Search social and mobile

Search, Social and Mobile:
How to Integrate Newer Media
with Search Marketing

A Search Marketing Now Whitepaper

How to Integrate Newer Media with Search Marketing

How to Integrate Newer Media
with Search Marketing

Introduction
S
ocial media and mobile apps have taken consumers by storm, converging on traditional search to create
enormous opportunities for marketers willing to brave the oft-murky waters of audience engagement and
relationship building. Brands that understand and cater to the preferences of their social and mobile users
in 2012, and use that knowledge to adapt their search marketing strategies will experience the most success in
2012. Technology will play a key role in that success, as data storage, analytics and modeling techniques become
more critical.

This whitepaper examines the growing impact of social and mobile on consumers and search marketing
strategies, as well as how search marketers are adapting to create more integrated, relevant campaigns. Adobe
and Search Marketing Now would like to thank the following Search Engine Land and Marketing Land columnists
for their contributions: Brian Klais, Founder and CEO at Pure Oxygen Labs; Jordan Kasteler, Online Marketing
Strategist at PETA; Jim Belosic, Chief Designer at ShortStackLabs.com; Kevin Gibbons, Director of Strategy at
SEOptimise; Manu Mathew, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Visual IQ; Greg Finn, Chief Marketing Officer
at Cypress North; and Matt McGee, Executive News Editor at Marketing Land. This E-Book was prepared by
Nathania Johnson. n

2 © 2012 Third Door Media, Inc. http://searchmarketingnow.com • Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com • (203) 664-1350


Social Media and Mobile Growth, By the Numbers
At the end of 2011, Facebook had 132.5 million U.S. members and Twitter had 23.8 million, according to eMarketer.
The digital research firm projects Facebook will reach 141.2 million U.S. members in 2012, while Twitter is expected
to grow to 28.7 million U.S. members.

Overall, social networking accounted for one out of every five minutes online globally in October 2011, according
to comScore. At the same time, Facebook represented three out of every four social minutes, reaching 55% of the
global Internet audience. While 15-24 year olds are the most active social demographic, users age 55 and older are
the fastest growing social media adopters.

Newer social network are also enjoying impressive growth. The top 100 Google+ brand pages experienced 1,400%
growth in February 2012 according to BrightEdge. Pinterest is now one of the top 30 websites in the U.S., according
to Experian Hitwise, needing just six weeks to grow from one of the top 60 to one of the top 30.

Social media does not exist in a vacuum; mobile devices are
driving consumer social media use. comScore found that
64% of smart phone users accessed a social network on their
devices at least once in October 2011; two out of five users
socialize on their mobile devices every day.

Facebook’s 2012 public filing revealed that 50% of its traffic
is driven by mobile devices. Additionally, its mobile traffic
growth rate exceeded its overall U.S. growth rate by one
percentage point in 2011 (17% vs. 16%).

Despite obvious consumer desire to access the web via
mobile devices, content has not kept up. According to a
study by Mongoose Metrics, only 9% of publishing websites
were ready for mobile at the beginning of 2012. Advertisers
performed above average, with 33% optimizing for mobile,
according to Google. This leaves a lot of room for search
marketers to utilize their expertise.

Social and Mobile Influence on Consumer Buying Behavior
The impact of social media and mobile devices is changing the where and when of consumer online purchasing
decisions. Customers can just as easily find product information through Twitter as they can Google. Many
Internet users in the information-seeking stage of online purchasing use their social networks to see what their
friends think – a phenomenon called “crowdsourcing.” More and more people trust getting purchasing advice and
recommendations from other people.

Consumers are not waiting for marketers to catch up. Instead, they are turning their attention and loyalties to brands
catering to their newfound technological needs. For example, 57% of customers said they would not recommend
a business with a poor mobile experience, while 40% said they would switch to a competitor offering a better one,
according to a 2011 study by Compuware.

Mobile users search with local and immediate intent. In its study “Understanding the Mobile Movement,” Google
found that 77% of smart phone users engage in mobile search. Nearly 90% of those mobile searches led to action
within a day, and 53% led to a purchase – either in-store or online. Google’s study further found that 60% of mobile



searchers go on to visit a local business, and
44% use their devices while shopping.

The Impact of Social
Media and Mobile
on Search
For a long time, search and social media
marketing were two separate departments.
A successful brand had a social campaign
and a search marketing campaign, and the
two rarely mingled. Search was about being
found, and social media was about loyalty and
engagement.
Source: Google
Today, search and social campaigns are
inseparable for marketers, consumers and the Search engines now evaluate a social
search engines. In June 2011, Google released
two features to desktop users that were media user’s credibility just as they
previously exclusive to mobile users: search by
voice and search by image. This was preceded
evaluate a site’s credibility.
by the inclusion of social profile links in search
engine results pages (SERPs).

