your SM campaign integrated with the rest of your search marketing
strategy?
12. Social Media Optimisation (SMO)
• Simply using various popular social networks is
half the journey.
• You can optimise each in different ways, e.g.
— Facebook Pages are the only part of Facebook
that is crawled and indexed by Google
— Videos can be optimised to benefit SEO
— Customers have conversations at social
networking sites and references to a company
serve as “Citations” to their website even
when there are no clickable links.
• You can be proactive in maintaining a good
reputation by educating your marketing and
corporate affairs department.
13. Press Release Optimisation (PRO)
• Press releases are now known as Media
Releases and some companies have Social
Media Releases
• Submit to various online distribution services
such as PRWeb and PRNewsWire
• Apply standard SEO principles:
— Use plain English
— Insert deep links to a specific part of your
website
— Provide links to relevant supporting media
such as images and videos.
— Provide links to your profiles at various
social media outlets e.g. Twitter, blogs
• See http://schools.nsw.edu.au for local example
14. Search Marketing Strategy: Pulling it all together
Rank #1
Keyword Write
research content
Relevant
Social Network Content
page
(links)
Website
Credit card
(Word of mouth,
viral effect) comparison site Success
Relevant
Deep
(link) Links
(link)
(link)
Credit card
info site
Article about
personal finance
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15. Case Study: Optimising Your PPC Spend
• If you are not happy with your Google or Yahoo PPC results, your
campaigns might simply need a tweak.
• Clues:
— You are paying too much per click.
— You are not getting enough conversions.
— You don’t know if your ads are working for you.
16. Case Study: Improving your Google Quality Score
The Quality Score is fairly simple to grasp:
• Scale from 1 to 10 (10 is best)
• Are the keywords in your ad group present on the landing page?
• Are the keywords in the ad copy?
• Does the landing page load fast?
• Is the landing page a quality page?
— Is it relevant to the keyword?
— Is your business transparent?
— Is the content original?
— Is it navigable?
Yes, a high Quality Score is achievable
17. Case Study: Lowering the cost per conversion
• Comparing two dissimilar ad groups, one being non-competitive and the
other being very competitive, we can see not only the difference in the cost
per click, but also the lower cost per conversion.
Non-competitive, High Quality Score
Competitive, Low Quality Score
18. Wrapping it up
To summarise:
— Effective search engine marketing is a blend of SEO, SMO, PRO and PPC
— SEO is the cheapest to implement but it involves your own organisation
on an ongoing basis, not a short engagement with an agency.
— PPC is essential to fill gaps in search engine visibility and gives instant
results and gratification.
— Social media needs careful planning and splendid implementation. It is
not for everyone, but for consumer brands it is essential and should be a
long term commitment.
19. Questions?
Thank you.
— Chris Smith
— General Manager, Digital; Direct Banking, NAB
— Chris.x.smith@nab.com.au
— http://www.nab.com.au