Trends in Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Presented by Rob Laporte, CEO, DISC
www.2disc.com - rob@2disc.com - 413-584-6500
Presented as part of
“Marketing Your Business on the Internet Today:
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats”
HiddenTec Annual Marketing Showcase
Tuesday, October 28, Springfield, MA Technology Park
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
Handouts & this Presentation on the Web
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There are only 50 copies here, but this presentation
and all handouts are posted on DISC’s server at
www.2disc.com/newsletter.html
Handout includes:
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Print-out of this power point presentation
Rob Laporte’s article published at the Search Engine
Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO.org):
“SEM: In-house vs. Outsourced,” which outlines the time,
money and skills needed to perform successful SEM,
whether by an SEM vendor or by an in-house employee.
Abstract of Jupiter Research’s July 2003 study, “Search
Powers Online Ad Revival”
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
This 15 minute Presentation’s Outline
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About DISC and Rob Laporte
Audience’s Background (Questions)
A One Minute History of SEM
SEM = SEO, PPC, Paid Placement
PPC: Hype and Reality
SEO: Immediate Results, Long-Term Investment
Predicting and Tracking Results
Choosing or Hiring an SEM Expert
The Future of SEM
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
About DISC and Rob Laporte
 Rob
Laporte: Traditional
Marketing (1985 – 1990),
Shakespeare Scholar
(1991-1997), Owner of
DISC (1995-present)
 DISC: All Web Marketing
and Site Development,
Specializing in SEM
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
Audience Background
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By show of hands, how many of you have done or
contracted for paid placement or pay-per-click
SEM?
How many have done or contracted for search
engine optimization (SEO) or “organic SEO”?
How many have heard of the software,
“Maestro”?
How many have heard of the SEM software,
“IGAAMI”?
How many plan to do some web marketing within
the next 6 months?
How many find SEM to be a baffling field?
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
One Minute History of SEM
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1995-1998: Text-rich, often ugly sites got lucky
with good SE position
1997 – 1999: A plague of spam tactics, most of
which will now get you banished or demoted
2000 – 2001: failing web design firms scramble
willy-nilly into SEM; illegitimate tactics and
pricing confuses buyers and poisons the SEM
well.
2001 – Now: SEM moves firmly into mainstream
business, with major corporate attendance at the
Search Engine Strategies conference series, and
with a major shift of corporate marketing budgets
into SEM.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
One Minute History of SEM
(Cont.)
 Unlike
other web marketing
channels, there is a lot of published
statistics about the growth and
viability of SEM.
 Recent
moves by Microsoft and
Yahoo, for example, attest to present
and future importance of SEM.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
SEM = SEO, PPC, Paid Placement
SEM = Search Engine Marketing (Some
now say “Inquiry Marketing” is more apt)
 SEO = Search Engine Optimization, also
called Organic or Natural SEO/SEM
 PPC = Pay-Per-Click (e.g., Overture,
Google AdWords)
 Paid Placement includes PPC plus any
way by which you pay to get into the
search engines, e.g., Trusted Feed, Yahoo
Directory.
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DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
SEM: It’s Hot
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Paid search listings will total $1.6 billion by the end of 2003,
making up 25 percent of total online advertising spending. Two
years ago, it made up only 10 percent of spending. -- Jupiter
Research, July 2003
13 percent of traffic to web sites came from search engines, up
from 8 percent the year before. - StatMarket, Feb. 2003
(StatMarket’s methods grossly under-report SE referrals, but
even so . . .)
Jupiter Research pegs the paid search market as worth $1.6
billion this year, after growing at a 48 percent clip. Over the next
five years, the researcher expects spending on search to
increase by a compound annual rate of more than 20 percent. -Jupiter Research, July 2003
Please see the handout, “Search Powers Online Ad Revival.“
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
SEM: A Highly Disciplined Field
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If there were a cheap (under $2000) or easy
(under 20 hours) solution, tons of businesses
would do it, thus nullifying the competitive
advantage of the solution.
To better understand the skills and labor time
needed in SEM, please see my article, “SEM: InHouse vs. Outsourced,” at the Search Engine
Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO),
www.sempo.org/sem-article-sem-in-house-vs-outsourced.php
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That article is crucial for deciding not only
whether you should try SEM in-house, but also for
evaluating a prospective SEM vendor.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
Pay-Per-Click (PPC): What It Is
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PPC marketing is a method of
advertising on search engines like
Overture and Google and their many
affiliated search engines. Companies
pay to be listed in search results. Often
but not always, the higher a company's
bid for a particular search term, the
higher its listing in the SE.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
PPC: Hype and Reality
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been a lot of media hype over
PPC, because:
It has proven the best revenue source for the SEs,
who thus promote it heavily.
 The media fastens onto “The Next Great Thing.”
Many SEM vendors hype PPC, because, compared to
SEO, it is easier to do (but not easier to do well) and
is easier to hire for. In PPC it is also easier to
guarantee placement (though not ROI).
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DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
PPC: Hype and Reality
(cont.)
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Reality: It is a lot more difficult to get positive ROI
than you might think – see my SEMPO.org article.
Reality: Tons of people over-bid and don’t know it
-- or don’t care because they have a marketing
budget to spend and the boss can see the
placements in the SEs.
Reality: Click charges can bleed you to death
slowly, and when you stop paying, your site
vanishes from the SEs.
Reality: Tracking ROI and adjusting your PPC
campaign accordingly can take a lot continuous
time.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
PPC: Hype and Reality
(cont.)
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SEM professionals concur that, while SEO
earns better ROI than PPC, PPC is still worth
doing, especially if you use PPC management
software, like BidRank, Did-It’s Maestro,
GoToast.com, or several others that improve
on the bid management tools built into
Overture, AdWords, FindWhat and the other
PPC SE’s.