Search engines now evaluate a social media user’s credibility just as they evaluate a site’s credibility. For example,
search engines consider retweet rates in their rankings. If a link tweeted to 1,000 followers gets 100 retweets, the link
is considered to have a 10% retweet rate and may do better in search rankings than a link with a 3% retweet rate.

Google also considers the volume and source of social media links – both on and off the social network – to be
important. A link to a custom tab on a business page will be weighted more heavily for a popular, recognized source.
Well-earned “likes” are also a significant ranking factor on Bing.

Similarly, search results are being influenced by mobile Internet use. Google has created separate user interfaces
for tablets, feature phones and smart phones, changing search results completely for certain queries from mobile
versus desktop users. Mobile landing pages are now a factor in Quality Scores for AdWords, as well.

Adapting to Social and Mobile Opportunities
When it comes to search engine rankings, the names of social profile pages, custom URLs, and custom tabs are
just as important as headers, URLs, and meta data. Motivated search users want to find a brand’s Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn profiles on the first page of both mobile and desktop SERPs.

A brand’s social profiles need to be made available to the public, whether or not a user has “liked” or is “following”
the profile. While brands may be inclined to build login gates to drive up fan counts, walled content will be hidden
from search engines.

Links to social profiles are just as imperative as website link building and internal links. Social networks allow search
marketers to build relationships with industry influencers and determine which sources or profiles are legitimate.
Like traditional desktop search link building, social link building takes time. The same rules of building networks,



trust and compelling content apply. Social media at its core is about connecting with people. Search marketers
already know how harmful bad reviews and other user-generated content can be. Interactivity and engagement are
crucial to maintaining a good reputation online.

Search without Keywords
The introduction of “search by image” has created a new challenge for search
marketers: searches without keywords. Search engines scour their image The introduction of
collections for related images and offer keyword suggestions based on keywords
associated with the image. To capitalize on this traffic-building opportunity,
“search by image”
you need to make sure that logos and labels for all of your products are clearly has created a
displayed and optimized for logo queries in Google Image Search. Each of these
logos can also be attached to a mobile site that allows the viewer to recommend new challenge for
your brand on social networks.
search marketers:
Paid and Organic Lines Blur
Social media is blurring the line between SEO and SEM. Facebook Ads encourage
searches without
users to “like” brand pages. Once a page is liked, that page’s updates will be keywords.
automatically posted on users’ news feeds, generating more continual traffic as
users will regularly click on links that interest them. When compared to a basic ad
that goes directly to a site’s home page, “like” ads may generate a greater audience
and steadier traffic with repeat visitors.

Advertising on social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Reddit also looks similar to organic submissions.
Since users are able to interact with the sponsored post, just as they would with non-paid links, ads garner better
clickthrough rates. And while Facebook and Twitter appear to dominate social advertising, less popular social
networks such as MySpace, which still has over 150 million members, may help stretch budget clout. MySpace
advertising is part of the MyAds network, which is owned by the FOX Audience Network and hosts advertising on
over 1,000 websites.

Optimizing for Mobile
Search marketers have an enormous and immediate opportunity to reach the millions of mobile consumers hungry
for mobile-optimized content. The best sites play to the strengths of mobile, compelling users to share and link to
them. Clicking on a mobile ad should not interrupt a user’s current activity. Additionally, the call to action must be
easy to engage on a small screen with a slower connection.

Mobile-specific landing pages are essential for successful mobile SEM. Search marketers should take advantage of
search ad device targeting and give mobile searchers a clear signal that a site is “iPhone optimized” or “Android
ready.” Searchers see these signals as shortcuts that may help them survive what often seems like the limited
nature of today’s mobile web.

Modern browsers now have access to the gyroscope, camera and accelerometer, offering the ability to create
something unique that mobile users will find invaluable. Remember that mobile intent is not the same as desktop
intent. Marketers who only use desktop keywords to optimize for mobile sites are at a disadvantage compared to
those who develop content based on mobile data. For example, a mobile home page could offer to find a user’s
location based on GPS and display a map and contact information for the nearest store. It could also link to an
optimized store page that would give local shoppers a list of products on sale at the local store with the option to
buy and pick up in store.



Measuring Search, Social and Mobile ROI
Search marketers attempting to integrate search, social and mobile marketing results face several challenges in
measuring ROI, namely the difficulty in accurately tracking referral data. These challenges can be overcome with
smart data mining and attribution modeling techniques, which are available through an increasing number of
campaign management platforms such as Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite.

