We used to talk about Search Engine Marketing, but since Google continued to grow in importance through 2006. By the end of the year it accounted for over three quarters of searches in the UK. If you work in B2B you will find this is probably over 90%. Amazing?

So, Google is kind of important if you want to reach your online audiences when it matters, i.e. when they are searching for products and services you offer or if customers are looking for by typing in brand terms. Google Marketing is also tough since you won’t be the only company in your sector to realize Google’s importance.

In most commercial sectors you will face intense competition, both for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO):

1. Placement in the natural listings where there is no fee per click,
2. And paid search marketing – placement in the sponsored listings on Google or third party sites on a pay-per-click basis.

Given this there may be other online or offline marketing options that perform better than Google Marketing. OK, let’s take a look at what needs to go into a Google strategy. These are the 10 elements of an effective Google Marketing strategy as I see it.

1. Dissect your customer’s online click behaviour.

You should start with in-depth keyphrase research to understand the number of different searches your audience is performing online. I have compiled a list of these keyphrase analysis tools like the Google Traffic Estimator at http://www.davechaffey.com/seo-keyword-tools.

Once this keyphrase research is done, you can then build a keyphrase strategy with these steps:

a. Do a ‘gap analysis’ to give you a type of market opportunity and competitor baseline.

b. Select target keyphrases to prioritise on.

c. Set goals for returns on SEM based on the number of relevant searches and the cost of achieving results.

d. Select SEM strategy for achieving results for each keyphrase – which combination of SEO, paid-search, online PR and affiliate marketing will work best?

e. Review progress against these goals.

2. Understand where Google fits in the Google Click Ecosystem.

Most search agencies will do keyphrase analysis and selection, but to really understand how to optimize sales and return on investment, Google Marketing you need to understand that every product purchase has a “click persona” and a “click journey” associated with it.

A “click persona” is a thumbnail sketch of typical search behaviour. A “click journey” is the sequence of searches, clicks and content accessed in Google and other online media that a user takes before purchasing. Each click can contribute to the decision to select a service or provider, but some online media are more important than others in selecting the product.

3. Quantified goals

This is relatively straightforward once you have performed our keyphrase analysis.

To assess the quality of your tracking I would recommend considering how many of these you can measure with your current web analytics and audience data:

You also need to check against the granularity of your reporting. Can you assess the seven tracking levels above for?

• Your different product categories and individual products
• Different types of search network, i.e. Google Adwords and also Yahoo!, MSN and Miva.
• The content network for each network, i.e. where ads are displayed not in the search engine but on publisher sites
• Different keyphrases
• Comparison with other online media

4. Make your SEO effective

Next we’re onto the implementation. This is a massive topic and a difficult task, which is why there are now hundreds of specialist search marketing agencies and many of the traditional agencies have acquired search agencies or recruited in their own team.

Alan Eustace, a Google VP of search engineering recently announced that there are now over 200 signals that Google uses to determine document relevance for a searcher.

Some companies, such as Cheapflights.com have built their own internal Search team given the importance of search to their business and their belief that they have the best knowledge of customer search behaviour and their marketplace.

In the space I have here, I would simplify the many success factors to say there are five fundamental laws of SEO:

• First Law of SEO. The more pages on your site that are indexed by Google, the more visitors you will get. So make sure your index inclusion is 100% and Google’s robots can find ALL of your relevant content.

• Second Law of SEO: If you create more pages with unique keyphrase rich content, you will get more qualified visitors, leads and sales. So make sure you identify target keyphrases and create additional content themed around them.

• Third Law of SEO: If you create more quality internal links you will get more quality visitors, leads and sales. So make sure that link-building isn’t only an external activity – you will need to refine your internal link architecture.

• Fourth Law of SEO: If you create more quality external links you will get more quality visitors, leads and sales. So a proactive approach to link-building will pay dividends. Great content will also lead to more natural links, but it will only get you so far. You need to be proactive also.

• Fifth Law of SEO: If you spam, you will be found out eventually. So don’t spam. You need to ensure that an ethical approach to SEO is used. You need to work through with an agency to work through how ethical you are since there are many shades of grey.

Of course quality of content and links is important too. Content must contain an appropriate keyphrase density for a phrase that is being searched for and links to that content from inside and outside the site must relate to the keyphrase in the link anchor text and the page as a whole.

5. Make your paid search or pay per click marketing effective.

Effective paid search marketing will minimize the Cost Per Acquisition across all your keyphrases. From many under-performing Google Adwords accounts I have reviewed, I would say these are the most common mistakes - all stem from not realizing the importance of Google’s Quality Score.