The key is predicting, tracking and adjusting
ROI: (Clicks to your web site x conversions x
gross profit or value of a lead) – costs (in
labor, software, and click charges)
Your SEM vendor or marketing manager
should work out with you in detail the ROI
formulas specific to your business by which
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
SEO: What It Is
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SEO matches the language of your
web site (every keystroke, not merely
copy writing) to the language used in
search engine queries by your
prospects.
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Copy writing, html titles, navigation links, all file
and folder names, and (least effectively)
keyword meta-tags and alt tags – all words
count.
But what frequency, density and distribution of
key phrases should you use in each page? This
question is one major reason SEM professionals
exist. The best SEM firms reverse engineer the
SE algorithms.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
SEO: Immediate Results &
Long-Term Investment
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Done right, SEO brings in a larger
quantity of targeted traffic than
does PPC, without click charges.
Contrary to what some SEM firms
(who want retainer fees) say, SEO,
properly done, does not require
frequent tweaking or re-submitting.
DISC SEO’d client sites in 1998 and
1999 that are still prevailing in the
SEs, with no changes to SEO
tactics.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
Is Your Site Ready for SEO?
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Unlike PPC, SEO almost always requires
some site redesign or at least re-coding of
the current design.
Most sites have been and are being built by
webmasters who know little or nothing about
SEO architecture.
If you are planning to build or re-build your
site, consult with an SEM expert or online
resource before even taking a crayon to
paper. Even if you don’t do SEO, you want
your site to be open to the SE spiders.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
SEO, Dynamic Sites, Shopping
Carts, & E-catalogs
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Opening non-static sites to the SE
spiders is a major trend now.
I do not have time even to
summarize this field.
Flash only sites can’t be read by the
SE spiders. Use Flash sparingly.
Mod_rewrite for Apache and its
Windows equivalents alone are NOT
a solution.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
Predicting and Tracking SEM
Results
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In most cases you can predict and track
the site traffic and revenues and
resulting Return On Investment (ROI) of
both PPC and SEO.
Improvements in software for predicting
and tracking comprise a major trend in
SEM today.
I highly recommend that you use an
experienced SEM person to predict SEM
ROI before beginning SEM, so that you
can allocate resources and measure
results.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
Predicting and Tracking SEM Results
(Cont.)
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WordTracker, Overture’s Term Suggestion
Tool, WebPosition™ reports, and server
statistics (WebTrends, Webalizer,
Hitbox.com, WebStat.com) showing SE
referrals to a site are industry standards
for predicting and tracking SEM results.
Many other excellent tracking tools are
available: ClickTracks.com,
ConversionRuler.com, TrafficROI.com –
see the resources section of
www.SEMPO.org and
www.SearchEngineWatch.com.
Improvements in and wider use of such
tools are a major trend in SEM today.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
Choosing or Hiring an SEM
Expert
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See my article in the resources
section of SEMPO.org:
www.sempo.org/search-enginemarketing-resources.php.
Ask for proof of past successes in
the form of WebPosition™ reports
and server stats. Ideally, a vendor’s
web site would display some of this
proof.
Get names and numbers of past
clients with whom you can speak.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
The Future of SEM: The Vision Thing
 The
web is above all a
linguistic phenomenon.
The top search engines
constitute the nexus, the
spider, at the center of this
web of words. This will
always remain the case.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
The Future of SEM: Automatic, ROIBased Adjustments of Your
Positioning
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During the coming months and
years, tools for predicting and
tracking will automatically, daily
adjust your PPC position and other
ad spends in accordance with
resulting profit.
See
www.2disc.com/pay_per_click.htm
and
clickz.com/author/index.php/60853_
all to learn more about this trend.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
The Future of SEM: Optimizing
Site Conversion Rates
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When most businesses deploy automatic
optimization of PPC web marketing, your
competitive advantage will come from superior
SEO and from optimization of the conversion
rates of your web site. The latter will require
superb usability and navigation design, and
testing of multiple landing pages. This trend is
in full swing now.
www.useit.com – Jakob Nielsen is the Guru of
site usability and navigation – His books are
required reading for webmasters and web
marketers.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
The Future of SEM:
Localization
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Localization and regionalization of the
SEs: bye-bye Yellow Pages (both print
and online).
Localization of SE queries, a trend that
is happening as we speak, means that
smaller budget businesses will be able
to earn good ROI from SEM.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
The Future of SEM: SEO Prevails
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More screen real estate will be taken
by paid listings as opposed to the free
“editorial” listings in which only SEO
can positions you.
However, SEO will remain the most
cost-effective web marketing
channel. The SEs can’t sell all or
even most of their screen space,
because if they do, another Google
will emerge to convince people that
it has great “objective,” non-paid
listings.
DISC - www.2disc.com - info@2disc.com - 413.584.6500
SEM Resources: A Few Good Links
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www.SearchEngineWatch.com – The best, but you could
spend months reading it all
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www.SEMPO.com – Second best, and more condensed.
SEM vendors here should become members.
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www.clickz.com – The single best source for all things web
marketing.
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www.WilsonWeb.com – Enormous, well selected array of
web marketing articles.
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www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf - shows affiliate
relationships among the top SEs.
www.alchemistmedia.com - A good how-to primer, by DISC’s
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former employee and current luminary in the SEM field.
www.useit.com – The Guru of site usability and navigation – His
books are required reading for webmasters and web marketers.
www.cyberatlas.com – tons of great web marketing statistics.
Thank You For Attending
Trends in Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
By Rob Laporte, CEO, DISC
Attendees get a free 15 minute consultation from me
www.2disc.com - rob@2disc.com - 413-584-6500
HiddenTec Annual Marketing Showcase
Tuesday, October 28, Springfield, MA Technology Park