30.11.06
SES Expo: SEM Campaign and Project Management
You will find below my notes about the second conference I attended on Nov. 29th.
SEM Campaign and Project Management
Moderator:
Gilles Dandel, Consultant, WSI
Speakers:
Pierre-Edouard Hiers, Associate and Co-Fondateur, @position
Sara Andersson, Search Strategist Europe, Global Strategies International
Chris Zaharias, SVP Strategic Initiatives, Efficient Frontier
Sara Andersson talked about global SEM (Search Engine Marketing), as defined by her company, Global Strategies Int’l.
Global SEM is complex because of the language and education issues that can arise about the areas you’re working on. You should be careful about the translation, because some words can be relevant in some languages (such as “notebooks” in English, Spanish and Italian) but totally irrelevant in others (like “notebooks” in French, which translates in “ordinateurs portables”).
It’s a good idea to divide KW (keywords) by tiers (more important to less important for instance). If you’re a commercial company, you should map your KW strategy to the buy cycle, by using different KW depending on which step of the cycle you’re working on. The buy cycle is defined as follows by Global Strategies Int’l:
Search > Awareness > Interest > Consider > Purchase (you should use different KW for each step of the process)
It’s important to train they key people in the company you’re working about web searches to make them understand web searches are important. Translators must understand search as well. You should train them by focusing on basic concepts and the value of the search, on KW, landing pages, etc. It’s important to know the worth of the client coming in on your site, it’s important to know their value in order to map your strategy (KW, paid listings, etc.)
You can use the news to optimize your paid listings.
Pierre-Edouard Hiers //
There are more than 360 million searches every day on the internet in the US.
Sometimes it’s not necessary to buy a paid listing, like if your page is already well indexed in the natural results. You have to watch out for duplicate content on your site. You can compete with blogs and personal sites by using a misspelling strategy, in order to improve your rank or index.
You have to keep in mind that the content is very important in your SEO. A beautiful, well organized site isn’t necessarily SE worthy if the content isn’t interesting or relevant.
Chris Zaharias //
Yahoo! and MSN will be as opaque as Google is today eventually. SEM is actually based on math calculation. Yo should remember that a higher CPC means a better visibiliy in SE.
The market is more competitive in the States; ROI is still very good in Europe, but it might change in the near future.
Choosing the higher CPC isn’t always the best solution, cost wise, because you could end up paying more by choosing 2 #1 spots that would bring you 30 customers, than if you’d choose a #1 spot and a #2 spot that’d bring you 25 customers. The ratio could be more interesting, even if that’ll bring you a bit less potential buyers.
That’s why you should look data across KW, but humans can’t do that if there are too many KW to check so robots or software could be useful. Testing ad copies is a good way to improve your campaigns as well.
You should think historically, but act recently to stay relevant at all times. Prepare for Yahoo! Panama system (in 6 to 12 months), that should make it easier to test ad copies and adwords.
It’s maybe not a good idea to use Google Analytics because Google would have your data and you don’t know for sure what they’ll do with it.