For those not in the know, Google Adwords uses a hidden ‘Quality Score’ to assess the quality of an ad which according to Google is based on “your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) [the main factor used for some time], relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors”.

Other relevancy factors are likely to include the bounce rate of the landing page and the amount of content on the destination site, so pages that don’t engage well relative to competitors will rate less highly or will at least have a higher minimum bid for each search term.

So this means that you must:

a. Get the campaign structure right.
b. Remember the importance of Ad copy.
c. Optimise your Landing pages.
d. Use the keyword matching options for targeting.

Keyword matching using broad, phrase, exact and negative matching is an important targeting technique within paid search since it gives you precise control of which ad you display for the combination of keywords entered by the searcher.

6. Paid and natural integration.

Google marketing will work best if you use the right combination of natural and paid search.

A Google Marketing strategy involves getting the right balance of SEO and PPC marketing based on their strengths and weaknesses. SEO clicks are free, but it is difficult to get on the first page for competitive phrases. So to reach your audience, PPC is essential for many companies.

Alternatively, if you don’t invest in SEO due to its lack of control, then you will miss out on those potential clicks from the search head and tail.

7. Online media integration.

To reduce the cost of customer acquisition, it may not be worth paying for some clicks like Google Adwords clicks, Affiliate clicks or Online media clicks.

Your Google marketing strategy should carefully consider how affiliate marketing can be used to improve your results from SEM since the main benefit of affiliate marketing is that potentially it increases your reach or share of search. And of course, you only pay when leads or sales are generated.

It can also increase visibility for a particular search phrase since affiliates may be displayed in the listings for target key-phrases when you are not, or they may be alongside your results, giving more opportunity for the searcher to visit your site.

You need to balance the potentially higher cost of customer acquisition required by affiliate commission compared to direct search to the site through the natural listings or paid listing.

But affiliate marketing can potentially be cheaper than other forms of promotion for example affiliates may perform better in the natural listings for a phrase compared with you.

8. Marketing campaign integration.

Despite the growing importance of Google Marketing, Companies will continue to run specific campaigns to generate awareness of new brands, services, promotions and many other reasons.

These campaigns often use print and TV advertising and other direct media such as direct mail and phone. Google Adwords search gives an opportunity to improve the results of these campaigns through integrating paid search with these other media.

But this opportunity won’t be realized if the organization or its agencies are in silos.

Integration of paid and natural search requires two changes to be made within an organisation compared to the days before Search Engine Marketing:

• Allocation of campaign based spend to continuous spend on Google Adwords.
• Updating of continuous Google Adwords spend to reflect campaign based activity.

9. Resource selection.

The main alternative choices to consider for undertaking your Google marketing are:

• Traditional media agency
• Full-service digital focus agency
• Specialist search engine marketing agency
• Specialist paid search marketing agency
• In-house paid search specialist

While all of these may deliver a great service, often it is the specialist digital or paid search agency which will perform best.

While each of these may deliver a great service, often it is the specialist digital or search agencies which will perform best.

Then there is the choice of selecting a best of breed specialist for SEO and a separate specialist for paid search. While this should give you technical expertise, it may not give you the integration we talked about above and you also have the additional overhead of meeting and informing each agency.

Then there’s another choice – with the growing importance of SEO and its reliance on understanding customer behaviour and product benefits, some companies are moving their Google marketing activities in-house.

10. Responsiveness.

Finally, remember that Google Marketing is the fastest changing form of marketing on the planet. Period. New search algorithms and index refreshes occur at least monthly. Several changes occur monthly to the Google Adwords service and Google Adsense publishers network. Not to mention the introduction of new products such as Google Mobile, Google Checkout, Google Reader, Google Co-op and Google Video which we have recently seen.

It follows that you need to have agency or internal staff who are bang up-to-date and responsive to the changes that Google and the other players in its click ecosystem introduce. That’s to say its search competitors, your competitors, media owners and the fastest changing of all – the affiliates who are a new form of media owner.

 

By Dave Chaffey
Email: dave.chaffey@marketing-insights.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1773 599 506
Web: http://www.marketing-insights.co.uk

About the author

Dave Chaffey is author of the in-depth E-consultancy Best Practice Guides to Search Engine Optimisation and Paid Search Marketing. He is also author of E-marketing Excellence; Total E-mail Marketing, E-business and E-commerce management and Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. His day job is helping organisations improve their online marketing through Internet marketing training and consulting. He is recognised as one of 50 marketing gurus worldwide who have shaped the future of marketing. The Department of Trade and Industry has recognised him as one of the leading individuals who have provided input and influence on the development and growth of E-commerce and the Internet in the UK over the last 10 years.