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Essential Venues for small Business in 2006
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc.
December 14, 2005
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Search engine marketing has displaced every traditional media with the
exception of television in relevancy and importance in the eyes of ad-buyers.
With much lower costs and a much greater reach, online advertising makes
up the second largest area in which advertisers spend money and marketers
pass messages. There are a growing number of advertising channels available
via the Internet and the major search engines are interested in acting
as facilitators for as many of them as possible.
These channels or services, unlike traditional predecessors, are open and
available to virtually anyone with a product to sell or message to communicate.
Openness, ease of use, a sense of fairness and the global reach of the Internet
are factors that make search marketing so popular. Ultimately, the versatility
of the Internet combined with the much lower costs associated with online
communications is what has brought search marketing to today’s prominence.
Add the evolution of the medium and expanded accessibility and it is a safe
stretch to say that search marketing will eventually surpass traditional
television advertising by 2010 as the communications vehicle of choice.
Here is a short list of what the search engines currently offer in the way
of services to small business advertisers.
Organic Listings
By far, the strongest form of search engine advertising is found in the
free organic listings, at least if your site is in the Top10. According
to a number of studies, the most well known of which is Gord Hotchkiss’ Google
Eye Tracking study, the vast majority of search engine visitors examine
and select organic listings over paid listings.
Organic listings are also the least expensive form of online marketing.
All that is required is a good website and information on items people are
searching for. Delivering a bigger bang for less money, a strong placement
at Google, Yahoo and MSN can provide dramatic increases in site traffic.
Ironically, organic search marketing is not seen to be nearly as sexy or
interesting as its wealthier cousins from the paid-placement side of the
family. The free, organic listings are the loss leader of the search engine
world. None of the major search engines makes a penny providing free listings
and the search marketing sector servicing organic placements is still seen
as an arcane and murky world by many advertisers.
Pay Per Click Advertising and Placement
Pay Per Click or PPC is currently the most popular advertising service
offered by the major search engines. Mainstream marketers love it because
PPC is fairly easy to understand and not nearly as difficult to explain
to others as organic SEO. Because of this, and the base fact that search
engines make money hand-over-fist from PPC programs, the rise in interest
in search by major advertisers mirrors the evolution of the various PPC
systems offered.
Overture started the ball rolling with their original pay per click search
engine GoTo.com. The model was copied and modified by Google and Yahoo purchased
Overture, rebranding the service Yahoo Search Marketing. Overture was fairly
successful in its early years, sticking deals with the search engines of
the day to display paid results much in the same way Google and YSM do today
but it wasn’t until Google introduced AdWords that mainstream advertisers
took notice.
When they did, the sky was suddenly no longer the limit. (Google is actually
working to send search services to space.) Mainstream advertising agencies
and the absurd amounts of money they control started attending conferences
and learning as much as they can about pay per click and other forms of
search marketing.
PPC offers a number of definable results that organic SEO simply cannot.
You can guarantee with absolute accuracy that the result will be visible
on the front page as long as the money and effort is there to make it happen.
Good SEOs haven’t made guarantees for a number of years now. PPC has
another hidden advantage that makes it widely attractive to larger advertisers.
Contextual Ad Delivery is possibly the coolest thing since the automated
bread slicer was invented, at least if you think like a marketer or a search
engine financial executive. The delivery system works in two unique ways.
The first is based on keywords entered by searchers; the second is based
on keywords found on a page or document.
Many search engines display ads generated by a larger search tool. AOL
for example currently runs ads generated by Google. The specific ads coming
up to the right of the organic search results are placed there because they
somehow correspond to the keyword query made by the searcher viewing them.
That’s the basic form of contextual ad delivery.
The more complex form is found on non-search related documents. Next time
you visit a website that is not a search engine, (perhaps even this one),
take a look around the sides of the screen. If you see any ads by Google
or YSM, you are looking at contextually delivered product. The ads appear
on the screen because the website owner has partnered with Google or YSM.
The ads are generated based on keywords found on the document on which they
are displayed. Whenever a site visitor clicks on one of those ads, the site
owner shares a percentage of the click-through bid. Similarly, users of
Gmail have become accustomed to seeing paid advertisements generated based
on keywords found in the text of their email messages.
Marketers see contextual delivery as the predecessor of personalized ad-delivery,
a service MSN feels it is close to introducing when it takes adCenter out
of beta.
Shopping Search
Another form of search service is shopping based search engines. Shopping
engines deliver product information directly to consumers, and help them
find online merchants to purchase from. They are not meant to be places
people look for lost relatives or seek solutions to common health ailments
but they would be glad to refer visitors to a good book or microwave oven.
Most shopping search engines receive information directly from the databases
of merchants using their systems via an XML feed. Two well-known independent
examples are Become.com and Shopping.com. They are not alone however as
the major search engines know a good thing when they see it. Earlier today,
another well-known shopping engine, PriceGrabber.com was purchased by London
based GUS
PLC for $485million.
Google, Yahoo and MSN all have their own shopping search engines. Of the
three, Yahoo’s is arguably the most interesting application of Web2.0
philosophy, MSN is the most traditional and Google is the most comparative.
Yahoo
Shopping has moved forward into the world of Web2.0 providing lists
of products and reviews compiled by its massive user base. It actively promotes
users to save lists to an area known as my lists, and to make those lists
available to other users. Yahoo has tied Yahoo Shopping into Yahoo local
search and provides maps to stores found through their shopping engine.
MSN
Shopping is fairly traditional and straight forward with product listings
by category and price range.
Google’s shopping service Froogle is actually more of a comparative
price engine than a pure shopping engine but, in conjunction with Google
Local and Google Maps, Froogle can provide directions to the lowest cost
items near you.
Local Search
Perhaps the biggest marketing bonanza will be found in local search engines.
Many search engine observers suggest local search will replace the Yellow
Pages as users start to interface with search via handheld devices and
cell phones. Most often used by consumers looking for a product or service
near their own home, local search engines tend to draw information from
the general search databases.
The types of search services mentioned above are only the tip of the iceberg
when it comes to the full range of features, tools and services offered
by the major search engines. For small business advertisers though, these
are the services that are easiest to take advantage of and tend to return
the best results.
Marketing in general has become more complicated and search marketing is
becoming extremely complex. small businesses that already have a relationship
with an SEO or SEM firm might want to arrange a meeting with their search
marketing vendor to discuss plans for the coming year. With or without the
assistance of SEOs or SEMs all online advertisers have a lot to think about
over the holiday season. 2006 looks like it is going to be wild and highly
productive year.
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