Paul Adams is a user experience research at Google. He recently gave a speech outlining research by Google and others into how people connect with each other and what that means for the internet.
It’s easy to follow, persuasive and, most importantly, not about technology. It’s about persistent facts about how people behave and what that means for designers (his audience) and marketers (my audience).
This year, I was honored to be invited to present at SMX Advanced in London. I took the opportunity to vent all of my pent up anger at reports from years spent as a web analyst and Account Manager in a presentation called “4 Ways Reports Suck (And How To Fix Them).
Joking aside, I share 4 ways to make reporting more about optimization. Alex Minchin was kind enough to record my presentation for those who didn’t make it:
Things have been quiet here on Digital Alex, because I’ve been spending a lot of time writing for Search Engine Watch and speaking at search conferences.
No rest for the weary, though, as I’m presenting a free webinar about keyword research. The webinar was organized by ClickEquations (my company) and Compete, the folks who have a great free competitive intelligence tool (and a pay one that’s much cheaper than Hitwise).
Keywords are the gateway in PPC advertising that connect your business to prospects. But, how do you find keyword niches that are profitable? I’ll talk about 2 unconventional techniques to finding the right keywords (or, rather, search queries):
Competitive Intelligence – Discover which words are driving traffic to your competitors sites and which ones drive engagement.
Search Query Mining – Uncover the real words people use before they click on your text ad and stop irrelevant clicks
You’ll leave with actionable tips and free tools you can use immediately to improve your PPC campaigns. Space is limited. Register now!
Search marketing is 1% data and 99% action. But, we all spend a lot of time on reporting. This presentation, which I just delivered at SMX London, shows you 4 ways PPC reports suck and how you can fix them.
Google does not make money from organic search. It’s simply content they need to monetize like any publisher.
As with all publishers, their goal is to maximize revenue by:
Increasing market share
Improving user loyalty and product usage
Monetizing users more effectively
In the past few years, Google has made significant improvements in the relevance of their organic search results (content) by introducing Universal Search – the integration of new types of content such as video and product listings directly into search results.
While those changes occurred, PPC ads have largely remained text only. It’s possible that as universal search has gone mainstream, clicks on paid search ads may have suffered. Something had to give.
These changes largely fall under Google’s AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative. When I was at SES Chicago, I asked Devin Sandoz, Product Marketing Manager for AdWords, about the guiding principles behind the initiative. He pointed to the evolution of organic search results as the model for the initiative.
Google is playing with the visual balance between organic and paid search to balance user satisfaction and the average revenue per click/SERP. Any combination of images, videos, PlusBoxes, icons, product listings and multiple text ad links can now appear mixed in with paid search ads.
And this is only the beginning.
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2010: The Year of Universal Paid Search
2010 will be the year of what I’m naming Universal Paid Search – the evolution of online advertising served to searchers on Google and across the web.
Universal Paid Search will be driven by 4 major trends:
Increased Ad Diversity
Moving Beyond Clickthrough Rate
Personalized Text Ads
Search Retargeting with Display
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Increased Ad Diversity
Text ads will continue to dominate most search results. However, we’ll see a greater percentage of SERPs with new ad formats and ad extensions blended into text ads, specifically:
Product listings ads
Product listing extensions
Comparative Ads
Ad sitelinks
The conditions that trigger comparative ad and ad sitelinks are somewhat limited. It’s more likely, then, that product listing ads and extensions will be the first step in increased ad diversity.
Click to Enlarge
New ad formats are more disruptive than ad extensions, so I expect that Google be more liberal with their beta tests for ad extensions. These often come in the form of their PlusBox. For example, rich media ads were introduced to the Content Network through the PlusBox earlier this year. As this analysis shows, the presence of PlusBox does increase clickthrough rates.
Click to Enlarge
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see video ads wade into the waters through the PlusBox. They’ve already tested these out in the entertainment area. PlusBox could also help recoup some of the massive drop in search spending within the pharmaceutical industry by adding a place for fair balance.
This post originally appeared on SEOMoz. Referenceable content is the holy grail of online communities. People talk about it, comment on it, link to it, tweet it and visit it over and over again. In a world full of chatter, it sets you apart as an authoritative voice. Creating referenceable content is an art. Measuring [...]
Keywords get too much attention in paid search. Search queries, the actual phrase a search types into the engine, are a much better indicator of a person’s intent. Today, I spoke at Search Marketing Expo west about what search queries are, where you can find them and how to use them to optimize your paid [...]
I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at SMX West this year. I’m on the Keyword Research: Beyond the Ordinary Panel with a distinguished group (see below). Stop by on day 1 at 3:00 to hear me speak or say hello in the expo hall where I’ll be manning the ClickEquations booth. Register [...]
This post originally appeared on Search Engine Watch, where I will be a (semi-regular) contributor You can’t make money in web analytics just by looking at reports.” With that, SES Advisor and New York Times bestselling author Bryan Eisenberg set the stage for the state of analysis in search marketing. As budgets flow from offline [...]
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AdGooroo just launched a new product to help website owners find quality backlinks.