Referral data is the connective tissue that enables search marketers to attribute success and allocate resources against
ROI metrics. Smartphone apps are innately unable to pass “referring page” information to site analytics because they
are not recorded as website referrers, but rather viewed as separate applications. The net result is that “direct” traffic
and sales counts become inflated, and a sizable percentage of actual mobile traffic becomes understated. This often
leads marketers to under-invest in mobile and give inaccurate conversion credit to other channels.

For brands with a strong search and social media presence, Facebook,
Google, and Twitter apps are the most commercially relevant apps likely to
be driving volumes of misclassified visitors.

For brands with a strong search and social media presence, Facebook, Google, and Twitter apps are the most
commercially relevant apps likely to be driving volumes of misclassified visitors. Upon the second click within the
Facebook app browser, the “referrer” gets populated with “Facebook.com” through the “l.php” redirect script page
path. This is exactly how desktop-sourced Facebook clicks get recorded making it difficult for marketers to determine
that the traffic came from the Facebook mobile app.

To get a more accurate reading on both mobile app and mobile organic traffic, use log file data-mining. This can
get a bit complicated, as marketers can pivot around the user agent data, yet need to filter out the 301 and 206
status codes that were requested from the same user agent string. When linking between profiles, branded redirect
“tracking” links can be utilized instead of linking directly to a social profile URL. This allows you to measure how
much activity each profile drives to a given profile and vice versa.

Solving Attribution
Attribution is the science of calculating the contribution that each marketing touch point experienced by a consumer
has on generating a “conversion action,” such as a purchase. Instead of analyzing the performance of social, mobile
and search marketing channels in silos, attribution defines the performance of channels by their true contribution to
a campaign’s overall marketing success.

Search marketers’ use of attribution models have become more accurate, thanks largely to retargeting search
users that visit a social network or website. With Facebook and Twitter opening up their ad networks to the mobile
versions of their sites, the ability to reach mobile users through retargeting will also increase.

Attribution also helps search marketers optimize for different channels. For example, mobile search lives closer
to the bottom of the conversion funnel, while desktop search sits closer to the top. As a result, abandoned mobile
searches should be considered more like abandoned shopping carts than like a traditional desktop search. The better
a brand is at properly attributing and weighting that activity, the more confidently they will be able to optimize it.



Let’s look at this example:
If a site converts 3% of 1,000,000 desktop search queries at an average order value of $100, the result is 30,000 orders
and $3,000,000 in sales. A similar value can be assigned for each user that opens a site cart. Perhaps 20% of those
users convert at $100 each (i.e., each open cart is “worth” $20 in revenue). Because mobile search is more immediate
in nature, the attribution value ascribed should be closer to that of an open cart ($20), than a desktop search ($3).

In this case, mobile search may still just be 7% of search traffic, with 70,000 queries, but the business value of mobile
search would be closer to an estimated $1.4 million than the crude $200,000 value ascribed by unsophisticated
models. A slight change in viewing the opportunity may be powerful enough to change corporate priorities. Search
marketers can lead that conversation.

Conclusion
Social media and mobile devices are changing the way consumers search and shop online. Successful digital
marketing requires relevance, agility and the ability to target products and offers to the right consumer at the right
time based on their preferences and behavior.

These newer media offer search marketers unprecedented opportunities – as well as some challenges. Measuring
social media and mobile marketing results currently requires more technical effort than desktop search campaigns,
but it’s crucial for search marketers to begin. By grasping solutions, such as learning to optimize mobile content,
understanding how the lines between SEO and SEM are blurring, and adapting search marketing to capture mobile
and social users, marketers can ramp up their ROI.

Search marketers that embrace the convergence of social, mobile and search are poised to enjoy the most success
in 2012 and beyond.

Search Marketing Now provide authoritative and actionable education about search engine marketing issues.
Register today for one of our free webcastscovering topics about search engine optimization, paid search
advertising and search marketing in general.

Search Marketing Now is a division of Third Door Media, which publishes web sites, and produces in-person events
and webcasts. Each of the four brands - Search Engine Land, Search Marketing Expo, Search Marketing Now, and
Marketing Land - fosters continuing education, evolution and engagement for the community we serve. n

Search Marketing Now webcasts and white papers provide authoritative and actionable education about search
engine marketing issues. Register today for one of our free webcasts covering topics about search engine
optimization, paid search advertising and search marketing in general.

Search Marketing Now is a division of Third Door Media, which publishes web sites, and produces in-person
events and webcasts. Each of the four brands - Search Engine Land, Search Marketing Expo, Search Marketing
Now, and Marketing Land - fosters continuing education, evolution and engagement for the community we
serve.


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