Balancing Organic and Paid Listings
Moderated by Alex Bennert from Beyond Ink
Peter Hershberg from Reprise Media Overview of paid and organic. Will talk about how they can be used effectively in combination with each other. Says that organic clicks represent 75% of total clicks. Organic listings are basically an impartial endorsement of the pages. This is a long term solution. Front loaded cost required for SEO. Huge impact on site traffic. Paid search takes the remaining clicks. Also has benefits. Can control messaging and placement, on demand. Broad distribution channels if syndicating results and/or using contextual opportunities. Performance pricing.
Organic + paid equals lasting impact + immediate results. Goes though some more explanation. 5 out of 6 consumers do not understand the difference between organic and paid. They have seen that paid search enhances organic listing when same site has both top listings. Gets into some examples of integration. They see benefit on the publishing side. Lifecycle of a news story: published, blogged, then searched. You can target during each part of the cycle. Paid search for published, con textual ads for blogs and news outlets, and organic for searched. Does another example regarding a news story of the California heat wave and how they did creative for cnn.com paid listings. One more example: Hezbollah news. Nice to get different types of results, such as specific info an recent crisis in paid area vs a longer history of Hezbollah in organics.
Speaks then briefly with some more examples including a branded search and some entertainment searches. They think analytics are the most important bridge between paid and organic, and they use a software that can tell the difference between them. They can optimize against top paid performers, and use organic results to refine keyword list. Suggests that everyone give a lot of consideration as to how the two tactics can work together.
Craig Hordlow from Red Bricks Media, LLC. Fact: when searchers see a website listed both organically and paid, they are more likely to click to a site. Could give “SEM Commandments,” but this isn’t why he is here. Wants to recommend people put aside the dogma. The above fact is actually unimportant, because there is no mention of goals or cost. Goes into some biology stuff and compares “Le Chatelier Principle” to search. To compete, you have to have a superior process and technology. Recommends using “A.R.P.” Accountability, Reporting, and Process. Accountability discusses how to structure search programs players. There can be problems with accountability both with in-house and agency. For example, business units might compete against each other in an in-house scenario. Talks about how many in-house will be Jack(ass) of all trades. Recommends asking proper questions like conversion goals, responsibility for overseeing? Show an example of a kw you are pursuing in SEO since PPC goals are not being met. Goals should be clearly articulated.
Create goals at the keyword level. Use reports that show the synergies between SEO and PPC efforts. Shows a “keyword portfolio analysis,” which is a Spreadsheet with common metrics and KPI’s for both SEO and PPC. Goes though a variety of interesting scenarios with one outperforming the other. Recommends that you be wary of using multiple vendors for reporting. Goes into the importance of keyword level reporting. Need to have a “line item of action items.” Begin report with a recap of action items. Conclude with a summary of action items assigned to each individual. Conclusion is that the Internet will require you to manage your marketing with increased efficiencies.
Abu Noaman from Elliance Paid versus Organic: Deciding which to Use and When. Tells of speaking to a couple of the presenters and finding out that even senior mangers do not rally know right off-hand how they divide budgets between SEO and Paid Search. He finds that most of their clients spend about 10% of their overall marketing budget on Internet. Senior marketers want to be able to structure “fair amounts” of budgets on and offline. How much should you be spending on paid versus SEO? Will give an overview on how they approach this.
Typical challenges faced determines the allocation of budget. Some problems include: excess inventory, timed offers, product launch, site launch, customer acquisition, brand awareness, retention. Some of the questions are more long term than short term. So these goals will help determine the budgeting between SEO and paid. Clearing inventory, for example. They go 75% PPC and 25% sponsored links. Timed offers: 25% SEO, 50% PPC, and 25% “ePR” (online buzz). Product launches: 20% SEO, 40% PPC, 20% ePR, 20% sponsored links. You need more balance in this situation. Site launch: 15%ePR, 10% links, 50% SEO, and 25% PPC. Customer acquisition: 30% SEO, 40% sponsored links, 10% each links, ePR, and PPC. Once again, need a well balanced portolio for acquisition over long term. Brand awareness is 25% each SEO, ePR, Sponsored links and PPC. Retention: looking for reassurance of purchase. 40% ePR, 10% PPC, 50% SEO.
Does a short case study…have to go now. That’s all folks! See you in Chicago for the next SES coverage.
